by Jen Pretty
I sighed. “Yeah, Frankie’s father wants me dead or he is going to kill a bunch of people, I assume. We can add poppa warlock to the list that currently has your brother’s name on it.” The ‘who wants to kill Lark’ list. The WWWTKL. The acronym wasn’t great; I would work on it.
My bedroom door opened, because apparently not everyone could magically appear in my room, but knocking was still totally optional, and in walked a giant white lion.
He walked across my room and hopped up onto my bed, then curled up there and started grooming himself and purring as loud as a motorcycle engine.
I threw my hands up in the air and collapsed in Vincent’s favorite chair in the corner. Nothing was sacred anymore. My bed was full of white cat hair. Why was my life like this?
“Alright, what are we supposed to do about poppa warlock?” I asked.
“It’s really weird that you call him that,” Frankie said running his fingers through his hair and sitting down on the edge of my bed. The lion stopped cleaning his shaggy mane and looked at the warlock on my bed, then went back to what he was doing, apparently satisfied the warlock wasn’t about to climb into his bed or something.
“Why is he a lion right now?” I asked. I couldn’t take not knowing anymore.
Vincent and Frankie both looked at the lion who stopped licking his fur and rolled over onto his back, displaying more of the lion man than I needed to see.
“Dude, that’s really not ok,” Frankie said. Singh didn’t seem to care.
“Whatever, back to the bigger problem. I think Durga will let me know if Frankie’s father is back.”
“He’s still in the city. If he doesn’t use magic, you won’t be able to sense him.” Frankie explained. “Warlocks are not evil unless they are actively casting black magic. It’s not like vampires who turn evil. We make a choice every time we use magic.”
“Great.”
“I finally heard back from the police station. The tip about your image in that surveillance footage in the high rise came from a payphone near your old apartment. It could have been anyone, but with Frankie’s father causing problems, I have a feeling it was him. No one has seen Vernon since he tried to blow you up in Canada.”
“Well, if Vernon could just stay lost somewhere for a little while, I’d rather not have two people chasing me at once,” I said, leaning back and closing my eyes.
Silence filled the room. My thoughts turned from Vernon to poppa warlock. I didn’t really know what witches and warlocks were capable of. I would need to get more information before I tried to fight that brand of evil. I knew I could probably take on any vampire with Durga’s help. She flashed an image of our knife sticking out of someone’s temple. It could have been Frankie’s father. I didn’t recognize him. Pretty gross, Durga.
“That would kill him,” Frankie muttered from where he leaned against the window frame across the room. I cracked an eye open.
“Did you just see that?” I asked.
“I heard you think it.”
“That’s a bit shady. I didn’t think it, Durga showed it to me.”
“What are you two talking about?” Vincent asked.
“Durga has been sending me pictures. Typically, violent ones,” I replied.
“I heard her think about her knife in the side of my father’s head,” Frankie replied.
I shifted, uncomfortable with the phrasing. I didn’t want to kill someone’s father. It was such a grey area. Then I realized I had spent all this time trying to kill Vincent’s brother and I was probably the most terrible person in the world. I looked at Vincent. He was a good person. Why couldn’t his brother be good too?
“He’s not that good,” Frankie muttered.
“Who isn’t good?” Vincent asked.
I glared at Frankie and told him to shut up and stop reading my thoughts.
“I can’t help it,” he replied out loud.
“Can’t help what?” Vincent asked
I mentally told Frankie to stop. Vincent was getting angry.
“He’s always angry and he’s not good for you,” Frankie replied out loud, throwing his arms in the air. Oh shit, we were not having this conversation now.
“Why not? We should get it all out in the open. I want to be with you, Lark,” the idiot warlock replied. Out loud.
Vincent stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him, startling the sleeping lion who growled and rolled over. At least his lion bits weren’t on display anymore. I put my head in my hands and rubbed my forehead. This was not what I needed right now.
“Lark,” Frankie said. I didn’t look up. I sat in silence for a few more minutes.
When I finally felt strong enough, I looked up and Frankie was gone.
Singh shifted back into a man and bit his lip.
“You have quite a mess there,” he said.
“Yes, thanks. Everything is a mess,” I said. “Want to go get some food?”
Singh slid off the bed and I made a note to change my sheets before I collapsed in it later.
The sun was well and truly in the sky. I was exhausted. I hadn’t heard from Durga in a while and I was nervous that she was going to take over and lock me out again. I needed to get some sleep. Singh had been a hit at breakfast with the vampires. He stayed in human form, but told them stories of ancient times. He was pretty charismatic when he got going and knew some of the early vampires. Vincent even stood in the doorway of the dining room listening. I saw him out of the corner of my eye.
I climbed the stairs to my room and discovered that the magical house keeping people had removed the lion haired bed coverings and replaced them with brand new sheets and blankets. I closed the blinds, plunging the room into complete darkness before changing into a big shirt and boy shorts. I collapsed into the bed and burrowed under the heavy blankets. I closed my eyes.
I heard a click and light from the hall flooded my room, hitting my closed eyelids.
“Whoever you are, in or out. I’m sleeping,” I said, keeping my eyes closed.
“I can just sit by the door,” Singh said.
“You want me to ask Vincent to give you a room?” I muttered. I hadn’t thought of that at brunch.
“He already offered but it would be better if I stayed with you.”
“Singh, I am too tired to play twenty questions. In or out?”
The door shut and the mattress dipped beside me. Purring confirmed what I had guessed. He was totally going to sleep as a lion, on my bed. Whatever. His purring was soothing and before I knew it, I was asleep.
***
Intense purring was the only warning before a coarse tongue ran up my face. It was the equivalent of being licked by a cinder block.
“Oh, God, that is so gross.” I tried to shove the offending lion off the bed, but he weighed about the same as a mac truck. He rolled over on his back, pinning the leg I was trying to shove him with to the mattress and pulling the blankets off me. The room was cold so I started trying to dislodge the blankets and my leg form beneath the freaking jungle beast.
“Shit. You oaf. Get off!”
Suddenly my door opened and an angry vampire walked in. I really needed to get better locks. Or maybe lasers, because the vampire got an eyeful of me with very little clothes on, wrestling with a lion and I wasn’t about to try and explain that.
The angry look melted off Vincent’s face and he sat down in his chair, like he was ready to watch the show. I gave up on getting the blankets back and instead slithered off the bed like a jelly fish sliding my leg out from under the lion.
I righted myself and stomped to the closet, slamming the door behind me. I had way too many men in my life. They were all jerks.
Durga sent me a flash of the river and gave me a shove. I put on my leather gear and strapped my blade to my thigh. When I walked back out Singh, now in human form, and Vincent were talking. They stopped when they saw me.
“Time to go,” I said with a smile.
***
My boots were a loud retort on the
cement under the docks. Vampires on my heels and a dark magic user in my sights, I pushed my muscles until they burned and kept pushing. We flew past a group of teens setting up sleeping bags and an old man who yelled at us to stop the government. I thought of Frankie and with whatever weird magic connected us, he appeared just as his father disappeared in to thin air. I stopped short, tripped on the uneven pavement and slid across the ground tearing my hands.
My pride was hurt more than my body. Frankie grabbed my hands and inspected the cuts and scrapes imbedded with gravel and dirt and who knew what else. This was why I wore leather pants.
I took some deep breaths and tried to slow my heart rate. If I could calm down, I could search for him.
“You won’t find him now, Lark,” Frankie said.
I took one more breath and tried to send out my senses. Instead, Durga was there, she sent me a flash of black. Nothing.
“Shit.”
“What has he done?” Frankie asked, still holding my wrists. I didn’t say anything, just thought about the scene on the other end of the docks. Four homeless people, still in their sleeping bags with their throats slit and the word Durga, sloppily painted in their blood on the cement pillar beside them.
Frankie dropped my hands and started walking back the way we had come. The team and I followed behind him. A sullen procession.
I probably wouldn’t catch him without more bodies. He only used dark magic when he wanted me to see what he had done. He was toying with me.
“He’s toying with me too, Lark,” Frankie said without turning around.
I found Singh about half way back to murder scene, sitting beside an elderly man who was weeping. Singh’s arm was around the man’s shoulders and the pair were rocking gently.
“I just don’t know what to do,” the man sobbed.
“You know what you must do. You must change your ways. It is time to go home, Leo. Your family wants you to come home and get help.” The man’s sobs punctuated Singh’s words as I waited.
The man stood and dried his face on his sleeve before turning back to look at Singh who hadn’t moved from his place on the grass.
“Thank you,” he whispered before he turned, climbed the embankment and disappeared across the parking lot.
I wasn’t sure what had just happened, but it sounded like Singh had staged an intervention for a stranger. I turned to continue back to the crime scene and Singh caught up to me, walking beside me along the dirt path that trailed beside the river.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Leo. He has a problem with alcohol,” Singh said.
That was confirmation enough. I already had enough weird in my life.
As we walked up to the grizzly scene, Frankie was there. He was standing behind the bodies with a look of total devastation on his face. I saw a tear glisten on his cheek before he wiped it away and shook his head.
“This has to stop. We need to talk to Vincent.” With that, he disappeared. Vlad took out his phone and called in the clean-up crew.
“Let’s head back, Lark,” Cedric said as the familiar dark van parked close to the pier and the vampires of the clean-up crew came into view.
“Alright. This night was a bust.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Back at the mansion, the boys were fighting. Shocker. I walked into the office and sat down in my usual chair, waiting for a break in the argument.
“You don’t get to decide that, warlock,” Vincent yelled.
“She can help bring this to an end.”
“And what if Vernon shows up? He has already bested you once. I won’t leave her unprotected,” Vincent sneered.
“She will have the full coven. She won’t be unprotected and that vampire won’t get the drop on me again. He was lucky last time. I wasn’t expecting him. And when are you going to stop bringing that up? It’s not like you were able to protect her. She almost got blown up. Twice!”
“That’s enough, Shut up!” I yelled. They both turned to look at me. “What are you fighting about now?”
The men glared at each other. Neither one spoke. I rolled my eyes.
“Speak,” I said.
“Frankie wants you to stay in the coven’s place of power so he can hop to the location before his father has a chance to get away next time.”
“Ok, let’s go,” I said.
“What?” they both said at once.
“Is that the place downtown? With the cool paintings?” I asked.
“Yes,” Frankie replied.
“Vampires can’t go there, Lark.”
Oh, now I saw the problem. Bossy vampire wouldn’t have any way to pop in at night and brood in the corner while I slept. I smiled and he looked away. Frankie plucked that thought out of my head and scowled at the vampire again.
“We have to stop him, Vincent,” I said, standing up and walking over to him. “He’s killed seven people in two days.”
Vincent rubbed his forehead. “What if he shows up there and attacks you? I can’t get in.”
Durga flashed an image of my blade sliding across the neck of who I now recognized as Frankie’s father.
“Durga says she will slit his throat.”
The door opened and a lion sauntered in. He moved across the room and rubbed his face on my stomach like an over grown house cat, nearly knocking me down.
“Can Singh get in the magical warehouse?” I asked, scratching the purring lions chin.
“Yes,” Frankie replied.
“That’s just great,” Vincent said, turning to stare out the window.
“Can you give us a second, guys?” I asked. Frankie disappeared, but Singh walked over to the tiny couch in the corner and wedged his massive frame on it. The antique furniture groaned in distress. Apparently, he was not going to leave, so I ignored him and turned back to Vincent. I moved in close beside him and his hand came up to rest on my back before pulling me around to face him.
“I don’t like this,” Vincent grumbled. “You will be safe from my brother, but Frankie’s father could walk right in.”
“And what?” I asked. “You think he can kill me?” Durga pushed at my skin, wanting out. So, I let her. The room turned red as Durga set her sights on Vincent.
“That foul magic user is no match for us,” she said using my voice. Vincent dropped his arms and took half a step back, realizing he wasn’t talking to me anymore.
“He could destroy the whole city,” Vincent replied.
“Lark would still be standing, even if the whole city crumbled around her. You doubt my power, vampire?” She asked with a sneer.
“No, Durga. I...”
“You should be more confident in Lark. She will be stronger than any I have partnered with before. Shiva has told me.” With that she relinquished control and shrunk back.
“I’m sorry,” I said reaching out to Vincent and taking hold of his hand. He used it to pull me back into his arms.
“That is a bit strange, you know.”
“It’s just as strange for me,” I replied with a laugh. “So, I’m going to the magic warehouse?” I asked. I knew he wouldn’t say no at this point, he had a contract that said I would live with him, but this was the right thing to do.
He glanced over his shoulder at the lion who was twisted into a pretzel licking his back and then looked back at me and raised an eyebrow. “Alright. But if that warlock lets you get hurt, I will tear him limb from limb,” he said.
“You would have to catch me first, vampire,” Frankie’s disembodied voice came from the other side of the room making me startle. Vincent picked up a paperweight from his desk and lobbed it across the room.
Frankie cursed. Yeah, I really needed a magic for dummies crash course. I needed to know exactly what they could do if I was going to find poppa warlock.
“His name is Bennet, Lark,” Frankie said reading my mind again. “You calling him poppa warlock makes him sound like a cartoon character.”
He had a point.
I pulled away
from Vincent and he grabbed my hand, kissing my knuckles before he released me. Singh and I climbed the stairs to pack some things and get ready to stay at the warehouse for a few days. Hopefully not longer. Singh lion just lay on the bed and napped while I packed our stuff. I shoved some of the clothes that one of the house staff had brought him from his apartment into a smaller bag. He didn’t need it all, particularly if he was going to be a sleeping cat for most of our little sleep over with the witches and warlocks.
I flung my backpack and his over my shoulders and then woke the lazy cat and we headed out.
Frankie and Vincent were in the entry way. Vincent didn’t look happy, but he wasn’t yelling so that was a plus.
“Ready to go?” Frankie asked.
“Yup. Let’s do this.”
Vincent looked at me like I was going away for months.
“I’ll be back, Vincent.”
“Don’t get hurt,” he muttered, wrapping me in his arms. After a moment he turned and asked the vampires watching in the hall if they had nothing better to do. The vampires scurried off and I shook my head. Then I walked out of the mansion and got in my SUV with Frankie and human Singh.
Adventure time.
Singh sat shotgun, leaving Frankie to sit in the backseat as we crossed town towards my old apartment. We passed Arnie’s bar and I looked longingly at the dark door below the fluorescent sign. Those were much simpler days.
My old apartment still stood and there was no “for rent” sign in the window so I assumed my little cave on the top floor had been rented out again. It hadn’t been that long since I moved out, but a cheap apartment didn’t stay vacant in this city, even if it was more of a crawl space.
I followed the road down and turned off into a small alley at Frankie’s direction. At the end was a garage door and it opened as I approached. The garage was dimly lit, but there were a few other vehicles parked inside including Frankie’s motorcycle. I wondered if we would have time to go for a ride at some point.
“I can take you out any time, Lark.”
Right, mind reader.
“Thanks.”
I parked and we followed Frankie up a set of old, dingy looking stairs. I hadn’t seen this part of the warehouse before. It was more like an apartment building. When Frankie opened the door to one of the numbered units, I was shocked to find a luxury apartment. It was beautifully designed, with high ceilings and all the most modern conveniences. The kitchen boasted a large granite topped island with stools and glistening stainless steel appliances. The open concept living room was decorated in a sleek, masculine style with rich earthy colours. It had a sunken floor, a huge TV and large bay window.