Witch's Soul

by Emma L. Adams

  Keir stepped in the direction of the tunnel. His black jacket was caked in dirt, and so was one side of his face, like he’d fallen headfirst into a tunnel. Maybe he’d spent the last three weeks chasing monsters underground, but a call would have been nice.

  “You, Lloyd,” Keir said. “Stay back. You can’t fight these.”

  “That’s lovely,” he said. “Maybe I can outdo you, vampire. Jas loaned me some spells.”

  “Necromancy,” said Keir, “doesn’t work on furies.”

  “Iron does, but they’re fast,” I told Lloyd. “Also, don’t look directly into their eyes, otherwise you’re dead. We don’t want to fight them in a confined space—”

  Rustling and the sound of wingbeats came from ahead. “We can’t always have what we want, Jas,” said Keir.

  What is that supposed to mean?

  A flurry of wings echoed off the tunnel walls, and a screaming beast entered the cave. Seven feet long and covered in black and red feathers, it looked like cross between a giant monstrous bird and a pterodactyl. Its long, curved talons were slick with blood. Vampire blood.

  “Hello, ugly,” I said, flinging a spell into the beast’s eyes. The stickiness spell covered its entire face in gluey black tar. “That’s one way to avoid looking at its eyes.”

  Keir shot me a half-bewildered, half-impressed look. “That’s new.”

  “Yes, it is.” I ran to stab the flailing beast, but Keir got there first. With a practised swipe, he lodged the blade between its scales, cutting downwards. Furies’ skin was harder than concrete even without the scales, but they did have weak spots. I ducked under its flailing talons and stabbed the underside of its wing, causing it to unleash an agonised squawk.

  Lloyd shouted a warning as more wingbeats sounded. The fury had brought a friend over from whatever hellish dimension it’d come from. Yanking my knife free, I left Keir to take care of this one and ran to help.

  Lloyd threw a spell at the oncoming winged monster, which exploded in a shower of sparks. The fury flew back, barely fazed. My spells might be volatile, but furies were covered in so much armour that it was impossible to reach their organs without going through several layers of scaled skin first.

  Detaching itself from the wall, the fury turned its simmering, pitch-dark gaze in our direction.

  “Bloody hell,” Lloyd yelped. “Is that what you meant by ‘don’t look it in the eyes’? I can’t move.”

  “Stay down!” As the beast flew at us, I grabbed Lloyd and pulled him out of reach of its talons, swiping wildly. The knife bounced off its rocky skin, and Lloyd yelped, diving for cover.

  “Get me instead, you big scaly dickhead,” I yelled, waving my knife.

  The fury screeched, a bone-chilling noise that shook up my senses, and Evelyn’s magic hummed in my skin, sudden and intense. All right, then. I didn’t have to hold back this time.

  My hands glowed white, and a whipcord of magic shot from my palms, yanking the fury away from Lloyd. Another swipe severed its head from its shoulders. This time, the weapon didn’t vanish after I used it but remained in my hands, shimmering with iridescent light. Glyphs swirled up and down its length, glimmering faintly green-white. Whoa. That wasn’t there before.

  A snarling noise drew my attention to Keir and his own attacker. I readied the whip, but Keir had already lunged in for the killing blow. The fury’s death rattle rang through the tunnel, fading to silence.

  I breathed out. “That was close.” I turned to Keir. “Tell me you saw where they came from?”

  Someone—a witch—must have used the same ritual as before. Maybe word had spread before Leila Hemlock had died.

  “I imagine they came from the same hellhole as usual.” Keir shook droplets of blood from his knife, but aside from a few scrapes and scratches, he looked unhurt. “They tore a hole through the wall of my apartment. Someone sent them to hunt vampires.”

  My mouth went dry. “What? Who would do that?”

  The same someone who thought they could switch off the spirit lines using a handmade weapon?

  Lloyd release a shaky breath. “Jesus. How many?”

  “I killed three, not counting this one.” Keir shook his head. “It’s an epidemic. I couldn’t find the site of the summoning either.”

  “What, you don’t think there’s another Hemlock running around?” Lloyd said.

  “Just what we need.” I wiped my bloody knife on my sleeve. “Any more of those bastards? Which direction did they come from?”

  “I’ve been up and down this street and all the neighbouring tunnels and these are the last of them,” said Keir. “The furies must have all come out of the same place, but they can’t be tracked.”

  “But—Leila’s dead,” I said. And Evelyn was gone. Yet the cold feeling persisted, and the fuzziness in the spirit realm bothered me more than the pile of dead vampires in the tunnel.

  “Great,” Lloyd said. “I take it back about missing out on the fun. I vote we leave the vamps to sort out their feud alone, Jas, while we deal with the spirit line. That’s our business, not… this.”

  “We’re on a spirit line,” I pointed out. “I don’t know, it feels like it’s all linked.”

  “What’s that about the spirit line?” asked Keir.

  I glanced at Lloyd. “We should probably get out of here first. But who are we supposed to report the bodies to? The vampires have families, right? They should know.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Keir said. “There’s a procedure. Vampire bodies make potent hosts, and the guild leaves us to handle their deaths ourselves.”

  “Even if your leader is brutally murdered by a beast from another dimension?” I asked. “Have you even spoken to the king recently?”

  One of the dead vampires abruptly sat up. Its flesh hung off in in tatters, and I tasted bile in the back of my throat.

  Keir sighed. “John, you moron, I told you not to follow me.”

  The undead’s mouth moved, speaking the words, “You will pay for what you did.”

  “I didn’t kill him, you fucking imbecile,” Keir responded.

  Footsteps came from behind us, and several more undead ran into the tunnel. Keir made an exasperated noise and threw a knife at one of them, spearing it through the eyeball. “John, this is your last warning.”

  “You murdering bastard,” said the zombie, the knife still sticking out of its glowing eyeball. “You will pay for that.”

  “Not again.” Keir slipped another knife into his hand.

  The undead charged. I threw a blasting spell, which took a zombie’s head off, and set another ablaze using one of the warmth spells that’d accidentally turned into an inferno. Beside me, Keir grappled with another zombie, flinging him into the wall of flames I’d created.

  He wasn’t using his vampire power. Why? Usually he finished the fight in seconds by ripping out the soul of the person possessing the vessels. Maybe he didn’t want to kill the person attacking him, but he seemed unusually cautious.

  I tapped into the spirit realm, searching for the fading threads connecting the vampire to its vessels. “Hey, dickhead!” I yelled at the retreating shadowy figure. “Keir didn’t kill the vampire king.”

  Blue light blasted back at me, and I ducked as kinetic energy shot over my head. “Oh, you want to fight, do you?” I grabbed the threads of light, tugging the vampire towards me.

  “Hemlock bitch,” he growled.

  He wrenched loose from my hold, and Keir’s shadowy form appeared at my shoulder. “I wouldn’t pick a fight with him,” he said.

  I blinked back into my body. “He knows my coven,” I retaliated. “That generally means he wants to kill me.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Keir. “You’ve acquired something of a reputation. The vampires who worked with Leila Hemlock spread word of your name before their deaths.”

  “Yeah, thanks for just standing there while she nearly died, dickface,” Lloyd put in.

  “Lloyd,” I said warningly, though he had a
point.

  “I know where he is,” Keir said. “He’s not half the vampire I am, and while he might think I killed our king, he’ll come to his senses when I don’t claim the position.”

  “Can you just do that?” I said dubiously. “I mean, I know there’s not a literal crown involved. Not even a metaphorical one.”

  “Any of us can decide we’re the new leading vampire if there’s an opening,” he said. “Whether we get to keep the position or not depends on how many followers we’ve managed to gather.”

  “And the size of your zombie armies.”

  “Yes.” He raised his hands, which glowed with white light. “I’d strongly advise you to duck.”

  Kinetic energy blasted through the tunnels, turning to fire, which engulfed the furies and undead all in one.

  “What was that for?” I looked down at the bloodstained tunnel floor. “You just burned away all the evidence.”

  “Exactly,” Keir said. “Let’s get out of here. I need to search the house, but I suspect I won’t find anyone alive in there.”

  “There were humans living upstairs.” Who could have set the furies on the vampires, and why?

  “I’m aware of that,” said Keir through clenched teeth. He walked a little unsteadily, and though he had no visible injuries, I recognised the signs of a vampire on the brink of exhaustion.

  “Hey,” I said as we climbed the stone steps. “Why not drain that other vampire?”

  “I didn’t need to.”

  “You look like you need it.” His form was a little faded in the spirit realm, while in this one, he was in dire need of a haircut and shave.

  “I’ll feed later.” He shrugged. “It’s good to see you again, Jas.”

  “You two can catch up later,” said Lloyd, opening the door before I could figure out how in hell to respond to that. “Want to check out the house?”

  Keir moved behind me. “You should, considering there’s a guild patrol two streets down, coming this way.”

  “Oh, shit. The house has a back exit, right?” I climbed the stone steps to the surface and jumped to the doorstep, ignoring Lloyd’s protests. The fire in the tunnels would have destroyed all the evidence, and if we got waylaid by the patrol, we’d have to give eyewitness accounts. Considering furies were covered by the same geas as the Hemlock Coven and I’d never been able to tell anyone about them, it’d be impossible for me to adequately explain what I was doing here when I was meant to be miles away. Especially with no bodies left behind.

  I used an unlocking charm to let us into the house rather than forcing the door, and Keir closed it behind us once we were inside.

  “Why are you avoiding the guild?” asked Keir.

  “Long story.” I ran through the hall into a kitchen. The scent of rot pervaded, but there was no time to check for bodies. The guild patrol would find them soon enough.

  “They won’t be able to take action,” Keir said, as though he’d guessed my line of thought. “It’s out of their area. If the person who summoned the furies wanted to destabilise the vampires’ society, they didn’t need to go to that much trouble.”

  “No, you’re not exactly a united front,” I said. “Who do you think will be the next king?”

  “Whoever gets there first.”

  I used another unlocking spell on the back door, which sprang open onto an overgrown yard. The ongoing theme of the weekend was unintentional trespassing, apparently. The back garden was overgrown with weeds, suggesting the person who’d lived in the house hadn’t been a keen gardener. With one last look back at the house, I broke into a run towards the fence.

  “At this rate, we’ll get caught by the police instead of the guild,” Lloyd said from behind me.

  “The owners of these houses were all vampires, and dead.” Keir climbed up the fence ahead of me. “The guild will likely send in an investigation, but as I said, the evidence is gone, and they don’t want to get any more involved with us than they already are. The enemy is picking us off one at a time.”

  “So talk to the guild.” I vaulted the fence, landing beside him in the neighbouring garden.

  Keir pushed his mud-streaked brown hair from his eyes. “I’d rather not.”

  In the daylight, he looked even worse than he had in the tunnel. I’d thought I had the sleepless look down, but dark smudges underscored his blue-grey eyes and his cheekbones were more prominent than the last time I’d seen him.

  If people had been trying to kill him, why hadn’t he called me? Was it vampire pride at work, or was there something else going on?

  “We can get out that way,” said Lloyd, pulling his lanky form over the fence and pointing across the garden. “No necromancers?”

  I checked the spirit realm, but it remained fuzzy. “I can’t see any.”

  Keir took the lead, sprinting for the next fence and leaping over like he broke into people’s gardens every day. He waited expectantly as I jumped down to join him. “Aren’t you going to tell me why you wanted to speak to the king?”

  “You’re assuming that’s why we were there?” said Lloyd.

  “You don’t have a death wish,” he answered.

  “And I do?” After his long absence, he didn’t deserve my trust, yet someone had set a swarm of furies on him and his fellow vampires. What if my coven had been involved?

  Keir listened in silence as I ran through an abbreviated version of the weekend’s misadventures, while we crossed more gardens until we reached an alley leading out onto the street.

  “You should show me that device,” he said. “I might be able to help you figure out how it works so you can shut it down.”

  “It’s at the guild,” I said. “Since it’s a product of illegal necromancy, it’s their property. If you cooperate with the guild, though, they might let you help. Unless it’s them you’re avoiding, not me.”

  “I’m not avoiding you.”

  Lloyd made a sceptical noise, while I said, “Not at this precise moment, you aren’t.”

  He didn’t dignify that with a response, and we exited the alley onto the street. No patrols in sight. Mission accomplished. Except for the fact that the only vampire I was on speaking terms with was about as reliable as the sun in the Highlands.

  “I need to go back to my apartment,” said Keir. “Before someone breaks in through the hole in the wall and steals my things.”

  “Aren’t you being followed by furies?” I asked. “Look, are you positive you don’t know any vampires who are in the business of conning humans?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later, Jas. I’ll message you.”

  I’d heard that before. “Sure, whatever.” I turned to Lloyd as the vampire walked away, not even bothering to clean the dirt and blood off his face beforehand. “The king’s dead, and our contacts are a bust. What are we supposed to do now?”

  “I think the real question is, what’s his problem?” Lloyd jerked his head in the direction of Keir’s retreating back.

  “I wish I knew.” It wasn’t like we’d parted on bad terms, unless he hadn’t enjoyed kissing me on the guild’s porch as much as it’d seemed. Whatever his problem was, it was entirely on his end, not mine.

  Except for the fact that someone had had the vampires’ leader brutally murdered at the claws of a fury. Even if the king had been a temporary title and didn’t necessarily command respect, who in the world would summon a monster like that on purpose? Another vampire? Their society consisted mostly of loners who didn’t care to draw attention, and I’d thought all the ones who’d known the fury-summoning ritual had met unfortunate ends. Unless they’d taken up a new hobby running a local cult to sacrifice helpless humans.

  Just for once, I’d like my wild theories to be wrong.

  I released a sigh. “Never mind him. I’m done. Want to go grab a drink?”

  10

  The rain began in earnest by the time we’d left the vampires’ district behind, and we ran for the nearest pub. The space insi
de was packed with people sheltering from the rain, and the only free table was by the door. I ran a brief check of the spirit realm to make sure there were no vampires inside, then made my way over to the bar.

  “Is now an acceptable time to start day-drinking?” I asked Lloyd.

  “Morgan seems to think it is,” Lloyd remarked, pointing at a dark-haired figure at the table I’d thought was empty.

  “Ah, never mind.” I backed up. “We’re supposed to be avoiding the guild.”

  “He’s way too far gone,” said Lloyd. “Come on, we nearly died in a tunnel. Live while you can.”

  “Spoken like a true necromancer.” Who knew, maybe Morgan had sensed the vampire who’d killed the king. I didn’t have much cash, so I opted for a glass of ‘witch’s brew’, the cheapest option on the drinks menu.

  Lloyd shook his head at me. “That tastes like feet, Jas.”

  “Sorry I’m not as sophisticated as you are.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He lifted his glass of ‘elven lager’ and clinked it against mine. “To surviving near-death experiences.”

  “To staying on the right side of the veil.” I tipped back my glass. Ugh, maybe he had a point about the taste. With any luck, by evening I’d be drunk enough not to care.

  We walked over to the free table, where Morgan was asleep with one head resting on his hand. Lloyd poked him in the shoulder. “Training getting to you again?”

  The psychic blinked at us. “What’re you doing here?”

  “You know you’re sleeping on a table, don’t you? Have you seen any vampires?” asked Lloyd.

  “No. What do you want a vampire for?”

  “We’re tracking a criminal,” said Lloyd, and I elbowed him in the ribs. “C’mon, we’re going to have to tell the boss as soon as she gets back to her office tomorrow morning.”

  It would help if we knew where the criminal was. The only vampires aside from Keir within a mile’s radius were dead, except for the dick who’d set his zombies on us.

  “What criminal?” Morgan dug in his pocket for his wallet, which he was lucky nobody had stolen while he was asleep, and counted out change on the table.