Sabrina and the Gargoyle

by Marie Dry

  “Back at you bloodsucker,” Simon murmured, but Sabrina thought he looked more amused than insulted.

  Nicholas turned to Mark again. “We need to join forces. I’ve hunted the drogge and I think I know their general location.”

  “How did you manage that?” Mark demanded. “I’ve been through every inch of this city for months now.”

  Nicholas rubbed his eyes, his shoulders tense. In spite of how rude he’d been to her before, Sabrina felt sorry for him. He seemed tired, the kind of tired when your soul was empty. The way she’d felt after Jennifer died and Christopher had left.

  “I wish I could claim some skill that would better our chances, but it was pure luck. I suspect they momentarily lifted a glamor to allow someone back in. At least, I can pinpoint us at a more specific area.”

  Mark nodded “We need to take turns searching, but we also have to stay sharp and practice. We don’t know what we will have to battle.”

  The next week, they all practice with various weapons every day and Mark joined in, in spite of the silver sliver driven into his knee. He showed her some moves and taught her how to shoot. She was good with a sword and terrible with a gun. It upset her when he limped and was in obvious pain.

  Reports of humans and vampires being killed kept coming in. No gargoyles were killed but five gargoyles came to join them, determined to find the drogge and wipe them off the face of the earth.

  Then exactly one week after Nicholas had inserted the sliver she woke to find him sweating and groaning while the sliver emerged. She ran to the bathroom and got a cloth and wiped his sweating brow.

  “How long will it take to get out?” she asked him and continued to wipe his brow, neck, and chest with the cool cloth.

  “I don’t know,” he said between clenched teeth.

  An hour later the sliver emerged. She took it with a grimace of distaste and threw it in the bin. “Promise me you’ll never do something like that again,” she demanded.

  “Do you accept that you’re important to me, that I care about you?”

  She noticed he didn’t say she was the most important thing in his life, or that he loved her, but she nodded. They might all die in this war against the drogge. She’d grab what happiness she could.

  “We have to get some sleep, we need to be alert tomorrow,” he said. He drew her down on his chest and she closed her eyes and eventually his steady heartbeat soothed her into sleep.

  He drove all the warriors to the edge of their abilities in order to train them for what was coming. The problem was they didn’t know what was coming. What weapons their enemy would use to fight them. All the manuscripts said the drogge came and killed many vampires, but it never said how. Or gave a description of them. It seemed as if no person who saw them ever lived to tell about it. Sabrina spend hours on the internet trying to find anything useful.

  They scoured Cape Town for the drogge’s hiding place. They’d divided the area Nicholas had indicated and Mark had agreed he felt their presence around that area, but they couldn’t pinpoint their location. While they searched, thousands of humans disappeared and vampires were found drained daily. They seemed to be the drogge’s food of choice.

  Cape Town was in a panic. Newscasts warned people to stay at home. Restaurants closed early because no one ventured outside anymore. The disappearances and killings were ascribed to gangs, militia, and even secret government forces.

  No one suggested supernatural creatures.

  Sabrina was chatting online with her friends, finding it hard to sound normal and to answer their questions without giving away what she knew when Mark found her.

  “Your friend Mikaela might be able to help us,” Mark said from behind her.

  Sabrina clutched her heart and quickly put her laptop on the bed and got up. One of these days she’d put a bell on him. “You won’t hurt her?”

  “No, I got her out early enough, she hadn’t turned yet.” He touched Sabrina’s shoulder and they were at the gargoyle farm.

  Sabrina looked around at the large living room she remembered from before. She’d never enjoy coming here.

  Thailog stood in the door, his face grim. “We found three of ours dead this morning, young ones who thought they’d go out and fight the enemy.”

  Mark’s jaw firmed. “You should show the young ones, even the children, what a gargoyle looks like after the drogge are through with them.”

  Thailog nodded.

  Sabrina gasped. “No, you can’t show something so gruesome to children. They’d be scarred for life.” What kind of monster did she marry? Or thought she married, oh hell whatever.

  Mark cupped her cheek. “Gargoyles are invulnerable to illness, have very few natural enemies, and the children grow up with a false sense of safety. It’s been centuries since gargoyles fought in wars. If he doesn’t show them the reality, they will keep trying to go out and fight the drogge. A grown gargoyle stands a chance against the drogge. A juvenile will be easy prey.”

  Sabrina nodded. She really, really, hated the drogge. She might not like the gargoyles, but she would never wish harm to any child.

  “We came to see Mikaela,” Mark said.

  Thailog nodded and motioned to the door behind them. “We keep her locked up in one of the downstairs suites. She’s been very quiet lately. At first she kept trying to escape, but as their hold on her is lifting, she’s quieting down.”

  Sabrina drew in a deep breath. Even knowing Mikaela had not been in control of her own actions, Sabrina dreaded seeing her. Seeing the combination of evil hatred and desperate plea for help in her friend’s gaze.

  They found Mikaela sitting on the floor in a large room with an old fashioned copper bed. The same kind her Ouma used to sleep on. It even had the same four ornamental balls at each corner of the headboard and the iron foot of the bed. Sabrina could see at a glance that the lovely patchwork quilt on the bed were handmade. On the wooden bedside table, a vase with proteas had place of pride. Gauzy curtains allowed the sun to shine into the room. In any other circumstances, Sabrina would’ve enjoyed the sheer beauty and history of the room.

  Mikaela sat cross legged on the floor, her hands on her knees, meditating. She opened her eyes and looked at them with such sorrow in her large brown eyes that Sabrina sobbed and rushed forward. Mark grabbed her. Mikaela jumped up and moved back from her, holding her hands out in front of her as if to warn Sabrina away.

  “Don’t come near me, Sabrina. There’s evil inside me. I can feel it waiting to come out.”

  “You could never be evil,” Sabrina said fiercely, struggling against Mark’s hold.

  Mikaela smiled, a sad smile, her eyes glittering with tears. Looking at her, Sabrina could see the difference between her and Jo. She looked bad, not like her beautiful vibrant friend at all, but she also didn’t have that strange bone structure coming through her face. Sabrina’s heartbeat sped up. Maybe Mark had gotten her out in time, after all.

  Mikaela looked at Mark. “I don’t know how I know this, but they’re feeding to get the strength to bring someone here. I also don’t know who or how they plan to do it, but I do know this thing they want to bring will be the end of all of us if you don’t stop them.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Please stop them.”

  “I will,” Mark said with grim promise.

  “Promise me, if they can’t be stopped, promise me--” Mikaela swallowed and Sabrina tried to go to her again. Mark tightened his hold on her.

  “I won’t let them have you,” he said quietly.

  Mikaela nodded seeming to relax slightly. For the first time, Sabrina really understood how much her friend had to fear becoming like Jo.

  “Thank you for the information, we are keeping a spell around this house, I know it must be difficult, but you have to remain in this room.”

  Mikaela nodded.

  “If they get ahold of you only once, you’ll be lost. None of us will be able to help you,” Mark stressed.

  Mikaela nodded
again. She’d always been tall and model thin, her short tightly curled black hair glossy with health. Now she was too thin, her hair dull. Her brown skin that used to be a healthy slightly darker tone than Sabrina’s, looked almost gray.

  Mark pulled Sabrina back and she reluctantly allowed him to pull her through the door.

  “Sabrina,” Mikaela said.

  She turned and looked at the woman who’d been her friend ever since she could remember.

  “I’m sorry, Sabrina, for what I said and did at those parties.”

  Sabrina smiled at her. “Even then, when I looked into your eyes, I saw my friend.”

  Michaela jerked as if someone had slapped her and paled even more. Sabrina wanted to cry. Mikaela did not deserve this.

  “I would like to stay here. They treat me well. The voices are fading. I actually have hope that I might get out of this without going crazy.”

  Sabrina nodded and got out of there. Thailog followed them to the living room. “She struggles at night. I get the feeling they’re searching for her.”

  Mark nodded. “We’re getting close, I can sense them in a particular area. Keep your people safe.” He touched Sabrina’s shoulder and they were back in the safe house.

  Mark led her up the stairs.

  “Why are we always coming here? Why not materialize in our room?”

  “There’s a protection spell on the house. Everyone appears in the living room. If anyone tries to infiltrate us that way, they have to appear here, and we’ll behead them before they can find their bearings.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to interrogate them.”

  He shook his head. “We cannot take the chance. They might start feeding on the person who tries to capture them. We don’t know how they feed or how close they need to be to drain them.”

  “Why wouldn’t you let me touch Mikaela.”

  “She’s infected, if they somehow got through the glamor they could use her to harm you.”

  Sabrina’s fingers twitched. She wanted to sew. Whenever she was stressed, when she didn’t know how she’d go on without a family, sewing had soothed her. Now she wished she’d taken some more projects to keep her busy from her ruined workroom.

  Mark took her hands in his and touched her twitching fingers with his forefinger. “I have something to show you in our room.”

  She thought he meant he wanted to make love to her, and she wanted that, although she did wonder how he could manage to take the time out in the middle of the day, when he should be searching for the drogge.

  He opened the bedroom door. She nodded at the guards and walked in then came to a dead stop.

  Her quilting frame stood in the middle of the room. The last time she saw it, it had been smashed to pieces. Tears spilled out of her eyes and she stood rooted to the spot. This was the most wonderful present anyone had ever given her.

  Sabrina caressed the aged wood, tracing a finger over the stains where she’d colored the wood with a pen when she was little. Her mother wanted to spank her, but Ouma stopped her and thanked Sabrina for decorating it for her. She looked up at Mark, overwhelmed that he would go to such lengths to have it fixed for her when they were under siege. It soothed that small part of her that still feared that he planned to use her as bait. That he was keeping her sweet to keep her compliant. “How, how did you restore it so perfectly. Some of the wood had been pulverized.” She’d given up on ever being able to repair it.

  “I know a warlord wizard who was willing to fix it.”

  “Warlord wizard?”

  He made a weird abortive movement with his hand. “You don’t want to know.”

  He was right. The drogge was enough to deal with for now. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you doesn’t seem enough.”

  He shrugged, the gesture was casual, but he had a watchful look. “It was destroyed because of me. It’s only right that I return it to you. When this is over, we will take it back to the house and put it in your work room where it belongs.”

  For the first time she noticed the chair she used to sit in also repaired as well as the table she kept her needles and thimbles on. And among the threads and needles, arranged exactly as she’d left it before it was destroyed, was the silver thimble and the little pair of scissors. She picked up the thimble with trembling hands.

  Mark touched the thimble in her hand with a long forefinger. “The wizard also has the ability to read objects. He said the thimble belonged to a princess from Malaysia. It’s at least five centuries old.”

  “Ouma’s stories were true?” She’d always claimed they descended from royalty. That her great, great, great grandfather and his wife were political enemies of the Dutch East India Company, who brought them to the Cape as slaves.

  “Most of them. I have to leave. Will you be all right here?”

  Sabrina nodded. “I can’t wait to start working again.”

  “I will leave you to it, I have to go to another meeting to waste time deciding who does what.”

  He kissed her and she kissed him back, trying not to hold back. Not to let her reservations about his motives come between then.

  He smoothed her hair back and smiled down at her. “I will romance you and seduce you until you cannot help but love me.”

  Sabrina smiled and stroked a finger over his face. “I’ll see you later.”

  Something flashed over his features and she thought it might be disappointment, but he kissed her again and left.

  Closing the door to her bedroom, she opened up all the parcels that contained everything she needed to design the most lavish of quilts. An hour later, she set down her scissors and sat back on her haunches.

  “Who am I fooling? I just can’t concentrate.”

  Determined, she went for the door to ask the others what was happening, when she felt premonition slither down her spine. She knew something evil stood behind her before she turned and faced the tall man whose skin and hair seemed to have been bleached of all color.

  Chapter 15

  Slowly, very slowly Sabrina turned. She wanted to run, to scream, but her lips wouldn’t move and she had to see what stood behind her. She’d half expected to find a gargoyle. But a man with pasty white skin, unnaturally tall and thin with human features that had gone somehow wrong, looked at her out of dying eyes. It was the only way to describe the way they faded. Held absolutely no emotion.

  Mark had said she’d know them when she saw them, and she knew, she knew to the depths of her terrified soul that this was a drogge. Utter dread infiltrated her very cells until her mind screamed for help while control of her body was seized from her. She couldn’t move couldn’t call out to Mark or the vampires or Simon. He made a strange circular motion with his hand. The room she stood in disappeared, and she was in darkness. Terrified, alone, and in the dark.

  In her petrified mind, she screamed for Mark and then for Christopher, but even as she screamed their names with that soundless terrible scream, she knew they couldn’t hear her. The darkness was too thick and heavy, the unnatural silence pressing in on her ears until it turned each corner of her brain into nothing.

  Mark will find me. She just had to stay calm and wait. The drogge were afraid of him. If anyone could find her in this terrible darkness, he could.

  It felt like hours that she spent in the darkness. Even worse than the darkness was the way she lost her sense of self. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and couldn’t feel. She tried to fist her hands, but couldn’t feel that she had hands. What if they’d paralyzed her and she was still in the room in the safe house, trapped inside her own body?

  After being kidnapped twice this month, she should be praying that she was at least in their room in the safe house, but she prayed with every breath she took that she was in the dungeon of the drogge and that they’d given her a drug that would wear off and allow her to feel her own body.

  Many hours later, she became aware of a tingling in her hands and feet and could’ve cried with relief. It must’ve been a drug. The other
option, that they could have seized total control of her mind made her want to lose her breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  “I have given you back yourself. Be aware that I can take it away as easily,” a voice said in the darkness. A terrible voice with such a lack of life that her mind urged her to willingly seek the place where she had no sense of self. Like the eyes of the drogge who captured her, his voice sounded like that of a dying soul.

  It started with a pinprick behind her eyes and, at first, she saw only a small dot of light which widened until suddenly she was aware. Sabrina looked at the creature in front of her and tried with all her might not to cringe. She was in a bedroom, a strangely normal sunny bedroom with a wooden four poster bed and two wingback chairs. Colorful printed curtains matched the quilt on the bed. What turned her stomach was the family picture on the dresser. She just knew they took this house from that smiling family. She didn’t want to think what they did with them.

  She looked at the creature in front of her and shivered. It might have a handsome human shell, but a monster stood opposite her. It lurked with frightening dead eyes. Every now and then the image of the perfect handsome man would shift and she’d see something terrifyingly ugly with large sharp teeth, a short forehead, and beady eyes. The same thing that had happened to Jo, but only worse.

  “Why did you kidnap me. What do you want with me?” Please let them not want to sacrifice me. Maybe this lot didn’t know she was the one they sensed when they moved to Africa.

  It looked at her with a blank face, the faded white eyes almost seemed blind, but she had the feeling something about her confused him. Please let her be the wrong person, that they don’t want her. That they don’t kill her or drain her or sacrifice her, but throw her out on the street.

  “Who are you?” she asked him.

  It was definitely a him, but not a masculine him like Mark and the others.

  With a strange really creepy move, it shuffled back from her. Almost as if she creeped it out as much as it did her.

  “Why do you only kill vampires and not humans?”