had evolved somehow, and the evolution made it almost invincible.
The mist battled past the spray and seeped into the slayers. Immediately, they dropped their extinguishers and began pulling out their weapons and turning on one another.
Suddenly, Ethan was by my side, taking hold of my hand. Close by were Gabriel and Alvie, who were chanting a spell I didn’t recognise. By the frustrated looks on their faces, I guessed it wasn’t working. They needed Rita.
Emilia watched this new turn of events from her balcony with a satisfied smile on her face. Only a second later her smile faltered, and I followed her eyes to where Pamphrock and two other dhampirs were fighting their way through the infected slayers. What on earth was Pamphrock thinking? There was no hope of him taking down Theodore in his current state of power. The sorcerer was practically pulsating with magic, ready to wipe out anyone who got in his way.
Ethan pulled me behind him when a crazed slayer tried to attack us. Ethan snapped his neck before I even had the chance to push the mist out of him. Shocked, I tried to let go of his hand, but he held on tight.
“This is a battle,” Ethan said. “You cannot balk at death. There are going to be casualties.”
I gulped and tried to find Pamphrock again amongst the fighting slayers. So many of them had already been killed by their comrades, whose actions were not their own. I finally spotted Pamphrock, who was wielding a bow and arrow identical to Finn’s and aiming it directly at Theodore’s head.
Seeing the attempt on his life, Theodore stepped forward with his arms outstretched.
“Come on then, Governor. Take your best shot.”
Pamphrock let loose the arrow, and it sailed through the air toward Theodore, but the arrow disintegrated mid-flight, falling to the ground like dust.
Theodore’s hand shot out, as though throwing an invisible rope, and something strange happened to Pamphrock. He clutched at his throat like he was choking, while Theodore’s laughter echoed around the street. Finn and Ira rushed to Pamphrock’s side, but just before they got to him, Theodore fisted his hand and Pamphrock’s body flew up into the air. It reminded me of the trick he used with Rita in the church.
Pamphrock struggled and gasped for breath as he hovered in mid-air. Theodore and his group watched on, smug in their victory. I couldn’t let this happen. If Pamphrock died, then the only halfway decent leader in this city would be gone, leaving Theodore and Whitfield to battle it out. And neither of those was a good option.
Ethan seemed to come to the same conclusion because he didn’t hold me back when I started running. He ran right along with me. A second later, he scooped me up and threw me onto his back like he did last night. Going at vampire speed, we reached Pamphrock in mere seconds.
I needed to think of something. I was the granddaughter of a sorcerer. I could do this, right?
With that thought, the book sprang open in my head again, the one Rita referred to as the “All-Knowing Tome”. I held tight onto Ethan’s neck as the pages flicked then stopped on the information I needed.
In order to kill a sorcerer, he must be decapitated and his body burned to ash.
I whispered this information quickly to Ethan.
“There’s no way to do it,” he said, his jaw tight with tension. “He’d have us up in the air just like Pamphrock before we got within feet of him.”
“There has to be some way,” I said desperately, looking up at Pamphrock who was losing the struggle against Theodore’s magic.
My attention was drawn away when an unusual crackling noise filled my ears over the din of the battling slayers. I turned around and was immediately struck with the image of purple fire lighting a blaze down the empty end of the street. Within the purple fire stood Rita. Only she didn’t look like the Rita I knew.
Her short hair fizzled with electricity, and it shot from her fingertips like lightening, bouncing off the ground as she strode toward us. Her eyes were black and purple, the same as they’d been after Noreen died. She wore her long, lacy black dress, her feet bare.
I didn’t know how she got all the way here since we were a good distance from Finn’s house. Did she walk? I couldn’t imagine her going unnoticed looking like this. Then again, the humans were hardly in their right minds at