by Greco, Karen
"Wait, there's more," Darcy said. "There is some sort of press conference and demonstration going on at the statehouse this afternoon because of what happened at the concert. And the exorcisms."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't know exactly. I got the news alert on my phone when you guys were cooking up the wolfsbane back at the farm. I didn't think anything of it."
"Bertrand called a damn press conference?" I asked. My fangs began to slip into place. I was furious.
"I think it started as a demonstration," she said, scrolling through her phone while she talked. "Your eyes are doing that crazy vampire thing, by the way. Anyway, yeah. The reporter called it a demonstration and said that the mayor would be there to explain how they were handling the meth epidemic. They still think it's drugs."
"Well, that's a relief."
Frankie looked back at us. His eyes were vampy too. "There's no such thing as coincidence, and right now there are way too many converging in one area. We'll need to gear up first. We don't know what we're going into."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Veterans Memorial Auditorium was ice-cold and derelict. The gorgeous 1920s theater, once a crown jewel of the city, was faded and worn bare. A thick layer of grey dust dulled the once opulent velvet seats and covered their mahogany arms. Our steps echoed on the bare floor as we climbed around the detritus of a theater that appeared partially bombed out. Frankie, Max and I slowly picked our way through the dank space.
Darcy was back at the apartment. She hacked into the city's cameras and was keeping an eye on the outside. She was our eye in the sky, able to find the best route out if we needed it, especially with the growing crowd on the statehouse lawn.
Every once in a while I could hear the crowd roaring from the rally, which was just across the street. I imagined Bertrand reveling in the audience’s cheers. He loved all that pomp and circumstance.
"This doesn't feel right," Frankie's voice boomed out, even though he was right beside me. The acoustics were amazing.
I reached behind me and touched the Beretta M9 tucked into the small of my back. Now that I knew there were shifters hanging around, it was loaded with silver bullets. The blade tucked into my boot felt hot against my sock, making my foot itch.
I didn't like that it felt active. The witch blade was forged by my dad and Bertrand to kill my mother, until my dad double-crossed Bertrand. The knife drained a witch of her power and transferred the magic to whomever wielded the blade. Marcello tried to off me with a copycat blade a few months prior. The knife felt alive in my boot, anxious to slice. Since it was a magic blade, that sensation made me nervous.
Max was behind us, searching under the sheets placed over the more valuable artifacts in the old music hall. Clearly the FBI was more nuanced in searches than Blood Ops. Frankie and I just kind of barreled through.
A clank of metal pulled our attention to the stage. Gears ground, and the floor of the stage opened like a gaping wound. There was a blinding flash when lights came up to illuminate a group of people riding a lift up from the bowels of the theater. I blinked a few times, adjusting to the harsh glare.
My view cleared and I gasped. "Babe? Dr. O?"
Babe and Dr. O were on that stage, hands cuffed behind them. Flanking them were a man and a woman, both in army dress greens. I recognized the man. It was Sergeant Hardass, the Department of Defense official who found Darcy and me on the beach back in January, the one I lied to about a Berserker arriving in town. The woman was about my size, with thick, wavy red hair. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her.
"Nina, no," Frankie said. He reached out and gripped my arm, stopping me as I lunged forward to get to the stage.
Max scrambled beside us, catching me around the waist. I struggled to break from the two of them, to reach my aunt, but the guys had me locked down tight.
The woman moved preternaturally quick and raised a knife to Babe's throat. I went limp against Max and Frankie at her threat, but my heart refused to slow its pace, a mix of fear and adrenaline causing it to spike. How do I get Babe and Dr. O out of this? Needing to focus my thoughts, I squinted at the weapon, stage lights glinting off it. Dammit, was that another witch blade? Bertrand said there were a few more out there. But I never really expected to see any more in my lifetime. Maybe that's why mine was on fire.
"Hello, Frankie," the redheaded woman cooed from the stage. "Been a long time. You haven't aged a bit."
"Nor you." His voice was rough, on edge, and his already alabaster skin went even paler. He looked like he'd seen a ghost.
"Babe, you okay?" My voice cracked when I called out to her.
"We're okay, honey," she said, glancing nervously at the woman. "Don't you worry about us."
The woman snorted. "You say that like you're her mother."
She lingered on the last word, rolling it around on her tongue as if she were tasting it. Shivers traveled down my spine.
"What do we do, Frankie?" I whispered.
"You and Frankie, and your FBI friend there, don't do anything," the woman on the stage responded.
If she heard that, she was definitely not human.
Sergeant Hardass looked at her, confused for a moment, before launching into what I assumed was some government sanctioned decree or something.
"Nina Martinez and Francesco Montefeltro, you are ordered by the Government of the United States to drop your weapons and turn yourselves in."
"For what? We work for the damn government!" I protested.
"Not anymore. Blood Ops is shut down. Officer Deveroux, please relieve them of their weapons."
"You are not authorized to shut us down!" I shot back.
"Oh yes we are." He leveled his gun at Dr. O's head.
Max stood completely still, glancing between us and the guy in uniform.
"Why are we shut down?" I countered.
"You people are crimes against nature, that's why," Sergeant Hardass fumed.
I almost laughed, it was so preposterous. I noted that the woman on stage shot him a dirty look. "You cannot be serious."
"He's serious, Nina," Dr. O said gravely. "Very serious."
Another roar from the crowd outside poured into the room. It was a little unnerving.
"Oh, they must be announcing it right now," the red-haired lady said as she smiled. "Shall we watch?"
Sergeant Hardass pulled a remote from his pocket and turned on an old TV that was on the stage. Small and black and white, like a closed-circuit feed, I could barely make out the picture. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the camera was aimed at the dais, where Bertrand stood with Tavio to his right. They both looked uncomfortable, and Bertrand, who usually wore a poker face, looked particularly agitated. The head of the United States Secret Service was at the podium in the middle of a speech.
"...no cause for panic. The government has the situation under control," he bellowed over the crowd, silencing them. "We are in the process of rounding up the monsters. We have a facility in Nevada that can detain them indefinitely as terrorists. Make no mistake, they are terrorists. They are threats to our way of life. Threats to the fabric of our freedom."
"Oh shit, Nina," Darcy's voice came through my earpiece. "It’s on all the networks. They're outing us! They're outing us!" she repeated in a panic.
"This is on every major television network," the red-haired woman echoed Darcy. But she said it with a Cheshire cat smile.
I gasped. "Are you crazy? Do you know what you just did?"
"Nina?" Darcy called over the comms. "Nina, what's going on?"
Sergeant Hardass looked triumphant. "Now we can finally round you freaks up and intern you. Let the tribunals decide your fate."
"Tribunals?" Max asked, looking horrified. "They aren't war criminals."
"Darcy, stand by, we're going to need to get out fast," I whispered into my microphone, hoping no one noticed as Max and Hardass argued.
"Terrorists, Officer Deveroux. They are domestic terrorists. Not u
nlike what you put your own parents away for."
I glanced at Max. His chin jutted forward defiantly, but his eyes glistened.
"We'll be slaughtered," Frankie growled. "And so will you, Leila."
"Leila?" I choked out, staring at Frankie.
Pain etched into his face. "I'm sorry, Nina."
No wonder my blade was burning. It found the witch it was forged to kill.
"Mom?" I gasped, stepping towards the stage. "But you're dead!"
Her grin was saccharine. "Yes, darling, Mommy's here."
"Leila? What's she talking about?" Sergeant Hardass angled his gun towards her.
Leila pulled out her own gun and leveled it at the man. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"I don't understand," I interrupted. "Mom? You're alive?"
She rolled her eyes. "I am standing in front of you, yes?"
"Then where the hell have you been for 30 years?" My voice rose an octave. "And why the hell are you pointing weapons at Babe?"
My mother cackled. "Didn't the good doctor and my sweet sister tell you what they did to me? How they betrayed me?"
"No one betrayed you, puta," Babe spat at her. "You're betraying us."
I just about dropped from shock that Babe called her a puta. My Spanish sucked, but I knew it wasn't a nice word at all.
Leila didn't like it either, and she slapped Babe across the face with the pistol, cutting Babe's lip. Babe held her head up stoically while blood trickled down her chin. My face burned with anger.
"Leila, think about this," Dr. O said, trying to reason with her.
But Leila crossed the stage and in one swift move broke the Sergeant's gun-holding hand before he could remove the safety. She then fired two shots into each kneecap. He went down with a yelp.
"I've had decades of thinking, Lachlan. Decades. Plenty of time to think this all through, don't you think?" she snorted.
"Nina, stay where you are, honey," Babe called out from the stage as I crept closer. "Frankie! Max! You boys keep her back!"
Frankie's strong arms grabbed me from behind in a bear hug. He pressed his lips on top of my head and murmured into my hair. "Stay back, Love. Let's stay back here."
I stared, horrified, as Leila strode across the stage back to Babe, knife in one hand, gun in the other.
"You do sound just like her mother," Leila hissed. "You think you could take my place?"
"You were dead," Babe said firmly. "You should have stayed dead."
"Let them go, and I'll give you whatever it is you want!" I called out.
"You can't give me what I want," she laughed. Even that was ice-cold. "It's time for a witch hunt, don't you think?"
"No, you can't do this," Frankie said, relaxing his arms around me. "Leila, if the humans find out about us—"
"—there will be chaos. Anarchy," Max finished for him. He looked positively shell-shocked.
"That's exactly what I am counting on," Leila said.
While she argued with Max and Frankie, I saw my opportunity. I carefully lifted my leg and slipped my father's witch blade out of my boot. I tucked it into the small of my back and glanced up at the stage. Leila was still cackling manically about throwing the world into pandemonium. I took a deep breath. I would have to move fast. When she turned towards Babe, I took my chance, and shot like a rocket. I raced along the seatbacks to the front of the auditorium and then launched myself like a spring onto the stage. With momentum still behind me, I football tackled my mother.
We sprawled onto the floor of the stage. Sergeant Hardass's "Dear God" broke the silence in the theater when Leila's eyes turned from plain old green to a preternatural glow. Her fangs extended and she hissed.
Frankie, vamped out, jumped between Leila and me. She backhanded him with ease, sending him about 10 feet backwards. He rushed back at her, but again, she just swatted him away. I sat on the stage floor, stunned. My mother was a vampire?
"You!" She pointed at Max, who was on stage working on releasing Babe from her shackles.
She closed her eyes and muttered a familiar mix of Spanish and Latin. Max dropped the metal cuffs, which turned molten in his hands. Ignoring the metal burning her wrists, Babe began muttering her own counter-spell.
"You can't beat me, sis," Leila laughed at Babe. "I was always the better witch."
With her attention now on Babe, I pulled the witch blade from behind my back. My hand vibrated at the energy charging through it. I lunged at her, thrusting the knife into her side.
"Nina, no!" Babe shouted at me, but it was too late.
The energy rushing through the knife became so strong that it was hard to keep hold of it. I felt her powers rush into me, envelop my body. I cried out in a mix of pain and triumph they consumed me.
Frankie scrambled to reach me just as Leila pushed me away. I fell backward into his arms. The blade, now covered in blood up to the hilt, was still vibrating in my hand.
My mother gripped her side, her face a twisted mix of pain, anger and triumph. In one swift move, she turned and plunged her own blade into Babe's stomach. My screams were drowned out by the buzz of electricity as her blade came to life. Babe's powers flowed out of her, through the blade, and into my mother, who gripped the handle. She turned to me. Her green eyes, so much like my own, glowed. Smiling, she showed off two very sharp fangs. I saw the wound at her side was almost completely healed.
Frankie gasped at the sight of her. "Who the hell turned you?"
"Marcello," she said sweetly. "He was my love. My true love. And my daughter killed him. It has all the makings of a Greek tragedy, doesn't it?"
Leila pulled the knife out of Babe and Babe crumbled to the floor. With the knife no longer shooting out its electric drone, my screams alone echoed through the theater.
"You," Leila called to Max, who was standing by Dr. O. "You're a government agent and you have captured a dangerous witch. Come on. Come pick my sister up. We need to show her to the world."
I turned to Max, tears streaming down my face. He reached for me, and I pushed his hand away. Instead I grabbed his face. "You're human, Max. Forget about us."
He shook his head and wrapped his arms around me.
"You have to go," I whispered. "They don't know about you. You’re safest if you're not part of us."
"I won't let you go," he said.
"You have to," I said, choking back a sob. "Maybe you can keep an eye on things from the inside?"
He released me slowly, reluctantly. "For the record, Nina, it wasn't the love spell. It was real."
I squeezed my eyes closed, holding back tears. When I reopened them, he was still looking at me, hesitating. I shook my head.
"You're human, Max. Be human." I raised my eyebrows at him, hoping he understood what I was trying to tell him.
A tear dropped from his eye and he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to him and kissed me deeply.
"I get it," he whispered in my ear before he released me. Then he turned his back on me and Frankie and walked to the stage, where he gathered Auntie Babe into his arms.
Babe moaned when Max lifted her. My heart leaped. She was still alive. Barely, but still alive. Maybe there was a way out of this.
Gun in hand, Leila stepped behind Dr. O, prodding him down a set of small stairs with the gun. Max followed, gently cradling Babe in his arms as they walked up the aisles towards the door.
"Oh, I almost forgot," Leila said, turning towards the Army officer writhing on the stage floor with his knee caps blown off.
"Leila," he wheezed through the pain. "What the hell are you doing? I thought we were going to rid the world of these beasts."
"Oh please," she said coldly. "You were simply a means to an end. And you failed me, Sergeant. Where's that Berserker you promised me, anyway?"
I glanced quickly at Max. His chiseled jaw remained firm, his expression unreadable.
As Sergeant Hardass began to protest, Leila whipped her hand into a twisting motion. Without so much as touching him, she s
napped his neck quickly and cleanly. He dropped to the floor. "Those damn witches are tricky. See why I had to use the knife on her, Officer Deveroux?"
Frankie and I stood on the other side of the theater, watching them make their way up the aisle.
"I suggest you go out the other side," Leila said, her voice still like ice. "I really don't want you arrested as a terrorist. You're my daughter and I want our little family unit back together."
My eyes met hers and hate filled every inch of my body. "Babe was my family. You are nothing but a psychopath."
She looked at me sharply. "I understand you're in mourning, so I'll let that go. But we will be together, darling. Didn't they tell you how special you are?"
They opened the doors and the faint light of late afternoon trickled into the building as they exited. I stared at Frankie.
"What the hell did she mean by that?"
Frankie's eyes were wide, almost panicked. "I am not sure, Nina. Really. Your dad said some things once, but I've no way to know for sure."
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, as if I could push the tears back in. "What things, Frankie?"
"It was about how you were conceived," he hesitated.
"And?"
"You were fathered by a dead man, Nina. That's kind of impossible. Without a little help."
"I don't understand, Frankie," I said. ""What about Matty?" His dad is dead too. He's definitely not special."
"I don't understand either," he sighed and raked his hair in frustration.
"But Bertrand will," I growled just before racing up the aisle. Frankie sprinted after me, grabbing me before I blew through the door.
"Wait!" He pointed to the door leading to the side alley. "We don't know what's out there."
"Babe is out there!" I argued, trying to push my way past him.
"We can't risk exposure. Then we'll have zero chance of getting her back."
I pointed at my earpiece. "Darcy can get us to her!"
But he shook his head. "Let's assume our comms are compromised. Darcy, get off comms and go underground. Wipe all the computers and shut them down. Unplug them too, just in case."
"You guys, what the hell is going on?" Darcy asked. She sounded panicked.