by D. N. Hoxa
It didn’t make sense to me at all, and one look up at Frosty confirmed that he had no clue what Thea was talking about, either.
“Can you tell us about the place you were held in? Any sound or smell could be extremely helpful,” I said, but when two seconds passed and Thea hadn’t moved, I realized she wasn’t going to. She had collapsed, her hands frozen to her face, too.
“She needs blood,” Frosty said. “I’m drained.” And he made for the door.
While he went to look for a human to fill a glass with fresh blood, I cursed under my breath. I dragged myself closer to Thea and pried her hands away from her face. It was hard, too. Her muscles were completely frozen. She was completely out of it, resembling a body you’d see in an open casket funeral. There didn’t seem to be a single drop of blood left in her, and Frosty hadn’t made it back yet.
What was taking him so long? He was a vampire for God’s sake.
“Fucking bloodsucking hell,” I hissed as I drew out Bob.
My poor palm was going to be cut open a second time, and the first wound had already healed from when I’d given blood to Frosty. Never fed a vampire in my life and now I was feeding two, only hours apart. It sucked, but I couldn’t stand around and wait. So I cut into my skin and waited for my fist to fill with blood before I reached out for Thea. I opened her jaw—tough as hell—with my other hand, then watched my blood drip into her mouth.
It was amazing how fast it worked. Never seen anything like it in my life. With every drop of blood that slipped down her throat, her skin took on a new hue. The blood coursed through her veins at a seemingly impossible speed. Thea opened her eyes, just as Frosty walked in the door.
Half a second later, I was thrown to the floor.
What the hell?
I jumped to my feet—and I’ll admit I was a little afraid—to see Thea with her eyes silver and her fangs out, hissing at me, ready to attack again. Holy shit, she’d slapped the hell out of me, and I even spun once before crashing on the floor. Like a little girl, my hand flew to my cheek. It stung badly.
“Thea, calm down,” Frosty said.
He sat on the bed next to her, in between us, and offered her the glass of blood he had in his hands. She didn’t want it. She was still looking at me like I’d murdered all her family.
Frosty put the glass on the nightstand and took her by the shoulders, and spoke above her hissing. “Thea, you need to calm down, now.” His voice was more of a command now, than a soft whisper. “Put those fangs away, Thea. I mean it. Look at me.”
Thea looked at him. It was like whatever spell had been cast upon her released her now. Her eyes began to lose the silver and her fangs retreated inside her mouth. A second later, she collapsed on the bed again. Frosty, like a concerned father, held her head while he fed her the blood from the glass.
“The…the…blood,” Thea said after almost each swallow. “It’s the blood.”
I didn’t know exactly what she meant yet, but I already had a terrible, terrible feeling about it.
“What’s the blood?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Your blood!” Thea hissed, as if my voice alone had pushed her buttons. “It’s your blood!”
A screeching sound left her lips and she knocked the glass out of Frosty’s hands. I moved as fast as I could and walked out in the hallway. And I thought she wasn’t going to freak out. I was wrong a lot these days, it seemed.
Out in the hallway, the doors lining the walls suffocated me. I wanted to be alone so desperately. I needed to take it all out somehow, but I didn’t think I had it in me to cry. Things were starting to make sense and my heart pounded loudly in my ears. Too much noise in my head. Too much information. Too much sense—it was like I wasn’t used to it. Messy things were better, right? Because now that I was beginning to put some pieces together, the big picture was turning out to be a hell of a lot uglier than I could have ever imagined.
Frosty came out of the room, and until he was in front of me and put his hand on my shoulder, I hadn’t even realized it.
“What the hell was that?”
“I need a second. Bathroom?”
He looked genuinely surprised. “Bathroom?”
“Bathroom.”
Frosty opened and closed his mouth a couple times before he raised his arm and pointed at the door on the other side of the hallway. I disappeared behind it without giving him a chance to speak.
There wasn’t much I noticed in there except the toilet. The chicken fingers Frosty had made me eat disappeared when I flushed. Cold water slammed onto my face and it slowly began to sing its tune for my ears only because it knew how much I needed it. The reflection in front of me showed a ghost, in much worse shape than the vampire Thea. Or even Kirsten.
Ella’s bright curls came to my mind and a new wave of hatred crushed my bones. For how much longer was I going to be the cause of my family’s pain? Talk about the black sheep of the family.
“Star?” Frosty called after slamming his fists on the door.
“Give me a sec,” I said, though it would be better if he didn’t. Everything was spinning fast now.
My blood. The kidnapping. Ella’s disappearance.
I took out my phone and called the person that would most likely know how to get his hands on information the fastest.
“Star?” Sam’s old voice rang clear in my ears.
“I need your help.” Despite what people say, saying I needed help did not get better over time.
“Are you okay?”
“Can a demon possess through his possessed?”
Silence for a second. “I don’t understand.”
Neither did I, but I tried to explain the best I could. “Can a demon possess thirty vampires, and through them reach out to possess another without even knowing their whereabouts? The vampires in question are independent. They have no sire, so no connection to another.”
A loud sigh whistled through the speaker. “Doesn’t sound possible. I haven’t heard anything about it, but I can look into it if you’d like.”
“They have Ella, Sam. They have my little sister, and I suspect this is how Samayan did it.”
I don’t know why I told him that. I could have just said that it was important, or top priority, or whatever. But every time I spoke to the old man, there was just something about him that threatened to turn me back to the teenager in whose mind he’d hidden Illyon’s secret.
Another second of silence. “I’m sorry, Star.”
“I need to know if this is possible.” Like Sam said, I’d never heard about anything like it before, but I’d also had no clue about the Binding Ceremony of the Nephilim.
“I’ll get right to it,” Sam said.
Without another word, I ended the call and opened the bathroom door. Frosty was waiting for me right outside, looking more concerned than he had a right to. After all, he’d only met me a few hours ago, but as the situation demanded, I took advantage of it.
“I need to know who you saw.” If Sam couldn’t find anything out like I suspected, Illyon could show me exactly what a demon could do. It would also show me how to stop it. Hopefully.
Frosty’s jaw clenched. “We had a deal,” he said, but it wasn’t a protest. It was just a statement.
“I suspect that Samayan and his ally demon took your vampires to absorb their strength and possess another female vampire.”
“But why us? Samayan must have thousands of his own,” Frosty said.
“I think he needed vampires without a sire. Without a bond. Their minds would be easier to manipulate because they’re their own, not submissive to a sire vampire.” And unfortunately for me, it all made sense.
“Holy shit,” Frosty whispered. “This is great. This is more than we’ve known so far, but we need to find out where they are.”
“And in order to do that, I need to find the thieves you saw.”
“Why?” Frosty asked, shaking his head. “I mean, you can’t just expect me to believe that once you have what
you’re looking for, you’ll stick around and help us like you promised. I did have to practically drag you here.”
And he was right to think that. “You can trust me, Frosty.”
“I can?” He had a dumbfounded smile on his face. “Why are you so sure?”
“Because the vampire your vampires were used to possess is my sister.”
“You have a vampire sister?” For some reason, Frosty seemed to find that a bit funny. The corner of his mouth curled up at my statement.
“I do, and she’s disappeared.”
No longer smiling, Frosty stared at his feet for a long second. “But Thea said it was your blood—”
“Yes. Like I said, she’s my sister, and he used my blood to connect with her.”
“But how did Samayan even have your blood in the first place?”
It didn’t look like he was going to drop it, so I just indulged the vampire instead. “Because he kidnapped me, too, at one point.” And he and my friend Victor-the-bald-warlock had had enough time to fill more than enough bags with my blood. The reminder sent shivers down my spine. “So you see, I need to find what was stolen from me. I’m not going to break my end of the deal because now this involves me personally.” In fact, I should have probably thanked Frosty for coming to find me, because something told me Ella would have disappeared even if I’d been at the Base. There was nothing I would have been able to do to stop it.
Frosty looked away from me. “I’m sorry about your sister, but I can’t tell you anything.”
“You have to. You can see that I’m doing everything I can to help you find your vampires.” I didn’t allow myself to lose it because nothing good was going to come out of a fight, but I was really starting to lose patience.
“I know you are, and I’m thankful for it. We all are. But I can’t tell you.”
My vision blurred as anger rang a fucking bell in my head that made my whole body vibrate, all the way to my toes. I looked at his pale face, at his unblinking eyes locked on the floor, and all of the sudden, this crazy, stupid idea appeared in my mind.
“You lied.”
It was one of those things you voiced out because they were too terrifying to keep inside, yet you believed a hundred percent that they weren’t true. They couldn’t be true.
But then Frosty looked up at me. His mouth opened but no word came out of him, not even a whisper. His fists were clenched, and as the seconds ticked by, reality sunk in little by little. It looked like one of those things that were too terrifying to keep inside was true.
“You lied?” My voice trembled as if I was about to cry, but far from it.
“I had to. It was the only way I could get you to come help us. I’m so s—”
Even I didn’t see the fist aiming for his jaw coming. I knocked him back a couple of steps, then was in front of him again, punching and kicking at full speed, so fast, I swear my movements became a blur. And Frosty didn’t fight back, which pissed me off even more. Even when I slammed him against the wall, then grabbed his hair and slammed his head some more, he took it all and didn’t try to stop me.
The anger fueling me spread like fire over my skin. The guns with silver bullets in them in the back of my waistband burned me, called to me, demanded I turn this lying vampire into dust. And I would have without a second thought had he raised one hand against me.
But he didn’t.
Minutes later, or it could have been hours, I took a step back, breathing heavily, and Frosty slid down to the ground, no longer able to stand on his own because I’d broken both his legs. I just looked at him look at me, his face covered in blood, though most of the wounds I’d inflicted with my bare hands and feet had already healed.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” he whispered with a flinch. I must’ve broken a rib or two, and bones were going to take fresh blood to heal. Good.
“I’m going to kill you, you know that? I’m going to make sure your ashes are never found, too. Right after I turn your body into a mold for silver.”
Frosty smiled. “I know. I knew it the moment I lied to you.”
“So why did you?” Had his life so little meaning?
“Because it was worth it. A life for thirty is a pretty fair deal if you ask me.”
I almost didn’t believe his words, but what other reason did he have to lie to me again? This filthy fucking vampire seemed to really care about his people, and even in the situation we were in—the whole world was in—I couldn’t help but be impressed.
“So do it. However you want to. I wish I could say I was sorry for the lie, but I am sorry for your sister.”
“You bloodsucking monster,” I spit despite my better judgment. How the hell could I now kill this guy when all he had tried to do was save his coven—his family? I would have done the same in a heartbeat, right now, if it meant I could have someone help me find Ella faster. I turned away and found the first door in the wall, then slammed my fists into it until my knuckles were bloodier than before, and the wood cracked almost all the way. Better to get it all out before I looked at Frosty again, because I didn’t have the time or even the motive to be mad at him right now.
“Get some blood and get back on your feet. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
17
——————————
Lies, lies, lies. I was so fed up with them. As I walked out into the alley, I took out my phone and called Aaron. No more lies.
“Star,” he said when he picked up, as if my name had already been at the tip of his tongue.
“You were in my room last night.” And I couldn’t decide what to feel about it or about what the fairy bitch who gave birth to me told me.
“What?”
“You were in my room last night, Aaron.”
Silence. “I wasn’t. I already told you.”
His voice was strained, just like it had been when he’d faced me that morning. And he’d sweated badly as if it was hard for him to talk to me. As I thought about how he’d avoided my eyes, it all made perfect sense to me, even though I wished it didn’t.
“You took Illyon from me, Aaron. You did it while you were possessed by Azazel.”
The words tasted so bitter on my tongue that for a second, I almost wished I hadn’t called. I wished I’d waited to see him before telling him. But it had already been enough with the lies.
“Have you lost your mind?” Aaron said, his voice rough.
“I found out today that when Nijaria gave you back to your father, the Fairy Courts demanded a guarantee for your release, someone to hold accountable for all matters regarding you. That guarantee was Azazel, and in order for you to be returned back to your father, he connected himself with your mind, which basically means that he knows what you know and he can possess you without your knowledge whenever he damn well pleases.”
Not only couldn’t she tell me lies, but the whole situation made sense. The only one who knew about Illyon was Aaron. That’s how Azazel found out about the necklace. And I’d seen Aaron go into my room the night before. Cameras didn’t lie., not unless someone manipulated them and I was pretty sure Kyle would have known if that were the case. It all fit into the puzzle.
Anger heated the blood in my veins once again. A traitor in our midst. Samayan had tried to tell me that in our weird little meetings. Oh, he showed me. He showed me good. And I couldn’t wait to make him pay.
“Aaron?” I asked when a long second went by and I could no longer even hear him breathing through the speaker. I could imagine his shock. My reaction had been much worse. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered because there was no worse fate I could imagine than to not be in control of my own body and mind. I knew exactly what that was like, and I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy. Except for Azazel. And Samayan. And Vladimir—couldn’t forget good ole Vlad.
“Aaron, talk to me,” I said again, and just as I expected him to say something, the line went dead.
What the hell?
I dialed again, my mind completely blank. The
call didn’t even go through. So I tried again. And again. And again…
The bones in my body froze. Had Azazel heard? Had he been listening to us speak, or however the hell their connection worked?
When I tried Jack, he answered before his phone had the chance to even ring properly. “Aaron’s in trouble. Find him, right now.”
“What the hell is going on?” he said, and I could already hear him moving.
“He’s being possessed by Azazel. I think he’s going to try and get out of the Base. Find him before he does.”
There was no need for more words. The line went dead the next second. As I called Kyle—who sounded like he was crying—to ask him to check the cameras, find Aaron and tell Jack if he did as soon as possible, beads of cold sweat lined my forehead. My whole body shook.
First Ella, now Aaron. Samayan was going to take everyone I cared about until he had me on my knees.
And maybe I already was. I could barely stand on my own.
“There’s something I want to show you.”
Frosty’s voice registered in my mind a few seconds after he spoke. The sun was setting so he stood in the doorway and gave me the time I needed to turn around and look at him. His words had registered but had yet to make sense to me.
“What?”
“I want to show you something. Follow me,” he said.
He’d fed, all right. I could see the red under his skin on his cheeks before he disappeared back into the building. As if in a dream, I followed him without word. He took us all the way to the first building of his neighborhood, down a flight of stairs, and inside a poorly maintained basement. You’d think I would be cautious enough to ask what he wanted with me in a basement, but I was too out of it to question anything at that point. So, soundlessly, I followed.
The place was badly lit with old lamps mounted on the yellowish walls. The corridor was narrow and it wouldn’t fit two people walking side by side. Frosty took us all the way to the end of it, and to a door, the keys of which looked ancient. The door groaned as if it were a beast we’d woken after a long sleep. It led us to an equally badly lit room with yellow walls and dirt on the ground. Other than a makeshift shelf filled with what looked like empty liquor bottles, there was only a large wooden chest across from us. Frosty went straight for it.