The Chronicles of the Immortal Council: The complete 10-book collection

by D C Young

  Catalina had been scorched by the older woman’s words. Her belief in the fifth reign of Himiko was that strong; the research she had done… in her opinion… flawless. She had traced Himiko through almost two thousand years and identified three previous occasions in history where the witch queen had been resurrected. Catalina was sure her calculations were precise as well.

  Himiko has reigned over Yamatai, Japan from around 185 to 248 A.D. The legend had it that when she died, her body—perfectly preserved and appearing just as it had in life—stood up from the funeral dais, walked to the sea and disappeared below the western waves, never to be found.

  In her research, Catalina had made a solid connection between Himiko and three extraordinary and controversial women, who coincidentally had at one time or another faced accusations of witchcraft. First was Eleanor of Aquitaine, the first queen of France. Her sons became Kings in nearby England and her bloodline ruled in almost every house of Europe for centuries after her death. Eleanor was known for her fearlessness and was called the Witch of the West by Saladin’s men when she rode into battle against them astride a war horse in full armor and very heavily pregnant.

  Then the trail had led Catalina to another queen, a very bizarre woman of her time… Elizabeth Tudor, the fiery-haired bastard queen of England. Even before her conception, Elizabeth’s mother, the notorious Ann Boleyn had been labeled a witch and accused of enchanting Henry the Eighth into divorcing his wife Catherine, a princess of Spanish blood, and denouncing the Church of Rome. In 1533, when Ann gave birth to her daughter, the red-haired child captivated the king’s heart in a way which his daughter Mary never had. It was quite contrary to the king’s well known anxiety over producing a male heir and his entire court saw his adoration of Elizabeth as a spell cast on him by Ann.

  Elizabeth was promiscuous and never got married; gaining a reputation for herself as a hater of men and an abomination to womanhood on a whole. Her choice to legitimize the protestant faith and remove England from the folds of the Catholic Church and from under the thumb of Rome and the Pope sent shock-waves through Europe.

  The third and most recent appearance of Himiko, in Catalina’s estimation, occurred in 1755 with the birth of Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria. It was the perfect incarnation of the rebellious, quirky and extravagant character that was Himiko. Marie Antoinette went down in history as a self centered, spoiled, indulgent woman who was out of touch with the struggles of the people she helped to rule and is felt to have had a heavy hand in the imminent demise of the country as a whole.

  Each of these women had experienced an event in their early womanhood which had seemed to change them. Their characters had suddenly developed, they came into their own… and then they’d acted on their impulses. Their need to be great, famous, rich, inspirational or just different whatever their motivation had been, they had seized it and ran with it straight onto the pages of the history books.

  After France, Himiko was scheduled to inhabit the body of a Chinese Empress but things had gone awry and the host had been hijacked by another spirit. With no host to inhabit Himiko had drifted into the spirit world, lost and homeless, but all that was about to change.

  As Catalina, combed through her research, she became increasingly aware that Himiko’s next incarnation was just about due. The alignment of the five brightest planets in early 2016 was the sign she had been looking for. Now all she had to do was find the perfect conduit; a supernatural being of remarkable power to energize the spell.

  Free of the confining rules of her former coven, Catalina had taken the time to put the full scope of her devious nature to use. Freeing Himiko’s spirit was the goal; with the Witch Queen in her debt, Catalina’s influence, and her new coven, would soar. But the inner workings of the plan were pure genius.

  Firstly, she had to find a suitable host. Someone whose star was rising in the right arena was a pertinent choice. Secondly, she would have to select, and then plant, a familiar in the host’s inner circle; someone who would have daily private access to the person in order to properly prepare the body for Himiko. Finally, the power source. It was a demanding spell that would be needed to call Himiko’s spirit forth and place her in her new host.

  A few weeks prior, identifying that being was the biggest of Catalina’s problem but after coming across several newspaper articles in The Times-Picayune about a string of unexplained disappearances and murders across Louisiana and a strange fire fight in a shipping yard that seemed to mark the end of the killing spree, she’d suddenly realized that supernaturals surrounded her every day. She just hadn’t been looking hard enough.

  “Let those with eyes see,” she said out loud again, as she crushed a handful of Merloch orchid petals in a stone bowl with a heavy pestle.

  The potion was coming together nicely. She’d been gathering the rare and potent ingredients for months. If it hadn’t been for the over eager members of her young coven, she probably never would have been able to pull it off. They’d dug through their families spell pantries and rifled through unmarked and overgrown witch gardens all over the surrounding hills to find what she needed.

  The orchid had been the most difficult to attain. Catalina had traveled to the bayous of Southern Louisiana to find it and when she had reached the location, she’d sat down among the wild flowers and grass of the meadow and laughed heartily.

  The orchid had obviously been planted by a witch and a powerful one at that. She had found it flourishing in the heart of a huge white oak completely intertwined with an abundance of vervain and wolfs bane. Only a witch could make the two grow so high up off the ground and so well shaded. But the purpose was clear, the orchid was safe from any interference by supernatural creatures, specifically werewolves and vampires, which nearby New Orleans was known to be crawling with.

  Her potion was almost ready and the witches under her command had just about mastered the resurrection spell. Soon, they would be going vampire hunting. More specifically, they would be going hunting for Samantha Moon.

  Chapter Three

  Her mind was in turmoil as Samantha stood at the library reception desk in the Occult reading Room at Cal State Fullerton. She stared directly at her friend the librarian across the space that separated them. Maximus let her have a few moments to process everything she had just heard. From the look on her face, it didn’t seem as if Sam was doing a very good job of it. She took a step back as if she would swoon at any moment.

  Grabbing hold of the edge of the desk, she said, “I think I need to have a little sit down.”

  Max moved quickly around the piece of dividing furniture and guided her deftly to one of the plush reading chairs that were scattered throughout the room. Of course, they were all as empty as they always were, but that little piece of strangeness was par for the course as far as Sam was concerned.

  In fact, on all the occasions she had been there to see Maximus since she’d learned of the existence of this place and of him, she’d never seen another soul in there. Sam wasn’t sure who the Librarian’s other clients were, and truthfully, she wasn’t convinced that was something she wanted to know either.

  After Max had set her safely in the chair, he took the seat across from her.

  “Just two normal people sitting at the library,” I said, “although I’m probably talking a little loudly.”

  “No one can hear you, Sam.”

  “Let those with ears hear. Isn’t that what you said before?”

  “Sam, you’re upset.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I know that I wasn’t exactly forthright with you before about these things…”

  “Not forthright? Really, Max? I mean, come on. How long have you known that the bi… I mean, this thing inside me was your mother?”

  “You can call her a bitch, Samantha. It’s utterly appropriate, I assure you. My mother is very much one who has earned that descriptive, and probably far worse, truth be told.”

  “Well does that mean that the tru
th is being told right now? You’ve got to come out with it, Max. All of it, damn it!”

  “The truth is that I really didn’t know, Sam. At least, not until you arrived with the diamond medallion. That was when I knew for sure…” He had lowered his head as his voice trailed off. Sam felt a little guilty seeing his reaction to her losing her temper. He was embarrassed. It was obvious he hadn’t done what he did maliciously.

  “But you suspected all along, didn’t you?”

  “I did, yes. The medallions were designed that way. They would eventually seek her out and I would know that it was her when it happened. But if—and only if—all four medallions were returned back to me…” He paused slightly as if he were choosing the right words to say.

  “By the same person,” she finished for him.

  “Yes.”

  “You could have told me...”

  “No, Sam. There’s no way I could have done that because it most certainly would have affected the outcome. The whole point of the exercise is that I needed to know, and the only way for me to know so beyond the shadow of a doubt was to allow things to occur in their own time and their own way.”

  Although, as far as Sam was concerned, one demon was quite the same as any other, Max’s words made a lot of sense. However, even with the circumstances well considered, Sam wanted the spirit out of her body, whether it was Max’s mother or not! But even as she sat there with the thought of who this entity was to her friend in the forefront of her mind, she was still having trouble wrapping her brain around it.

  She told Max her concerns even though Sam knew that he’d already been following her every thought very closely.

  His answer to Sam’s thoughts was the beginning of a very enlightening explanation of how her vampirism worked.

  “The spirit in supernaturals that gives them their unique abilities is called a dark master. Every highly evolved dark master was once a human being, Sam, every alchemist, too. Perhaps, the only exception to the rule would be beings like your angel friend, he was never human. My mother came from a long line of mystics, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. But she was seduced by the darkness, to put it lightly. She was never much of what you would call a disciplined person.”

  “She looked for shortcuts,” Sam said.

  He nodded. “That’s quite true. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  “What timeline are we talking about here, Max?”

  “Over six and a half centuries ago; just around fourteen thirty-two, if memory serves me right.”

  “Wow, you don’t look a day over fast cars and freedom.”

  Max smiled at the country song reference. “You’re not entirely wrong in that statement, Sam. Compared to some of the spirits that inhabit the host bodies of your friends in that Hollywood Hills mansion, we are merely freshmen.”

  Sam chuckled in response. Max’s musical reference comeback wasn’t lost on Samantha Moon.

  Chapter Four

  Hey! Where the hell are you? Allison’s voice came through and into Sam’s head as clear as a talk show host’s on Sirius XM Radio.

  I’m out! she shot back, a little defensively.

  Well, wherever out is I would suggest it end up at Elysium House sometime in the next half an hour.

  Oh, what the H-E-double hockey sticks! What does Julia want now?

  Over the past few months, Sam had become increasingly entangled with the inner workings of an organization she didn’t even know existed. At least, she’d enjoyed that piece of blissful ignorance until the day she’d received a hand delivered invitation from Julia Agrippina. Yes, the Julia Agrippina… as in the ancient Greek woman who boasted such political accomplishments as having been the birth mother of the Emperor Nero. Of course, she had become a vampire since then and survived centuries of life on Earth which eventually had led her to a head seat on the Immortal Council, more specifically the Western Council of Elder Watchers. But that didn’t make all of it any less creepy.

  Sam had met a few ancients in her time but they were faceless, nameless creatures; no one she could look up in her local library or on the internet. The occupants of Elysium House were quite the opposite. “Ever wonder what happened to those people your boring history teacher insisted you research and write essays about in middle school?” Sam had asked Kingsley Fulcrum, her werewolf on again off again boyfriend one night over dinner. “Well, apparently they live in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills now.”

  As Sam had come to understand it, The Council had existed for as long as vampires had existed, which was a hell of a long time. Their primary function, to keep the eldest of the species aligned to one cause… the greater good for both supernaturals and mankind alike.

  From what Sam could make of it, Julia and her group made sure that humans learned as little of the existence of supernatural beings as possible and where that knowledge somehow leaked out, they ensured that it was chalked up to fiction or insanity. They also provided a place where any supernatural being in need of it could have a place to rest, recover, live and feel safe for as long as they needed it. In essence, Elysium House and all their other properties served as safe houses for their kind.

  But most importantly, and on a more serious note, the Western Council of the Elder Watchers sought out and destroyed any creature that posed a threat to the peaceful coexistence of preternatural beings and humans; and they did so swiftly and precisely. They had employed an acquaintance of Sam’s a year before to execute one of these eradications of theirs. Veronica Melbourne, a huntress vampire who was a friend of Detective Spinoza’s.

  The Council had assigned her to take down a nasty creature called Set, a cambion with a taste for the spiritual essence of teenage girls and young women. He’d murdered many of them across the country and at the time was weaving his way south through the state of Louisiana like a warm knife cutting through butter.

  Veronica had been successful and the Council members had embraced her as one of their enforcers. She had contacts with other vampires throughout Southern California who were out of the reach of the Council and they made use of Veronica to tap into those individuals. In fact, that’s exactly how Sam had found herself in the middle of the Central American Jungle a few months back searching for a lovely vampire boy who was once the crowned prince of Russia.

  Sam had been wary of ever getting involved on a Council sponsored adventure again but from the sound in Allison’s voice… or thought… it didn’t seem there was going to be a choice in the matter for Sam. Again.

  My life is so extraordinarily weird, she thought as she changed her direction of flight and headed for the Hollywood Hills.

  There was a popping and a clicking in her ears, the kind you would hear when listening to a real vintage vinyl record.

  Allison?

  There was silence. Pop. Pop. Click. Pop. Nothing.

  The connection was lost.

  It was unusual for Allison to cut off in the middle of a conversation. In fact, she was quite a talkative one when she had something to say. On a night like that, with the kind of mystery brewing at Elysium that warranted an emergency call, she probably should have had a lot to say. But she was gone.

  That worried Sam so she pushed a little harder trying to get to Hollywood as quickly as possible.

  Suddenly, a pinpoint of bright light came into view on the distant horizon that lay out in front of Sam. As it raced towards her and she towards it, it grew in size and brightness. It seemed to be picking up speed too. Sam was astounded by how fast it was streaking towards her. Before she could swerve an inch to avoid an impact the giant ball of light hit her dead on. It was like she had collided with a comet. ]

  The last thing to go through Sam’s mind before everything turned to black was, Damn, that hurts!

  ***

  “I can’t reach her, Julia,” Allison said softly. She hung her head holding it in both her hands trying her best to concentrate on finding Samantha Moon.

  It had been an hour since she had told Sam that Julia
needed her at Elysium House and about fifteen minutes after that psychic conversation had ended Allison had heard a loud explosion in her head followed by Sam’s voice saying something hurt, then nothing.

  Despite repeated tries at contacting her again, Allison couldn’t make a connection with Samantha at all. It was all just dead air.

  From across the room, Empress Tzu-Hsi clucked her tongue and moved a bishop forward on the chess board she was sharing with Saigo Takamori. There was a pregnant pause before, without taking her gaze from the game in front of her, she said, “She is gone, little witchy girl. You should prepare to go and find her. The sooner the better, because soon it will be too late for our gifted, young detective friend.”

  Saigo placed his finger on the top of a pawn then drew it back. Then he added, also without looking up, “My suggestion would be to call that huntress girl… Veronica-san, is it?”

  Allison sprang to her feet and started towards the pair. Julia held her back by the elbow and whispered softly, “Leave those two to me. Go, get Veronica.”

  “Yes, yes,” Saigo mumbled in agreement. “Go and get the Vampire Huntress, Allison-san.”

  Chapter Five

  Veronica was seated in a corner booth scribbling furiously in a five hundred page, 5” x 8” ring bound notebook that Bjorn ‘Ironside’ Ragnarsson had given her. She’d only managed to go through six number 2 pencils in the last couple of hours, which meant she was thinking more than she was writing.

  She was in one of Mr. Tan’s ‘opium’ rooms. It was among the more refined and quiet ones that the old man ran. This particular den was located under a record shop in Laguna Beach which was appropriately named Underground Railroad. It was the most popular feeding place for vampires of all classes and creeds who resided south of California route 91. And that was primarily due to the caliber of donors that Mr. Tan kept in his employ there.