by Rain Oxford
“Yes. Rita said it was the sacred language of her world.”
“Sacred? Ah. I get it.”
“How so?”
“Languages change and die over decades. Ancient Egyptians developed Demotic and Coptic. However, on a world that revolves around gods and magic, a language they consider sacred would be preserved and worshipped rather than adapted to everyday life. There’s no slang allowed.”
“So you can figure it out?”
“Not without context. I need a larger sample. I’ll keep this, just in case.” He folded it up and put it in his pocket. “If Fake-Jillian is not Veronica, why did Veronica go through the trouble of putting her here?”
“To spy on the vampires, maybe.”
“Are we sure Fake-Jillian isn’t just a distraction?”
“I thought the hunters and the pack were distractions. If Jillian is the distraction, who is Veronica trying to distract? Us? We were distracted with the school. Plus, I was called to the school from your pack. So far, she hasn’t gone after Amy or Scott that we know of. It’s not really clear who her targets are.”
“She tried to keep us at the school and stop us when we were taking Ahz to the school. If she really wanted me dead, she could have possessed Remy to kill me in my sleep. Maybe she isn’t out to kill me. There are so many maybes that it’s hard to keep track. We’re finding clues that contradict each other and no clear motives.”
“Unless her motive is to cause chaos,” Darwin suggested.
“Is there any reason a wizard would want to cause chaos?”
“Sure. Chaos is dangerous in magic. When magic is balanced, it’s working with you. Even when your spell is imperfect, as long as it’s balanced, it should work and the consequences will be somewhat predictable. Now, if your magic is unbalanced, your spell has to be perfect, and even then, the entire universe is acting against you. The consequences will be impossible to predict. Basically, using unbalanced magic is taking a shot in the dark and hoping to hit an enemy instead of ally.”
“So basically, it makes her completely unpredictable, and my visions are based on decisions. She’s killed and possessed people, but only people we barely know. I think she doesn’t want to kill us. I think she wants us running in circles, trying to guess at what she’s doing. She wants us to be chasing after her, but only on her terms, not actually getting any closer.”
Chapter 19
Henry had thought ahead and brought three vials of dragon’s blood, each enough to paint protection on a person to get them through the shadow pass. Despite our limited supply, he painted the spell by memory on Darwin in case we needed to make an emergency escape.
We couldn’t let Veronica find out we were going after the hunters. She found out we woke my siblings and Remington was arrested almost immediately afterwards. She was able to track us while taking Ahz back to the school. Yes, the hex bags helped, but if we seriously pissed her off, I was afraid she would step up her game by possessing one of us.
I had to take precautions.
Darwin lied to Jillian and Stephen again, telling them we had to return to the school to get supplies, but that we would be back to help in a couple of days. They were not happy.
“What supplies are we lacking?” Stephen asked. “We have weapons and ties with your father’s pack to get supplies much faster.”
“Actually, we need wizard supplies,” he said smoothly. “On account of our wizard.”
“I thought he used mind control,” Jillian said, not impressed.
“Last time, things went wrong,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. “I’ll be more prepared next time.” Also not a lie… I hoped.
“Well, in the meantime, I will not sit back and let them attack us without punishment,” Jillian swore.
“We’re not leaving for long. Give us a few more days before you start retaliating. We have to crush their operation. These humans aren’t in charge of anything, so if you kill them, more will follow, and they’ll be even more aggressive.”
“Devon has dealt with humans who were aware of paranormals. He knows what he’s doing,” Darwin said.
“Were aware?” Jillian asked.
“Yeah, they’re dead or worse now.”
That wasn’t true. Sure, Gale was dead. Regina probably learned about paranormals after she married a shifter, but I was all too happy not to hear anything about her since. Marcus’s father knew and was imprisoned indefinitely in Maseré’s dungeon. Most of the humans who were aware of us, however, were allies, like my mother.
It didn’t take any further arguing to convince Jillian to trust us. We left for the farmhouse, which was an hour away.
* * *
When the vampires were active at night, the hunters hunkered down. Henry parked far enough away from the hunters’ base that we knew we wouldn’t be seen. Of course, that meant we had to hike for half an hour. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the traps we had to avoid.
The house was exactly as I had seen it, except it was dark and quiet. “Darwin shouldn’t be doing this after everything he’s just gone through,” Henry told me.
“Relax,” Darwin said. “I’ve got this. I can talk my way out of a problem, and I want to do this.”
“I could use magic to get past them,” I said.
“No, Dev, for once, you will be the backup plan. They’re messing with paranormals— our people. I want to do this and I can do it.”
“Just be careful, then.”
“I know you two have my back. I’ll let you know when I’m ready for you.” He walked right up to the house and knocked on the door. An old man answered the door, scowling with suspicion. I was a hundred percent sure he had a shotgun hidden to the side.
“Hey! Wow! It’s just like Jimmy described it, except… you know… smaller. Sure is a pretty porch, though,” Darwin said brightly with a flawless, albeit irritating southern accent. It wasn’t the accent itself that was annoying but his use of it.
“Who are you?” the old man asked.
“Oh, sorry. Where are my manners? I’m Luis, your new recruit.” He held his hand out for the old man, who didn’t reach out to shake it. After a moment, Darwin frowned and dropped his hand. “Jonny told you I was coming, didn’t he?”
“Who sent you?”
“Jer… Jim… gosh. I’m terrible with names. I know it was somethin’ with a “J.” Jason? Jeff? JC?” Most masculine names started with “J” so there was likely someone in the organization whose name started with it.
“James?”
“Yeah! That was it! Anyway, nice ta meet ya.”
“We weren’t told James had a new recruit coming.”
“Ah, no? Darn. Guess no one saved me a plate for dinner then. I woulda come sooner, but my ma wouldn’t let me. She thinks the city ain’t safe and someone’s gonna mug me. I told her I ain’t a boy anymore. Right, then.” He clapped his hands together loudly, causing the dogs at the back of the house to bark. “Let’s stake us some vampires! When are we leavin’? I hope I didn’t miss all the fun.”
“You don’t slay vampires at night.”
“Oh…” Darwin said, frowning dramatically. “I guess that makes sense. When do I get my own garlic and stake? I got a cross already, so no vampire is sneakin’ up on me without a face full of the lord.”
The man rubbed his forehead with frustration. From his perspective, Darwin was useless as a vampire hunter, but so stupid that he would reveal their location if he was turned away.
When the man stepped inside to let Darwin in, a German Shepherd charged forth, growling. Darwin didn’t react in the slightest until the dog realized what it was up against. It stopped growling.
Startling the dog further, Darwin cooed loudly and rubbed the dog’s head. “What a good lookin’ boy!” the dog whimpered and licked his hand. “He a working dog? Ma had to sell our dogs with the farm to move here. Cryin’ shame if you ask me.”
“Come in, just… stop talking.”
“Sure thing! Ma says I talk enoug
h to put the sheep to sleep. But she’s just nitpicky. I can totally be quiet as a mouse starin’ down a cat.” The door closed behind him and I sighed with relief.
“Remind me again what stops him from becoming a supervillain?” Henry said.
“Laziness.”
I tried to check on Darwin several times, but he pushed me away from his mind. Although I could have invaded his mind anyway, I didn’t want to be overbearing and untrusting. Darwin would call me when he was ready. I refrained from using my power on the humans just in case one of them happened to notice me and attack Darwin, or if Darwin needed my help.
* * *
We had to wait twenty minutes before I sensed Darwin trying to contact me. I opened my mind to him and he told me he was ready. I relayed this to Henry and the shadows quickly wrapped around us. When they released us, we were in a dark room. Darwin flipped on the lights a moment later.
There was something to be said for electricity.
“They told me to bunk here tonight while they decide if they can use me. I’m betting on being bait. Anyway, I saw an office on the way in, but we might have to wait for everyone to go to sleep before we can check it out. Also, the old man said that there were watchers who stayed up all night, so we’ll have to sneak past them.”
“In the meantime, maybe we can overhear something helpful.” I sat on the chair and released my power into the minds of the humans around me. Most of them were workers and knew nothing, so I had to do a lot of skimming. The old man was in charge of guarding the door and keeping the public away, but he didn’t actually know much about the operation.
Then I discovered the “lab” in the basement of the house. The previous hunters had a huge operation with captured vampires that they could experiment on. Here, they only had one room to test out their weapons. Unfortunately, while we had destroyed the previous compound and their weapons, blueprints of the weapons and secrets to killing vampires had prevailed.
My intuition warned me that someone was coming, so I retracted my power. “We need to hide.”
“In the closet,” Darwin said, pointing to the door. “I’ll keep him distracted.”
Henry and I hid in the closet, which was full of more vampire hunting gear than clothes. Henry hissed at the silver blade of a machete next to his face and we had to switch places. It was a tight fit and if there was an earthquake, we would be shredded like junk mail.
Seconds later, the bedroom door opened. “Hey!” Darwin said loudly and enthusiastically with his fake accent. “I’m Luis! Sup? Is this your room? Of course it is! Otherwise, why would you be here? How long have you been a vampire hunter? It’s my first night. Think I’ll get to go in the morning? Or do I need training first? I’m totally looking forward to training.”
“Shut up,” the hunter demanded.
“Oh, sorry! Am I talking too much? My ma says I talk too much, but it’s just because I have lots to say. If I’m irritating, just tell me and I’ll stop talking. I don’t think I talk too much, though. I’m just friendly. Sometimes too friendly. Like, you can totally tell me everything about you and I’ll keep all your secrets. I’m so good at secrets. I’ve never told anyone about my best friend in high school, Sarah, wetting the bed until she was ten. I mean, I’m telling you, but you don’t know Sarah, so it’s alright. Unless you did know her. Boy, that would be a coinkydink, don’t ya think? Then again, you could know a different Sarah. It’s a pretty common name.”
“For God’s sake, shut the fuck up!”
Darwin was silent for a few seconds. “You shouldn’t take the Lord's name in vain,” he said shyly. “I guess I’m irritating you, huh?” He started speaking louder and faster as he continued. “I’m really just nervous, you know? I always wanted to hunt vampires ever since I saw that Buffy movie, but now that I’m so close, I’m worried that I’ll mess up. My ma would be devastated if I got eaten. But we’re safe here, right? Cause vamps can’t come in if you don’t invite ‘em.”
“Get out of my room!” the man demanded.
“I’m not that bad! I don’t snore or nothin’! Come on, they put me in here and I don’t want to be a bother makin’ them change my room. I can be quiet, honest!” Then he fell silent… for fifteen whole seconds. “How many vampires have you killed? How many should I aim for? Like a hundred? Or like a dozen? Is there a quota I gotta fill to stay on the team? Do y’all go out every night? Cause I can’t go on Sundays and then I got Pilates on Wednesdays.”
“Jesus Christ!” the hunter shouted. “You are not staying here. I’m going to talk to Trevor and get you thrown in the shed with the dogs.” I suddenly recognized his voice just as the door slammed shut.
Darwin exhaled loudly. “Thank fuck! I was annoying myself there.”
I opened the door. “Why is it that you think the epitome of an annoying personality is a southern accent?” I asked.
“I was going for overly friendly and can’t do a good Canadian accent. Private people and uber-friendly people get on like a horse on fire.”
“House,” I corrected.
“I meant what I said. I got rid of him, but maybe I went too far.”
“We’ll just have to act faster. That was the man who attacked Mellow at Drake’s club. Search his things.”
Darwin and Henry rifled through the bags of weapons in the closet while I searched the desk. In the last drawer was a crumpled, sweaty note. I figured it was the one he had planned to leave with Mellow’s charred remains.
You think you’re safe at the coven?
You’re not.
We’ll get you and make you pay for what you’ve done.
I groaned as I realized it was a message. I was right before; they wanted to send a message to someone at the coven. “Mellow’s death was meant to serve as a warning. They knew he was a member of Stephen’s coven and they were going to kill him as a warning to them.” This meant that the hunters weren’t after everyone at the coven but someone in particular.
* * *
I used my powers to dissuade anyone from entering the room… but it could have also been that Darwin’s reputation had spread to them. When everyone on the second floor was asleep, we snuck out of the bedroom and downstairs. The old man was in the living room, watching a show on television with the German Shepherd at his side.
The office was down the hall, just short of the living room. As we crept down the hall, the dog lifted his head to look at us. Fortunately, the man didn’t look over when the dog got off the couch and confronted us. He growled at Henry. I was prepared to intervene and control the dog, but it wasn’t necessary.
Darwin growled back at him, confusing the dog. He clearly respected Darwin’s dominance, but Henry was a cat. After a moment of glancing back between Darwin and Henry, he growled at Henry again. “Go lie down,” Darwin ordered quietly. When the dog hesitated, he said, “Go!”
The dog didn’t need to be told a third time. With his tail between his legs, he returned to the old man, got on the couch, and put his head in the man’s lap.
We went to the office, which was locked. I unlocked it easily, half expecting to set off some kind of magic-detecting alarm. There was nothing, though. I locked it behind us to give us a warning if someone wanted to come in.
It was more like a storage room than a study. Instead of bookshelves, the walls were lined with metal filing cabinets. There was a desk facing the big window, as well as a few cardboard boxes and wooden trunks scattered around.
“This is going to take a while,” Darwin said.
Everything was locked, not that that slowed us down. I didn’t know who they were trying to stop, anyway; vampires and most shifters could break simple locks easily. Then it occurred to me. “Maybe they don’t trust everyone in their own organization. Most of the people whose minds I’ve read don’t know much and just follow orders. These locks could be used to keep people from snooping.”
We found detailed records on attacks, including what weapons they used and what the results were. They also had mea
surements and pictures of Stephen’s mansion and Drake’s club. There were detailed profiles on all hunters, which incorporated performance reviews. They even kept all the designs of their weapons, detailed enough that we could recreate them or disarm them if we wanted to. All of this was useful, but it wasn’t what we came for. We needed to know who was feeding them information.
Finally, in a locked drawer of the desk, we found a file that was full of letters… in Veronica’s handwriting.
All of the letters were short, to the point, and anonymous. Some of them gave secrets about vampires and shifters, some of them described how to make new, deadly weapons, and some of them talked about one vampire in particular.
It wasn’t Stephen, though. There were reports of murders and some of the letters referenced them as the victims of a vampire named Nadia, who was hiding out at the coven. According to Veronica, Nadia had killed hundreds of humans.
And then, at the very back of the folder, I found a picture. “Shit. Jillian is definitely not Veronica.”
They looked at the photo. “That can’t be her,” Henry said.
I nodded. The wild-looking woman in the fetal position on the floor of a cage, covered in dirt, blood, and worse, was the same vampire who thought she was Clara’s mother.
“See that scar on her back? I didn’t get her name, but I remember that scar. That’s why Jillian looked so familiar. We thought she was basically dead when we rescued her from the hunters last summer.”
* * *
It was a lot easier to sneak out of the compound than it was to get in. I made the dog think there was someone dangerous in a bedroom at the back of the house, so when he started barking, the old man rushed to see what it was. Before anyone could come downstairs, we were out the front door. Since we didn’t use windows, we eluded the silver dust traps and walked down the main road to avoid tripping any of the forest traps.