by brett hicks
“No, no, no, no!”
I said it like a mantra of terror. I kicked the door shut and I pulled Skylar onto my lap. I fed my magic into the door and the walls, feeding new rune symbols to life and I began to construct basic wards. They were not meant to stop anything magical, but they would hold against physical assault. I had recently begun to learn how to construct warding against human intrusions.
Call me a paranoid girl, but I was much more concerned with the possibility of human intruders in New York than I was supernatural ones. I now had thousands of subjects to help me watch for any unusual inhuman behavior.
“Stay with me Sky!”
I practically yelled at him and he smiled at me weakly. Dark blood was dripping from his lips now. For the first time since I had become a vampire, the smell did not entice me. That scared me above all else because I knew death was coming for my partner! Death was here, not just the death I represented, but very literal tangible death.
I pulled his radio to my lips and I began to “10-13, 10-13! Officer down! Requesting immediate assistance!”
Twenty-Six:
Banging sounded around me as wood and stone began to fracture. Banging sounded to the beating of my rapid heart. Beating began to fade from the thumping of Skylar’s human pulse.
My heart was heavy and I pulled out one of my hidden daggers. I slashed my left palm open and I pressed the bleeding wound over Skylar’s mass of exposed red-pink meaty tissue in his hollowed gut.
I wasn’t much for prayers anymore, not after the nightmares life had visited upon me. Yet I found myself saying a very audible prayer to the divine. My flesh was mending quickly and I felt my fangs burn in my gums as they descended. I bit into Skylar’s neck and I took only a swallow of his blood. Then I re-opened the quickly knitting wound on my palm and I dribbled my life-blood into his lips.
I felt the green magic rising off of me in wafts of heady ozone twanged scent. Something began to burn inside me and I focused my mind, imagining his wounds closing. I was trying to heal him the way a master vampire could. I was trying to keep him alive, even if that meant turning him.
Come on work! Not vampire, just heal!
This became my new internal mantra. I forced his mouth to move and reluctantly began to swallow the hot peppery liquid.
“Stay with me Sky, come on!”
I felt green magic binding to him and swirling around him. His body became luminous with the light-green glow of my power. This was not the blues of my necromancy, but the other magic that resided inside my body, the same magic that forged the katana I now commanded.
Blasting roared through the hall as if someone had fired a cannon nearby. My wards quaked under the pressure. I kept feeding Skylar my blood, even after my vision became spotty. I reopened the wound several more times and I bit back the pain of the cold blade. I sagged against the wall and the world began to lose its focus. Still, I forced my blood into his mouth.
Spotted dotted my vision and my keen sight became doubled and bleary from my blood-loss. After what seemed like an eternity of exsanguinating myself, my word went dark as I cradled Skylar in my arms. I vaguely felt my wards shattering around us and gunfire erupted outside with a renewed vigor. Then, there was nothingness and the weight was lifted from my shoulders.
***
The caverns dripped water and the ancient broken stone walls ran with old power. Greens of every verity streamed through the cracks. Withered plant-life was decaying on the floors around me.
I stood on surprisingly steady legs and I followed the glow of the green. The magic was so like mine that I nearly mistook it for my own power. The trail led me through the broken walls and down spiral stairs forming tight a tight circular pattern as I rapidly descended.
The stairs took forever and my progress seemed impossible to gauge. After a while, I lost all vision of the top I had started down. My pace began to increase with my frustration and desperation to be anywhere but these crumbling ancient steps. A fall from this height might actually kill me, or was it depth?
What seemed like hours, passed before I finally hit the last rung of steps and I stood in an ancient hallway. Silver and gold lined the walls. Tablets were neatly arranged in stony configurations with strange cursive writing neatly etched into each.
My eyes scanned the texts and to my great surprise, I recognized some of the words.
“Come and see…”
A whisper of invitation from a timeless masculine voice called to me. I found myself pacing towards the far end of the long gilded halls as if lured by a siren. Bones littered the broken halls and the many rooms I passed held tablets, gems, and other aging products. I recognized this place as something akin to a witch’s lair. It still held the traces of natural elements and herbs, and something richly metallic.
“Thea…”
The voice whispered to me again like a lover’s caress to my ear. I followed deeper still, like the stairs; the halls seemed to stretch on forever. I felt the pull of the green strands of magic on my mind and I turned left, or right with each tug, as if to answer the call.
I walked into a massive corridor and out through what was once a courtyard. Despite being deep beneath the earth, light shone down on me, soft like the pin-pricks of night. The unnatural stillness of everything sent chills down my arms.
Again I felt the tug and I spun towards what looked to be a solid wall, but I passed through it and I fell.
My fall was short, maybe twenty-feet down, nothing for an immortal with heightened physical prowess.
My blade shimmered green-blue in my right hand at the ready. A cloaked figure was crouched over what looked to be a broken translucent egg-shell. The egg, or whatever it had been, looked to be about a foot-and-a-half long.
The hooded form seemed to be a statue. I felt the pull and I began to walk slowly towards the creepy statue. My spine shivered and my arms buzzed with the hairs standing on their ends. Blue power swirled and twinned around the statue and I crouched beside it and when my hand connected with the chilled marble, green shot from my palm and the cold was quickly replaced with warmth.
The statue softened under my touch and a huge wheezing breath expelled. It was massive, well over seven-feet tall. I had thought it an old stone statue. This was a man and his magic was mostly pale-blue similar to mine, but he was something else, something that had known the grave.
Revenant…
The word seemed to slip into my mind as if supplied by some external power.
His golden eyes opened, glowing faintly with a power of something ageless and mythical.
At…
The rest was cut off as I felt myself falling back up through the ground and I slammed into my body. I sat up jerking my hands and drawing my blade in one swift motion. I spun in a circuit but stilled my blade as my eyes connected with Seraphina Herrington.
“Skylar…”
Her eyes were somber and she bit her lip. She paced over to me and she settled into what I now recognized to be a hospital bed. My blade vanished and I felt it sizzle back into place in my bone and blood.
“I’ll never grow accustomed to seeing you produce your blade in such a manner.”
Seri gave me a slightly wan smile and I furrowed my brows deeply.
“How did I get here and where the hell is Skylar?!”
She leaned in and she stroked her hand through my hair.
“Peace, be still my princess. He still lives; he is down the hall from here.”
I sat up and I plucked the IV in my arm free and winced slightly.
“Show me to him, because I have to see this with my own eye to believe it.”
Seri sighed and nodded; she moved back and let me scoot off the hospital bed. I noticed that several bags of blood had been emptied in one of the IV racks.
“They had to give your four bags of transfusion blood Thea. You damn-near emptied yourself holding that boy to life!”
I blinked and took in this information.
“So, he’s alive?
Is he ok? Why do you look so disturbed?”
She smiled faintly and gave me an unreadable look.
“Liam told me you would pop up spitting out questions faster than a machine gun. Thea, you saved him, but yet again, what you have done should not be possible.”
I frowned at her and tilted my head slightly.
“What does that even mean?”
My tone was edged with hostility; I was not much of a fan of hospitals. Being here and without caffeine made me a very grumpy girl! Seri pursed her lips and she seemed to come to some decision.
“When you were infected with the hell-fire poisoning, that should have burned out any immortal. Necromancers, vampires, witches, fae, and shifters all die when exposed to hell-fire. You burned the toxin out so fast that it couldn’t consume you. Your body burned hell-fire out of itself. Even left untreated, Vivian is certain you might have recovered of your own power.”
I felt my chest tighten and my spine seemed to chill. Seri was just getting started.
“Then there is the matter of your sword. Thea that sword is not necromancer or vampire magic. Whatever it is, it is something I have never seen before. I have beheld just about any conceivable magic and power known to this or any realm connected to earth.”
I licked my lips and I shrugged.
“Ok, nothing too bad about all that…”
Seri shook her head in agreement.
“I never said it was bad, just mysterious. Thea, there is more.”
I looked up and my eyes widened slightly.
“Tell me…”
She ran her hand through her long red-blonde hair and huffed a deep breath.
“You didn’t just turn Skylar into a vampire, you made him a Dhampire. Dhampires should only be possible a revenant conceives them with a mortal or a vampire.”
My chest constricted tighter and I stepped out of the room and I ignored Seri’s inquisition as to my state of mind. My chest pulsed and I felt my bond to Seri behind me, but I felt two new bonds one shot off into the distance of New York City. The other was four doors down where several uniform officers stood vigil.
I followed the icy bond of blue magic and the officers tipped their heads to me and let me pass. I didn’t have enough clarity yet to realize I was walking around like something a horror movie spit out from the eighties.
An aging brunette with slightly lines features sat at the side of the bed. Grey-streaked through her beautiful chestnut hair. She looked up at me and she flashed with recognition. She was stiff and very still for a human now. She knew what I was and if I had to guess, she was Skylar’s mom.
Skylar was out cold, but I could feel the pulse of his heart right next to mine as if I were inside his very flesh. Considering how much of my blood was inside him, that was a literal truth in some ways.
He was not any paler than he had been. He did not of the slightly chalk-like complex that all full-blood vampires get upon being turned. I reached out and I clasped his hand. I felt his pulse against my fingers and I felt it inside my own chest still. The whole sensation was extremely odd and trippy.
“Is he…still…”
I looked over to the woman and I could guess her questions.
“He’s alive and he is still himself. I am afraid I will have to teach him how to live as an immortal and to control certain urges.”
I trailed off; she did not need to hear the details.
“Will he be ok?”
I nodded and I felt the hot tears filling my eyes as I remembered how torn up he had been.
“It was close, but I guess it worked. I’ve never done this before. I am only twenty-three myself, so I had not planned to turn anyone.”
The depth of the shadows around her face told me she knew how close her son had come to the great beyond.
“I don’t know if I should thank you or hit you.”
She calmly confessed and I bit my bottom lip and I nodded my understanding.
“You do whatever you need to do and I will make sure Skylar lives for a long time to come either way.”
She seemed to still again and finally, after several long moments of deep thought, she nodded to me in concession.
Twenty-Seven:
Seri helped me convince the Johnsons that I had to move Skylar to my apartment. They didn’t understand the dangers of him rising as an immortal in a hospital filled with the scent of blood and prey.
My boss had nearly pinned me to the wall demanding to know what I had done to his son. To say he was not happy with me would be greatly understating his feelings. He had arrived on the scene as I was passing out. He had shot his way into the conference room I had warded.
Over a dozen men and several women were injured or dead. My ghouls had killed five people before being put down permanently. Inspector Johnson had arrived quickly enough to see the massive shotgun blast in his son’s chest and stomach. He had been a bloody mess and shouldn’t have been breathing at all, except for what my blood had done to him.
His logical mind seemed to know this, but his parental instincts seemed to rage against me nonetheless.
I sat vigil with Skylar for the rest of the evening that night and I only took enough time to stop to go for a debriefing at my precinct tonight. Liam was sitting with Skylar and Seri was close by holding her nightly court meeting.
Humans were up in arms, focusing more on the casualties who assaulted police and not the facts surrounding the deaths. I had been reluctant to use my magic for a reason. I knew the type of backlash it could have on the community.
I was in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. The killer had struck again, this time killing another young woman. He had not bothered to use a condom, again. His attack was even more ruthless. This time he killed a half-fairy girl. Beyond that, I had yet to read up on her file. I did know one thing now, all of his victims worked for Fairy Flare. This was a fact which had not escaped the intrepid reporters of the new media conglomerate.
I was stuck in meetings with local and federal authorities for most of the night. The IAB had hassled me for hours and hours alone. Their lieutenant seemed to be firmly set in his belief that I was lying about the Captain selling us down the creek.
I have been on the job for a week now and I am already being pushed towards the door. I was suspended indefinitely, pending a thorough review of the case into my shooting and magical deaths.
That I had turned my partner had rankled most of the brass. They were up in arms about my decision to “play god,” as they put it. They wouldn’t understand how immortals think, or how we select who we pass our gifts on to. Hell, that was my first damn time and I knew instinctively that I did not want Skylar to die. He was all the best traits of modern man personified into one young adult.
Vampires are very selective about who they turn. That I had out-right refused to turn humans for the US government, to breed new soldiers, had also lent weight to the hammer of righteous fury being leveled against me.
Only master vampires could turn humans, necromancer, and witches into new vampires. Master vampires are very sparse, despite the fact that we currently had about five in my court in New York, most places didn’t have any.
All the vampires had taken their cue from Seri and me in regards to refusing to let humans dictate changes to us.
Now I sat in this damn white room for ten-hours. I had been screamed at by no fewer than a dozen different law-enforcement agents of various flavors. Some agencies were trying to pin charges of murder and magical terror to my head as I sat here.
In short, this was an absolute shit show.
I rested my head on the table as I waited for the next round to begin. Get a vampire into a box and everyone wants to tag in! It was like these people didn’t see me as a person, a cop, or a friend trying to save someone. They saw fangs and my need for hemo!
The door clicked open and I didn’t bother to look up.
“Good evening Sir.”
My monotonous boredom seeped through my voice.
The door closed firmly behind the Inspector as he trots hotly over and sat across from me.
“Part of me still wants to kill you where you sit.”
He said by way of greeting. I shrugged and didn’t look up at him.
“Well, I did what I had to do to keep Skylar breathing. Sorry, not sorry.”
I was too tired to be anything but cute and a complete cheeky smart-ass. The Inspector knew the real me. He knew that I was a street-rat that told everything plainly and I called a spade, a spade.
“I know and that is the only reason I am reigning in my wrath, Thea. I logically know why you did what you did, but you’re not a parent. You do not know how worried I am for my son. How it feels to now know he is going to have a bulls-eye painted on his forehead forever, because of his blood-tie to you. Don’t try to deny it either, because I know the full story. I know that immortals want you and Seraphina dead.”
I looked up and him and shrugged.
“It’s true; I have pissed plenty of people off in my very short stint on this rock.”
He huffed in annoyance and seemed to lean in closer. I could feel his hot breath tickling my cheek.
“It’s not just your actions, but who you are and what you represent.”
I shrugged a third time.
“Are you looking for me to apologize? I’m not sorry for anything I have ever done in my life. I am exactly who I claim to be, nothing more and nothing less.”
His lips thinned into a long line.
“What are you going to do with him now?”
I frowned.
“He’s not a damn puppy. I’m going to help him adjust and get him back on his feet. Teach him how to only drink the red stuff when he needs to and how to get it legally. We will teach him how to defend himself and he will start learning how to be a Dhampire.”
Inspector Johnson nodded in understanding.
“I hope you land on your feet Thea. While we cannot charge you with a crime after reviewing the facts, the department is not willing to employ a vampire at this time. The temptation to do as you did and turn a fallen comrade is too great. You are being relieved of your duty effective as of twenty minutes ago. The commissioner signed the papers and I just finished signing off on my end.”