POV: Sam
"What the hell do you mean, it was for nothing?" I demanded, echoing the words Cyrus had just muttered, almost under his breath. I wasn't like him and Cameron. I didn't have freakishly good hearing, but there was no mistaking what I heard.
"He's right," Sarah said, her voice as blank as her gaze. She had been like that all night, but between her, Alex, and me, she was definitely the least affected by Chase’s death. I was unsure why that surprised me. Why it bothered me. I certainly didn’t have any room to talk about betrayal.
My best friend was dead, and even if I hadn’t been the one to literally put the knife in him, I had twisted it in his back all the same. Chase's blood was on all our hands, but no one's hands were stained more than mine. Except maybe Alex’s, but he hadn't really been there all evening either.
Once we had all finally come to accept that the ritual hadn't worked and Sarah wasn't possessed by the goddess, Ichor, Alex had gone totally despondent. Hell, I wasn't sure I looked much better from the outside.
Chase's body was still on the table, growing cold. Every now and then, I'd hear the sound of his blood dripping.
Drip. Drop.
I was never going to forget that sound. I knew I didn't deserve to. For all I knew, Chase was already haunting me. Part of me wished he would. The idea of never seeing him again…
It was all too surreal. His screams, his pleas for mercy…
Fuck. Fuck, what had we done?
What had I done?
Alternating waves of numbness and dismay washed over me while the others continued to argue about what could have gone wrong. Cyrus insisted that we had followed the ritual down to the letter. He was clearly trying to convince himself more than us at this point. Meanwhile, Cameron was probably the most fucked up out of all of us, and I hadn't heard him speak a word or seen him so much as blink in the last ten minutes.
Of course, he didn't give a shit about Chase. I was pretty sure Sarah was the only human he was actually capable of caring for, and there were times I wondered if that was only because she was Ichor's vessel.
Or at least, she should have been.
"Can we undo it?" I wasn’t even aware that question had left my mouth until everyone was staring at me.
"What the hell do you mean, ‘Can we undo it?’" Cameron asked, finally speaking up. “It’s a human sacrifice.”
I forced myself to look back at Chase's body. Somehow, I was convinced it would've disappeared in the two seconds I'd been distracted. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.
"I mean… There are all kinds of spells in Sarah’s grimoire. And the two of you are technically dead. Maybe —"
"You can't turn someone into a vampire after they're dead, Sam," Cyrus said slowly, like he was speaking to an idiot or small child. I was probably both in his eyes.
I clenched my jaw, trying to ignore the mounting panic that was overtaking the numbness. "You must have fucked something up. You said it was going to work. You said it was a guarantee."
"It was!" Cyrus snarled, his eyes glowing with rage. He was usually so calm that his uncharacteristic reaction probably would've scared me shitless if I had any shits left to give. He masked it as quickly as it had appeared and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know what happened. I don't know why it didn't work. Everything was in place."
"It's the stars," Sarah muttered. "It has to be."
It finally occurred to me that she wasn’t actually upset about Chase. She was upset about the fact that the ritual hadn't worked. They all were.
What the hell was I doing with these people? What was I a part of?
Before I could form an answer I knew I wouldn’t like, Alex spoke up. "We can't just leave him here."
He seemed to be having the same trouble looking over at the body as I was, and I knew it wasn't because he was squeamish. His voice was rough, and he looked about ten shades paler than usual.
"He's right," Sarah said in a quiet tone that gave me hope maybe she actually did feel something resembling the guilt that tainted my every breath. "We should get him to the morgue. We need to start thinking about our alibis."
So much for that.
"Alibis?" Cameron hissed. "You think that matters now?"
It was the first time I'd ever seen him raise his voice to her. He treated her like what she was: the sacred vessel of the goddess he had been obsessed with for lifetime upon lifetime. We all had, and even though my memories of those past lives were a little shaky, I still felt the same devotion and love for Ichor as the others.
It was just that I was also capable of feeling it for the human boy I'd grown up alongside, even if it wasn't the same.
"Of course it matters," Sarah shot back, seemingly unbothered by his outburst. "We can't fix this if we’re all in jail, can we?”
He gave a bewildered laugh and raked a hand through his hair as he paced the small attic room. "Fix it. Right. There is no fixing it!" he cried, turning on her. "This was a once-in-three-centuries opportunity, and we failed. We blew it. It's over.”
"That's enough," Cyrus barked. Everyone in the room fell silent. Even Cameron. Cyrus looked between us as if he didn't really know what to say now that he had our attention, but he was the calm and collected one, and we were all looking to him for what to do next. "Alex is right. We need to get the body to the morgue. We’ll figure out the rest from there.”
"There's a gaping hole in his chest," said Cameron. "We have to fix that before anything else. No way that’s going to go unnoticed in Hicksville."
Cyrus was already walking over to the stone table, and my stomach turned as I watched him dig his nails into his own palm. His face was a mask of stone as he held his bleeding hand over the wound in Chase's chest. There was something almost gentle about the way he filled the wound with his own blood, as if there was anything that could be done. At first, I wasn’t sure what he was doing. Then I remembered the healing properties vampire blood had—ironic, really, considering they were parasites in every other way—and ventured close enough to see the wound beginning to seal itself shut.
A second was enough. I looked away, and my eyes met Alex's for the first time since it had all begun. His face said everything we were both thinking. What the fuck?
"Once Cameron takes him to the morgue, what then?" I asked, trying to ignore the sudden chill in the room. Maybe that ghost theory wasn't too far off, after all. I couldn't stop thinking about the prospect of Chase watching me. Of him looking over the scene of our betrayal. He might not have believed in any of this stuff while he was living, but I had no doubt he would make one hell of a vengeful spirit.
"The rest of us will go home," Sarah answered. "I'll report him missing in the morning. I'll tell the sheriff he didn't come home last night, and I'm sure they’ll want to talk to Alex."
He froze. "Me?"
"Yes, you, dipshit," Sarah snapped. “You're the one who decided to get involved with a human in the first place. They always suspect the boyfriend first."
"I didn't know he was going to be a sacrifice!" Alex protested.
This was all so surreal. I kept thinking I was going to wake up at any moment. Hoping.
“You're not going to jail," Cyrus said, his calm and diplomatic self once more. "I'll compel the sheriff if I have to, but I'd rather not do it unless it’s absolutely necessary."
His answer seemed to appease Sarah, but Alex understandably looked like he thought it was pretty fucking necessary. He didn't say that, of course. We had all just participated in a cold-blooded murder, and if the look on his face was any indication, he was feeling every bit as out of his element as I was.
No turning back now, I told myself. Not that it made it any easier.
"You need to get your shit together," Sarah said, looking at Alex before she turned to me. "Both of you. They're going to call his close friends to identify the body, and there's no way his mom is going to get here in time."
His mom. My heart sank into an even deeper pit, but Sarah wasn’t even slightly phased.
"Right," I mumbled. And she was. She might have been a stone cold bitch, but she was right and I had to get my shit together or this disastrous night was going to turn into an inescapable nightmare.
According to the others, "all we had to do" was identify the body. I spent all night thinking about it, since sleep wasn’t an option, and by the time the sun rose, I was no closer to feeling remotely together than I had been before. I was about to go crazy waiting for the phone to ring, and when it finally did, I picked it up without looking at the display. To my surprise, Sarah's voice was on the other line, not the sheriff’s. It just wasn't any more of a relief.
"Where are you?"
"Home," I answered, looking around the room. "Where are you?"
"The morgue," she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. "Something went wrong."
My heart pounded. What more could possibly have gone wrong? "Did they ask you to identify the body?"
"No," she said in a grave tone. "There was a body when I got here, but I don't know whose it is."
It took me a moment to process her words, but when I finally did, they were no closer to making sense.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"It wasn't Chase," she answered. “It was the guy who watches the morgue at night. His throat was ripped out."
"What the fuck?" I cried, my thoughts racing. It didn't take long to come to an unsettling conclusion. "Cameron—"
"It wasn't him," Sarah said impatiently.
"What makes you so sure about that?"
"Because he wouldn't lie to me.”
It took me a second to think of a response for that. The guy had no moral compass to speak of, so it was kind of hard to believe he drew the line at lying to his girlfriend. Maybe Ichor, but contrary to what Sarah had declared so proudly for years, the two of them were not one and the same. Not by a long shot. That was clearer now than ever. I just wondered when it was going to sink in for her.
"Okay," I said slowly. "So where the fuck is Chase?"
She fell silent for long enough I started to think either she'd hung up or we lost connection.
"I don't know," she finally answered. "I only called because I hoped you might."
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