I laughed. "Well, I guess you were right. Megan, I'm a..." I didn't know which word to use.
Megan grabbed my hand, her cool fingers linking with mine. "Darling, you're you. Just the way I'm me. True, I'm a vampire now, which changes things, but I'm still me. And that's really what matters."
"But, the thing is," I looked into her mismatched eyes, one the pale blue of vampires, and the other still the moss green of my best friend. “That doctor, the warlock and his whole society—they think I can stop the zombies."
Megan's jaw dropped. “How?" She whispered.
“I’m not sure," I said. "But, my father thought so, too. My real father.” I pulled the letter that I’d been given at the Warlock Society out of my pocket. I had not looked at it since reading it for the first time. "He left me a note, with the warlocks. They were supposed to find me. But I was in the wrong place."
Megan took the letter but didn't open it. "What do you mean ‘the wrong place?’ "
"Megan, I grew up in this world.” I waved my hand around the forest. “In this human-less, zombie-destroyed world, but much further north. And when I climbed into that cabinet at my father's house, I ended up way north in the world where you were born. I guess he meant to send me to the Warlock Society in Crescent City, but something went wrong.” I’d told Megan all about my memories....which at the time we thought were delusions.
Megan shook her head. "That's terrible." Her eyes were wide. “You could have been safe all along.”
"No," I said, holding her gaze. "If he had gotten it right, I never would have met you." She squeezed my hand and shook her head slightly. She loved me enough to wish we’d never met so I could have always been happy. "Read the note,” I said.
Megan released my hand and unfolded the paper, her eyes running over the words.
My Dearest Daughter,
* * *
If you are reading this, I am gone, and we did not have the time I hoped for together. As I write this, you are by the fire, working on your math lessons. A strong and precocious girl of eight. My heart aches to think that you may someday have to read this letter. But do not be afraid, my Darling, for you are stronger than you know. Stronger even than your mother.
* * *
I have entrusted this correspondence to one of my oldest friends, Tyronios Templar. Listen to him. He can be trusted. Tyronios and his fellow warlocks have more knowledge about you and your kind than any other order I have come across in all the worlds. They will protect you until you grow into the powerful woman I know you will be.
* * *
Listen to Tyronios and learn from him. The universe may depend upon you someday, my dearest darling daughter.
* * *
Forever,
Your loving father,
Darconia Price III
When she was done Megan looked up at me. "The universe may depend upon you?" she said.
"I know," I said, dropping my head into my hands. "And Emmanuel, his plan is for us to hang out here for a while, relaxing, and then he wants to travel the worlds. Go see all these amazing sights. How can I do that and save the universe?" I asked.
Megan shook her head. "I don't know."
"I think I need to go back to Crescent City," I said. "Maybe there are more letters. He wrote so many. I remember him always writing. And Tyronios promised me more information.”
"You met him?"
"Yes, and he had all these books about me."
"What do you mean, about you?"
"My mother was a…I don't know. A daughter of Lilith, a succubus, a creature that feeds off sex. That is incredibly powerful. According to Tyronios, we are the most powerful beings in all the universe."
"Wow," Megan said, her eyes wide.
"I think that's why you only turned part way," I said. "I have this feeling that you were…I don't know, feeding off me somehow. We were so close. And because of what happened with…” I didn’t want to say our foster father’s name out loud. “I was never with anyone else.” My voice faded.
"I know, Darling." Megan took my hand again.
"I always thought I killed him.” I met her gaze, and she nodded, knowing how I felt. “Somehow when he touched me, when he did those things—even though I hated it—I felt him taking from me, and I think it killed him. I think it's why you got sick. I don’t think the energy just flows one way. I think I can nourish…but that it also kills." I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
"Slow down," Megan said. "What's one way?"
"I think I just have to show you."
"Show me what?"
"I'm going to kiss you."
Megan raised her eyebrows. Before she could question me, I grabbed her eyes with mine, letting the hunger rise up my throat, using the power I'd taken from Emmanuel. It gave me incredible control. Slowly, I brought her to me.
Megan's eyes went hazy, and she leaned forward. I controlled her entire body using my influence. My lips touched hers, and I took from her.
I started to lose control, wanting more. But I backed off, turning away from her. Megan fell forward a little, her body free from my influence. I glanced at her. She touched her lips and then looked down at her hand. "How did you do that?" she asked.
"I'm not sure. Every day, really, every minute, I seem to be gaining more power. But tell me, what did you feel?"
She looked up at me. "It felt incredible. Like I was fulfilling my purpose. Like all I ever wanted was to give to you, to follow your commands, to be ravished by you."
I nodded. "I always wanted to nourish you, Megan, and I think wanting that made it true. But I think that while I can feed from others, if they feed from my energy, it makes them sick. Our foster father took from me when I was too young. I wasn't mature so I couldn't stop him. But it killed him. And I think my love for you…killed you, too."
Megan sat back and stared down at her feet with an expression I recognized. She was working on a problem. It was the same look she got when we were stuck on a song, when we weren't getting the gigs we wanted. And she always came up with a solution. "So," she started. "Let me recap this. You're one of the most powerful beings on the planet."
I held up my hand. "I'm the only one in the universe."
"Seriously?"
"Yes, apparently there is only one at a time. Or at least that's what the legends say.” Megan looked back down at my father’s note. "What?" I asked.
"It's just that your father says dearest daughter…doesn't that imply he has other daughters?"
The woman from my dream flashed across my vision. Could she be my sister? I shook my head. It was just a dream…
I took the note from her. “I think it’s just an expression“ I said, but my voice betrayed me.
“What?” Megan asked.
Looking up, I met her gaze. “I had this weird dream where I saw a woman who looked a lot like me. Close enough that we could have been sisters.”
“Freaky,” Megan said.
I laughed. “Yes,” I agreed. “But this is probably just an expression. I don’t think it implies I have a sister.“
"Okay," Megan said, sitting forward, her elbows on her knees. "Let's go over this again." She ticked off on her fingers. "You're the most powerful creature in the universe. Your father and this society of warlocks believed you hold the key to the zombie apocalypse that over took our world."
I stopped her again. "It's not just our world.” She looked over at me, waiting for more. "That's why there are so few humans here. This world was overtaken by zombies. The vampires did the same thing—protected the humans—then" I took a deep breath "Emmanuel returned, which caused all the vampires to be raptured…I’m not totally sure what that means.”
“Right,” Megan nodded. “That’s a part of my parents’ religion. Basically, the zombies lose their energy from not being fed, and any vampires who survived—and not killed too many humans—get raptured to the promised land.” She waved a hand.
"But," I held up a finger, "the zombies are still here." I
motioned around the forest. "Under the ground, covered by dirt, lying where they fell, skeletons, hungry for human flesh but too weak to hunt it down."
Megan nodded. "That's what happens to vampires if we are not fed. We don't die, just atrophy. It is a punishment."
"What do you mean by a punishment?"
"If a vampire breaks a law—a vampire law, obviously," she said with a small smile. "Like, killing another vampire without permission, taking blood from a claimed human, a messy kill that leads to human investigations and undue scrutiny." She waved her hand to express that there were more crimes in that vein. "There is a triumvirate that judges them, and a punishment is applied. Often it is time in a box, locked up with no blood. The longest I've heard of was a century. The vampire survived. It took him a long time to regain full strength, but I can see how zombies might be the same. Without fuel they stop running."
"Okay," I said, "good to know. But I still don't know what to do."
"You mean go back, or stay here with Emmanuel and do what he says?”
"It does seem that way, doesn't it?" I asked. "Like I'm supposed to just do what he says."
"Darling, you just completely controlled me. Now, I know I'm just a young vampire, and he is a deity, but there has got to be a way for you to have more power in the relationship.”
"I have not really tried," I admitted.
"Did you tell him about the note? About your worries?"
"No," I said, realizing how unfair I was being to him.
"I think you should. He obviously likes you. I mean," she laughed, "like is the wrong word."
"He says he wants to spend eternity with me," I said quietly. “That he loves me.”
"Wow," Megan said. "That’s intense."
I barked out a laugh. “Yeah."
She looked out into the forest back toward the town. "You've got to talk to him, Darling. Show him the note, let him know what's going on with you." She turned back to me. "Do you know how to travel between the dimensions?"
I shook my head. "No. But apparently my kind can. One of us, I forget her name, she conquered seventy worlds with a vampire army a million strong."
"Bad ass."
"Yeah, but it's also thought that we basically started the zombie plague."
"Who thinks that?"
I shook my head. "A lot of scholars, I guess."
"I don't know what started it, Darling. But I do know it's not your fault."
“If I can do something to stop it, to help people, then I think I have to."
Megan nodded. "I agree. But I think you need to figure this out with Emmanuel. For several reasons, the biggest being that you can't get off this world without him. Not yet, anyway."
"Should we try?" I asked.
"Try? You mean see if you can zap us back to my parents and the madness in our own world?"
"Yeah."
She laughed. “No, even if you could get us back there, we have no idea what we'll find or what we can do. Talk to Emmanuel."
"He said he could never go back."
"But he can teach you how to travel safely. You told me your father, who was a very smart warlock, even messed it up. What if we end up in the North Pole or something?"
I smiled. "You could run us south."
Megan laughed again. "Fine, if you really want to try, I'll risk it," she said, standing up.
"No." I waved the idea away. "You're right. I'm going to show Emmanuel the note and explain that I need to follow this through. I can't just start this new life without finding out what happened to my father…or if I have sisters." That woman’s eyes—my eyes—burned in my memory.
Megan took my hand and squeezed it. "You have a sister," she said.
I folded her into an embrace. “Thank you, I know. I missed you.”
“I missed you too," Megan said. “I never want us to be apart like that again. But since you're now the most powerful creature in the universe, I think you'd probably do just fine."
I held her at arm’s length and looked into her eyes. "Megan, that's not true. We are in this together. Like we promised when we were kids. Forever."
She smiled. "That word has a new meaning now, doesn't it?"
I laughed as we turned back to the compound. “I guess—” My thought was cut off as I tripped over a root, splaying onto the forest floor. “Ouch,” I mumbled into the dirt.
“You okay?” Megan crouched next to me. I turned over onto my back and laughed.
“The most powerful being in all the worlds, but not the most graceful.”
Megan laughed, falling back onto her butt.
I went to sit up but my hair was caught on something. A tug pulled me to the earth. What? A sharp pain at the back of my head made me cry out.
“What?” Megan asked, not laughing.
“Something has my hair.” I twisted, trying to get away. Megan sat up and yanked me forward, ripping a clump of hair from my head. Warm blood spilled down my neck.
“Holy shit,” Megan said, hauling me to my feet and pulling me away. I turned to look over my shoulder. A mouth stained with blood sat flush with the earth. It chomped and I yelped.
The dirt shifted and a skeletal hand rose. I stumbled back with Megan, both of us staring at the trembling ground. Another arm appeared, then the hands pressed into the ground and pushed, raising the torso. The skull’s empty eye sockets glinted with phosphorous green—as if a flame burned inside its skull like a jack-o’-lantern.
The zombie grabbed at tree roots, pulling itself forward until legs came free, and the skeleton rose to standing. There was no flesh left—its bones shone white in the moonlight. How did it stay together without muscles or ligament?
Hunger wafted off the zombie, raising my own. I swallowed, fear tightening my throat. The skeleton lunged. Megan blurred in front of me and knocked the thing back. The body fell over and its head popped off, hitting a tree and rolling to a stop, face down. The jaw opened, it dug its teeth into the ground and began to inch toward me.
I was staring at the horror show of a skull when bony fingers grasped my ankle. Kicking out, I knocked the hand away but fell back, my arms windmilling.
Grabbing onto a branch, I stopped my fall but the skeleton kept coming, its headless body reaching for me. Its hunger beat against my body, more terrifying than the walking skeleton. To be that hungry and not die was a special kind of torture.
A crack rang out, and the skeleton dropped into a pile of bones on the forest floor. Megan stood over the skull, her boot on top of it. She’d crushed it.
Megan’s blue eye burned brightly and I sensed her hunger on the air. The zombie affected her, too. As did the scent of my blood, slowly seeping down my back. Megan growled, low and throaty, her lip raising over her fangs. She took a faltering step toward me. “Run,” she said.
I opened my mouth to answer but before I could Megan blurred away from me, zipping through the forest so quickly the only way I’d known she’d headed back toward town was the underbrush she left swaying in her wake.
Screams tore through the night. Oh crap.
Chapter Five
I ran after Megan, dodging branches and rushing through vines. The firelight up ahead drew me forward. When I broke out of the tree line I stopped, my breath catching in my throat.
Megan hung suspended in the air. Suki stood with her hand raised, using her power to hold Megan off the ground. Crumpled at Suki’s feet a woman wept, a bloody wound pulsing at her neck.
Dimitri appeared next to me, as silent as a shadow. “She lost control,” Dimitri said. Thanks, Captain Obvious.
“Suki,” I entered the clearing, raising my voice. “Do not hurt her.”
Suki’s gaze met mine. I’d expected anger but found a fathomless blankness, as if there was no one home. It frightened me more than rage.
“We ran into a zombie,” I started to explain. “It bit me, and its hunger affected Megan.”
Emmanuel crossed the square, his curls and broad shoulders a welcome sight. He’d help sort
this out.
“Release her,” Emmanuel said, his voice quiet but firm. Dimitri’s power pulsed at my back.
Suki cocked her head at Emmanuel, as if seeing him for the first time. She dropped Megan. Her body thudded into the ground. Megan leapt to her feet, eyes wild, hunger wafting off her in waves. Dimitri’s own hunger rose up to meet it.
Emmanuel laid his hand on Megan’s shoulder, resting his influence over her like a blanket, calming the blood lust. “Apologize,” he commanded.
“I am sorry,” Megan said, her voice a monotone.
Suki shook her head. “Emmanuel, you must remove these vampires from my world. Or I will have to do it.”
“No,” Emmanuel said. “They can stay. She will not harm another. I promise you that.”
Suki released a derisive laugh. “Your promises are nothing to me, Emmanuel.”
The bleeding woman at her feet looked up at Suki, her brows furrowed. She had faith in Emmanuel.
I glanced around the square. Faces watched from the windows.
“I will feed her,” I said, stepping closer.
Suki turned to me again, and this time her gaze held contempt. She thought I was a loser with a capital L.
“You won’t,” Emmanuel said. “Dimitri,” he turned his attention to the older vampire. “You will hunt for deer with Megan, now.”
Dimitri bowed, extending his influence out and wrapping it around Megan. Emmanuel released her and Dimitri pulled her forward, backing slowly into the woods. They disappeared into the darkness.
Emmanuel crouched next to the injured woman and spoke with her softly, laying his hand on the wound and healing it.
He stood and looked at me. “Come to me now,” he said. “You hunger as well.”
For once, I didn’t argue.
I hovered on the edge of sleep. Wait, Didn’t I want to talk to him about something?
"What is it, Darling?" Emmanuel asked, his voice sleepy.
I looked up at him from where I cuddled close to his side. Emmanuel’s eyes were gentle and hair wild.
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