House Of Vampires 3 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy)

by Samantha Snow

  When I got into the car twenty minutes later I was wearing a set of dark green robes with silver symbols around the edges. The symbols, according to my dad, were protective in nature, and would help me better than any armor. I believed him, but I paired the robes with a pair of batman leggings and boots anyway. Apparently, I was about six inches taller than my grandmother had been.

  I had a belt too, with a bunch of pouches. They weren't leather, like you might see in some cheesy fantasy film, they were made of floral print fabrics, like you'd get at a sewing shop. Each one was filled with what could only be called witchcraft supplies. Crystals in one, little bottles of herbs in another, and a bunch of salt in the last. I probably should have spent more time researching what works best for a necromancer, but I was going to have to work with what I had.

  When I took the wheel in my hands the sleeves of my robe slithered up a few inches to show off the mathematical symbols that made spiraling bracelets up my arms. I didn't understand them, but Dad swore they would help me. I was just going to have to accept that.

  “You stay safe,” I told Dad, rolling down the window. I could see the concern knitting his brows together and I almost felt guilty that he couldn't come.

  “Between the two of us, I think that you are the one who is going to be in more danger.”

  He wasn't wrong. But I put the car into gear and sped out of the driveway anyway.

  ~~

  I knew something was wrong the moment I drove by the mini-mart. It was a little twenty-four-hour gas station that Marquessa Green, Jenny's grandmother, owned. She had left it in Jenny's seemingly capable hands. Every time I had ever gone by the big sign over the door had said OPEN. Now? It looked pretty much abandoned. It wasn't just that it was closed, it was the stack of bills tucked into the slot, and the pile of newspapers making a small mountain outside the front door. As I watched. a guy in a pickup truck approached, and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, tried to open the front door. It didn't budge.

  That was definitely weird.

  I'd only been to Jenny's house once, but I found my way there as if I had been a million times. There weren't a lot of houses in this two-stop-light town. The mountains made it hard, and I suspected the vampires, who owned pretty much everything around here, didn't lease a lot of land for development. I drove towards the simple one level ranch style home and was surprised to see twenty or so cars parked up and down the street. There weren't that many houses, a lot of the space was taken up by a really old church. I had to drive all the way down the street to find a place to park.

  My skin started to itch with the knowledge that something was wrong. It wasn't any kind of magic, just the sort of thing you know when everything else in your life had gone wrong.

  I parked the car and got out, regretting it nearly the moment I did.

  Jenny's house was located on a little stretch of road called Hunter's Lane. It was just over two football fields long, with six houses sprinkled up one side and down the other. They didn't match, the way you'd find in suburban housing development, but they all shared that lived in look that you got in places older than forty years. There were no fences, accept small ones around gardens, and it was easy to see that the only house where anything was happening was Jenny's.

  All the other houses were empty. The lights were off, the driveways were empty, and mailboxes had been left open. One yard was a murky flooded wasteland where someone had left a hose half turned on. Another door was left open, a yawning square of black against a mint green trim as if clearly stating that no one was home. On top of all that, there were no animals. No dogs wandering down the abandoned street, no tell-tale signs of glittering cat eyes. In fact, aside from the yellow gleam of lights coming from Jenny's house, there was absolutely nothing happening.

  That was...weird.

  Maahes appeared next to me, his ghostly tail wrapping around my ankle as if he wasn't any happier to be here than I was. I knelt down, gave the space between his ears a gentle rub, not sure if I was comforting myself and the skipping heartbeat in my chest, or the spectral cat.

  “Alright, let's go scooby-doo on this.”

  I reached inside my robes and pulled out the wand. It nearly jumped into my hand. Its light weight was a comfort in my palm.

  “Rescue Jenny, rescue Wei, fulfill prophecy...dragons.” I reminded myself of my goals before taking the long walk down the deserted street. I mean, if a best friend, a hot dude, and mythical fire breathing flying beasts weren't enough to inspire me then what was?

  A mist rose up around my ankles, nearly rendering Maahes invisible as old road in desperate need of repair crunched beneath my boots. It wasn't a usual mist, the kind you might get if you lived in the valley. This was too dense, and too high up the mountain this time of year. Also, it smelled kinda like old gym socks and wet dog, two of my least favorite smells.

  The door was half open when I approached. The mist was coming out of it, like it was a fridge door left open. I put my hand on it and pushed and it took a little too much strength to get it to move. The scent was nauseating as I stepped over the threshold. Maahes lingered on the porch.

  “Scaredy-cat.”

  He wasn't amused. There was a pretty big part of me that wanted to linger just inside the door and trade witty repartee with my cat, but that wasn't particularly heroic. I took a deep breath, asked myself what would Wonder Woman do, and then headed into the living room.

  Marquessa Green was a clean woman. She wasn't obsessively neat, the way some people could be, but she liked things in their place. The living room that stretched out before me was not Marquessa Green's, and I seriously mean stretched. The room looked to be fifty yards long, and I knew that wasn't right. The proportions pretty much everywhere were screwy. The family pictures on the wall were too thin and too long. The sofa looked like it could fit have of the Justice League and their comic book sized egos. Everything was wrong, and everything was covered in mist.

  Despite the incredible amount of cars the entire living room was empty. It was just a long deep brown couch stretched along an impossibly lengthy wall. I checked the kitchen, which was equally disproportionate, and there was nothing there either, just the remnants of a dinner that looked several weeks too old to be good. A lone fly made lazy circles over the top of a chicken carcass. I could smell the tinge of rot mingling with the other smells and I had to leave before I got sick everywhere. I hadn't had nearly enough to eat to throw it up.

  Where was everyone?

  In the end, I followed the mist. It had to be coming from some central point, right? So I put my arm across my mouth in the hopes of blocking out all the smell. It wasn't until I got through the kitchen that I spotted something that should not be there.

  The Green house was a single-story ranch, there were no stairs, yet there was a set, , made of wood and wrought iron. They spiraled up to a second story that I knew did not exist.

  “Well, I guess that answers that,” I grumbled to myself.

  I did not want to go up those stairs, but heroes didn't have a choice. Okay, that's not true. I could have just said that this was too much for me, that I needed to leave and go one level up and go somewhere before coming back. If this had been a video game that's pretty much exactly what I would have done. But my friend, my one and only friend, and her girlfriend might not be okay. I had to do something about that. I should have done something about this weeks ago but I had been so wrapped up in my own issues that I hadn't even thought anything of Jenny's sudden absence.

  I made my way up the staircase. The mist was cold around my ankles, and the stairs creaked under my boots. It was way colder upstairs than it had been downstairs. I could see my breath by the time I got to the very top. It came out in short puffs as I looked from one side to the other.

  There was a hall, as unbelievably long as the house downstairs had been. It reminded me a little of the hallways at the mansion, but there was nothing elegant about this. This had the cold lines and colder colors of a hosp
ital wing. There were twenty doors, unevenly spread out on either side of the hall. The floors were white. At least I thought they were white. The mist was getting hard to see through.

  I stood there and listened for a moment, hoping that some sound would guide me to where I needed to go. I really did not want to play “What's behind door number 1?” in this weird place. I didn't hear anything, just the soft rustle of my own robes as I breathed.

  “Any ideas, Maahes?”

  The ghost cat wrapped his tail around my ankle, assuring me of his presence, but offered nothing else.

  “Guessing games it is.”

  As I approached the front door I noticed that there was a name plaque across the center of it, just around eye level. There wasn't a name on it, though, there was a circle of runes. Runes, I frowned, I knew those. I wasn't an expert or anything, but Reikah had taught me the basics. Runes, and similar symbols were a part of the Hermit's magical background. Since they believed in all witches being taught the exact same stuff, in law and order and all that crap, they used the same symbols.

  I looked the symbols over. I knew that they were binding symbols, meant to either keep something out, or something in. Maybe both. Like I said, I was in no way an expert. There was also the symbol for witch or heretic, when it came to the Order those two were pretty much interchangeable.

  Well, I was looking for a witch. With a deep breath, I put my hand on the door and pushed. It pushed back. Not with force but with magic. The moment my hand hit the handle it warmed, and then it grew hot. Instinct took over and I jerked my hand away from the knob and then I went flying across the short hallway, my back slamming into the wall behind me.

  The air left my lungs in a whoosh and I was pretty sure I saw cartoon stars around my eyes.

  That was...different. I had been on the receiving end of magic before, but nothing quite like that. My entire arm was tingling and my head was spinning. I held up my arm and saw the magical numbers scrawled over my skin were sparkling. It was hard to draw a breath. Crap. I could only imagine what might have happened to me if I hadn't let go of the doorknob. From the tingling in my arm I could only assume something terrible.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I muttered to myself. He totally would have been helpful here. I brushed my hands off on my robes and stood up. “Okay, Lorena. Think.”

  I knew some magical circle magic. I needed to put that to use. I also knew a little bit about symbology. I needed that too. I just needed to be careful. I took a breath and stood up.

  Touching the door was a no-no. I could persuade Maahes to go into the rooms, but what good would that do? He couldn't tell me what was going on inside of there, and he couldn't bring whatever was in there out. Too bad the house wasn't haunted, that would have worked in my favor.

  Wait. There was a church. Churches had graveyards, and graveyards had ghosts. I'd never tried summoning a ghost before, but I'd called to vampires. This couldn't be all that different, right? I reached into one of the pouches and pulled out a crystal. It was smooth and dark and cool to the touch.

  I hadn't done a lot of work with crystals or stones. Some, yes, but not a lot. In retrospect, I should have spent more time practicing. Oh well.

  I sat on the ground, the mist swimming up over my thighs. A moment later the weight of a cat slithered into my lap and I gave Maahes a pet. Him being there settled my nerves. I took a breath and closed my eyes.

  If I had been a mage this might not have worked. Mages were big into planning, into the creation of circles, and ritualistic spell casting. For a mage, or a wizard depending on what they wanted to be called, planning was everything. As a full-fledged witch, I might not have been able to do this either. Half of a witch’s power was in being absolutely certain in herself, and I was in no way, shape, or form certain in what I was about to do. Thanks to Reikah and Jenny I had a little bit of training in both. I hoped it would be enough.

  I closed my eyes, stilled my mind, and focused on the weight of the crystal in my hand. It was warmer now than it had been, and holding it eased the lingering pain in my arm.

  Meditation wasn't really about clearing the mind, it was more about organizing it. Sorta like cleaning up my room. I didn't throw everything out, I just put things where they were supposed to go. I couldn't worry about Jenny or Reikah or Wei. That was for another time. Right now, I needed to access that part of me that called to the dead, in the hopes of calling the dead to me. I focused on the stone. I ran my thumb across the top of it, feeling the smoothness beneath my digit. I opened up the door inside of myself that let out the magical part of me and I had to fight to keep myself steady.

  A necromancer had an affinity with the dead, it was just what we were, and death happened everywhere. If I concentrated hard enough I could trace every single death that had happened along this entire street. Considering the church at the end? That could be an awful lot of death. I wasn't looking just for death though. I was looking for a spirit that lingered. A ghost. I needed a human ghost.

  The house was old. But the land it sat on top of was even older. People had died here, been buried near by. I saw glimpses of women in childbirth, of men brawling in the dark. I saw old men and women asleep in their beds. I saw children covered in sickness and animal slaughtered for meals. The land had changed over time, being a farm, being a cottage, being the house it was now. Death, old as can be, had been here, but not a lot of spirits lingered.

  “Oh come on,” I growled under my breath. I kept my eyes closed and focused on the tendrils of lingering spirits, trying to chase one back to its owner. I wasn't very good at this, it was like tugging on spider webs. Every time I got close to something the line would snap and wither away beneath my metaphysical fingers.

  And then I found it, a line that snapped tight for me. I followed it. I didn't see anything, not really. I just got a slew of sensations. A male, tall and strong. I tugged and felt the undead come. It was weak, barely clinging to its current existence. I could fix that. My magic nourished the dead. I pushed my magic down that line, feeding the dead.

  The dead, and their undead cousins, were a hungry bunch. The spirit at the end of my magic drank deeply. I let him, right up until my head started to spin.

  “Come to me,” I beckoned, not just with my words but with my will. The spirit paused. I said it again, firmer this time. It tried to pull away. That made me mad. I gave it magic and it wasn't going to help me? Oh no. Not today. Not this time. I had stuff to do.

  I tugged again, and this time the spirit came.

  For a moment, I thought I had messed up. After all, the spirit was coming from one of the creepy upstairs rooms. According to the visions I had just had, no one had died in these rooms. The door near the end of the hall was vibrating, buckling as if someone was throwing their weight against it. I couldn't hear anything though. I watched as the door vibrated, and then flew apart. I clapped my hands over my face to protect myself from pieces of wood and splinters of magic as they went flying everywhere.

  When I looked up I went very still. It was a guy who stood before me, but it was in no way a ghost. This guy stood over six feet tall with the body of a brown Adonis. A good deal of it was on display too, since he was wearing boxer briefs and nothing else. There was a tightness around his eyes, sharp and angry. He glared down at me and I glared right back.

  “Well,” said a deep baritone voice, “this is the second time that you have saved me, Lorena Quinn.” He didn't sound super happy about it.

  “Zane...I thought you were dead.”

  His lips formed a tight line. On the average guy, it would have been an ugly look, but I was pretty sure that Zane couldn't look ugly. Angry, frustrated, and terrifying, yes. Ugly? Not so much. “I nearly was.” He looked away. “You ruined it.”

  “I... I what?”

  He snarled, and he was no longer handsome. His teeth lengthened inside of his mouth until fangs skimmed over his lips. His eyes went from dark brown to a startling red. A moment later a dark wind flooded over me, bringing wi
th it the sensation of vampire magic. If I hadn't been a necromancer I would have stepped back.

  “You ruined it!” he snarled. His voice reverberated across the hallway, echoing strangely. “You must have a gift for meddling. That's all you've ever done.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I'm the one meddling. You and that creepy cult are the one's trying to screw around with prophecy, but, hey. Let's put the blame on me.”

  He tried to surge forward, but the magic that I had used to summon him to me kept him in place. The tips of his hands were edged with pitch black claws. His skin was several shades darker than it had been.

  “You would see the world remade!”

  I shrugged. “And?”

  “You would put my father and his whores into power.”

  I blinked. “I...huh?”

  “Do not play the fool with me. I've seen you with Dmitri and Alan and Wei. My brothers have grown special to you.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah. So?”