Bethalie felt the world fall from beneath her and all sound was blotted out. All...reason was blotted out.

There was nothing but Evyn... her face pale and drawn...her eyes wide...tortured.

No. No. No.

No. It wasn't Evyn.

No. It couldn't be Evyn.

There had to be some mistake.

Dear god, there had to be some mistake...

"Bethalie," she saw Evyn's mouth form the word but she couldn't pick up the sound. She couldn't hear anything but the sluggish beating of her own heart.

No. No. No.

No. It wasn't Evyn.

No. It couldn't be Evyn.

There had to be some mistake.

Evyn was her family. Evyn was...her heart.

Sound returned as a loud roar split the air and shook the ground beneath her feet. She saw Noah go flying up the steps toward Evyn....and a blink later...he was dragging the woman down the steps by her hair, her arms and legs flailing, making her look like a lifeless rag doll. He hauled her over to Bethalie and dropped her onto her knees.

"Nodevīgs kuce! Es ceru, ka viņa nogalina tevi lēnām!" Noah spat, drawing back and swatting his palm across Evyn's face, sending her sprawling sideways with a sharp shriek.

Bethalie stood frozen, her stomach rolling around inside her. She couldn't help but agree with Noah. She...should kill the traitorous bitch slowly.

""Evyn?" Bethalie croaked out, watching her assistant as she picked herself up off the dirt and sat on her knees.

"Bethalie, please, I can explain everything!" Evyn sobbed, swiping at the blood oozing from the corner of her mouth.

"Evyn...this...this...there's some mistake?  Its all just...a mistake. Right?" she croaked out.

Dear god, tell me it's a mistake. Please.

"It's no mistake, Ward!" Leila Simpson hissed spitefully. "She's been in with us this entire time! She's been in on every kill!"

Bethalie felt all the warmth drain from her flesh. No. It was a lie. The Witch was lying to her...

Mace appeared, picking up the glass jar that had fallen from Evyn's hands. "What do I with this, Bethalie? How do I help Jürgen?"

Bethalie tried to tear her gaze from her assistant, sitting there sobbing on the dirt floor, but she couldn't. "He...he h-has to drink it. Not too much. A few spoonfuls." Her voice sounded far away, almost as if it was coming from somewhere outside her body.

Mace hurried away and Noah stepped up to Bethalie's side, his shoulders heaving with rage. "Shall I kill her for you, mīla?" he rasped through his teeth.

Bethalie didn't answer him. "It's a lie," she said to her assistant. "Tell me the Witch is lying, Evyn."

"She's been in from the first!" Leila spat. "How do you think we got the names of these leeches!"

A gasp flew out of Bethalie and her heart dropped down into her stomach. No! No! "Evyn, you...you didn't leak the names of my targets! It wasn't...you!"

It was Lance Morgan. It was supposed to be Lance Morgan!

"Shut up, Leila!" Jenna's thick, groggy voice sounded out. "Don't tell them anything!"

"Why not! We're caught! And I'm not going down without taking everyone involved down with me!" Leila shouted at her cohort.

"Shut up! Marley wouldn't want you to narc us out like this!" Jenna snapped, struggling to get up off the dirt.

"Marley is why we're in this!" Leila snarled. She turned her gaze to Bethalie. "I'm not going to hell alone, Ward. I'm taking your Evyn with me! She's as much guilty as I am!"

"Shut up, Leila!" Evyn suddenly screamed out in a sharp, shrill voice, startling Bethalie. "Stop talking! We swore! Remember! We swore!"

Bethalie looked at her assistant, finding herself looking down at someone who was almost unrecognizable. The woman before her was not Evyn. That desperate, panicked creature was not...her friend...her family.

Perhaps...perhaps...Evyn had been taken over by someone else? A spelled human would do anything they were told. Anything...

"Tell me what there is to tell, Witch," she said hoarsely, glancing away from her assistant because...looking at her hurt a little too much.

"Don't tell her anything!" Jenna screeched wildly, working her way up onto her knees. "Keep your mouth shut!"

"You shut up! It's over! And I'm glad! I never wanted this!" Leila yelled at her cohort before turning her slightly wild eyes back to Bethalie. "We killed them all, Ward! We killed them, we drained them, and we used them to keep Marley alive! And it was all for nothing because that jackass killed her anyway!"

"Don't listen to her, Bethalie!" Evyn shouted on a sob. "She's...she's crazy! She has no idea what she's saying!"

"Don't I!" Leila hollered. "Who's the one who was getting nothing out of this but the thrill of killing! We were helping Marley! You did it just for the fun of watching someone die!"

A chill swept over Bethalie and she thought her legs might fall from beneath her. But...somehow...she did not crumple to the ground. Nor would she...

"Shut up, you stupid bitch! What are you doing!" Evyn screamed, moving to get to her feet, but Noah shot out a boot and slammed it into her chest, sending her pitching backwards onto the ground with a loud oomph!

"You shut up, grunt!" Leila yelled back. "You found us, remember! You came looking for us! We did not recruit you! You stumbled onto Marley's chat room! You offered to help us because you had access to everything we needed!"

"What...what do you mean everything you needed?" Bethalie croaked out, her heart skipping a hard beat.

She almost didn't want to continue the conversation...almost didn't want to know. But, she had to finish this...

"What do you think I mean? She had access to the names of the lawbreakers! She's the one who came up with the idea of giving us the names of your targets days before she passed them onto you! And ask your grunt where we did the wet work!" Leila taunted, leering at Evyn.

Bethalie felt herself stiffen and something sickening uncoil inside her belly. "What did you say?"

Leila burst into a fit of maniacal laughter that sent a chill right through Bethalie's soul. The woman was crazy. Certifiably crazy. "That's right, Ward! We took the bodies to your garage and we drained them dry right there under your roof!  And your assistant was the one who slit their wrists! She got off on watching those leeches die! She got off on it and then she cleaned up the mess and even dumped some of the bodies for us!"

Bethalie felt bile rise up in her throat. No. No. No! Not in her space. Not in her home. Those Vampires had not been murdered and drained in her home! It would be...a sacrilege.

"We did it to save Marley! She did it because she likes to kill things! And through us, she found a way to finally do it," Leila tossed the words out with a smug smile.

"Traitor!" Jenna screamed wildly. "Marley would never do this to you!"

"Marley was trying to hang on to something she should have let go of months ago!" Leila snorted derisively. "She was dying! And she was afraid to go through with it!"

"She was dying?" Noah spoke up, his gaze sliding over to the still form of Marley Tate.

"Her body was failing her!" Leila snapped at him, but some of the nastiness was gone from her tone. "She...she was sick. The doctor's couldn't help. And she didn't want to give up and go on and be at peace! She didn't want to leave this place. She...she somehow came up with the idea that Vampire blood might stave off death for a while."

Marley Tate was sick and dying? That probably explained the bitter, repulsive taste lingering on the air. It was coming from her blood, which was tainted by disease.

"She didn't want to leave us!" Jenna defended. "She didn't want to leave us here all alone! She loved us and she knew we needed her!"

"We would have gotten along just fine without her!" Leila argued, clearly annoyed by Jenna Hawes' view on the matter.

"Then why did you help her!" Mace demanded, sounding as irate as Leila Simpson.

"Because she's my sister! I had to help her!" Leila's face fell as the words left her mouth. "She's my sister. I had to help her."

"And it was working! She was alive and breathing!" Jenna raged. "We could have gone on forever if Evyn hadn't talked us into dumping the bodies out in the open instead of in the woods someplace! It's her fault the Ward had to get involved! I think she wanted to get caught!"

"Shut up, Jenna!" Evyn shrieked wildly. "Bethalie wouldn't have settled for all those Vampires just disappearing! She would have found them anyway! At least I tried to throw her off! And if she hadn't gotten hold of your brother's name, she never would have figured it out! He was the one who should have kept his skinny ass at home instead of hanging out at a bar, running his goddamned mouth!"

"Why in hell did you have to kill so many!" Noah boomed, interrupting the argument. "Did you not think the sheer number of dead bodies would be your downfall!"

"Because your blood is weak, leech!" Jenna hurled at him. "It only lasts for a few hours outside your body! We tried everything to get it to keep, but it degraded no matter what we did! And Marley needed to inject herself with it every few days or she started to fade away!"

"Why not just turn her!" Noah demanded, sounding disgusted. "Wouldn't that have solved everything and spared you...all this!"

Yes. Why not turn her. They had access to Vampires. They could have drained Marley and fed her from any of the Vampires and she would have transitioned. She would have awakened healed and free of any sort of mortal disease.

"She didn't want to be one of you! You're filth!" Jenna spat.

"But, you still used us to keep the bitch alive!" Noah spat angrily.

"She found a way to make you useful! And it was working!" Jenna yelled.

Bethalie felt a wave of sickness wash over her, but she steeled herself against it.  She'd heard enough.  It was time to finish things. "Mace, take Evyn's phone and have Them come and pick up these women," she stated hoarsely. "I'll let Them handle the punishment this time."

Hopefully, They would make an example out of these Sister Witches. And she would request pictures of what was left, just for her own satisfaction.

Jenna opened her mouth to start screaming again, but Noah suddenly shot forward, cracking a palm into her face hard enough to send her slumping to the ground in a heap, where she lay, quiet and unmoving. Leila, having no one else to argue with, sat back on her heels and lapsed into silence, her pretty face set. She was obviously prepared to face whatever punishment she had earned.

As Noah came back to stand with her, Bethalie turned to Evyn, feeling her heart turn to stone inside her chest.

"Bethalie, please listen to me. Please!" Evyn begged. Or at least, the person on the floor begged. It wasn't Evyn. Evyn was...gone. "I won't do it anymore. I promise! I won't do it and we can just go back to the way things were!"

Bethalie felt her stomach drop and her soul twist. Something inside her was going to die in this house. And she knew she would never be the same.

"I love you, Bethalie! I didn't do anything to hurt you!" Evyn beseeched. "I didn't do anything to anyone who didn't deserve it!!"

Poor Evyn. Something had obviously gone wrong inside her. It was undoubtedly this life they lived. It was undoubtedly...dwelling in the constant darkness and being forever surrounded by monsters and dissolving bodies.

Evyn was only human.

So, perhaps Evyn hadn't been strong enough...and she had just let it all...break her. Maybe Jenna Hawes was right. Maybe Evyn had wanted to get caught on some level. Maybe she couldn't stop and needed someone else to step in and stop it for her.

"You can't get along without me!" Evyn went on, sobbing as she pled for her very life. "You'd already be dead without me! I've kept you alive since the night you were bitten! I've been putting Stat in your coffee! Without that you would have died days ago! I was the one who thought of that!"

Bethalie felt everything inside her lurch. She'd been taking Stat? She'd been drinking synthetic blood all these days?

The betrayal was just too much. Bethalie wanted to...to scream! She wanted to cry! She wanted to smash something with her fists! She wanted to damage something, to make something else hurt as much as she was suddenly hurting!

"You need me, Bethalie! You won't make it on your own! You can't even feed yourself!" Evyn reminded her, her tone...hysterical.

Evyn was right. She couldn't even feed herself...

"Please, Bethalie!" Evyn wailed. "We didn't hurt anybody that didn't deserve it! We did you a favor by taking them out! It was easier for us than it ever was for you!"

The gun was in Bethalie's hand and the bullet was fired before she had time to stop and think about what she was doing. The dull thunk sounded out as it hit Evyn's skull and the back of her head exploded outward, spraying blood and shrapnel over the dirt floor behind her. A stalled moment later, her body fell backward, thudding to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Time froze then. 

For a long moment, there was nothing—no sound, no thought—nothing but the sight of the body lying on the ground, the body that had once been her friend, her family. Now...it was just a useless pile of meat that needed to be disposed of. In that moment of dead silence, Bethalie felt something inside her shift and tear, a pain that was so sharp and poignant she could almost hear it happening.

A hole had been ripped into her soul, small yet burningly painful, and that hole would be there all the rest of her days, reminding her of this horrid, senseless moment. Reminding her that she'd lost something irreplaceable.

Reminding her of the day her entire world had been...emptied.

Suddenly shaking from head to toe, Bethalie put her.45 back into its holster and tried to pull herself together. Assistants were replaceable. She'd have a new one in a few days. And maybe the next one wouldn't be so...weak.

"I need some air," she told Noah, turning to look up at him.

Wordlessly, Noah scooped her up into his arms and rushed her up the stairs, through the house, and out onto the front porch. Once there, he carefully sat her in a wicker rocking chair and went to his knees before her. "I knew she was doing it, Bethalie," Noah confessed, his voice rough. "I scented it in your coffee every time she gave it to you, but I didn't say anything. I allowed you to drink it because I didn't want you to die from hunger."

Bethalie couldn't even feel the sting she knew his words should bring her. She was...numb. She thought she might be numb for the rest of her time on earth.

"Do you forgive me, Bethalie?" he wondered, a slight trace of desperation in his words. "I should have told you, but I...I couldn't. I couldn't risk losing you."

"I forgive you," she said the words, but no sound came out. She did forgive him. She didn't have enough feeling left inside her to hold onto hatred or resentment.

Her statement caused Noah to visibly relax. "Everything will be well and fine, mīla. I promise you," he assured her, his tone soft. "I will be here for you. Always."

She nodded because she couldn't speak just then. She believed him. Everything would be well and fine. It had to be. There was no other choice. And she knew he would be there for her until death claimed one of them. He had no choice. And no matter what else, at least their blood bond would ensure that he remained...loyal.

Noah gave her a reassuring smile and then lifted his wrist to his mouth, opening the flesh there. When he brought his wound up to her lips, she didn't turn him away. It was too late for that now...

She took hold of his forearm, closed her mouth around the injury, and drank from him. She pulled him into her, letting the wholesome nectar tease her tongue and tickle her throat, swallowing it down so that it splashed into her belly and set off a spasmodic reaction that had her losing all sense of time and space, all sense of awareness and thought. Her body was lost in the bliss of feeding, so feed she did, going on and on, letting those numbing spasms wash over and through her until Noah asked her to stop.

*  *  *  *  *  *

Bethalie stood at the door of Lance Morgan's condo, watching the dark sedan as it sped Kelli away into the night. Kelli was free now. Free of Lance Morgan, leastways.

After who knew how many years of Lance using magick to force her to stay with him, her mind had been turned into nothing more than empty space. And she would stay like that, delightfully vacant, unable to remember past the day she was in, happy to sit and leaf through her magazines that were five years old, for the rest of her life. And she would live for many years yet because she was very young still.

But, she would be taken someplace where she would be cared for, someplace where she would be fed and tended to, a safe place where she wouldn't have to endure who knew what indignities at the hands of a selfish Warlock.

Yes, Kelli was free.

And Lance was dead. And she had never taken such pleasure as she had pulling the trigger and splitting his head open like a ripe melon.

Noah exited the condo carrying the limp body of Lance Morgan, going over to toss it into the van before coming back to her. "Are you alright, mīla?" he asked, looking down at her with his brows pulled together.

"I'm good," she said, not really knowing if it was the truth or not.

"Viss būs labi, mīlestība. Es būšu šeit jums līdz nāvei apgalvo vienu no mums," he whispered to her, speaking in that beautiful old language that he'd taken to lapsing into from time to time.

Bethalie smiled. She knew that Noah would be there for her until death claimed one of them. She had no doubts about that fact.

"I have word that your new assistant will be with you in a couple of days," he told her.

She nodded. That was good. She needed a new assistant. She still couldn't work the friggin' blender. And that was the only way she would allow herself to drink the Stat that probably kept her...her.

"It's almost time for Tuck's webcast," he reminded, taking her hand and leading her to the van. "You don't want to miss it. He'll be calling to see what you thought."

Mace Donovan had been allowed to be let go. He was probably the first human They had ever shown that mercy to. And Bethalie couldn't have been more grateful. She'd been prepared to go into hiding with him, if They hadn't agreed to leave him alive, yet They had consented to her proposed idea. Probably because it wasn't so easy to replace a Ward on such short notice and she had done a lot of threatening before an answer had been given.

As it turned out, Mace had his suspicions about Evyn toward the end of the whole situation because of something he'd seen on her computer that Bethalie still didn't understand. Either way, he'd known and had tried to tell her, but something always happened to stop him.

Of course, she wouldn't have believed him anyway. Who would believe that their best friend was a cold, calculating serial killer unless they witnessed it with their own eyes?

He was airing his latest webcast that night from his office in L.A. It was about the Vampire hoax in Port Angeles. It seemed that some person out there was attacking people and making it appear that a Vampire had killed them. Once word of a possible hoax got out, the body the authorities had at the morgue would mysteriously vanish, so there would be no evidence to refute the claim. And hopefully, things could get back to normal. Whatever that meant.

Mace was going to go monster hunting someplace else and lead his followers with him, but she knew she'd see Mace Donovan again someday. There was no way he'd stay away from all the excitement in Port Angeles. She was the coolest woman he'd ever met, after all. She also knew that she could call if she ever needed him and he'd come running, just the way a friend should.

"Come on, mīla. You've had a rough few days. You need to take the night off," Noah said, opening her door for her.

She could do that. She could take the night off. But, tomorrow she would be back on the job, the same as always.

Well, perhaps not exactly the same. Things were a little different now.

She herself...was a little different now.

She had no real clue as to what she was. She was...something between...the person she had been...and the new...thing...she'd been forced to become. She really wasn't sure how she was going to deal with that...or just how she was going to deal with her newly acquired mate, who had responsibilities of his own to tend to in New York, yet who couldn't bring himself to leave her side.

But, the one thing she knew with absolutely certainty was, that no matter what this new life might bring for her and Noah Grey, no matter what might be awaiting them out in there in the fog of the future...nothing would stop her from getting on with her work.

Nothing would stop her from making sure that those who broke the laws...no matter who they might be...were punished for their misdeeds.

That was the one thing that would never change....

THE END

PERHAPS...