Free Scarlet Vamporium: Vamporium #2 by Poppet[vampire]

then slows the car's speed to gradually halt on the shoulder. Turning to look at me, he puts it in neutral and uses the hand that was on the gear lever to press on my leg. “Ellie, I know what ye are. I saw yer eyes light up back there. I promise tae keep yer secret, which is why I ha'e te get ye far away from Roddie. He suspects and he willnae let it slide. I'm concerned he may try tae follow us which is why I just want us tae escape. Ye ken?”
    I nod, the world bottoming out on me.
    My eyes lit up? He knows what I am?
    Oh god above I'm in so much trouble now.

 
    Chapter 8
     
     
    Ellindt:
     
    My thoughts are swarming like a flock of dunlins flying in murmuration, amassing into coagulated darkness only to widen again, leaving a pocket of emptiness where a second ago dark chaos reigned.
    How am I going to explain this? I don't know what to say. And how the heck does he know?
    I feel like I have a noose tightening around my neck when his car slows, crawling onto the side of the lane toward the banks of the stream where he collected me.
    He looks at me with such intensity it scorches my soul. “Where to?”
    I wave my hand, manifesting a road where there was previously none.
    “So it's true,” he mumbles, navigating the car onto the path, meandering carefully along my impromptu lane, into the heart of shaded woodland.
    It's dark and no moon penetrates. The fog filters ambient light through it like fiber optic cable channeling starlight from one end of the spectral realm to the other, but here we are plunged into a cloak of chilling black.
    “What's true?” I mumble, becoming increasingly apprehensive.
    I gave him confirmation by opening up this road and now I just want to palm slap my head for being such an idiot. I should have just denied it and told him it's all superstitious nonsense.
    “The glamor,” he says in answer, flicking the headlights onto bright and peering with honed focus through the windscreen.
    “What glamor?” I demand.
    “You shield your realm from us, and ye just let me see what ye see but we're blind tae. The shield, it's the glamor.”
    No idiot. It's not a shield that hides this from your kind, it wasn't here, I just manifested it with my will because we needed a road.
    But instead of voicing the truth I stay silent, staring glumly at the thick trunks slipping past the car and trailing long wooden fingers across the roof and windows, squealing their disapproval at our invasion.
    “Stop the car, we can walk from here,” I snap, already opening my door, unable to handle the grating screech a second longer.
    Before he's pulled up the handbrake I'm out of the car, running up the incline, breathing forest incense in with deep desperate gulps.
    Selene is going to flog me for this. I'll be sent to the demons for discipline. Oh god! I am in so much trouble I just want to curl into a ball and cry my fears out.
    “Ellindt!”
    Closing my hands over my ears I look up at the dense canopy, hopelessness swallowing me whole. I can't breathe in here, it's too dark.
    The tears are hot when they run down my cheeks, blinding my footfalls. I run with pure instinct, I need to get out, I need air!
    “Ellindt!” hollers close behind, which spurs me faster.
    Diving and ducking like a dancer prancing to avoid the crossed swords, I leap, crushing mushrooms, snapping brittle twigs underfoot, charging like a pict into the dragon's domain.
    Just when I spy a bright gap, a doorway to fresh air and light, a hand hooks my elbow, slamming me around and making me impact against him with such force we repel off each other like static.
    With the air knocked out of me, laid flat out on strewn moist leaves, my chest heaving, my lungs burning, my eyesight blurred, the tiny patch of light blacks out into encompassing darkness.
    “Say something! God lass, yer scarin' the shite outtae me! Are ye okay?”
    Long hair tickles my face when he bends over me, wiping my cheeks with thumb swipes and holding me tight between