Resist

by Shawn Knightley

  The interior hall was dark with only a dim flickering light above us, threatening to go out at any moment as Rodrick walked up the spiral staircase scaling the entire hall. I followed along behind him, wondering how he knew exactly where to go.

  “You must have met Margaux quite a few times,” I said. “Or at least you’re familiar with the area.”

  “I’ve been here several times actually. To visit a friend.”

  “You have friends?” I shot him a sarcastic grin when he peered back at me with a sneer.

  “Indeed. In high places that you would benefit from if you worked on your manners.”

  “My manners are fine.”

  We continued walking until we reached the suite at the top of the stairs. Rodrick didn’t bother knocking. Only once I reached the door did I realize why. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open without moving forward and took a quick glance around. Margaux’s home was lavish. The furniture looked like something an aristocrat would buy in the early 20th century. The curtains scaled from ceiling to floor. The walls were decorated with paintings I was certain couldn’t be of any recent century. And most of all, it was completely trashed.

  “What the hell?” I whispered under my breath as Rodrick took a step inside, making sure to hold out his arm and prevent me from walking too close.

  “Wait here,” he ordered.

  I stood there waiting as he walked throughout the main living area, listening closely for anything nefarious. The mirrors hanging from the walls were broken, the paintings and expensive furnishings had been slashed with knives, and the walls appeared as though someone took a sledgehammer to them, making sure there weren’t any secret compartments where something could be hidden.

  I listened closely for any sign of movement. The only thing my lycan senses noticed was a breeze picking up speed outside. Otherwise, the flat was completely abandoned. And might have been for weeks.

  Rodrick reached for the light switch on the wall. The power line lighting up the room blew up the bulbs in the ceiling, shattering the glass and sending sparks all over the place. For a moment, I thought it might catch what was left of the furnishings or the decorative rugs on fire. Fortunately, it didn’t. But the flash of light from the bulbs did show the room to the back. The white paneled door leading to another room was broken from the hinges and dangling from one latch. Rodrick stepped over it to see the back room was in equal disarray. I was careful to avoid breaking anything else as I took each step carefully behind him, trying my best not to make a single sound. With so much destroyed, it was a difficult task. Glass broke under my toes as I carefully weaved around the shredded remains of a few broken picture frames.

  I nearly gasped when I saw the room. It was the bedroom from my dream. The dream that I was reluctant to admit might have been a vision of the future. I was relieved to see that the room was only a vague likeness to the memories flashing through my mind. The large bed with the beautiful comforter had been busted apart and torn up with knives, digging about the mattress for anything that might be hidden. More of the curtains had been slashed. The tall tapered candles lay broken on the floor. Even the bricks inside the fireplace were dislodged and crumbled over the iron log holder.

  ‘Well, I can rest assured that this isn’t particularly romantic.’

  I scooted the slashed pillows from the floor with my foot to make room for me to walk around. “What were they searching for?”

  “Probably the svethulka.”

  “But Margaux already has it. I saw her with it.”

  “Then we can’t truly know what they were searching for. Or what Margaux might have been hiding.”

  “Do you think this was the Dolch Erbe?”

  “Most likely.”

  A shiver traveled from the back of my neck and down my spine, making sure every single hair wasn’t shown a bit of mercy as they stood up straight.

  ‘Dirk might have been here.’

  “Doesn’t that mean we need to know what they wanted to find?” I asked.

  “Who’s to say they didn’t find it already?”

  Something flashed in the corner of my eye. A faint glint of light as though the moon had touched a piece of glass and sent a glare directly in my line of sight. It was coming from a painting to the left of the fireplace. I took a closer look to see the slash of a knife through the painting had gone deeper than the canvas. Whoever cut through the painting of a tall gentleman in a Regency-era suit didn’t realize they had cut a piece of the wall behind it. I peeked through the sliced remains to see what had caught my eye.

  “There’s something back here,” I said, reaching for the painting’s heavy gold frame and removing it from the wall.

  “Let me,” Rodrick said, taking it from my hands.

  “I’m not completely helpless, you know.”

  Rodrick shook his head. “You modern women. Always refusing help with anything.”

  I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a glare. I simply looked through the hole in the wall. There was indeed something that caught my eye. Something blue and shiny. When I peered through the drywall, there was a large glass bottle on the other side holding a luminous blue light. It could only be one thing.

  ‘Magic!’

  “Do you see what I see?” I asked.

  “Move aside.”

  Rodrick took the toppled side table to his right and thrust it into the wall, creating a bigger hole and ripping apart the wallpaper. He threw it again and again, raising it above his head and hammering it down until there was a big enough hole for me to dig my hands into what was left and tear open a big space to climb through.

  I placed my foot through the hole, ready to explore what I had found.

  “Be careful,” he said, taking my hand into his and helping to prop me up as I went through. Part of me was surprised he was letting me go in first. Another part of me would have been offended if he hadn’t. I wasn’t helpless. I was a lycan with crowning magic. Perhaps he was finally starting to see that I was capable of handling myself and didn’t need his constant protection.

  When my feet hit the floor I swooped my long black curls back to get the dust out of my face. I was surrounded by tables with what looked like swirling balls of enchanted light. I had done enough reading on witchlings in the library to know exactly what this was.

  ‘A potion room!’

  Tucked away where no one could see and Margaux could work with some privacy.

  I heard a groan. Rodrick busted through more pieces of the wall and climbed inside. He passed by me and went over to one of the tables where candles towered in long black tapers and placed a single finger on the wick. A small bright spark of his crowning magic lit the candle and proceeded to light up every other one in the room all at once. What was a dark and gloomy room with no windows turned into a large study with countless leather books laying open, potions stacked up on shelves in empty wine bottles, and a large cauldron to the left of the massive hole in the wall behind us. The fireplace worked from both sides so Margaux could heat her cauldron from inside the potion room or her bedroom.

  “I take it whoever was searching her flat didn’t know about this room,” I assumed, looking at one of the many leather-bound books she had lying about with her elegant penmanship lining the pages. They were filled with her notes and so many words I had never seen before. An entire world of mysteries that hadn’t yet been revealed to me. Her elegant penmanship listed everything from potion ingredients to logging the results of various spells and rituals. I tossed about a few of the books, not really seeing anything noteworthy on her desk full of empty glass potion bottles, waiting for her to fill them with magic. That was until I moved a few of the books to see one sprawled open to a certain page. The word at the top was definitely one I had grown to recognize. Blackatters.

  I peered over my shoulder to get a hint of what Rodrick was doing. He was busy searching through some of Margaux’s potions. Even observing a few close up like he knew what they were just by looking at them. And
for all I knew, maybe he did.

  I took the small leather-bound notebook and folded it closed. Then I tucked it away deep inside the inner pocket of my trench coat.

  I was against stealing. And I never wanted to stoop down to the same levels that our enemies obviously saw as necessary when they trashed Margaux’s flat. At the same time, I was relatively certain that Rodrick would be dead set against me borrowing a notebook scribbled with notes about our species. Especially since he was one to keep things from me.

  ‘If you’re allowed secrets, so am I.’

  Rodrick cleared his throat and for a split second, I thought he had seen me discreetly tuck the notebook away inside the folds of my trench coat. On the contrary. He was trying to get my attention away from the desk. He lifted his finger to his lips, telling me to be silent. I finally got the message. He heard something and wanted to know if I could hear it too.

  There was nothing. Not the sound of people on the streets below or even cars in the distance. The flat was oddly quiet. After a few seconds, I realized Rodrick didn’t want me to listen. He wanted me to smell. I sniffed the air a bit harder and understood what got his attention. Blood. Human blood. And it was fresh.

  Rodrick reached inside his trench coat and pulled out a gun. Then he motioned for me to get behind him as he sniffed the air harder to figure out where the smell was coming from. He led me back through the hole in the wall and into the bedroom. Then down the trashed hallway and up to a wide set of stairs. The smell was getting stronger. Only I couldn’t smell any flesh. It couldn’t be a dead body. I had been hunting with the Vontex enough times to know better.

  “Stay here,” Rodrick whispered to me once we reached the top of the stairs. He proceeded down the hallway, careful not to make too much noise as he walked over broken picture frames that had been torn down from the walls along with more drywall from what looked like sledgehammers. Whoever invaded Margaux’s home was desperate to find whatever it was they were searching for.

  I blinked and the hall flew away from me. Something hard struck me directly in the ribs and flung me down the staircase into the wall on the middle landing. My left shoulder exploded with blazing pain. I crashed into the wooden floorboards and raised my hands up before me. I was blocked. A pair of ice-cold hands latched onto my wrists and pinned them over my head with impossible strength.

  I tried getting up only to get struck down so fast that I didn’t know I had fallen until I was down. The air inside my lungs abandoned me. The back of my head pounded against the landing. A shadow loomed over me. He was nothing but a blur until my head cleared from the impact against the floor. A man with short blond hair and deathly pale skin glared down at me. His eyes were icy and cold. But most frightening of all, his teeth flared with a large set of fangs ready to plunge right into my neck.

  “Rodrick!” I screamed.

  ‘He won’t get here fast enough.’

  Before I could stop him, my attacker’s fangs sank deep in my throat. I never realized how tender that part of the body was until I had a man with fangs draining me of blood. I could feel it rushing from my veins and spilling into his mouth as he sucked harder, stealing my life force right out of me.

  Rodrick told me to defend myself if I felt I was in danger. I figured this was one such occasion.

  I spread my fingers out and let my crowning magic rip through my palms, shooting a spiral of scarlet red light right into the man’s chest and forcing him off of me. He let go of my wrists and flew into the wooden staircase behind him, breaking a few of the floorboards and cracking the side railing.

  I didn’t give myself time to think about it twice. I shifted as fast as I could until I was towering over the man in my lycan form with scarlet red smoke barreling from the floor and weaving in circles around my arms and legs. He moved almost too fast for my eyes to see, backing up over what was left of the staircase and slamming into the wall on the upper floor with wide eyes. I could see his veins through his deathly pale skin. The smell of human blood churned inside his stomach. Only one feature set him apart from any other being I had yet to encounter. I didn’t hear a heartbeat.

  ‘Is this the vampire Rodrick spoke of?’

  “Your kind shouldn’t be here!” the man said in a thick Russian accent. His fangs peeked below his upper lip. My blood dripped from the tips onto his chin.

  I launched my body up over the broken steps of the staircase and landed on my hind legs. My claws were ready to drive right into him if he so much as tried to hurt me again. The tendons inside my shoulder mended back together. I could hear the fibers of muscle stitch closed. The skin on my neck sealed shut, healing the mark of his fangs. He didn’t manage to hurt me in any real way. He did, however, manage to make me furious. Something that definitely wasn’t good when I was in lycan form.

  I roared into the air. The remaining unbroken glass on the pictures hanging from the walls shattered to the floor. The vampire put his arms before him, trying to protect himself from the crowning magic spiraling from my paws and coming right for him. I wouldn’t be caught off guard again. He held me down. I would do the same to him. Only my magic would hurt far worse than his icy cold skin.

  “Riley!” Rodrick shouted from down the hall. He stomped with each foot on the floor as he neared me. “Shift back this instant.”

  I growled at him. Not the best choice to make but that’s what I did. He, naturally, didn’t see what the vampire had done to me. Or he didn’t care. I would amend that.

  Rodrick’s magic poured from his hand and danced about my body, pinning my massive arms to my side and scorching the fur on my legs. He was trying to force me into submission with his magic.

  My senses came back to me like a rock hitting me right on my head. What was I doing? Had I really just growled and resisted the Dean of L.I.T.?

  I shifted back as fast as I could. My bones returned to their normal size. All the power I felt from towering over the vampire fled from my body and left me feeling vulnerable.

  Rodrick wasn’t focused on me anymore. Thank goodness. He was watching the vampire before me as he marveled at the young woman shifting from a lycan back into human form right before his eyes.

  Rodrick casually approached the vampire and sighed once he reached him. The vampire stared up at him. The fear I managed to evoke inside of him quickly faded.

  “Rodrick?” the vampire mumbled.

  “What did I tell you about picking out your prey, Alexei? Stop stalking in patterns.”

  “But young women are always so enticing. And willing. Especially in Paris.”

  Rodrick shook his head as though the man beneath him was a sorrowful disappointment. Then he veiled his discontent with a half-smile and reached out a hand to him.

  ‘This is Alexei?’

  “I didn’t think you would come,” the vampire said.

  “I didn’t know I needed to until recently,” Rodrick responded, giving his hand a firm shake.

  I shuffled backward and nearly hit the corner of the wall. “This is him?” I asked a bit stunned. “This is the vampire you wanted us to protect? Doesn’t look like he needs help.”

  Alexei pulled his hand away from Rodrick and raised a brow at me.

  “Riley, this is Alexei Ibragimov,” Rodrick said. “Alexei, meet Riley.”

  “A Blackatter?” Alexei asked.

  “Yes. The Northern Vontex found her only a few months ago.”

  Alexei scanned me with apprehensive eyes. “A novice student? Can you trust her?”

  Rodrick shot me a smirk as Alexei squinted at me with judging eyes. “For the time being. But she’s much like you now. She needs help. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve come here.”

  I didn’t know what made me more irritated. The fact that Rodrick was friendly with a man he only referred to as a mere acquaintance or that he seemingly didn’t care that his friend had thrown me down a flight of stairs and bit me in the neck.

  ‘So much for being protective of me.’

  I blinked a fe
w times as the thought came and went. I didn’t want Rodrick hovering over me like a protective guardian. But then again, I didn’t want him to appear so unconcerned either.

  ‘Christ. This won’t end well, will it?’

  I wanted Rodrick’s attention. I longed for it. I was familiar enough with the feeling to know what it meant. I was developing feelings for Rodrick. And as long as this curse over Blackatters remained, it wasn’t something I was likely to shake off.

  13

  I was still relatively new to this world where supernatural beings I only ever read about in fairy tales and horror stories were a walking and talking reality. Even so, I read enough about vampires and their morbid history in Alina’s class to know that I would be a fool to feel anything other than uneasy as I sat across from Alexei at Margaux’s kitchen table. Alina’s class might have had a focus on the history of lycan but the relevant books I read to prepare for my most recent essay told a much darker story than I was ready to read. Stories of rabid vampires, willing to kill anything and everything for a single taste of blood, driven mad by their thirst, and desperate to kill any kruxa witchling they could get a hold of. Apparently, some believed kruxa blood provided the ability to walk in the sunlight. I had no idea if it was true or not. And I wasn’t bold enough to go ask Nurse Roslyn.

  Alexei stared at his hands as Rodrick prepared tea in Margaux’s electric kettle. He poured us cups then took out a blood bag from the refrigerator and handed it to Alexei. I might have enjoyed the taste of human flesh but the scent of old blood was enough to make my nose curl.

  Every few seconds Alexei’s eyes would find their way back to me. As if he was trying to sneak glances at a potential meal he started but had yet to complete. A shiver ran down my legs and gave me goosebumps. I pulled my trench coat in tighter from the shivers coursing over my skin. I knew he noticed just how much he set my teeth on edge. And worse yet, I think he enjoyed it.