by Rob Cornell
And I had damn well liked him, too.
As gently as I could, I pulled the chain off from around his neck. Then I held it out in front of me, the silver cross dangling at eye level. I noticed a strange glaze on the cross, almost like cooked bacon fat. I laughed when I realized what it was. Barry must have pressed this against one of the vamps he’d tussled with. The gunk was sizzled vamp flesh. And since it had remained flesh instead of turning to dust, the vamp was likely still alive.
Barry had given me a way to find the bloodsuckers who killed him.
Chapter Sixteen
Despite what had happened with Odi when I tried to teach him some flame magic, Sly allowed me and Mom to use his place to conjure some magic of our own. With the vamp goop stuck to Barry’s cross necklace, we could use it as an ingredient in a vision spell. I’d done something similar when trying to track down Goulet after he had kidnapped Mom. But that had been with remains from an already dead vampire—I had used his dust. Since we were dealing with one who was still alive, we didn’t have to look into the vampire’s past; we could get a good peek into his present.
We had gathered the necessary supplies on the way over to Sly’s. First stop was the church down the street from the Switch. Using an empty plastic water bottle from the back seat of my car, we scooped up some holy water from the bowl at the church’s entrance. I think the priest spotted us, but we were in and out before he had a chance to say anything.
Then we hit a dollar store to get the rest of the stuff—a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, a plastic Elmo bowl, and a paring knife that would probably go dull the second it cut anything. But it would work fine for our purposes.
When we got to Sly’s place, we spread out the stuff on the kitchen table.
His kitchen smelled like gingerbread, as if he’d done some baking recently. But I doubted it was cookies he’d put in the oven. Probably one of his herbal treatments. My guess, it had super relaxing properties that not even a packed pipe of weed could compete with.
He deserved it, the poor bastard. I hoped he was insured by a standard company, because the Ministry’s payouts were probably deadlocked with all the claims they must have been getting after the riots.
Mom stepped back from the table, her gaze roving over the items. Then she pulled out a chair, but instead of taking it, she gestured for me to sit.
I stepped back and held my hands out. “Um, no thanks. You’re better at the small stuff than me.”
She rose an eyebrow. “I thought you’d come around on that. There’s no small magic—”
“Yes,” I said, not wanting to hear one of Dad’s truisms. Not now. “I’m working on learning some more subtle magic. But I haven’t had a chance to really perfect anything. Especially not this spell.”
She crossed her arms. She gave me one of those narrow-eyed looks she used to when I was a kid and she had called me out on my trademark stubbornness. “It’s a simple spell. You used almost this exact one to find me.”
“And it blew every ounce of magic clean out of me.”
She stepped forward and gently nudged me toward the chair with her elbow. “You want to learn,” she said, “let me teach you.”
“Now’s not really—”
“Shut up and sit down, Sebastian.”
I sighed and plopped onto the chair. The wooden ribs in the chair’s back felt especially hard. I scooted to the edge of the chair, but then my ass started going numb from the loss of circulation through my legs. I slid back a little and found a compromise that didn’t feel any more comfortable, but at least I wouldn’t lose my legs from lack of blood flow.
“Quit fidgeting,” Mom said. “You’re like a little kid who doesn’t want to eat his broccoli.”
“I love broccoli.”
“Stop stalling.”
I looked over the funny tools at my disposal. These items weren’t half as sophisticated as those I had used last time I had tried a similar spell. No mortar and pestle. Chintzy plastic sunglasses instead of the real glasses with wire frames. But I was somehow supposed to do better this time. The muscles in my neck had tied themselves in knots. I tried to relax without much success.
Mom, now standing behind me, rested a hand on my shoulder. I felt a small spark of magic, then those tense muscles eased.
My pending headache averted, I took a deep breath and picked up the crucifix.
I used the paring knife to scrape the vamp gristle into the Elmo bowl. A thick clump landed right in poor Elmo’s eye, but he kept on smiling. Once I had scraped as much crisp flesh into the bowl as I could get, I set the necklace aside. I picked up the plastic water bottle of holy water. I dumped the blessed water into the bowl. It filled the bowl up about a quarter of an inch. The clusters of cooked vampire rolled around in the water like…well, like boogers.
I grimaced, set the plastic bottle aside, and twisted in my chair so I could look up at Mom.
“Vampire flesh in holy water,” I said. “The source and the weakness. Now I need a part of myself.”
She nodded.
“So…?”
“The knife, Sebastian,” she said with restrained annoyance.
“Blood is old school. Last time, I used a nail clipping.”
“And last time,” she said, “you blew every ounce of magic clean out of you. Isn’t that what you said?”
“It’s not nice to use my own words against me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Blood will make it easier for you. There’s more power in it to work with. For someone whose primary skills lie in elemental manipulation, and who has seldom done low key magic, I have to say, it was pretty ambitious of you to think you could pull it off with a little bit of your nail.”
“Thanks, Mom. I feel better already.”
She pressed her fingertips against my jaw and gently pushed so I looked back at the table. “Time to bleed a little, son.”
I didn’t want to look like a weakling. Mom had already busted my balls enough. So I splayed my left hand out and sliced straight across my palm with the paring knife. It stung like a bitch, but I didn’t so much as say ouch. Blood immediately ran down to the edge of my hand and dripped off onto the table. Luckily, Sly hadn’t laid out a table cloth. He didn’t need me staining his stuff with my blood.
I moved my hand over the bowl and let the blood continue to dribble. The drops exploded into red swirls when they hit the holy water. I bled into the bowl until the water turned completely red. Only then did I realize I didn’t have anything to staunch the wound.
Mom had thought ahead, though. She held out a dishtowel she must have pulled from one of the drawers in the kitchen.
So much for keeping my blood out of Sly’s things.
But I didn’t want to bleed all over myself either. I took the rag and wrapped it around my hand, then tucked in one end to keep it in place.
All I had left on the table was a bowl of holy blood water with vampire bit floaters and the cheap sunglasses. The glasses had bright yellow frames, but least they weren’t those silly oversized kind. I could retain that much dignity, at least. I picked the glasses up, turned them from side to side as if they were an ancient relic fresh out of the dirt.
“The spell isn’t going to cast itself, you know.”
I looked over my shoulder at Mom, doing my best to keep from sticking my tongue out at her. Boy was I having flashbacks to my childhood right then. But instead of resenting the memories, I softened to them. All those times Mom or Dad had leaned over my shoulder while I did my studies, learning about this arcane theory or that ancient magical culture or, best of all, pouring through spell books. I had taken that all for granted. Now a part of me desperately wanted to go back. But, as far as I knew, there wasn’t a kind of magic that could allow time travel. Not in the literal sense anyway.
“Last time, the stuff turned into a paste I could smear on the glasses.”
“It’s magic,” Mom said. “Not science. Go with your gut.”
I shrugged, then dipped the lenses of
the glasses into the bowl like a tea bag. The watery mixture didn’t stick to the plastic. Only a few beads rolled around on the inside like rain drops. And when I raised the glasses to put them on, the drops scurried down and dripped off the frames, back into the bowl.
I didn’t hesitate, though. Going with my gut, as Mom suggested, I put the glasses on. They felt cold against my face, and the moisture made my skin crawl knowing where it had come from.
Mom rested her hand on my shoulder again. “Now, you only need a spark of magic. You have to look at your power in a whole new way.”
“Seriously, Mom. Maybe we should swap places.”
“It’s too late for that. You’ll spoil the spell.”
I couldn’t help remembering the feeling from the last spell, how I felt like I was melting inside, how empty I felt when it was all over. Despite Mom’s touch of magic, my shoulders tensed again. The start of a headache crawled up the back of my neck.
“What do you mean I have to look at my power in a new way? What way?”
“Think of it as a kiss. You don’t want to slip the spell your tongue—”
“Aw, come on.”
“—you aren’t trying to get to third base. This is your first date. You’re on the porch to her house. It’s time to say goodnight. Give her a peck. Nothing more.”
I laughed. “You have been out of the dating scene for too long.”
She smacked me upside the head. “It’s an analogy, for the gods’ sake.”
“Fine. Give her a peck on the cheek. No tongue. It’s nineteen fifty. Good girls don’t kiss on the first date.”
That got me another smack to the noggin.
“I’m trying to concentrate here.”
“Uh-huh.”
I took a deep breath. No more jokes. No more stalling. I pictured Barry, on the floor, ravaged, dying, the metallic smell of blood thick in the air.
I clenched my teeth and drew on my power.
“Easy,” Mom whispered. “Now isn’t the time to let anger fuel your magic.”
I stared straight ahead. On the kitchen wall, Sly had hung a Picasso print. I recognized the Cubist portrait, but couldn’t have told you the name. I focused on the portrait’s strange eyes. I fell into those eyes. The dark shade of the sunglasses somehow didn’t darken my vision. In fact, I felt like I could see more clearly than ever before.
“That’s it,” Mom said. “A gentle touch. Barely a brush against her cheek.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. I hadn’t let loose any of my energy yet. I almost said so, but then I felt it. My focus on the painting had relaxed me, distracted me, allowing the power I held to seep away outside of my notice. And the second I realized it, a black curtain dropped over my sight.
My breath caught while a cold sweat broke out across my skin.
I remained still, not letting panic get the best of me. I knew instinctively that any sudden reaction could let the bulk of the energy I held at bay break loose, at best wrecking the spell, at worse leaving me empty and powerless like before.
I focused on my breathing, bringing it back to a steady, relaxed rhythm. I cleared my head of any intrusive thoughts or worry.
The darkness dropped away.
I found myself looking out of a pair of eyes not my own. I felt someone else’s weariness. They desperately needed sleep.
I was now in the mind of the vampire Barry had burned with his cross.
Chapter Seventeen
I could still feel the crucifix’s sting against the vamp’s neck, coincidently around the spot a vampire typically fed—at least from those who didn’t fight back.
The vamp—I couldn’t tease out a name from his subconscious, and since most people don’t go around thinking about their name, so I wasn’t likely to get one unless someone addressed him—scratched at the bubbled skin where the crucifix had touched, sparking a fresh twinge of pain. The vamp’s sharp senses could even smell the wound, a cross between corpse flesh and barbeque.
Turned his stomach. But remembering the pathetic bastard who’d done it to him bleeding out on the floor in the back of the Switch made him feel better.
My own stomach turned, too. The taste of the Tubby’s sub I’d grabbed on my way to Sly’s from the Ministry offices came back up. (I should have held off on the onions.)
The vamp walked down a nondescript hallway. Looked like the kind of plain, white-walled, thin-carpeted hall in a standard office building. It even had ugly gray rubber molding along the floor. The white walls were dirty, though. The ghosts of handprints past, dust gone black, cobwebs clinging to the corners where wall met ceiling. A few of the doorways he passed were missing the doors. I caught glimpses of broken down office furniture in the shadows of those rooms. One of the intact doors had a golden plaque that read, “Canton Summers, CFO.” Poor Mr. Summers apparently hadn’t done so well maintaining the finances of whatever company had once occupied this building.
But the vamp himself didn’t notice any of it. He’d seen it all before. A hundred times. Had walked this hall so often he barely saw it. He walked with hurried purpose. The journey an inconvenience between him and the destination.
It didn’t help that, with each step, he grew more tired. And his wound grew more and more painful.
He needed sleep, damn it. All he could think about was sleep.
He came to the end of the hall, which intersected with another hallway. He made a right. More of the same down this hall. Except this one was shorter and ended at a metal door. The door had dents here and there. Its beige paint had flaked away in spots, showing the gray steel underneath.
The vamp made a beeline for this door. He wrenched the knob as if me meant to twist it off. Then he shoved his way through and let it slam shut. The sound reverberated against cinderblock walls and down a set of stairs. The stairs went down half a flight to a landing, then turned and continued into shadows.
A hideous smell filled the stairwell. Hideous to me, at least. To the vamp it smelled like…home. But it smelled like a high school gym locker times about a thousand, as if all the boys of all the world shared this one room.
Those onions came back up again, along with the peppery flavor of salami.
I held back the urge to puke. That would have definitely put a damper on my spell.
The vampire took the stairs as if they might crumble beneath his feet, rushing down into those shadows as he continued to fight off his fatigue.
The stairs only went down one full flight. I realized there was no light source in the stairwell. I was seeing through the eyes of a vampire, where night and shadows were as good as light.
He skipped off the last step, the soles of his shoes scuffing the dusty grit on the floor. He didn’t pay much attention to where he stepped, but I could see dozens of trails in the dirty floor where plenty of others had stepped or shuffled through.
This building might have been technically abandoned, but I had a feeling it got more use than anyone on the outside would have expected. I had a feeling, as well, that I knew what this place was. But I wasn’t at all prepared for what I saw when the vampire pushed through another metal door like the one above.
The space he entered must have come close to stretching the full square footage of the entire building, a massive basement held up by rusty metal columns and the skeletal remains of studs and beams that had once formed walls to separate the space. Someone had come through and ripped everything apart to accommodate at least a hundred vampires all laying in the darkness, sleeping.
Some lay on old, thin mattresses. Others on woven mats. Some on the bare concrete. It looked like an oversized and overcrowded crack house. Only these junkies were strung out on any conventional drug. These were blood junkies. And that locker room stink permeated the air so thickly, if I had actually been present, I probably would have gagged myself into a coma.
Despite the stench, the rush of relief that poured through the vamp rushed through me as well. But I also hung onto the cold sweat and twisted st
omach from my own physical body outside the vision. The mix gave me a dirty feel, as if I should have been ashamed of something, caught in some profane act.
The vamp shuffled through the narrow spaces between his sleeping brethren, heading for one of only a few bare spots he could curl up in and finally sleep off the annoying damage from that fucker’s cross. He paused on his way, though. Something caught his eye to his left. Something dangling from a rafter.
He turned, and I could feel the smile break across his face, and the wet hunger roll across his tongue.
A male human dangled upside down by a rope tied around his ankles. His naked body was so wasted and gray, I couldn’t guess his age. His longish hair hung from his scalp in greasy, black clumps, caked with the blood weeping from the half dozen bite marks on his arms, neck, and torso.
The man’s arms hung limply, and my host vampire gazed at the coagulating blood dripping off one of the man’s fingers. The vamp’s fangs slid down, and he ran his tongue over one of them.
Only one craving held him more strongly than his need for sleep.
His hunger.
He changed direction, stepping between the sleeping others, toward the hanging man. On his way, I caught glimpses of others hanging by their feet throughout the large basement. Up to half-a-dozen from what I could tell.
I had never actually been inside a vamp nest. I hadn’t known they could be so large. Maybe this wasn’t a prime example. But I suspected this gathering represented a large portion of the rioting vampires from the night before.
The vampire I had hitched a ride in reached the hanging man. The victim’s sickly gangrenous scent made the vamp’s mouth water. When he found a crusted and bloody wound on the man’s arm and dipped his head toward it, I jerked myself out of the vision with an instinctive bolt of magical energy.