by Aya DeAniege
Then I got out and closed the door as quietly as I could and scowled at her. I thought I had a right to know what I had done to upset her.
I didn’t think I’d get an actual answer out of her, considering the fact that her response to that question was to shoot me a scathing look, which was worse than her resting murder face. If I had to guess, I’d say that was the look she gave someone before she ate them and left bits of their body hanging in trees as a warning to others.
“I don’t want to, nor do I have to answer that,” she said sternly and quietly.
I drew in a long breath and shook my head. “Then why help me?”
“I’m not helping you, I’m helping Quin,” she said in response. “Now go walk into the cemetery like you’re wandering about and get caught so I can snap a neck and eat something. I’m starving.”
I grumbled under my breath and reached down, slipping off the shoes I had ‘borrowed’ from the joggers outside the park. Since I was already outed as a vampire, I no longer needed them. They were pinching my toes anyhow, so I turned and tossed them away from the car.
One way or another, I was not putting them back on again.
“You suck,” I said.
“I do, that’s why my lovers always come crawling back to me.”
Huffing out an annoyed breath, I marched into the cemetery.
The tablet gave off no light unless—almost muttering a curse, I checked on the phone that I had replaced my tablet with.
It had still been recording, despite its screen being dark.
Slipping it back into place, I nodded once to myself and stepped onto the cement path. It was cold beneath my feet, a little damp from dew. There was a chill in the air that I suddenly felt as my stomach rumbled in protest.
I was hungry and so very, very aware of my surroundings.
As a mortal, I never would have walked into a cemetery at night. Let alone done so by myself, or headed towards a couple of people who I knew were determined to kill me.
If I was lucky, he’d snap my neck again and torture me for a couple of centuries.
Pressing my lips into a thin line, I came to a stop at an intersection between two paths, wondering which way to go. The cone of yellow light cast an odd colouring across me, making me feel as if there were a spotlight on me, pointing out where I was to anyone who wanted to find me.
Sasha hadn’t told me where Lu and Death were in the cemetery, only that they were there. I also didn’t know my way through.
She had, however, said that my instincts were good.
I looked up the path, I looked down the path, and I sighed as I turned on my heel and looked back at the car. Sasha was leaning against the hood of the vehicle. She arched an eyebrow up and motioned to the left.
I turned on my heel and marched down the path. It would have been more helpful if she had told me before leaving the vehicle which way I was supposed to go, instead of having me wander around aimlessly.
Unless that was the point.
I wandered through the cemetery aimlessly. At some point, I heard a song echoing across the tombstones, but I just kept wandering around.
I figured if Sasha wanted me to do something else, she should have damned well told me. Not would have, should have. If I messed up her plan by wandering around too much, that was her problem, not mine.
The song in the air was being sung by a male voice and slowly growing louder. I couldn’t seem to tell if I was getting closer to the singer, or if he was getting closer to me.
“Would you stop that?” Lu protested.
“Reminds me of home,” another voice growled in response.
Just as I came around the side of a mausoleum and within sight of the pair of them. Startled, I stood there for a moment, uncertain what to do.
I was probably as surprised to stumble on them as they were to have me, of all people, come around that corner. The three of us stared at one another for a long moment, waiting for the other one to make the first move.
The pair of them were near a tombstone and there was a little lamp at their feet. Lu looked pale, almost white as a sheet in the light of the lamp. Death was residing in a mortal body, well cared for and a young adult. The body had muscle to it, but not a great deal of it, more of just maintained.
Understanding that if they moved first, I’d be caught by the both of them, I turned quickly and bolted.
I had never been the fastest runner. Race me in a straight line, and you’ll win every time. But in my day, I had outrun all the boys. I knew darting around a tall tombstone and swinging myself around it was an effective way to startle him. So, that was what I did.
I rushed back towards the mausoleum and then back in the direction I had come. My heart began pounding in my chest, lungs burning as I struggled to get air in.
It was difficult to remind myself that air was now optional, with how everything protested, but I continued. I ran and ran, then came to a stop in the middle of a flat area as I realized that I was lost.
The area was not empty. That became painfully obvious as my foot touched cold stone engraved with an epitaph. I stepped off the grave marker, all too aware that there was no place I could go that wouldn’t involve traipsing across a grave.
I turned back the way I had come as Death hit the area at a run and made his way directly towards me.
Fight or flight?
It should have been seconds but felt like forever as I weighed my options.
Death had possessed, for lack of a better word, the body of a young man with a clean-shaven face and blond hair. He looked like he had just stepped out of some magazine, he was that pretty. The body was even dressed in a sweater vest and khakis, as if he had gotten lost from his church group or something.
Even if he looked like he belonged in a magazine, that didn’t mean he was strong. And as an immortal residing in a mortal body, I still had one advantage.
I was hungry, and that made him a midnight snack.
Think like a predator.
Gritting my teeth, I rushed towards him. He reached up, and I batted his hand out of the way.
“No,” I snapped.
I swear I felt a movement in the air, a force beyond me, as his hands seemed to drop. The light went out of his eyes and he just stood there placidly awaiting instructions. I wasted no time pondering what I had done this time, tangling my hand in his hair and yanking his head to the side before sinking my teeth into his neck.
Biting people is hard. Not just morally, but physically hard. Without the advantage of the sharp teeth that vampires had in fiction, the skin did not part easily. Once it did, however, I was in a wondrous red haze.
His life force throbbed into my greedy mouth as I wrapped my arms around him in an almost loving fashion, holding him up as he became weakened. I didn’t stop drinking until the blood came no more. Then I let the husk of a man drop to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Wiping at my lips, I grimaced at the mess I had made of myself. I knelt and struggled for a moment before getting his vest up enough to use it to wipe my mouth and chin. It wasn’t great, but it’d have to do.
Someone else could clean up the mess later. Like Sasha, or Quin. That’d teach them to not tell me what to do.
I stood and looked around. At the edge of my being, almost the corner of my mind and yet out the corner of my eye, I heard a whispering and saw something. Gritting my teeth, I almost kicked the body at my feet, but in the end, it wasn’t his fault.
Death was trying to get his claws into me. As a baby vampire, I didn’t have the skills to keep him out. Skills which I was betting other vampires had developed out of necessity. They probably didn’t even think about it anymore.
I think I’ll stay.
I huffed out an annoyed sound and locked him in a box in my mind. That seemed to shut him up, but I didn’t know for how long.
Without a body, Death would have to find one, not being able to get a good grip on one, he’d be tugged back to Lu. That made sense, right?
This is the part where you die.
“I’m well aware of that, thank you!” I snapped.
Grumbling because I had just given myself away, I walked around the mausoleum and tried to stop and look like I had planned the entire thing. Huffing out a breath, because I was still trying to breathe, I nodded towards Lu.
“How’s that whole ‘world domination’ thing going?”
Lu looked up at me as if I wasn’t supposed to be there for the second time in twenty minutes. He expected me to be dead for good now, or for Death to be dragging my unconscious, but not quite lifeless, corpse back to him.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “We’re kind of confused too.”
“We as in you and He?”
“Shouldn’t you know it’s him, not he?” I asked.
“Depends on the language,” Lu said quietly and calmly.
He was perched on a tombstone, a box at his feet and his hands clasped in his lap. He looked pale, even for a vampire, even for him. As I watched, he seemed to tremble.
Lu was sick. Death had still been tagging along because of that. For the past fifteen hundred years, it had been Quin’s duty to care for Lu when he got like that.
Someone must have done it before that too.
I could only assume that Lu was buying time for Death to dig his claws in deep. Neither of them was able to attack, but if I tried to attack him, he could reach for that box.
If the tool was even in the box any longer. It might have been behind the tombstone, and all he’d have to do was reach back and grab it.
I had to struggle to figure out how I could kill Lu before he killed me. Reach for the tool and split into what the Oracle called Banshee.
I didn’t like the feeling of Death trying to ride shotgun. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with another personality permanently. Let alone deal with such a murderous presence constantly.
Did they really send you by yourself?
Death laughed at me, which made me smile. I offered no response but that smile, which made Lu smile in response.
“He’s going to win, one way or another,” Lu said. “Then he’ll ride you as he rode me. Though, now he doesn’t have to be careful with bodies. He can swap whenever he pleases instead of just upon becoming the tool bearer.”
I stiffened as Death echoed in the back of my mind with raucous laughter.
Did you think he had split? He’s always been like that!
“It’s not you and the tool that matters,” I said to Lu. “Or the head and the staff…”
“It’s him and the head,” Lu said gruffly. “The boy was supposed to take him on. He told me how to do it, so I did it. Split the boy’s mind, built him a nice, comfy home where he could hide and come and go as he pleased.”
“At the cost of Quin.”
“No, the boy would remain. It was the hound who would be consumed in the process.”
“Wraith,” I whispered the name and shuddered. “Because he had been touching the tool. Wraith came to exist.”
“Until those women got their claws into him, there was no Wraith,” Lu said without inflexion, as if he couldn’t muster the energy to be angry any longer. “Just an empty compartment waiting for him to slip in. They took everything I wanted my boy to be and gave him a name, giving him shape by doing so.”
“To do the transfer, you would have to die at Quin’s hand, with the tool linking the two of you.”
I flitted through what I had been told that night. That was why the Oracle hadn’t wanted us to use the tool. Anyone who killed Lu with it would take on Death. The action might even lock him into our bodies, but neither of us could survive a dark magic almost as old as the supernatural races.
“So, don’t kill you with the tool,” I said, then I swore. “That means I’d need the Great Maker to kill you.”
Lu nodded. “Or to know the ways under the moons, but only my Maker still recalls those.”
“Or... be able to kill people with my mind,” I said, cocking my head to the side.
Not because I wanted to, but because I wanted to appear a little crazy. Maybe even look like I wasn’t in control of my actions.
Thank you, horror movies, for both scaring the wits out of me and for giving me something to base a crazy, unstable young woman on.
You’re a clever one. Are you waiting for someone? Because they aren’t coming. You are fodder and nothing more.
“No one can do that,” Lu said with a frown.
“Quin can.”
“No, he can move things with his mind,” Lu snapped.
“Yeah, we’re confused about that too. That and your dual power, but if Death was a remainder of the witch magic in the tool, then that at least is explained.”
“One power per fledgling. So, she spoke, so it was.”
“He was still a fledgling when she found him,” I said quietly.
Lu frowned at the ground at his feet. Then his eyes grew wide, and he looked up at me.
“She found him?”
“You think Lucrecia took on a full male out of the kindness of her heart?”
“No, that woman could never stand male vampires, not after what was done to her. How much do you know?”
“Enough to know that the crimes your family committed against your sister are so etched in her soul that she remembers how much she hates you, even though she can remember nothing else.”
Lu made a sound that I didn’t hear. All I saw was the motion of his chest and the little, tired nod of his head.
“And which of her family claims to be the Great Maker?”
“The one who is. Surely Death told you. He must have seen her with his own eyes when he rode Bau.”
“Don’t say her name,” Lu snapped at me.
Suddenly there was rage and anger, even energy enough to come off the tombstone and towards me several steps.
“You do not have the right to say her name!”
The two of us stared at one another as something scratched at the back of my mind. Death seemed to be quite enjoying himself, picking away at me ever so slowly. Bit by bit, he would wear me away and slide just a little deeper into my being.
Give me the plan, little one, and maybe I’ll be kind to you.
“Like you were kind to him?” I snapped at Death.
Have you met him? The things he does to children? The things he’s done to the boy in my name? He deserved everything he got. Just a blade that I kept an edge to all these years. But the blade is failing.
I glared at Lu, who was frowning off into the darkness to my right. He turned his attention back to me and gave his head a shake.
“No point in fighting him,” Lu said. “If you could kill me, you would have done so by now.”
I was too focused on keeping Death at bay to make an attempt on Lu. Even fully fed, I didn’t think that I could split my attention like that. Not without Death slipping into some crack.
Sasha? Why are you thinking of Sasha?
I was wondering where in the hell she was, and what she thought she was doing. I knew she had a lot of hunting experience, but a swift action was usually best, surely.
“Where is she?” Death asked with my mouth.
Mother fucker!
I slammed him back into the imaginary box and tried to glare at Lu as if I had meant to say that. As if I was still in complete control, nothing unusual about me.
Just a baby vampire standing in a cemetery with an old black magic trying to eat my brain, whose only company was a really old sadist with a plan to eat the entire human race.
A typical Tuesday night.
“Coming,” Lu said. “It’s been so very long since she was last seen by the others, by the impurities. But soon, they will once more fear her.”
“Coming, like, tomorrow night? Or coming like six months from now?”
“Why?” Lu asked. “Wonder
how long you have to live?”
“Sure, how long do I have to live?” I asked.
He just shook his head in response. “She has never tainted herself with food. Only ever blood. Her teeth bleed venom constantly and will paralyse any vampire. And, of course, her power.”
“You mean her magic,” I said. “Because she was a witch.”
“She is better than them, has always been better than them!”
“Does she know about the plan?” I asked.
“She is the one who made it,” Lu said.
I looked around me, struggling to come up with something else to ask. Finally, I shrugged.
“I got nothing,” I said. “Can’t come up with more questions.”
Something hit the ground to my right. Lu and I both turned as Death said something in another language that may have been a curse. He jerked me towards the left.
Because of that, I was looking at Lu as Sasha slammed into him, tackling him to the ground. Weakened as he was, Lu crumpled to the ground under the sheer force of her body moving at that speed.
I was stuck in place, trying to move, as Sasha bled Lu dry. There was a glint of something, and his head rolled. Then the blade was raised above her head and slammed into his chest.
“Sasha,” I managed to get out.
Death was struggling against me. His fight renewed at the sight of Lu on the ground.
Sasha was up immediately and sprinted towards me. She flung the knife at my feet, then grabbed my face between her hands and stood on tiptoe as she pulled me down slightly.
“Helen, no other being, creature, or magic, can ride you without your permission. I command you to throw him out.”
So, she spoke and so it was.
I fell to my knees in relief as Death seemed to disappear. My very bones ached, a trembling coming over me as my stomach threatened to spill its contents.
No, that won’t work.
I puked black sludge on the ground as Sasha danced backwards, barely getting out of the way in time. The putrid smell of it made me gag again. Dry heaving the second time did not help matters with my stomach. I gagged, dragging in a long breath, and instantly regretted it.
The black sludge smelled like rotting meat mixed with ammonia and something else, something I had never smelled before.