Page 3 of The Haunting
Nobody said a word as Drake continued driving forward. The lane was heavily overgrown with trees, and it was awfully reminiscent of a horror movie.
A huge building came into sight, and I baulked. I loved Halloween, but nope. Not setting foot in that for love or money!
Emmaline
“Anything?” I asked my husband desperately as Vladimir tried accessing the mirror network again.
“No, darling, I’m sorry. Whatever this storm is, it’s messing with Mary’s mirrors,” Vladimir replied.
“Oh God, Vladimir, what if the others are also cut off from getting home?” I worried.
“They won’t be. Babe, a storm can’t harm the Legendary Shifters. Jase’s target was at sea; he and Willow will shift into their merforms and dive deep if they have to hide. They won’t be found. Lanie and Mac are in England, so they’ll be away from this storm. Dale was the only other one who went hunting,” Vladimir said thoughtfully.
“And Dale will simply shift into Invisible Man and disappear if need be. He’ll be safe,” I murmured more to reassure myself than Vladimir.
“Exactly, don’t worry about them. I don’t know where we are, and the sat nav being broken isn’t great.”
“The weather is shocking,” I complained, looking out at the dark afternoon. The storm had hit out of nowhere and scared me half to death. Sure, a storm wouldn’t kill me, but even so, this was nature at its most furious, and it worried me.
Vladimir and I had come to Nebraska to feed Bloodlust. The target who’d appeared in Vladimir’s mirror portal had been a particularly nasty person. Once Vladimir had fed the Sin of Bloodlust, we’d attempted teleporting back through Mary Worth’s mirror network, and we’d failed. At first, neither of us were concerned. Vladimir had tried a different mirror and then several others. None of them allowed us to open a portal home.
Knowing we were with a dead body, Vladimir got us out, and we escaped to our hire car. Hell, we didn’t want to be caught red-handed with the victim. Well, the dead guy wasn’t exactly a victim. He’d butchered over a dozen people and was a serial killer, one who had evaded the authorities’ notice. The Sin of Bloodlust had fed and was satiated. But we’d been stuck.
I’d agreed with Vladimir when he said hanging around would be bad, so we raced to the car, a few streets away, and drove off. We’d driven all morning trying to find a mirror that worked, and none did. Vladimir had tried calling for a private plane, but our phones wouldn’t work either. It seemed everything was against us, and now this storm had fallen, and we were lost.
Honestly, I was a little scared, but not overly so. Vladimir and I could always shift into our vampire forms and protect ourselves should the need arise. Anyone attempting to mess with us would be in for a shock. We certainly weren’t defenceless.
A huge house appeared, making me gasp, and then I frowned. “Where did that come from?”
“Don’t know, but it might provide us some protection from this storm,” Vladimir replied.
Horrified, I gazed up at the structure. “Nope, I don’t think so. Ain’t going in there.”
Vladimir peered up and shuddered. “Yeah, it’s kind of somewhere you’d expect to find vampires.”
A laugh left me at his dry tone.
“Really?” I asked in disbelief.
“Come on. It’s probably got fires, and we can get warm,” Vladimir suggested, and I shivered. It was damn cold here, he was right.
As we looked on, we saw headlights appear. We weren’t alone anymore!
James
“Dickhead,” I muttered at Inglorious, who scowled.
The President of the Unwanted Bastards MC hunched over his steering wheel, trying to see ahead of him. Any fool could have told him that was impossible.
“Shut up,” Inglorious retorted.
“James isn’t wrong,” Nanci replied, sounding unamused.
“Babe, I love ya…” Inglorious started saying, and his old lady scowled.
“Don’t patronise me!” Nanci snapped, and I grinned. Inglorious subsided and then flared up again.
“Where did you want me to go? The road in front of me was flooded!”
