BLOODSPELL
by Amalie Howard
Copyright © 2011 by Amalie Howard
Langdon Street Press
212 3 Ave North, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401
612.455.2293
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Alan Pranke
www.bloodspellbook.com
www.amaliehoward.com
ISBN: 978-1-936782-20-8
for Connor, Noah, and Olivia
the lights of my life
and
for Cam
who has my heart
Never shall a Vampyre consort, befriend, or choose for a mate any Witch, Wizard, Warlock, or any creature harboring sorcerous abilities or knowledge of magicks, save if such relations have been warranted and sanctioned as crucial by the Vampyre Council, and only in the combined and unanimous interest of the Seven Vampyre Houses.
Henceforth under the Peace Treaties of the Great War, never shall a Vampyre attack, kill, or consume the blood of any such persons or creatures under penalty of immediate conviction and sentencing by the Vampyre High Council.
To break this Covenant shall be punishable by exile or execution in accordance with Vampyre Law.
— Vampyre Covenant XVI, The Book of Reii
"HEY FREAK, YOU lost? The hobo section is on the other side of the cafeteria!"
Victoria shuffled past a crowded table keeping her eyes on the scuffed toes of her sneakers as the table's occupants burst into laughter.
"By the way, the Salvation Army called, they're having a sale!" A foot blocked her path and her stomach tensed.
No, no, no. Not now. Keep it together, Tori!
Her fingers hovered over the volume dial on her iPod as she stepped over the foot without looking up and moved faster, away from the table. The rush of music in her ears did nothing to dissipate the jeers. She tucked her hands deeper into the pockets of her black hoodie and swallowed the knot in her throat. Just a few more steps and she'd be out of their reach. Junior year was almost over, and the last thing she needed was a scene in the crowded school cafeteria.
She could usually handle the Stepfords, but she wasn't herself today. Since earlier that morning, everything had seemed off, unpredictable. Volatile. After another mostly sleepless night, she'd woken up soaked in sweat and with such achy muscles that it'd taken almost a half hour just to get out of bed. A cold shower had done nothing to calm the heat inside her. If she hadn't had her Calculus final, she'd have stayed home.
A large hand crossed her peripheral vision and before she could guess its owner's intent, her headphones were ripped from her ears.
"So what's with all the black? Somebody die?" Victoria raised blank eyes to the boy who'd spoken. Brett Halloway. Captain of the football team and king of the popular crowd at St. Xavier's, he had a ruthless reputation. He was flanked by two cheerleaders, both blond, blue-eyed, and leggy. They eyed her with identical expressions of undisguised disdain. Victoria felt anger flood to the tips of her toenails.
Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize where I was," she said in a careful monotone.
"You bet you didn't. Otherwise we might think you wanted to try out for cheerleading." Brett laughed and turned to his friends. "What do you think, boys? She could do it. She's got a nice pair ... of legs." His eyes settled on her chest. Victoria felt a flush steal up her cheeks.
"Very funny, Brett," she said. "Can I have my headphones, please? Then you can go back to figuring out whether you're going to repeat yet another year of high school on daddy's dime." The group at the table erupted in smothered laughter. For a second, something ugly rippled in Brett's eyes before he masked his anger with a smile.
"Sure. Just give me one cheer. Come on, give me a V! Give me an I! Give me an ... R!" Brett taunted. "How do you spell virgin again?"
Victoria scanned the room for help. No teachers or monitors in sight, and everybody else seemed suddenly preoccupied with other things, even though she could still feel their furtive glances. Humiliation scorched her ears.
"Or should we be spelling something else? Give me an S! Give me an L ..."
Brett's voice faded into nothingness as pain exploded behind her eyes. A violent surge rushed from her stomach up into her throat, and Victoria knew instantly that if she didn't leave that minute, something terrible was going to happen.
"Give me a U ..."
She snatched the ear buds back and rushed past Brett, not bothering to breathe until she reached the wide entry doors. Outside, she felt wetness on her upper lip. A nosebleed. She sank to the ground, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger to stop the flow. Sweat dripped down her back, her skin impossibly hot, as she shuddered from the terrifying feelings in the pit of her stomach—the ones that had started appearing the minute she'd awakened, the ones that made her feel like she was being gutted from the inside out.
Victoria glanced at her watch. It was almost one o'clock. She still had two hours left before she could go home.
"Screw it," she muttered, running to her car parked behind the west building. She didn't see the two people waiting in the parking lot until she almost crashed into one of them. Her heart sank.
"What do you want, Brett?"
"You think you can talk to me like that and get away with it?"
"What are we, five? Did I hurt your feelings? You stopped me, remember?" Victoria glanced around quickly. Other than the three of them, the parking lot was deserted, dotted with a handful of empty, silent cars. She tried to move toward her car, but the other boy blocked her way. Victoria recognized him as a burly linebacker named Ryan.
"What do you want, Brett?" she repeated.
"I think I deserve an apology," Brett said. He was smiling, but Victoria knew it was only a performance. She could smell the rage evaporating off him.
"Fine, I'm sorry for whatever it is I did," she said. "You've had your fun. Can you guys get out of my way now?"
"I wouldn't say that I'd had all my fun yet," Brett said, leaning in suggestively. "Rumor is you're ... friendly."
"What?" Victoria masked her sudden panic with sarcasm. "Surely you already have enough friends of your own?"
Brett laughed. "Come on, don't be a tease. You know what I mean ... friend."
Victoria felt the air around her being sucked into a vortex as if she were a flame burning up all the available oxygen. She was hot again, her rising fury shattering any shred of control she had left. Her green Mini was only one car away, but Ryan still blocked her way, smirking.
"I don't know what you're talking about. Please move ..." she gasped, unable to catch her breath. Her hands shook.
"Please what, not-so-virginal-Victoria," said Brett, grabbing her by her arms and pushing her against the nearest car. "I think you need to learn your place at St. Xavier's."
"Get off me," she gritted through clenched teeth, as she jabbed her elbow into his ribs with all the force she could muster. Brett staggered back.
The heat was suffocating now—the rage seething to dangerous levels held together only by the thin barrier of her skin. The thing boiling inside her tore at her eyes and hissed past her cracked lips. Victoria twisted toward Ryan and swung her knee up, connecting with the soft tissue of his groin as she pushed past him. She'd only taken five ste
ps before she felt fingers yanking her hair so hard that her head jerked sideways.
"Where do you think you're going, you crazy witch?" Brett snarled, dragging her by her hair to the passenger door of her car.
"Please, let go!"
"Shut up." His hand cracked against her face, splitting her lip. Dazed, she touched a fingertip to her chin and stared at the blood. For an instant its color was mesmerizing, dark and shimmery, like something alien. The taste of it in her mouth was like burnt molasses, sweet and powerful, the silent catalyst of something beyond her control. An eerie calm descended.
Brett shoved her against the door, his breath sour in her face. "You like being here on your church scholarship? My daddy paid for that too, you know. I heard your aunt sent you here because you got kicked out of your last school for being a sl—"
The thing inside her keened, her mouth giving voice to its agony. Victoria didn't even notice as Brett flew backward, his words choked into silence. All she could feel was the frighteningly raw energy burning fiery lines along her veins, stinging her eyelids and tasting like ash on her tongue. Brett stared at her as if she were a monster and scuttled backward like a strange crab, suddenly desperate to get away from her.
"You need to learn your place," the thing hissed with her voice. In the next second, it was as if a sonic explosion hit the parking lot; a silent sonic explosion, the only evidence of which was the blood gushing from Brett's eyes and mouth as he lay on the ground clutching his head in agony. Behind her, Ryan screamed then fell silent. Euphoria spun in giddy circles inside of her.
"Hey!" Through a filmy red haze, Victoria could see someone running toward them, one of the Stepfords. The girl slid to cradle Brett's head in her hands, her eyes darting to Ryan's inert body a few feet away. "What did you do?"
"I didn't ..." Victoria could hardly finish the sentence. The world was spinning off its axis once more. She couldn't breathe, and all she could see was the expression on the girl's face, fearful and so utterly damning. She felt wetness on her face and her legs, and looked to the clear sky, confused.
Was it raining?
It was her last thought before she sank into unconsciousness, something still singing madly, terrifyingly, inside her head.
WHEN VICTORIA AWOKE, she was lying in a spotless hospital room. There were tubes in her arms connected to discordantly beeping machines. Her aunt Holly sat reading in a chair across the room near the window, opposite the empty bed occupying the other half of the room. The white of the walls was blinding.
"W ... water," she croaked. Holly darted to her side.
"Oh honey, you gave us such a fright," she said, holding a cup to Victoria's lips. "How are you feeling?"
"Where am I? What happened?" Victoria felt foggy, as if she'd been asleep for months. Her eyelids were sticky, heavy, but the water was cool against her gums and tongue, which seemed coated with a strange metallic film like she'd sucked on a dirty copper penny.
"We're in the hospital. They brought you in five days ago," Holly said. "You and two other kids."
"Two others?" Holly brushed the strands of hair out of Victoria's face.
"One went home three days ago, and the other is here recovering. But you, my darling, you almost died." Her voice broke on the last word. "What happened, honey? I really don't understand. One of the girls from school said there'd been some kind of a fight."
"I don't ... know. I must have blacked out." Victoria blinked, trying futilely to remember. "I've been here five days, Aunt Holly? Why?"
"You really should rest," Holly said, not wanting to overwhelm her.
"No, please tell me." Despite her distress, Victoria was resolute. "Aunt Holly, please. I need to know."
"You lost consciousness at school and they called 911 because of all the blood," Holly began, her fingers twisting in her lap. "By the time you got to the ER, you were losing so much of it that nobody seemed to know what to do at first. Something about the color, it was so dark. They said it was overly de-oxygenated. It was black almost." She glanced anxiously at Victoria, who nodded for her to continue.
"At first, they thought some kind of rogue strain of leukemia was attacking the blood cells in your bone marrow. That's what they said was the cause of the bleeding, some kind of infection in your nervous system. It seemed as if you were dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Then your heart stopped. They tried to resuscitate, but your heart just wouldn't respond. Just when everyone thought it was over, a miracle happened, somehow your heart started beating again, and somehow by God's grace, you came back to us ... to me." Holly pulled Victoria into a tight embrace. "I almost lost you, Tori," she choked, then turned her face away and sobbed.
"But you didn't, I'm still here, Aunt Holly, I'm fine," Victoria soothed, her mind whirling. Everything Holly had just said seemed entirely too surreal. "I wish I could remember, but it's all so fuzzy. I remember eating breakfast. I remember going to school but nothing much after that. There was no warning, nothing ..."
Victoria stared at the plastic tubing shackling her wrists. From what Holly had said, it was a miracle that she was even alive. Yet again. A sense of despair crashed like a tide against her and she felt the tears she'd been struggling to hold back coming. She couldn't shake the sense that something terrible had happened, something she'd done.
You have to remember! she urged herself. Think!
The memories swirled beneath a black fog in her mind but the more she fought against it, the thicker it became. Her head throbbed, accompanied by a dull ache in her stomach. Her hands pressed against it.
"Something else, Tori. Your monthly came," Holly said, her eyes kindly. "The doctors said it was most likely the trauma."
Victoria didn't know whether to feel embarrassed at the circumstances of having her first period or relieved that she'd finally gotten it. She'd started wondering whether she was abnormal after her sixteenth birthday had passed with no womanly fanfare. A visit to Holly's doctor had only confirmed that the range for young women went from as young as nine to as old as eighteen. He'd assured her that it would come in time.
And now that it was here, Victoria felt nothing, just a peculiar sense of anticlimax. On top of everything else, the one event that was supposed to make a girl feel normal only made her feel more odd than ever. She'd blacked out. Had she gotten her period at school? In the cafeteria? In class? In front of everyone?
A hazy recollection of mocking laughter drifted through her mind. She'd be the Carrie White of St. Xavier's, enacting that awful scene from Carrie in the girls' bathroom. By now everyone would know. Victoria couldn't even begin to imagine what they would all be saying about her. Her stomach heaved.
A clean-shaven young man in a white coat walked into the room carrying her chart. "Ms. Warrick, you're awake. How do you feel?" he said, not looking at her. "I'm Dr. Mills."
I got into a fight at school, bled in front of everyone, almost died, and can't remember a thing. How do you think I feel?
"I feel okay, I guess. A little groggy, and I can't remember anything."
"Yes, well, it's temporary memory loss. The grogginess will wear off; it's the medication. You hit your head quite hard when you fell, so try not to push yourself. It's been a tough few days for that body of yours but you have a very strong will to live."
Victoria glanced from Dr. Mills to Holly's drawn face. Holly's wrinkled fingers were still gently squeezing hers. They were warm, reassuring. Victoria gripped back and voiced the thought at the edge of her mind.
"What's wrong with me?"
"Nothing's wrong with you. In fact, you're a healthy, strong young woman who's recovering very well, but you should try to get some rest." Victoria frowned at the bland response. "Do I have leukemia?"
A glance. "No. Those tests were inconclusive."
"I don't understand. How can I be absolutely fine if I've been here in a coma for five days?" Her voice sounded petulant even to her.
Dr. Mills hesitated, looking first at Holly. "We have d
ifferent theories, none one hundred percent conclusive. But your complete recovery in such a short time ... well, there is no way to explain that medically." He paused, and then smiled brightly studying her chart. "The main thing is that you're alive, and recovering. You are a very lucky young woman."
The luck of the devil ...
Her muscles tightened with unexpected dread and for an instant, Victoria felt violently ill. The beeping of the heart monitor matched her escalating heart rate. How does a normal, healthy girl have a blackout and end up in a hospital for five days with no memory? And why wouldn't Dr. Mills look at her?
"I just want to go home," she gasped, black spots marring her vision as the cramping feeling in her stomach intensified. The heart-rate monitor beeped erratically.
"We need to keep you just a few more days for observation," Dr. Mills said, pressing the button for the floor nurse.
"Observation?"
Like she was some kind of freak.
A wave of anxiety overcame her. Heat flooded her limbs and she flung the blankets aside, clawing her hospital gown. "It's ... too hot in here!"
The day nurse came into the room bearing a tray, and Victoria stared warily as Doctor Mills prepped one of the syringes on it. A drop of pale liquid formed at the needle's tip.
Full-scale panic. "What's that for?"
"It's just something to help you rest," he said, emptying the syringe into the IV connected to her wrist. A cool sensation slithered along the hot veins of her forearm.
Victoria's eyes connected with his deep brown ones. What she saw there made her breath hitch. He looked at her with both fear and fascination, the way she'd once felt after seeing a two-headed snake on the Discovery Channel; an aberration of nature, fascinating yet obscene. Unnatural.
Her eyelids drooped as Doctor Mills faded into the background of the room.
"Aunt Holly?" she heard herself say thickly.
"It'll be okay, darling," Holly said, stroking Victoria's hand gently. "I'm here."
"I don't want to close my eyes. The monsters ..."
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