Aden rolled off the bonnet to clumsily regain his feet; wondered dizzily if he'd scratched Raj's pride and joy. Groaning, and gripping his bruised shoulder, he looked past the tangled mess of his hair and through the Cortina's windshield to shoot the driver—Bell—a disbelieving look. He didn't know how he'd ended up out on the street, his memories a grey whirl, but it was damn clear who'd put him on the car's bonnet.

Bell shoved open the passenger-side door, zero apology in her dark eyes. "Get in! Move, you idiot!"

Dazed, he rounded the car to slide inside and close himself in with his attempted murderer. "Does Raj know you've borrowed his car?" He struggled to focus his concussed brain as he fumbled with the seatbelt. "Is he too drunk to drive?" He'd a vague memory of Bell saying something about Raj being in some kind of trouble.

Bell didn't answer—just stomped the accelerator to launch the car forward.

Something clanged down on the car's boot.

"What—" Aden swung to look out the rear window in time to see the retro-metaller from the party, Victor, sliding off the car's boot—his claws dragging across shiny blue paint.

Aden watched the man crumple to the road in the darkness as Bell sped away. A thousand things hit at once—a thousand wrong things. His memories of Raj's party were a fog, but he was sure Victor had looked healthier before. Dramatic and creepy, sure, but alive. The man he'd seen seconds ago, scrambling to grab hold of the car, had looked like death; his face more skull than flesh; his limbs and torso thin bone. Blood had covered the lower half of his face. And his eyes...

They'd burned.

Straight out of a nightmare.

Aden failed to draw his next breath, the dark horrors of his recurring dreams filling his mind. He blindly faced the road ahead; braced himself as Bell took a turn at speed. His hands felt bloodless and numb. In the fog of his brain, more wisps of memory started to resolve: his friends going mad, crashing into his bedroom; Bell yelling at him to run as she threw blue fire. Raj—he was missing, maybe hurt. And Victor...

A hazy nightmare reeled back: red eyes, archaic words, and blood—Shirley Chan's. Recalling its taste and realising the blood currently smearing his face was not from his bruised nose, Aden felt his stomach dive. Shirley hadn't fought the attack on her. And nor had he fought when... "I think I'm going to be sick."

"No! Shit, no!" Bell thumped his arm, the other on the wheel, the Cortina swerving then straightening under suburban streetlights, moving fast enough to make them appear to strobe. "You will not. Not in Raj's baby. Get a grip and grow a damn pair!"

"I think I just got mind-flayed by a vampire." He'd watched Victor bite Shirley and barely reacted. He'd let the fanged creeper touch him and carry him away like some swooning damsel in a horror movie. He'd all but forgotten Raj, his best friend, and had given next to no thought to other friends as they'd lain dazed and wounded on his bedroom floor. He'd forgotten Bell after she'd been tossed across the room while trying to protect him. "Bell... I'm sorry. I couldn't—"

"Save it for your therapist, Dekker." Bell wrenched the car around another dark street corner, setting tires squealing. "We've got big problems. I haven't been able to get hold of anyone who can help protect you. The witches in town are in league with the vamps. They've taken Raj out of action and probably other members of my family. We need to get you somewhere safe, and we need to gear up to fight, because..." The look she shot him chilled his blood. "The bitch is coming for you, Aden."

He didn't ask who. The memory of his dreams—hungry, burning eyes—told him all he needed to know.

___

The Cortina roared through dark, tree-lined streets. Aden barely saw silent homes and yards flash past. Broken memories filled his mind, superimposing horrors on urban sprawl. He wanted to deny them, but forced himself to roll with the insanity. Demonic hypnosis was a thing. A vampire queen wanted to make him her "one forever" snack. And the girl he'd always thought of as intriguingly weird and unnecessarily hostile had an extremely good reason to be both.

He looked to Bell's ring-covered hands clenched on the Cortina's steering wheel, then to her shadowed face as streetlights repeatedly washed it dark to gold. His stomach knotted painfully. He'd grown up seeing that stubborn set to her jaw and the pissed-off look in her eyes. He'd always known something about him irritated her, even before he'd started pulling on her pigtails and ambushing her with water pistols. He'd long taken that to heart, believing something was wrong with him that drove people to dislike and discard him. Now, he knew what it was.

He was cursed, the world a far stranger and more terrifying place than he could ever have imagined. And those around him had known that—while he'd been a clueless idiot. How could Bell not have sneered?

The Cortina's tires kicked up loose gravel as Bell swung the car into a familiar, hedge-lined driveway. Her rental property loomed up in the night's gloom, a modern townhouse with all the street appeal of overprocessed white bread. And as with store-bought bread, the narrow two-storey was just one slice in a loaf of identical houses, a block of bland that took up most of one side of the quiet, tidy street.

Aden shook his head as Bell cut the engine. He'd never understood her renting a place so far from the city's bohemian Old Quarter, where most of her family lived. The house, built for young professionals with no time for personality or yard work, had always seemed more suited to the tastes of his family than hers.

Slipping out of the car as Bell did the same, he scanned the street: low picket fences; decorative hedge plants; and lightless windows, homes tucked up for the night. Middle-class suburbia. "Is this the best place to go? Shouldn't we, I don't know, go to the police or something?" Somewhere with security and weapons, and—"We need to find Raj." He struggled to breathe past his dread.

Bell shot him a dry glance as she strode to her dove-grey, cookie-cutter front door to unlock it. "So, the police can what? Handcuff us and hand us over to the vampires enthralling their normie brains?" She wrenched open the door and dragged him inside by the front of his T-shirt. "When it comes to freaky and weird, Dekker, people like me and my family are the law."

Recalling the blue fire she'd pulled out of thin air, Aden didn't argue.

As Bell locked the door and flicked on lights, he scanned the open-plan lounge and kitchen he found himself in. He'd never been inside before. He'd put that down to her being antisocial. But getting a load of her unique décor—op-shop furniture and rustic shelves loaded with books, crystals, apothecary-type bottles, and weird junk—he understood completely why she never invited people in. "Shit, Blackwood." The entire room—from dreamcatcher-strung ceiling to moth-eaten Persian rugs—embraced the 'urban wiccan does mental breakdown' theme.

"Shove it. You're not so pretty and pristine yourself, Dekker." She dug out a box of wet wipes from the books and cushions crowding an ancient, tufted leather couch—one with a brick for a front leg. "Get the blood off your face." She threw him the wipes. "The last time Dhalmora fed was when she came across you as a baby twenty years ago. She can't drink from anyone else because of that witch curse I mentioned. If she smells even a molecule of your blood, she'll go into a frenzy and probably kill you before she remembers that'll doom her vamp arse to dust—after a century or so of gruesome starvation."

Aden gladly accepted the disinfectant cloth. "It's not my blood." It was Shirley's. Hands unsteady, he wiped his face clean then sank down onto the couch, his mind spinning. "Tell me this is all a bad dream."

"The normie life you've been living is the dream." Bell started gathering up bottles, crystals, and herbs. "This blood-cursed shitshow has always been your reality, you just didn't know it."

"Why didn't I?" He clenched his fist around blood-stained cloth. "You and Raj—you knew."

"Take that shit up with your father." Bell strode for the door with her supplies.

"My dad?" Aden pushed back to his feet; crossed to her as she started dumping salt and hanging beads, weeds, crosses, and other religious symbols around the door. "What the hell has Dad got to do with this?" Sam Dekker, the man who'd raised him, dealt in facts, maths, and ambush hugs, not demons, his passions his accountancy business and family.

Bell moved to decorate the uninspired white sills and louvre blinds of her front, floor-to-ceiling windows. "I don't mean the legendary barbeque chef and all-round decent human being Sammual Dekker. I mean Ferron Drayke, Grand Wizard of the Fifth Clan, cold-blooded slayer of demons. After Dhalmora attacked you and people realised you were her blood-bound soulmate, it was his decision to hide you among the non-adept and adopt you out."

Aden closed his eyes, a painful pressure building inside his skull. He'd always had questions about his adoption and biological parents. Now, Bell was telling him he'd been given up because a vampire had bitten him as a kid, and the father he'd always wondered about was a "Grand Wizard", someone called Ferron... "Drayke?" He snapped open his eyes as he recalled Victor's greeting. "That fanged freak at the party called me Aden Drayke."

"That was your name before adoption." Bell turned with a frown. "You remember what happened when you were enthralled?" She gave him a narrow-eyed onceover before offering a wry smile. "Why, 'Harry,' under all the spells your a-hole father cast to pass you off as a normie, you must be a half-decent psychic channeller." As she moved towards the kitchen, she punched him in the arm with rough comradery. "Congrats!"

"Spells..." He trailed off as the name "Harry" triggered another memory: Bell shouting through the Cortina's windshield after she'd turned him into a hood ornament. She'd said something about him being—"A wizard? You think I'm like..." Memories of wild blue fire shortened his breath as she dumped pouches of salt and herbs onto her kitchen's bland laminate benchtop. "Bell, I'm not like you. I can't... Shit, you took Paul down like frickin' Palpatine channelling the dark side of the Force! You dropped nearly everyone who—"

"Palpatine?" She swung about, her stare making it clear the comparison to a wizen, pasty Star Wars villain had not been the best choice. "Screw you, Dekker."

"That was a compliment."

"The hell it was." She yanked back the loose strands of her hair, exasperation seeming to override insult. "Look, you have every right to lose your shit over all this—the curse, the threats to your life, all the lies you've been told. Hell, I want to lose my shit over it—and have lost my shit, multiple times over the years." She hissed out a fraught curse, her expression turning pained. "Aden, my dad is your biological father's best friend. Twenty years ago, he agreed to protect and hide you—and help hide everything from you. But I never agreed to that! I never agreed to lie to you. That's on our parents. We're both living with the crappy choices they made."

Before he could respond, she flung out a hand; set weird blue symbols flaring in the air across the roof, floor, and every wall. Every line of salt she'd laid on door thresholds and window sills ignited, flashing brilliant white.

After a heart-thumping few seconds, the room faded back to its general cluttered state.

With the afterimage of Bell's magic burning his retinas like hot ghosts, Aden finally understood the fire in her eyes, both emotional and supernatural. He swallowed hard as she turned back to him with a snarl.

"Instead of playing stupid squirt-gun tag in your backyard, I should've grown up throwing arcane fireballs. And right now, I should be studying at a university for the magical arts. And, damn it—" She rammed a palm into his chest. "So should you. They robbed us both of that."

"Bell..." He winced. This world of hers—this side of her that she'd hidden from everyone—it was insane. Incredible. Flaming, floating secret codes? Yeah, squirt guns seemed damn lame next to those. How could he not understand why she was pissed? She'd had to pretend to be boring and normal, something less, because of him and their parents' decisions. He met her furious gaze and grimaced. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this. I don't exactly understand what's going on, but it's clear it shouldn't have been made your problem."

"Not my... Goddamn it!" She launched a fist into his stomach. "You're a jerk, Aden Dekker!"

He grabbed his abs; matched her glare. "What did I do? I'm just saying I get it. It's not fair that you—"

"Arrgh!" Bell threw a spark of blue electricity straight at him, making him jerk back. "Stop apologising, and get pissed! You're the one who's been crapped on from on high!" She stomped up to him to jab her finger into his chest. "You want to understand what's going on? Let me break the whole crapola pile down for you. A thousand goddamn years ago, some witch's mortal lover got brutalised by an a-hole vampire king. So, the witch hexed the shit out of him for it, along with all the vamps he'd sired. She wanted them to die horribly like her lover had, but she also wanted them to suffer like she was. To do that, they needed to know love's agony before they died—or, at least, something as close to love as a demonic bloodsucker can experience. But that vengeance involves serving up random humans as addictive treats. Aden... Damn it. You want to talk about fair? You get first dibs on complaining."

Aden felt each of her furious breaths as if they were his own. As she shoved back the hair that'd escaped her ponytail, he couldn't help but notice her hands trembled; couldn't help but see the glint of distress behind her glare. She'd wanted him angry. 

Well, mission accomplished.