by Leah Silver
The four men closed in on me, surrounding me, and I felt trapped. I didn’t want them to see me like this, a hot mess. I covered my face, and Levi took me into his arms. I recognized his body as it folded around me.
“Merry,” he said softly.
Oscar’s heavy hand landed on my shoulder, and Ed added his to my lower back. Ike rounded them out with my other shoulder.
“You’re not alone,” Ed said.
“Sorry, love,” Oscar said.
“The more the merrier, right?” Ike asked.
Levi pulled away and held me at arm’s length. “We’re here to help you with this. We’re in this for the long haul.” He looked over my head at the men around me. “Right?”
They all uttered some form of agreement.
Levi smiled down at me. “We’re a coven.”
“A coven of magic,” Ed added.
In spite of myself, I liked the sound of that. “No one will accept us. Four races living together as a coven and romantically involved?”
“Since when do you care about acceptance?” Levi asked.
He had me there, so I shrugged. “Fine, so you seem to think this relationship, or coven thing, will be so easy, but what of everything else?”
“Whoa, I never said this would be easy. I said we’re in it together. We’re not going anywhere. We’ll help each other through the bad, and enjoy the good.”
Ed’s hand slipped a little lower, cupping my ass. “Boy, am I looking forward to the good.”
I jumped, heat filling me. When I glanced at him over my shoulder, he squeezed for good measure, making me squeak.
“For now, what do we do?” I asked.
“We go get the serum,” Levi said. “And Sara.”
“Then what?” Here, I knew, would be a point of contention.
“Let’s take it one step at a time,” Levi suggested.
“No. I need to know what we’re doing going in, so I don’t get my hopes up. If you men don’t understand what this is about for me, why are you here? This whole thing is about saving Sara. Nothing more, nothing less. She is my world. She has been for almost a thousand years. You can’t ask me to not save her when I have the power in my hands.”
The men shifted. “But this is bigger than you, us, or Sara. If we use it on her, and then they spread the plague, how are we supposed to stop it?”
“We can only save one person with that. Why not Sara?” I demanded.
“No. If I can study it, duplicate it, I could save everyone. I could negate their stupid plague altogether,” Levi pressed.
“Only if you could move fast enough. And anyway, don’t you think they have stores of the serum somewhere? We find that, and you don’t have to waste time making your own.”
Ed offered a compromise. “Levi, how much of the serum do you need?”
“All of it. I would need to run different tests on it to even attempt to duplicate it.”
“Could you not take just a tiny bit of it, and leave the rest for Sara?”
He frowned at this option. “It might take me longer to crack its code if I did that.”
“And it might not fully heal Sara without all of it,” I pointed out.
“It might not, but that’s what compromise is all about.”
“So my options are to leave Sara asleep and let Levi try to duplicate what could cure her now, share and risk not curing her completely, or give her the serum and deal with the spread of the plague later.”
The men didn’t respond except to clear their throats and shift uncomfortably.
“You don’t understand. This world has not cared much for me. Not ever. Not when I was human, and certainly not now that I’m a monster. Why would I sacrifice my daughter to save any of it?”
“Because you live in it. What good is saving her if you don’t survive? You won’t be exempt from this, Merry. Eventually, the plague will come for you,” Ed pointed out.
“That’s a problem for tomorrow. I have the solution for today’s problem within reach,” I argued.
“Levi, what about something else?” Ike asked. “Did you see I am Legend?”
“Yeah, it was so different from the book. And the science was a bit flawed. As if vampires would be some kind of zombie creatures.” He straightened indignity, as if the movie had been some kind of deliberate insult to our race, when the humans didn’t even know we existed in the first place.
“They weren’t supposed to be vampires in the movie. Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Ike said. “They used his blood to find a cure. Couldn’t you do that with Sara?”
Levi blinked a few times as he thought. “Cure her, then use her blood to create the cure? Maybe. I think so. Yes, I could do that. Then I wouldn’t have a limited supply to do tests on. Now, if the plague jumps races, I may have a problem, but for vampires, it would be a fine solution.”
“So once she’s cured, she stays with you at her lab for a while. You’ll keep her safe?” I asked. Well, it was more of a command than a question, but I wasn’t splitting hairs.
He looked into my eyes, grabbing my arms. “Of course I will.”
“You just better, Levi Pietz.” I came in close to him, grabbing him by the shirt. “I know where you live, and I know how to kill vampires.”
“I know you do, my love.” He leaned in and kissed me gently on the lips. “It will be okay. I promise. It’s not over until it is.”
When I pulled away, all the others were nodding their agreement. “Fine. Let’s go get the serum, and save my daughter.”
“And the world,” Ike added.
“And the world,” I parroted.
Dancing in the dark
We drove to Devlin’s lair, because what else would I call the place where that sniveling little weasel lived? It certainly wasn’t a home.
“What if she’s not here?” I asked as we drove up.
“She’s here. The truth powder doesn’t lie,” Ed offered.
“But what if this isn’t what he considered his home base? What if he’s got her somewhere else in some other basement?” I could feel my heart racing as the panic set in.
Oscar laid a heavy hand on my leg. “One thing at a time, love. We’ll find her.”
There were no cars at the dumpy place, but that didn’t mean Devlin had left it unoccupied. As I stepped out of the car, I pulled out two daggers, having freshly restocked my holsters before we left.
Ike put a hand on my shoulder. “Steady.”
“I’ll be steady when Sara is awake and in my arms.”
“Right. Then we just have to save the world from some secret super race. No problem,” he said as we walked up the front stoop.
“That’s a job. This is personal,” I said, keeping my daggers out but by my side.
“Should we knock?” Ed asked when we hesitated at the front door.
“Well, we know Devlin isn’t in,” I said. “You know what? This isn’t right. This isn’t how I would approach a job at all. We need to back off, go in another way, and—” The ground went out beneath me. As I fell, I cursed. Seriously, Devlin? A trap door under the doormat? How typical can you be? I thought as my fall turned to a slide, and I landed on my ass in the dark. The others crashed into me, knocking me forward.
“No one wanted to stay above ground, possibly to find a way out of here?” I asked.
“Well, no. We thought we should stay together,” Ike said, more than a bit sheepish.
“You know what happens in the movies when they split up,” Oscar retorted, trying to back his friend up.
“This is not a movie, and we are not dying in this stupid funhouse Devlin made. Ed, can you get us some light?”
“Certainly.” With a small flourish of his hand, a ball of light appeared in his palm. He held it out for us, revealing a small square room lined with cinder blocks. No way out but the way we came in.
“Shit shooters,” I cursed.
“Now what?” Oscar asked, running his hands along the cement walls, as if he were familiar with them,
friendly almost.
“Well, I could—” Ed started, but Oscar cut him off.
“Wait.” He stopped walking, his hand midway up the wall. “Here.” He pushed on the wall, and the cement crumbled around him. Instinctively, I took a step back, not wanting to be here if he brought the whole room down on our heads.
“Oscar,” I cautioned, but he ignored me. More and more of the wall came away, revealing a chamber behind it. Okay, chamber was a bit generous. Cave was more accurate. I even heard water dripping somewhere, and the earthy smell that filled the cement room was a bit overwhelming.
“Where does it go?” Ike asked.
“One way to find out,” Oscar said as he took the lead and stepped into the tunnel.
We followed him silently as it snaked around. As we went deeper and deeper into the tunnel, I grew frustrated. It didn’t even feel like we were near his lair anymore.
“This is a goose chase. We need to get back to the house,” I said, my voice echoing.
“I’m not so sure, Merry,” Ike said with his nose to the air as the tunnel suddenly opened into a huge cavern that was less earthy than where we’d been. It was lined with cement, as our original jail had been. When we moved into it, the motion tripped white lights. It gave the space a very industrial feel. Our shoes clicked against a hard cement floor, and metal cabinets lined one wall, while shelves filled with all sorts of weapons and tools lined another.
“What is this place?” Levi asked, walking across the room.
“I’m not sure, but there’s something familiar on the air,” Ike said.
We walked deeper into it, and more lights came on. I started to despair as I searched. No stone tiles with a sun on them, and no Sara. We were barking up the wrong tree.
“It’s just his stupid storeroom. She isn’t here.” My grouchy tone made me even grouchier.
“Oh, isn’t she?” Ed nodded over my shoulder where another light had just come on.
“I knew it,” Ike said. “She was the something familiar I smelled. She smells a lot like you, but with a hint of something younger, too. Not unlike baby powder.”
I couldn’t process what he was saying. I was too focused on what was in front of me. There, just at the edge of the light, was Sara. She floated in midair, suspended about two feet from the ground, wearing that green dress I’d made so many centuries ago. Where had Devlin even come up with that? That magician was something else.
Sara’s eyes were still closed, and she seemed untouched.
“What magic holds her here, Ed?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” He followed me to her side, but hesitated to touch her, as did I. “Probably another of the magician’s parlor tricks. But if I don’t unravel it properly, it could be a trap set to kill what’s left of her.”
“Of course it could,” I said, trying to digest the situation. “We still need the serum.”
“We need to find our way out of here. It sounded like the serum was in the garden or something?” Levi said. “Not here in the basement with her.”
“No. That would be too convenient.”
Buried under the stone with the sun etched on it. Devlin’s words played on repeat in my mind. “Shit shooters. That could even be in one of the damned caverns we walked through. Did any of you see any stones with suns on them?”
They shook their heads, my desperation spreading to them.
Impatiently, I brushed a stray hair away from my face, trying to calm down. We were so close to the solution, but it stayed just out of reach. It made me want to scream. Instead, I took a deep breath and tried to think things through.
“Ed, can you remove the spell on her?” I asked as I turned back to him. He nodded. “If you’re lying to me, I don’t want to know,” I said, but didn’t wait for him to respond. “Someone should stay with him, in case he needs help.”
“I’ll stay,” Levi said. “I’m used to being a bit of a sous chef to him.”
“Fine, you guys are with me,” I said. I hurried to the back of the room, into the darkness.
“Where are we going?” Ike asked, sprinting to keep up with me.
“To find that stone.”
I walked through the darkness, lights coming on as I went, but the room just went on forever it seemed.
“Do you think this is magic?” Ike asked as he carefully walked beside me, clearly a bit skittish.
“Probably.”
“So if we leave, will we be able to find this place again?” he asked.
“No idea. But we can’t help Sara without that serum. We have to get out of here and find our way back. They put her here, so there must be a more conventional way back in.” Saying it out loud helped me convince myself it was true. I tried to focus on that, and not the fact I was walking away from her. My arms ached to hold her, but they would have to wait. “Just a little longer,” I told myself.
“What?” Ike asked.
“Nothing.” I spotted a huge metal staircase along what was hopefully the back wall. I turned and looked over my shoulder but I couldn’t see Sara anymore. The lights had gone out between us. Had we really walked that far, or was there some kind of magic at play? Nothing about the room seemed natural, at least to me.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself for whatever lay ahead. “Let’s go.” Taking the steps two at a time, it still took an intolerable amount of time to get to the top.
“This is like some kind of hall of mirrors or something,” Oscar said behind me. “Nothing is as it seems.” I didn’t miss the caution in his voice.
“Devlin had too much time on his hands to mess around with building this stuff. What did he hope to accomplish?” Ike asked.
“Keeping us out, I imagine,” I said as I opened the door above us to blinding sunlight. I shoved it and climbed out of what looked like an average storm cellar from the outside.
“This isn’t tornado alley. What do you need a storm cellar for in Connecticut?” Oscar asked as he joined me in the backyard.
“Who knows? Help me look.” I got down on my hands and knees and crawled through freshly fallen leaves. The stone with the sun on it would be hard to find in all this coverage.
Ike transformed into a wolf before me and put his nose to the ground, sniffing around. “Good boy” almost slipped out, but I held it back. Barely. Oscar kicked at the leaves, searching for the stone with me while Ike did his thing. Before long, he was barking around the corner.
I stood and ran to where he was, only to find a huge stone patio covered in bricks with suns etched into every single one of them. “You stupid twatwaffle, Devlin. I hope the demons beyond the void are enjoying torturing you.”
“Come on. Let’s get to work.” Oscar walked to the edge of the patio and put his hand out, overturning the first brick. It was handy to have a gargoyle around. Ike dug at a different corner, so I went to the other edge and started trying to pry the stones up with my hands.
All of my stones turned over easily, with nothing below them. I sat back, wiping my forehead with the back of my wrist when I realized Ike was digging furiously clear across the yard.
“Ike,” I hollered, but he didn’t respond. Dirt flew up around him, and I called to Oscar, gesturing toward Ike. “I think he’s got something.”
We approached carefully, trying not to get covered in dirt. There wasn’t a single stone with a sun on it, and I couldn’t help but question what he was doing. “Ike, are you just having some fun digging in this yard?”
Still, he didn’t acknowledge me, not until his claws scratched on something hard. He barked and stepped back.
Oscar stepped into the sizable hole Ike had created and brushed the dirt away, revealing a huge stone with a sun, just like the ones on the back deck, but bigger. “Damned twatwaffle,” I murmured before I turned to Ike. “We’d never have found this without you. Thank you.”
He licked my face, leaving one of my cheeks completely slimed. “Demon’s breath, Ike. I hope your human kisses have a little more finesse than that.” He
yipped, and I ruffled the fur on his head.
Meanwhile, Oscar turned his hand to stone, and laid it on top of the huge rock, crumbling it completely to dust. He pulled away, sucking air between his teeth as he went, and looked at his hand.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Just another booby trap,” he said, holding his hand close to his chest.
I pulled at it, and he reluctantly showed me. His hand was black, completely charred. “Oscar, we need to get you some help.” I insisted.
“I’m fine. Just get the serum and let’s get out of here.” A deep frown made his face look older than he was. More mature. Hard. I didn’t like it one bit.
I hopped down into the hole, and started lifting the pebbles out by the armload with Oscar’s help. My blood hummed in my veins, as if I could feel what was underneath it. The end was so close I could almost taste it.
Beneath the stone was a small metal box. I picked it up out of the hole, but it didn’t have any way to open it. No hinges, no keyhole, nothing. “What do you make of it?”
Ike sniffed at it and harrumphed. “Me too,” I said as I turned the box around in the sunlight.
“Let’s get it back to Ed. He might have some ideas. All of this is his realm anyway,” Oscar said.
I nodded and went back to the storm cellar door, praying the journey back down the rabbit hole would be uneventful. I’d had enough curve balls for the day.
Ike transformed back. He pulled his clothes on as we descended the stairs.
In my own haste, I nearly fell down the last ten steps, but somehow managed to keep my feet under me.
“Graceful,” Ike said.
“Oh, hush,” I said as I hurried into the darkness, knowing they were there, even if I couldn’t see them. No one said anything as we ran flat out, too fast for the lights to keep up with us.
We’d come to them any minute, or so I told myself. Just keep running. Put one foot in front of the other. But too much time passed.
“It didn’t take us this long to cross the room before, did it?” I asked, slowing down to a brisk walk.