“What’s going on?” Carrie asked as she got to the monastery. The others were crouched behind the front pew. There were a few dead vampires lying on the floor between the rows of pews. Carrie crouched low as she reached her friends.

“They have us blocked in,” Raven said as she looked over the edge of the pew and then got down again. “We don’t know where Helga went, and Solomon has at least a hundred vampires out there. We’re trapped like rats.”

Carrie was going to tell Raven about the other door when vampires started to flood into the monastery. They were yelling and breathing harshly as they stormed into the room. Carrie was used to seeing vampires moving incredibly fast. It was like these guys were trapped in slow motion. Carrie looked over at Radu, who was focused on slowing down the attackers.

Carrie pulled out her wand and started peppering the attackers with purple bolts of magical power. Her friends followed suit. They started to hit the vampires as they came through the church. They were running in through the main doorway and the witches were picking them off as soon as they entered the room. With three wands blasting powerful spells across the room, it was almost an unfair advantage.

The bodies were starting to pile up as the last of the attackers turned to run. Raven sent a bolt of purple light at his butt. “Ahh!” He screamed as he leapt into the air and headed back to the line of vampires standing outside the doors.

Radu stood up and raised his hands. He gathered all of the bodies into the air and pushed them out the monastery. With a flick of his wrists, he shut the doors and then locked them with a turn of his finger. He did it all while being fifty feet away from everything that he was moving. Carrie was impressed by the powers that the vampire had acquired over the years.

“Well, that went well,” Raven said as the doors locked.

“We can’t do that forever,” Carrie grumbled as she looked at her hand. The wand was already starting to heat up. The witches each only had so much power inside of them at any given time. The wand focused the power, but it didn’t add to the amount of power.

“Solomon is just toying with us,” Ali sighed as she tried to rest her eyes. She was summoning up power. “He knows we’re almost out of magic.”

The vampires outside the door had stopped making any noise. They had gone silent as soon as the attackers had started flying back out of the building. Then they heard his voice. It was Solomon talking to his troops. Inside the church, Carrie and her friends couldn’t understand him, but they could hear the vampires getting ready to attack.

“There’s a way out,” Carrie said as she looked at Radu. The old vampire nodded to her. She smiled, it meant a lot that he was going to let her friends escape. She could hear the vampires getting angry outside of the monastery.

“They sound mad,” Ali said. Carrie gave her a sarcastic look.

“Of course they’re mad, Ali. Come on now. Focus. We are going to get out of here alive.”

“It’s hard for vampires created by Solomon to be around religious relics,” Radu explained as he tried to watch through the frosted glass of the front windows. He could make out shapes and figures, they seemed to be in a frenzy. “They are trying to get pumped up so that they can fight through the pain of seeing a cross.”

Carrie looked back at the large wooden cross, and then she thought about the spells that she had seen in the book. She had an idea, but she wasn’t sure if it would work. She had moved things, but she hadn’t thrown them. Carrie tried to focus on the spell.

“Are we going to run for it?” Ali asked as she looked from Carrie to Radu, and back again.

“I have something that I want to try first,” Carrie said as she took a deep breath and tried to focus. It was hard to know how this spell was going to work. She hadn’t had a lot of luck with the spells in the book so far.

There was a big thud and five vampires ran in through the big oak doors at the front of the church. Carrie stood up and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Luați sabia!” Carrie grabbed the nine-foot-long wooden cross off the wall and tossed it across the room. The cross hit all five of the vampires. Cutting the first two in half, the cross knocked the others down, and it burned them.

“That was genius!” Radu cheered.

“We need to stay,” Raven said as the others stood up.

“One little victory and you want to stay and fight,” Ali moaned as she tried to pull her friend up off the floor. Raven wouldn’t budge at all, she needed to stay. “What are you doing?”

“We have to let them get away,” Raven whispered. She wasn’t sure who could be listening. “Helga won’t let them kill us, but we can keep them distracted long enough for these two to get away. We have to do it, right?”

“Fine, this is my one good deed for the year,” Ali groaned as she blasted the vampires by the cross with a bolt from her wand. “We will head back to the castle, call if you need anything. You know, if they let us live.” Ali hugged Carrie and kissed her cheek.

“They will. Helga will protect us, and you guys are going to take care of the book,” Raven hugged Carrie and sent a blast over toward the entrance. They all crouched again and Carrie and Radu stayed low as they headed to the tunnel. They didn’t want anything tipping off Solomon.

“I can’t leave them,” Carrie fretted as they walked toward the exit. Her feet were starting to feel like they weighed a thousand pounds each. Raven was likely right about Helga protecting them, but if they were hurt on this mission, Carrie was going to wear those scars forever.

“We are in just as much danger,” Radu assured Carrie. It was comforting in a strange way. She still felt bad about abandoning them in the monastery, but at least she wasn’t going to be safe. She was going to be on the run. Carrie took in a deep breath and followed Radu to the secret tunnel.

It wasn’t until the tunnel closed up behind her that Carrie truly felt like she had abandoned her friends. She could still hear them fighting Solomon’s forces. They were alive and that was something. Carrie had to will her legs to keep moving. They had lost all of their strength when she heard the tunnel wall slam closed.

“You are doing the right thing,” Radu assured his young companion. “That’s why it’s so hard. The easy thing is almost never right. The correct path is difficult, but the rewards are real.” Radu was sounding like a fortune cookie, but Carrie knew that he was right. She needed to hear that she was right, because everything felt so wrong.

Radu’s hand gave a quick squeeze on Carrie’s, and they walked on. Carrie had barely noticed that they were holding hands until that moment. It was a comforting feeling. The lighting was terrible, and the cave opening was a long way off, but they had each other.

“I can still hear them fighting,” Carrie sobbed, and then anger filled her. “Helga betrayed us again, she was the one who put us together, and she is the reason that we’re here. Why is she always creating problems?”

“You need to stay quiet,” Radu whispered as they walked through the tunnel. “There are little gaps in the rocks and the sound can travel. As soon as the vampires know we’re heading through the tunnels they’ll be sweeping the mountain to find us.”

Carrie tried to contain her anger, but there was no way for her to calm down. She needed to see Helga again soon, and she needed to pay her back for all of the betrayal and the lies. Helga had caused so many problems in Carrie’s life of late. Carrie was seeing her face in her mind, and the burning hatred was seething inside her.

“She’s tracking me,” Carrie said as she realized why she was so angry. The spell had been able to creep into her mind, because being mad at Helga seemed so natural. The image of Helga was what gave it away. She looked so much younger in the image in Carrie’s mind. Carrie didn’t remember back when Helga looked that young.

“Is there a way to stop it?” Radu asked.

“I need the book,” Carrie said as she closed her eyes and tried to block the image from sending any information back to Helga. Radu passed Carrie the book and Carrie thought about the problem and then flipped the book open. She looked down at the page as soon as it had settled. “Cargura Notay!”

Carrie could actually feel the hold break. The image left, she was still mad at Helga, but Carrie could run again. Radu took her hand and led her through the tunnel. The rocky floor made for slow going. The tunnel hadn’t been used since the monastery had opened. The path was not worn at all.

“Where are we headed?” Carrie asked. Radu shrugged and kept moving. “You won’t tell me?”

“What if someone who isn’t you is listening to this conversation?” Radu had a good point, but Carrie didn’t like going anywhere and not having a plan. She wanted to say something about Radu’s thinking, but it was a good idea. She had removed an obvious spell, but there might be other ways that Helga was using to listen to them. Carrie stayed right beside Radu as they moved over the thick, uneven rocks.

“Are we almost out of this tunnel?” Carrie asked softly as they continued to fight their way through the boulders, rocks, and stalagmites and stalactites. Radu just shook his head. They were trying to make it to the other side of a mountain and it was going to take a long time, especially at their current pace.

They got to the edge of the tunnel and once again Radu felt weak and dizzy. He was starting to fall when Carrie caught him and got him moving toward a pile of brush. They were deep in the forest, and there seemed to be no one around, but Carrie knew that Solomon knew they had escaped. Helga had only been in her head for a minute, but that was enough time to gather a lot of information.

Carrie got Radu behind the pile of brush, and then she moved bigger pieces of wood closer to the pile. Carrie pulled out her wand and waved it around the area around the pile. “Sigiliți aceste ziduri!” Carrie called out as she built a wall of magical protection around Radu and herself.

“Pretty impressive,” Radu said as he looked out at the world through the filmy-looking screen that Carrie had created. It was a little taller than a two-man tent, but the wall of protection was a handy spell that the book had taught Carrie before they left on this mission.

“What do you think we’re looking for?” a tall, dark-haired man in glasses was saying as he scanned the mountainside. “I mean does he understand that there is an endless supply of caves and tunnels on this mountainside? They don’t lead to anything, they are just holes in the mountain.”

“That’s it!” a second vampire shouted. The shorter vampire had no hair, and a very pointy nose. He charged toward the tunnel. “I know this is the tunnel, they are close.” The smaller man was running all over the mountainside like a dog with a scent, but he didn’t get close to the pile of brush where Carrie and Radu were hiding.

“Do you think he knows how far off the mark he is?” Radu laughed as he watched the vampire run up and down the mountainside. The skinny vampire sniffed the opening of the cave, and then ran down the hill; he was running down the other way and then he curved back up.

“They definitely came out of here,” he was raving at this point. The taller man was finally able to get the other man to keep walking. He was disappointed, but his friend promised that they would mention smelling the targets when they got back to the main camp.

“We’re going to need you to find a way to get moving,” Carrie said as she looked at the weakened man. He had just been running and walking moments earlier, and now he was down. Carrie knew that there was one thing that she could do to help him. One thing that would help him get his strength back. Radu opened his mouth and Carrie thought she knew what he was going to say.

“I need you to bury me,” Radu said.

“You can have a drink,” Carrie said before she even really heard what Radu said. “What? I’m sorry, I thought you were going to say something else.”

“I can’t take too much blood,” Radu explained. “I need you to be strong and fit, or else we’re never making it out of here.” Radu put his hand on Carrie’s shoulder. “I do appreciate you trying to feed me.”

Carrie wasn’t sure what to say. She was worried about burying the vampire. It sounded like an easy way to be caught. She was going to have to sit out in the open while he healed. The vampires of Solomon’s army would be sleeping, but Helga would be wide awake, and the protection spell was useless against other witches.