by J. L. McCoy
“What in the world?” I asked aloud, my brow furrowed deeply in confusion.
“Morrison?”
“She was just here,” I managed to say as I looked around the room in shock. “She said I would... become... she said....”
“Are you feeling okay?” he asked, coming up to me and taking me by the elbow, almost like he was worried I’d faint or something.
“I...I...”
“Okay, maybe you should sit down,” he said, definitely worried this time. “Do you need to feed? Are you okay? Talk to me, Skye.”
“She was right here, Hagan!” I exclaimed earnestly, turning and fisting the front of his shirt. “She was right here, and she just vanished!”
“There’s no one up here,” he explained gently, worry painting the entirety of his face. “Smell the air, Skye. There’s not a trace of scent, vampire or otherwise.”
Letting go of his shirt, I slowly spun as I took in the room. It was completely different than the one I’d just been in. “This is... this is... bullshit!” I exclaimed before using my arm to push him aside.
I was going to go downstairs and speak to the staff. Something had just happened up here. I didn’t imagine it. It happened dammit!
Racing down the stairs, I came to the first floor and immediately reached over the counter and grabbed the first person I came to by the upper arms.
“Where did she go?” I asked, desperation and a touch of madness quivering in my voice. “She was just there.”
“Wh-where did who go?” he man asked, his body quaking in terror.
“The woman! The old woman with the silver hair. Where is she?” She still hadn’t answered my question, and I needed to know what was inside of me. I had to know! And I had to know how to remove it!
“There—there’s no one here like that,” he answered, his eyes wide and afraid.
“I just saw her. I just talked to her.”
“Morrison!” Hagan yelled as he popped out of the stairwell and came charging over to me. “Let him go.”
“Not until he answers my question!” I snarled, rage burning inside of me. He had answers, and I wanted them. He knew where the woman was but was keeping it from me.
“We’ve got a problem,” I heard Hagan radio to Corvus. “Get your ass in here.”
“Ma’am, please,” the man pleaded, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman approach.
“W-we are the only people here,” she explained, terrified as well, as she motioned her hand to another woman standing a few feet from her.
“Stop lying to me!” I screamed. “I just saw her. We were talking, and now she’s gone. Where is she?”
“P-please,” he man stuttered before the woman spoke up.
“We don’t go up there.”
“What? Why?” I asked, letting go of the man and flashing over to her.
She yelped and backed up a few feet to put some space between us, and I allowed her to. I’d let her do anything she wanted as long as I got my answers. “B-because... I believe the teahouse is haunted, ma’am.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” I scoffed angrily.
“I-it’s true,” the man said. “I’ve seen objects move on their own.”
“Ghosts don’t exist, so stop feeding me that line of crap! I want to know where the woman is, and I want to know now!”
The woman in front of me started crying, and I gasped as I stepped back from her. I’d scared the living hell out of her and hadn’t realized what I was doing. I glanced up and to the left, catching my reflection in the storefront glass, and I gasped again. My eyes were black as midnight and my fangs were out for all to see.
Just then I heard the tinkling of the bells above the teahouse door and spun to find Corvus marching in.
“Get her out of here!” Hagan bellowed to him.
Corvus reached my side, gave me a disapproving tsk, grabbed me by the upper arm, and marched me outside. I didn’t put up a fight because I knew without a doubt that I’d crossed several lines in there, and now Hagan was going to have to clean it up.
“Why do I miss all the good stuff?” Corvus asked as he sat me down on a bench, crossing his arms over his chest and gazing down at me with a grain of judgement.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I demanded sourly.
“Maybe I would if you’d put your fangs away and got ahold of yourself.”
Realizing I still had them out, I closed my eyes, took several deep, cleansing breaths, and slid my fangs up as I felt my eyes change back to normal.
“Care to tell me what the hell happened in there?”
“No,” I stated plainly as I scowled up at him, leaving no room for discussion.
“You become darker every time I see you, Skye. I’d say that was a good thing, but in your case, it is concerning. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I do know you teleported to Amun yesterday by accident. His influence on you is becoming plainer by the day. I’m worried about you, kitten.”
Sighing, I turned my head away and was introspective for a few moments before I agreed with him. “I’m worried about me too.”
I heard Hagan’s angry, pounding footsteps before I saw him, and I knew by the look on his face that I was in trouble.
“Just what the hell was that in there?”
“I’m sorry.” I sighed, looking him in the eye as he came to stand in front of me.
“You fucked up big time, Morrison! You completely lost your shit and outed our kind to humans! That is expressly forbidden. You know that, and you did it anyway!”
“I’m sorry,” I conveyed louder and was brutally honest. “I couldn’t help it. I saw something up there, sir. The woman said I had evil inside of me and was getting ready to tell me what it was and how to remove it when you came in. And she was gone, sir. Poof, just like that. I needed those answers. I need them.”
“There was no one up there,” he said, speaking to me but sharing a look with Corvus.
“You don’t believe me?” I asked, injured by the fact that he thought I was lying.
“No, I believe you think you saw something,” he said, looking back down at me.
I scoffed and stood up, forcing him back a little so I had some space between us. “You think I’m batshit crazy, don’t you?”
“I believe you’ve been under a great deal of stress for a long time and that maybe it’s finally gotten to you,” he said honestly, gazing down at me with concern.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Hagan! Don’t give me that load of crap, okay? Remember who you are talking to.”
“And you remember who you are talking to,” he said, practically growling at my defiance.
“This is riveting, truly, but I think we need to get the hell back to the plane and debrief before our human friends over there call in the pitchforks.”
A brief look over my shoulder found the three human staff peering at us through the shop window. When they saw us looking at them, they immediately scrambled away from the door.
“How did you handle that?” I reluctantly asked Hagan.
“A just apologized,” he scoffed. “How do you think? I mesmerized the hell out of them into thinking you were just some crazy drunk American tourist.”
I gasped as I looked up at him. Hagan had never divulged his Divine Power to me before, and I was shocked at the admission.
“Oh good,” Corvus said, visibly breathing a sigh of relief.
“Let’s get back to the plane. This isn’t the time or the place to have the discussion we need to have, Morrison.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I sighed, turning my back on him as I started walking. “I saw someone, and I don’t give two shits if either of you believe me.”
I knew I had messed up royally and was not looking forward to the wrath Hagan would no doubt dish out. I was angry, but mostly at myself. Were my eyes just playing tricks on me? Was this a hallucination brought on by Amun to trick me? Did I really see and have a conversation with a freaking
ghost? Yep... now I was starting to doubt myself. I had to give it to Hagan, my story did sound crazy as hell, looking back at it from an outside view. If he had told me he just spoke to a ghost, I would have asked him if he’d taken his meds that morning.
But the question still loomed, if it wasn’t a hallucination and I really did see a ghost, and she really was telling the truth, what was it that I had inside of me? Would I really become the harbinger of death if it wasn’t removed? More importantly, how the hell did I get whatever it was out of me?
The cab ride back to the airport was deafly silent. I was lost in my own thoughts as I imagine everyone else was. They were probably thinking just how crazy and fucked up I really was. And truth was, they were right. I was half Day, half whatever the hell Amun was. I was definitely three apples short of a bushel and couldn’t fault them for their reaction to my behavior. I couldn’t believe I’d lost my shit like I had. I was better than that. I knew better than that and wasn’t looking forward to the conversation Hagan and I were going to have.
Once we arrive back at the airport, Corvus gave us a modicum of privacy as he boarded the plane, leaving Hagan and me on the tarmac to talk.
“Care to fill me in?” he asked, standing across from me as he folded his muscled arms over his chest.
“Before I tell you, I just want to ask that you please go into this with an open mind.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Sighing, I spilled the beans. I told him everything that had happened upstairs with the woman and didn’t leave a word out. I also made sure to whisper, just in case Corvus had ideas on listening in to our conversation. I didn’t need him knowing every single detail.
“Harbinger of death?” he asked, his brow furrowed hard in confusion.
“She said if I didn’t get the darkness out of me soon, it would be too late.”
He was silent for a long time as he studied me closely. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I listened meticulously and heard his inner thoughts working as he wondered if I had truly lost my shit or not. But he knew me and ultimately decided I had to have been telling the truth, however bizarre it was.
“So why don’t you fill me in on what happened in Ireland, since this is probably the only time we are going to get some real privacy,” he said finally.
“I teleported to Amun and... and it was awful, sir,” I explained, shuddering as I remembered the feeling of my flesh burning. “I saw him lying there in that silver coffin, wrapped in silver chains. And the pain... the pain was unimaginable. I felt everything he was feeling. And he begged me, sir. He begged me to save him.”
“Please tell me you didn’t unchain him, Morrison.”
“No sir,” I denied, shaking my head, “but I did ask Ruarc to come up with another solution for him. The longer he’s in pain and suffering, the more I will dream of him and suffer as well.”
“We’ve got to find a way to save you from this curse,” he said, his eyes sympathetic and surprisingly gentle.
“I want him out of my life, Hagan, so badly. My life will continue to be a nightmare the longer he’s in it.”
“And she... whoever that woman was... was about to tell you what it was and how to get rid of it?”
“Yes, that’s why I got so mad. I was seconds away from having the answers I’ve been searching for. If you hadn’t have opened that door when you did...” I didn’t finish the sentence.
“I think we should talk to Ruarc and tell him what she told you.”
“How is that supposed to help him?”
“Well, you said he’s looking for a cure for you. Any information is good information, Morrison, however insignificant you think it is.”
“We don’t have time to fly back to Ireland, and I’m definitely not having that conversation with him over the phone. Finding Stanus is my number-one priority right now, sir. I can focus on the Amun situation once Stanus is brought to justice.”
“You can teleport to Ruarc and fill him in while Corvus and I fly to the next location on the list. He needs to know what you saw. He’s the best person for this. I can train you all day long, but I can’t help you when it comes to your soul tie to Amun. Talk to Ruarc... trust Ruarc. He really does have your best interest at heart.”
Groaning, I reluctantly agreed. “Fine, I’ll go talk to him. But I want brought up to speed as soon as I get back. We’d better find Stanus at this next stop. We’re running out of time here.”
“Speaking of the Stanus situation,” he began, sighing as he ran his fingers through his long brown hair, brushing it back from his face, “I didn’t get any good intel from the humans at the teahouse. They had no idea who their true owner was. Just that they had a manager who was away on holiday and that their checks were directly deposited every month from a local bank.”
“Shit, this was another wasted trip,” I sighed, shaking my head. “This bastard really knows how to hide well.”
“Besides the woman you saw upstairs, did you find anything?”
“Just some old map,” I said, bending to get it out of the top of my boot before handing it to Hagan. “I can’t read what it says. It’s pretty old.”
Carefully unfolding it, Hagan studied it for a moment before folding it back up.
“It’s an old Viking map of Scandinavia,” he explained, handing it back to me. “Not much significance if you ask me. Nowhere in Stanus’s paperwork did we find a Scandinavian address.”
“Crap. Well, I’ll just put it with the other dead-end shit I managed to pull from Stanus’s safe. I can’t believe we wasted all this damn time here. Do you think we’ll ever find him?”
“We’ll find him, Morrison,” he stated gently. “Don’t give up hope yet.”
“I’d better go see Ruarc and get this over with,” I said, stepping back from him a few feet. “Tell Corvus to get the plane up in the air. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Be safe,” he replied, taking a few steps back as well. I shut my eyes, pulled the energy into myself, and vanished.
Chapter Eighteen
I landed with an oomph and damn near toppled over the chair Ruarc was sitting in.
“Ifran nifola!” he bellowed in surprised anger as he flashed to stand and helped steady me. “What on earth, Miss Morrison? Can you not telephone ahead and warn a guy?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but this couldn’t wait,” I answered, pushing my hair back from my face before righting the chair he’d knocked over in his haste to grab me.
“What’s so damn important?” he asked, motioning to the left with a sweep of his hand. “I’m in a meeting.”
Turning, I blanched as I noticed Rioghan sitting behind a desk, an amused smirk on his handsome face. “Oh! Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” I replied, immediately contrite as I held my hands out in front of me apologetically. “I didn’t know.”
“We were just discussing your situation,” Rioghan stated as he leaned back in his tall black leather chair and studied me. “I hear you wish to remove Amun from his confinement?”
“Well, no... I mean,” I stuttered, still shocked to be face-to-face with the leader of An Dílis. I’d only met the man once, at my Sacred Vow ceremony, but there was something old and all-knowing about him. He carried with him this air of importance and mystery, and comparatively, I felt like a bumbling idiot.
Taking a deep, cleansing breath, I slowly blew it out and calmed myself. “No, sir. I do not wish to remove him from captivity, simply the coffin and chains he is housed in.”
“The coffin guarantees Amun will never escape again,” he explained as his eyes seemed to bore into me, silently judgmental.
“The coffin also guarantees that I suffer as well,” I explained patiently. “Ruarc saw my burns with his own eyes. Even if I’m not close to him, I still have nightmares and feel his pain. That’s no way for me to live, with all due respect.”
He was silent for a long moment before he spoke. “And if I make concessions to his imprisonment for you, what will you grant me in return?”<
br />
I almost scoffed but quickly remembered who I was speaking to. “I’m guessing my undying gratitude is not enough?”
“Not this time,” he answered plainly as he studied me. “What you are asking could potentially endanger the lives of every vampire on this earth. Amun said he will stop at nothing to end Cinaed’s bloodline. What’s to say he stops there once he’s taken all of you out? He will still need a vampire’s blood to live. That in turn endangers every vampire still walking today. You are but one vampire. Is your discomfort not worth the lives of many?”
“You make me sound selfish,” I commented, swallowing thickly. Deep down I knew it was a selfish request. But could I continue to live this way, with a part of him inside me for eternity? What’s to say the nightmares wouldn’t drive me insane as well after a few centuries?
“I asked what you would give me in turn?” he questioned, ignoring my comment altogether.
I glanced over at Ruarc for guidance, but he just shook his head at me.
Turning back to Rioghan, I chewed my bottom lip as I seriously thought it over. After a long while, I came up with the only solution I had. “I’ll come here and train with An Dílis. I will also guarantee you my services any time you need them.”
“I will take your request under advisement,” he said, his eyes darting to Ruarc’s before he glanced back at me. I tried reading his thoughts to gauge my chances of getting what I wanted, but it was nothing but silence in his head. I couldn’t read him at all, and that shocked me. Never before had I met another person or vampire that I could not read. The knowledge was unsettling.
Ruarc, on the other hand, was ecstatic. I knew he’d wanted me to join An Dílis, and this was the closest he’d gotten so far.
“Tell me,” Rioghan said, ripping me out of my inner thoughts, “why have you come?”
“Oh, well, something happened to me in Amsterdam a few minutes ago. Hagan thought it would be a good idea to talk to Ruarc about it, but it can wait.”
“Nonsense, Miss Morrison,” he replied, steepling his fingers in front of him as he watched me with renewed interest. “Tell us why you’re here.”