I screamed.
Then I felt the wolf’s grip loosen. Something changed in the beast’s eyes—they turned from a bright yellow to a dark brown. The werewolf’s body started to shrink. It was changing back… thank God for that! The timing couldn’t have been better. But as the creature resumed a human shape, I was startled by what I saw. It was an older man, a black man. It was Cain.
It made sense… too much sense. Of course he knew all about my past. I’d assumed Annabelle had filled him in on the details she knew. But if he was a member of the Order… Fucking Cain. He wasn’t counseling me about my “daddy” issues, he was tormenting me with them. He wasn’t trying to teach Nyx to be more assertive—he was a backwards bitch who just couldn’t swallow up his antiquated ideas about what was right and “natural.” It made sense that he’d be a member of the Order of the Morning Dawn. The other wolf, the one we’d already killed, clearly was. Besides, when Rutherford was tormenting Nyx and me through the intercom, she didn’t seem to know where Cain was. Of course she didn’t—he was inside the asylum!
“Cain!” I screamed, while trying to avert my eyes from the unpleasant sight of his nude body. “You’re a werewolf?”
Cain looked at me confused—he’d shifted back into human form, but he was still disoriented. I glanced at the other wolves; they’d resumed their human form, too. I recognized them as one of the males and the female who’d come into the asylum the day before.
Then I heard a scream. It was coming from down the hall where my room was located.
“Is someone still here?” Nyx asked.
I shrugged. “I thought everyone had evacuated.”
“Maybe we should check. I’ll stay with the werewolves.”
I nodded and ran toward the sound of the scream. It was coming from my room. I opened the door.
Rutherford was there, still bound in the leather straps that I’d tied her down with before. “How the hell? I saw you…”
“That wasn’t the nurse,” a voice said behind me.
I turned, and there was another Rutherford. Her spitting image. She even had the same scrubs. “How the hell…”
Chapter Twenty
Rutherford—the real Rutherford who was tied to my bed—screamed in horror at the sight of her doppelgänger.
“Shut up,” I snapped at her as I released her bindings. She took off as quickly as a human could. Her doppelgänger stepped aside and allowed her to pass. I turned toward the imposter. “Who the hell are you, really?”
“You know, it’s sure fortunate that my chosen victim was so infatuated with this nurse that this was the form he found most appealing. Made things a lot more convenient for me.”
I scrunched my brow. “You’re the vampire who bit Nyx… the one who stole her abilities.”
The false Rutherford laughed. “Poor Nyxie-poo. I do have to say, though, I find his present form practically irresistible.”
“Of course you do.”
The fake Rutherford nodded. “But isn’t it an enigma how I’d even know that I could do something like that? Oh, the strings I had to pull to set up this very moment…”
“What are you talking about?”
“You think it was a mistake that you ended up possessed by your own brother?” the false Rutherford said through a laugh.
This vampire knew about Edwin. She knew something I’d only just come to learn myself—that is, when we bit magical creatures, we’d temporarily steal their abilities. I narrowed my eyes.
The fake Rutherford smiled wide. “You’ve figured it out.”
“Alice?” I asked.
Shifting back into her natural form, Alice now stood in front of me, smugly looking back at me.
My chest tightened and I clenched my fist, gripping my wand tightly. If only I knew a spell that might work. Something that could kill a vampire.
“All that time in hell, tormenting your poor brother. Driving him insane… just so he could do the same to you.”
“You meant for him to possess me all the while?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Of course I did,” Alice said. “You think heaven would really accept him?”
“Heaven might have before you warped his mind, you self-righteous bitch.”
Alice laughed. “I didn’t do anything but bring out his true self, his true villainy.”
“My father loved him. And he was your mentor in the Order. If he knew what you did…”
“Still hung up on Daddy?” Alice asked, putting on a fake frown and pretending to wipe fake tears from her eyes. “I got over your daddy decades ago. Isn’t it about time you did, too?”
“Edwin was just a child, Alice. He might have died, but his soul was still a child’s.”
“I’m not the one who damned him, Mercy. It was you. You and your witch. When you deceived your dumb father. The truth is, while I no longer have any loyalty to your daddy dearest, he’s the one who secured celestial magic for our cause. He’s the one who created me. Yes, it was your bite. But it was the magic he gave me that revived me. To think, in some backwards way, through all he planned, your father is still finding ways to eliminate his daughter from existence.”
“This is all you, Alice. He might have been a fool. A vile man, even. But it’s you who chose to torture my brother in hell—as if he wasn’t going to suffer enough. It was you who’ve been so obsessed with eliminating me that you’ve become the very thing you hate. You really think you and the Order do God’s work? Please.”
“You don’t know anything about God and holiness. You’re an abomination.”
“As are you,” I said, shrugging. “You aren’t really hunting me because of your love for your God. You’ve targeted me because you hate what you’ve become. You hate me for making you what you are. And you hate my father for giving you the magic that made it possible to heal, made it possible to complete your transformation. And you took your shit out on my brother because it was a way to get back at my father and to get to me, to get inside my head.”
“To hear his voice, his crazed ideas… tell me, Mercy. Some of it resonates with you, doesn’t it? Does he remind you of the monster you really are?”
I shook my head. “His ideas are warped. He drives me mad. I can admit that. But it isn’t because of what I am or what I did to him that he’s this way. That’s your fault.”
“Does it really matter who’s at fault, Mercy? I mean, so far I’ve gotten everything I intended. I’ve manipulated you from day one. And I have you exactly where I want you.”
I rolled my eyes. “In a mental institution with a bunch of werewolves from your damned Order?”
Alice shrugged. “Only one of them is a member of the Order.”
“And that one is dead in a room down the hall. Come to find out, a silver-tipped stiletto does the same trick as a silver bullet.”
“Nyx?” Alice asked. “I didn’t realize the shifter had it in him.”
“In her,” I said curtly.
“Whatever. Technically it’s an it. They don’t have genders, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “So you targeted Cain, who was also a wolf?”
“He was the one who arranged for my wolf… God rest his soul… to get into the asylum. And what better way to corner you here than to let the dogs out to play?”
I winced as I tucked my bitten leg behind my good one. “You’re still not going to get to me.”
“How’s that leg doing? Looks like an awful bite.”
“Don’t pretend you’re concerned.”
“Concerned? Heavens no. But I am intrigued. I had no way of knowing for sure that you’d get bitten, but I played the odds, and the odds were apparently in my favor. Now you’re vulnerable. You do know what a werewolf bite does to a vampire, do you not?”
Alice pulled out her crucifix—the same one she’d used before, the one my father had used more than a century ago to channel sunlight on me.
“You tried to use that on me before,” I said. “And that didn’t go so well for yo
u.”
Alice shrugged. “Before you were bitten, sunlight would hurt you. It would even leave scars. But now… infected by the wolf’s bite, the sunlight will burn you from the inside out. It will end you.”
I gripped my wand. When she’d used it before, I didn’t hear any incantation—however the crucifix worked, she could channel it in an instant. If I tried anything, she’d burn me with sunlight before I could get a spell off.
You’re older than she is, Edwin said in my mind, breaking my silence. You’re stronger. You’re faster. I don’t want to go to hell…
For the first time since he’d been inside me, Edwin showed his humanity. He knew Alice wasn’t going to take him to heaven—not like she’d lied to make me believe she would. She’d damn him to the real hell, the human hell… and he was asking me, begging me to fight. If anyone had reason to hate Alice more than me, it was Edwin.
Until this moment, I’d wanted nothing more than to get my brother out of my head. But now it felt like I was responsible for him. I wasn’t just protecting my life, my existence, from Alice—I had to protect him, too. For the first time since I’d become a vampire, I felt like I was Mercy Brown, not just Mercy the vampire. I was Edwin Brown’s big sister. I felt protective. Fighting for my own life was one thing. But now, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I was fighting for someone else, too.
Edwin showed fear. He showed that he was still human… a part of him remained. After all, he still had a soul. And his soul was the only one I had—did that make me more human, possessed by him, than I could be without him?
All those thoughts flooded through my mind in an instant, and a half-second later I found myself charging after Alice.
She raised her crucifix. I saw light consume its form. A beam of sunlight was to strike me—and the moment it did, I’d be gone. But hopefully I could end her before I burned.
A stiletto came flying out of nowhere, like some kind of boomerang. It knocked the crucifix out of Alice’s hand.
I collided with Alice, pressing her to the floor. She’d succeeded in making me vulnerable to sunlight, more vulnerable than I was before, but she still had a heart. She was vulnerable, too.
Rip her heart out from her chest!
That was the Edwin I’d become accustomed to. This time I was willing to comply. But I had my own methods. I took my wand and thrust it into her chest. It was as good as a stake.
Alice screamed as her red eyes turned black. Now, with my wand in her chest as a stake, all I needed was a simple incantation. A fire spell. I could burn her heart from the inside.
“Mercy, no!” Nyx shouted before I could even begin to speak the words that would destroy her.
I looked up at Nyx, confused.
“If you kill her, my true nature will die with her. My ability… we have to find a way to get it back.”
I bit my lip. “You don’t want me to kill her?”
“No,” Nyx said. “I’ll do that. Eventually. But not yet. We have to take her with us. Until we find out how…”
I nodded. “Nyx, take her crucifix. We can’t let her have it back. And I am not leaving my wand in her chest forever.”
It might have been the first time I’d actually lived up to my name—I showed her mercy. Not for her sake. For Nyx’s sake. I wanted to destroy her. I wanted her to pay for all the hell she’d literally put me through. I wanted her to suffer for what she’d done to Edwin. But she’d also hurt Nyx. And after all we’d done, all we’d been through together, eliminating Alice now would make an enemy of Nyx. I didn’t even know if it was possible to siphon her abilities out of Alice and back to her—but if there was a way, Nyx deserved a chance.
“We’ll have to carry her out of here,” I said.
Nyx didn’t hesitate as she grabbed Alice’s staked body and tossed her like a rag doll over her shoulder.
“We’ll find something else to stake her with once we get out of here,” I said. “But we have to move fast.”
Chapter Twenty-One
With my grimoire tucked under my arm, Nyx and ran hard—we had to get out of here. Vilokan was a Voodoo city under the ground—an oddity in a place like New Orleans, where the city was already below sea level. But the place was protected by some kind of Voodoo magic—it prevented the place from flooding under most circumstances. If I could just get out of the asylum, I could find cover somewhere in Vilokan until nightfall. It was a rather large place, with plenty of dark corners where I could hide.
“Mercy, wait!” Cain shouted from the other end of the hallway. Apparently he’d regained his senses.
I glared back at him. “We’re leaving, Cain. And don’t think you’re going to convince me otherwise. Just an hour ago you were trying to kill me.”
“That wasn’t me… it was the wolf…”
I huffed. This was the man who’d told me that blaming Edwin for my earlier rampage in the French Quarter wasn’t right. He said I had to accept responsibility for my actions, as if being possessed and controlled by another spirit didn’t exonerate my guilt. But now he was blaming the wolf? “I don’t need your excuses, Cain. And I don’t care. I’m leaving.”
“Don’t you want to know why you’re really here?” Cain asked. “Why Annabelle brought you to me?”
I bit my lip and turned slowly back toward Cain. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re here for your protection, Mercy.”
“My protection?” I asked, looking back at Cain incredulously. “After I got bitten by a vampire, and that bitch from the Order of the Morning Dawn just tried to kill me?”
“I admit, we did not succeed as we’d hoped.”
“So all this bullshit about multiple personality disorders, trying to come to grips with my past…”
“It wasn’t all bullshit. I know you don’t have a disorder, Mercy. But what we discussed about your past, your father, the pain you’ve known. All that was real.”
I took a deep breath. “Maybe. But I still have to go.”
“These threats are nothing compared to the threat outside these walls.”
“The demons?” I asked. “Not a threat to me. I’m immune to their infection now.”
“They have other methods,” Cain said. “Other ways they might come after you.”
“Why do they care to come after me? Their goal is to possess vampires, to infect humans and make us vulnerable to their possession.”
“And you are their greatest threat,” Cain said. “Annabelle had you brought to me so we could bring out something of your humanity, to convince you to fight off the demons for the sake of humanity. You are their only hope, Mercy.”
I huffed. “I’m not the only vampire out there who is now immune to the demons.”
“Hailey is, too,” Cain said. “But even she does not have what you possess.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you read the book she brought to you?”
“The grimoire?” I asked, glancing down to where it was tucked beneath my arm. “I’ve read bits and pieces. The things I thought might help.”
“And did you see the spell that was used to revive you?”
I nodded. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Are you sure? At the end of the spell, there was a reference to another page.”
I opened the grimoire and turned to the page where the spell Moll had used to revive me was located. The ashes of my heart fed to another. My return from the grave. All things I recognized. But at the bottom of the spell, it said in small writing, “See the entry on page 66.”
I rolled my eyes. “66? At least it’s not 666.”
“Turn to the page,” Cain said, not finding much humor in my attempt at a joke. “It’s in the celestial section of the book.”
I bit my lip and turned to the page Cain had indicated. I read the words aloud. “One shall rise again from the pits of hell. Once a human. Once a devil. Now neither one nor the other but both. Even as the Christ was both true God and fully man,
so shall she be both Lucifer and man. As the Nazarene, she too shall rise from her grave. She will judge the demons. She will feed from the blood of man. Some will call her an angel of death. Others the queen of demons. Still others, Antichrist.”
“We believe those words speak of you, Mercy.”
“Antichrist? Come on. I’m not the fucking Antichrist.”
“The book simply said that some will declare you such. You wonder why the Order of the Morning Dawn has gone to such lengths to eliminate you? Why they would compromise everything, create vampires themselves, to hunt you down? Why they’d try to end you before you could ever return from hell?”
I shook my head. “I’m not evil. I mean, I guess I sort of am by human standards. But I am what I am—I’m a vampire.”
“But you’re much more than that, Mercy. Surely you know as much. Moll knew it, too. That’s why she made you.”
“So she could bring about the Antichrist?”
Cain shook his head. “Because the prophecy foretold that you, the one who returned from hell in the flesh, who fed from the blood of man, would also judge the demons.”
“And you know all of this because…”
“I haven’t been hiding who I truly am, Mercy.”
“You’re a werewolf.”
“The first,” Cain said.
“What do you mean, the first?”
“After I killed my brother, I was given a mark. A mark and a curse.”
“Wait… are you saying that you are that Cain? The one who killed Abel?”
Cain nodded as he turned his wrist toward me. On it was a strange symbol. Not quite a tattoo. More like a brand, burned into his flesh. It vaguely resembled a grain of wheat. “The wolf is the curse that accompanies my mark. It has granted me immortality, and serves as a warning against any who might try to kill me. Those who have tried through the years have become what I am.”
“Werewolves?” I asked.
“There are two ways to become a werewolf,” Cain said. “Get bit by one. Or, try to kill me.”
“And that’s how a member of the Order became a werewolf?”
Bloody Mad: A Dark Urban Fantasy Story (The Legacy of a Vampire Witch Book 2) Page 12