Sanguinity

by Tori Centanni

  Carla’s red eyes fixed on me. “You’re a fool. We should never have involved you in our business.” She raised her hand and her bracelet glowed. I dove for the ground, landing next to my sword. A spell flew over my head and exploded into the dirt behind me. I looked around and realized I didn’t see Angela anywhere. That was worrying. But I didn’t see any more skeletons either.

  As if on cue, three skeletons rose from the ground behind Carla. They shambled forward, flanking her like soldiers. I tried to do mental math, counting the mortals who’d followed Brad. There were already more skeletons than vampire groupies, and who knew what other people she might have lured out here with false promises, only to turn them into skeletons.

  She gestured and they rushed forward—as well as they could rush on skeletal feet—and headed straight for me.

  I jumped to my feet, holding my sword. The handle had cooled off, but my burned hand protested as it closed around the hilt. Erin grabbed her knife and threw it at Carla. The knife stopped inches from Carla’s shoulder. She spun it around in midair and tossed it back at Erin, catching her in the arm. Erin didn’t scream, but she gritted her teeth and looked at the blade sticking out of her skin in horror.

  The skeletons reached me, bony hands grabbing at my arms, my coat, my hair. Blood thrummed in my ears and I felt nauseated, still shaken from almost being choked to death. I took a deep breath, filling my sore lungs, and then I swung my sword. I aimed for their necks, fighting against their grappling hands of bone.

  “You have to die, I’m afraid,” Carla said, moving closer to Erin. “It’s part of the story. I arrived to find you doing this dark magic and managed to stop you just in time.”

  “Yeah, they’re going to believe I was doing death magic with nullifiers on,” Erin said. She yanked the knife from her arm, wincing. “I called the others when I ran inside. They’re on their way.”

  I cut off the head of the skeleton closest to me, but one of the others got my arm and the headless one still grabbed at my hair. Angela reappeared with a garden hoe.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Getting a weapon,” she said, swinging hard enough to send the second skeleton’s skull flying like a golf ball off a tee. Bits of bone broke off and flew through the air. She rammed it in the ribs and it fell over.

  “Who the hell is that?” Carla demanded when she caught sight of Angela.

  “A vampire who’s on our side,” Erin said. “This isn’t going to work out for you.”

  One of the skeletons, the one who still had a head, grabbed my chin, fingertips digging into my cheeks. I stabbed forward, kicking and trying to get it off me. My sword caught in its ribcage. Its bony hand twisted my face. It was trying to break my neck, I realized in a panic.

  I kicked harder, hitting a knee or leg, and then finally managed to break off some of its ribs with my blade. Its fingers squeezed harder until I thought it might crush my jaw.

  Angela punched its skull off its neck and then wrenched it off me by its shoulders, using the hoe to obliterate the bones, slamming the metal tool down on them until they turned to dust.

  I wiggled my jaw, gingerly touching it. It was bruised, but I didn’t think it was actually broken. I swung my gaze around wildly, looking for more skeletons or attackers. When I saw Erin, a lump rose in my throat and my stomach churned.

  Carla had thrown some kind of spell at Erin and she was convulsing on the ground. I sprang forward at Carla, sword out. The blade caught her in the shoulder. It cut through her muscle like butter.

  Carla screamed and spun around. I yanked the sword back. Her red eyes gleamed. She raised a hand to attack. I didn’t let her. I swung the sword hard, aiming right at her throat. The blade sank into her neck. I felt it severe her spine as the blade hit bone. Carla stumbled, her face pulled into an expression of shock.

  Her head started to roll right off her shoulders. I pulled my blade back, the job done. But her hand jerked up and caught her own head by the hair. She pressed it back into place. The skin around the wound healed with vampiric speed. Faster, even, than a vampire. She stretched her neck, rolling her shoulders, and then fixed her angry red eyes on me.

  I stared blankly, frozen in shock. Even vampires died when they were beheaded. Things couldn’t live without heads. And the skeletons she had stumbling around didn’t count. They weren’t alive, just animated. It made sense they could function without heads when they lacked brains. Carla, though, should have slumped to the ground the minute I severed her spine.

  “I told you I’m immortal. Truly immortal, unlike that thing,” she hissed, pointing at Angela, who had just finished pulverizing the last skeleton with its own leg bone, the hoe forgotten at her feet.

  Angela looked up and smiled in an unsettling way. “Nothing is truly invincible in this world.”

  Carla curled her fingers and then her bracelet glowed. She fired a spell at Angela, another arrow made of flame. Angela dodged it easily.

  Erin moaned from the ground, blinking. I let out a breath. She was alive for now. That was good.

  My sword was useless. Then I had a thought: the only other thing that reliably killed vampires was fire. If beheading didn’t work on Carla, maybe flames wouldn’t either, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  She fired another spell at me. I jumped out of the way but it caught the arm of my jacket, slicing a hole in the fabric.

  Erin pushed herself up, the nullifiers still on. She grabbed the knife by her side and jumped Carla again, pulling the evil witch’s attention.

  As soon as Carla was distracted, I ran toward the remnants of the magical circle, searching for that long lighter Carla had used in her ritual. I finally spotted it in the grass, closing my hand around it. I darted inside the house, looking for something flammable. There was a table serving as a wet bar against the wall of the dining room and I grabbed the highest-proof bottle I could find, a high-octane vodka.

  I raced back outside, lungs burning and head a little fuzzy.

  Outside, Angela had yanked Carla off Erin. Carla zapped her with another spell. Angela swore, her arm catching fire. She batted it out, hissing.

  “Angela,” I said. I thought about the liquor and lighter in my hands and Angela nodded, reading the thoughts loud and clear. It was the first time I truly appreciated how useful her telepathy could be.

  Carla turned to me. I kept the lighter low at my side but her gaze landed on the bottle.

  “Drink all you want. You’ll be dead in a minute.” She grinned and turned back to Erin, firing another spell at her.

  Erin screamed and convulsed, falling to the ground again. Angela grabbed Carla and broke her neck, dropping the body before helping Erin to her feet. Erin was shaking.

  Carla’s head spun, righting itself. I doused her in vodka. She shot another fire spell at me, breaking the bottle. The contents and glass spilled on top of her. She got to her feet.

  “You fools.” Her eyes flared red. She was overwhelmed. She hadn’t expected to fight three people. “I told you, I cannot be killed.”

  “Not that way,” I said. I flicked the lighter.

  Carla’s eyes widened. “That won’t work,” she said, readying another spell. “But if you stop fighting me, I can make you immortal, too. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  She smiled when I hesitated. But my hesitation only lasted a second. I’d heard those kinds of empty promises from better people than her.

  “I don’t want your brand of immortality,” I said.

  I sprang forward. She fired a spell off. It hit me in the shoulder and my arm screamed in pain. Every single pain neuron in that side of my body fired like I was being burned alive. I couldn’t think or move for several seconds. It hurt like hell. Actual hell, or how I imagined it. Tears pricked my eyes. My vision was red. Everything was pain.

  I tried to breathe, tried to focus. To fight through it. When I managed to come back, I saw Angela holding my sword.

  Angela zipped behind Carla, dodging another spe
ll with vampiric speed. The blade of my sword shot out from Carla’s chest. Carla gasped, blood dripping from her mouth. Angela pulled back the sword and took a step back. “Now,” she said calmly.

  I fumbled with the lighter, my fingers still sore. It ignited. Carla’s body hadn’t even hit the ground when her eyes popped open again, her heart healed.

  I got the lighter against her jacket, which was soaked in vodka, before she could figure out what was happening. Her clothes went up in flames. She screamed, and it was the most ear-piercing, heart-stopping sound I’d ever heard. For good measure, Angela sliced through her neck and cut off her head.

  Carla’s body hit the ground, still burning, her head falling several feet away. Angela traded me the sword for the lighter and set Carla’s head on fire, too. Erin pulled a shaker of salt out of her jean pocket and twisted off the lid, dumping it over the flames and chanting the same spell she and Kiki had chanted over the bones.

  “What if it doesn’t work?” Angela asked.

  I shrugged. I honestly didn’t know. If fire couldn’t kill her, we were pretty fucked.

  “Oh, it’s working,” Erin said as a blue light rose from Carla’s body, twining with the smoke. We all stood and watched her burn until the fire tried to spread out to the sparse patches of grass.

  Erin finally retrieved a fire extinguisher from inside and put it out. And then the tree of us stared at the charred and blackened body, waiting for it to rise or twitch or move.

  “There’s nothing in there,” Angela confirmed.

  “What?” Erin asked.

  “She’s a telepath,” I said. “If Carla were still in there, Angela would know.”

  “Oh,” Erin said, not taking her eyes off the body.

  All three of us stood there for a long time, none of us wanting to leave the body alone to rise and recover, even if Angela was pretty sure Carla was gone.

  A car pulled up around the front, its tires loud in the gravel-covered drive, headlights swinging over the yard.

  “That’ll be Jones and Kiki,” Erin said. Her voice was flat. “Is it safe to leave her…?”

  She didn’t seem to be asking either Angela or I specifically. Neither of us answered. After a moment, she must have decided it was okay, because she headed up to the porch and went inside.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said to Angela.

  Her smile was devious. “You owe me now.”

  “Okay,” I said, too tired to argue. I hadn’t asked her to come. I’d called Lark, and Lark had sent her. But really, what was one more favor owed to a vampire?

  “Check the pockets,” she said, nodding to Carla’s corpse.

  With that, she marched around the side of the house. A moment later, I heard a car start.

  I sighed and walked over to the body.

  Chapter 29

  “I can’t believe it was her,” Kiki said. She sat at the table with Evan and Erin. Jones was in the kitchen, filling one of those electric kettles. Byron, Kiki said, had been told and was on his way.

  Evan had watched most of the action from his bedroom window, where he’d been locked up. He and his sister both still wore nullifiers, and Evan looked a little green around the edges.

  I dropped two metal keys on the table. They’d been in Carla’s pants pocket, just as Angela had indicated.

  “Oh, thank the gods,” Evan said, snatching one of the keys and trying it on the band in his wrist. “I was starting to feel really weird. Like drugged, almost.”

  The key clicked in the lock and the band fell off. He repeated the action on his other wrist. Erin did the same with the other key, and then rubbed her wrists. She had red lines where the bands had been, but they were faint. Evan had similar bands, but his were redder and looked almost raw. Erin had a split lip and red lines running down her arm where one of Carla’s spells had hit her.

  My own shoulder felt like it had been shoved through a meat grinder, and I was scared to take off my coat and assess the carnage.

  “I feel like I should have realized it,” Jones said gravely. “She’s always been so eager for power. But I never thought she’d sink to such dark magic.”

  “No one did,” Kiki agreed. “I mean, I knew she was bossy, but holy shit.”

  “I kind of knew,” Evan said. That earned him curious looks. “What? She’s been trying to steal my farm for years. Always acting like it was hers, holding ceremonies and meetings in the field without permission.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I guess Bev was working with her, huh?” Kiki sounded utterly betrayed.

  “Seems so,” Erin confirmed. “But I’m willing to bet Carla forced her hand.”

  “What happens now?” I asked. “Do you bury her evil spells in the ground and hope no one digs them up, or what?”

  The four of them exchanged uncertain looks. They didn’t know, either.

  “This is pretty unprecedented,” Kiki finally said. “About ten years ago down in Texas, there was a witch who tried to take over their Guild by using black magic to possess fellow witches. He killed five people before he was stopped. The Guild basically dissolved after that. We have a few members from there. Maybe they can help us decide.”

  “And we still have the vampires to deal with,” Erin said.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Evan said. “In the meantime, we should get her remains cremated as soon as possible. I’m not going to sleep until I know that body ain’t getting up.”

  “You’re in luck,” I said. “I know someone with an incinerator, and we might be able to solve your vampire problem at the same time.”

  Might as well owe Lark a favor while I was at it. Plus, it would help resolve any potential war with the vampires if we presented the body of the culprit who’d killed Harold, Bea, and other immortals from the area.

  “How do we move the body?” Jones asked.

  I turned to Evan. “Got any trash bags?”

  * * *

  An hour later, I pulled up to the Factory with Carla’s body in my trunk and Erin in the passenger’s seat. She’d volunteered to brave the vampires’ den and we’d spent the whole ride listening uneasily for bumps or knocks coming from the rear of my car, afraid even burned and headless, Carla might come back to life.

  Erin stopped me midway to the front door. “Where’s your sword?”

  “In the car. I shouldn’t need it.” Or at least, I hoped not.

  Erin didn’t look convinced, but didn’t argue.

  From the outside, the Factory looked like the same old abandoned textile factory it had always been. The windows that had burned out during the fire had been replaced.

  I knocked, not even sure if Lark was here. When Ry opened the door, I had a moment of total disconnect where I had to make sure I’d driven to the right place. I’d never seen Ry in the Factory before.

  “Hi,” he said. He glanced at Erin. “What’s up?”

  “Uh, is Lark here?”

  “Sure.” He gave another glance at Erin, but I didn’t bother to introduce her or explain who she was, and he didn’t ask. He gestured for us to come inside.

  No one was in the parlor near the door. I almost turned into that room automatically anyhow. It was where guests were usually left to wait. But Ry kept going, so I followed.

  He led us to the ballroom. There was a long table in the middle that took up only a tiny fraction of the cavernous space. At one end sat Lark, dressed in a beige formal dress, the kind of thing an actress might wear on the red carpet. At the opposite end of the table sat Cazimir, dressed in all of his regal 18th century French king attire: a blue and silver embroidered outfit that looked like it could be used in a historical film. Sean sat at the center of the table, in a dress shirt, listening to something Lark was saying.

  Tension filled the room like smoke.

  The three of them stopped talking and looked up when we walked in.

  “Am I interrupting?” I asked.

  Sean said “No” at the same time Lark said “Actually, yes.”

  Cazimi
r said nothing. He just sat there regarding me like he always regarded his visitors: with a slightly condescending look that said he knew you needed a favor or you wouldn’t be there. He was right, of course.

  “I need to use the incinerator. But first,” I grabbed Erin’s wrist—gently, because we were both injured—and pulled her up beside me. “I need to finish some business regarding Harold and Bea’s murder.”

  Lark pressed her lips into a thin line. I didn’t need Angela’s powers to read her thoughts that this was not the right time.

  Cazimir, meanwhile, made a gesture with his hand, rolling his wrist, the universal sign for go on.

  I told them about Carla and her devious plan, her ritual sacrifices, and how she’d tried to kill Erin and several others in the Guild. I made sure to mention that Carla had worked alone with the exception of a single accomplice, whom she had already killed, and that the Guild at large did not condone or participate in her ritual sacrifices. And finally, after detailing how we’d defeated her, I mentioned that I had her body in the trunk and asked to use the incinerator.

  All three vampires listened patiently as I spoke. When I finished, Cazimir stood. He addressed Erin.

  “You are the representative of the Seattle Witches’ Guild?”

  “Yes, sire,” she said, and bowed.

  I did not roll my eyes, but it was an effort. I remembered that her Guild had some sort of contract with Cazimir, and no doubt part of that meant playing along with his King Vampire act in order to keep the peace.

  “You may rise,” he said magnanimously. “If you have stopped this murderous wretch and brought me her body, then our business is done. Our contract remains in place, and the vampires of Seattle will consider this situation resolved.”

  “Thank you, sire,” she said, unable to keep the utter relief out of her voice.

  Cazimir snapped his fingers. Nothing happened, so he snapped them again, staring meaningfully at the doorway, like he was expecting his security crew to appear.