The Possession

by Jennifer Armintrout

  Madrid, what I could see of it from the cab windows, was rather unlike my expectations of a Spanish city. There were no terra-cotta tiles on any of the skyscrapers we passed. Billboards for American products mingled with advertisements for Spanish movies. Except for the enormous aloe plants growing in the median of the boulevard and the signs I couldn’t understand, I could have been in Chicago.

  Then we passed the modern part of town. The glossy shops and illuminated theater awnings gave way to the terra-cotta and stucco I’d imagined. The streets were less smooth here. Wrought-iron railings surrounded tiny balconies overflowing with geraniums. Laundry hung to dry on lines stretching from one building to another. I figured we’d taken a shortcut until the cab stopped.

  The street was so narrow we could open only one door to get out. Max had barely pulled our bags from the backseat when the driver sped off, the taxi bouncing merrily on the cobblestones.

  “Are we…Where are we?” I asked, staring up at the sliver of sky between the buildings on either side of us.

  “He couldn’t drive us to the Plaza del Major.” Max pronounced it with a slight lisp, like platha my-or. “It’s a pedestrians-only kinda place.”

  I followed him down a maze of alleys, impressed that he could find his way so easily. For the most part, the streets we walked were empty and dark. Vampire or not, if I’d been alone, I would have turned tail and run back the way the cab had brought us.

  We emerged from one alley to find a more populated street. People enjoyed drinks on sidewalk tables in front of expensive-looking restaurants, and street performers danced and posed for the tourists. At the end of the street loomed a huge, dark wall with an arched doorway. On the other side was the Plaza del Major.

  I’d never seen anything so incredibly beautiful and romantic in my entire life. Buildings the likes of which I’d imagined when I read Don Quixote as a child surrounded the square. Cafés and shops proclaimed their wares tastefully for visitors, and a huge sculpture dominated the center. There were many people, but the space felt vast. The ring of voices echoing off the buildings and the stones beneath our feet was swallowed up by the open night air, creating a gentle but unintelligible murmur. Above it all, the clear night sky sparkled with stars that seemed so close I could touch them, and its cold beauty contrasted with the warm life on the ground.

  The way Max and I contrasted with the life around us. A pang of longing speared my heart. A group of teens congregated near a vendor’s cart, laughing over their ice-cream cones. Near the huge statue of a soldier on horseback, a darkly handsome man lifted a woman in his arms and spun, her blood red, broomstick skirt swirling like a rebellious flag. He set her on her feet and kissed her upturned face, and they melted against each other. It was like a romantic postcard and a cosmic jab at my feelings all at once. I envied these people in a way I hadn’t experienced since I’d turned. Oh, I missed my humanity from time to time, but the point of all that had been stolen from me had never been driven home so incredibly hard before.

  “This is…”

  “Beautiful,” Max finished for me. “This is my favorite part of the city. It’s so alive, you’d never know it wasn’t day.”

  Miserably, I closed my eyes. “I was going to say ‘unbearable.’”

  “Carrie, you okay?” He clasped my arm.

  I put my hand over his. The romance of the place was getting to me, that was all. “I’m fine. Just worn out from the trip and worried about Nathan. It’s nothing, really.”

  “Well, let’s get this over with, then.” He pointed to a redbrick building with beautiful white trim around the windows. At street level, patrons spilled out of a bustling café.

  “That,” Max said with a note of wistfulness in his voice, “is the headquarters of the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not quite sure I follow. Is it the two floors of what appear to be apartments upstairs, or the place with the dinner menu posted on the window?”

  “You’ll see.” He slung my bag across his shoulder and grabbed my hand.

  The café was hip with black walls and blue neon recessed lighting. The clientele dined off square plates with barely any food on them—fitting, since they were all thin as rails.

  The maître d’, a handsome, haughty young man all in black, looked up from his reservation book. When he saw Max, he grinned. “Ah, Senor Harrison. And this is?”

  “Dr. Carrie Ames. She’s got a reservation.” Max winked at the man, though it was barely perceptible.

  The maître d’ seemed to catch the meaning behind the expression, and he smiled pleasantly. “Follow me, please.”

  We wound our way among the tables toward a steel door with a black velvet rope in front of it. A small, black label bearing the letters V.I.P. proclaimed its purpose. Diners looked up with interest as we passed, probably trying to figure out how we, in our slept-in clothes, could possibly be VIP’s.

  The door was an elevator. The black button blended in with the wall. The maître d’ pushed it and the panel slid open, allowing us inside.

  Once the door closed, the young man turned to us. “First time visiting the Movement, Doctor?”

  “First time visiting Spain, as a matter of fact.” I tried to keep my tone light. I wasn’t sure if I should give away my non-Movement status or not.

  “You’ll love it here.” The man’s English was slightly accented, but very good. “After six hundred years, I’m still not sick of it.”

  Our conversation was cut short by a rude electronic voice. It droned on in several different languages before it reached English. “Voice recognition confirmation required.”

  The maître d’ held a finger to his lips to warn me to silence before stating, “Miguel.”

  “Voice sample confirmed,” the voice informed us after a litany of foreign tongues. “Please enter security clearance code” was the next instruction I could understand.

  “Miguel is the front line here at the Movement,” Max explained as the vampire flipped open a hidden panel and punched a sequence of numbers on the keypad. “Nobody gets in without his okay. Still, there’s plenty of backup.”

  “The waiter thing is a, how do the spy movies put it, a cover,” Miguel said with a wry grin.

  “What kind of backup?” I peered over Miguel’s arm as the keypad retracted and the panel slid back into place. “What happens if you get it wrong?”

  “A debilitating electronic impulse would momentarily paralyze us and the elevator would be sent to a secure floor. Assassins would be waiting to detain and interrogate us until our credentials cleared,” Max said with a shrug. “It’s not so bad.”

  “You would know,” Miguel said with a laugh, clapping him on the back. “Max is not allowed to take the elevator by himself anymore.”

  Max was about to snipe back at him when the doors opened on a reception area so bright I had to shield my eyes. The walls, furniture and ceiling were stark white, the overhead fluorescents blinding. Only the floor, covered in low-pile, slate-gray carpet, and a very frightening girl at the front desk, stood out.

  “Anne will take care of you from here,” Miguel said as we exited the elevator. “Buenos noches.”

  “Buenos noches,” Max repeated, though the pleasantry wasn’t directed at Miguel.

  “Hi, Max,” the girl behind the desk said with a smile. Her expression was a startling contrast to the bleakness of her appearance. Her black hair, pale skin and zombie-couture black clothing reminded me of the bored teenagers who worked at the goth shop in the mall back home.

  Max leaned casually on the tall counter. “Miss me, baby doll?”

  “Oh, yeah. You know I did,” the girl quipped with a roll of her eyes.

  “This is Dr. Carrie Ames. She should be on the amnesty list.”

  “Amnesty list?” I asked, looking over the counter with interest.

  “The ‘do not kill’ list,” the girl clarified, holding out her hand. “I’m Anne.”

  I shook it, thinking
it best to be polite in case I’d been omitted from the list. After a tense second or two of looking, she found my name. “Okay, you’re cleared to meet with General Breton in an hour. Uh, and he is in a mood today.”

  “General?” I snorted. “So, are you guys more like the Salvation Army or the actual army?”

  Max cleared his throat with a warning look. “General Breton demands the respect afforded him as an officer of the British Army.”

  “Oh, so he’s, like, a real general.” I swallowed. “Great.”

  Anne patted my arm reassuringly. “Only for, like, a couple years, and only in the War of 1812.”

  “Carrie is…new,” Max said apologetically. “Remember, some of us are not quite as old as you.”

  Looking at the girl, I had a hard time believing she wasn’t a sixteen-year-old human, but I’m a firm believer in never asking a woman her age.

  “Sorry,” Anne said sheepishly. Then, brightening, she asked, “Do you want the tour while you wait?”

  “Sure,” I answered for both Max and me. I wasn’t about to stroll the halls of the Movement without him there to protect me in case some bored assassin got a hankering to kill.

  Anne motioned for us to follow her as she walked to a set of double doors and slid a badge through a card reader. There was a buzz, then the lock popped loudly. She opened the door and ushered us inside.

  The inner sanctum of the Movement was decorated similarly to the lobby, but doors with badge readers lined the hallway. Sentries were posted at regular intervals, clad in the same black uniform I’d seen the assassins wear the night they stormed Cyrus’s mansion.

  “All the rooms with blue labels like these are safe ones in the event of a security breach.” She pulled one door open to reveal an office. A woman in a long, flowing caftan and a high turban looked up blandly from a pile of paperwork. “Something I can help you with?”

  “Just pointing out the safe rooms to our visitors,” Anne said cheerfully before she closed the door again.

  “So, what are safe rooms?” I had to admit, the security around Movement headquarters wasn’t as impressive as I’d imagined it to be.

  “Safe rooms are exactly where you want to be when you hear the security breach countdown announcement,” Max interjected. “If someone manages to get in, Anne can pull the alarm. You’ve got thirty seconds to get into a safe room—they’re all unlocked—before the UV lights come on.”

  “Frying any vampire roaming the halls,” she finished for him. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Pretty cool,” I agreed, sounding for all the world like a mom trying to imitate her teen daughter’s speech. “But what if it’s not a vampire? What if a human gets in?”

  “We have a contingency plan for that,” Anne replied smugly. “A furry contingency plan.”

  “Werewolves.” Max made a disgusted noise. “They’re not affected by UV lights. They do a manual sweep of the halls and kill anything still out there.”

  The idea that at any time someone could flip a switch and subject us to unnatural, but seriously harmful, daylight unnerved me, and I flinched as the fluorescent bulbs flickered above us.

  “Don’t worry,” Anne said with a laugh. “Only a handful of people have the security breach code. Keeps us safer that way.”

  The tour continued through a maze of downward sloping halls. Each level had heightened security, like the Pentagon back home. Anne explained what some of the rooms contained, and I nodded politely, but my mind kept wandering to my worries over Nathan.

  “And this,” she said, sliding her card through a reader and opening a heavy door, “is where our tour ends. General Breton’s office.”

  “Well, thanks,” I offered lamely. “This has been…educational.”

  “You mean boring.” Anne sighed dramatically. She might have been hundreds of years old, but she had the sarcastic American teenager act down pat. “Just imagine living here.”

  “Wah, wah, wah,” Max teased cheerfully. “We’ll see you on the way out.”

  Anne left us at the door with a little wave. Before Max could enter the office, I put my hand on his shoulder. “Okay, I get it. High security, superparanoia. Why are we here?”

  “We’re here because we need to help Nathan.” Max put his foot in the door and let it close a bit. “Listen, it’s pretty clear that whatever happened to him was a spell someone cast. The Movement can help us find out who.”

  “How? Do they keep a database of all witches, too? It would be impossible! Do you have any clue how many fifteen-year-old Sabrina wannabes there are out there?” I wanted to kick the wall, I was so frustrated. “Can you just please give me a straight answer? You always have before!”

  “Fine!” He scanned the hallway before he spoke. “We’re here to see the Oracle.”

  “The Oracle?” I repeated, a ridiculous image of the magic mirror from Snow White popping into my brain.

  “She’s a vampire, a really old one. She knows things. She knows practically everything, and what she doesn’t, she can find out. But she’s dangerous.” Max blew out a breath, as if he knew the inevitable was about to come. “I was hoping I could convince Breton to let me in to see her.”

  “Without me, right?” What was it with male vampires that they thought I needed their constant protection? “No way.”

  “Carrie, you don’t understand. She’s completely unpredictable, and she’s got this telekinesis thing…. She can kill you, Carrie. With her mind. Now, I’ve got no one depending on me. If I get poofed to dust, fine. But you need to be around for Nathan. I’m not gonna be responsible for getting you killed.” His mouth set in a grim line. “And my impassioned speech is not moving you at all.”

  “Not an inch.” I eyed the door. “Do you think this general will go along with your plan?”

  Max considered a moment. “I think we have a better chance with him than with some of the others. Just let me do the talking, okay?”

  My jaw dropped. “You know I want to help Nathan! Do you think I’d do something to jeopardize our chances?”

  “Not intentionally.” He opened the door and motioned me inside.

  “What do you mean, not intentionally?” I demanded. But he wouldn’t say anything more. I sighed and walked in to our meeting with General Breton.

  Chapter 5

  Resistance

  “What were you like before you died?”

  The question startled Cyrus. He’d thought the Mouse asleep. If anyone could sleep through the noise the Fangs made upstairs. It seemed almost as soon as the sun went down, the music started and the engines roared to life, and then there was the inevitable screaming. Usually, the Mouse endeavored to be asleep before then. Having days of experience with them, she knew the Fangs’ feeding schedule.

  Cyrus would have been asleep himself, if he’d had the testicular fortitude to take the bed from her. He comforted himself by reasoning he liked the sounds of the screaming upstairs. He tugged his thin blanket in a futile attempt to cover his entire body. The hideous, polyester preacher clothes bunched with every movement, but he shuddered to imagine the rough upholstery against his naked skin, so he kept them on.

  “What do you mean?” he asked now.

  She rolled to face him. She’d stopped cringing from him, at least. Maybe the dark helped. “They brought you back from the dead. What were you like before you died? Were you…the way you are now?”

  “Human?” Cyrus sniffed derisively. “No, I wasn’t human.”

  “No.” Wrinkles of frustration creased her brow as she sighed. “Did you…hurt people?”

  He flinched when her hand strayed to her bandaged throat. He hated himself for regretting he’d hurt her. It was growing tiresome, this feeling of shame at doing something he would have found perfectly natural in the past.

  “Of course I did. And far worse than you got.” When she didn’t respond, a wicked impulse overtook him. The first time he’d killed, he’d been put off by it. But he’d turned it into a game then, to make it engaging.
What he’d done to her before had been mindless. How foolish of him. It had always been the chase that satisfied him. “I used to love girls like you.”

  She leaned up on her elbows, a hint of fear in her eyes. “What do you mean, like me?”

  Shrugging, he folded the chair’s footrest and sat up. “I’m sure you know your type. Starving for affection the way a dog starves for table scraps. Just plain enough that they never get the attention they want, but pretty enough to get noticed by men who are truly desperate. I’ll bet you hiked that sundress up for your fair share of please-love-me fucks.”

  She sat up, hugged her knees. “You’re wrong.”

  “Of course I am.” He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at her. “You were one of the good girls.”

  Uncertainty quivered in her watery eyes as she nodded.

  “Good girls don’t exist.” He sat beside her on the bed and placed his hand on her blanket-covered knee. “No matter how they tease, no matter how they insist they want to stay pure, they’re burning to know what it’s like.”

  “What…” She closed her eyes, shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “What what’s like?”

  Cyrus peeled back the blanket slowly, and she hurried to arrange her skirt over her knees. He reached beneath her legs and cupped the warm, rounded muscle of her calf. “The feeling of completely surrendering yourself to another person.”

  “I’ve never—” Her breath hitched, cutting her denial short.

  “You have.” He moved his hand up, skimming the bend of her knee. She shivered, but didn’t draw away.

  He stilled his hand. “You don’t have to deny it. I’ve had enough girls like you to know what’s happening in your head. You’re wondering what I did to them to make them give in. What pleasure I gave them to wear them down so they would surrender to me without hesitation. And you’re wondering if I’ll do the same to you.”

  He slid over her in one smooth motion. She gave no resistance, parting her thighs so he could lie between them. It was fear more than desire that made her compliant, he could tell by the look in her eyes. It encouraged him to continue.