My Love Has Come Along

09

It happens, of course, in the middle of the night. Lauren had a feeling it would; after all, his first attack had been in the middle of the night.

The alarms that she’s set up all around the border of town trigger and she gasps awake. Camila (who spends more nights in Lauren’s bed than her dorm) jolts awake next to her, startled by Lauren’s sudden loud breathing.

“He’s here,” Lauren slurs, staggering to her feet and pulling on a pair of jeans (what are the best pants to wear to some fucked up magic battle?). She yanks on her boots after that and turns back to Camila, who looks tiny and lovely in Lauren’s bed. Lauren leans forward and presses a searing kiss to her lips.

“Don’t come outside,” she orders, and then she’s out the door, passing Dinah who’s knocked out on their couch.

She runs to the park as fast as her legs can carry her and she skids to a stop when she spots him from a distance through the trees.

He’s dressed in dark clothing, looking every bit as frightening and intimidating as Lauren remembers him. He’s standing in between Lauren and her tree.

She needs to get to that tree.

She walks forward cautiously, and he slowly does the same. She stops a few feet away from him and gets a good look at him in the lamplight.

He’s young, she notes, faintly surprised. Probably only a few years older than Lauren herself. He’s got a nasty scar that runs from below his ear and along his collarbone until it disappears under his shirt. He’s handsome, she can admit, but there’s something unsettling in his eyes. Something cold and just the slightest bit… off.

“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” he says, voice as low and as smooth as silk. He sounds genuinely eager and it sends a shiver up Lauren’s spine. “To finally claim the last Jauregui.”

“Claim?” Lauren’s anger overtakes her fear. “You murdered my family, you sick son of a bitch.”

“But not all of them,” he says regretfully. “I missed one. This time, though, I will not fail.”

It strikes Lauren as a little odd that she can so calmly stand and speak with the man that murdered her family and blatantly admits to wanting to kill her as well. It’s like her heart is beating so fast that the rest of the world seems slow, almost lazy in comparison.

“I disagree,” Lauren narrows her eyes, shifting herself into a defensive stance.

He moves so quickly, she can barely see him. A burst of energy knocks her off her feet and sends her flying backwards. She lands heavily, all of the breath in her lungs leaving her in an instant. She scrambles to her feet and he hasn’t moved.

“Unfortunately,” he says calmly, as though he didn’t just blow Lauren back a dozen feet, “only one of us will be correct. And I do so hate to be wrong.”

“That makes two of us,” Lauren snarls, diving behind a tree to avoid the next wave of energy. It hits the tree, which groans irritably, not really hurt, but more put out. “I’m glad one of us can take a hit,” she grumbles to it.

The back of her neck tingles and her head ducks almost of its own accord. A sword, an honest to fucking god sword, hacks into the tree where her head just was. Lauren staggers away from the man, where he cackles (seriously?) and takes his time pulling his sword out of the tree.

“A sword?” Lauren can’t help but gasp.

“It’s traditional,” he says, his eyes going wide with sincerity.

“Tradition didn’t mean much when you brought a house on my sleeping family.”

The man shrugs, the movement somehow nonchalant and incredibly deliberate at the same time. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”