The first sign of the coming meeting was the departure of the vampires from the farmhouse grounds. All except Molly and a nerdy vampire who looked to have turned when he was only nineteen or twenty. From his slight build and fidgety fingers, he seemed better suited for biting necks in a virtual world instead of their own.

The two vamps entered the farmhouse for the first time and sat beside their liaison at the massive old dining room table. Both seemed oddly at ease and somehow playful as Billie continuously bringing attention to his throat. Which to vampires was equivalent to ringing a dinner bell. Molly winked at the pair, who both sighed in delight.

Is Billie getting more action than I am? Rory wondered.

Maggie and Gus appeared on the front lawn. The bottles Sven had given them still at their lips.

Nadine welcomed them to the witches’ home and ushered them into the dining area.

The Blueskin couple looked bizarre to Rory outside of their own camp. Their unusual complexions stood out more than the two vampires. There was silver showing at Gus’ light blond temples and he’d grown the beginnings of a beard.

Doc helped Maggie into her seat and Gus took an open one next to her. He nodded at the members present and folded his hands in his lap.

Maggie must have given him some etiquette lessons, Rory thought in amazement.

A low growl formed in Asher’s throat, and his eyes narrowed. He gripped the tabletop, his fingers shaping into claws and his breath came in quick shallow gasps. The exposed tattoos on his arms bristled.

“This is going to end before it even gets started,” Rory muttered.

The nerdy vampire stood up and yelped. His fangs retracted out of instinct and Gus jumped up to protect his wife.

“Sit the fuck down,” Rory commanded the vampire, fusing the magic into her words.

A tiny squeal left his lips as his body sat down for him. Stock still in his seat, he glowered at Rory.

She turned her attention to Gus. Maggie patted his arm, and he returned to his chair, his eyes focused on the struggling shifter.

“Nessa, you’re needed immediately,” Rosemary called.

The witch ran into the room and whispered softly into Asher’s ear. Magic pulsed through the room as she spoke.

Asher closed his eyes. The growl tapered and his posture relaxed to normal human instead of trapped predator.

“Forgive my son. His other-self panicked after years of hearing the threats both vampires and Blueskins pose. Some beasts can be territorial, especially when confined in close-quarters.”

Despite the continued unease in the room, the meeting began. And droned on far too long for Rory's liking.

She spent the majority of it with her hearing tuned out. Her idle mind focused on the body language of those around her.

The Blueskin couple leaned into each other, their pinkies locked together in a subtle display of affection. With pride sparkling in her eyes, Maggie watched her husband stumble through full sentences instead of his clipped native tongue.

Rosemary and Asher sat silently, speaking volumes in glances to each other.

While Doc kept himself mostly professional. Occasionally, he’d bump his leg into Rory’s rousing her into the present and the touch would linger.

Finally, with armies pledged and plans drawn out, the council ended. Everyone stood to go their separate ways.

Everyone except the nerdy vampire who sat unmoving. Helpless.

“Oops.” Rory shrugged. “It’ll wear off. Still haven’t figured out a counter spell.”

“No?” Rosemary took a sharp breath.

“Like I said, it wears off eventually, so I just kinda figured what’s the point?”

She gestured at the vampire stuck to his chair. “That’s the point. It’s irresponsible and disrespectful.”

Rory turned and looked at the helpless vampire. “Go on and go.”

Nothing happened.

“You need to mean it.”

“I’ve tried it before, meant it, and it didn’t work.” Her cocky attitude melted away into a puddle around her feet. It had been in this very house over a year ago. Byron stood frozen in the living room after their first real evening together. He tried to kiss her neck, and she panicked.

For all I knew, he would have bitten me that night and who knows where we’d be.

“Are you sure you wanted them free?”

“Absolutely.” Not, she finished the statement in her mind. If I’m being honest with myself, it was safer having him tied up and out of eating distance. Her shoulders fell, and she took a deep breath. “Go on and go.” This time the magic filled her words, and the vampire took off. “You’re both uninvited to the house. Thank you for coming.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Rosemary asked and patted Rory’s back.

With their differences finally resolved, Nadine and Sven were cozied up in bed together. So Rory got in bed alone, still wondering what would happen if Byron bit her that night at the farmhouse.

As often happened when she didn't have someone nearby to keep her company, she cried herself to sleep again. Though each time there were a few less tears to shed. His smell was still too present, and the memory of his lips just as real as though they kissed yesterday.

The sound of chirping birds and the warm summer breeze against her skin roused her.

Fuck, she thought as she realized she’d been pulled into Mara’s domain in her sleep. Fuck her and her goddamn heavy-handed bullshit.

“Language, Aurora.” The old woman stood near her. Just as she appeared the last they’d met. Her stooped frame propped on a cobalt staff. The same old brown dress and maroon shawl that made her look like she stepped out of a renaissance festival. Her silver-white hair spun into a tight bun at the top of her head.

“Oh, yay. I’m here. Are you going to send me on some bullshit quest too? Or are you sending Doc and the rest of my friends away to add more salt to the wound?” The pocket reality of perpetual bright blue skies and lush flower-filled meadows lost its wonderland charm. She wanted to tear each blade of grass from the ground and shove them down the old lady's throat.

Mara leered at her, and Rory swallowed her anger. Her thoughts weren’t safe around the old crone who picked up on everything. It was best to cool her head a bit while she still had one.

The ancient witch ran a thumb across her staff and sighed. “I understand you’re cross with me, but it was for a good reason.”

“Oh well, that makes it better. My world got fucked up not once but twice thanks to you. But it was all for a good reason. So...”

“You’ll see him again.”

“When?” she asked, ignoring the butterflies that flitted in her stomach.

“In time.” Mara waved a dismissive hand. “You should have known there would be a price for the gift I gave him.”

“You could have told me so I was ready.”

“Was that my secret to tell?”

Rory’s spite shattered into humiliation. She’d been so angry at Mara. And bitter. But she was right, there was always a cost, and she was only taking her due. It wasn’t her duty to tell a partner what the other was doing.

If he’d just been honest with me. Tears burned her eyes.

“Aurora, you’d still be angry. Even if he told you the very day we made the deal.”

“But at least I wouldn’t feel like this, maybe.”

“The past is over. His mistakes are made, and he lives with them.” She narrowed her eyes. “But he deals with his sins alone. Without the aid of not one but two suitors to distract him. You’re fickle as the wind, girl.”

Rory shuddered and balled her fists. “You had centuries to wait and let us be. One year. That’s all we had.”

“The both of you were too busy playing house to realize the walls crashed down around you. Hatred spread like flash fires through Alma, and you moaned like a king’s whore for him.” Her eyes burned into Rory.

“Fuck you,” Rory spat, though terrified those would be her last ever uttered words. It wasn’t in her to back down when she was wronged.

“You want to see where you were headed? Here.” Mara pushed a finger against Rory’s forehead. “Enjoy what the future would be for the two of you had I not intervened.”

The world went black.

Kisses soft as silk brushed against her lips. She leaned into him, the familiarity of him. She opened her eyes and Byron kissed the tip of her nose, her mouth, her neck, her breasts. His fingers traveled lower, and she gasped.

They were in their room at the farmhouse. He’d met up with them in Inboco. They’d rescued Nadine and made their escape together. The rest was a horrible nightmare.

His kisses moved further south, and she stopped him. “You’re really here. I need to look at you.” She’d started crying again, but this time it was for no other reason than pure joy.

“Where would I go?” He looked at her with growing concern. “Did you have a bad dream?”

She kissed him again and again, nodding into his kisses, and wetting his face with her tears. “I love you so much. You can’t ever leave me.”

“I love you too and I’m right here. Use your power and make me stay in bed all day to prove it.” He held her hands and kissed each fingertip.

“I might just-”

Nadine’s screams from below shattered their moment of peace.

Byron jumped from the bed and narrowly avoided a lit torch tossed through the window. “Run, Rory. Grace found us.”

They ran to the staircase, but it was already rapidly burning and deteriorating.

Rory coughed through the growing smoke. “We have to jump out a window.”

They turned to open Doc’s bedroom door, but the floor gave way beneath them.

They fell.

Broken boards tore into their bodies.

Byron had protected her from the worst of the damage and was gone already.

She tried to stand, but a plank pierced them together.

This is it, she thought.

Rory felt herself burn and finally fade away in his arms.

She opened her eyes while gasping for breath and coughing. “What the fuck was that?”

“Such foul language for a lady,” Mara scolded. “I told you already, Aurora.” She looked down at Rory’s convulsing form with an almost sad expression. “I was hoping to spare you the pain, but you seemed insistent.”

“So, what, you brought me here to torture me?” Rory still shook from her brush with death. Her stomach churned violently, and she rolled to her side to vomit. She cried harder and pulled her knees to her chest.

“Enough.” Mara raised her hand and Rory rose with it.

She’s using my power again on me. Great. Are you listening to me, Mara? Fuck you. I won’t let you get the better of me that easy. Rory lifted her chin in defiance.

“Is it just me or did I feel the tremors of a tiny earthquake? Too bad you had to wrap it in that smug little attitude of yours. But your little displays keep putting me in a sharing mood. It was so much fun the first time, don’t you think?” Mara’s eyes burned like hot coals, and she stepped closer. “I suppose you’re strong enough for a darker vision. Since you keep wondering what would have happened if your lover had bitten you that night. Let’s find out.”

Rory flinched away, but the arthritic finger tapped into her third eye and once more she fell down the rabbit’s hole.

Cold skin pressed against hers. Hands hungrily tore at clothing. The partner was new and exciting and familiar all at the same time. His tongue lapped at her neck.

This is where I should command him to stop, she thought, but didn’t.

She gasped as his fangs entered her.

He drank greedily from her neck, but he was hungry for more than blood. He pushed himself against her, hard and ready.

He was too insistent and taking too much.

She was fading. If she didn’t make him stop, she’d die. It took him three hundred years, but he’d gotten the better of her. “No more,” she said in a voice so small it was barely her own. “You took too much.”

The power of her blood took hold. Stronger than her voice could ever be, a vampire drinking from her created a thrall. Immediately he obeyed and closed the wound. Without saying a word, he opened a vein in his wrist for her and placed it against her lips.

Her eyes narrowed at him and her top lip curled.

But head bowed, he insisted.

The blood reached her mouth and her mind filled with faces of those who died long ago at the hands of the creature before her. She clenched the arm to her mouth, reveling in the power building inside her body. Her magic flared and windows shattered. The dormant monster inside herself, the one who fed on her deceit and corruption, opened its eyes.

It was hungry and insatiable.

The vampire fell on his knees in front of her, kissing her feet. Worshiping her. He dared a peek at her face, and his eyes held something beyond love.

Obsession.

A horrible smile crept upon her lips. He made a beautiful pet. She watched with a growing pride as the thing she’d feared, the Man from Table Five, lost himself to her. After all the horror and self-doubt, it was intoxicating to feel so in control.

If it was this easy to dominate him, how would the others fare? Not so far away, the witches slept and they would join her. She would control the chaos of this world, the same way she conquered the creature of her nightmares.

Rory’s true self, lost inside the growing malaise of this other version of her, screamed in frustration but was unheard.

She was no longer the Rory that had been. But neither was she vampire. She was a perverse version of the two and more powerful than both combined.

Her body tightened and hummed with energy. She fucked him, marking him with her scent. “Mine,” she hissed. Magic flowed from her, weaving into the words. A spell that would never wear off.

The scene grew distant, and another took its place.

With the rest of the vampires under her influence, Alma fell quickly. The Catherine of old, once so careless with Rory’s life, hung from the city gates next to her right hand, Grace.

The leadership of the Blueskins passed from the traitorous Vic to herself. She gave the loathsome creature to her pet Byron to do with as he pleased—never bothering to learn his fate—and took the three witches Vic had tortured into her care.

Soon after, Inboco burned.

Beside her, Nadine shed a single tear as the last who dared stand against Rory fell. The exsanguinated body of Rosemary lay at her feet.

“She was delicious,” Rory said and moaned in delight. “Old magic flowed in her veins.” She took Asher as another pet to make three in total. While she’d taken the large witch called Doc as a pet, she hadn’t claimed him yet. It was more fun to break him. Force him to watch her claim others. Allow hands to explore the body he would never touch.

The night she took Inboco, she leaned back in her bed in what was once the Catherine’s chambers. The old holy place was profaned. The walls scarred. Graffitied with lewd drawings in blood.

Doc stared with the same hurt expression that excited her, and she contemplated finally claiming him. But no, that would spoil her fun.

Byron and Asher took their places on either side of her. They disrobed her. Pleasured her. Pleasured each other. Yet her leer never fell from Doc.

The other unturned witches joined them, and her bed writhed with bodies. Holga’s dark flesh pressed against Nadine’s own, pale and freckled skin. Sven poured libations down Rory’s throat and lightly pinched her left nipple.

A mistake the true Rory realized immediately. But this twisted version wasn’t familiar enough with him to know his tricks. Or what he was capable of.

Her head clouded, and she shook. Her vision doubled.

Both thralls, Asher and Byron, howled in pain.

“I’m really sorry,” Billie cried and drove a stake through Byron’s heart. The vampire crumbled to dust while his killer looked on, shocked and heartbroken.

Asher moved to change, but the blonde, Nessa, from Inboco forced his leopard into hibernation. He made to cast a spell, but the ungrateful bitch Rory had saved from Vic’s clutches—Lena—blinded him. He doubled over and shrieked before Nadine drove a dagger into his throat.

The witches turned to Rory, but her limbs refused to move. She tried to speak, but whatever Sven had given her had damaged her vocal cords.

I should have claimed the drunken fool, were her last thoughts.

Before Doc held the Catherine’s dowsing rod and brought it down on Rory’s skull.

Once… Twice… Three times…