by Simon Cantan
“No,” Loki said. “But—”
“Then shut up and let us follow the only lead we have,” Katie said. “I thought gods were meant to help, not get in the way.”
Loki gave her a stern look and vanished from sight. Jaden was happy for the god to leave. It felt creepy to have him appear from thin air whenever he wanted. Jaden wondered whether Loki was still hovering nearby, just invisible to them.
“Molly might tell us the truth,” Katie said. “If she’s still using the same name. An ex-girlfriend isn’t likely to have too much loyalty to either Rans or Caterina.”
Jaden nodded. “We’ve nowhere else to turn. We might as well try it.”
She took the book and headed for her room. He followed her up; trying to ignore the coppery scent she left in the air as she walked.
Up in her room, Katie opened a browser on her computer and searched for Molly Meisels. Surprisingly, the Irish phone book showed a number for her.
Jaden took out his phone and dialled, waiting as it rang. He almost held his breath again, but forced himself to breathe to avoid freaking Katie out. He didn’t need to seem any more dead than he already was. Putting his phone on speaker, he set it on the desk between them.
A woman answered after three rings, her harsh Irish voice saying, “Do you know what time it is?”
He checked his watch. “Eleven here, so ten, right?”
“Exactly,” the woman said. “And some of us work nights.”
“Oh,” he said. “Listen, is this Molly Meisels?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “This better not be about my name, or I’ll hunt you down and rip your throat out.”
“No,” he said. “My name is Jaden Beck. My father is Rans Beck, but he might have been called something different when you knew him.”
“Little Jaden?” Molly said. “Is that really you? You were only four when your father took you. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. You said my father took me?”
“From your mother,” Molly said. “Caterina was furious when she realised, tore her way through a dozen humans before she calmed down.”
Katie went a little white, but stayed quiet.
“Rans kidnapped me from Caterina?” Jaden asked.
“Of course,” Molly said. “How could he not? She wanted you all for herself. Listen, where are you and your father living these days? Maybe I can see you reunited with your mother.”
Something in her voice made his skin crawl. “Caterina is already here. So I don’t need any help, thanks.”
“It’d be nice to catch up, though,” Molly said. “From your number, I can see you’re in Norway. It’s only a short ferry ride away.”
Molly sounded desperate to meet him, which confused him even more. Before he could stop her, Katie reached out and disconnected the call.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“Didn’t you hear how much she wanted to see you?”
“Why wouldn’t she? If she’s an old family friend, she might want to catch up.”
“Enough to take a ferry from Ireland to Norway?” Katie asked. “Her voice had a hunger in it. Like she wanted something from you. And did you hear when she said your mother wanted you all to herself?”
“Divorced couples can get like that; possessive of their children.”
Katie shook her head. “They all want something from you.”
“What? I’m a vampire. Or I will be soon. What do I have that they’d want?”
“I don’t know.” She reached for Rans’ book and looked at Molly’s name. “What if this isn’t a Cupid’s heart? What would a wooden arrow do to a vampire’s heart?”
“It’d mean the opposite to a vampire.” Loki appeared nearby. “Stakes don’t work, but they still have a symbolic meaning: death. Reserved for your worst enemy.”
Katie frowned at him. “Then why didn’t you warn us?”
“I tried to,” Loki said. “But you told me to shut up. So I figured you might need to make your own mistakes to learn to listen next time. Now this woman knows what Jaden’s name is and what country he’s in. She’ll track you down sooner rather than later.”
“And do what?” Katie asked. “You said vampires don’t prey on other vampires.”
“I didn’t think they did,” Loki said. “This is all new to me.”
“What?” Katie asked. “What are you talking about? You’ve been hunting vampires for centuries.”
“And you know how many times my host tried to save one of them?” Loki asked. “Let alone sat around with one and tried to solve his life’s problems? None. Zero times. That’s how often that’s happened. I know how to kill them. Where they hunt, how to track them, how they’ll attack when they come for you. I don’t know how their society works or how they relate to one another.”
“Then I’ll need to train,” Katie said. “For when this woman shows up.”
Loki nodded. “And for when Rans and Caterina come for Jaden. They all want him, and I don’t think it’s because of how much they love him.”
Jaden swivelled his head between the two of them, confusion making it impossible to bring order to his thoughts. Nothing in his world made sense anymore.
He stopped turning his head and looked at Katie. Well, one thing did.
Chapter 21
Night
Katie heard the door open from the kitchen and went to meet her father at the door. Aidan gave her a questioning look as she approached.
“The trip was cancelled,” she said. “I’m making dinner, if you’re hungry.”
He broke into a smile. “You don’t need to act so guilty, monkey. You’re almost eighteen now. If you want to shack up with your boyfriend instead of going to Oslo, I’m okay with that.”
She stared at him, unable to process it for a moment.
“Besides,” he said. “Jaden seems like a nice guy. I trust your judgement.”
She felt her heart swell with emotion. After everything her father had been through, he kept putting her first. She hugged him tight and tears welled in her eyes.
“Be careful the dinner doesn’t burn,” he said.
She sniffed the air and hurried away to the kitchen, toward the suspicious smell of smoke.
***
After a subdued dinner, Katie and Jaden went back to her room, where Jaden had been searching genealogy sites. He sat in front of the computer and brought up the first one.
“I found a picture of Molly Meisels.” He pointed to an image of a painting. The woman in it had red hair tied back, and a dress decorated with gold thread. She stared out of the portrait with bored blue eyes, as if sitting for the painting had been too tedious for words.
“How old is she?” Katie asked.
“This painting is from 1801,” Jaden said. “So old. From the little this site says, she was the wife of some British landlord.”
“Anything else?”
“Not on that site.” He switched to another page. “But this looks like the same woman.”
Katie leaned in and looked at the image of a redheaded woman standing in front of a large country house at night. She had a dozen children around her, and the same bored expression on her face. “Looks like it. Where is that?”
“In the west of Ireland. Some place called Clifden. It says children were sent there from England during the Second World War. Their parents wanted them as far from the bombing as possible. When they went back to check a year later, she was gone and so were the children.”
Katie stared at the woman’s face in the image. She’d murdered those children, using them as her own personal larder until she’d drained them all. The thought made Katie’s stomach turn.
She looked at Jaden and saw him staring at her throat. When he noticed her looking, he glanced away and blushed. She wondered if he would do something like that. What kind of hunger would make someone do that? How bad was it going to get?
Jaden’s phone rang, startling them both. He pulled it from his pocket and checked the
number. “Caterina. Should I take it?”
Katie shook her head. She’d had enough of vampires for one day. They still had time to find out more.
“We could watch a movie,” Jaden suggested.
Katie nodded. “Anything but horror.”
***
It was after eleven when Jaden padded off to the spare room. Katie didn’t stop him. She could see how uncomfortable he was, now Aidan had said he was okay with it all.
After putting on her pyjamas, she climbed into bed, trying to keep her thoughts away from the undead. She couldn’t help it, though. Sleep refused to come, and she lay thinking for hours.
The crack of something breaking echoed around the front garden outside. She was out of bed in a flash, heading to her window and twitching the curtains aside. For a moment, she couldn’t see anything, then she spotted a figure standing still across the road from the house.
The shadowy person wasn’t facing her. Instead, they were poised, ready to fight. A moment later, she saw the reason. A second figure flew out of the darkness and slammed into the first, sending the person tumbling toward the street.
They landed on the asphalt under the lights and Katie saw it was a man. He got to his feet just in time to meet the onrushing other figure. The woman hit the man again, sending him back another ten paces. This time, he sprang to his feet and jumped higher than the house.
The woman flew under the man and he dropped back to the road, landing behind her. He moved at once, skipping to her and slamming into her back. The woman spun through the air out of sight down the road.
The man turned and ran for the trees, breaking off a large branch. He swung it as the woman came back into sight, catching her in the head.
Katie winced, knowing no human could have survived a moment against those two. She watched as the woman landed at the man’s feet.
He jumped onto her and slammed his fists into the woman’s face, snapping her head back and forth, back and forth. When the woman was helpless, reeling, the man bent low, his mouth heading for the woman’s throat. At the last moment, though, the woman bucked, sending the man toppling off her.
She scrambled to her feet and ran away, off into the night and out of sight.
“Well that answers that,” Loki said from behind Katie. “I never saw a vampire try to drain another one before.”
“They can,” Katie said. “Obviously.”
The victor of the fight turned toward the house and she ducked back, worried he might see her. When she looked again, she found him stalking toward the house, taking long, skipping strides for the front door. The doorbell rang, and she froze, her heart taking a moment to remember to beat.
From outside her room, she heard her father’s door open.
“Stop him,” Loki hissed. “Don’t let him invite the vampire in.”
Her feet felt numb, slow to respond, as she hurried to her bedroom door and outside. Her father was already down the stairs, heading for the front door.
“Don’t open it!” Katie shouted.
“Go back to bed, monkey,” Aidan said. “I’ll take care of this.”
She jerked forward, her fear for her own life replaced by fear for her father. She ran down the stairs as Aidan opened the door, revealing a middle-aged man with long brown hair and cold, dark eyes.
“Can I help you?” Aidan asked.
“I’m Rans Beck,” the man said. “Is my son staying with you? I need to see him. Can I come in?”
“No,” Aidan said. “It’s the middle of the night. You need to come back in the daytime.”
“This is an emergency,” Rans said. “I need to come in and see my son right now.”
Katie moved around her father and put her shoulder into the door, closing it before he could say another word. Aidan turned and stared at her with surprise.
His shock melted into a kind look when he saw the fear on her face. “Don’t worry, monkey, vampires can’t come in unless you invite them.”
“Vampires?” she asked. She stared at him, her fear giving way to surprise.
“Sure. Godchosen aren’t the only ones hiding from normal people. But why is a vampire so interested in your boyfriend?”
“Jaden’s not my boyfriend.” She paused, but she couldn’t come up with a lie. She didn’t want to keep the secret from her father, now she needed him more than ever. “Jaden is Rans’ son. He’s going to turn into a vampire too.”
“Oh,” Aidan said. “Then you’d better wait here.”
She watched her father walk away down the hall, heading for the garage. When he returned, he had something held in his hand, hidden from her.
“What’s that?” she asked.
He ignored her, heading for the stairs. When he turned to go up, she saw what he was holding: an axe.
She rushed after him. “You can’t kill him. He’s my best friend.”
Aidan ignored her, climbing the stairs. She ran up after him, trying to catch him before he could reach Jaden. Aidan got to the spare bedroom door and opened it, the axe held ready.
She caught up to him at the door. “Jaden!”
The spare bedroom was dark, but the figure in the bed moved when she shouted. Jaden reached and turned on the light, looking at them with weary eyes. “What’s going on?”
Jaden’s gaze fell on the axe in Aidan’s hands and he nodded.
“Sorry,” Aidan said. “I can’t let a vampire with an invitation survive.”
“I understand,” Jaden said. “It’s okay.”
Katie struggled under her father’s arm and moved in front of him. “We’re working on a cure. He’s not going to be a vampire.”
“There is no cure.” Aidan’s eyes never left Jaden. “That boy will become a mindless killer and eat us both.”
“It’s okay, Katie,” Jaden said. “I don’t want to be a murderer. I’m starting to change, to notice things. Let your father do it.”
“No!” she said. “Both of you back off. We have two weeks until he turns. Don’t you even want to try to find a cure?”
“There is no cure,” Aidan said. “Believe me, people have tried.”
She stared up at her father. “How come you know so much about vampires?”
“How do you think your mother died?” Aidan asked.
“An accident,” she said. “You said it was a car accident… It was a vampire?”
He nodded. “She fell in with a group called the Servants of Loki. Their leader was turned and when she tried to talk to him, he drank her dry. Your mother was killed by someone just like that boy there. Someone who appears innocent until they’re at your throat.”
Katie turned to look at Jaden. Could she be that wrong? She thought… knew Jaden was a good person. Was he going to kill her when he turned? Would he even be able to?
She shook her head. “Two weeks. Give us two weeks and then you can kill him, if we haven’t found a cure by then.”
“It won’t help,” Aidan said.
“But it won’t hurt either,” she said. “Do it now and you’re murdering a human. If what you say is true, he’s not a killer yet.”
Aidan sighed. “He could escape by then… come back and kill us at his own convenience.”
“Then we’ll move,” she said. “Isn’t someone’s life worth at least that much?”
Aidan looked uncertain, but he nodded slightly. “But no more sleeping in the same room. We lock him in at night. And whatever you do, don’t let him touch you.”
“He wouldn’t want to, even if he could,” Katie said, then blushed.
Chapter 22
Delinquent
Her father wove endless tales of Katie’s mother until six in the morning. How she’d fought vampires, with a half-dozen other Godchosen at her back. How Aidan had sat watching the door every time she went out. Until she didn’t come back, and he was left with a nine-year-old girl who didn’t understand where her mother had gone.
Katie felt a sick lurch in her stomach. She’d felt like her parents were hiding so
mething as a child, but she hadn’t realised what it was.
Aidan said that after they’d fled Dublin, he’d heard from the remaining Servants of Loki, still fighting the vampires. Until they were all gone, and the vampires started trying to find other Godchosen. They didn’t like having another potential threat among them. Aidan kept Katie safe, across the sea where the vampires couldn’t go without leaving their precious society.
He got up and stretched his back. “I have to go to work.”
She stood, a frown of concern creasing her brow. “But they could still be out there. It’s dark, and will be for hours yet.”
“I need to work,” he said. He pulled a small piece of metal from his pocket: a coin rubbed flat by years of use. “Besides, I have Klondike. As long as I have his symbol on me, I can use it to ward them off.”
She put her own hand on her pocket, feeling Loki’s symbol there. She didn’t take it out. Aidan would recognise it at once and realise who her god really was. Instead, she gave him a hug and watched him leave the room.
Once he was out of sight up the stairs, she followed him up. A key was hanging on a hook by the guest bedroom door. She took it down and unlocked the door, pushing it open.
Inside, Jaden was sitting in the dark, staring out. He didn’t return her smile. “I can see better in the dark now.”
“That’s useful,” she said. “You’ll save on electricity.”
“I can smell your blood, too,” he said. “Even from there. I can almost see it pulsing around your body. You should have let Aidan kill me.”
“Again with this? There’s two weeks until you turn. That’s plenty of time to find a cure.”
“We can’t wait until I’m fully vampire. By then it’ll be too late. At most you have a week.”
“A week?” She paused, then nodded. “A week. Plenty of time.”
“Katie, you have to be realistic. I don’t want to die, but there’s no choice. I’d rather die than become a murderer.”
She switched the light on, found a chair, and sat. “You’re not going to turn into a murderer. You’ll still be you, behind the fangs.”