by Aya DeAniege
She was dressed in a terrycloth housecoat. Her hair was pulled up and back from her face, tied up in a quick bun. There was an ashen colour to her face, the pain was likely overwhelming her, but she didn’t tremble as she pushed off the doorframe and walked into the kitchen.
“The like and like and something,” Daisy said. She motioned to Rosalyn. “She told me once, something about math and magic being dance partners. I think. The body of the lover is gone, it can’t be remade without God powers, and I say that in a sarcastic manner. Gods like that don’t exist, if at all.”
“So Bau would need a body, but it would also need to be a wolf,” Lucrecia said, her hand rubbing over her heart. “But if taking the heart of her child was necromancy… killing her will kill the child, won’t it?”
Rosalyn and Helen winced as one.
“Lucrecia…”
“Will it kill the child, that’s what I asked, not for you to dance around the point and slowly come to the conclusion that we need to hear,” Lucrecia said, strength lacing her voice for the first time in a week since I had been named Younger Council. “Answer me, oh Oracle great and mighty, are you about to kill two vampires in a bid to free yourself of the Stone? Which does nothing but hide in the shadows, I might remind you. Perhaps if you hadn’t poked her in the first place, she wouldn’t be here causing problems!”
“Well, I think she knows she’s the child,” Helen said with a nervous sound that might have been a laugh.
The brittle silence that followed almost made me laugh, but in a desperate sort of way that made me bite the inside of my mouth. Lucrecia didn’t look at Helen. She glared at me instead because she held me responsible for Helen’s behaviour.
“I asked a question,” Lucrecia snarled out, each word its own sentence.
“She wanted me to look back to find the heart, to make certain none of you had it. Witches can’t touch it. Only a vampire could, except none of you could get in because magic protects it.”
“Oh, I’m immune to magic!” Helen said, raising her hand.
“Since when?”
“It’s a story, just go with it.”
“You mean to tell me that you’re still recording?”
“No, I mean, yes, but no, I meant that how I became immune to magic is a bit of a story, so let’s not discuss it right now because Quin’s getting that look real darkly like he didn’t remember everything that we discussed while he was Wraith.”
Immune to magic meant that Helen had eaten a werewolf.
I knew that.
It would explain what had happened at the Den and why Daisy hadn’t brought it up again. I turned to Daisy to demand an answer, but the wolf’s eyes were on the floor.
She was in her human form but clearly in a submissive stance. Just seeing her like that made me bristle in anger. I had never witnessed Daisy cowering, but she was then.
I swung my attention back around the room, daring the others to bring it up.
Lucrecia was smouldering in anger.
Literally.
Besides her mind reading and glamouring, Lucrecia’s powers were kept very quiet. Those who witnessed it were not willing to talk about it because they were afraid of incurring her wrath.
But was I surprised to see steam rising off her? To see her clothing darken as if it had been put to a flame?
No, that didn’t surprise me in the least.
What did surprise me was how her eyes seemed to darken to charred remains and her skin changed colour. Turning to that too-tanned look of someone who had been baked outside, the natural lines where her skin bent at the joints and the wrinkles that would have appeared over time and with age turned black as coal. Her flesh seemed to burn away, leaving only skin and bone in its place.
RUN!
“Calm down!” I snapped.
The words were shouted as much for Wraith as they were for Lucrecia. She was angry and yes, that look made me want to run, it twisted my bladder and made me want to piss myself in fear.
Knowing that I had both of their attentions, knowing that Wraith was panicking at the edge of my mind, practically biting his nails as he whined out, I continued.
“This is nothing to get explosive over. Stabby, certainly, but not explosive. Rosalyn, answer Lucrecia’s question about the heart.”
“Well, if the man you donated a kidney dies, do you die?” Rosalyn asked, then shrugged. “It’s magic we’ve never done before. I can only assume you bastards are a hearty bunch. If Daisy eats it, it grows back, right?”
“As long as I don’t go hellhound on something, yes,” Daisy said. “Which means I’m not eating the heart.”
I gave her a scathing look and her nose went into the air. Daisy should have known that I wouldn’t allow her to fight anything that night. If I could, I’d keep her from fighting until she was fully healed. I’d bring the whole damned pack to their knees if necessary.
Though, admittedly, I hoped that wasn’t necessary. That was the place of Daisy’s mate, a spot that I didn’t want to claim but if that was what was necessary to keep her safe, so be it.
“What we need is to destroy the one that’s in her chest while piercing the one she’s got off on the other side of the land.”
“Can’t we just use the tool, or have Quin melt her into goo?” Helen asked. “This is a ridiculous boss fight.”
“She may be protected from my power,” I said. “That may have been what caused the explosion. I think the witches believe that her heart being removed from her person was meant to prevent her from dying.”
“The original heart has to die. Otherwise it’s a tether to this world,” Rosalyn said. “We don’t know if it will kill the child. Frankly we don’t care. This has reached beyond just a vampire or two. She made a mess in a city, one we can’t exactly cover. That could out us all.”
“Oh, Lucrecia wasn’t there for that part,” Helen said. “But Lu’s plan was made by his Maker. She plans to continue his work, which means taking the tool and remaking the world in her image. You either help her and become a god or don’t and become a blood bag, if you even survive the initial purge.”
“We don’t have the tool,” Rosalyn said, frowning and shaking her head.
“The Great Maker was supposed to bring it to you.”
“Well, clearly she didn’t, that’s not my fault.”
“What if we had another tool?” I asked.
“What?” Rosalyn demanded. “No, it took like three covens to figure out how to do that. She’d need a full coven and the materials from the werewolves.”
I raised my hands, showing her the still burned palms. She stared at them for a long moment, then looked past my hands to me. Ever so slowly, she raised her finger and jabbed at my hand.
“Are you saying something she had did that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s in the front hall. I hope.”
Rosalyn walked off immediately. I rolled my eyes and followed her. At the front door, there the mace sat on a table just beside the door. She reached out and set her hand on it, then yanked her hand back.
“What kind of magic is this?” she whispered.
“Always a lovely thing to hear the utmost authority on witch magic say,” I responded.
“Oh no, oh no, no, no, this isn’t supposed to exist. This can’t exist.”
Her hands raised in the air, shaking as she protested and her eyes went wide. Which was exactly what I didn’t want to see coming from a witch. She was a culmination of generations of magic, I had been hoping that she would know what was going on, not wince and then protest like I was crazy for suggesting it.
“Okay, for the non-magically inclined,” Helen snapped. “What in the hell is it?”
“It’s not a tool. This is a death bringer.”
“That’s what the tool is.”
“It kills everything.”
“Again, isn’t that what the tool is?” Helen demanded.
“How can you know that with only a touch?” I asked.
�
��She had fed on something, right? Keeping herself whole to keep that edge. You have got to make her bleed, Quin. Bleed her dry if you can. Eat her. Why didn’t you try to eat her?”
“It’s impolite to eat another vampire in a fight,” I said. “Sure, I tried that with Lu, but what kind of animal do you think I am?”
“The kind that wants to live?” she demanded, her voice rising with each word. “Or, I don’t know, the kind that needs to stop a reaper from killing the entire world?”
“Calm down, she won’t end the entire world.”
“You did say Lu used to talk to himself about the four horsemen,” Helen said as she slipped up beside me. “Four horsemen is a sign of the apocalypse isn’t it?”
“Based on the great war, near as I can tell,” I said. “Four Progeny riding against their Maker and God. Had they won, it would have been the end of the world.”
“Except now it has turned into a symbol,” Helen said. “That a witch could use, right?”
“Exactly. In Lu, you could argue two horsemen, pestilence and death.”
“Who are the other two?” Helen asked, tapping her bottom lip.
“War, famine, conquest, and death,” I said. “Pestilence is sometimes named in place of conquest. There are no horsemen. She would have had to turn someone else, and we would have been told a week ago. Unless you think Lucrecia is famine or war and it’s not happening, so drop the topic.”
“She might not have four horsemen, but that’s because the third and fourth went and messed up her plan,” Helen said, motioning between her and I. “You were supposed to kill everyone and then, in turn, be killed by me.”
“So how does that change to her causing the end of the world?” I asked.
“She’s crazy, Quin. In crazy land, it just all makes sense.”
“That is not helpful in the least,” I muttered.
Rosalyn jabbed her hand at the mace. “This was made as a reaping weapon. It’s meant to kill everything. Wolf, human, witch, vampire, fae, you know… the other ones, which are not easy to kill.”
“The other ones, she says,” Helen muttered under her breath.
“Not while that thing is on,” Rosalyn said with a motion to the tablet. “This is meant to kill everything, that’s why it ate your hands. I don’t know if they’ll ever heal.”
“There must be something with an immunity to it, that would have been what she ate,” I said.
Rosalyn bit her bottom lip and looked at the mace. She gave herself a little shake, or perhaps a tremble ran through her, and she turned to me.
“The only creature apart from all and mysterious even to the first seven is the Archivist.”
“Who is immortal and sometimes young, sometimes old,” Helen said.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Troy told me, a week ago,” she said. “The Archivist sounds like all things but no things. If she has him captive… oh no, what if she ate him like dead, ate him.”
“Deja Vu,” Rosalyn whispered.
“What?” Helen squawked.
“The Oracle declaring Deja Vu is something worrying,” I said.
“We’re in a fragment,” Rosalyn said, her hands flying through the air. She swore and seemed to pluck an invisible book from the air then began turning non-existent pages, her fingers trailing over the pages. “This is a fragment of six, no, eight possible futures.”
“In how many of those futures do we die?” Helen asked.
Rosalyn closed that invisible book of hers and gave us an awkward smile. “All of them?”
“Hate prophecies,” Helen snapped out angrily.
“No, we’ll be fine,” I said.
“Just not do what they said we do?” Helen asked.
“Prophecy is based on patterns that emerge through behaviour,” I countered. “Oracles are simply capable of seeing the larger pattern of behaviour across the entire world. Everyone behaves predictably. The thing is, there’s always a way to throw a wrench in the plan.”
“Yes, but not if you’re in the pattern,” Rosalyn said. “You need to be able to see it, register what you’re seeing, alter your plan and then be able to see if it changes the pattern in seconds. No one can do that. We can’t do that, and we’re three.”
Weren’t we precognitive?
I batted at Wraith’s voice, then swung that hand to motion to Rosalyn.
“I’ve been told that in life I had precognitive abilities. Is that true?”
Rosalyn looked uncomfortable. “Before you were turned, you were called the special boy.”
I frowned at her. “Your boy was called the special boy.”
“It happens, rarely, but it happens,” Rosalyn whispered.
“Are you telling me that my mother was a witch?” I shouted.
Helen’s eyebrows rose.
“She’s been determined to destroy the special boys,” Rosalyn said slowly. “I don’t have the history, but I’m pretty certain if your mother was a witch, she would have whooped Lu. She would have been one born without magic, just a human born to witches. Sometimes it skips a generation.”
“Wait, wait,” Helen said. “Are you saying the special boy that Lu tortured and killed was a male witch?”
She was quick enough to make that connection. Thank goodness.
“Bound to be Oracle,” Rosalyn said. “We may hold the magic, but like all things, there must be balance. We don’t know the frequency of male witch birth, we’ve always assumed one every few centuries. But none have been born since Lu’s little adventure.”
“You mean since a vampire raped and murdered the little boy who was to be the next male witch,” Helen snapped. “I wish I could kill him again.”
“He believed in a god and hell,” Rosalyn said. “Most of us do, so hopefully justice is served. If not, removing him is plenty of good.”
“And the boy before that was…” Helen turned to me. “But a witch can’t be turned. You’d have been a supernatural.”
“Sitting as Oracle does not mean that one has magic, or is a witch,” Rosalyn said. “We don’t know what a special boy is.”
“He’s a supernatural,” Helen said.
“Look, I didn’t make the rules, okay?” Rosalyn snapped back at her. “Vampires can’t turn a supernatural, so she spoke and so it was. Talk to your precious Great Maker, not me.”
So she spoke, after Bau was turned.
Maybe, as the only line of vampires with a name, Witchblood didn’t obey the Great Maker. If we obeyed entirely, every one of her commands, surely she would have killed Lu earlier, or at the very least, prevented him from turning me.
“Some of her commands have exclusions,” I said. “All those who cannot accept her commands must be killed, but Bob is alive, and if you think about him, suddenly you feel like you’re hugging a stuffed animal.”
“If Bau was excluded from the command because she was a witch, then so was anyone who wasn’t on the field,” Helen said. “Oh wow, that makes a lot of dangerous vampires who just haven’t tried it before.”
“Can I learn magic?” I asked Rosalyn.
“No, it doesn’t work like that. If you have magic, you would have had it all these years, and trust me, you’d know.”
“Oh, so had I not been turned or found, I probably would have ended up an Oracle who could only see things, great,” I muttered.
“Several others ended up prophets of God,” Rosalyn muttered.
“Nostradamus?” Helen asked.
“Just a crazy guy,” Rosalyn said. “Or trying to prove a point about prophecy and vague words. I’m talking pre-common era. None of them managed to change the future. Most were far-seeing, not near seeing. To be Oracle, you need both. Sometimes a far-seer is taken on but rarely.”
“Sasha said you told your father what would happen,” Helen said, turning to me.
“How would she even know that?”
“Couple of options, including meeting up with Bau years later. Someone would have recreated her turning
for her, and Sasha would have continued trying to save her. You had to have that for some reason.”
I scratched the back of my head. “Fine, I have precognitive abilities. Which I’ve never used before.”
“Except you did a week ago.”
Out came her phone, Helen swiped through several things, then handed the phone over to me. The bit was from just around when I had turned her. It detailed the types of powers that a baby vampire might experience. What I had said mirrored what she did, in the exact order she had done it in.
I could admit defeat, but I chose to claim ignorance.
“And?” I asked.
“The interviewers asked if you had changed that passage later on.”
“Why?”
“Because those are the powers I expressed, in the order, they appeared.”
“Oh,” I took the phone and read the last of the transcribed page. “Okay, so I apparently do that. Can you teach me to so it on purpose in twenty minutes?”
Rosalyn snorted in derision. “Yeah, and men can give birth.”
“A no would have sufficed.”
“You’re the ones who are going to die. You should care,” Rosalyn said.
Helen shrugged. “I was supposed to be dead a week ago.”
“And my entire life has been a lie, so why the hell not die tonight and take her out with us. She dies too, right?”
“In three out of five possible futures, yes.”
“Great, how do we make those three happen?”
“Look, in those three, there’s a possibility of one of you living,” Rosalyn said. “But two people die tonight, and there’s no changing that. Two immortals die tonight. The city is empty of vampires.”
I shrugged and grimaced at the same time. “Life sucks, so I’m going to die.”
“Fifteen hundred years of hell, I hope there’s an afterlife,” Helen muttered in annoyance.
“Virgins and cotton candy everywhere,” Rosalyn said.
I made a disgusted sound. “I’d just hang around until Helen came about, I suppose.”
Helen frowned at me, then turned to Rosalyn. “How do we do this thing?”
“We need her heart, for starters.”
“Oh, an adventure. Quick, give that to me. I have got to get this.”