VEE

The light beam lands on the creature that attacked Ewan, now spreadeagled on the ground beside him. Human, but inhuman. Large. The dull red eyes remain open, in a death stare at the car park roof. Oh god, please don't let zombies exist as well. No, they can't be; these creatures have unnaturally long arms end with claws curved into weapons.

But that's not what's gripped me with fear. Lacerations and blood cover Ewan's chest, soaking through his shirt along with a thick black substance. I'm thankful the torchlight stops me seeing more detail, and I fix my eyes on his pale face. Grief washes away the fear, sudden, as reality pushes away disbelief when he doesn't respond to me.

"Is he dead?" Joss asks Heath.

Heath crouches and flicks Ewan's nose. Ewan doesn't flinch. "Probably."

"What the fuck are those things?" mutters Xander.

"Ewan's dead? How?" My voice comes hoarse and trembling.

"That thing killed him." Xander points at the creature's broken body.

"I know that! But you guys are strong. You can take down anybody when you unite. How can Ewan die?"

"Calm down, Vee." Heath places a hand on my shoulder. "He'll be back in a few minutes."

"Back? What does that mean?" I rake my hands through my hair. More noise elsewhere jolts along my spine pulling me to alert.

Heath flashes a torch into the gloom, and we all look around.

Apart from Ewan.

"This time, we'll go together, me and Joss," mutters Xander. "Typical bloody Ewan walking off on his own."

"He's not dead then?" I breathe out.

"Yeah, Ewan's dead. Bloody weird how quickly he died." Heath runs his fingers across Ewan's lacerated chest and stares at the mixed blood and sticky substance on his hand. "That thing used some major poison against Pestilence."

He laughs.

He actually bloody laughs.

"This isn't a joke!" I half shriek.

"Vee! Shush. Honestly, he's fine," says Heath.

"Fine or dead? Which?" I don't want to sound like the hysterical girl, but she's breaking through. The guys may've faced this before, but I'm back in the nightmares.

Joss pokes Heath in the back with his boot. "Just do your thing. We need the torch."

He holds his hand out and Heath passes the torch to him. Joss switches to shine the light onto Ewan.

I draw my knees to my chest and watch with fingers dug into my hair as I dart a look at the horrific corpse and back to the Ewan. Heath kneels up and bends over Ewan's motionless body, then probes the wound on Ewan's chest.

As Heath rubs his hands together a light flickers around his fingers and crackles towards his palm, forming a shimmering ball. He holds his palm out and studies the light, which flickers as if he's kindled fire.

I've witnessed—and experienced—death bolts shooting from Heath's hands, but I stare in wonder at the light's peaceful beauty.

"Is his heart damaged?" asks Xander.

"Yeah, so this is gonna take a lot. We'd better hope there isn't an army of the evil fuckers." Heath circles his fingers around the light, which spreads upwards to match his movement. With a sharp intake of breath, he slams his palm onto Ewan's chest. "Because I don't have enough to resurrect the whole lot of you!"

Resurrect? I'm lost, grasping my way from the fear and darkness. But I have powers. I can use them. Can't I? How? Which? I rest my head on my knees and grip my hair tighter. Fuck. I can't keep my thoughts straight when the only thing occupying my head is the horror at Ewan's death.

Xander's leg brushes my arm as he stands closer and, with the touch, his contained anger finally sparks mine.

"Are there more?" I snarl at Xander.

"I heard something up there."

I spring to my feet and grab Joss's torch. Before Xander can finish his sentence, I step into the shadow.

"Vee! Don't be so fucking stupid!" calls Xander

Okay, so I can be a "human lightbulb" when I'm not expecting to, but what about when I bloody need to? I clench my teeth and grip the torch in both hands. The fury builds, a pounding headache between my eyes, but no light from me.

I stride along the centre of the car park, not giving a shit who's around. I don't care if Heath can resurrect Ewan. Something can kill a Horseman in seconds, and they need to know they fucking can't.

Xander catches up and grabs my arm in an attempt to retrieve the torch.

"Vee, you saw what happened to Ewan. Stop being so stupid."

I thrust the torch at him. "Cool. You light the way, and I'll rip the fuckers' heads off."

A look I don't often see crosses Xander's face. Shock. "Wow, Vee."

"Yeah." I turn and continue my progress towards the place the cold fear emanated from earlier. Joss senses the souls of demons, but I'm sensing more. Are my empath powers heightened by his proximity? Xander flashes the torch side to side revealing parked cars.

"You need your knife ready," he mutters.

"I won't need a knife," I retort. "I'll break their necks."

"Whatever, Vee." Xander strides ahead of me, and I match his pace. "Hang back."

"No."

"You're not used to these situations. Let me handle it."

I grab his sleeve. "You have got to be kidding me."

He halts. "What?"

"I can look after myself."

Xander shines the light into my face, and I squint before covering my eyes with one arm. "Only if we're around to help."

A scraping sound in the nearby corner interrupts the flood of words I'm about to spew at Xander, and my eyes follow Xander's beam into an empty space. A tall figure launches towards us. I sidestep and dodge the hands reaching out to me as I back up.

Xander lunges forward and skewers the creature's chest with his knife. An inhuman scream escapes its mouth and echoes around the car park, but the creature remains upright. He lurches at Xander again.

Xander holds both palms outwards, arms extended and when the injured figure reaches him, he slams hard, knocking the creature against a pillar opposite and away from us at an inhuman speed. Storming over, Xander raises the knife again.

A second figure steps from the shadows, and I yell Xander's name in warning as it bears down on him. The flashlight crashes to the floor, plunging the surroundings into a darkness filled with scuffles and growls.

This is what happened to Ewan.

This is not happening to Xander.

The tingle I felt the other night builds in my arms, increasing to a painful shock as my body prepares to launch death at the two creatures. My fingers conjure a crackling white energy, which lights up a small area around me. I jerk my head to the left as another figure appears. Fuck. How many? It charges towards me with a surprising dexterity and reaches out.

I drop the knife and energy shoots from my palms, as I did when I killed the incubus. But this creature needs more than one hit. The first knocks him sideways, but not to the ground.

The first time a supernatural creature loomed towards me, the night in my flat, I feared for my life. Now the emotions flowing with the energy are hatred and fury. I will obliterate the whole fucking lot of them.

Which do I attack first? The one coming for Xander or the one about to reach me?

I need the other powers. Where the hell is my light?

I focus harder. Nothing. This triggered with the incubus, why not now? Why the fuck can't I just summon and control my powers? I need more...

Xander.

I adjust aye eyes to the poorly lit area. He's on the ground still, readying to defend himself. Darting over, I kick the creature approaching him in the back of the knees. Bone cracks from my strength and it collapses with a howl.

"Xander!" I hold out a hand and he grips mine. Our eyes meet, understanding, dropping the attempts to outwit each other.

Instantly, the light explodes from me again with a ferocity twice that at the incubus's place and stronger than the time at Portia's. I pull Xander to his feet, then stand, hand locked in his, side by side as energy manifests into a blinding brilliance. The creatures surrounding us fall to the floor, covering their heads.

One struggles onto all fours and attempts to crawl closer, but the light around us intensifies.

"Man, you're really fucking angry," says Xander.

"They killed Ewan!" A pulse of anger spikes again at the memory, and I'm overwhelmed by the desire to conjure death too. But my hand remains in Xander’s and the need to stay connected to him overrides, to soak up every last iota of the energy flowing between us.

Joss charges into the area we illuminate and grabs a creature's body. He clenches both hands around the head, and a scream fills the silence again. They're inhuman, death dealers, but the agony in the creature’s voice slices through my head like the knife I dropped to the floor.

In Joss's hands, the body shrinks and disintegrates to dust in seconds. The other two attackers meet the same fate, letting out the same agonised yells and crumbling into nothing.

Silence falls.

I gasp in a breath and drop Xander's hand. As I sway, he attempts to catch me, but I'm sick of his implications I'm weaker than him, and I steady myself.

"I never saw you kill before," I whisper to Joss.

Joss claps his hands together and black dust falls to the ground, joining the pile between us. "Yeah, I'm more of a 'hang in the background until I'm needed' kind of guy, Vee." He pauses and gives a wry smile. "As you probably noticed."

Beside me, Xander takes laboured breaths to match mine and bends to pick up the miraculously unbroken torch from the floor. "How's Ewan?"

"He's okay. The slashes on his chest aren't a great look though. Heath says he should be okay by tomorrow,” replies Joss.

"I don't know what the fuck that was or where it came from.” Xander kicks the dust.

"This is fucked up," mutters Joss.

"I'm not leaving until we've scouted every inch of this place," growls Xander. "Come on."

"And if there're more around?" I ask.

He cocks a brow. "I think we've scared the shit out of the bastards. They'd be dumb to approach us again."

I don't voice my thoughts: I doubt they have logical thought processes.

I sense Joss and Xander still pumped from the fight, and the adrenaline pushes me to finish this too. But more than that, I'm invigorated, body alive with the power absorbed from Xander and multiplying inside me. I could take on the world, and my insane body would try, given half a chance right now.

"We still haven't found the bloody crime scene," says Xander.

"I think we found more than we needed," Joss replies. "If we needed any confirmation something wasn't right about this death, we've got it."

"Yeah, but before we head back to Ewan and Heath, let's do this."

We continue around the car park, sweeping the torchlight from side to side ahead of us. I'm wound tight, ready to attack again, but no longer sense anything.

The far corner contains the last shadows we haven't looked in, and as the beam hits the wall, we know we've found the place. In my heightened state, the horror from looking at bloodied words on a wall doesn't sicken me the way they did earlier, but I can't help the dread feeling scratching at my mind’s edge that the words refer to me.

"Do either of you sense anything?" asks Xander as he crouches to examine the floor.

"Not me," says Joss.

I step forward and touch the wall, close to the dried blood. Who would do this? What evil exists in the world I haven't discovered yet? The atmosphere in this spot contains an imprint, as if the death remains in the air around. Despair and terror permeate the area. I snatch my fingers from the wall and look at the tips, tuning out from what I just picked up as Joss and Xander hold a low conversation.

What are they looking for? I want to get back to Ewan and Heath to make sure they're okay, and for somebody to tell me what the hell those things were. I glance back to where we left the two guys and notice a crack of light in the doorway to the stairwell.

"What's that?" I whisper and pull on Joss's arm.

"Switch the torch off," he hisses at Xander.

I adjust my eyes in the dark and peer across the car park. The door's open part of the way and a figure stands, half-hidden.

"Wait there." Xander hands the torch to Joss and points at me through the dark. "And I mean it this time."

He stealthily moves around the perimeter and heads towards the stairwell, his footsteps inaudible. I shuffle closer to Joss, coiled and ready to follow if needed.

As Xander steps from the shadows, the door slams closed, the figure gone. "Joss!" he shouts and barrels through the door after the intruder.

Joss follows, and I'm on their heels. By the time I reach the top of the stairs, Xander's on the car park upper level. I blink in the light and focus as a small white hatchback reverses at speed and heads down the ramp, tyres screeching. Xander runs, phone in his hand and stops at the top of the ramp.

Joss and I glance at each other in confusion as Xander storms back over. "Whoever the fuck that was, I have their car registration."

"Someone was watching us?" I ask.

Xander's jaw tightens. "I don't know what shit is going on here, and why this is associated with your online lunatic friend, but I'm going to find out."