by Karen Mead
“It wasn’t her fault,” said Cassie, immediately putting her body between Miri and Aeka. “She was being used by a demon, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well we’re all being used by demons hon, but most of us don’t go around decapitating each other,” said Miri, crossing her arms defensively. “I take that kind of personally.”
Khalil stepped forward and put a comforting arm on Miri’s shoulder, and she visibly calmed, sighing and relaxing her shoulders. Cassie stared: didn’t Khalil hate vampires to a fault? What had she missed?
Just then, there was a rustling as Aeka began to stir. Cassie knelt down by her side again, wanting to be the first thing the girl saw when she awoke. Miri took another step back and Khalil wrapped his arms around her shoulders, while Sam hovered near Cassie, militant; if the girl made a threatening move towards anyone, he was probably going to strike her in the face with a closed fist and knock her out. Just because she looked helpless now didn’t mean that she was.
Aeka opened her eyes, and they were that same beguiling color that Cassie remembered: mostly dark green, but with flecks of blue and gray that evoked visions of stormy seas. She sat up very slowly, appraising the room with her eyes, then turned to Cassie. She tilted her head to the side, that same strange, birdlike motion that she had always done while wearing her helmet. It looked so different coming from a beautiful girl than an armored warrior.
“Aeka, are you alright? Can you speak?” asked Cassie. When Aeka didn’t answer, Cassie gently put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s okay, you’re safe here; you don’t have to obey that demon anymore. You’re free.”
Suddenly Aeka’s eyes seemed to glow with the light of recognition. “Sister!” she said in a little girl’s voice, and buried her face in Cassie’s chest.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Serenus entered The Daily Grind that evening with a pensive expression that clashed with his usual cheerful demeanor. He had just told Arrigio over the phone that the situation with Bennet Marcus had somehow been neutralized, at least for the time being, but he didn’t share the chairman’s obvious relief. Partially because he didn’t really understand what was going on, an unfamiliar feeling profoundly unsettling to him, and partially because he felt like over the last week, everyone’s lives had been pushed into fast-forward.
He knitted his brow as he passed a college student with a messenger bag on the way in the shop. True, he’d wanted Sam to form a proper entourage, as his mother had envisioned, for a long time. But this was all happening much too fast. First, there was all the strangeness of Ethan’s acquisition, and now Sam was gaining yet another familiar who might not be a familiar at all. And then there was the Buckley clan, who could be extraordinarily dangerous, but had a gift for blending into the wallpaper when they didn’t feel like being noticed; even among vampires, they were formidable. And Cassie was…well, whatever she was. They were working on that.
He nodded to Eugene Buckley, who was sitting at a café table keeping Ethan company. Ethan, who had apparently eaten one of DG’s sandwiches for his dinner, was showing the elder vampire how to play his game.
“—and this is how I know how much life I have left, and this is how I switch weapons,” he said, filled with the infectious pride of a child explaining something to an adult.
“Interesting. And what does this indicate?” asked Eugene, pointing to the screen.
“That’s my magic points.”
“Is it now? How lucky for you.”
Just overhearing the snippet of their conversation lifted his mood. He walked past Khalil at the register and opened the door to the break room with a smile on his face, only to lose it as soon as he saw what was going on inside.
“I can’t believe you!” Cassie yelled, almost shaking with rage.
“I told you, I didn’t mean to!” Sam replied, holding his hands up protectively; apparently, she was throwing things at him.
“You still did it!”
Behind Cassie, an absolutely gorgeous young girl in an oversized T-shirt was sitting primly on the couch, hands clasped on her bare thighs: the one Cassie called Aeka. It took some effort to tear his eyes away from her.
“What did I miss now?” asked Serenus.
“Ser!” Cassie turned to him and pointed at Sam. “He turned Mr. Golding into a rat! A rat!”
Sam looked embarrassed for a fraction of a second, then covered it up with bravado. “Look, if he didn’t want to become a rodent, he never should have majored in liberal arts. This is what happens to people who graduate with English degrees.”
When Serenus let out a cackle at that, Cassie glared at him. “It’s not funny!”
“You forget, my dear, that I’m an academic; that’s hilarious,” he said, walking over to the rat cage that Sam had propped on some kind of cleaning machine. He kneeled down gingerly and looked at the shivering creature, resisting the urge to poke the glass. “Well, this is only the second time I’ve seen this done in reality. Quite an impressive feat.”
“Is it really that rare?” asked Sam, walking over to stand next to Serenus. “Lately demons have been calling up and threatening to turn people into things, that’s where I got the idea…even though I shouldn’t have acted on it.”
“Oh, it’s common enough as a threat,” said Serenus, straightening up and putting his hands in his pockets. “But only a fraction of those who like to threaten this sort of curse can actually pull it off. It’s an incredibly complex process.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “Really? Because as I keep trying to tell Cassie,” he said, shooting her a look, “I didn’t plan it. We were arguing, and I lost it for a second, and the next thing I knew he was like this.”
“And that is the beauty of you—you don’t even know what you did!” Slowly and carefully, so as not to spook the creature, he lifted John Golding out of the cage. The rat had stopped shaking and seemed to be reasonably calm now, by rat standards.
“Look at this little thing—do you think a whole man, a whole human consciousness could fit in here?” he asked, cradling the rat gently in his arms. “And I’m not just talking the brain—I’m talking muscle memory, quirks of the metabolism, everything. Everything that makes up a human being, and it’s all in here, even though it shouldn’t be possible.”
“Great, but can we turn him back?” asked Cassie, still frowning.
“I’m getting to that. See Sam, what you did was not only curse him into an animal form, which isn’t unheard of, but you maintained everything that keeps him human at the same time. As much as it was a metamorphosing curse, it was also a time-space curse; somewhere, there’s a little pocket of space that’s all Mr. Golding: all his memories, all his sensations, a perfect copy of each and every organ. To turn someone into a rat, yet actually keep everything that defines them, you had to basically create a tiny little universe.”
Sam looked dumbstruck. “I did that without even being aware?”
Serenus shrugged, giving in to the temptation to pet the rat despite his desire to treat it with human dignity. “I think it was mostly spite; you intuitively knew that it’s no fun to turn someone into something if they don’t retain the consciousness to understand what you’ve done to them.”
“Thanks,” said Sam darkly.
Cassie waved her arms to get his attention. “Okay, so if everything that makes him Mr. Golding is still there, that means Sam can change him back, right?”
“Yes, it should mean that.”
Sam frowned and looked chastened once again. “I don’t know. I’ve never uncursed anyone in my entire life, Ser. I’ve already tried, a few times.”
Serenus spared a glance at Aeka over on the couch, a suspiciously innocuous presence in the room; her expression was impossible to read. He returned his attention to Sam.
“That’s because you’re conceiving of it all wrong. You don’t have to uncurse him, you need to do an extremely local time reversal—reverse time only for him, so he goes back to the way he was before you cursed him.”
Sam blinked, looking tired. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because that would mean dealing with the fact that space/time magic seems to be your specialty, which you aren’t prepared for. But after this, we can have no doubt.”
Sam seemed to process that for a moment, then deflated further. “They’re going to nail me for this at the blood status hearing, aren’t they?”
“One problem at a time,” said Serenus, placing the rat on the floor and standing back. “For now, let’s solve the problem of the cursed English teacher—although I guess we can’t change the fact that he’s an English teacher, so he’ll still be cursed either way.”
“You know, I really don’t get why that’s supposed to be funny,” snapped Cassie.
“Sam, borrow some of Cassie’s magic; you do your best work together with her, and this will require some concentration.”
Sam nodded and reached a hand out tentatively toward Cassie, who took it quickly, and Serenus felt a warm tingle up his spine as the magic exchange happened. He would never know what it was like to have a human familiar of his own, but he could glean a little bit just from being around these two; the magic was so strong, to his eyes it seemed to paint the air in brilliant colors. Sam closed his eyes, not releasing Cassie’s hand.
“Remember, you’re not uncursing, you’re reversing. Send Mr. Golding back to a time before this no good, very bad day.”
There was a long pause, then Sam murmured something to bypass his wordlock. Serenus was expecting the transition to happen in stages, but he was wrong: one second there was a small creature on the floor, the next moment, a fully nude 6’2 male was in front of them on all fours. Well, Sam did tend toward extremes.
“Aaaaah!” said Cassie, ripping her hand away from Sam to shield her eyes. “Aeka, cover your eyes!”
Aeka merely blinked at the naked man and tilted her head sideways.
“That man has no clothes,” she observed to no one in particular.
“You did it,” said Serenus, smiling at Sam. “I knew you would.”
John pulled himself up into a kneeling position, trying to cover himself with his hands. “Clothes, please?” he croaked in a small, hoarse voice. Sam immediately pulled the man’s clothes out of the locker where he’d stashed them and held them out.
“Sorry about that. I never meant to do that, things kind of got out of—”
“I know, I could hear the whole time,” said Golding, snatching the clothes and immediately putting on his underwear and pants. Cassie turned away, blushing furiously. Sam looked from Cassie to John and back again with a frown, and Serenus rolled his eyes at the pair of them.
Cassie kept her back turned long after John was decent. “Is it over? Can I look now?”
“Yes,” said John, still buttoning up his shirt.
“You may want to wait another minute,” Sam said with forced casualness.
Cassie ignored him and turned around. “Mr. Gold- John, I’m sorry I said I hated you. I didn’t know—”
“Don’t mention it,” he said coldly, barely acknowledging her. “Do I have permission to leave now?”
“Err, yes of course,” said Sam. “Once again, I’m sorry.”
John’s jaw tightened, and he wouldn’t meet Sam’s eyes. His deep voice quavered, a strange sound. “Stop apologizing to me like you care. And stay away from me. Goodbye.” With that, he turned on his heel and left the room, still buttoning up his shirt as he went.
Cassie looked dumbstruck, so Serenus walked over and put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, he’s had a scare and he’s not himself. He’ll get over it.” He looked over to Aeka, who still hadn’t moved. “Now, onto other matters. What about her? Apparently she can talk.”
“She talks when she wants to,” said Sam, looking all too eager to change the subject. “It’s like she knows the words but doesn’t bother, most of the time.”
“I think she’s…whatever I am,” said Cassie. Then she explained everything that had happened in Oregon, including her strange vision. While she was speaking, Sam went into the café and made Serenus a triple espresso; he had heard the story already.
By the time she was finished, they had sat down at the table and Serenus had disposed of two drinks. He looked from Cassie to Aeka and back again, bewildered. “Fascinating. I wish I could tell you what all of this means, but I have no idea.”
“Oh,” said Cassie softly. The disappointment in her voice was almost palpable.
“I will tell you one thing though: the Book of Succession is a hoax.”
Now Cassie just looked confused. “It is?”
“Fragments of it were found in a cave in Israel, near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, but they aren’t from the same era; they’re only a couple of decades old, but doctored up to look like ancient texts. A group of occultists published analysis and commentaries of it, but no one in either community—human or demonic—takes it seriously.”
“But Belial seems to think it’s real,” said Sam. “Or, from what Cassie says, he’s at least convinced his son that it is.”
“Maybe he has his own reasons for wanting to fulfill the so-called prophecy, without necessarily believing in it himself—I couldn’t tell you,” said Serenus, shrugging. “We need to talk to someone who knows more—someone who knows, well, everything.”
Sam reacted like he’d been slapped. “No.”
“It’s time, Sam. Time to find out about Cassie, time to find out about this mysterious girl who may be like her, time to find out if there’s any truth to the Book of Succession after all. I can think of only one person who might know all of those things.”
Sam looked down at his lap, crestfallen; he looked like a man who’d been told he only had months to live. Cassie just looked confused, then a glimmer of recognition dawned.
“Hey, are you talking about….” She started.
Serenus grinned. “It’s high time we paid Helen a visit.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The entourage was now large enough that organizing everything was something of a pain. It was decided that Sam, Serenus and Cassie would drive down to North Carolina to meet with Helen, with Miri in tow as Cassie’s personal guard. Aeka would have to come too, because they weren’t sure it was safe for her to be separated from Cassie; besides, it might help for Helen to be able to see her. Everyone else would stay behind in Sterling, over the strong protests of Jay and Mike.
As usual, the Buckleys would be protecting Ethan and the rest of the entourage, which should be fine, but Sam was still worried. Even though they shouldn’t be gone for more than two days, if word got out that Sam had left town, certain parties might try to swoop in and do lord knows what in his absence. When he’d shared his concerns with Eugene Buckley though, he was met with a withering look that made him feel like a small child who had misbehaved.
“Son of Sammael, I am the only remaining scion of my sire, the honorable William of Harts Grove. I have fought in more wars than you have years on this earth. I already failed you once when my subordinate, Miriam, could not protect your Cassandra. Do you think I will tolerate failing you again?”
“Err, no. Forget I mentioned it,” Sam had mumbled, chastened. And he answers to me? What is going on in the world?
Serenus’ beat-up old Volkswagon wasn’t big enough for five people, and Sam didn’t have his own car, so the professor had rented a van. They could have flown, but Serenus had advised against it; being stuck on a plane allowed for the possibility for them to be trapped in the air, or worse. So the five of them made an odd party, driving down the highway from New England to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Cassie had complained that it was her second long road trip in a week, but as Sam had pointed out, the first one was entirely her fault.
In the backseat, Miri was looking out at the road with a smile on her face, her red hair streaming in the wind that came in through the partially opened window. She looked way too happy for someone stuck in the car for a ten-hour trip, and
that was only if they lucked out with the traffic. Aeka, wearing a pair of faded denim overalls Cassie had found in the back of her closet, was sleeping with her head on Cassie’s shoulder, which she seemed to do often; the girl spent a large portion of her time asleep. Cassie was reading something on her tablet that made her alternately blush and look sick. Sam thought of asking her what was bothering her so much, but decided against it—it was probably none of his business.
He found himself regretting, for about the millionth time, giving her those earrings that made reading her mind impossible. Giving her privacy was something he’d appreciated a lot more in theory than in practice.
“Can’t we get some of those transportation amulets, like Bennet Marcus had?” Cassie asked after they’d made their first rest stop. “That seems like a much better way to travel.”
“We could, but last I heard, those things cost about $50,000 dollars a pop,” Serenus replied.
“Oh. Never mind then.”
He tried to read a paperback book on the Hundred Years War—could that have been among the wars Eugene had fought in?- but reading in the car felt strange and he gave up. Tossing the book in the glove compartment, he stretched out in the front passenger seat, trying to relax. Meanwhile, Serenus was frequently driving 80 miles an hour in a 65 mph zone.
“Are you sure you should be going this fast?” he asked.
“I would like to see Helen again before I die of old age,” Serenus replied. “And I’m keeping up with traffic.”
“Fine. Let me know when you’re getting tired and I’ll take over for you.”
“No, you won’t.”
Sam turned towards the other man slowly. “I’m sorry?”
“When was the last time you drove a car?”
Sam paused and looked away. “I got my license when I was working for Cordon Construction.”
“Yes, and I’m sure you drive very well for someone who drove for about two days five years ago, but this is serious highway driving. Just relax.”