by Jack Knight
“Fine, look,” I said, speaking as quickly as I could, “I just found out my father left the Hunters yesterday, I had no idea until I sort of ran into him. I didn’t steal any book, and my mother isn’t sad that I’m gone. I left because she tried to kill me.
“Also, I sort of joined up with these guys that are kind of like Hunters. You need to get out of here, because they know you’re looking for them and they’ll kill to stay a secret.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “First off, nobody can kill a Hunter. Second, we aren’t leaving town.”
The goth guy had gotten his coffee and the Reapers had just stepped forward to give their order. If they were still reading minds, they might be listening in on this conversation right now. I didn’t care, I knew Matt for way longer than I’d known any of them. I didn’t want to see him get killed.
“They’ve already killed a Hunter,” I told Matt, practically growling the words at him, he was making me so frustrated.
Matt’s expression flickered, then he forced it to look serious again as he shook his head. “No, only one Hunter has died around here. They told me it was fighting one of the new vamps.”
My curiosity spiked. The Hunters obviously lied to Matt, and that was fine, not a surprise at all. What did interest me was that the Hunters were interested in the same thing William was.
“Vamps that are working with mages?” I asked, forgetting for just a second that I was supposed to be ending this conversation.
Matt crossed his arms over his chest and furrowed his brow again. “What? No, there are new vamps popping up, ones that have different powers.”
What William had said must have been true, except the magic that was used had come from the vampire itself, not a mage accomplice. Whatever was going on was starting to seem really bad.
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter,” I insisted, trying to convince myself just as much as Matt. “You need to leave town, even if you do it alone. Just get out.”
Matt looked at me like I was being ridiculous. “Maddi, think about what I just said, we have to stay here.”
Anger was starting to bubble in my chest. Matt always refused to listen to me, and I was always right.
“Who exactly paid you to kill these new vamps, huh?” I asked. “Anyone ever think you should try and figure out what’s going on?”
Matt shrugged. “It’s not our place to figure out things like that. Someone’s starting a vampire factory in this city, we need to destroy it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah, someone’s just cranking out a ton of vampires. You remember the last time that happened?” I demanded. “They called it the black plague, remember?”
Matt fixed me with an angry glare. “Yes, I do. And, if you remember, the Hunter’s didn’t jump on it right away, and it took years to get it under control, it killed millions of people. My guess? Someone in charge wanted to figure out what was happening instead of taking care of the problem. You think we should make that mistake again?”
A growl escaped from between my gritted teeth. When the hell had Matt turned into this infuriating oaf?
“Fine, stay in town,” I seethed. “If they start killing you guys, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
With that, I stormed away from Matt, and over to the Reapers, who all received their drinks right as I reached them.
“Hey,” Asher said as he handed me a cup that was warm to the touch. “You fall in? You need some X-Lax?” he joked.
“Danger. Hunters on the move,” Torn interrupted before I could let some of my anger loose on Asher.
I turned around to see that Matt had returned to the Hunters. Whatever they were doing in the coffee shop didn’t seem to be as important as what they were doing now.
“What’re they thinking?” I asked Magnus, hoping they didn’t know I had warned Matt, even if he was too stupid to listen.
The Hunters gathered their things together and were gone within seconds. Magnus was watching them, a focused expression on his face.
“I’m not sure. One of them warned the others about something, he said he would explain later. They know someone is watching them, that is all I can discern.”
It didn’t sound like they knew it had anything to do with me, so I was in the clear with the Reapers. My issue now was that Matt knew where I was. Soon, all the Hunters would know where to find me, they would know I had dyed my hair, and they would be gunning for me harder than they had been before.
It looked like staying with the Reapers was my only choice now. I couldn’t exactly take on all of the Hunters alone.
Chapter 13
“I STILL SAY WE SHOULD be chasing after those guys. We were told to gather info,” Asher complained after we had all gotten back into the car.
I was looking out the window so that nobody could see my face. Telling them all that I had warned Matt was not something I would even consider doing. I needed the Reapers, I didn’t trust them.
“No,” Magnus insisted calmly as he pulled the car into the street and headed back to the church. “They were on high alert, following them would have given us away.”
“Should’ve just killed them while we had the chance,” Torn grumbled.
A shiver of heat ran down my spine and settled in my stomach. Matt may have become a dick, but I wasn’t about to let anyone kill him. If Torn had tried, I would’ve given Asher the assassination demonstration he asked for.
This was veering into dangerous territory, though. If they kept discussing it, it would inevitably come up that Matt had figured out the Hunters were being watched while I was away from the group. I had to change the subject to protect myself. Luckily, Brittany, or whatever her name was, had given me a perfect topic.
“Do you guys know about a vampire factory in town?” I asked as I looked around at Asher and Magnus.
Asher looked at me like I was speaking gibberish, Magnus even took his eyes off the road to look over his shoulder at me. Only Torn seemed unaffected, he didn’t move or make a sound.
“A what now?” Asher asked.
Magnus, after he faced forward again, answered for me. “It’s a Hunter term. It means when a vampire, or a nest of vampires, goes on a massive recruiting spree. They turn as many people as they can as fast as they can, which usually ends in significant destruction as the fledgling vampires develop without any guidance.”
Asher smiled at me and asked, “So, did the Hunters tell you about that in exchange for tipping them off that they were being followed?”
I glared at Asher, mainly so I wouldn’t look guilty.
“I ran into a ghoul in the bathroom. She said her thrall went missing after he went looking into a bunch of new vampires. The guy is my neighbor, he talked to me about it before.”
That seemed like enough to distract Asher. His smile disappeared and he shook his head. “That must be why the Hunters came to town in the first place.”
“If it is,” Torn contributed, “we should look into it. We don’t need another wave of vampires going around killing people right now.”
“Another?” Asher asked.
“Yeah, there hasn’t been one in a long time, but still,” Torn answered dismissively.
“Regardless, Torn is correct,” Magnus agreed. “We will look into this. Maddi, you and Asher should study, since the rest of the day is now open for the two of you.”
Asher gave me a big grin and I decided to go back to looking out the window until we got to the church. The rest of the ride was silent, but I made sure not to think about anything too damning in the meantime. I didn’t know how long their mind reading spell would last.
When we got to the Reaper base, we all got out of the car and Asher hurried me along. Even though he had barely given me any instruction the day before, he seemed especially excited to teach me now.
I followed him into the same hallway that we walked down to get to the bedrooms. This time, we walked to the end of the hall, where it took a sharp turn to the right. The hallway didn’t continue much longer past th
e bend and only had three doors. One directly ahead and one on each side.
Asher pushed open the door on the left and beckoned me inside. When I entered, I saw that the room had a long table against one wall and was otherwise empty. It sort of looked like a dungeon, with the brick walls and dim lighting. None of the church’s windows seemed to be connected to this room, the only source of light was the lone lightbulb hanging from the center of the ceiling.
Asher walked over to the table as I closed the door behind me. I hadn’t noticed at first, but the table was actually covered in little wooden bowls, each one was filled with powder, every powder looked slightly different from the rest.
“Alright, you did the levitation spell, right?” Asher asked as he started moving the bowls of dust around. I didn’t see where the book had come from, but he was suddenly flipping through the pages of what I assumed was a grimoire.
“Yup, cutting myself was super fun,” I answered with as much sarcasm as I could.
Asher chuckled and tapped the book a couple of times before he turned around and looked at me. “Is that why you tipped off the Hunters?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and forced my expression to become as angry as possible. “I didn’t tip off anyone,” I lied. “Stop with that shit.”
“Gotcha,” Asher laughed.
He reached behind himself and put his hand on the book. “What exactly do you know about magic?”
The change in topic was so sudden my brain grinded along slowly before I could manage to fit a sentence together.
“Um, mages use it?”
“A mage is anyone who can use magic, what are the types of mages?” Asher asked.
He was quizzing me? This was seriously basic stuff. I felt like he was asking me to add one and one together to prove I knew math.
I rolled my eyes as I started to list everything off, just like when I was five and in the Beginner’s Knowledge class back at the Hunter’s compound.
“Witches have no magic of their own, they learn to use the magic within nature, which means they need the plants and exact spells that already go with them. Literally anyone can become a witch.
“Wizards are born without magic, but they learn to use it. They study every spell they want to learn over and over until they can get the magic in the air around them, or whatever, to work the way they want it.
“Sorcerers are born with magic. It’s in their blood, so they can use it any time they want. Sometimes, they don’t even need spells, it just bursts out of them.”
Asher nodded the entire time, and then when I finished he smiled at me.
“Pretty good, the Hunters clearly taught you with one point of view in mind. All correct, though. Except, about the ‘air, or whatever’. Do you know what magic is?”
I shrugged. He was not going to get me to play along with his “teach the child” act.
Asher sat back against the table he was standing in front of and explained, “Magic is the energy of the universe. It’s the power of creation and destruction that was left over after the Big Bang. Magic permeates every atom, every particle, in existence. When we use magic, we are basically telling those particles what to do.”
“Great, so?” I asked.
It sounded a lot like religious crap to me. Who cared why magic worked or what it was? I just cared about using it. I didn’t know how a stove worked, I still needed to eat.
Asher laughed. “It’s kind of important,” he answered as he turned back around to the book. “Come here, we’re going to try this spell.”
I let my arms fall away from my chest and approached the table Asher had been standing in front of. The grimoire he was looking at was almost identical to mine. Old, faded, weird, leathery paper, the works. And, everything was written in Latin.
“What the hell is with magic and Latin? I had no idea how to use magic and I still got it to work just by using a language nobody’s spoken in centuries.”
Asher looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. “It doesn’t need to be Latin. You just need that when you first start, practiced sorcerers, and even some wizards, can do magic silently or change the words or language whenever they want. The point is the intent.”
I propped my arm against the table, careful to avoid knocking over any bowls of dirt, and leaned against it so I could glare directly at Asher.
“English, please.”
Asher smiled. “You use Latin to learn a spell, because the words are new, they’re only used for magic. In your head, those words mean what the magic is supposed to do, no other association. It helps you focus.”
“Right, what’re the words for this then? I can’t read this shit,” I asked as I gestured at the book with my free hand.
“Impero haec herba facti ignis sunt,” Asher said slowly.
I did my best to repeat what he said, but the words felt so awkward and foreign I had no idea if I was even on the right track. This led to Asher repeating himself, correcting my pronunciation, and coaching me through the sentence at least another five or six times. When I did get it right, Asher had me say it over and over again until the words came out easily. The exercise took at least ten minutes.
“Now, the sacrifice. You have to cut your hand, just like with the levitation spell.”
I rolled my eyes as I pushed myself off the table and pulled my knife from my belt. I slid the blade across my still wounded hand and returned the knife to my belt.
“Great, now, you’re going to take a pinch of this,” Asher picked a bowl of dirt up and set it down in front of me, “and say the words before you throw it. That way,” he added the last part while pointing toward the opposite side of the room.
I took a pinch of the ground up whatever it was in my hand and turned away from the table.
“Now, when you do, you need to visualize the plant grounds becoming fire, that’s basically what the words mean.”
I raised an eyebrow and looked at Asher skeptically. “Fire?” I asked. “What is this stuff?”
“Ground cinnamon,” he answered quickly. “Just trust me.”
I didn’t see how the ground cinnamon had anything to do with fire, nor did I get why magic demanded I keep hurting myself, but I wanted to see how this turned out.
“Impero haec herba facti ignis sunt,” I said quickly and I threw the cinnamon away from me.
There was a flash of light, then a roar, like when a barbecue first lights. Heat slammed into me and a burst of flame shot through the empty room, almost reaching the opposite wall ten feet away.
“First try!” Asher announced excitedly. He raised his hand in the air and shouted, “High five!”
A smile forced itself onto my face, the adrenaline pumping through me and the fact that my heart was racing probably made it more difficult to fight my facial muscles than usual.
I raised my uninjured hand into the air and Asher slapped it with his, clearly just as excited by what I had done as I was.
“I’m gonna need a bucket of that stuff,” I laughed, pointing to the ground cinnamon.
Asher chuckled. “Nah, there are better spells for making fire, this is just the easiest one. Hell, if you’re cool with bleeding a lot, you can burn an entire building down with a sigil drawn in your own blood.”
That was not information you could just throw out there without an explanation. I was about to demand exact details of how that was done, but the door to the room opened at that exact second.
I looked up to see Ezra standing in the doorway, his hand still on the doorknob.
“Maddison, would you mind speaking to me for a moment?”
Chapter 14
“WELL, THAT WAS A GOOD day of practice,” Asher said, looking like he was trying to suppress a smile. “What was that, fifteen minutes? That’s a good day’s worth of work.”
I shook my head at him and said, “Bye,” as I walked toward Ezra.
“In my office,” Ezra said, not giving me any indication as to whether this was a good or bad thing.
Ezra st
arted back down the hall and I followed, cradling my still bleeding hand against my stomach. The two of us walked in silence back through the building, leaving me to wonder why Ezra wanted to talk to me. It also left me time to wonder if there was a spell I could use to heal my hand so I didn’t have to bleed all the time.
Ezra led me back into the main room of the church, which I thought was a little odd. If he had had a way to his office in this room, surely I would have seen it by now, right?
He walked straight to the door that I knew would lead to the library, and I got even more confused.
“Um, where is your office, exactly?” I asked as I pulled the library door closed behind me.
“In case of emergency,” Ezra said casually, “I keep my office hidden.”
He walked over to the bookshelf directly across from the library door and pulled one of the books from the shelf. He reached into the now empty space where the book had been, and the entire wall shuddered. Slowly, with a high-pitched squeaking sound, the wall started sliding to the left.
Holy fuck, hidden room. This was the coolest church ever.
Once the wall had slid over about three feet, there was a loud thud and it stopped moving. The stretch of wall that it revealed had a door that perfectly matched the one we had just entered through. Ezra walked inside as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and I hurried across the library to follow him.
His office was pretty plain. There was a large, oak desk with a rolling chair behind it, two arm chairs in the center of the room, and a few cabinets and bookshelves lining the walls.
“Sit,” Ezra commanded, gesturing toward the armchairs. He walked around his desk and took a seat behind it as I let myself fall into one of the chairs.
“Magnus tells me you heard about someone in the city creating vampires,” Ezra began as soon as I was seated.
“No preamble or anything, huh?” I asked.
Ezra just stared at me, waiting for me to answer his question. He always did like acting like everyone should obey his commands immediately and without question. This was probably the reason I hated all authority figures.