Her head twisted around on her shoulders as the chandeliers above her flickered and swung violently over their heads. Loki didn’t bother looking back at Axel, the light supervisor. He heard the sound of his knees clanking together like the chains around the neck of the ghost of Christmas past.
A swirling wind of chilling snowflakes filled the room. Loki didn’t think she needed to kill them. She could just leave them to freeze in here. She stretched her arms sideways like a witch casting a spell, her arms showing purplish veins curling like tiny snakes all over her body, all the way down to her bare feet. Her head rotated back into normal position, and she looked down at them with her mouth wide open, snarling with her white fangs.
Loki couldn’t explain how he felt exactly. This roller coaster of emotions in one single night was too much confusion for him. Her angry eyes were fixated on him. He continued to feel guilty in a silly way. Whenever she looked pleadingly at him like that, he thought she wanted to tell him something, which made him question why she never talked.
She shifted her eyes to Big Bad who was still invisible in the dark, and Loki could still hear him growling and his bones breaking.
What was going on with Big Bad?
There was no time to figure it out now. The vampire princess rushed down, as if upon an invisible transveyor belt, faster than the speed of light toward him, and finished Big Bad in the dark.
Axel was too scared to follow her with the flashlight, keeping it on Loki as if he were the star of the show.
“Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the scariest of them all?” Loki mumbled again.
Axel and Loki exchanged reluctant gazes. Loki wondered how fast, and far, they could run. He thought he’d save himself tonight, so he could think of an effective way to come back and kill her later.
Snow White turned back to Loki. She wiped her lips with the tip of her white dress then grunted at him. She took a step closer, smelled his neck, and inhaled the odor of his body. She breathed over his neck slowly like cold wind upon the water and then she brushed her tongue softly above his earlobe. The chilling touch caused the veins on his neck to show like a singer singing his highest note. Her edgy teeth touched his veins slightly. It felt like the tip of a needle flirting with his skin.
She stood like that for a while, not biting him. Then she finally talked, and it wasn’t like anything Loki had expected to hear.
Whatever she whispered in his ear, he thought he was imagining it.
It couldn’t be. She didn’t say that. Did she?
Her voice was musical and deliciously feminine. She rested her cold hand on Loki’s chest, detecting the pulse of his racing heartbeat.
“Save me,” she whispered one more time.
When she said the words, her voice was low, even fainter than a whisper, as if she was scared someone would hear her. But who would that be? The castle was empty. Why would she worry that someone would hear her?
“What did she say?” Axel whimpered from his hiding spot.
Loki said nothing. The surprise was overwhelming. Somehow, he knew that this moment was going to change his whole life.
Snow White disappeared back into the dark, leaving him undone, just like that. The scent of apples lingered in the air, and Loki inhaled it as flashes of blurred memories passed before his eyes again.
What’s happening to me?
He inhaled her appleicious scent unconsciously as if wanting to take something of her back with him, as if wanting to let some of her naturally deadly perfume run through his veins.
But he had to leave. She had spared his life, and he didn’t know why. He was beyond confused.
He turned around, grabbed his Alicorn, then Axel’s hand and sprinted out of the castle. As they hurried back through the Black Forest, red snow began to fall from above.
11
Bedtime Stoories
All the way back to town, Axel sat with his knees on the passenger seat, looking back at the empty road, and making sure the vampire princess wasn’t after them.
When Loki stopped the Cadillac in front of Candy House, Axel didn’t bother to invite him in. He slithered out of the car, almost hypnotized, forgetting about his backpack of crosses and food, and entered his house with a slouched posture. He snorted with anger when he found Bitsy had sewn his web on the key lock again. It presented a good opportunity to release himself from the chains of fear by kicking the door open with his boot.
Loki drove away, back to the parking lot, which would be his sleeping place until his sixteenth birthday. He wasn’t angry at Axel for not inviting him in. He understood. Axel had seen more than enough, and Loki felt slightly guilty for dragging him into this. Vampires were Loki’s everyday business. None of them had been a beautiful girl, though. Certainly none had asked him to save them before.
The parking lot was empty, and Loki needed the sleep. He locked his car, and tried to see if the Pumpkin Warriors were playing music, but they were snoring in their sleep. Scared and lonely, Loki decided he’d keep the radio channel open and let their snoring keep him company.