SWNOVELS Chapter CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LAUREN WAS DEAD. Her bones lay inside the coffin, and her essence inside the hourglass.
The red sheriff imagined her demise as the hourglass approached a minute’s worth of sand. Lauren had stressed her brain, attempting to find a solution before it was too late. She opened and closed her gray-blue eyes several times. It was strange to only have about a minute to live and to know it. The grains of sand mocked her as they continued to count down the remaining moments of her life. Whoever was responsible was obviously going to get away with it. She wouldn’t even see the wizard’s face before the end unless he showed up within the next minute. There was no way to know who killed her, which pissed her off. What kind of a wizard, coward, son-of-a-bitch destroyed her life and then swooped in and became even more powerful by using the energy that Dracula had bestowed upon her?
The desire to get up and smash that hourglass to pieces was palpable; she visualized it correctly, but all she could accomplish was to move her foot. It was such an awful feeling. Would the end hurt? It might not be instantaneous. A thump from outside was the horse continuing to be frisky. If only the animal would get close enough to her.
“Come closer, boy, girl, or whatever you are! Damn it! Come on, come on, come on.”
Lauren could hear the animal doing something out there, with its hooves thumping the ground. A loud crash startled her; she thought the end had come. But no, the horse had thrown the tire through the window, which lay on the bottom of the left brown curtain, creating a much larger opening so Lauren could plainly observe the white Arabian. She commanded it to enter, and as it crashed through what remained of the window, it made a hell of a racket. It reared and snorted. With its two rear hoofs, the horse turned and took the command, kicking the coffin and sending Lauren flying against the wall over the sofa.
She flew as a ragdoll might with no control whatsoever. Lauren ended up behind the couch, and as she stood up, she realized the binding spell had been broken. She told the horse to kick her with all its might to give her the best chance to escape. She blurred and stomped the hourglass to pieces just as the sand was about to run out. A small tornado of sparkled energy remained for several seconds and then disappeared.
She kissed the horse. “You big beautiful thing.”
The red sheriff guided the horse out the door, shaking the glass out of its mane. She examined the animal, and it appeared to be okay, just a small cut on its right leg. In the front yard, she took a moment to gather herself before leaving. Lauren returned within hours with five other red sheriffs and a skinny wizard named Oblivion, only to discover that the place had been mirrored, to her dismay. Tiny particles of the broken mirror were everywhere on the ranch, far too many to clear up, which allowed the wizard responsible for keeping an eye on the place to do it from afar. He would likely never return or return only when the area saw no activity for months. If the wizard was wise, he would never return because she would keep an eye on the place. The owner’s body and the rest of his family were located in the back near a small garden of daffodils.
Lauren stared at the horse as it ran with the tire and realized she wouldn’t be standing there without him. It was a day that she would never forget. Finally, it was time to find Michael.