But lamentations wouldn't help him. Fortunately, William knew something that would. "You hold tight, sir. I'll be back in a moment." He ran to the kitchen and hurried back with a container of blood. Michael seemed helpless, so the butler held the container to his lips.
Soon Michael was drinking on his own. He stood in front of a mirror, to look at his injury. William was fascinated to see that traces of silver were running out of the wound. Michael's veins faded from view and his skin returned to its usual color. Seconds later, the injury closed.
"Thanks, William," Michael said.
"All in the line of duty, sir."
"Really? That's on the application? Tending stab wounds?"
"Right beneath the part about my blood type, sir."
Michael raised his eyebrows. "Okay then." He stood to his feet. "Thanks again, William. I have to get to the campus. I'll be back before dawn."
"Sir, if I may?"
Michael looked at him, indicating he should continue.
"Your recent course of action ... your liaison with this young girl, your antagonism toward Liam ... forgive me for speaking out of turn, sir, but I fear that this may not end well for you."
Michael looked at him for a long moment. "You might be right, William. But what else am I going to do? I can't leave her to him. I can't leave any of them. You know what he is."
"Indeed sir. That's why I'm so concerned."
Chapter Thirteen
Waiting was the hardest part.
What they had seen had been horrible. The images of Jess and Raj and that other guy—God, they still didn't even know his name, and it seemed like they really should know his name, since they had seen him die—would be fueling their nightmares for quite some time. Maybe forever. It was impossible to tell.
But as terrible as their deaths were, there was a certain separation, a distance. They weren't real people, they weren't friends. They were just unfortunate victims, like you saw on TV.
Bethany was real.
Caitlin, Alexis, and Evan were sitting in the girls' dorm. They were all staring at something far away, and they were all silent. Caitlin thought that she should say something, that they should be trying to help each other through this, but there were really no appropriate words. She wanted to tell them that everything would be all right—wanted to tell herself that everything would be all right—but that was a promise she just couldn't make.
But it would, wouldn't it? Michael was going to rescue Bethany, just like he had rescued Caitlin. And Liam liked to play with his food. As horrible as that was, it was actually in Bethany's favor; it would give Michael the time he needed to rescue her.
Yeah, Caitlin was sure of it. Bethany would be frightened, maybe a little banged up, but she would be fine. Just like Caitlin had been fine.
Caitlin tried to ignore the stab of fire she felt in her back, and tried not to think about what that probably meant.
There was a knock at the door. Everyone jumped like they had heard a gunshot. Caitlin ran over and pulled it open. Michael was standing there, and she looked up at him, a question on her face. "Is she ...?"
Her voice trailed off. Michael's face told her everything she needed to know. The grim set of his lips. The hard lines around his eyes. The furrowed brow. The slumped shoulders. He was angry. Defeated.
"She's ...?" Caitlin said.
Michael just shook his head.
"Oh. Oh God." Caitlin broke into uncontrollable sobs.
Somehow, she found herself on the floor, half in the dorm, half in the hallway. Michael looked down at her helplessly.
For a while, she just cried. Eventually, Caitlin composed herself, or at least got control of her tears, and climbed back onto her feet. Her chest hurt, like she had been punched, but she was at least able to look around. Evan stared at Michael, his mouth hanging open. Alexis had a dangerous look on her face, the kind of look someone gets before they do something stupid.
Caitlin looked at Michael, still standing in the doorway, still wearing his defeat. "Come in," she said to him. "Sit down with us."
Michael's eyes twitched. "I'm sorry," he said. He shook his head. "I'm sorry." He turned to leave.
"Michael, wait," Caitlin said, but there was a gust of wind, and Michael was gone.
***
Evan's head hurt. And his eyes were dry. And his back was stiff from sitting for so long. But he wasn't ready to call it a night, not yet. He wasn't even ready to take a break. The things he was reading were fascinating.
At least, they were when he could convince himself to believe them. He'd never been big on the supernatural. Sure, he went to church every Sunday, but there was a big difference between "there's a really old guy with a really long beard who lives in the sky, and when we die good people go to heaven and bad people to go hell," and "channeling the primordial forces of the universe through the power of symbol and faith."
Of course, a couple of weeks ago he hadn't believed in vampires, either. His world view had been seriously expanding lately.
The spell book was made of leather, and had an old, musty scent. A leather thong was affixed to the cover, and could be wrapped around the book to hold it closed. The book was battered and worn, and the engravings on the cover—knotwork that looked vaguely Celtic to Evan's untrained eye—were faded almost to illegibility. Someone, probably a lot of someones, had spent a lot of hours with this book.
The first hundred pages or so were inscribed with small, precise, flowing letters. Age had taken its toll here, too, but most of it was still perfectly readable. And it was all in English, thankfully. The letter 'f' was used in place of 's' throughout that part of the writing, which Evan thought dated the book to some time around the American Revolution.
That section—none of them were attributed to an author—was a hodgepodge of ceremonies and rites, potions and drawings of the flowers and roots that went into them, and arcane symbols. It also had long dissertations on the Old Ways and the Old Ones, and the need for secrecy, lest the Burning Times begin anew.
Every writer had left their own personality on the pages Evan read. For some, the Craft was a religious experience, a way of meeting with the creative forces of the universe. For others, it was a means of expression, almost an artistic endeavor. Still others treated it as a means to an end, a way of helping a mother through child birth or encouraging crops to grow.
But it was the latest entries, the ones that Morgan must have made, that intrigued him the most. They were written in messy shorthand, more like the kind of notes you'd take in class than the kind of entries you'd expect in a grimoire. And more importantly, they treated magic as a science—a weird science, sure, but still a science—with rules and theories and practical applications.
Morgan had done a lot of the legwork for him. She had read the book cover to cover several times, and looked for the elements common to each of her ancestors' practice. And she'd apparently gone beyond this particular book, too. She had made comparisons to other systems of belief, noted where they overlapped and where they differed, speculated on what it all meant, and tried to figure out how, exactly, it all really worked.
Everything seemed to revolve around something Morgan referred to as Aether, though she noted it was also called Chi or Manna or Prana or The Force, depending on who you asked.
She wasn't sure if Aether was created by human thought, or if it just responded to it, but the important thing was that it was malleable, and could be manipulated to some pretty amazing results. Essentially everything in magic, from calling down fire to disappearing from your enemy's sight, was a manifestation or manipulation of Aether.
That much Evan was okay with. The hard part for him to accept was the idea that belief was the fuel that got everything moving. According to the book, a spell or incantation was nothing more than a very focused thought, a belief so powerful, so real that it had no choice but to become manifest. All of the hocus-pocus, the spells and symbols and artifacts, were just ways to direct those thoughts into reality.
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That seemed, literally, like a lot of wishful thinking. The kind of crap you'd hear on Oprah, or from some wanna-be Guru from California. It didn't fit with the way Evan saw the world. Evan believed in hard work, not day-dreaming. All the wishing in the world wouldn't have gotten him a football scholarship; that had come as the result of hundreds of hours on the field and in the gym. And when he turned his computer on, he plugged it into a wall, he didn't chant at it.
But still, vampires. So who knew what else was possible?
The sections on sigils made more sense to him. The sigils were symbols, usually drawn inside of a circle, that had special meanings, and could be used to channel your will into magical effect. If you could buy that willpower made magic work—still a big if, but he was willing to accept it, for now—then sigils were basically circuit boards. And that was a language he knew how to speak.
The sigils gained power over time, because people kept channeling power through them. They became part of humanity's shared consciousness, like a Jungian archetype. The first guy that used a symbol would have had a hard time with it, but the second guy, having seen it work, would have had it easier. Over the years, hundreds of people had poured their willpower into the sigils, making everyone else even more confident in its effectiveness, making it more powerful. At least, that's what Evan got out of it.
Basically, they worked because they were supposed to work.
The more complicated the symbol, the more precise and powerful its effect, but that also meant you had to put more energy and more belief into it. Some of the sigils, like the ones used to perform what Morgan called "very simple elemental summonings: lighting a fire, or shaking the ground a little," were so simple a child could draw them. Others, though, had hundreds of little details.
The containment spell Morgan had tried to use on Liam fell into the latter category. It would take an hour just to copy it down onto a piece of paper, let alone inscribe it on a floor somewhere. And even if you were able to copy it correctly, a spell that intricate would take an incredible amount of willpower to keep going. Evan was amazed that Morgan had even been able to cast it, and he wasn't at all surprised that her strength had eventually failed.
But where did that leave him?
This book, and the little squiggles and lines inside of it, was their best hope. It was the best chance they had—maybe the only chance they had—to get justice for Bethany. And to protect themselves. And to make up for what he had done to Garret.
He had to make it work. So he might as well get started.
He took out a notepad and carefully drew one of the sigils, a stylized flame inside of a circle. One of the simplest sigils he'd come across, one of the basic elemental summonings Morgan had described. This symbol, if you channeled your will through it, should let you summon and control a flame.
He set a candle on the desk next to him, and placed his hand on the sigil. He focused on the candle's wick, and willed it to burst into flame. To smolder. To smoke. Anything.
Nothing happened.
Half an hour later, he threw the notepad across the room. This was stupid, he told himself. He might as well ask his faerie godmother for help.
Evan undressed and fell into bed, exhausted. He'd try again in the morning.
The notebook lay on the floor. Evan didn't notice the golden energy that shimmered through the ink.
***
It had been a week since Liam had murdered three people right before Caitlin's eyes. A week since Bethany had been killed. A week since Garret had been put in the hospital. A week since she'd heard from Michael.
Everyone was dealing with it in their own way. Evan had basically disappeared, holed up with Morgan's spell book. In the brief moments she'd seen him, and the even briefer moments she'd been able to get him to talk, he had said that Liam was just another problem, and that he was looking for "the right tool to solve that problem." Hearing him talk like that gave her a chill.
Alexis had spent a lot of time in the Campus Center gym, beating up a punching bag. She was more than willing to talk, but most of what she said was a mix of profanity and threats. Not directed at Caitlin, of course, but at Liam, or vampires in general. Or anything that happened to be annoying her at the moment, which was just about everything.
Garret had been released two days ago. Physically he was fine, but his friendship with Evan was done. It wasn't Evan's fault—even Garret knew that, deep inside—but that didn't make it any easier for Garret to look at him. He said that he had put in a request to be transferred to a different dorm.
As for Caitlin, she was just kind of numb. It seemed like all of the color had been drained out of the world, leaving nothing but shades of gray.
Photography had always been a means of escape for her. Seeing the world through a lens made it more distant, more manageable. It helped her to see the beauty in things. Even in small things, like the way paint faded and chipped on the side of an old building.
But she couldn't see that beauty anymore, and it made her angry. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she knew that it was selfish. She wasn't angry about the three relative strangers that she had seen killed. She wasn't angry about the pain Liam had caused her friends. She wasn't even angry about Bethany. She was sad, yes. There was a pit in her stomach that she wasn't sure would ever go away. But she was angry that Liam had made the world less beautiful.
They were all angry, and they were all alone.
She wasn't entirely sure why she went to the mansion. She missed Michael, sure, but she wasn't in the mood for a friendly visit. Or for another session in Michael's studio. And she doubted he was, either.
Maybe she just wanted reassurance, to be told that everything was going to be okay. None of this was new to Michael. He didn't have to adjust, didn't have to cope with mountains of new information and fundamental changes to his worldview. Maybe she just wanted to be around someone that was strong and stable.
Caitlin paid the cab driver and walked toward the mansion's door. The place seemed more imposing than it had before. The door seemed heavier, the stones older, the trees more claw-like. She pulled her sweater a little tighter and rang the bell.
"Miss Manning?" William said when he stuck his head through the door. "Oh, thank goodness. Master McKenna has been out of sorts for some days' time now, and we have all been at a loss as to how to deal with him. Perhaps you can cheer him up."
"What's wrong with him?" Caitlin asked.
"He is ... well, perhaps it's better to see for yourself."
Caitlin wasn't sure what to expect. She'd seen glimpses of Michael's anger, and his potential for violence, but it had always been in the context of a battle. Usually, when she'd seen him angry, he had been saving her life, or the life of someone close to her. She'd never seen him rage just for the sake of it, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to help him. Or if it was even safe to be near him.
William led her toward the living room, and her mind filled with images of what she might find there. She pictured the room in shambles, furniture reduced to splinters, artwork torn from the walls. She imagined him stalking from corner to corner, maybe with a sword in his hand. She saw his blood-red eyes, and his sharp, pointed teeth.
She didn't picture him drunk.
The room was fine, except maybe a little untidy. The fireplace was burning. Michael was sitting in his arm chair, dressed all in black, with his shirt unbuttoned. He was clutching a glass of not-bourbon, and a half-empty decanter sat on an end table next to him.
"What are you doing here?" he asked without looking up.
"I, um ... just wanted to see if you were doing all right?"
"Fantastic. Never been better." He took a sip of the thick liquid. "Did you know vampires can get drunk? I had to give the pig a handle of whiskey before I ate him, but this solves so many problems. I wish I'd thought of it before." He took another drink.
Okay. So Michael was in the "self destruction" phase of his mourning. That was ... unexpected. "Do you want to talk?" Caitl
in asked.
"Nope." Another drink. "I want to sit in the dark, and brood, and drink until I'm sober again. You know, the things I'm good at."
"I ... don't think that's exactly the healthiest way to deal with this."
"Why not?" Michael asked. "It's not like it can hurt me." He tossed back the last of the blood. "I'm going to be young forever. I can do anything I want. Drink as much as I want. Sleep with anyone. Live a life of debauchery. And I'll never change. I'm like Dorian Gray." His eyebrows knit together, and he thought for a moment. "Without all the homosexual undertones."
Caitlin was dumbfounded. She hated seeing him like this. She knew he was hurting, and knew that this was all bravado, an attempt to cover up what he was really feeling. But she was also angry that he wasn't doing ... something. Anything. He was the strongest ally she had, the only person she knew that even had a chance at fighting Liam and winning, and instead, he was getting drunk.
On pig's blood.
It was undignified.
"So that's your plan?" she asked. "A few days of hedonism? Or a few years?"
Michael gave her a half-smile. "Want to join me?"
"I had something else in mind."
Michael looked back at the fire. "Really? And what would that be? Because honestly, my muse has gone missing, and I'm really not feeling all that artistic right now."
Caitlin didn't take the bait. "You could try fighting back."
Michael poured more blood from the decanter. "Tried that. Didn't work. I'm moving on now."
"So that's it? You're just going to give up? Let him win?"
Michael smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. "I'm not letting him do anything. I've been trying to kill that son of a bitch for over a year."
"Want some help?"
Michael laughed. "You guys are planning to take on Liam? Good luck."
"He killed our friend, Michael."
Sire Page 16