Alvie in an effort to calm him, but Alvie pushed him away, lost in his anguish. Suddenly, I felt Rita begin to shake. The scent of magic, incense and spice, filled the air. Her gaze cut to the people around her, and my heart stopped when I saw her eyes. They’d gone completely black, except for a swirl of purple in the centre.
Her voice came out low at first when she whispered, “Get away from her.”
I was the only one who seemed to have heard her. Fury seeped from her every pore. “Get away from her. All of you!” she wailed, her voice reverberating throughout the entire street.
I still hadn’t moved, but Rita’s sudden anger got me going. I started to feel hot, as though my skin was burning from the inside out.
“I said MOVE!!” Rita yelled, and everyone finally got the message.
As we scrambled away, a sizzling, crackling wall of magical fire began to rise around her as she clutched tightly to Noreen’s lifeless body. The flames were all purple, just like the swirls in her eyes. Somehow, the fire smelled of sadness and rage. I wasn’t sure how to describe it, but it reminded me of rain when it hit the pavement during a sudden downpour.
Ethan slipped his arm around my waist, pulling me farther away from the fire.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked helplessly.
“She is grieving,” Ethan answered. “The grief of a witch can be a powerful thing. It makes itself known in unimaginable ways.”
Everybody else stood still, staring in awe at the cocoon of fire that Rita had constructed around herself.
I started to panic. “She’s going to burn if she stays in there.”
“She won’t,” Gabriel said. “The fire belongs to her. It will only burn the people who try to get past it. We need to leave her to her grief. She’ll drop the flames eventually.”
All around me, Pamphrock and his remaining slayers were tending to one another’s injuries. It was only at that moment that I remembered the wound on my neck where Eliza bit me, and the fact that not only was I covered in vampire blood, I was also covered in my own blood. Ethan still stood with his arm around me, but I sensed his gaze on my neck almost as soon as he noticed the blood.
My heart hammered when I turned around to see his black eyes bearing down on me and his fangs extending from his mouth.
13.
I backed away from him slowly. “Hey now, relax,” I said, making sure I had my razor handy. Ethan’s eyes were so full of need they practically glowed. His sharp fangs glistened under the shine of the streetlamp, and I was torn between enchantment and terror. I wasn’t in my right mind. Ethan helping me kill Eliza caused my brain to go loopy. Surely, that was it.
I shook myself from the trance and held out the blade to keep him at bay. Thankfully, Delilah yanked him back by the arm and gave him an almighty whack across the face, which seemed to snap him out of it.
Broken from his bloodlust, Ethan put a hand to his cheek in surprise, glaring at Delilah. “What did you do that for?”
“You were about to bite her, you idiot!” she bellowed at him. “Have you lost your mind?” At this, her eyes trailed to my neck, registering that I’d already been bitten tonight.
“It was Eliza,” I stated flatly. “I killed her.”
“Yeah, I gathered as much from what Whitfield said. I didn’t know she bit you though. What happened?”
I suddenly noticed that everybody had gathered around me now, except for Pamphrock and his remaining slayers. Alvie was still sitting just outside of Rita’s cocoon of fire, weeping. In my heart, I wanted to join him, but there was no time for me to be sad. I needed to stay strong.
“Her eyes and skin turned silver,” I explained. “Then she started to shake as though she was transforming.”
“Are you okay?” Finn asked, coming to my side and putting his hand to the small of my back in a concerned gesture. Ethan gave a barely audible growl. He stopped when Delilah’s reproaching green eyes landed on him in silent warning.
“I’ll live,” I answered, turning to look at Finn. He had a small cut on his jaw, and there was blood on his clothing, but it was too dark to be human. Vampire blood was a shade deeper than ours.
Nobody said anything then. We fell into a state of quiet distress. Ethan,