by Stella Blaze
The beast inside him roared for her blood. It demanded vengeance for the witch possessing him so. But Luca swallowed that hatred, for there was something inside him, something outshining the terrible burning of his bloodlust. It was what it was, and though he couldn’t yet face it, he recognized the feeling. And though he hadn’t felt it since those long ago days when he was human, it was indeed love.
When Min at long last opened the door to him, the tension and warring emotions inside him simply evaporated. He gazed down upon her, utterly besotted by the sight of her, by the mere nearness of her proximity. He knew then and there he was hers. But even with this devoted feeling, the beast still called out to him, relentless, but seemingly farther away than was possible, like the distant howl of a wolf.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t look up into his eyes with her usual flirtatious manner. Her expression was so very careful, nearly blank, but for some telltale grave lines. She was hiding something. Luca knew he should be wary. It wasn’t safe to enter, and yet he moved forward when she invited him, and again, he felt the magicks that guarded the door, like electric sparks on his flesh.
She was dressed not in the silky robe, or a thin, wispy gown, as he had shredded the last time. But in funeral black: slacks and a blouse, and black leather boots. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a tight bun.
With a wave of her hand Min beckoned him to follow her. Walking straight to the stairs, Min didn’t even look back at him. Her shoulders were tight, and she smelled of fear and something else, something tangy, not as sweet as fear, something more complex…guilt maybe. The upstairs was dark except for the light from one burning candle. She led him right past her bedroom, its door closed, to the end of the hall and stopped at that doorway, resting her hand against its dark stained wood.
“Forgive me…” she whispered, “I have no choice.”
Luca felt something cold rolling out from under that door, something supremely evil. He didn’t want to go into that room. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he tried to turn and walk away. But Min had not told him he could leave her, so he stood and waited for her to open that door.
She walked into the room as if she couldn’t feel the pulsing, freezing evil contained within. She was a witch of light, and yet she couldn’t feel the malevolent presence in her own home? Had he been wrong? Was she indeed a dark sorceress, and communing with demons? If so, he was in grave trouble. A dark witch, a black one, lived to control things, to play with the living and the dead with gruesome results.
Min whispered a sibilant chant, and candles lit all over the room. A bedroom. An old woman was lying on the bed, the covers drawn up to her chest. Her face was so pale, and her hair so utterly white, he thought for a moment she was a statue. Her eyes were open and staring up at the ceiling.
“She is dead,” he said.
Min hissed. “No she’s not!” She moved over to the bed and sat alongside the pale woman. “She’s asleep…” she placed her hand over her mother’s frigid hand.
Luca gasped, grasping at his hand, staring down at it as if it were a snake. “She’s cold…colder than any ice…I think she is no longer in there.” He raised his eyes to meet Min’s.
She dropped her eyes from his gaze. When she spoke again, her voice shook frightfully. “You’re right. Her spirit is not inside her body. Something sucked the soul right out of her a little over six months ago. Put her in some kind of suspended animation. I’ve been hunting for a cure ever since.”
Luca saw a hard look overtake Min’s face. She stared at him with cold eyes, much like her sleeping mother’s. “But then a few days ago I found a spell, in the pages of an ancient tome. At first I thought it was just some crazy speculation.” She laughed, and she sounded quite mad—like Elaina sounded—but then she sobbed and just sounded scared and desperate.
“I mean, a vampire with a soul…” she turned away from him. “It’s just ridiculous!”
Luca felt his entire body stiffen. No. It can’t be. She can’t mean me. The little trifling spark in me? It couldn’t be counted as an actual soul.
“And then I saw it.” She whirled back around, her glistening eyes wide and frightened. “I saw a divine spark in your eyes. A besouled vampire—I knew it had to be fate.”
No, not fate. A fucking tragedy. Yes, of course his soul was still there. It was making him weaker and weaker by the day. But if Min was pinning her obviously deceased mother’s resurrection on his puny, weak little soul, then her prayers were doomed.
He opened his mouth to tell her just that, but she told him, “Don’t say a word, and stay where you are.” He stood there, mutely cursing to himself. It was going to be worse than he had ever imagined.
He looked about the room and saw a pentacle drawn in multicolored chalk on the gleaming hardwood floor, and a line of dried herbs and other ingredients, all gathered by a marble bowl, and a medicinal crusher sitting right alongside . Beside that lay a cruelly sharp, long dagger, shining silver. He wanted out of that room, but she had told him to stay where he was. It would end badly, whatever she was planning to do to him. He knew it would hurt, physically and metaphysically. And then it would hurt because he’d fail her. His puny soul wouldn’t be enough to work what magick she needed, and she would fall apart when it failed to revive her mother.
But then again, maybe it would work. If the magicks only needed but a spark, then maybe his soul might be sufficient. Maybe it was exactly what he needed. To finally be done with this needling, niggling spark. Yes, to finally be free of it, free to kill and feed without feeling anything but the hellish hunger inside him being sated once more.
He knew then and there, that the moment his soul was removed, he would try with all his strength to break the bonds the witch had put on him. He would kill her first. He would kill Min. And that thought made him sick. He wanted to rush to her and beg her not to do it. The mere thought of taking her life was too unimaginably terrible.
First, she lit a dried stick of sage, and walked around the room. The redolent smoke the herb gave off as it burned would cleanse the air of all bad and evil spirits and magicks. Unfortunately, it didn’t even touch the cold evil that permeated the room, the power Min could not sense.
When she’d finished the ritual cleansing, Min started the ceremony, obviously having memorized the spell beforehand. No reading from a book, not even any stuttered phrasing. Min knew exactly what she was doing. She pulverized the ingredients she added to the bowl, mixing drizzled oil that stank of cloves and blood. And finally she struck a match. The flame of which was queer black tipped with an eerie blue light. The bowl lit up inside, and dark, ominous black smoke began to spread through the room. Everything in Luca told him he needed to get out of that room. Even his beast knew nothing good was going to come of all this. Nothing but pain, maybe blood. Probably,and unfortunately, his. And just as he thought it, she reached for the knife and turned toward him.
“Give me your arm…”
He could tell she was about to say something else. He wished he knew what it was. He wished that she was about to call him by his name, but thought better of it. But then again, she might’ve just been about to call him vampire…and likewise had thought better of it. Either way, it was a kindness she didn’t say it, whatever it was. But part of him still desperately wanted to know.
As if he had absolutely no control over his body’s movements, he held out his arm to her. She unbuttoned the cuff of his silk shirt and pushed it up until his arm was bare and gleaming in the candlelight. And then she cut him, a long, shallow cut, letting the blood smear over the silver blade. Silver hurt, for a cut made with it healed only human fast. And it seared and burned every agonizing moment of that time. She took the blade and walked back to the burning bowl of ingredients. Chanting, she dripped his blood into the bowl and the black and blue flames turned green. The very green of his eyes. The smoke turned a dusty, rusted orange color, and the scent of his burning blood filled the room.
He hadn’t heard Latin being spoken since h
is sire had stolen him away from his church, from his life. He hadn’t dared to enter a house of god since. Though she had tried to get him to, it had been finally just too much for Elaina to ask of him. She could devise no torture so great that Luca would dare cross the threshold of any church. And he had never touched one of god’s people. No priests, no nuns, no monks, not even a vicar.
But now the gypsy witch, his Min, was reciting something in his long forgotten Latin. But it wasn’t all Latin. Many of the words he knew were nothing he had ever heard before. But when she spoke the word for soul, he felt something deep within him tug and burn. He called out as he hit his knees. The spark inside him couldn’t get out, but it wanted to, as if she were the Pied Piper and it a lowly rat. It was excruciating. He growled and howled as Min chanted with more and more force, calling his soul out to save her mother. Suddenly he knew every word she spoke, and with it he knew that she would get what she wanted, at least in part. She would get his soul, no doubt about it.
But then he felt a gust of winter cold wind. It was blowing in, cold and strong as any arctic wind, up under the bedroom door. And there was darkness in it. It muted out the orange smoke it came in contact with, it ate the candlelight, and it crawled across the floor, encroaching on Min. She didn’t see it coming, and Luca couldn’t even breathe, for he was now covered in the darkness: wet, freezing darkness, sticking to him, pulling him even further to the floor.
Then it finally struck out at her. She fell to the floor as well, and then her mother sat up and turned to look upon her. There was something, someone, looking out through those frosted blue eyes, predatory and evil. The smile that stretched across that face wasn’t human; it was as cold and calculating as any demon’s. And then he smelled it, full and strong and so very, very sweet. And what he smelled both excited him and sent the most horrible chill up and down his spine. It was a faerie. A Sidhe, from the smell of her. And it was a she…and she was monstrously powerful, to take him and the witch, and so easily take possession of the dormant mother, and all from a distance. They were being attacked by something high up in the Winter Court.
Unseelie.
She spoke, and the voice was bitter with frost, yet as smooth as silk. “Silly, arrogant gypsy…you could never fathom my power.”
That power struck out at Min, slamming her into the wall of the bedroom.
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate it.” Her mother’s corpse held up a hand and black light, if there was such a thing, burst from her palm and filled the room.
Min cried out as the blazing darkness engulfed her. It didn’t seem to be burning her, but she writhed and wailed as if it were eating the very flesh from her bones. The Sidhe’s voice laughed with fiendish delight as Min’s mother’s eyes glowed like blue moons in her skull. The room was so cold, and so full of Min’s cries for help, that Luca couldn’t stand it. He was frozen to the spot, helpless to defend her, his hands in fists, his fingernails cutting deep into the flesh of his palms.
But when Min finally fell to the floor, unconscious, the flames flickered and died, and the darkness seeped from the room in a quiet, orderly flow. The room was still cold, and the candles were snuffed out. And just as the sweet smell of Sidhe faded, Luca felt Min’s magical control over him evaporate. The cold, cruel voice of the faerie whispered in his ear. Now it’s your turn to play, vampire.
Moonlight streamed into the bedroom from an open window. Min lay on the floor, her limp, bloodied body framed beautifully in that cool, silver light. Inside, somewhere far from his mind, his beast called out, howling for Min’s blood.
Her body looked so warm and tempting, like the most delicious banquet he had ever imagined. So much of him wanted to take her, to glut himself at her neck, to end his servitude and his newfound pain and guilt. He knew right then that if he just let his beast take over again that he would never feel again. It would be so easy. He saw the outline of her breasts as she slept, and the pulse at her throat, but he pulled away.
The beast inside him howled incredulously, baying for the blood. He tried pushing the beast back, tried to walk away from Min’s bloodied, placid form. When he looked up he saw something that he’d never thought to see again. His reflection in Min’s vanity mirror. He hadn’t seen his reflection in three hundred years, and it was terrifying to see it now. Especially since it wasn’t really him. It looked like him, and was dressed like him, but there was blood trickling from the corner of his mouth down his chin. The image of him licked at it with his tongue and smiled at him, a knowing look on his face.
“Don’t waste this,” it said to him. “If you really don’t want her to die, you should bring her over. Then she would truly, always be ours, ours to hunt with, ours to fuck…and you know from Elaina that she would have to do as you command. That no matter where she was, she would have to come back and answer your call. She would be ours, forever.
Luca closed his eyes and balled up his fists until the bones creaked. “No,” he said to both his beast and to the image of himself in the mirror. He moved back to where Min was and scooped her up in his arms and carried her back to her bedroom, laying her down in her unmade bed. She was bleeding. Cuts and some nasty gashes on her hands, her forehead, and the side of her face where she hit the wall, looked poised on bruising.
If that filthy fae were there he would latch onto her throat and suck her dry. That would, after all, be the only way he would have a fighting chance against one of the Sidhe. Even if it had been one of their weaker lot, he’d have a hell of a time killing it by himself. But this creature was powerful. Maybe the most powerful.
A chilling and sobering thought. Most powerful or not, all Luca wanted to do was rip her throat out.
Luca pushed thoughts of vengeance out of his head. He ministered to the cuts and the soon to blossom bruises, easily finding first aid supplies in Min’s bathroom, and a bag of frozen peas in her freezer.
He sat there by the bed and waited. An hour went by, and just when he began to think she would not wake again, finally she stirred.
Chapter 13
Min woke to find her head a riot of pain. Nausea caught in her throat and she forced herself to swallow it. Then a wave of regret and disappointment washed through her. She’d been in the middle of the ceremony, she had felt that it was working, that somehow the soul of the vampire was calling to her mother’s, drawing it from wherever it was, back to her body, as a vampire can push a mortal to do just about anything, if they want to and don’t hunger to fight with them. But some love such violence. To use their vampire wiles takes the fun out of it for some.
She felt fear well up in her, the sight of her mother sitting up in bed with those frosted blue eyes, and that black flame in her hand. How much it had hurt as that power had shot out and beat her into the wall. She’d panicked as all had gone black…and now her head hurt and…
Her eyes shot open as she realized what had happened. She had passed out. Passed out alone with the vampire. Not Luca, but the vampire. She gasped in fear as she looked around the candle lit room—her bedroom. And there sitting in the chair in the corner, staring into her eyes, was the vampire.
Oh god, I’m at his mercy. Her wards may not depend on her being conscious, but the gris-gris hex she’d used was voodoo, and necromancy, and if she wasn’t awake to control it, it evaporated completely. She reached out with her senses and found nothing. She’d been unconscious too long. The magicks were gone, and she wouldn’t be able to use them upon him until he passed into the house again, and passed under one of the talismans.
But he didn’t have a triumphant smile on his face. He looked…relieved. And why hadn’t he taken her, killed her while she was out? Why hadn’t he bound and gagged her? She could still work magicks on him, and if she was lucky she might just be able to destroy him. Or maybe he wanted to play with her before he tried to kill her…or turn her into a soulless thing like him…but then, of course he did have a soul. If he sired her, would she have a soul too?
But when he
finally spoke it wasn’t about any of the things racing through her head. “We really should get you to the hospital. You’ve hit your head pretty hard,”—Min could see herself being flung across the room and into the wall, a vision seen through his eyes. And then of her lying defenseless on the floor of her mother’s room. The hunger had been so strong in him—“and you’re still just human.” She blinked at him, and gulped—her mouth and throat were so dry. He reached out and handed her a glass of water, as if he’d read her mind. “And then we need to talk about what you tried to do to me.” Okay, there’s that other shoe I’ve been waiting on to drop. He’s still going to rip my throat out…well, after he gives me a tongue lashing for trying to sacrifice him to wake my mother. “I don’t pretend to understand the magicks you were doing, but I’m quite certain it wouldn’t have worked.”
Min scowled at him. “It would’ve worked. I mean, why else would fate send me that spell and the one vampire in-all-the-world to use for it?”
He got a cold, detached look on his face, his young, handsome features hardening. “All vampires have a soul, Min.”
No, they don’t!
“Yes, we do.” Min felt a stab of panic as the vampire answered her mental objection. “It tortures us when we’re first brought over, but the hunger helps us ignore it until it fades to only a memory. Once you get past that part you will never suffer from it again. You know the phrase, ‘Better, for lack of use.’” He looked so thoughtful sitting there. “Something about what has happened between us has reawakened mine.”
Min shook her head, but it made her nausea all the harder to ignore. “But it was working. I could feel it. A presence was in the room. My mother’s soul.”
“So that’s what she is to you? Your mother?” He looked to the door and Min got a brief chill. “Well, believe me, what animated your mother’s body wasn’t her ghost, or her spirit, or anything like that.”
“Alright, smart-guy! What was it?”