Sam gave Jack an amused look. “Feel better now?” she asked simply.
Jack smiled in satisfaction. “A little.” He turned to Jamie who was staring at him in confusion. “I’m Jack,” he said, pointing to himself. “I’m sure Sam’s told you so much about me, because, well let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to talk about me? I’m amazing.”
Jamie laughed a little. “Jamie,” he replied.
Sam rolled her eyes. “What did you find out?”
Jack sat on the windowsill, his feet on the edge of the table. “You were right,” he said to Sam. “Like us awesome Hunters, they poison their weapons—such copy-cats, I mean can’t they get an original idea? They use wolfsbane, which is poisonous to Vampires,” he added to Jamie. “And dead man’s blood, not poisonous, but does make Vampires weak. They also treat some of their weapons using UV radiation. That’s the same thing that’s in the sun, so it can burn a Vampire from the inside out.
“They hunt in groups, usually the men do the killing. They sometimes try to lure Vampires into drinking drugged bait blood, which is usually hosted in the veins of an attractive female, or male, depending on the preferences of the Vampire they’re hunting.”
“So how do we notice one if they’re undercover?” Sam asked.
“Easy,” said Jack. “They’ll smell irresistibly sweet.”
“What?” Jamie asked in confusion.
Jack sighed. “He is the worst Vampire ever,” he mumbled to Sam, then turned to Jamie. “Vampires are attracted to humans because of their warmth, their life-force and their energy. But the first thing a Vampire picks up on is a scent, how a person smells . . . do I really need to tell you something you should have learned a bazillion years ago, you dumb fucker?” Jack didn’t wait for a response, though Jamie frowned slightly and opened his mouth as if he was about to speak. Jack continued, “Vampire Hunters drink a special potion. In that potion there’s wolfsbane, the wolfsbane is absorbed into their blood while the rest of the potion protects them from being poisoned themselves. The potion also gives off a ‘come get me’ smell. So you’ll try to get close to them, and you’ll try to drink from them. But Vampire plus wolfsbane equals bad . . . If a Vampire drinks from a Vampire Hunter they’ll be paralysed after one taste. Then the Vampire Hunter will kill the Vampire.”
“So . . . I should be on the lookout for people who smell good?” Jamie asked as if that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.
Jack smiled and nodded. “Exactly.”
CHAPTER 36
The room filled with an awkward silence after Sam left. Jamie sat on his chair and stared down at the book he was supposed to be reading, but he barely paid any attention to the words. He could feel Jack watching him, even without looking up.
What can you talk to a Ghost about? he thought to himself, feeling as though he should be the one to break the silence, since it seemed as though Jack wasn’t going to do it.
“So . . . um . . . is there really a heaven?”
Jack simply stared at him like he was asking the strangest thing that he could have possibly thought of. “How the fuck would I know? I’m not there, am I?”
“I suppose not.”
“I know there’s a Limbo. I’ve been there. Technically still am.”
“Okay, so what’s Limbo like?” Jamie asked.
“Boring,” Jack said vaguely, as he stared out the window, chin resting on his fist.
“That’s it? It’s just boring?”
Jack nodded. “Speaking of which, I have stuff to do. So when Sam comes back, just tell her I had to go.”
“O—” Before Jamie had time to finish saying ‘Okay’ Jack vanished into thin air.
Jamie sat alone in the attic for countless moments, before Sam finally came back up the stairs.
Sam looked at the empty place where Jack had been when she’d left, then at Jamie. “Where did Jack go?” she asked.
“Oh, he said he had some things he needed to do. He just left about a minute ago.”
Sam sighed. “Okay.” Jamie watched her as she walked over to him. She leaned over his shoulder to peer at the page he had been staring at. His stomach flipped, his breath momentarily stuck in his throat as her hair brushed against his cheek. “Find anything useful?” she asked coolly, as if his proximity didn’t affect her at all.
“Not sure,” he said, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “All the words started to blur together about an hour ago.”
Sam nodded her head as she stepped away from him. “We’ll just work with what we know so far, and maybe we’ll figure out some more stuff later.”
The book made a thud as Jamie closed it. “Alright . . . what are we doing now?” he asked, while hoping she wouldn’t tell him it was time for him to leave.
Sam walked over to one of the shelving units on the far side of the attic and rummaged through it. She took some jars and what looked like stones and plants off the shelf. “We’re going to your house to make it safer for you to be there.”
Jamie stood and walked over to Sam. “Why does it need to be made safer?”
Sam looked at him as if he was asking a question to which the answer was extremely obvious. “Um . . . because a whole load of Vampire Hunters know where you live and will probably come back for you when you least expect it.”
“Oh . . . ” Now he felt stupid for asking. “ . . . right.”
She opened the lids of all the jars and started to pull apart the plants, putting even amounts of each into all of the jars, then she placed a stone in each one before she twisted the lids back on and carefully placed them into a bag.
“How many times in your life have you used a weapon?” Sam asked, as she walked over to some wooden chests in the corner of the room.
“Not many . . . ” Jamie said slowly, not sure why she was asking about weapons. “Not at all really, I’ve never needed a weapon. I mean, I’ve been in a few fights, but I just use what I’ve got, and anything that’s lying around. Why, how many times have you used a weapon?”
“I don’t really need weapons. I carry a dagger around with me, but that’s just because Jack insisted. I’ve never had to use it before. I’ve got enough strength to get by without having to.”
“Okay, now why are you asking about weapons?”
“Just wondering if you knew how to use them if you needed to or if I needed to teach you how to sword fight or anything.”
Jamie’s head was immediately filled with the image of Sam, a girl who couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred pounds soaking wet, wielding a sword to fight off monsters. He laughed. “You know how to sword fight?”
“Yes,” Sam said defensively. “Jack taught me. He taught me how to use all kinds of weapons. Not that I need to, but it’s a ‘just in case’ sort of thing.”
“Um . . . okay. Should I be afraid?” Jamie asked with a smile.
“You mean of me killing you? . . . No. But not because I can’t, because I don’t feel like it. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead before you could blink.”
“Wow . . . thanks,” Jamie said sarcastically.
Sam laughed. “I said I wasn’t gonna kill you . . . Chillax.”
Jamie stared at her for a moment. It was difficult to picture her using a weapon to fight someone off without laughing . . . it was difficult to picture Sam fighting at all. When he looked at her he didn’t see someone with enough Power to burn him alive without so much as blinking, he simply saw a human girl. Even though he knew she wasn’t human, it was difficult for him to think of her as anything but.
He sighed to himself. “So what are we going to do once we get to my house?”
Sam kneeled down on the floor, opened the wooden chest and pulled out three daggers. She placed two of them in the bag with the jars she had taken from the
shelves, and held the third one out to Jamie. “You keep this one on you, leave one in your bedroom, under your pillow or somewhere you have easy access to it, and keep the other in whatever room you spend most of your time. Again, leave it somewhere you’ll be able to get to quickly if you need to.”
Jamie stared uneasily at the dagger she was holding out to him. “I told you I don’t need weapons.”
She stood and walked over to Jamie, then she took his hand in hers and placed the hilt of the dagger in the palm of his hand. “Just in case you do.”
She walked away from him, leaving him holding the blade. At least it’s sheathed, he thought as he tucked it into his belt. Now I just have to be careful not to stab myself.
“I’ve got some spell jars we can bury around your house,” Sam said as she picked her bag up off the floor and pulled the strap up to her shoulder. “They’ll keep people away. And I can place some barrier runes around your house so that once people get to a certain place they can’t get any closer without an invitation from you.”
“And this Magic stuff, it will actually work?”
Sam gave Jamie a sideways glance. “You’re walking around in the sunlight, and you’re unburned, and you’re still questioning my Magic?”
Jamie smiled guiltily. “Sorry. I just want to make sure.”
“Well be sure,” Sam said, holding her head high, her eyes burning bright with Power and confidence. “My Magic never fails.”
CHAPTER 37
It took well over two hours to make the trek to Jamie’s house. Before they left Sam suggested using a portal to travel. Because apparently she has the power to open up a hole in the universe, and step through it and land somewhere else in the universe.
And she suggested they travel through a hole in the universe, as though he’d be alright with that.
It was an interesting concept, the ability to move from one place to another without taking more than one step. But Jamie was more scared by the thought of doing it than he was fascinated, so they ended up walking the whole way there.
“Okay, we can dig the first hole here.” Sam pointed to a spot on the ground twenty feet from the front door.
Jamie looked at Sam and arched an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitched in an amused smile. “We?” he asked rhetorically. “Are you going to be digging too?”
Sam stared at him as if he were insane. “You’re a Vampire!” she yelled, too loudly and casually for him to feel comfortable with her saying it aloud. “You don’t need help with manual labour. It’s not like it’s a strain for you or anything.”
Jamie laughed a little, partly from a nervous feeling that someone had heard her, but mostly from amusement. He took his jacket off, and threw it on the grass beside him. It was September, so the weather was at that awkward stage where mostly it was damp and colder as the days got darker, yet every few days there were a couple of hours where during the daylight it was too warm to be comfortable in winter clothing, yet if you wore clothes designed for warmer weather, by the time the night came you would wish your coat was heavier.
Jamie had heard—or rather read and seen on TV—that Vampires didn’t feel the effects of the weather. That was one of those things that he had managed to figure out for himself was untrue. His experience was that he was generally unbothered by the cold, unless the temperature dropped below freezing point, and the heat made him feel uncomfortable, as though his body was suffocating despite the fact that oxygen was, for the most part, optional.
He gazed up towards the sky, knowing by the position of the sun that he wouldn’t have to suffer through the heat for much longer. The sun would set in an hour or two, and the night would bring cooler weather. With a sigh, he started digging, using the shovel that he had carried here all the way from Sam’s house. “How deep am I digging this thing?”
“Not too deep. About a foot maybe. The jars aren’t huge or anything.”
“And what will you do whilst I dig?” he asked with a smile. “Watch and hope I get warm enough to take some clothes off?”
Sam rolled her eyes and sighed while shaking her head. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’ll be putting some protection runes on those trees.” She placed the bag containing the jars on the ground beside Jamie. He watched as she took her jacket off, leaving her in a set of lightweight clothes; a light grey t-shirt—which seemed well fitted around the top and became looser near the end, flowing past her hips—a pair of patterned leggings covered her legs, and on her feet she wore a pair of black hiking boots. It was the first time he’d noticed that she changed her clothes. When he’d first found her in the attic she had been wearing a dress. He briefly wondered when exactly she’d changed, and why.
Sam cleared her throat, Jamie glanced at her face to find her glaring at him. “You can stop perving on me now.” She dropped her jacket on top of his. “That’s all the clothes I’m taking off.”
Jamie laughed a little, out of embarrassment more than amusement, as she walked over to the tree behind him.
He looked over his shoulder just in time to see Sam climbing it with ease. He watched her curiously. “What are you doing?” he asked. When she told him she would be carving things into the trees he didn’t think she meant she would be climbing them first.
She took the knife out from between her teeth where she had kept it while she climbed.
“What’s it look like?” she asked rhetorically as she started carving things into the bark as near to the top as she could climb. Although the trees appeared strong, the branches near the top were old and weathered. And she was standing on them, perfectly balanced without a hint of nervousness, as if she didn’t feel them bowing beneath her.
“Please don’t fall,” Jamie mumbled to himself as he whispered a silent prayer to whatever God was out there, then he started digging. Keeping his ears on alert for the sound of a falling Sam.
The hole didn’t take all that long to dig. A little less than five minutes. Jamie dropped the shovel next to the little hole he had dug in the ground and turned to Sam, who was now standing on the tree a few over from the one she had started on. He gazed at her curiously, wondering how she had moved between them without him hearing a sound.
“What now?” he asked, thinking she should have explained what he was supposed to do in more detail. It wasn’t as though he was incompetent and needed to be given instructions one step at a time, but he didn’t say anything about that. He just assumed it was how Sam liked to work.
Never giving away more information than was necessary at the time.
Sam looked at him over her shoulder. “You need to dig another one to your left.”
Jamie sighed. “Okay . . . how far to the left?”
Sam continued carving her symbols into the tree she was perched in. “Give me a minute!” she shouted down to him. She took a few more seconds to finish her carvings, then she jumped out of the tree, knife still in hand.
Jamie leapt forward a little in an attempt to catch her, though he hesitated for long enough to not get there in time. She had already landed, feet first, on the ground. Sam fixed her clothes, wiping away flecks of dirt and broken leaves, then looked up to see Jamie staring at her.
“What?” she asked and put her free hand to her cheek as if to wipe something away. “Is there something on my face?”
Jamie shook his head. “You just jumped out of a thirty foot tree.”
Sam shrugged. “So? I landed on my feet.”
“Is that how you’ve been getting down from all the trees?”
“No,” Sam laughed. “I jumped from one to the other.”
Jamie stared at her in shock. “Are you joking?”
She shook her head. “No. Why waste time climbing up and down when I can jump?”
“What if you had fallen and hurt yourself?”
Sam shrugged in a half ‘whatever’ half ‘I don’t know’ kind
of way, then walked past him to the hole in the ground. She moved about twenty feet to the left of it and pointed down. “About here should be good.”
She’s completely insane, Jamie thought to himself as he walked over. “Okay. Can you tell me how many of these holes I need to dig and where they need to go so that I can not get my hopes up and think I’m done, then find out that I’m not?”
Sam half smiled. “Sure.”
She went back to the first hole where she had left her bag. She picked it up and took out a jar, placing it by the hole. After which she took out another and handed it to him, pointing down to indicate where it would go.
“There needs to be five,” she said. “They’ll make the five points of the star. And your house will be in the middle.” She continued moving to the left, about another twenty feet and placed a jar on the ground. “When you’re finished digging the holes the jars get buried.” She walked another twenty feet, then left a jar to mark the spot. “But before they get buried you need to cut your hand or something and put a drop of blood into each jar.”
“I have to put my blood into those?”
Sam continued in the same direction, then placed the final jar on the ground. “Well yeah. To make them protect you, you put your blood in them. Otherwise they won’t work.”
“Does it have to be blood?”
Sam rolled her eyes and mumbled, “Vampires.” Jamie didn’t know whether he should be insulted or not. “No, it doesn’t have to be blood. Blood is just the least disgusting bodily fluid you can use. So do you think you can man up and control yourself around your own blood or would you rather pee in the jars?”
Jamie looked down, creasing his brow thoughtfully. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “I think I’ll pee in the jars.”
Sam scrunched her nose up in disgust. “Eww.”
Jamie laughed at her expression, then, sighing dramatically, he threw his hands up in defeat. “Fine, I suppose I can use some blood.”
Immortal Souls: The Immortal Souls, Magic & Chaos (Book 1) Page 16