‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘You didn’t like me then.’
‘How do you know what I felt?’
‘People don’t act like that to people they like.’
‘Sure they do.’
‘Maybe in kindergarten when we’re told that boys pick on the girls that they like, but in the real world, when men are dicks – it usually just means they’re dicks. If they’re mean to you, it’s because they’re an asshole.
‘That type of misrepresentation of how men show affection is the exact reason so many women stay in damaging relationships and men think it’s not masculine enough to show real positive emotion.’
‘You know why I was cross. It took me a while to get over it. I’m over it.’
It didn’t seem like it took him a while. It was like one minute he was all “Liv is a thieving pain in my ass and I’m going to do everything I can to annoy her” and then immediately did a 180 inviting me over for a shopping trip and just casually chilling at lunch like he hadn’t been vying to get me a detention in class every day before.
‘You’ve always liked me: that’s the stance you’re going for?’
‘Sure,’ Emerson grinned.
I did not like this grin. It was entirely too confident and cocky, and my body was already melting for it.
‘What about me appealed to you?’ I asked, trying to make him see how absolutely ridiculous he was sounding. ‘Was it the moment I punched you in the face? I hear that’s a real turn on.’
‘Everything you’ve ever done or said has always surprised me. I never know where I stand with you. You’re a mystery.’
I remembered the awed expression he had when he’d looked at me in the food court: trying to suss out this non-lamia, non-human person who reacted to only him.
‘A mystery is something you solve. It’s not something you like. You don’t like me,’ I said returning to my original point.
‘What’s the big deal if I do, love?’ At some point Emerson had moved so that our chairs were touching, our legs pressed up against each other and our faces barely a breath apart. ‘Are you scared if we get close, you’d start to like me, too?’
‘We’re already too close for comfort,’ I said. I pulled my leg as far away from him as I could get. It didn’t work every well since all he had to do was move an inch and we were touching once more.
‘I don’t think we’re close enough. I think your body would agree with me.’
My body, I wanted to say, was a traitor.
‘I’m already dating Gi so that poses a problem to your little plan,’ I said, bringing up the sarcastic remark I’d told Emma and her cronies a while back and I’d been going along with since I couldn’t be bothered to correct them.
‘I’m fine with sharing.’ Emerson smirked. ‘There’s also the fact you’re straight and want me.’
‘You’re such a cocky asshole.’
‘I love it when you speak dirty to me, love,’ Emerson teased.
‘You’re a pain.’
I didn’t like that Emerson saying all of this was confusing me. Wasn’t it enough that we’d established I was crushing on him? Did we really need to go through this whole rigmarole about liking each other or any of that teenage BS? We weren’t ordinary teens. He was a vampire of an indeterminant age, and I was a teen whose closest relationship was a non-physical entity that literally took the lives of anyone I got moderately close to.
The last boy I’d had a crush on had had his life ruined because of me. Literally wrecked. It wasn’t likely that I would do the same for Emerson, but everything that had gone on with Christian hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park for me. I wasn’t going to go through that again. Especially not for some cocky vamp I knew better than to fall for. A crush was as far as this was going. My body might like him, but I didn’t have to.
Emerson seemed to have been spending the entire time I was lecturing myself in my head watching my expression go through the motions. Eventually, as he sensed the end of my slog through mental flashbacks and arguments, he spoke again.
‘I know you don’t form connections lightly,’ Emerson said. ‘But you don’t have to worry about things getting too serious with me – or whatever it is that makes you push people away.’
‘Oh, that’s great, Dr Phil, please tell me more how I feel. I love being mansplained my own feelings.’
Emerson ignored me. ‘Whatever you’re willing to give me, I’ll take.’
‘You need to get some self-respect, man. That’s just sad.’
Emerson laughed at me. ‘I’ve got plenty of self-respect. I just know what I want and I’m willing to accept any part of what you’re willing to give me. Like I said before, we don’t take what we crave when it belongs to someone else.’
‘I don’t belong to anyone,’ I said.
‘You belong to yourself,’ Emerson said. ‘And I’d never try and take possession over you.’
Emerson pulled his chair back allowing me to focus on my work, but my mind couldn’t focus on anything but Emerson and his words.
At lunch even Jenny commented on how Emerson had stopped bugging me in class.
‘He was bugging you in class?’ Gi asked, completely oblivious. As though I had been the point of contention this whole time.
‘He still bloody is,’ I mumbled to myself, but Emerson was all jokes and smiles as everyone talked about the call backs that were being announced after school and would take place over the next few days before the final cast list would be posted at the beginning of next week.
I rolled my eyes as I was told to prepare myself for round-two of “Gi-Will-Rock-You”, the shitty name Jenny had invented for my plan to get Gi to perform in that damn school musical. I was under no illusion that I’d be asked back, but after Gi and Emerson’s performance, I knew they would be.
‘What do you mean you two don’t have a call back?’ I asked, infuriated as we stood in front of the theatre after school later that day. I did not suffer through that ridiculous audition, endure the heightened vamp-glamour of Emerson singing and threaten Lisa (okay, that part wasn’t a big deal) for Gi to not even get a part.
‘Ms Phillips has already given us our parts,’ Gi said, gesturing to Emerson who was messing around with his cap whilst everyone else checked out the call back sheet. He kept flipping it up in the air and then catching it.
‘You’re telling me-’ I said, through gritted teeth. ‘-that he doesn’t have to do a call back, but I do?’
Emerson pretended he wasn’t paying attention to our conversation, fighting a smirk. He was failing miserably, but I could see that he really was trying not to give the game away. Oh, he might pretend that he “liked” me and that our petty little war was over, but he certainly still loved to see me riled up. Prick.
‘Ms Phillips doesn’t know what part to give you. I heard her tell the pianist that if you’d only auditioned to sing, too, you might have even got one of the supporting roles.’
‘I don’t sing,’ I said.
‘It’ll only be like last time,’ Gi said. ‘Nothing you haven’t done before.’
Jenny had a call back, too, along with Martha. Martha tried to look like she wasn’t annoyed at Gi, but it was obvious she wasn’t surprised. I heard her muttering something about their parts being “pre-cast” since the leads had been announced so quick.
Martha had gotten over the hissy fit back at the shopping mall after a couple of days, so her grumblings about Gi’s status as leader of the AA Team was back to her usual level, not the black cloud sulk it had been then.
My call back was the next day where Emerson and Gi had sat in the audience whilst I ran lines again for Ms Phillips. It took twice as long as last time and I tried to ignore the way I could sense Emerson’s eyes on me.
It was getting more and more difficult for me to pretend I didn’t sense him now that he’d pointed out how unusual it was that I could. I tried my hardest not to even think about his glamour versus hormones comme
nt he’d left me with. Or that Emerson now admitted to liking me. Like my body needed any more encouragement. It was easier to pretend that we hadn’t had that conversation at all.
Emerson didn’t like me. I wasn’t crushing on him. We didn’t have some weird connection where I could sense him – and only him – or feel tied together by an invisible bond. Nope. None of those things were true.
*
It had been two hundred years since the Mors Exercitus had been ordered to disband, and the threat of the immune hunters had disappeared in the wind. But as the population of the New World continued to grow, and America gained its independence from the British, whispers began to appear of humans immune to the powers of the lamia.
In this particular town, the human was in a position of power: the town mayor.
No one had known at first that the mayor was immune. Though hunters could spot vampires because of their immunity to glamour, they could not identify witches. (This was clearly the reason the insanity of Salem and other witch trials had begun two hundred years ago since they knew witches had to exist, but couldn’t find them).
It hadn’t been until a member of the local coven had been tasked with performing a spell that would sway the mind of the mayor – and failed – that the lamia realised they had a descendent of the immune hunters in their midst.
The spell had begun with a couple. Though slavery had been abolished four decades ago, segregation was still strong in the US. The thought of a white woman with a black man was beyond preposterous in the eyes of good society – indeed, practically all society. So, when the town had discovered a black man making love to a white woman – there was no doubt in their mind that this had to be rape.
Usually, “justice” was swift in this case: a lynching there and then. But the woman had been armed with a pistol at the time and had threatened to shoot any man who neared her lover. They deemed her hysterical from the heinous act and returned with the sheriff and the mayor hours later and arrested them both.
In the jail, the woman pleaded on behalf of the man, but it got nowhere. No one would believe her. A doctor and nurse were called to tend upon the woman’s hysteria. The doctor told the mayor that she was addled in the mind and recommended she be sent to a psychiatric ward where she could get the treatment she needed. The doctor left the nurse to take care of the woman as they arranged her transport and the trial of her black lover who was to be hung.
‘You have to stop them,’ the desperate woman pleaded to the nurse. ‘You have to save him.’
‘I can’t do anything,’ the nurse replied. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You can,’ the woman insisted. ‘I know you can. I know who you are.’
The woman had looked in her eyes so intently that the nurse had instantly known this woman understood that she was a witch. She had no idea how. Her secret remained within the family. The witch calmed the woman and put her to sleep – not using the laudanum as the doctor instructed, but her own power which was easier on the body and would mean she would sleep long after the journey to the psychiatric ward.
Whilst the witch owed nothing to this woman, she could not forget the awful look of sorrow in the woman’s eye or the desperate plea. She could not let an innocent man die. The witch had to try something.
So, on the night of the trial, the witch stood in the stands and watched. When the jury sentenced the man, she influenced the mayor to overrule their judgement. The witch, whose powers of empathetic manipulation had never failed her before, had been unable to change the mayor’s heart. The man had hung.
The witch couldn’t understand what had happened. So, every witch in her family suggested that they might try their hand at using their supernatural gifts upon the mayor. The idea was to know whether it had been the empath’s magic that had failed, or something about the mayor which was immune. After each witch in the family had attempted their magic, and failed, they had their answer. The mayor was immune.
It was these whispers within the lamia community that drew out the last remaining Mors Exercitus. Three vampires who had turned during the Black Plague and had escaped the Order. For two centuries, they’d escaped the Order’s spies and assassins who had been sent after them to stop the Mors Exercitus vow to exterminate all immune humans.
The vampire Gabriel, a Mors Exercitus cutthroat who had wiped out the largest of hunter families back in the “war”, persuaded the others to hang back and let them see if he could not find a way within the Code to deal with the mayor and his offspring.
Gabriel was known to be the more lenient of the three, though no less bloodthirsty. He simply preferred a smarter way to catch his prey. Especially since the Order of the Cross had all but rid the world of the once powerful Mors Exercitus – believing their existence to be more of a detriment to the Blood World than a necessity for its survival. It was thanks to Gabriel that he and the other two Mors Exercitus had survived where the others had been wiped from the world.
Over the next few weeks, Gabriel found that the mayor knew not of the Blood World, like most descendants of the immune hunters. Always out of sight, in case the mayor spotted him and identified Gabriel as a vampire due to the lack of glamour, Gabriel concocted a plan to remove the mayor from office – and this mortal plain.
But what Gabriel hadn’t realised, was that whilst he had been watching the mayor, someone had been watching him. It wasn’t until a woman approached him on the street, demanding an introduction, that he realised how focused he had been and how blind to others his mission had made him.
Against his better judgement, Gabriel introduced himself.
‘Susanna Elinor,’ she said, shaking his hand, in a manner Gabriel would have expected from a man, but not a gentlewoman of her class.
Over the next few weeks as Gabriel concocted his plan to remove the mayor, the vampire became close with Susanna in a way he had not with any other before he had been turned. With her, time did not pass as it had for the hundreds of years he had been alive before. With her, time felt different. He was no longer consumed by the passions that had driven him when he turned, but could feel each moment as they passed by as if there was more to this world than just the Mors Exercitus mission. Finally given a chance to feel, Gabriel fell in love.
It wasn’t until Gabriel admitted his truth to her – that he was lamia, and that he wanted her to join him – that Susanna told him how impossible that was. She had been able to see past his glamour this entire time. And like she was immune to that vampiric magic; it was likely she was immune to whatever would allow her to become like him.
Gabriel couldn’t believe his ears. She had known his true face the whole time and still she had wanted to be with him? Talk to him? Spend time with him?
Gabriel traced Susanna’s family history – realising, too late, that her “father” was not the man who had sired her at all. She was the illegitimate daughter of the town mayor.
Gabriel couldn’t accept that he would one day have to leave behind this woman who gave him back the ability to feel after centuries of being a heartless assassin. How could he expect to live hundreds more years, when he would have only a handful of decades of truly living?
Gabriel forgot his plan to kill the mayor and focused all his efforts on Susanna and a way to make her like him. He found the local coven – the lamia who had drawn his attention to the mayor when they had tried their magic upon him and failed – and pleaded with them. He wanted to know if there was a spell that might make it possible to change someone who was immune to lamia magic.
The witches were willing. If they could somehow find a way to make Susanna one of the lamia, then it might pave the way to undoing all hunter immunity.
For a year, the witches looked into the old grimoires – dating back to the sixteenth century and the rise of the hunters. Many had tried at that time to create a spell that would remove their immunity, but none had been successful. Gabriel had known all this, being part of the Order’s non-magical solution for their problem. But he still had ho
pe that centuries later, there might be a witch with a spell or power that could give his love long-lasting life so that they may never have to part.
Eventually, the witches found something that might work. First, a spell to kill the immunity and then a spell to kill the body to be transformed. Two deaths Susanna had to be willing to go through. Either one of them could kill her permanently.
Susanna saw her future in the moments the witches gave her the choice. She had loved no one in life like Gabriel and knew she could never love anyone the same way again. If she were to remain human, they could never be together. Her body and mind would change, wither and fade, whilst his would remain the same. She would die a thousand times for the possibility for a future with him.
Susanna agreed and the coven began the preparations for the spell. A spell of such magnitude – something which had never been attempted before – sent waves throughout the lamia world. Ripples of energy travelled through the lay lines; lamia from across the states feeling the power the coven was wielding to attempt a spell which had never been believed possible.
The Order of the Cross began to hear whisperings, too, but could not understand what was happening, or why. Their task was to keep magic quiet. And so they did. But not before the remaining Mors Exercitus heard of the magic, too.
The two Mors Exercitus, who had left Gabriel with the task of watching the mayor, returned. They heard from other lamia of the power of the spell and traced its origins to where they had last seen Gabriel.
It had been a year and still Gabriel had not completed the mission. They wondered if the mayor had proved more difficult than the decedents of the immune hunters they had tracked and killed before. If this growing power was perhaps in response, were the witches beginning a war with Gabriel? One against the immune hunters they despised? If so, the remaining Mors Exercitus wanted to be a part of it.
If it was a surprise to see the mayor still alive when they returned, it was more of a surprise to find Gabriel in love with the immune mayor’s bastard.
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