by Lissa Kasey
“I get to scare some witch kid? I’m down with that,” Sam said.
Seiran handed a file folder over to Sam, who immediately opened it. Were the vampires supposed to have access to Dominion files? The car moved and Gabe studied Seiran as they headed toward the address.
Seiran placed a quick call to the Director of Ethics, mentioning the case he was working on, the severity of the offenses, and how he had been undermined by Director Han to the possible detriment of a child. He ended the short call, which seemed to be a voicemail with, “I hope we are in time to keep her from being abused.”
The tightness of his voice at that phrase made Gabe’s stomach hurt. Had someone abused the witch? Had it been him? He’d never thought himself possible of that sort of thing. Even in his earliest days as a vampire, he could recall stalking and seducing people, but all were adults in full use of their faculties. It was a vague memory of his childhood, as faded as it was, that made him dislike the young being used that way. Had he been? He couldn’t recall, and suspected there would be none alive to ask.
“This is sick shit,” Sam said after several minutes of reviewing the files. “I mean beyond your crappy handwriting. These kids are messed up.”
“Agreed,” Seiran said. “Did you know any of the vampires that we identified?”
“Only from their missing persons profiles. At least we know they are dead. Makes me wonder, as we have almost three dozen others who have been reported missing.”
Seiran looked at Sam. “Do you think there are more golems?”
“No idea, Ronnie. That’s strong magic. And a lot of golems if so. Who would need a golem army? And why three vampires in one golem? Are vampire souls less powerful than human ones?” He closed the file. They rode in silence for a bit. “Sorry you had to experience that today. I know you have people who handle the sexual crimes area.”
“It’s fine,” Seiran said.
“It’s not. But I know no one knew. I mean… well, fuck,” Sam said. “Sick stuff.”
“I hope the girl is okay,” Seiran said, his gaze intent out the side window.
“I’ve got other vampires in route to meet us,” Sam added. He held up his phone, showing a group text. “In case this kid gives us trouble.”
“He didn’t create it. At least I don’t think so. Just used it.”
“To rape his sister? Yeah, I know it wasn’t really her, but gross.”
The bond between Gabe and Seiran closed further, leaving Gabe gasping a little. Too much distance, his brain said. A floundering edge of darkness began to tunnel his vision, and Gabe struggled to breathe. He wasn’t sure any of them would be able to escape if his revenant got loose in the car.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe said softly. “The bond between us when closed like this, makes it harder to control the revenant.” He hated admitting it, worried that they’d put him back in the ground, even though he was doing his best. He didn’t think he should be this unsteady. But he couldn’t remember any of the specific times he’d gone to ground and returned, if they felt this way and he’d forgotten, or this was unusual.
Seiran looked back at him, and Gabe felt the wall slowly begin to release. It was like fingers uncurling from a tight fist, opening at a snail pace. Finally, Gabe could breathe. “Thank you,” he said after a moment. The darkness pressing on his sight faded and the revenant seemed to ease back into the bowels of his conscience.
“Haven’t renewed the bond?” Sam asked glancing Gabe’s way.
“Renewed the bond? I thought it never goes away?” Seiran asked.
“No, but it gets stretched and weak.”
Seiran seemed to stew in that for a minute as Sam continued to read. “What do I have to do to renew it? Give him blood?”
“Well, yeah, Ronnie. He’s a vampire.” Sam looked back at Gabe. “Holding together okay so far, right?”
“Is it normal to be so unsteady after awakening?” Gabe asked. “I can’t remember other times specific enough to recall.”
“Yes, and no?” Sam said. “I mean it’s always a little touch and go right after a bit in the ground. Never down more than a week anymore myself. But I schedule it like Max says to, and have less trouble. Once I feed from one of my guys, it’s a lot better.”
“But neither of them is your Focus,” Seiran said.
“Not officially. No vows or anything. We don’t think that I can make Luca a Focus since he’s a dhampir. His power sort of runs parallel to mine. It’s like trying to bond to a vampire I didn’t make. We’ve discussed the option with Con. But both the witches and the vampires don’t much like bonds between vampires and witches.”
“Our relationship is an anomaly?” Gabe asked about himself and Seiran.
“Rare,” Sam agreed. “But since you’re one of the bigger powers left in the vampire world, or were, everyone mostly left you alone.”
Gabe didn’t feel like a big power. He wished his memory came back in more than fits and stutters. There were too many blanks for his comfort.
The car pulled up to a giant house not unlike Seiran’s home. Though this looked bigger on the outside. One of those sprawling mansions with a dozen wings spread out like fingertips.
“Guess we’re not going for subtle,” Sam muttered, glaring at the flashlights of cops, black vehicles surrounded by thug-looking vampires, and a line of witches with badges on lanyards around their necks, all in a standoff.
The SUV stopped and Seiran didn’t wait for the driver to get out and open the door. He was first out, with Sam quick behind him.
“This is a vampire case,” one of the vampires said.
“A witch family,” one of the witches said, though her gaze fell on Seiran and it wasn’t one of the many Gabe had seen in the last few hours filled with disdain. Her expression showed respect. “Director Rou.”
“Emmaline, thanks for coming. Did you review the videos?”
“Yes. Horrible.”
“Could we have done this quieter?” Sam asked. “Seems like standing out here making noise is giving our perp a chance to run?”
“He’s not here,” one of the vampires said. “Family is. Said the kid was out back in his pool house. They have a fucking pool house in Minnesota,” the vampire was shaking his head. “But he’s not there.”
“His family just let him leave?” Seiran asked. “Did anyone fill them in? Check on the girl?”
Emmaline nodded. “I gave them the low-lights. Keeping it minimal and hopefully the worst of it out of the press. Sounds like he never returned home after originally being questioned? We’ve got the family coming in for interrogation, and I’ll have people sweeping the entire property for evidence.”
“He didn’t create it,” Seiran said. “Used it, but didn’t make it. I need to know where he got it from.”
“The house is empty right now. All staff and family are being transported to the Dominion office. I can take you back to look through his area, but we have a lot of ground to cover. We already have investigators ready to question everyone as soon as they arrive.”
Seiran sighed, sounding tired. “Fine.” He glanced at the vampires.
“I’ve got them,” Sam said. “Going to have them walk the grounds. See if we can find any of the missing vampires.”
Gabe followed as Seiran walked with the witch group toward the house. If there had been wards, they were gone now. Not even a residual lingering of energy. Were there witches who didn’t ward their homes?
“Who’s your escort?” Emmaline asked.
“Oh,” Seiran turned Gabe’s way. “This is Gabe Santini. Gabe this is Emmaline Jacques, head of my investigation team here in the USA. I’m glad you were in town.”
“Heard about the golem sighting and made our way back. Figured if it didn’t go to the vampires, it would be something big. You’re sure this thing is made from vampire souls?” She stared at Forest.
“Yes,” Seiran said.
“Seems overkill?”
“Unnecessary for sure,” Seiran agreed. �
��No idea why they put souls in it at all? A mistake in the spell maybe?”
“Is there a spell for a transfer of souls?” She asked.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Very likely an unskilled witch then? A mistake.” She seemed to pause at that, her tone hitching a little.
“Still a death sentence,” Seiran said softly, as though knowing her question without her saying it.
That seemed extreme if someone had accidentally created the golem, although Gabe supposed it depended on intent. Had they meant to make it? Or awakened to a power they didn’t know how to control? Or had something completely mundane turned dark? Didn’t any of that matter to the Dominion?
They traveled a handful of hallways and out a back door to a courtyard and a pool beyond. The house sitting on a concrete slab felt very cold, and dark. But there were police and what appeared to be agents of the Dominion moving around the space, cataloging things with photos and little numbered tabs.
“Did you find anything?” Seiran asked.
“Evidence of his presence. We’re taking his electronics, searching phone records, getting DNA from the property to see if we can match it up. Treating the whole property like a crime scene so we don’t miss anything.”
The door to the pool house was open. It was furnished grandly, but little more than a wide-open studio space. It stank of sex, which made Gabe wrinkle his nose. Especially knowing how the day had progressed. Did that mean there was another golem this kid was abusing?
“Stinks in here,” Seiran remarked. “Sex, and death?”
Did Gabe smell the death? He breathed deeply, trying to pull out the nuances of the scents, and found it there beneath the overpowering stink of dried spend. “I smell it,” he said.
“Death?” Emmaline asked. “We didn’t find any bodies in here. No blood spatters. We’ve already brought black lights in to search.”
Gabe turned, following the smell, not deeper into the house, but out and around. He was shocked by the level at which he could track it. Not blood, as that was usually easy to find, but death. It was a dark, musty scent of rot. Not even new death.
Golems didn’t have a smell, not normally. Another memory clunking into place. They didn’t usually rot. Which meant they had no reason to smell like anything other than the earth of which they were created.
He got the vague impression that zombies smelled. How he knew that or if he had encountered some actual zombies in his life, eluded him. But he followed the scent in a weaving path through a giant, well-manicured yard around tool sheds, and finally into a wooded area.
Seiran’s senses were wide open to him now, as if he was trying to sense what Gabe was following. Though the connection was still weak. Gabe worked to keep the lines open as everyone followed him.
Gabe paused at one of the locked tool sheds, and even though he needed to keep going, there was something inside. The strong smell of blood.
Seiran reached out with magic and the lock snapped without being touched. The door swung open. Not full of tools at all, but tables, and stains. More like the space that would be used to gut an animal after a kill.
Emmaline was on the phone calling more investigators, and Sam appeared a few seconds later. “I smell blood.”
Old blood. Yeah, a lot had died here. But this wasn’t all. Gabe turned and focused on the feeling of rot, and the animation that often came with it. He left the group at the first shed, though there were a line of them, and headed into the woods. Seiran followed.
“Zombies?” Seiran asked quietly as they walked, Gabe mostly unseeing anything really around them as he was laser-focused on the smell.
“Do you smell it?” Gabe asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t know what exactly it was. Old death? We’ve found old bodies before and they just smell like earth. The rot scent fades pretty fast. You think these are fresher?” He sniffed the air, seeming to find the scent again, and frowned. “It’s like death, and rot, but with perfume? Not the sickly-sweet smell of rotting meat, but actual flowers?”
“Only zombies smell like that.”
“Not vampires?” Seiran asked.
“No. Vampires don’t rot. Even when we go to ground, we are absorbed back into it if we are down long enough. This is something else.”
“Zombies aren’t a thing,” Emmaline said, having left people behind to begin cataloging the sheds as she followed Gabe. “It’s a horror movie special effect.”
“It’s a thing,” Gabe assured her. He had a sudden memory of a handful of times in his past he had encountered zombies. Not movies. The real thing. And they felt very familiar. Fuck. “Death magic.”
“I am really beginning to think death magic is its own thing,” Seiran said.
“It is,” Gabe said. “As an earth witch you could unravel the ties that make a vampire, but you can’t create a vampire. Death magic is required for animation.”
“You’re remembering more?”
“Bits and pieces.”
The area they came across was a bit of a break in the trees, mostly bland and seeming to be little more than dirt. It wasn’t mounds or anything that looked like graves. In fact, the ground didn’t appear disturbed at all, but Gabe’s revenant was pulling hard at him, wanting out to fight whatever danger they stood in.
Gabe stopped in the center of the small clearing and let his power reach into the ground. Not magic like the witches, but a vampire’s strength. He could sense other vampires. Gone to ground here, perhaps? Why?
“There are vampires here,” Gabe said. He looked at Seiran. “Can you feel them in the earth?”
“Gone to ground?” Seiran appeared confused, but Gabe could feel when he opened himself up to what the earth was telling him. Gone to ground wasn’t right. Left more than a few days the vampire body would reform, eventually returning to their graves. Or wherever most of their grave dirt was.
This ground had been disturbed, and only the barest hints of blackness in the soil gave tell to what lay beneath. Touching them, the bits of darkness, was almost like stirring the revenants. Not possible. Seiran hissed after a moment and the ground began to bubble.
The witches stepped back all gasping at the sight as Seiran’s power forced the bodies of vampires to the surface. Not one, or even a dozen, but so many it was impossible to find ground without them. Some had tree roots grown through, and many were actually rotted, taken by true death. A few stared at them with wide, seeing eyes, while staked and bound, limbs missing, covered in lacerations and burns, like they’d been tortured and then somehow bound beneath the earth to keep them silent.
“Holy fuck,” Sam said as he appeared behind the group. “What the fuck is this?”
“Your missing vampires.” Seiran said.
And then some, thought Gabe at the body count. “Does this mean there are more golems?”
Chapter 13
A vampire serial killer was not the news Seiran had been hoping to end his evening with. The amount of law enforcement, Dominion investigators, and vampires that descended on the spot was astronomical. They would need something larger than the normal morgue office to house all the bodies. Seiran suspected they needed more space than the combined Twin Cities morgues could offer.
“What is the point of all this?” He wondered out loud as the group worked its way across the scene. Vampires in the modern day kept their heads down and out of trouble. The Vampire War, even as brief as it had been, only lasting a few months, had been enough to set the entire world against them. Only delicate negotiation had helped soothe some of the frayed trust. Negotiation and time. Was this some sort of revenge? Why so many vampires? And how? Vampires weren’t exactly easy to kill, or hold. “Does anyone know the family’s history? Is there a beef against vampires?”
“I’ll look into it,” one of the group Emmaline had brought in, said. Seiran was pretty sure she was on the investigative team, but hadn’t personally trained her as he had Emmaline.
Max appearing on the fringes of the group star
tled him, and the cops who were guarding the area, although they recognized him fast enough and let him through. It was never good when the big dog of vampires showed up.
“Hart,” Seiran greeted him.
“How many were saved?” He asked without preamble. “I have a warehouse open for the bodies. We can go through each, identify and notify next of kin and the members of their nests.”
“Two are still somewhat there,” Sam said. “Might be revenant, so we’re being careful.”
Gabe had done something with those two that had calmed them enough to be taken to the hospital. They still had to be bound with vampire grade cuffs before transport and treatment. A half dozen vampires had escorted the ambulance to ensure the safety of the EMT and the hospital staff. But the vampires weren’t in any shape to answer questions. The torture they had survived brought a lot of uncomfortable realizations. Like the fact that being a vampire and almost impossible to kill, might not be a good thing.
“Broken,” Gabe said. “The tie to what makes them human, snapped.”
Max studied him, then turned to Seiran. “I’ve been told the culprit hasn’t been caught?”
Seiran felt his cheeks heat. It wasn’t really his place to be embarrassed. He hadn’t let the guy go. He still didn’t believe the missing kid, Steven Brody, had created the golem. The magic of the golem wasn’t maniacal or even haphazard. It seemed to have been created by someone who knew how to do it. Or sort of knew how to do it, and had the power to do so. The rest of this mess was anything but a skilled practitioner. It was more a child breaking toys while it played, messy, and erratic, but nonetheless horrifying.
Why have this killing field then? It reminded him of the discovery years ago on the grounds of his father’s old mansion in California. The house was now a halfway house and training ground for young male witches, which Jamie and Kelly monitored, and his cousin actually ran the house, but at one time it had been the hub for the Ascendance, a body of male witches practicing forbidden magic to gain more power. He had found bodies, dozens of them, buried to create a ring of dark magic. This wasn’t any sort of ring or structure that Seiran could tell.