For the next few days, my five remaining guardians took turns staying with me. My body was so severely depleted of magic that I needed the skin-to-skin recharge, but I was only just on this side of catatonic.

So for however long it took, they rotated time with me, just lying there in my giant purple bed and hugging me. I wished I could say it made everything better, that it made me feel safe and loved and that I realized there was more left to live for.

I wished I could say that. But I couldn’t. Instead, all their presence did was remind me how many other people stood to lose their lives because of me. Had we not already come close with Wes? We still had no idea who had blown up Seamus’s house. Hell, we hadn’t even tried to find out; we’d been so focused on Bridget.

Every time one of the guys slipped into the bed with me, enclosing me in strong arms and whispering words of love in my ear, it made me even more certain that I would eventually be their downfall.

“Vixen?” Cole crouched in front of me, stroking my hair back behind my ear. Someone was still wrapped around me from behind, maybe Vali? I’d lost track. “Lucy’s funeral is today. We thought you might want to go.”

I blinked my gritty eyes back at him a couple of times, letting his words sink in to my foggy brain. I’d run out of tears days ago and had just been staring at the wall when I wasn’t sleeping.

“Regina?” Vali murmured in my ear, confirming my guess. “Do you want to shower and dress? I think it would be good for you to go.”

Cole cleared his throat and shot his brother a sharp look over my head. “If you want to. You don’t have to go if you’re not feeling up to it.”

Do I want to go? Am I really ready to face the sight of Lucy in a fucking coffin?

Then again, what good did denial do me? She was dead. Hiding in my bedroom and refusing to pay my respects wasn’t going to bring her back.

No, the least I could do was take a fucking shower and put on a black dress. Lucy was my best friend, my sister. To not attend her final send off would be just a fucking slap after I had let her be killed.

With a small nod, I tried to push myself up, only to be immediately lifted into Cole’s strong arms and carried into my adjoining bathroom.

“Cole, I’m not disabled,” I grumbled, my voice husky from disuse. “I can handle showering alone.”

The big man paused, having just turned on my shower to warm up the water.

“Huh, I never realized how much I missed your voice, Vixen. Even when you are being a grump.” His lips pulled up on one side in a half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Not even close.

I glared at him, not totally sure why I was being such a bitch when all he was doing was helping me. “I have this handled, Cole. Just tell me how much time I have to get ready, and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

His jaw clenched, but he gave me a tight nod and opened the bathroom door to leave. “You’ve got about forty-five minutes. Yell if you need anything, and we will hear you, okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured him, but I really needed to reassure myself. Because I was far from fine. The least I could do, for Lucy’s sake, was to fake it. She deserved that much from me.

Then maybe I could find my backbone and do what I should have done a long, long time ago... walk away.

I showered as quick as my stiff muscles would allow, then roughly blasted my hair dry with the swanky hairdryer one of the boys had equipped my bathroom with. After it was dry enough, I took my time to carefully apply some make up. Lucy would be horrified if I turned up to her funeral looking like a sack of shit, even if that was how I felt.

No, for her I made sure to take my time, winging my eyeliner and applying a soft pink lipstick. She’d have given me a high five for the finished product if she were still here.

Back out in my bedroom, a new black dress lay out on the bed with its tags still attached. Nice of someone to have thought of that, considering none of the black dresses I currently owned would have been anywhere near appropriate for a funeral.

Biting my lip to keep my emotions in check, I slipped into some fresh underwear and then stepped into the dress, tugging the zipper up myself and not bothering to look in the mirror. Chances were, Vali had bought it for me, and he had a real knack for getting my sizes spot on.

The garment was comfortable, a soft fabric that clung to my upper arms and chest, then flared out from the waist into a full skirt that fell to my knees. Reaching behind me, I yanked the tags off, then sat on the edge of the bed to roll stockings onto my legs and stuff my feet into the pair of simple, black patent leather Louboutin pumps that had been left out.

Placing my hand on the door handle, I took a moment to gather what little strength I had left inside me. Lucy’s adoptive parents would be there, and they didn’t need to see me in a blubbering mess. Neither did Elena or Finn, Lucy’s lovers.

At some point after getting back from the fight with my mother, Wesley had told me that they’d found Elena. Apparently Bridget had been holding her too, but when Bridget didn’t return and her guards disappeared, Elena’d been able to escape.

Vali and Cole had to be relieved to know that Elena was okay. No one had seen Finn for a while, but from what I knew of his relationship with the girls, that wasn’t unusual for him. I did hope he would make it to Lucy’s funeral, though.

“Ready?” Wesley asked me as I joined the guys in the foyer of our opulent house. They were all smartly dressed in dark suits, but I was too far gone to appreciate the image they cut.

I gave him a nod and followed them out to the backyard for Caleb to portal us to wherever the funeral was being held. It dimly occurred to me I didn’t even know what country our home was in. Then again... I no longer cared. I’d be gone soon enough.

The six of us congregated together in a circle, ready for Caleb to do his thing, and someone took my hand. Glancing down, I saw inked fingers gripping mine, and as the whoosh of magic flared around us, Austin squeezed my hand tightly, then released as we appeared on the grass outside a depressing-looking chapel.

“This isn’t right,” I muttered, staring up at the stained glass angel above the open doors. “Lucy would have hated to have her funeral in a church. She was a scientist; she wanted to be cryogenically frozen, not prayed over.”

“It’s what her parents wanted,” Vali told me, nudging the small of my back to coax me into motion, instead of standing there like one of the stone angels in the graveyard.

Heaving a sigh, I dragged my reluctant ass up the steps toward where I could see people taking their seats inside. “Makes sense, I guess,” I sighed. “Her adoptive parents are lovely people and yes, very religious. I’m still shocked they never changed Lucy’s name.”

“Lucifer?” Caleb smiled. “They couldn’t have. It suited her too much.”

“It did,” I agreed, making my way down the aisle but pulling up short when a five-foot-tall, weeping woman threw herself into my arms and sobbed into my chest.

“Kit,” she wailed, clutching me tight and leaving me no option but to pat her awkwardly on the back while she babbled totally incomprehensible words into my dress. A few feet behind her, Lucy’s adoptive father, Jerry, stood watching us and looking just totally lost.

He and Valda had been older when they’d taken Lucy on, and she’d really only ever spent holidays with them since starting boarding school with me, but they loved her like she was their own child. They’d been the best parents any foster kid could have hoped for, and I knew this would be devastating them.

Yet I couldn’t force myself to try and comfort Valda as she sobbed on me. I couldn’t summon up those empty words or platitudes that I knew she needed to hear so badly.

Thankfully, one of the guys sensed my dilemma and carefully peeled her off me to offer a box of tissues. Free, I took a few more shaking steps toward the front of the chapel. Toward the coffin, which sat there in the center of the open space surrounded by flowers and with its lid propped open.

“I don’t think I can do this,” I whispered to myself, my fists clenched so tight that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see blood on my palms.

“You can, Vixen,” Cole murmured in my ear. “I know you can. You’re stronger than you think.”

My lips pursed, and I bit back my angry retort that he didn’t know what he was talking about. I wasn’t strong, I was just... lucky. Or unlucky, depending how you looked at it. Somehow I kept escaping with my life, while those around me suffered.

But right here, at my best friend’s funeral, I owed it to her to at least say goodbye.

Shaking Cole’s hand off my arm, I quickly closed the space between me and Lucy’s casket before I could change my mind again.

She looked so peaceful lying there. Like she was just asleep. The funeral home had done a good job of arranging her short hair to cover the evidence of her head wounds, and Valda had picked out a long-sleeved floral dress that Lucy would have made fake vomiting noises over had anyone suggested she wear it in life.

“Lucifer,” I whispered softly enough that no one without supernatural hearing could hear me. “You look ridiculous, babe. And in a church as well. I’m amazed your body made it inside without bursting into flames.” I paused, biting my lip. “Then again, there’s nothing of you left in there, is there?”

Reaching out a trembling hand, I lightly touched her cheek.

“I’m going to miss you so damn much, girl. I hope you know that. I hope you know how much I fucking love you. And I promise you, I will get vengeance for your death. That bitch will pay for what she did to you, I swear it.” One last time, because I couldn’t help myself, I sent another pulse of my magic into her body, and when it returned to me, I imagined a small piece stayed with her. So a little bit of my essence would always be with my sister.

Sniffing hard and swallowing the heavy lump in my throat, I leaned down and kissed her forehead before turning and halfway running back out of the chapel. I’d said my goodbyes, and that was all I could handle.

As I came to a gasping stop some fifty yards into the graveyard, a gentle hand rested on my back, and I cringed away from it.

“Go back inside,” I told him, wrapping my arms around myself and staring into the distance. “I just want to be alone for a bit.”

“I’ll leave you alone,” Vali murmured in a soft voice. “But I won’t leave you. I’ll go over to that bench and wait until you’re ready.”

He didn’t linger to try and force a hug on me or demand I talk about my feelings; he just walked away and went to sit on the park bench at the top of the grassy hill overlooking the site where Lucy would be interred.

For a while I stayed where I was, kneeling on the wet grass and trying to pull myself together. I’d cried enough in past few days, and that wasn’t productive. Lucy didn’t need my tears and self-pity; she needed justice.

Wiping my face on the hem of my dress, I slowly picked my way between headstones up to where Vali sat waiting for me.

We sat there together, not speaking until the sounds of singing could be heard from the chapel, and I knew the service was almost over.

“That wasn’t what she would have wanted,” I said finally, looking towards the house of God where my best friend was being prayed over.

“I know,” he replied. “So does Elena. But it was important to Valda and Jerry, and she didn’t have the heart to tell them no. After all, funerals are for the living, not the dead, are they not?” I said nothing, and he let that thought hang in the air for a moment. “Did you say goodbye?” I gave a tight nod, not trusting my voice. “Well, then that’s all that matters.”

He reached down, taking my hand in his and linking our fingers together between us.

One of the best things about Vali and Cole, they didn’t waste words. I’d never met two people more comfortable with silence before, but it calmed me. Especially in a time like this.

“I can’t let this go,” I finally said, my voice hardening with resolve as weeping guests began pouring out of the chapel, following my other four guardians as they carried Lucy’s casket across the grass to her final resting place.

“We never thought you would,” Vali responded simply. Below us, the people who had come to mourn Lucy gathered around the hole, which had already been dug out of the ground in preparation. My guys placed her coffin down on the pulley system that would slowly lower her corpse into the ground and stepped back.

Vaguely I recognized a few of the people in attendance, standing there clutching flowers and getting ready to throw them on top of her casket. Kids from school, teachers, residents of Cascade Falls... Mostly though, they seemed to be Valda and Jerry’s friends, there to show their support for the older couple who had just lost their daughter.

It was the striking brunette stalking towards us that held my attention, though. Her hair was perfectly pinned into place, exactly the way it had been when I’d first met her, and her black dress was cut in a severe line across the neck.

“Elena,” Vali greeted her when she approached, and I stood to greet her with dread pooling in my stomach. It was my fault her girlfriend was dead. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Instead of the polite kiss that she gave her brother, when she turned to me, it was a sharp slap across the face that she delivered.

Her slap took me by surprise and my head snapped to the side. I raised a hand to my stinging cheek even as she jabbed a finger in my face.

“Elena!” Vali roared, grabbing her hand to prevent another slap, even though I doubted she was going to try it again. She was grieving, not stupid.

“This is your fault,” she hissed at me, her words vibrating with fury and grief. “She is dead because of you. Will you never get tired of bringing so much death and destruction to those who love you? Who will be next, huh? My brothers?”

“Elena, you are way out of line,” Vali growled in a menacing way, but she ignored him. Instead she just glared at me with poison and hate in her eyes.

I said nothing in my own defense. What the hell was there to say? She had just perfectly echoed the thoughts that had run through my mind only seconds earlier.

“Elena,” Vali tried to redirect her ire again, “she didn’t—”

“She didn’t what?” Elena whirled on her older brother, her mouth twisted in an ugly scowl and her words dripping with scorn. “She sure as shit didn’t keep Lucy safe. Nor did she come for her when that psychopath had us locked in a cage for close to two weeks. And yet Lucy never stopped defending you. Right up to her last moment, she was defending her precious, beleaguered Kit.” She sneered at me in disgust. “You’ve done nothing to deserve that sort of loyalty from her, and then she died for you. I hope her face haunts you for your eternal life, you piece of shit.” She spat at my feet, then turned on her heel and stalked back down the hill to where a dark-haired man was just arriving in a blacked-out town car.

When Elena spotted him, her pace increased to a run, and she launched herself, sobbing, into his arms. Over her head, Finn met my eyes with pain in his own, and I looked away.

“Regina,” Vali said, trying to take my hand once more, but I jerked out of his grip.

“No, she’s right. You know it, too.” I tucked my hands under my arms, hugging my body tight and steeling myself for what needed to be done. I’d saved Simon and Lucy over and over again when we’d been at the orphanage. I’d saved them from Mr. Gray and all the other sick psychos. So that what? My mother could torture Lucy and kill her. So that Simon could butcher my friends and murder the one real father I’d ever had. Yeah, I’d saved them, and look what happened. My kind of saving wasn’t really a blessing, was it? “Lucy’s death is on me. As is Jonathan’s, and River...” I sucked a deep breath, remembering the midnight black, fire-eyed beast he had become. A hell-hound, according to the supernatural bible. Or that was as close as Wesley could work out based on the sketchy details given within those pages. “Elena is right. I can’t keep putting you all at risk. It isn’t fair.”

“Regina, what are you saying? We’re bonded for all eternity. We’re in this together whether you like it or not.” There was a stubbornness to his voice, but it was underscored with pain. He knew what I was saying; he just didn’t want to make it so easy.

“That doesn’t mean you have to become collateral damage in my mother’s war,” I told him firmly. “I promised Lucy I would get revenge for what that bitch did to her, but I have no intention of losing any more of you along the way.” As I said the words aloud, I sensed my resolve hardening and my magic responding. Since breaking the bracelet off, it had been different... more sentient. And now it was angry. Furious. Blood-thirsty.

All I needed to do was embrace it.

“Kit,” Vali said, this time with a little more urgency to his voice. It was too late to talk me out of my plan, though. I was already opening myself to that dark, violent magic, feeling it fill my body and then flood my soul.

There would be no turning back from this. Not until Bridget was dead.

“Regina, love. Your eyes have turned black. What’s happening to you? Talk to me, please.” Vali sounded panicked. For the first time ever, fear echoed in his voice, his posture—even his eyes. That terror wasn’t anything I wanted to hear again, and that made it all so much easier to walk away. I couldn’t be the cause of my men’s loss of self.

Across the graveyard, the massive black form of River’s beast stepped out of the shadows of a tree, and I met his glowing, red eyes without hesitation. He was here for me, and on some level, I’d been waiting for him. River would never abandon me, no matter what darkness consumed either of us. He would help me in my quest, and when it was done... we would either be saved or damned.

Either way, my remaining loved ones would be safer, and Lucy would get her vengeance.

I blocked out the sounds of Vali’s protests, using my magic to keep him from following as I strode across the grass to where River waited. The last thing I saw before my hand touched his obsidian fur was my five remaining guardians running toward me, trying to stop me... from what? It didn’t matter.

The second my fingers touched fur, we were gone.

TO BE CONTINUED…