Twisted Potions (Hidden Blood Book 2)

by Al K. Line

  So on I went to the final cemetery, hoping this one was still undisturbed and I'd have the chance to get answers. This time I would remain in enforcer mode. Meaning, I'd bash heads, capture me a prisoner or two, and then use my captive for information or to lure the Chemist and get him to come to his senses. Something like that anyway. I hadn't exactly figured out how to stop him, but I was sure I'd come up with something, even if it meant just locking him in a magical cell until he could see reason. Assuming, of course, that Dancer had such a thing back at HQ.

  The small church was deserted, as they all are mid-week, although there's not much more activity on a Sunday now. I shivered as the day turned cold and wrapped my leather coat around me. It was a tight fit, wouldn't close properly, and I wondered if I'd put on weight or this spare one was a size smaller. I yanked it over my breasts and then looked down at them suspiciously. Had they grown larger? Haha, I really was getting carried away with this baby business. Plenty of time for that in the months ahead.

  I settled around the back of the church where the graveyard was, a small place housing no more than thirty or so gravestones. Only a handful of plots were recent as the grounds were small and you paid premium for being buried in these local parish cemeteries. The gray stone of the church was cold, the guttering above kept dripping, and my bum was numb from sitting on one of the ancient, cracked headstones that were kept for posterity, but I wasn't here to be comfortable, I was here to catch me a ghoul or two.

  I waited, and waited, and waited, but nobody came, no gross smell assaulted my nostrils, and not a single person passed through or visited a loved one.

  ***

  Something tickled my unconscious mind, and I woke to a feeling of not being alone. Even before I opened my eyes I knew it was a ghoul. The fetid odor of their favorite snack told me that, and I could taste their sweat, the sticky emanations that coated their bodies. I opened my eyes slowly and was surprised to find it was dark. An orange glow from the streetlight the other side of the low church wall barely reached the cemetery, the stars added their own pale light, but the moon was nowhere to be seen.

  This was my time, and I was instantly alert, magic thrumming, eyes darkening, teeth itching to sink into something soft and warm, but fresh. None of this rotten business for me thank you very much. Without moving anything but my eyelids, I took in the entire space from my vantage point deep in the shadow of the church wall.

  A single male ghoul was hunkered down beside one of the recent graves, a large hole in the ground showing where he'd dug to get to the coffin. Seemed this one was rather lazy as he'd obviously just smashed part of the coffin, delved in, and pulled out whatever he laid his disfigured hands on. He held his prize aloft then tore at it with broken teeth.

  He'd do.

  I moved with all the grace of the vampire, each movement precise, silent, and fluid. I felt like a wild animal stalking a deer, knowing one false move would startle it and my prey would flee. Slowly, slowly, I got closer, but something caught my attention off to the right and a little in front of the ghoul.

  A head appeared, facing away from me, and as it rose out of the ground I had an idea. These were the Chemist's ghouls, and they wouldn't be coming from their rightful home, they'd be coming from wherever he'd been housing them. If I could go where this emerging ghoul was leaving I'd be able to get to him, stop this before anything dangerous occurred.

  I moved silently, both ghouls still oblivious to my presence.

  As his shoulders came out from the ground, and then a hand emerged, I was right behind him. I reached around, grabbed down by his belly, then utterly freaked as the squirming thing I clutched grew hard. The ghoul moaned.

  Oh. My. God.

  I shook to free my fingers from this large, revolting thing, but that only made things worse and it hardened rock solid in an instant and grew to horrifying proportions, too thick for my hand. I was stuck fast by the ectoplasm that helps beings move from one realm to another, but I yanked frantically until finally my grip released.

  The ghoul spun, still only emerged just above the waist, and with a smile of euphoria, it grabbed for my hands, maybe wanting me to finish what I'd started. No way. Gross.

  I smacked him across the head so hard that I heard bone crack as his neck broke. As his eyes rolled up in his head he began to sink back down.

  "You owe me after that," I whispered, grabbing onto his broken neck, the head lolling to one side, and as he sank I followed right on behind.

  Got That Wrong

  For what felt like an eternity, all was darkness. Creatures of the earth wriggled across my face, beetles scratched at my lips, worms slithered across my eyes, earwigs burrowed into my ears, and spiders crawled up my nostrils. It was wet as well. So annoying.

  A slick coating of slime covered my skin and then I was weightless. Falling but not falling, like I was in a tiny bubble in space, weightless. Unsure which way was up or down, or even if there were such things any more.

  Then I landed, hard, on my ass, and slid. Eventually, I stopped, but only because I smacked into something that felt very much like rock.

  "Yep, rock," I said as I opened my eyes and stared at, you guessed it. Rock.

  I righted myself in an instant, pushing the pain and the horrible visions of insects chewing my face aside, but before I could turn, my ears stung and I shook my head going, "Ugh, geddoff," or something equally as vampish, and an earwig really did fall out of my ear.

  Never mind, I'd made it. I could get the Chemist and then all this would be at an end. Then I was off-duty, home to get fat and make men do all the work because I was pregnant and I told them to.

  My head whipped around, magic primed for whatever the ghouls could throw at me, knowing that if the Chemist was here he wouldn't actually kill me. I hoped not anyway. I like me, plus I had a baby. I could tell him, couldn't I? Then no way would he harm me.

  "Right, I don't want…"

  My words trailed off. This was not the Chemist's realm, not somewhere he was hiding his ghoul babies.

  No, this was somewhere entirely different. And not in a good way.

  Grumpy Old Men

  "You came," said a voice from deep beneath the folds of a tattered, filthy cloak, face lost in shadow.

  "We knew you would," said another, voice just as raw sounding.

  "It worked," mumbled the third.

  The ghoul I'd got too intimate with crept away into the dark recesses of the cramped cave, head bowed as it backed up from its masters, the injury somehow repaired. Other ghouls made strange mewling sounds from their hiding places, a handful of them at most. They didn't concern me, it was the Elders that held my focus, made me worried.

  Suddenly I felt very exposed, as if the mere fact I was a few days pregnant changed everything. Risking life and limb now seemed like utter foolishness. I was the worst of the worst for even contemplating putting myself in danger when I was trying to bring forth new life. But now wasn't the time to hold back or contemplate my idiocy, as if I wasn't on my game there'd be no chance later for self-recrimination. I'd be one pissed-off ghost.

  This was one of the other realms, the places we have no names for because they aren't for us, for humans, certainly not vampires. I was in the ghoul world, more specifically a very special, private section. This was the Elders' private retreat, their seat of power. I could feel it, knew it with absolute certainty. Their strength, their timelessness, their age, knowledge, and will were what made this place real, what kept it hidden and strong.

  Their power was at its peak here, and although my magic worked just as well as it did back home, I could tell that whatever I threw at them would mean little.

  "Look, um, Elders, I don't want any trouble." Lame, I know, but I was pre-occupied.

  "We want the Chemist. You will give him to us." The three Elders stood in a line, bodies close so it was impossible to tell which one spoke without seeing their faces. They took a step forward, I took a step back then was at the wet wall. It smelled so bad
I wouldn't have been surprised if liquid necrotic flesh had oozed from the walls. Maybe it would.

  "I want to find him, too. I want to, need to, stop him. But I can't locate him."

  "Find him you must," said one.

  "What's this, a Star Wars audition?" I asked, a little of my humor returning. If you can't laugh in such situations then you'll definitely cry.

  "I do not understand."

  "Never mind. What's all this about?" I asked, feeling moody and trying to mask my fear with petulance.

  "You will show respect," said an Elder, and they took another step.

  Their stink reached me with full effect, an impossible stench of timeless decay and age, of a million and maybe soon a million and one rotten corpses consumed, of untold crawling through the nether regions of the world, of all the journeys through the endless realms of the ghoul, all wrapped up in a musty, dusty, brittle cloying smell that must be what it was like when the pyramids were first opened up.

  "I apologize. Oh, ancient Elders, rulers of the ghouls, please forgive my intrusion, and my manners. I meant no disrespect." Sometimes being nice is a good idea.

  "We called. We knew you would search the cemetery."

  Ah, so they'd sent some of their own to trap me, maybe before the Chemist's new children got there. "What do you want of me? You already threatened my husband, threatened me, and we're innocent in all this."

  "No human is innocent. Vampires never are."

  "Yeah, you got that right. But still. I didn't know what he had in mind. I still don't know what he has in mind. What's happening?"

  I saw movement. The ghouls came out of the shadows and closed in. I could tell they were very old creatures, not Elder old, but thousands of years, if not more. Their bodies were so malformed they hardly resembled humans any more, their limbs so long and twisted, their flesh so gray and diseased, their eyes so sad and sunken that I understood immediately who they were.

  "Some of the first?" I asked, indicating the amassing creatures that lurched or crawled to form a semi-circle behind the Elders, who somehow were now mere feet away.

  "Our oldest and dearest children," said the central Elder as they all pulled back the hoods of their cloaks at the same time. Damn but they had a sense of the dramatic. Their faces were as I remembered, as strange and twisted, weeping and looking like masks set upon with a fierce blow torch.

  "Why has he done this?" If I knew that then I'd have a better chance of finding him, as long as these guys let me go that is.

  "She doesn't know."

  "So foolish," agreed a third.

  "Hey," I said, "no need to be rude. I am right here, you know."

  "We know," they said, nonplussed.

  The Elders put their heads together and whispered, their ancient ghouls never took their eyes off me. They seemed to come to an agreement and they moved closer. I almost fainted with the smell and the wrongness of them.

  "We brought you here to see what you knew. A waste. We will tell. But you must succeed."

  "I'll do my best," I said, trying not to claw at the rock.

  "Ghoul named Chemist, the aberration, he made illegal potion. Now is Elder but not Elder, not old, not original. New father, wants children. Children that live in human realm. Earth children."

  "I know about the children. What I don't know is why?" My heart sank as I already thought I knew the answer, but I wanted confirmation.

  "Wants ghouls to become common. Hidden but not. Seen by humans. Accepted. New future. Ghouls and human. No more feeling alone, scared. No more name calling."

  "It's a hell of a way to stop feeling like you're the minority."

  "So sad. To know, to be of disgust to humans. We are them, they are us. We must hide."

  I heard the sadness, an endless, timeless weariness telling of an eternity of knowing what you were, that you were seen as something despicable by humans, that even amongst Hidden you were a grotesque. Why did the Elders think like this, feel this? Surely they were above such things, the ones who had created this race, the fathers of it all? Then I understood.

  "You feel responsible. You don't want him to do this because you know it will never work?"

  "We are ghouls," was the only answer I got. They knew what they were, accepted it, so remained in their world, and this was why ghouls could only emerge into human life when the hunger cravings grew too much. Because they were aberrations, unwanted. They didn't belong and they never would.

  "You are. If this saddens you so much, why have you made so many ghouls? Why do you make more?"

  "We make no more. No ghouls for five hundred years. It is done. We are done. One day, long in future, ghouls will be no more. Then we will have peace."

  "And the Chemist knows this?" They nodded. "He wants a new race of ghouls because he doesn't want to feel alone. But he also wants his kind to continue. You gave up on yourselves, on your own kind." It wasn't an accusation, but it came out like one.

  The Chemist was struggling for the survival of his entire race. Ghouls lived a long time, but they weren't immortal, not like the Elders, and anyway, accidents happen. So there would come a time when they were gone. The Chemist didn't want that. However much he disgusted himself, wanted to be like us, it was more important that his race continued. You couldn't blame him for that.

  "It must end. Ghouls must end. We have thought, pondered this for millennia. We made a mistake. We are, we will always be, but no more scabs. No more broken things. See our children, how they are ruined. This meat they must eat, the things they do, it has driven them beyond insane. Too much, too bad, must end."

  "And if he refuses? If I can't get him to change his mind?"

  "We will destroy him. We search, we must find him. We will talk, if he defies us…"

  "Guess I should be on my way then?" I said hopefully.

  "You will help?"

  "I will try to stop him, for his own sake, not yours. He needs to accept who he is, that he has people who care for him. I won't kill him."

  "It saddens us, to think of his death. If you find him you must stop him. We will try to do the same. But this must end."

  With a wave of the hand of one Elder, I felt everything darken. The chattering insects in my mind grew to a cacophony, a madness waiting to take me over and leave me nothing but a broken shell of a woman. I felt my body rise and the tear between this world and mine open and devour me whole.

  I came to standing over a grave, the ground looking like it had never been disturbed, the cemetery as silent as death.

  "Where are you?" I whispered into the night. An owl hooted.

  Feeling Sad

  My heart ached for the Chemist. He felt alone, an outcast, a thing of ridicule, and he wanted to change that. He wanted to create his own family, one that could remain in this world, so he would no longer be someone singled out but would have so many of his own kind here that it would be the norm. He also wanted to save his species too.

  What was wrong with that?

  In some ways nothing, in others plenty. For a start, what was he thinking? That humans would suddenly rejoice about our dead being eaten? Not likely. That somehow we'd change our aesthetics and no longer see their deformed bodies as something that made us shudder? Definitely wouldn't happen. That this would make him feel whole, complete, part of something? Maybe. Who was I to judge? But it wouldn't work, I knew it wouldn't. He'd always be what he was, the Chemist. He'd keep his insecurities, feel like a thing apart, and that was just the way it was. It was a terrible admission, that humans would always feel this superiority to races like his, but that's our nature.

  And besides, no matter how much he wanted to create a new race so he could fit in, the Hidden Council would never permit it. All Hidden were just that, hidden. If he did what he intended then our cover would be blown. Sooner or later the veil would drop and ghouls would be discovered by Regulars. They'd be raiding every cemetery, every morgue, every funeral home in the world. No way can you keep that secret and out of sight.

 
; And the Elders certainly wouldn't stand for it. They'd made their position very clear, and although extreme, I understood where they were coming from. They didn't want any more ghouls feeling this way, and their answer was a slow, millennia-long genocide. No more ghouls, no more pain, no more suffering. Surely there was a middle ground to all this? But if there was then I didn't know what. All I could do was stop the Chemist before he blew the lid off the whole Hidden world. The rest was down to those with a lot more power, and a much higher stake in the future of ghouls.

  What a screw up.

  I reached out and grabbed the relatively new gravestone, magic pulsing and blood pounding in my ears, a familiar sensation. Senses were hyper-alert, my eyes turned dark, my teeth snicked down, and my ink fattened until I felt like I'd put on an extra fifty pounds. My stomach cramped, felt like a solid ball of iron had been rammed through my stretched skin.

  A lone vampire stepped out from the shadow cast by a large monument of an angel in the center of the graveyard. He wasn't happy.

  Christopher, one of many vampires who were deeply entrenched in the culture. Five hundred odd years old, cold, calculating, spiteful, disdainful, and beautiful.

  "This is your fault," he said, his dulcet tones at odds with the sneer on his face.

  I sighed, relaxed a little, but then my hackles rose as his eyes grew darker than mine and his lip rolled back to expose his teeth, already dripping milky venom, the vampire's tear. "What is?" I asked cautiously.

  "I've heard about those disgusting ghouls. Almost as foul and stupid as humans. You let the one called Chemist create this new breed, these desecrators." Christopher continued walking forward and gently shoved me away from the grave I was standing on. He stared down at the marker and read the name, the inscription. "You will be missed," he said.

  "You knew her?"

  He nodded solemnly, almost with sadness. "I did. My wife. I have had many, and each has a special place here." He banged hard against his chest. "She would not be turned, refused the gift I offered. She died. I come to talk to her. Now she is gone. Desecrated!" he spat.