Dark Molly Book One

by Anderson, C. S

  The hunger works against me, like it always has.

  I try to hold to my starvling vow and not feed on any living thing but I have had to compromise. I steal blood when I can from hospitals and blood banks and ingest just enough to keep the hunger from consuming me.

  Soon I will have to venture forth and find a way to feed so that Dark Molly doesn’t use my weakness to take over this body we have shared for so long now.

  I can imagine her reading this account and sneering at the words in it. She is a creature of violence and it is all she truly understands. She glories in the slaughter and would bathe the world in blood if she could.

  The one thing we share is that we both hate vampires and we both want them wiped out. We both have our own reasons for that

  I dare not go in detail of what was done to me that long ago night, suffice to say that it involved torture, rape and forms of degradation so vile that I will not speak of them. Each time a new horror was inflicted upon me, I was sure that there could come nothing worse than what I had already borne.

  I was always wrong.

  Before it was over, I first prayed to the Light for death and then when that failed I begged my tormentors for it. I can still hear their mocking laughter at my desperate pleas. How long the coven had their way with me I cannot say, it felt like an eternity but it could have been hours or days.

  Abruptly they seemed to lose interest in the torture and began weaving dark workings over my semi-conscious ruined body. The dark magic flowed over me and I was too shattered and weak to fight it, it felt like drowning in raw sewage, except there was to be no sweet release of death that there would have been if I was truly drowning. The spells were bizarre and complex beyond imagining and I could feel the coven straining at the very outer limits of their skills and power attempting them.

  Then it was over and I slipped into a sleep so deep that it was akin to the death that I had prayed for.

  Chapter Five

  Seattle 1914 Andrea

  “Rise and shine sweetness!” Hector bellows as he hauls me to my feet and shakes me awake.

  I can barely stand, I would spit in his face but they have put the gag back in. My hands are tied behind my back and I am wearing a dark robe.

  He stares into my eyes intently, each in turn and whatever he sees there seems to make him happy because he is suddenly grinning wickedly.

  “Ah, my little Adept you have gone and gotten my hopes up you have. Tonight will tell the tale one way or the other I think. Tonight you will meet my Master.” He tells me with a gleeful note in his sick voice.

  His hand flashes out and tears the gag out of my mouth in one ripping motion.

  “This room is shielded and warded so don’t bother trying any spells, though I doubt that you are in any shape to do so just now. Someone will bring you food soon and I advise you to eat it. One way or the other it will likely be your last meal.”

  On this happy note, he leaves me alone.

  Moments later a man comes in who refuses to look at me, he is all business as he sets a tray of food down on a small table by the bed. He unties my hands without speaking and then he leaves the room. He limps badly and moves like each step is painful.

  I sit down wearily on the bed and try to reach for my magic, I can feel it just out of reach behind strong wards. Wards like this take a lot of power but I suppose a whole coven of Dark Adepts has the power to spare.

  My mind flinches away from what has been done to me, trying to protect the shreds of sanity I am clinging to. The horrors I endured, I lock away to be dealt with later. I have survived the abuse and for the moment that is all that matters. Despite everything the smell of the food is making my mouth water, I have no idea when the last time I ate something was. It is chicken soup with some kind of dark bread and I devour it in moments.

  They have done something to me, I cannot tell just what, but I am different. The sly voice snickers that whatever the change is, it has to be an improvement.

  They have healed some of the physical damage done to me by the various torments, otherwise I would be unable to stand, move or walk. I am baffled by what they want with me, it is more than the simple thrill of torturing and killing a rival Adept. They have some sort of agenda and that seems to be preparing me in some bizarre way to meet the Master vampire that Hector serves.

  That should be fun.

  Some small part of me clings to the hope of rescue, clings to the hope that Guns will come and kill each and every one of these foul bastards and set me free. With every hour that passes sadly that becomes less and less likely.

  It seems like I must save myself or die tonight.

  I will fight to survive and pray that it is the will of the Light that I do so.

  If it is the will of the Light that I give my life to the cause then so be it. I am done begging, if I am to die I want it to be on my feet fighting for my life.

  The room is windowless so I have no idea how many hours I have until nightfall and my appointment with the Master vampire. I have no idea if I am being brought to him or he is coming to me. I hope it is the former instead of the later as that gives me the best chance of escape.

  The same man who brought me the tray limps back in to remove it, I consider jumping him and trying to get out the door but I am sure that more guards are just outside of it. Better to conserve my strength and wait for a better opportunity.

  “Thank you for the food.” I tell him softly as he lurches past me.

  He turns and gives me a searching look and then opens his mouth and points inside.

  His tongue has been cut out.

  The horrors just keep on coming at me.

  Not sparing me another glance he walks out with the tray and the door is shut firmly behind him.

  I resist the urge to begin pacing the room and decide instead to lie down on the bed to rest and try to make some form of peace with all that has happened to me. If I somehow escape and survive this night I am forever scarred by what has been done to me.

  The sly voice in my mind doesn’t want to make peace, it lusts for revenge. It makes me nervous that the voice seems a little stronger now, a little more forceful.

  I have never liked to dwell on the voice, it seems like it has always been with me. I have always considered it a character fault and have worked hard to lock it away and ignore it. My parents had always been scornful of my imaginary friends and ‘other fanciful thoughts’ as they had called them. Even as a child I knew that my sly voice wasn’t imaginary. I know that it must be the discordance that the council spoke of, what seems like a life time ago. I wonder if they would have been able to help me with it if I had made it back to the supplicant’s house and none of this nightmare had ever happened.

  I will never know.

  Chapter Six

  Hector and three men come into the room and the first thing he does is retie and regag me. He also snaps a collar around my neck that is attached to a leash.

  “The time has come little Adept, my master awaits you and it would be unwise to keep him waiting. He has a limited amount of patience I fear.”

  He jerks the leash and pulls me to my feet easily, he is far stronger than he looks. The strength comes from being a human servant to a powerful Master vampire I suppose.

  Only one of the other men is a Dark Adept, the other two hired street thugs who stand there leering at me.

  Hector notices me noticing them and gives the leash another tug.

  “The rest of the coven awaits us with my Master, don’t try anything stupid girl. We are more than enough to handle the likes of you. No matter how cruel you think we have been, trust me things can be made worse for you if you don’t behave yourself.” He warns me sternly.

  They all form up around me, Hector holding the leash, the two street thugs on either side of me leaving his fellow Dark Adept to bring up the rear.

  I can feel the dark spells they are muttering under their

  breath as we leave the room, but I doubt if the two thugs can
.

  To them this nothing, just a slow tense walk somewhere with a wad of cash tossed to them at the end of it.

  Or an unmarked shallow grave if their Dark Adept Masters decides that is the way to handle it.

  Still no idea why they are bringing me to meet a master vampire or how my ordeals and their rituals have somehow prepared me for this meeting. I still have no idea if I was simply a random target or did they coming looking for me specifically, and if so why? Why me? To have pick me up where they did they must have been following me, but once again why? Why such interest and effort expended at a failed Adept supplicant?

  They haul me down a long hallway, swinging me on the leash into the walls so I more or less pinball down it wincing with each impact. I understand what they are doing, the pain is supposed to keep me disoriented and helpless.

  Sadly it is working.

  My magic boils in me, stronger and different since they did, well whatever they did to me. Stronger, but I lack the training to unleash it or even direct it without being able to frame it within the formal structure of spoken out loud spells. That would have come with the next level of training if the council had chosen to pass me on to it. I try anyway, mouthing desperate spells into the gag.

  Sadly, it isn’t working.

  “Come along then girl. Do you feel the possibilities swirling around us in the night? I have a good feeling about this my little failed Adept, that after tonight, you will be failed no longer. May it serve my Master.”

  He sounds excited and it makes me want to feed him his spleen.

  I shake my head to clear such thoughts from my mind, whatever they have done to me has lent strength to the sly passenger in my mind and this scares me almost as much as what fate I am being dragged to.

  Almost.

  All the frustrated energy seething in me is finding an outlet despite my inability to channel it and as we walk the light bulbs in the hallway first flare brightly and then burn out and go dark.

  “Oh you are a lively one aren’t you? You have me all in a tizzy you do. I do believe now that you just may be the one we have been looking for so relentlessly all this bloody time.” Hector chuckles mostly to himself.

  The thugs smell nervous to me and I can hear the other Dark Adept strengthen the tone of his incantations. I can get no sense of who he might be, my contained magic brushes against his and I sense his power but he is cloaked to me otherwise.

  Hector jerks on the leash again and smashes my head into the wall scattering all of my ideas. One of the thugs smacks my ass hard with his open hand.

  “Keep moving bitch!” He hisses nastily at me.

  I kick behind me blindly and hope for the best.

  Praise the Light, sometimes a girl just plain gets lucky.

  My kick is rewarded by a high squeal of pain as I shatter the kneecap of the thug who slapped me on the ass.

  “Knock it off!” Hector snaps at me as he cuffs me hard upside the head.

  He drags me along and we keep moving leaving one thug down and whimpering behind us.

  Nobody spares him a backward glance, not even his thug buddy.

  They hustle me outside and behind the building and toss me into a Packard moving van, like a bag of dirty laundry and we drive off into the night.

  Interlude: Present day

  I was forced to change to a different cheap no questions asked motel. I let my control slip for a moment and Dark Molly came out to play.

  She plays rough.

  When I came back to myself, there was an untouched large combo pizza on the rickety table and a very nearly dead pizza delivery boy convulsing on the dirty floor. There were blood splatters on the cheap drapes covering the windows of the room.

  He can’t be more than nineteen years old.

  I am still, if only for the moment, the dominate personality in the strange little dance Dark Molly and I do. I have placed the compulsion not to kill innocent humans as deeply upon her as I have been able. I have lost a lot of ground lately but that one command still remains.

  She tends to skirt the razor blade thin edge of that restriction.

  My laptop was sitting next to the pizza box unharmed, she has little interest in such things. I doubt that she so much as glanced at it. My thoughts and feelings would mean less than nothing to her.

  I pack it and my few other possessions and after a quick anonymous call to 911, I am out the door and into the night. I used magic to heal the bite marks and give him a shot at living. He will have no memory of what happened to him. Just another weird story for the EMTs to trade back and forth amongst themselves.

  They took me to the Master vampire, to Hector’s Master that night. I fought them as much as I possibly could but in the end they dumped me unceremoniously in front of him.

  We had training when I first became a White Adept supplicant in resisting the glamor tricks vampires can use to subdue your will. Tricks with their eyes and voices they use on humans. A starvling male vampire named Benjamin worked with us and in my pride, I felt I had gotten quite skilled in resisting those tricks.

  A nine hundred year old Master vampire is not a starvling.

  He had me at hello.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Hello Andrea Doyle, welcome to my humble dwelling. I am known as Bartholomew. You are most welcome here my dear, most welcome indeed. Hector, you didn’t tell me that she was quite this lovely. Let us make her a bit more comfortable shall we?”

  The sheer weight of his voice rolls me and I feel the fight flow out of me, replaced by a calmness underscored with an eagerness to please this deep rich voice.

  Hector bows deeply to his Master and gently removes the gag from my mouth and unties my hands. His hands shake slightly as he unsnaps the leash from my collar and then he steps away from me.

  I don’t even try to call my magic to me, it simply never occurs to me. All thoughts of resistance and escape are gone now, I simply stand there and wait to see what the voice will say next.

  “Tell me my loyal servant, is this the one we have been searching for?” There is velvet, steel in his voice and layered with the promise of rewards beyond imagining.

  And punishments equally as unimaginable.

  “My coven and I believe so Master. The fact that she survived what we did to her speaks volumes to her worthiness.” There is a note of pride in Hector’s voice.

  His Master looks me over slowly, his eyes an unspeakably vivid shade of blue as they seem to taste every inch of my being. He reaches a pale hand into the folds of his robe and pulls out a single black candle.

  “Show me something my new little friend. Light the candle for me Andrea.” He tells me and disobeying never crosses my enthralled mind.

  It is the first and least of the magic that we supplicants learn shortly after entering the house of supplicants. The ability to call flame to light a candle against the darkness.

  Or in this case for the darkness.

  I close my eyes and mutter a single word under my breath and send a flicker of magic out from me.

  With a flare of light the candle in his hand springs into flame.

  As do all the other dozen or so candles in the room.

  The vampire laughs, even through my entrancement, I note what a horrible sound it is. A distant tremor of fear ripples through me but is quickly pulled down beneath the calmness.

  “More than I asked for little one, but still less than hoped for perhaps. Your strength in magic isn’t really the question here. More important is whether or not any of that strength will remain after.” There are tones in his voice that speak of past disappointments and a detached part of my mind notices Hector and his fellow Dark Adept flinch slightly at it.

  An even more detached part of me wonders what he might mean, after what? The calmness flowing around and through me quickly drowns that question.

  “Very well then Hector, gather your little friends and let us be about this nights business shall we?”

  Hector nods and bowing deeply takes his
leave of us, taking his cohorts with him leaving me standing alone with the Master vampire who stares at me now in open fascination.

  The way a snake might stare unblinkingly at a particularly fat and tasty looking mouse.

  He beckons to me languidly with one pale hand and I drift across the room to sit at his feet.

  “We have tried so many times little friend, across the centuries and each time has been a disappointment. I look at you sitting there so beautiful and rich in potential and hope steals into my dark being like a thief in the night. Hope is like a double edged sword pretty little thing, it wounds just as often as it rewards.” As he speaks he absently strokes my hair like a fat half-drunk rich merchant would pet a cat sitting in front of the fireplace late at night.

  I thrill to his cold touch.

  “Put out the candles little friend, I have always preferred the darkness.” He tells me softly.

  With a shrug of my will, I extinguish all of the candles in the room.

  The sly voice that lives in the back of my mind is trying to scream warnings to me, but part of the calmness is relief at not having to struggle with it anymore. Bartholomew’s voice has rendered the battle moot for he has won control. At best now it is a minor distraction, a slight discordant note in a vast glorious symphony.

  Nothing matters but his voice and his touch.

  Together we sit in the comforting darkness and wait for his dark servant to return.

  Idly he reaches down and scratches my neck slightly, drawing a single swelling bead of blood that he watches until it threatens to begin a slow trickle down my neck. He captures it with a single finger that he raises reverently to his thin lips.

  Sighing contently he leans back in his chair with a low rumbling chuckle.

  “Wait with me little friend, let us dwell together in this moment of hope that just might finally be followed by triumph.”