Vampire Innocent | Book 12 | Ancient Vampire Death Cults & Other Annoyances

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Argh. Dammit. ‹Okay. Thanks. Def will not bother Soph.›

  “Drat.”

  Coralie and Brady look at me.

  “Mystics can’t help. They say finding a sire requires blood magic. Is it true using blood magic is a dangerous, dark path?”

  Coralie nods. “Yes. Even my husband refused to touch it.”

  “I didn’t realize your husband was dark.”

  “You would call him so. Back then, he would have been considered average. In those days, most mystics dabbled in whatever, unconcerned at consequences. My husband’s problem involved wanting power by any means necessary, but he did have lines he wouldn’t cross. Pity one of those lines wasn’t killing me.”

  Brady makes an ‘oh, daaaaamn’ face.

  “Hmm.” I tap my foot. Aww, hell. So much for my advantages. Hang on. I look up at the ceiling. “One more idea. Wait here a sec.”

  I fly up to the second floor and hover—not literally—outside Sam’s room.

  “Blix?” I whisper. “Are you awake?”

  The imp opens the door a moment later, PlayStation headphones hanging loose around his neck. Behind him, Sam’s room flickers in various shades of blue from the monitor. My brother is thoroughly asleep. Aww. He looks so innocent when his eyes are closed.

  “Eieboo?” asks Blix in a high-pitched voice like a thoroughly baked Gremlin.

  “Might be a long shot, but do you have any way to tell who sired a vampire?”

  Blix rubs his chin, one eye huge, the other narrow. His eyes switch sizes twice as he thinks. “Nerble marfat.”

  “Uhh, right.”

  Blix nods once, then gives me a weaselly look before pointing at the PlayStation.

  “You can do it, but it will require a tribute of a new game?”

  He nods again.

  “Sure. No problem.”

  Blix tilts his head, holds his fingers up to mimic fangs, then shrugs.

  “Down in my room. I need to find the vampire who turned Brady.”

  “Neeb nobu.” Blix zooms off down the hall. The headphones snap back into Sam’s room due to being on a wire, and land on the rug.

  I gingerly shut Sam’s door and hurry after the imp.

  When I walk into my room, it’s damn hard not to laugh. Brady’s standing on my desk like a 1950s housewife freaked out by a mouse, pointing at Blix.

  He looks at me. “What the heck is that?”

  “Please don’t call Blix an it. He’s an imp. A minor demon. If you want to get technical, he’s a daemon.”

  “What the freakin’ heck is going on in this house?” Brady stares at me.

  “Remember when I said going home to live with my family created certain issues and complications? I wasn’t talking about vampire politics. Shiz has been weird.”

  Blix looks up at me and makes a throat-cutting gesture.

  Ugh, everyone’s a critic. Guess he agrees with Dante.

  “He can help find the vampire who turned you. If we can find them, we can stop them from ambushing anyone else.”

  Blix flies up to Brady, who whimpers but holds totally still as though a highly venomous snake sniffed at him. After a few minutes of looking, some additional sniffing, and one brief taste, Blix walks out of the room, waving for me to follow.

  Brady wipes his cheek. “He licked me.”

  “Imps do that sometimes. It’s a sign of affection. Come on.”

  Blix pauses to give me a ‘really?’ look, then resumes gliding across the basement. He leads us upstairs to Sam’s room, heads over to the closet, and opens it. Not sure how many boys have a full-length mirror on the inside of their closets, but the house came with it. The imp runs his claws down the glass, not scratching it. Reflection changes to a view of another place, a dark black-and-white hallway like something straight out of a haunted mental asylum movie.

  “Oh crap. He’s taking us to the sire. Hang on. Be right back. Gonna go get my sword.”

  “You have a sword?” asks Brady. “And whoa. There’s a little kid in the bed.”

  “My brother.”

  Blix babbles.

  “The heck did he say?” whispers Brady.

  “He said you’re just like Sierra,” mumbles Sam from the bed in a half-awake voice.

  “Huh?” I ask. “How so?”

  Blix rambles.

  “Wanting to go get a sword before going into a portal,” says Sam.

  “Sierra went into a portal?” I blink.

  “Uh oh,” mutters Blix, then babbles rapidly at Sam.

  “He says it’s nothing bad. She and Soph were just testing something.”

  I cringe. “Yeah, that usually doesn’t go very well. And why are you awake at this hour?”

  “Gotta pee. Was gonna wait for you to leave first but…” Sam sits up. “Since you know I’m up, it doesn’t matter.”

  Brady stares at Sam. “Wow. You really did go home, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why does he smell like chocolate cupcakes?” whispers Brady.

  I rest my hand on his shoulder. “Unless you’re one of the weirdoes who enjoys the flavor of blood, kids typically smell and taste like stuff we consider desserts or candy. Also, if your fangs make contact with any of my siblings, your head will end up in your colon.”

  Brady leans back, hands up. “Chill. I hate the idea of biting adults. No way am I gonna hurt a kid.”

  “Who’s this guy?” Sam slides out of bed to stand. “He doesn’t look like your type.”

  “He’s not. We’re working together to stop an idiot.”

  Sam nods, yawns, then walks past us out to the hallway.

  “Your family is like cool with you being a vampire?” Brady gazes around the room. “Wow.”

  “Considering what the alternative would have been, yeah.”

  “Beyond cool,” says Sam from the hallway. “Sarah is awesome.”

  “Give me one sec.” I walk out. “Just gonna grab my sword real quick.”

  32

  One Horror Movie Set After Another

  All things considered, Brady tolerates crossing mirrors in stride.

  As much as becoming a vampire messed with his head, it’s kinda bizarre for him to brush off proof of alternate dimensions like no big deal. Hey, if nothing else, it seems to have distracted him from feeling all emo about himself. Blix leads us across the mirrorverse, most of which takes on the appearance of abandoned medical buildings. Some bits of furniture or windows look like they’re from the 1940s. Others are more modern, but highly creepy. Generally, it’s fairly ordinary except for the six-foot-long pillbugs crawling by on the ceiling and a handful of partially molten bodies fused into the walls.

  By ordinary, I mean there aren’t any gravity-defying stairwells straight out of an MC Escher drawing this time. No shattering sky raining broken glass, and no large anthropomorphic mice who want to eat us. The giant pillbugs are pretty trippy, though.

  I think having Blix here makes the mirrorworld much tamer.

  We roam various creepy hallways, operating rooms, patient wards, and a giant dark chamber full of industrial boilers. I’m sure hospital boiler rooms often have thousands of long ass chains randomly hanging from the ceiling. The clinking as we move among them is pretty damn eerie. If I wasn’t a vampire, I’d be scared.

  At the end of the boiler room from hell, we enter a massive bathroom. It’s stark white, like a dream sequence from a tech noir movie. A long shelf sink on the left stretches to a ridiculous distance with over thirty individual basins and faucets. The wall above it is all mirror. Gotta hand it to Blix, he’s making it easy. No need to squeeze through any tiny spaces.

  Naturally, the giant mirror is not reflecting the overly white room. It’s dark and grungy on the other side, but still looks like a commercial bathroom of some kind. Blix jumps into the mirror, or rather, open hole. I follow, as does Brady.

  As soon as I experience a faint sense of passing a squishy membrane, a horrible smell blasts me in the face. It’s a combi
nation of rotting trash, mold, dead animals, and urine. The room we enter is also a large bathroom, and this one is definitely not white. Might have once been, but it’s long since decayed past saving. The shelf sink on this side is much more reasonable, only six faucets. None of it looks operable. It’s a men’s room, obvious from the wall urinals. Spray paint graffiti on the walls offers more proof we’re no longer in the mirror universe but back in reality. Can’t tell if it’s English, but since we only spent about fifteen minutes inside the mirror, I’m sure we couldn’t have gone too far.

  Blix heads out of the bathroom.

  I follow into a large hallway. Out here, the smell improves. It’s merely mold, wetness, and some odd antiseptic chemical. Hundreds of doors on both sides look like patient rooms in a hospital. Gurneys, wheelchairs, IV stands, and pushcarts litter the area. This place has clearly been abandoned for at least twenty years, but it doesn’t feel like we’re alone. I’m starting to get the impression the mirrorverse takes on aspects of the intended destination—if there is one. Maybe the craziness we experienced last time happened due to us not having any particular endpoint in mind.

  “What is this place?” I whisper. “Damn, this might be a bad idea. We’ve walked into a horror movie too scary for me to watch.”

  Blix babbles, grinning at me.

  “He says you sound like Sophia,” says my little brother from behind us.

  I spin to stare at Sam. He’s leaning out from the bathroom, one hand gripping the doorjamb. The boy is still wearing his Iron Man pajamas… and he’s barefoot. “What the hell are you doing following us into a place like this?”

  “You need me to translate Blix.”

  “This place is filthy. You don’t have any shoes on.”

  Sam holds up his sneakers, which he’d been concealing behind his back. “Didn’t have a chance to put them on. Had to hurry to stay close enough to Blix to follow you guys.”

  “This is dangerous. Go back to bed.”

  “You want me to go into the mirror alone?” Sam raises an eyebrow. “Really dangerous to go alone. Having no one to talk to makes it way easier for the place to get into your head and make you go crazy. It’s safer here. Besides, if it gets serious, I can ask Mel for help. She’s really nice. And she’s super happy we let her out of the jar.”

  “Huh? Who’s Mel, and are you being literal about a jar?” asks Brady.

  “No time to explain.” I facepalm. “Okay, fine. I can’t send you to the mirrorverse alone, but you are to stay close to me. If this vampire isn’t in a talking mood, you run before anything gets dangerous.”

  Sam nods.

  “Wait. You’re seriously bringing a little kid into a place like this?” asks Brady.

  Blix rambles.

  Sam laughs. “He said you did, too. On a ghost hunt. Ariana?”

  Blix chirps and chatters, talking to my brother.

  “Kid sister of the girl you dated at the time.” Sam grins. “That kid was younger than me.”

  “A ghost hunt is way different than going into a place where a vampire lives.” Brady exhales.

  “It’s not fine, but it’s fine.” I rub the bridge of my nose. “Sam’s been in the middle of vampire BS before.”

  Blix points ahead and mutters to Sam, who says, “The guy who turned Brady is in here. Oh, please don’t tell Mom I snuck after you.”

  “Are you crazy? She’d totally ground me for bringing my nine—I mean ten-year-old brother into a creepy abandoned hospital after midnight.”

  Sam grins. “You have my silence. I won’t tell her.”

  Sigh.

  Blix salutes, warbling, “Eem oo.”

  “He said ‘mine, too’.” Sam pulls his sneakers on.

  “Brady, how are you at fighting?” I start down the hallway in the direction Blix pointed.

  “Umm, okay I guess. Haven’t really gotten into too many fights. I mean, I got my ass kicked a lot in school. Wouldn’t call any of them fights. Four, five, six on one isn’t really a fight.” He eyes the katana. “You know how to use that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. I’d be better off using a single-edged blade balanced slightly tip-heavy, like a falchion or cutlass. Maybe even a longsword—but those are double-edged. Katana’s a little light for my style. Requires different techniques. But I can fake it enough treating it as a light saber.”

  “Like from Star Wars?” Brady chuckles.

  “No, dork. Light as in the opposite of heavy.” I swing the sheathed blade around in a few basic movements.

  “Ooo kay.” Brady golf claps. “Guess you do know what you’re doing.”

  “You’ve got claws,” I say.

  He stares at me. “I do?”

  “Yes, you do. You had them out the night I saw you chasing the security guard.”

  Brady looks down at his hands. “How do they work?”

  “Wow. This guy’s really new, isn’t he?” asks Sam.

  “It’s super difficult. Think about having claws and wanting them to grow long and sharp.”

  Brady’s fingernails creak slightly, and elongate to three-inch talons. “Whoa. Umm, okay. Doesn’t work on toenails does it?”

  “Eww.” I shiver. “Never tried. Not going to. Okay. Gotta admit it feels weird being the oldest. Let me worry about the fighting part if it comes to that. Your job is to play goalie and watch Sam.”

  “Okay.”

  A hollow metallic clatter comes from a patient room ahead of us along with a zombie moan. Oh, good grief. Not more of these things. Is the ‘baby maker’ one of Anselme Ernoul’s associates trying to get revenge by deliberately attracting hunters here? Sam stops at the sound, not scared, but cautious. I reach across myself and grasp the handle of the katana, ready to draw the blade.

  The door opens inward. A young man clumsily shoves it aside as he stumbles out into the corridor. He feels like a vampire, almost. Doesn’t appear to be hostile. He staggers one step closer, raising a hand in a ‘help me’ reaching gesture. We don’t get much of a chance to look at him before he disintegrates into ashes and loose bones.

  “Uhh.” Brady looks at me. “I think that was Manuel.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Not totally sure. He kinda looked like him. You don’t remember Manuel Cordero?”

  “Name sounds familiar, but no.”

  Blix picks up one of the arm bones, sniffs it, then babbles.

  Sam nods. “Blix says you’re right. Manuel Cordero. He was too weak to survive.”

  The imp tosses the bone to the ground, chattering away.

  “He said the sire keeps making himself weaker each time he creates a new vampire.” Sam pauses to listen to Blix speak, then looks back at me. “The guy’s probably too weak to even walk right now.”

  “Which guy?” I ask. “The sire?”

  Blix nods.

  Hmm. Professor Heath told me giving the Transference is draining, especially to a new vampire. What Blix is saying matches. Is it possible this guy is so stupid he’s destroying himself to make tons of unstable vampires? If so, it rules out the idea of a survivor from Anselme’s group. What kind of moron is he? If it’s true he’s too weak to stand, I won’t feel quite so stupid and reckless for allowing Sam to tag along with us. Honestly, sending him back across the mirror alone would be more dangerous. The mirrorverse is unpredictable and freaky. Sam’s been near vampire fights before. I don’t like it at all, but I trust him to not be an idiot. Also, leaving him alone in the bathroom long enough for Blix to lead us to this sire then go back to help Sam get home is equally scary. Anything could be in this place. I’d rather keep my li’l bro close so I can watch over him.

  I continue going down the hall. Another baby vampire drags himself out of a room. He’s early twenties, dressed like a street punk. Skinny, white, bald, and drained to being a skeleton in a skin bag. Looks like what would happen if they left someone hooked up to that machine in The Princess Bride too long. He snarls, pulling himself
toward us.

  “Meem, woo, un.” Blix ticks his fingers in a countdown from three to one.

  The vampire convulses, then bursts into ash and bones.

  “Umm… am I going to die like that?” asks Brady in a shaky voice.

  “Mmm…” Blix ambles over to him and sniffs at his leg, then shrugs, making a hand tilt while muttering.

  “He says maybe, but you’ve got more energy than the ones who popped, so you might be one of the first ones he made,” says Sam.

  “Which means you might not be unstable.” I lightly kick the skull back into the room he came from. “Any vampires he tries to make now aren’t viable.”

  We make our way down the hallway to an intersection, follow Blix to the right past an empty nurse’s station, and along another corridor to a stairwell. Down three stories, we’re in the basement. Oh, goody. More horror movie ambiance. Yay. What’s scarier than an abandoned hospital at night? The basement of an abandoned hospital at night.

  Sigh.

  Tons of trash, broken small appliances, old oxygen tanks, and other junk lay scattered everywhere. Naked cinder block walls make it clear we are in a part of the building patients or the public aren’t meant to see. Employees only. Bare cinder blocks have the unfortunate side effect of reminding me of a spooky documentary about an old tuberculosis sanatorium somewhere where they used an underground tunnel to transport the dead unobtrusively out of the building. The place is supposedly haunted.

  I really shouldn’t be afraid of ghosts, or abandoned hospitals, or tunnels, but the hairs on the back of my neck still stand on end. Luckily, this basement corridor doesn’t appear dark to me. All the weird moaning and random noises aren’t making me feel any less on edge. The sounds are probably coming from a bunch of half-conscious wretches littered around the building who can barely stand, couldn’t give their own name if asked, and have no idea where they are or what they’re even doing here.

  How’d you end up in the House of Parliament? asks Dalton over our mental link.

  Being nervous makes me highly susceptible to inappropriate laughter. Sam and Brady stare at me like I’m going insane… until I explain what made me laugh. Sam snickers while Brady appears clueless.