by J. F. Lewis
Gabriella stood in the doorway.
“I see, the trouble is right here. Looks like they fouled up the wards when you had the courtyard redone,” the man said.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, Maurice.”
He smiled at her in a cheerful handyman sort of way. “I get paid to hurry. You’re top of the priorities list according to Lord Phillip, right under him.
“Huh, that’s weird.” He pulled a length of twisted hair from around the sill.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A gaff knot.” He walked to the other window and felt around carefully, crossed both fingers, and withdrew a matching string. “It—”
“Fix it first, then explain it,” she snapped.
Why the rush? I thought to myself. A thin sheen of bloody sweat formed on Gabriella’s upper lip. Why was she sweating?
“Melvin’s a good mage, Lady Gabriella, it’s not like him to be sloppy like this. A gaff knot is something magicians can use when they are working with a ward they didn’t make. It holds the ward back so that they can do surface work, like painting, putting in new windows. He must have just left them up by mistake.” He pulled another from around the door frame. “Maybe the wards were interfering with the paint they used on the wall. Was it an eternal mix?”
Melvin?
Gabriella nodded. “Yes, he said it would never need re-painting and would be self-repairing—”
As she spoke, the wall began doing just that. Bits of wood, paint, and plaster flowed up the wall like a videotape played in slow reverse.
“It is. All you had to do was pull the gaff knots. It’s not like him to miss that, but anyone can make a mistake.” He snapped the strings with his hands and gave them to Gabriella. He tilted his head at the same odd angle I’d often seen Magbidion use. “Yep. The wards are in place and the wall should be back to normal in ten or fifteen minutes. Anything else?”
“Will the ward hold even without the wall?”
“Sure,” he answered. “It’s only selectively permeable at the door, windows, and air vents.”
“Air vents?”
“In case owners want to sneak into their own apartment in animal forms,” Maurice answered. Maurice…mages and their damn M names.
Gabriella smiled at me.
“I believe I will give you a partial answer to your question, Eric.” She waited a beat. “One of the two people for whom you were looking?”
“Yeah?”
“She should make it back to the Pollux any time now.”
Gabriella closed the door. Two seconds later I felt a terrible screaming in my mind. My new thrall sense told me that they were in pain. The Pollux was on fire. My children were burning and I could smell the smoke, feel their terror. I felt like Obi-Wan Kenobi when Alderaan was destroyed. I was thirty minutes away and that was about twenty-nine minutes too far. One by one the screams began to fade. Greta winked out last. Gabriella was right, though…now I knew where Rachel was.
29
TABITHA: BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
Flames. That’s not what woke me up. I think it was the smoke, because the first thing I remember is choking, coughing so hard my lungs burned. Hot air. Too hot and thick to breathe, but I had to breathe. Why did I have to breathe?
“Eric?” I called out.
Heart pounding, I rolled out of the bed and onto the floor, because smoke rises and you’re supposed to be able to breathe better on the floor. Blood coursed through my veins as if I were still human. I could even taste the smoke.
“Talbot?”
Whose bedroom was this? I couldn’t remember. I didn’t recognize it. There was a blond woman, cold and dead, lying on the bed. Greta. Right, Greta was a vampire—Eric’s daughter or something. Someone was laughing. The fire was blue, not orange. Why blue fire? Natural gas?
In the doorway I got my explanation. Rachel was laughing, wreathed in flames, but untouched by them. “You should have stayed at the Highland Towers, sis.”
“Rachel?” I still didn’t know how she’d come back, but the gleam of hatred in her eyes…that I recognized. She’d looked at me with those same hate-filled eyes the last time I saw her in the hospital, two days before she died, when she’d begged me to find a way to save her. I’d been at her funeral. It had been open casket. I’d even gone back later to check the grave because my boyfriend was a vampire and I’d been totally scared that something weird would happen to her body. “Rachel! What are you doing?”
She smiled at me before turning away, closing the door behind her. Even over the sound of the flames I heard the lock. Eric had a dead bolt on the door that worked with a key on both sides. I dived for the door with all the vampiric speed I could muster, which was none at all. Sweat ran down my cheek, human sweat. I was stuck. I always had trouble using my vampire powers at their fullest when I’d been seeming human, but it had never been this bad before.
The clock on Eric’s wall said it was just after one in the afternoon. I was awake during the day! I pounded on the door. My vampire strength was a no-show, too. I was practically human. Great, my coolest vampire gift was going to get me burned to a crisp!
“Shit!”
On top of everything else, I was so hungry I could barely stand, not blood hungry, either. My stomach growled more angrily than it had when I’d gone on the negative-calorie diet. By day seven, when I couldn’t stand to eat any more cabbage soup, it was easier to starve myself.
Fire moved across the ceiling and the walls with a purpose. It curled and twisted, spreading slowly in some directions and more quickly in others as if driven by some sinister intelligence. God, it was hot.
I pulled myself up to my knees. On the bed, Greta’s arm was on fire and she still wasn’t waking up. I grabbed her foot and tugged her partway off the bed, took another breath, and pulled her the rest of the way down. Her head hit the hardwood floor with a sickening thud and I slapped at the eldritch fire on her arm with my hands.
“Wake up!” I screamed in her ear.
Greta slowly opened one eye, her mouth lolling open before she began to speak.
“What’s burning?” she asked thickly.
“The Pollux is on fire!” I yelled at her.
Her head went limp and her left eye slowly started to close, so I slapped her as hard as I could. Pain lanced through my hand and I coughed out an “ow.”
Greta opened both eyes and bared her fangs with deliberate threat. I tried to bare mine back, but nothing happened.
“I don’t usually wake up so slow,” Greta told me. Each word left her lips in a tangle, slurred like she was drunk. “Something’s wrong. Is it daytime? So…tired.”
She leaned back sharply and I shook her awake again. She was heavier than I thought she’d be.
In the distance I heard people screaming, like they were being burned alive.
“Holy shit!”
“Keep it away from me,” Greta mumbled, “I’m allergic to holy stuff. Are there any cookies left? Could you eat one for me? I love to watch people eat cookies.”
“Cookies?”
“Smells like cinnamon,” she continued.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I told her. The Pollux was old and the wood was dry like kindling. I dropped Greta and crawled over to the door. After kicking it a couple of times to confirm that I wasn’t strong enough to open it, I crawled back to Greta and pulled her to her feet. Tongues of fire engulfed the doorway and the smoke was so thick I could barely see standing up. Greta was beginning to doze off again, so I kicked her in the stomach. She snapped at me, but was too slow.
“You need to open that door, or we are both going to burn to ashes,” I told her.
She looked at the door and then looked back at me without comprehension. “What door? That’s a fireplace.”
“What would Eric do?” I whispered to myself. “Eric would turn into something and knock down the door.” Not an option for me at the moment. Okay, I wasn’t strong enough and Greta wasn’t awake enough. I trie
d to think it through and then the plan hit me. I got behind Greta and shoved her at the door as hard as I could. She hit it headfirst and flames ignited her hair. Hands pulling at her flaming tresses, Greta screamed.
I had never heard anybody scream like that before. Pure terror and agony were embodied in the sound that left her throat and all I could do was hope that she found the presence of mind to stop messing with her hair and knock down the door.
“Please, please, please,” I muttered as I crouched down on the floor. Greta took off running in the wrong direction, blinded by pain. She crashed into the shower, rupturing the pipes. My eyes closed from the stinging smoke as the water washed over her. It was almost impossible to breathe and my body didn’t seem too convinced that it no longer needed to perform that most basic of functions. Being stuck as a Living Doll was a pretty cruel trick. One, because I didn’t want to be human right now and two, because seeming alive was going to get me killed. Coughs wracked my body and I couldn’t talk anymore, couldn’t stand, couldn’t do anything but keep on coughing. A roar came from the shower, and I thought I heard Greta scream a single word. “Out.” She charged across the room at the door, fangs bared, and claws extended. The door exploded outward unleashing Greta, screaming, into the hall.
On my hands and knees, I went after her. Outside of the bedroom things looked even worse; the floor was collapsing and the roof was on fire. All of it was glowing a sickening blue.
Greta plunged through a hole, flames trailing from her clothing, screaming all the way down to the first floor. She charged through the wall like a rhinoceros, still shrieking, still burning, heading for the parking deck. If I could get to the deck, then I would be safe from the fire. As for the sun, well, maybe we could stay low and to the middle. Or maybe, like this, so convincingly human, I could even fool the sun.
I looked down through the smoking jagged hole. Below, the flaming wreck of the floor stared up at me. Seeming human or not, I realized I was going to have to jump, as Greta had. Even as I fell, I saw a board sticking up at just the wrong angle and tried to twist out of the way.
Breathing no longer hurt because my breathing had stopped. I had stopped. I lay like a broken rag doll in the middle of the fire, with a two-by-four jutting out of my chest as tendrils of fire licked my body. I didn’t catch fire the way Greta had, but my skin blistered and bubbled in the heat.
I’d been shot through the heart once, before the Demon Heart had blown up. Even that hadn’t really hurt until the bolt had been pulled out, but being burned hurt a lot. The roaring crackle of the fire reminded me of the winters I’d spent with my grandfather in Vermont. I couldn’t close my eyes, but the smoke was so thick I couldn’t see anything, so it was easy to picture him in front of the fire, laughing and calling my name.
“Tabitha!” A voice that was not Grandpa’s called out from behind me in the smoke. It sounded like Talbot’s voice, but smaller. Little padded footsteps ran toward me as my back began to smolder. I was going to catch fire. I really didn’t want to; Greta’s screams had been, well, awful. Above me, the flooring began to creak dangerously. I was surprised to be so calm…must have been the wood in my heart.
Before I had too much time to think about burning to death, I was lifted up off of the plank and carried through the lobby, out through the hole in the wall and into the sun. I couldn’t get enough air to scream. Just as quickly, we were in the shade of the parking deck, my clothes still smoldering. Talbot dropped me onto the cement and began patting me all over. “If Eric asks,” he said, “I am only touching you to keep you from catching fire.”
“Okay,” I nodded. He looked around the parking deck and then back at the Pollux. His clothes looked awful. They were actually still smoldering in places. Greta had also made it to the parking deck. I saw her briefly, horribly burned, lying under a parked car.
“I don’t suppose either of you thought to grab your cell phone?” Talbot chuckled exhaustedly. “I think mine is somewhere in the Pollux”—he patted his empty pockets—“next to my wallet, keys, Eric’s thralls.” Talbot sniffed the air. “Do you smell cinnamon?”
That was the last thing I heard before falling asleep.
30
ERIC: REWIND
Roger just keeps blowing up my shit!” I grabbed the table in front of me and flung it into the ceiling where it stuck feetfirst like a crazy dart.
Several of the assembled humans didn’t even flinch. A few even managed to compliment me on my accuracy. Others stared at me with patient wariness. Is he going to kill us now? I imagined them asking themselves. I’d already done a number on Gabriella’s courtyard. Shards of broken magic glass lay scattered over the courtyard’s meticulously tended grass. I hear when he doesn’t know what to do, he just grabs whoever is nearest and forces himself on them. I hope he eats Malloy; I’m so tired of listening to him whine about his master’s inner turmoil. Practiced neutral expressions surrounded me at every turn.
“Is there anything I can do to assist you, Highness?” asked a diminutive man in a cricket uniform. His jaunty little cap looked so funny and he wore it so seriously that I nearly laughed.
“Trouble at home,” I told him.
A man from the back produced a bottle of wine that smelled like blood. “Blood wine, Sire?”
“Wine?” I asked.
“It’s much like wine, Highness,” a fetching young woman in a purple business suit offered, “but it’s actually made of human blood, so it’s completely compatible with your dietary restrictions. My mistress has also sent a bottle if you’d care to try it.”
“Is that anything like blood booze?” I asked. My question was greeted with thunderous assent, that yes, it was, but far more expensive and with a taste that actually resembled wine.
“How many of you brought bottles of this blood wine?” I asked.
Soon seven bottles sat on the table and I wondered if getting drunk would really dull the pain of loss I was trying not to feel. If Tabitha was dead…if Greta was dead…
I closed my eyes to fight back the emotions and took long, deep breaths.
“Impressive, Highness,” offered some dumb brunette, “and quite convincing.”
I looked at Beatrice and my voice trembled when I spoke. “What do I say if I don’t want to offend anybody, but I’d just as soon they all fucked off?”
No one even blinked as she turned to translate. “His Highness, the Lord Eric, wishes to convey his humble thanks for the gifts and offers of assistance.” She fingered a strand of her own red hair, twisting it, the only outward sign of nervousness. “He gladly accepts your tokens of esteem and will be certain to relay more proper gratitude at another time. Unfortunately,” she glanced up at the remains of the magic ceiling, the table I’d thrown obscuring the artistic sun overhead, “as the sun shines overhead, the eyelids of the immortal grow heavy and Lord Eric finds himself in need of rest.
“If you’d all leave your cards on the table,” she gestured to a little white tea cart that had survived my wrath, “to ensure that the good intentions of your Masters and Mistresses are not forgotten and then file quickly and quietly out of the courtyard, it would be most appreciated.”
She clasped her hands in front of her and smiled. Like magic, they filed past and vanished, leaving only little squares of paper and seven bottles of wine to mark their passing.
“Thanks, Bea. Do you mind if I call you Bea?”
“Anything you wish to call me would be—”
“None of that slave shit,” I interrupted. “You’re a person. What do you like to be called?”
Beatrice scoffed and her full pouting lips drew up into a very brief smile. “Well, my real name is Tina, but Lady Gabriella preferred Beatrice.”
“Do you like Tina?” I asked.
She nodded, “But I’d rather keep Beatrice, if it’s to your liking, Master. I said good-bye to Tina a long, long time ago.”
“Then you’re Beatrice. Do you want to go back to Gabby, Beatrice?”
“Si
re?” Those beautiful gray eyes of hers lit up at that suggestion, but her expression changed to a more pensive one and she started twisting a lock of hair again, putting the tip of it on the corner of her mouth as she thought. “You wouldn’t be offended?”
My laughter was a foreign bitter thing. “I think I’m going to get totally wasted and then act really stupid. If I make it through that okay, then you can come back to me if you want.” I stood up and sent the chair in which I’d been sitting up into the ceiling to join the table. It didn’t stick, falling back to the floor with a crash. “See, I’m not having the best luck lately. I mean, sure, I did come back from complete and utter obliteration recently, and now my car is a vampire, too, which is cool. It’s pretty damn neat to watch him run over stuff…squirrels, armadillos…other vampires.”
Beatrice’s mouth fell open. My eyes locked onto a single strand of hair that stuck to her lips when the large lock fell free. “You have a vampire car?”
“It could be a zombie car, I guess. It eats meat, too…not just blood. Either way, it’s definitely undead.”
“Really?”
“And that ain’t all of it,” I said. “See, on top of that, I have to deal with all this trippy shit about me not really being a Vlad, but some legendary one-in-a-million, oh-nowe’ve-got-to-deal-with-one-of-these-crazy-sons-of-bitches type of vamp.”
“Trippy shit?” Beatrice frowned.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got trippy shit out the waz. You know how that Ebon Winter guy can turn into mist?”
She nodded. “It’s very rare. He and Lord Phillip are the only vampires in the city who can do it.”
“Well, I can turn into a fucking ghost, revenant, whatever, and the reason—you’ll like this—the reason everybody fucks with me is because when I get really pissed off, I turn into some kind of uber vamp with purple eyes, leather wings, and the ability to control frickin’ bats.”
Beatrice took a hit off of the blood wine, wiped the top of the bottle and passed it across to me. I took a swig and shook my head. I’ve never liked wine, but it did taste different than blood and different is good. After another drink I continued, “Only now, one of my thralls, who isn’t really my thrall, but some sort of thrall double agent, has been screwing around with me using some sort of sex magic.”