Blood Song: Division 7: The Berkano Vampire Collection

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  “What did you do?” he asked.

  I blinked, searching my memory for what I might’ve done and when. There was so much, a good chunk of it worthy of inspection. Like the lemon candles to which I’d added a touch of sandalwood for a richer smell.

  Then it came to me. “Oh, that.”

  He nodded, a trace of a smile on his mouth. “Yes, that.”

  “I did what you asked. I sang for them.”

  He stepped inside the closet, his presence leaching the air from the tiny space. I dug my heels into the floor, fighting the impulse to back away so I wouldn’t feel his heat sliding over my skin. But I wanted to feel it.

  “Some of them are inconsolable,” he said. “You were supposed to put a spark in them, not make them need therapy.”

  “You told me to make them feel something, so I did. They listened. They felt.” I pointed an accusatory finger at him as if it were all his fault. “Where were you, anyway?”

  “I had other things to do.”

  I frowned at the open doorway behind him, hoping he meant what he said in only one straightforward, nonsexual way. “Well, you missed the interesting conversation at dinner in which I couldn’t speak.”

  He seemed to stop breathing for a moment as he stared, his jaw pulsing, then he shrugged his backpack off and handed me a thick book from inside. “That might explain a few things. Not everything, but…it’s a start.”

  “I take it you’re not allowed to talk about it either?” Had Allison spelled us both so we couldn’t clue others in on the hanging ritual and how to keep the Berkano away? That would be a dick move to everyone not involved in the church, so I couldn’t put it past her. But Allison didn’t just do magic for the hell of it. There had to be a reason.

  He shook his head and pushed the book at me until I took it.

  “The Witch Trials: From Salem to Modern Times,” I read from the worn cover. “Salem, Australia?”

  “No,” he said, glancing away. “There’s another Salem.”

  “All right, I’ll give it a read.” I stashed it behind a toilet brush on the shelf. “But tonight, I’m coming with you.”

  A smile curled across his mouth, there and then gone again; its sincerity pressed against my soul like a necessary distraction. I smiled back, so tempted to step toward him, to follow our charged connection and melt into him. Just like every other female with a pulse.

  I cleared my throat and forced my head into what was to come. “Ready?”

  His face fell into shadow as he turned. “Grab you backpack and let’s go. Bast is waiting.”

  On top of the roof, a cool breeze played on the air, swaying the eucalyptus branches in front of us in an eerie dance in front of the low moon. I’d never seen the night before since I’d only risked the outside once before, and that had ended horribly for Mom. Lesson learned.

  Stars hung above our heads and teased the universe’s secrets with little winks against the black sky. The world was so much bigger than I’d imagined, from church-sized to starlight-filled infinity. Looking up gave me the sense that I was both invincible and inconsequential at the same time, a clash of feelings that left me breathless.

  Hendry had already climbed up next to me, but instead of taking in the view, he gazed at me, likely wondering if I’d hit my inner panic button yet. So far, so good.

  “I’ll tell you when any Berkano are coming, so keep your listening ears on your head,” Bast said, his volume turned down low. He must’ve been elsewhere or hiding in the darkness.

  Hendry handed me a handful of wooden stakes, and I pocketed all of them but one. It felt foreign in my hand, and wrong, like a tool for killing when I’d already decided I couldn’t do it no matter what the weapon was. But if it came to mine or Hendry’s lives in danger, I would.

  He crossed the roof to move the ladder off the building to our right to the building behind the tree. I moved to help as quietly as I could, but once I stepped to the edge of the roof, the sight on the streets below shivered my flesh away from my bones. Moving shadows crowded the roads, slinking around or leaning against broken lampposts. Some were alone, others clustered in groups, but all were deadly quiet, listening, watching for their next blood meal. And we were about to tread through the doors of the hospital and right into their nest.

  Dread rattled down to my knees as we settled the ladder in place with barely a clink. I couldn’t do this. It was a terrible idea, one that could get our throats eaten.

  Hendry did a double-take when he glanced at me, concern digging a groove between his eyes. After taking the whiteboard and marker out of his pack, he quickly scrawled, You can change your mind if you want.

  He was giving me a free pass out of this impossible situation, but that was just it—the situation would stay impossible unless we did something about it. Humans and witches would continue to starve while trapped inside their houses like the bird’s nest girl. They would needlessly suffer from the Rift Curse, and would never feel the stunning night sky take their breath away. Plus, I would die in just a few days. Something had to change, and despite all my prayers to Sandreka that someone else could do it, there were only three of us here. Three of us willing to change things one slow step at a time.

  I nodded and swallowed back the fear that swam sharks through my stomach. He smiled again, this one lit completely by moonlight, and he took one step closer, his fingers brushing my hand. His skin on mine doused some of my worries, so I linked my fingers with his and squeezed, blazing something entirely different in their place. He squeezed back, his thumb tracing over my knuckles, his gaze electric with starlight.

  “It looks like the flow of them out the hospital doors has stopped, Hendry,” Bast said. “Time to move if you’re doing this tonight.”

  Hendry broke away from me and knelt to the ladder, his shoulder swiping the end of a leafy tree branch. With one more glance at me, he began making his way across. I followed, taking even greater care where I placed my hands and knees so I wouldn’t plummet into any vampire mouths.

  Once we’d made it to the last building before the hospital, Bast said, “Hold.”

  We froze, our witch shapes hopefully blending in with the night.

  “When you’re inside, take the very first hall to your right.” A pause, then he said, “Go. Go now.”

  Hendry stopped and took my shoulders. He pointed to his eyes and then himself. I nodded my understanding. He’d said earlier I needed to watch how he got down.

  He crouched on the edge of the building and lowered his legs. I scooted to the edge and peered down, but it didn’t appear as if he was stepping on anything. He was somehow scaling down the building with no support. How the hell did he expect me to do that when I could barely handle horizontal surfaces?

  I whipped out my marker and whiteboard from my backpack and scribbled, I’m watching but??? Of course he couldn’t see my message because he was busy spidering down the wall.

  About three quarters of the way down, he dropped to the ground in a crouch and looked all around his immediate area. Then he stood and waved at me.

  I showed him my sign with a hearty arm thrust, and he took his board out and scrawled, JUST STEP!

  “Hurry,” Bast said, his voice impatient.

  It had to be magic. I just needed to go with it, to trust Hendry, though I hadn’t memorized his exact hand and foot placement. This should go well.

  “Go now,” Bast growled.

  After stowing my supplies, I spun around and squatted, pushing my lips together against a petrified moan. With my hands propped against the rooftop, I lowered one leg down. Nothing but empty air. Why couldn’t we have just used a ladder? I glanced at the one bridging this building with the one we’d already crossed over. I could drag it over and use it.

  “One of them is coming down the road,” Bast said. “If he looks right, he’ll see you!”

  There wouldn’t be enough time to get the ladder. I prodded my boot around, searching frantically.

  A footstep sounded in the
weeds right below. I didn’t dare look down for fear the vertigo would knock me off the edge of the building. Hendry should go on without me. I couldn’t do this if there wasn’t—

  There! My toe touched something protruding from the wall. But at this rate, I would never make it before the vampire strolled by.

  I breathed into my elbow, smothering my shaky exhale, and whispered, “Sanguis.”

  Tiny orange embers drifted off my lips and faded into the darkness like floating dust. I poked my leg out for another foothold and found it a shoulder-width apart from the first one.

  “Okay… Go,” Bast said.

  I went. Each hold was about a foot and a half away from the previous one, all of them invisible but apparently sturdy enough. More than halfway down, I dropped, the tall weeds at my feet cracking like thunder. Strong arms wrapped around me from behind and hauled me away, Hendry’s hand folding tightly around mine.

  Our steps snapped through the overgrown garden and around iron benches. We didn’t risk slowing in case one of the shadows came alive as we headed toward the side of the building. Four stories stood in judgement with rows of dark windows to peer into our souls.

  A double door loomed in front of us, and behind it, darkness crowded against the glass. Hendry pulled the handle, and we entered the now-open entrance on cautious tiptoes.

  No protection spells to keep us out like we’d put in place for them. No garlic bulbs hanging from twine over the entrance. They didn’t even keep the door locked. They wanted visitors to walk right into the belly of the beast disguised as a place to help.

  We headed down the first hallway. One wall had been stacked haphazardly up to the ceiling with hospital beds. Other furniture littered the floor in pieces, along with loose papers and machinery, some of it so packed together in places that we had to slowly climb our way around it. The smell of animal carcasses and mildew thickened the air.

  “Go left. Second door on your right,” Bast said.

  Near the end of this hallway, a bent wheel on a flipped over wheelchair spun lazily with a squeak. Above it on the wall, someone had scrawled No Talking in red letters that dripped down the once-white paint. I shuddered at the reminder, thinking that maybe whoever had written it had learned that rule the hard way.

  Hendry held his arm out to block me while he peered left around the next corner.

  “All clear,” Bast said, “but I’ll let you know if that changes.”

  The second door on the right was unlocked. Hendry guided the door closed with a soft click, enveloping the room in even thicker darkness. I fumbled inside my backpack for a flashlight, and with my fingers over the end, I flipped it on so the light glowed red through my skin and bones. Thankfully, the door didn’t have any windows, and holding it this way would hopefully funnel the light away from the crack underneath the door.

  The room was small, with no other doors or windows. Box-shaped machinery and other medical gadgets lined the countertops that bordered the walls. Hendry swept toward the microscopes on the nearest wall, and I kept my light on him while he tested to see if one of them still worked. Balls of flame licked up from his fingertips, and he touched it to the power cord while he looked through the top of the nearest one.

  “Someone’s coming,” Bast warned.

  I snapped off the light and clutched it to my chest as terror squirmed through my insides. The dark opened the rest of my senses, but I couldn’t hear anything other than my thrashing heartbeat. No footsteps. I couldn’t say a spell aloud to throw them off our course without knowing how close they were to us.

  “Very close,” Bast hissed. “Keep quiet.”

  Shit.

  There was the slightest shift of air in front of me. Hopefully that was Hendry. I turned to face the door as if I could peer through it, my next breath hanging in my throat, waiting.

  “It’s in the room right next to you with the door closed,” Bast said. “Hurry to the pharmacy next!”

  I flipped on the muzzled flashlight again and shined it at Hendry, who waved me closer so he could settle one of the microscopes into my bag. In the cabinets below, he shoveled out boxes of needles and other supplies.

  Done. We swept toward the door, but a burst of deafening music pulled us up short. Squealed notes rang out on top of each other in no order, followed by the crash of drums and a wailing voice that sounded near death. I dug my palms into my ears as realization hit.

  They knew we were here. Knew somehow that we had a psychic link outside and that we would no longer be able to hear it. We were being toyed with, and the game was about to get so much worse.

  Hendry took out his whiteboard from his pack, and from the firm set of his jaw before he showed it to me, I could tell he’d come to the same conclusion.

  Don’t let go.

  He stashed the board in his bag, shouldered the straps, and grabbed my hand with a determined squeeze.

  I wouldn’t let go. Not for anything. But when I looked up at him, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss clamp around my heart. The muscles in his neck tightened as he looked down at me, a dark fierceness glinting in his eyes. He seemed about to say something, but of course he couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the music anyway.

  I powered off the flashlight and traded it for a wooden stake from my backpack. If I was about to go down, I would take as many Berkano down with me as I could. Still, a cold sweat leaked down my sides, dipping my resolve to move from this spot to near zero.

  The door clicked open, hardly louder than a breath, and then we were running to the right, deeper into the hospital. A hungry growl from the dim hallway in front of us turned us around, back the way we came, past the closed door where a vampire lurked inside. Our steps beat the floor faster than the music pounding through the hospital.

  As we turned into the next hallway, a heavy weight slammed into me from behind. I went sprawling into the wheelchair I’d seen earlier, dragging Hendry down with me. My chin caught the metal bar holding the bent wheel. Blood flooded my mouth as my teeth cracked together onto my tongue. I crashed to the floor so hard my lungs emptied, taking any hope I had with my air.

  Shadows swarmed, though I couldn’t see anything because my eyes had filled with tears. The music pulsed from the floor into my brain and shook it further. I squeezed Hendry’s hand, somehow still in mine.

  He didn’t squeeze back.

  A growl near my feet, a puncture of flesh under my pant leg, and then my pain levels needled past critical. I screamed. I bucked. I tore myself from Hendry and threw myself at whatever had caught me by their teeth. Their fangs. I’d been bitten.

  A pair of dark eyes I’d never seen before stared. Blood, my blood, dripped down a vampire’s chin as he crouched by my legs. A shudder ripped through him. His head tilted back toward the ceiling, and his mouth gaped open on a moan.

  My stake must’ve rolled somewhere when I’d fallen. I kicked at his head. He released me before my foot connected and flung himself to the floor. His arms flopped at his sides, and his whole body twitched. He bent his head back, and a spray of blood erupted from his mouth in an enormous geyser. I dragged myself away, the pain in my leg smothering all understanding of what had just happened.

  My shoulder bumped into the back of Hendry’s knee. I glanced up to see him still standing and glaring down at a dark figure just a few feet in front of us.

  “Sanguis.” Orange sparks fluttered off my lips and drifted toward the lab we’d just exited. The blood-scent spell wafted after them.

  I’d spoken it out loud, not as a whisper but as a shout so I could hear it over the music. I’d already screamed. I’d already been bitten. I was as good as dead anyway.

  The shadowy figure in front of Hendry shifted his focus to me and snapped his fingers. The music cut, swallowing the hospital with silence that was just as loud. Bast’s voice came in shrill and panicked, and he spoke so fast I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  Power emanated from this vampire in thick waves, much
stronger than the one behind me who was trying, and failing, to prop his arms underneath him to stand on the floor slicked with my blood.

  Hendry lunged, his stake at the ready. It burst into flame at a flick of the vampire’s gaze. Hendry dropped it, shaking out his singed fingers as he watched it roll under a pile of machinery. He immediately reached for another in the back of his waistband.

  “Not so fast,” the vampire said, his voice deeper than I thought it would be. “The thing about wooden stakes is that they burn so easily.”

  “Let Hendry go,” I pleaded.

  Bast gasped and went quiet inside my head.

  Hendry knelt next to me, his gaze never leaving the vampire, and slid his hand over my mouth with a small shake of his head. Did he not see it was already too late for me? Trading his life for mine was a no-brainer. He would’ve done the same for me.

  The vampire moved a step closer, moonlight from an open window in the adjacent room cutting across his sharp cheekbones. Cold, flinty eyes stared from sunken-in sockets. His button-up shirt and pants hung off his frame as if he hadn’t eaten in a long while.

  “Two witches,” he said. “Well, isn’t that—”

  A muttered breath breezed across my temple. Blinding white light exploded in the hallway with coiling black smoke at the center. Hendry’s hand over my mouth slipped away and reappeared behind my back. His other scooped my legs out from underneath me, and then we flew.

  With sprouted wings, or more like the strength of Hendry’s legs, he sprinted so quickly down the bright hallway that my hair whipped my cheeks and tears stung my eyes. My leg throbbed with the jostling movement.

  Something behind us simultaneously hissed and growled. What sounded like the remains of furniture hurled into the walls right behind us, the crashing noises charging the hairs on my scalp. I wound my arms around Hendry’s neck and willed him to hurry faster.

  “Sanguis,” I breathed, once more sending the blood-scented sparks in the direction of the lab.

  The banging continued. The bright light wound down with a whir. Whatever spell Hendry had used was losing power, and fast.