Story: The Bitch and the Beast (chapter 12)

Authors: Jos Mous

Back to chapter list

Chapter 12

Title: Chapter Twelve

Part Twelve

NOTE: And there you have it, the final part of the Bitch and the Beast. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who gave me feedback. I _really_ couldn't have done it without you. Thank you. And now without further ado, on with the story:

~~~~~~~~~~

"You know, this really upsets my entire timetable." Patricia said."Really?" Sam wasn't exactly in the mood to talk, but if she could keep this vamp talking long enough Lily might find Nicole and get out of here unnoticed.

"Yes, you see I wasn't planning on leading you here until I had turned the girl."

"Well in that case you shouldn't have sent one of my friends to my house." Sam responded as she slowly started to make her way towards the stage.

"That girl was one of your friends?" The vampire seemed honestly surprised. "My, it's a small world after all. But enough talk, would you mind coming over here on stage?"

"Strange, but I was already planning to do that."

"Oh, wait, let me guess, 'you're planning to kill me', is that it?"

"That's more or less the gist of it. Although simply killing you seems nice compared to what I have in mind for you."

The vampire laughed. "You know, contrary to what your literature and other forms of 'culture' might tell you, you humans are really no match for us."

"Well then, good thing I'm not human, right?"

Patricia looked confused, her well-practised smile disappearing from her face. "What?"

Smiling, Sam revealed the bite marks on her right shoulder. The vampire's eyes seemed to lose their amused glimmer and she clenched her fists. "Werewolf." She hissed. "One of _my_ blood a werewolf."

"What do you mean, 'one of your blood'?"

"Don't you get it? I was once human too you know, I had a loving husband, children and all that. Until the day I changed, of course. Unfortunately for me my darling husband took _my_ children and fled. It has taken me centuries to track my descendants down."

"And now I turn out to be a werewolf, must be really disappointing." Sam said.

"Well no matter," Her theatric expressions firmly back in place again. "You're not the only one, you know. I'll just track down another one. After all, as opposed to you I have all eternity."

"I wouldn't count on it." Sam said, ending the conversation.

In seconds Sam shifted and dashed towards the vampire. Patricia remained on her spot, her smile remaining completely the same. Sam leapt onto the stage and with one quick jump knocked the vampire to the ground. The vampire softly blew into Sam's face. The werewolf was lifted from the ground by a sudden gust of wind and knocked against the far wall.

"Magic." Sam muttered as she crawled back to her four feet again. "I hate magic."

"Ah yes, I forgot. You werewolves only know brute force. You truly don't appreciate the elegance of magic, do you?"

Sam didn't respond, but instead dashed towards the stage again in a second attack. Somewhere she knew that was probably futile, but she gambled that it would amuse the vampire, giving her time to think of something else.

No such luck.

A wall of fire emerged in front of the stage, effectively cutting Sam off. The fire soon spread across the walls. There was no more way out. Her only chance was that the vampire's magic might disappear if she died. Too bad Sam couldn't reach her. The werewolf paced up and down, never taking her eyes off from the vampire who stood smiling at the other side of the firewall. There had to be a way to solve this. Why wasn't the vampire doing anything? Sam realised uncomfortably that this vampire only had to lift a finger to set her fur aflame. But she suspected that that would be too easy for a vampire like this. Sam growled deep in her throat and turned around.

Only to see a large grey demon coming in her direction. The body seemed human enough, except for the claws. The head looked like a human skull with goat's horn attached to them. The thing had no eyes, but it was possible that the two gaping black holes _were_ it's eyes. The most striking feature of the thing, however was its man-sized scimitar. Since Sam had no intention of being decapitated any time soon she jumped out of the demons way. She could faintly hear the clapping sound coming from Patricia's hands. Sam tried to create as large a distance between herself and the thing. The demon was powerful, that much was certain. But it was also slow and a little clumsy at times, but that was because he was too large to be able to walk easily through the rows of chairs. It soon found a way to get rid of that nuisance and its scimitar started hacking in on the chairs. Sam had waited for the demon to be distracted by something like this. She leapt forward and hit the demon in the chest. The demon stumbled backward a few paces before tumbling down. Sam jumped onto its chest and sunk her teeth into the thing's throat, only to find that she couldn't pierce the skin. The demon had recovered enough from the fall by now to grab Sam by the neck and hurl her a few feet away.

"I'm sorry dear, did I forget to tell you that Gemma cannot be harmed by conventional means? He is created by magic after all."

At that moment in time Sam decided that she _definitely_ didn't like magic. The demon started making his way towards Sam again swinging his huge scimitar to get rid of all those pesky seats that were in the way. The most realistic part of Sam's brain told her that she was not going to win this. Sam ignored it, of course. Maybe she could knock that scimitar out of its claws and then use it on the demon. The scimitar was created by magic as well after all. When Gemma came within range Sam leapt at it again. The demon had foreseen this however and used Sam's momentum against her, effectively tossing her against the wall of fire. Sam howled as the flames started to spread across her fur and she could clearly hear Patricia's almost hysterical laughter. Sam rolled across the ground to extinguish the flames. Even magical fire needs oxygen after all. She was about to get back on her feet when she could feel the weight of a really heavy foot slamming onto her back and pinning her to the ground. Sam managed to roll around enough to see Gemma raising its scimitar in preparation.

"Game over," Sam's brain told her. "You lose."

Sam could hear the blade rushing down, but it never hit its target. Gemma stood frozen, slowly vanishing. Sam quickly got back up on her feet, thinking that this was just another trick of Patricia. That she wanted to get a little more fun out of the werewolf. But when Sam looked up at the stage she could only see that the firewall was gone and that Patricia was staring disbelieving at the wooden point sticking out of the front of her chest. The vampire sighed once, then fell to the ground. Patricia would probably be horribly embarrassed by such an amateuristic death-scene if it weren't for the fact that it was _her_ death-scene. With a smug look on her face Nicole planted her foot on the back of the vampire and yanked her stake out of the vampire's back.

"Guess my backstabbing skills pay off after all." She muttered, before she too fell to the ground.

Sam quickly shifted as she ran towards the stage. She sat down next to the fallen blonde and put her hand under her head for a support. Nicole's face was filled with cuts and bloodstains of all sizes and only a miracle could prevent her from ending up with a face full of scars.

"Hey." Sam whispered softly.

"Hey yourself." Nicole whispered back. "How are you?"

"Fine. And how about you?"

"Couldn't be better."

"You look great."

"Liar. That bitch decided to be creative with a knife and my face."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"Nicole? Nicole! Where did you…" Lily's voice was quickly silenced when she appeared from the side-scenes and onto the stage. She couldn't believe what she saw. Sam was holding Nicole in a very tender embrace and they stared at each other with what she could only describe as 'lovingly'. The fact that there was a dead vampire corpse lying almost next to them suddenly seemed to be a very common sight compared to this. The two girls seemed to be completely oblivious to everything around them except each other. Deciding that this moment was too intimate and too bizarre to disturb she walked over to the vampire. Now that her unlife was gone she really didn't look that impressive. Lily noticed a deck of odd-looking cards half-sticking out of a pouch. Since she really had nothing better to do she picked them up. They looked vaguely like tarot-cards, but not like any tarot-deck _she_ had ever seen.

"What do you have there?" She could hear the voice of Sam ask. Lily turned around to see the girls back on their feet. Nicole leaned heavily on Sam, but Lily wasn't completely sure whether that was out of necessity or not.

"I'm not sure." Lily said. "Do you have any ideas?" She asked as she showed the cards to Sam.

"Magic." Sam growled. "Those things are magical."

"Any idea how they work?" Lily asked.

Sam seemed heavily offended by this notion. "Of course not. I don't do magic."

Ignoring the undertone of Sam's voice that told her that she shouldn't do magic as well Lily started looking through the cards. There were two cards that caught her interest, but she didn't know why. It was like her subconscious was telling her to do something with them, but the problem was that only the subconscious van hear orders from the subconscious. So Lily basically had no idea why she was studying these two cards so intently. One of them was blue with a simple depiction of a hand and the word 'Summon' at the bottom. The other was pink and contained the portrayal of an angel and the word 'Heal' at the bottom. Lily had no idea _how_ she was doing it, but she could feel… something… flowing through her and into the cards. The two cards lit up for a moment and in a bright white light the angel from the pink card took form. She was simply breathtakingly beautiful, her two large wings seemed to be made out of the whitest feathers known to man and she had a large spiralling tattoo all over her body. She looked curiously at Lily with her two golden eyes, waiting for the girl to speak.

"Um… hi." Lily offered weakly. How does one talk with an angel, she wondered. "I'm Lily."

"My name is Kyra." The angel said. "Why have you summoned me?"

"Why have I what?" Lily asked confused. "Oh, the cards, right, well…"Even though the summoned Kyra was only a reflection of the original, she was capable of some independent thought. The girl standing there rather helplessly was obviously inexperienced. The angel smiled benignly.

"Are you wounded?" She asked.

"Me? No." Lily responded. "But Nicole is." She quickly added, pointing at the blonde.

Kyra turned around and saw that the girl was indeed wounded. But her wounds were only superficial cuts. This was not going to be difficult. Kyra started glowing brightly again and soon the whole auditorium was filled with a blinding light. When the light faded again Kyra was gone.

But so were Nicole's wounds.

Sam eyes went wide with joy. Lily's eyes went wide in amazement. Nicole had no idea why everybody's eyes were bugging out like that and assumed it had something to do with her. But before she could ask about it the doors at the far side of the room swung open and fifteen men and women stepped inside. David looked around calmly, noticing his protege, the girl she spent much time with, another girl he didn't know and most importantly the dead body of a vampire lying on the ground.

"It seems the cavalry has come too late." David said. "I hope nothing bad has happened?"

"Of course not." Sam responded calmly. "But I must admit that all the credit goes to the human."

"Really?" David said. "Most remarkable. Well, I suppose we'll have to clean up here a bit. You girls should go home."

Nicole and Sam took their time before leaving the theatre. When they hit the streets they would have to let go and they weren't up for that yet.

"Hey Nic, how did you get that stake?" Sam asked, more to stall than out of any real interest.

"I'm not stupid Sam. I never leave home without one, well, not since the night everything started." Nicole looked back to see Lily slowly trailing after them. She was looking through the cards, trying to figure out what did what and how to use them, since she still had really no idea. "How about her? What'll happen?"

"Lily? I don't know. According to the stories people like her revert to normal once the main vamp is killed, but I happen to know that most stories aren't very true. She might stay half-vampire forever."

"Well, the main vamp is dead, so we'll just have to wait and see. By the way, are you going to eat Patricia or what?"

"That's disgusting, Nic."

"What? You eat raw meat."

"Yeah, but not _undead_ meat. The thought just makes my stomach turn." Sam trembled to accentuate her point.

Then came the moment Nicole and Sam had dreaded for the past minute or so. They had reached the doors to the outside.

"I need to go home." Sam said sadly. "Mom's gonna ground me for life." She muttered.

"See you tonight?"

"I'd be offended if you wouldn't."

Nicole smiled. "Just the answer I wanted to hear."

The girls looked at each other for a moment, both hating the fact that they were going to be separated so soon again. They moved forward to one another and softly pressed their lips together. Lily absentmindedly avoided them. She was already reaching for the door when her brains registered what her eyes just saw. She stared disbelieving at the couple, her suspicions confirmed. Lily closed her eyes and shook her head. This just had to be some bizarre daydream. But when she opened her eyes they were still there. They weren't kissing any more, but their arms were still wrapped around each and once again loving gazes were exchanged. With the very disturbing image of Sam and Nicole together stuck in her mind Lily walked out of the building. She didn't even notice the blinding glare of the setting sun.

Sam and Nicole hadn't noticed Lily's odd behaviour those few moments before she left the building. They were focused entirely on that one most important thing in the world.

Each other.

Back to chapter list