Seventh Seal - Jacquelyn Faye Page 0,51

could feel her tension and anxiety.

Nothing.

Bullshit. She appeared at my side with a gust of wind a moment later. "Please tell me you're not about to do something abysmally stupid."

"You know I can't make that promise. Ever."

Ellis and Dar stepped out of the store. I could feel Chief standing in the square, hands on his hips as he turned toward my direction. Jason sat down at the desk in the office, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

None of them said a word, not one of them tried to stop me. They were all there for me. Except Yuki. She was a little white ball of snarling canine fury. "Gah!" She raised her hands to the sky and then slapped her thighs in frustration.

"Come on, Squishy. It'll be fun."

"I said gah, not glaaah." She made zombie motions with her hands, wiggling her forearms back and forth.

We headed for the central square.

As soon as we made it, I started laughing. The others chuckled and shifted nervously. In the park, the one that had been an open pit into the deepest reaches of Hell hardly a month before, stood about thirty people in dingy jeans and freshly printed OWL T-shirts. A few of them were toting effigies of witches in nooses, a couple of them were holding unlit tiki torches, and the rest were holding up poster boards with badly written racial slurs towards the magically gifted community. No one else was paying any attention to them. Not even Chief, who was striding purposely towards us trying to hide his smile.

"Impressive turnout." I snickered when he was close enough.

"Yeah. Don't know why you thought you needed to be here. I wouldn't even let them light the torches. Fire Marshal said it was a fire hazard."

"Well, I feel like an idiot." I was almost disappointed. I thought we were facing a major problem. In a town of a couple thousand, if thirty of those hated me, I'd call that a good day. I had more people than that in Ashville who hated me, and everybody knew about witches. I blamed my mother for that ratio, though.

"Thought you were going to a movie?"

"And miss all this excitement?" I motioned toward the crowd with my hands.

"Coffee?"

"Love some." I turned around. "Everybody get back to work. Party's over."

The tension in the group lifted. The nervous chuckles turned into full-fledged laughter of relief. Not that I could blame them. It was one thing to expect to be hated and feared, and another to realize that maybe you were imagining the whole thing. "Try and stay out of trouble, Master," Shea said with a grin and pulled Dar and Ellis into the shadows of the building entrance we were skirting.

"I'm going back to bed." Yuki humphed and disappeared with a mini tornado of leaves.

"Can we get out of the cold now?" Jimmy had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans and implored me with his eyes.

"You bet. I'm buying." It was only fair. He bought dinner.

He and Dennis started walking toward the diner, gratefully. Chief had just put his hand on the small of my back to move me along when a scream tore through the square. The crowd of thirty protesters had scattered. Where they had been standing, one of them was lying on the ground, hands clutching his throat as red stained the brown grass before him.

Another was pinned against a tree, vainly batting against the head of the vampire that held him there while he fed from the gaping wound he'd torn open. Four more were herding the scattering protestors toward the large alleyway beside city hall.

Lord Abernathy Jr. had made another move.

"Fuck," I grumbled and ignored Shea's warning. Striding toward the commotion, I yanked the broom charm from my neck and held a broom a moment later. One shake of my arm and a silent command later, I held the scythe.

The vampires were having a ball. There wasn't an iota of fear from them. But the scared shitless humans assaulted my olfactory senses and brought out the vampire in me. I snarled in rage. Then, and only then, did the vampires sense me. Slowly they turned. The one that was feeding dropped the human and sighed when he saw my approach. A moment later, Yuki was back at my side as we bore down on them.

Normally, when she moved, I couldn't follow her movements. She was that fast. Time slowed as my other senses took over illuminating the square in silver light. Each