by Aya DeAniege
“As Stone to the Oracle, she had access to your mind. Someone else gave it to the Archivist for safe keeping, to keep the sister alive. If—” I sighed in frustration. I had almost said her name again. “If the Maker, let’s say, destroyed the heart, she’d end up killing the last sister. Which could either prove her theory of trading lives or could be the start of the spell to bring her wolf lover back.”
“Great. And we just retrieved it for her,” Rosalyn snapped.
“Replace the heart,” Lucrecia said. “It won’t kill the child.”
She wouldn’t meet our eyes. Her body was angled away from us, that motion seemed to imply that she had recalled while we were gone and was embarrassed, but at the same time wanted nothing to do with either of us.
“No, but she’s gonna wish she was
dead,” I said.
“But it would solve a great deal, and stop the spell from being launched. So do it.”
“That was our plan,” Rosalyn said. “In theory that would remove her, uh, impervious qualities, allowing you to kill her like you would any vampire.”
“You realize we’re killing her three times, right?” I asked.
“Yes, you realize you aren’t going to, like, level up from this or something?”
“Who needs to level up?” I asked. “We got a legendary freaking weapon and unlocked a new area.”
“What are you two talking about?” Lucrecia demanded.
“Nothing,” Rosalyn and I said at the same time.
The older vampire scowled at us as I fought back a giggle. Rosalyn lowered her eyes, staring at the chest rather than meet Lucrecia’s eyes, but I saw the tug of her lips upward.
“I’ll get you a cooler, save the heart,” Lucrecia said.
“Why?” I asked. “Wouldn’t a new one have grown?”
“What did I just tell you?”
“Did a new one not grow, that’s what I’m asking you,” I said in response. “Lucrecia, if you haven’t got a heart—”
“Who said I was the child?” she demanded.
I growled in frustration and pinched the bridge of my nose. I firmly reminded myself that Sasha had said Lucrecia’s memories were completely shattered and she didn’t remember what had happened. I assumed that meant that even if we had discussed just an hour before, she’d no longer remember it once we left the room.
When talking about it, she became defensive, but she probably blamed that on the fact that she stood for women and victims. She probably thought she wasn’t doing anything differently than she had done before.
She wasn’t trying to lie or be difficult on purpose. Or even to protect her secrets. She honestly didn’t know.
“If the child doesn’t have a heart, how could she heal?”
“Even without a heart, a vampire heals,” Lucrecia said as Quin walked out of the kitchen.
“Oh, yeah, she’s never had damage in my entire life,” Quin said with a little motion to Lucrecia.
Because he knew, because I had told him.
“What?” Lucrecia asked.
“Nothing I told Anna the plan and all that, she’s going to call us back shortly. What are you all arguing about?”
“Lucrecia wants us to take the heart out and save it when we replace it with the old one,” I said.
Quin nodded. “Yes, that would be best. Like that old one, the new one would have magic. Kill it, kill the child.”
“Well, then, you get to do it,” I said. “Since you’re the one who signed us up for the side quest.”
“I’ll get the cooler,” Lucrecia muttered bitterly as she walked away.
“Is that a part of the plan, too?” I whispered at Quin as I motioned to Lucrecia’s retreating. “Rosalyn said the heart is the thing that holds emotion and memory and this is all witch magic at play.”
“I know that,” he said quietly, motioning downward as if to quiet me. “Trust me, I know that. When Anna calls back, I’ll discuss it with her. Without a doubt, it is a stupid idea, but what’s the other option? Allowing the magic to continue to exist in this world?”
“It would just stay,” Rosalyn whispered.
“Okay, what if the witch magic is stuck to the heart and we accidentally resurrect the freaking devil herself? All this trouble to kill her, just to have her come back to life? Except in the body of someone who can light air on fire and turn things to acid!”
The two of them considered one another. There was silence for a long time.
“Fae?” Quin asked.
“Maybe,” Rosalyn said slowly, pulling out her phone. “It’d be a noon hour cleansing so not on your little recorder. Not that the fae would welcome such a device.”
I assumed they meant some kind of cleansing ritual for the heart. It was the only thing that really made sense. Unless they were planning on cleansing Lucrecia with fae magic, but I imagined that’d involved ropes and screaming and death all around.
“Drat,” I grumbled. “Fine, just make certain they won’t, you know, turn it to dust in the process.”
“Not during a cleanse,” Rosalyn said. “They are immortal and have more magic than witches.”
“More magic than you?” I squawked out.
“A great deal more than me. Just because I’m an Oracle doesn’t make me all powerful. There are at least thirty mature witches who are stronger than I am.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
Rosalyn shrugged. “How do you know the sun is shining on you when your eyes are closed?”
“We really shouldn’t be questioning a witch,” Quin said.
“Why not?” I asked.
He sighed loudly. “Fine, you shouldn’t be asking a witch questions. It’s like date rape.”
“It’s not…” I felt my face heat up, and I looked away as I grumbled to myself.
“Come now, no need to pout. You can do that to many people all over the world, but let us respect Rosalyn’s position.”
“They should call you Mr. Fedora when they rename you,” I said glumly to my feet because I wanted to be mean, but that was as cruel as I could be with Quin.
“Mr. Fedora?” Rosalyn giggled. “That does suit you quite well. Oh, look how he blushes.”
“I do not blush!” Quin shouted.
Just as Lucrecia walked back in with the cooler. She hesitated at the doorway, then walked in slowly, her eyes on Quin. After handing him the cooler, she slipped between him and Rosalyn and turned her head slightly to the side.
“I do miss the beard,” she said to him.
“I’m not a poodle,” he responded steadily, but with just a hint of an edge to his voice so that she knew he was serious.
“Without it, it is quite obvious when you blush,” Lucrecia said. “There now, it’s gotten more obvious.”
“You women will be the never-ending torment of me!” he shouted before he walked off.
“Better us, than Bau, dear,” Lucrecia called after him.
“Anna, give me some good news.”
“Bad news, Quintillus.”
I swore and stepped out of the house. Looking up, I swore again, because I wanted to see the stars, I wanted to pick out the constellations and see if a planet was up there.
There was something about space and the infinity that threatened to consume me when I tried to comprehend the before and after of creation that always brought a calm over me. Humans drowned out the stars in an attempt to control their surroundings, but slapping a bad wallpaper over something didn’t solve the problem.
Being in a city, looking up, all I saw was a spot or two.
“We plan to return the child’s item to her. Using the other,” I said with a wince, hoping the message was understood.
“Good, that takes care of that problem,” Anna muttered. “Now explain how your Progeny ended up walking into the Archives.”
“Rosalyn was told to look back for the item. She did and saw the mother handing it off to someone she cared for and respected, then found its location in the physical
world.”
“The Archives are not in the physical world.”
A cold trickled down my back. I turned and glanced at the door of Lucrecia’s home, but decided no one was trying to listen in on my conversation.
“I thought there was only the one world,” I said, moving away from the door.
I could practically hear Anna shrug on the other side of the call. She sighed out a long breath.
“The sisters had a great many secrets. Most of which they took to their graves. Each held a part of the whole. The Archives is the part that the Great Maker holds.”
“If they each have a realm to rule, why aren’t the fae living in one?” I demanded.
They were too pretty for the world that humans had created. The pollution and climate change humans were bringing about were slowly killing the fae who had lived since before humans walked the world.
“Who says they aren’t?” Anna asked. “Look, keeping knowledge is my job, not doling it out to every idiot savant with a recording device. The Archives aren’t in the physical world, there’s no way to break into them, but your Progeny did. How?”
Meaning Androgen knew a great deal more than it let on. Facts that were helpful were probably withheld, even if that meant that I suffered or a plague was unleashed.
“She ate a werewolf earlier, was taken to that point by a witch,” I said with a shake of my head. “Rosalyn knew only a vampire could touch the heart.”
“Was she affected by fae magic shortly before entrance?”
“Possibly,” I said. “I’ve got a mace that sparkles and hurts like a fire. Took it from Bau during a fight. My hands are still burned from it. I tried feeding, nothing. Little worried I’m stuck like this.”
Silence for a moment. “Did she bleed at all?”
“Helen?”
“Bau.”
“No, saved her scalp. That was my first hint.”
“You did not try to have a slap fight with her to get your power to work.”
“How was I to know that she removed her heart to keep us from killing her? Oh, and she did it long before I was born. Really, I should have been aware of that fact because who wouldn’t have known?”
“While the sarcasm is amusing, it’s unnecessary,” Anna said. “You had a slap fight with a witch. Do your powers even work on a witch?”
“I’m told I was excluded for just this purpose.”
It had been something that Helen and I had spoken of during the past week. She had pointed it out to me and then we had discussed flavour of blood.
Helen compared it to wines. She had had both the cheapest wine possible and the next step up. There was a flavour change, she had said. Cheap wine all tasted the same no matter what type it was, but the next step up had different flavours. She had accused me of being stupid because I assumed all races tasted the same.
I had been insulted because all did taste the same. A black man tasted a little juicier than a white man, certainly, but the flavour was still the same.
I mean, it was my understanding that semen tasted the same no matter who it came from, so why would blood change taste?
Helen had called me Mr. Fedora, and then pointed out that my stock didn’t taste like Lucrecia’s stock. So why would I believe that a witch tasted the same as a human?
She had taken to calling me Mr. Fedora when I did something stupid or without thought. I allowed her to say it things because it was like waking from a dream. Her calling me Mr. Fedora helped so much.
It has nothing to do with actually liking the name?
“Ah, you are the hero the witches have been creating,” Anna said.
“You knew?”
“I know a great deal more than I tell you, but who the hero was, no. I didn’t know. I thought perhaps they were preparing Lucrecia.”
“If they wanted a female hero, they would call her a heroine,” I grumbled.
Again, silence on the other side of the phone.
“Anna?”
“You may have just solved a conundrum I had,” she said in a strangled sort of tone.
“Look, I don’t think she could do it again if she tried.”
“Except this is your Progeny, Quintillus. Either you issue a command, or we will end her.”
The Archives held a great number of dangerous objects. Part of its role was to remove such items from the world and place them out of reach of everyone, mortal and immortal alike. I thought the Archives were a myth, our Eldorado or Atlantis. It never occurred to me that those things might actually exist, or that no one had ever found them because they had been removed from the physical world.
Didn’t Helen have a theory on the Archivist and the Mute?
That my mute lover from all those centuries before had been turned by the sisters, by Bau’s children, in exchange for the key to killing their Maker. The tongue had later been removed by Lu, who wouldn’t have killed the mute because he belonged to the Archivist.
Like Wraith, the mute had been gifted to another, but nothing that had ever been said implied that the mute, or Androgen, disliked serving the Archivist. They hadn’t been forced to obey, simply brought to an odd time and finding heir master was giving.
“How?” I asked.
“The same way you normally do?”
“No, how do you want it worded? She’s very specific. Like, to save the world? With permission? Then she’d ask what would happen if you both die with no heir.”
“He can’t die.”
“Okay, you die, and then he’s grieving and refuses to get out of bed or something.”
“Your Progeny is annoying, Quintillus.”
“I know, but you know she’d ask that. And you do have the opportunity to make a failsafe for him, in case something did happen to you.”
“We don’t know the kind of vampire she will be, not yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, your Progeny is not whole, Quintillus. Some part of her is elsewhere. There is still a chance that Banshee will arise from the ashes of Helen, and that woman carries a lot of anger and grief. When they start going mad, that turns to a smouldering hatred that can never be quenched.”
“Well, I’m not going to just forbid her from the Archives. No one is forbidden of the Archives.”
“You all are! That’s the point of the Archives!”
I winced and pulled the phone from my ear as Anna began shouting at me in Italian, then switched to Egyptian to describe what she’d like to do to my heart and soul for being such a moron.
“Fine, I will tell her not to visit the Archives without consent.”
“You will tell her that the Archives are beyond her.”
“Hey, here’s a question: if we had asked for the heart, would you have given it to us?”
“No, it’s far too dangerous to be out in the world. Do you know what happens if you fail?”
“Yeah, so with all due respect, Androgen, unless you have a better idea, a way to kill Bau tonight without any other casualties than the ones we’re already expecting, kindly shut up. I will do what I need to do to clean up a mess you all should have fixed years ago. One that I was promised wouldn’t come down on my head. But it is, so you know what? Yeah, we accidentally broke into the Archives. Unless you were planning on helping in the first place, suck it up.”
“Quintillus.”
“Don’t you Quintillus me,” I snarled, putting an edge to my voice. “You can come for her, Androgen, but you know how that would end. And he could come for her, but I’m pretty certain he knows what happens when he tangles with Witchblood.”
“How did you—?”
“Bau didn’t burn up while she was touching the mace. She hunted him down, didn’t she? Drained him? That’s why you and he have your panties in a bunch. You should be grateful that we’re handling this, not being a dick about it.”
“I resent that.”
“You’re right, at the moment, you’re being a cunt, not a dick. You want to talk about her, we’ll do it after t
onight after we clean up another one of your messes.”
“He tried, at least.”
“Good for him, he failed and gave her a piece of what she needed.”
“And you’re about to give her another piece!”
“No, she needs Lucrecia to die, needs her heart to fail, to drop beyond whatever it is, to have that heart restart, inside her own chest, to pull a soul back with it. She needs the body of a Bitch, of which, hey, there’s only one, and she’s not going back into the field. I’m about to send her off in a completely different direction.”
Anna sighed on the other side. “You’ve been prying.”
“I’m told I have precognitive abilities and there are eight possibilities for tonight, that’s one of them. I’m trying to be open to this to predict the subtle changes and fix this.”
“If you slam the heart back into her chest and then stab it again, it will fail, her immunity will be gone, but she will die for the first time in... God, I don’t even know how long. She will be in the beyond, and she will bring a soul back with her.”
“Give me another option.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“Okay, I’d rather risk bringing Hitler or Attila or Vladimir the Impaler back from the dead. At least they’d be mortal, and I could kill them by eating them. So, I’m going to go do this thing and save the world. A fucking thank you would be nice.”
“You haven’t saved the world!”
“Fine, I’ll save it, then call you and then you can thank me.”
“Fine!”
“Good!” I shouted.
I gritted my teeth and looked around, wondering if any of the neighbours would be calling in a noise complaint because of my phone call.
“Worse news now?” Anna asked.
I could hear her acrylic nails tapping against a wooden desk. For a brief moment, I wondered what she was wearing, if she had taken to waxing, what had she done with her hair? The image that popped into my mind was that of Andrea from all those centuries ago, just upgraded to modern makeup and clothing, but I knew that couldn’t be right.
She had promised me, promised. But we were both in a place and things were happening. While I wanted to kneel for her and do whatever she begged of me, even if it meant no sex for another fifty years, I would have done it to see her smile.