by Viola Grace
Anthony brought out tiered trays of sandwiches and tiny hamburgers.
Hellebore dove into them with delight. Apparently, she liked tea with the right bait.
Raven asked, “So, what is our quest?”
Max nibbled at a sandwich and sipped at the Lap Seng Souchon tea that Anthony poured. The smoky taste was delightful and the cucumber sandwich was refreshing.
“On my fifth anniversary as a turned being, I have to go and try to get in touch with pieces of my soul assumed to be lost in the transition. This is the point where I would leave my parent vampire and go off on my own. If I were a vampire, that is.”
Raven blinked, “You still have to do it?”
“The Guild doesn’t have a separate rule for Abominations. They weren’t expecting one to actually turn up. Any that have occurred in the past have been destroyed by their maker.”
Hellebore mumbled around a tiny bacon cheeseburger. “There actually have been more?”
“A few throughout vampire history, but none of the makers would admit to how their abomination came to be.” Max laughed, “It was pretty much a mystery until I blew the whole thing wide open.”
“So, where do we start?” Hellebore kept working her way through the sandwiches.
“I thought you didn’t like taking tea.” Max chuckled.
“I didn’t think I did. Usually, it is nasty, damp sandwiches and stale scones. My hat’s off to Anthony.”
The elf in question returned with a smile. “Thank you for the compliment.”
“You deserve it. I hadn’t realized how hungry maintaining those wards had made me.”
Max winced. “Sorry about that. I forgot how much effort wards take. It is easy enough for me. I just ask other people to do it.”
“It isn’t a problem. I was happy to do it. I rarely get a chance to do something other than entertain.” Hellebore finally slowed in her consumption.
Max and Raven were already working on the desserts. Raven had a thing for lemon tarts, and she wasn’t shy about claiming them all on her plate.
Max ate an éclair carefully; she enjoyed them so much that her teeth extended a little when she bit down on one. “We have to go through all the motions of my turning night, ending with my appearance at the Guild Hall. Once that is done, we can change and the party begins.”
Raven arched her brow. “Just like that?”
“Well, the guild members who don’t like me will have the opportunity to try and kill me, but that shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?” Max raised her brows, and her friends stared at her slack-jawed.
While they were distracted, she went in for another éclair. It took effort to maintain her figure, and as long as Gregori was fascinated by it, she would keep the curves that he enjoyed. His enjoyment translated to hers, after all.
Chapter Six
She drove to Club Nyt without too many twists and turns. Raven looked nervous and Hellebore was humming.
“I swear, there is no danger to you. They just want to kill me, and I am ready for it.” Max shrugged. When she had learned of this particular event, she had been less than sanguine, but now that the day was here, she put on her big-girl panties and was ready for anything. At least the early start meant that she would engage in the first leg of her journey without vampire interference.
The club was closed, but she opened the door with her master key. It was a switch from the first night, being hauled along in the wake of her cousin. Tabby neither knew nor cared that Max was now a business owner. Tabby merely enjoyed her new life and new babies.
She escorted her friends inside, flicking the lights on as she went. The position of the booths was still the same, and she settled in. “This is where it started.”
Music started to play, and all three of them looked toward the DJ booth. No one was there, but the music was pounding.
Max got to her feet and used her senses. No one but her two friends was there. No sliding mind of a vampire and no heartbeats either.
“This is weird.”
As she blinked, the lights dimmed and a spectral re-enactment of that night five years ago began.
Raven whispered, “What is going on?”
Hellebore answered, “I have seen this spell once before. It is a turning-points spell. This is huge.”
“I can’t see anything.” Raven drummed her fingers on the table.
Hellebore began to describe the goings on.
Max sat and watched her cousin walk through the door with herself of five years ago right behind her. It was amazing how buttoned down she looked, but the choker showed her wild side peeking out.
“Wow. That takes me back.” Max watched herself walk in and take a seat at the booth that she was standing next to. It was all very confusing.
She watched the rest of their party arrive, the whole time Hellebore kept up a visual-impairment description for Raven. It was solid magic moving around and the midwife couldn’t see it.
They watched, and Max couldn’t move until Tabby was dancing with the vampire and phantom-Max got to her feet. They overlapped for a moment and Max felt a joining inside her. Emotion that she had not felt in years rippled through her. She was wary, afraid for Tabby and horribly unsure as to what was going on.
She followed phantom Tabby and Steve out into the back alley. Hellebore and Raven followed her, but she couldn’t focus on them. Tabby was in danger, and someone had to do something.
She saw the man and heard Tabby squeak. She grabbed a chunk of wood. “Oy, jackass, get your face off my cousin!”
The phantom stranger had his mouth on Tabby’s neck and the whites of her eyes were showing with the pain. He didn’t move and Tabby whined softly.
With her hands clenched on the wood, Max swung at his shoulder and knocked him three feet away from her cousin.
“What do you think you are doing, cow?” His snarl displayed bloody lips and teeth that glowed eerily in the darkness.
“Getting you away from her, ass hat.” Max held the wood like a broadsword.
“You don’t want to do that.” His eyes glowed a creepy green, and she felt a tugging, like she didn’t actually want to do whatever she was thinking about.
Before she could track his movement, he grabbed her and shoved her up against the wall, his fangs gleaming in the darkness. Fangs? What the hell? His hand covered her mouth as he swooped in to bite her neck, and she did what came naturally.
With all her power, she closed her teeth on his hand and tore a chunk of skin off his palm. Blood spilled into Max’s mouth, and her jaw was held so tightly, she couldn’t spit. He was gnawing at her neck, but he couldn’t do more than scratch the surface, her choker prevented him from getting a solid grip.
Strength born from fear and fury helped her push him off, but the damage was done. He had tasted her blood, and she had gulped his. With a snarl, he ran down the alley, leaving Max bent over, trying to wretch, her phantom cousin sitting nearby with her hand pressed to her neck.
“Tabby, are you all right?”
“He bit me. He really bit me.”
Max groaned and reached for Tabby. She disappeared; the phantom inside Max evaporated as well. With her legs shaking, Max leaned on the wall. “What the hell was that?”
Hellebore said, “Raven, it’s over now. Max has seen the first step in what she has become. Now, we need to get to the next place that she was that night.”
Max blinked. “I brought Tabby to the hospital. He had savaged her.”
“Then, we are bound for the hospital. Do you remember what you were feeling at the time?”
“Nausea and worry. Tabby was bleeding everywhere.” Max felt the memory of that urgency.
Raven took her keys. “I will drive. I won’t be affected by whatever happens next.”
Max knew a good idea when she heard one. She took the passenger side, and Hellebore sat in the back. They were a tense group as they drove to the hospital. If this was a scavenger hunt, Max was dreading the final prize.
; Hellebore whispered, “Where were you?”
“In that exam room. That is where I heard my first heartbeats, and where Miklos convinced my cousin that she fell on a board with a nail in it.”
“Then, that is where you need to be.” Hellebore sang under her breath and the humans went around them in a wave.
Max slipped past them and into the exam room. It was mercifully empty. She stepped into the exact spot she had been in, felt the fear of her body changing, the panic at hearing heartbeats everywhere and the anger as she heard someone lying to her cousin. She had to slip past him and out into the hall. She needed to escape.
Raven grabbed her arm and the fear and panic receded. “Where do you need to go?”
“I have to get away. They are right behind me.” Max’s logical mind was swamped with that day so long ago.
“Where do you want me to take you?”
Max looked behind her and the phantom of the vampire was there. “Reverse hard, he is right behind us.”
Raven did as requested and soon was pulling smoothly out of the parking lot.
Hellebore was quiet but attentive.
“Turn right, then left, then right again.” Max bit her lip. “One of them is police. I can’t go home. It won’t be safe.”
Hellebore asked, “Where is safe?”
“The park. He didn’t like wood. His eyes were fixed on it. There are always bits of hardwood in the fire pit. I can use one to defend myself. I have to get to the park.”
Raven nodded. “To the park it is. Just tell me where to turn.”
Max muttered directions and kept an eye out behind them. She knew she was being followed, but she couldn’t see the car.
Raven brought her to the park, and the moment the car was stopped, Max jumped out. She ran to the fire pit near the covered picnic area and sorted through the wood, her hands covered with ash.
The creepy man from the alley was suddenly in front of her, and moving faster than she ever had in her life, she thrust backward before she knew where he was going to be and buried the wood in his chest. Fire exploded in her memory.
Max shouted and clutched at her temples. Pain and a rushing of cold ran through her psyche. She was untethered from the man who had begun a tenuous hold on her. Knowing the vampires as she did, she recognized that he had been driving her fear.
Hellebore made a soothing noise but stayed clear. “What do you see now?”
“A police officer. He can’t believe I killed the creep.”
“What happens next?”
“He lifts me and shakes me. He threatens me and tells me I am going to the tribunal. I get in the back of the car and he drives.”
Hellebore whispered, “Max, I really need you to join reality now.”
Max blinked several times and brushed her hands on her jeans. Her real senses picked up on the slithering minds of the vampires. They were using this moment to attack. Well, shit.
Chapter Seven
Fuzzy with memory, she pulled herself together. The attackers blurred and lunged at her, using their speed to approach her before she could respond.
She fended them off, and they retreated to a safe distance of fifty feet away.
It was Robert and his two offspring, Neil and Ricky. Who could take a vampire named Neil seriously?
Robert had wished to be tapped as Gregori’s apprentice, and it hadn’t worked out that way.
“Ladies, get to the car. They can’t hurt you or they will risk the death penalty.”
Hellebore nodded and hustled Raven back to the car. Hellebore was fast but no match for a vampire if one of them decided to break the rules.
Max looked down and was happy that she was wearing jeans but wishing that she had been more practical in her footwear. Killing vampires while in wedges lacked a certain gravitas.
The moon was out, and it spilled over them as they squared off in the open field.
“Robert, you are out of your league.”
“You are vulnerable, Abomination. Your mind is split, and you are no longer in possession of your impressive abilities.” His sneer was full of confidence.
Max laughed, “Who told you that?”
She opened their minds and found out who had misinformed them. She was going to grab that elf’s ears and make a wish.
Robert sent Neil in as the first attacker.
Max waited until he was close then stepped forward and clotheslined him. His neck snapped the moment she struck him. She knelt and shoved her hand into his chest. He burst into flames, and she started to walk toward her attackers.
Robert’s confidence was shaken; Max could feel it through the empty shell of his mind. He was no more than a puppet in a larger game, so it was almost a pity that she had to kill him. Almost. His mind was a sewer of screaming victims. He liked to play with his food.
Ricky’s control broke, and he came at her directly, screaming epithets. Max sidestepped him, punched him in the gut, bent him backward and used her hand to rip his throat out.
“You know, I had never appreciated how five years changes a person. It is peculiar, Robert. If your little attack hadn’t snapped me back to reality, I might have been stuck in that moment between then and now forever. Losing your maker is a painful process, even if the transformation wasn’t complete.”
He blinked as she started toward him. The two flash burns of his offspring probably lit her with an evil glow.
She tilted her head. “Did you feel them go?”
Robert was backing up slowly. “How can you be this strong? He said you would be weak and confused.”
“He didn’t know. No Abomination has ever been in this position before. He guessed based on vampire tradition where you try and fan the gratitude that they need to feel five years later. My maker is dead. I am grateful only to myself.”
Robert started to run but that wasn’t in the cards. She caught him with her mind and set him aflame. The living torch stumbled three steps before he collapsed in a heap of smouldering ash.
Whistling and feeling much more like herself, Max went to the water fountain and washed her hands. Once the dark blood was off and she made sure that no traces were left on the steel and porcelain, she returned to the car.
“The Guild house please, Raven.”
Raven blinked and started the car. “That was exceptionally creepy, Max.”
Hellebore nodded. “Even for vampires, that was odd.”
Max smiled. “Well, the attack part is over. Now, I have to pledge allegiance to Gregori and the party can commence.”
Hellebore was sensitive to nuance. “What else is going to happen?”
“Oh, I am going to point out a traitor in the household and see what Gregori wants me to do.”
The occupants of the car fell silent. In the supernatural world, there was one fate for traitors. Another person was going to die.
Hellebore cleared her throat just as they entered the drive to the Guild Master’s home. “Why didn’t Miklos participate?”
Max wrinkled her nose. “Because knowing what I can do now, he wouldn’t have gotten me this far.”
Raven swallowed and parked the car. “Well, we made it. Now, for the final steps and then the celebration.”
“Thank you two, again. I know that the last few days have been rough. At least it will all be over tonight.” Max smiled at them as they exited.
When they all faced the door, Raven quickly hugged Max. “You did well.”
Hellebore echoed the hug. “You did extremely well. Now, go and face the Guild Master.”
It was the final stage of her turning night before the party, and Max had never been one to delay a party.
Vampires were the only faces in evidence, but the heartbeats in the backyard let Max know that her friends were on the grounds. This was Guild business. Vampires only.
She walked the path that she had been dragged through in chains five years earlier.
In the audience room, instead of the tribunal, there was only Gregori. The courtiers were
watching from the sidelines, but none of the household staff was in evidence.
Gregori’s forehead relaxed. It was the easiest tell when he was worried about her. He got a vertical line in the centre from knitting his brows.
She walked to the position designated by protocol and knelt.
“Speak.”
“My name is Maxine Munroe, and this night I have been changed into an Abomination. I have killed my maker and my heart still beats.”
He leaned forward. “This is a grave statement. What shall I do with you?”
“I offer to serve the vampire guild for as long as I live. My growing power is at your disposal, as is my ability to read the minds of other vampires.” She bit her lip.
“If I demand your destruction?”
She blinked and smiled grimly. “You will have a fight on your hands.”
He sat back. “Is that a threat?”
“I value my life. I will defend it no matter its form.”
He nodded. “I have come to a decision.”
She remained silent.
“I will take you on as my apprentice as no other suitable candidate has come forward.” He looked around and there was challenge in his eyes.
The courtiers shifted but remained silent. Max could feel their nervousness and inability to contradict his decision.
“I gladly accept the appointment.”
A room full of people, who didn’t need to breathe except to speak, all exhaled in relief.
Gregori stood and opened his arms. “Welcome back, Max. Your party awaits.”
She laughed and ran to him, hugging him tightly. It had only been a few hours, but it felt like those years had all passed between them, keeping them apart.
“I had to destroy Robert and his offspring.”
Gregori stroked her hair. “I could smell them on you. The scent may have stopped those who were planning a final attempt.”
She chuckled. “No doubt.”
He ran his hand down her back. “You need to get changed.”