I had watched Eliza butcher hundreds of immune humans in the Black Plague. I had seen her fury as she ripped out Gabriel’s throat. I experienced from Emerson’s perspective the calculation she took into planning how to remove the immune threat, so the Order did not catch onto her plot. But I had been shot, stabbed, thrown off bikes, and crushed in cars. Death was Death. Today, it simply wore Eliza’s face.
I gripped my hands into tight fists. She noticed the movement and smirked as she spotted the silver. ‘That’s not going to save you,’ she told me.
‘I didn’t have them last time and I still lived,’ I said.
I was baiting her. Why the hell was I baiting her? I didn’t want to die. I never had. No matter how many times Death came close, I kept on living. But it was a knee-jerk reaction at this point in my life to never show fear.
‘How?’ Eliza asked. She hadn’t moved from her position. Like a statue, she remained frozen on the spot in front of the torn hedge.
Emerson had told me that this was the same woman who had murdered my parents, but I couldn’t see past her glamour. I knew it was there, working on me, but it was entirely in place giving her that beautiful façade of a young blonde woman, a perfect English rose.
‘Magic,’ I said. I didn’t even have to be sarcastic that time.
She flashed in front of me. The way she reappeared was more brutal and startling than any time Emerson had done so. Her glamour was painful this close. Her true visage appeared as she sunk her nails into my arms, grabbing me tightly and pulling me close towards her.
Her skin paled to an awful, ugly translucent film and her eyes glazed over so they looked dead, without colour. The veins in her skin became more prominent and her teeth elongated into something that reminded me of a wolf.
‘After you are gone, I will rid the world of every traitor creature who protected your worthless, evil self,’ she whispered in my ear, her voice like a caress even if her words were a dagger straight to my heart.
She thought the magic that had protected me had been something designed specifically to keep me from harm – not a series of different spells that had accidentally wound up in giving me a second shot at life.
‘No.’
My hands reached up to grab her where she held me and attempt to pry her off. She was too strong, I knew that. But I had hoped that I might show some preternatural strength. It was now when I needed it the most. Why couldn’t I summon it? Why did it have to happen so randomly?
‘No?’ she enquired.
‘No.’
I ran to protect Emerson. She didn’t get to take what remained of the life she had already destroyed for him.
I struggled once more, trying to break free of her hold. I hadn’t been given enough time. I thought I could run for at least a day or two, and put a sufficient distance between me and the Sons that by the time she caught up with me Ali would have coordinated with Grayson to protect Emerson and Charlotte. If I died here, they were barely half an hour away. Emerson could be dead within the hour.
I couldn’t let that happen. My purpose was to protect him.
The only movement I had was my head. Though she was the same height as me, I doubted a headbutt would work to free myself. But perhaps… The idea only came to me simply because it was her, the one who had bitten me before. Something that might shock her enough to get purchase so my rings could do some damage, because all I could reach right now were her clothes with how she had my arms pinned.
I sunk my teeth down into the flesh of her skin – right where she had been about to bite me before she’d had to have those last words. She jerked. I held on, feeling veins and muscle underneath my skin tearing, but my bite still held.
Blood poured into my mouth. It was thick, hot. The only way I could hold on to her was to gulp down the red liquid, or choke. It was disgusting. I could understand why vampires had moved onto transfusions. Even if I was starving, this would never be appealing. As I drank, despite being a liquid, it left my mouth feeling dry.
Eliza kicked and flailed, but I still held on. The shock of being a vampire but being the one to be bitten caused her to let go of my arms. I grabbed her with my bare hands, the silver making contact with her cheek and the side of her neck I wasn’t biting deep into. From far away, it would look like we were in a passionate embrace.
I didn’t understand my plan little more than to not let her go. I wouldn’t let her get to Emerson. It ended here, with me. Blood still poured from my mouth, the silver in such proximity to the wound, and my teeth keeping the bite open, meant she was unable to heal.
Vampires, contrary to popular belief, could faint by bleeding out. Their blood was the only thing that kept them awake, after all. I just had to make sure she lost enough. I had never thought that was an option. I’d always thought I’d need a weapon to inflict damage, not that I could be the weapon, but now that I could see that it was working – I was sticking to it.
I tore deeper into her neck with my teeth. Gagging as more blood pushed its way into my mouth. I knew I’d ripped through an artery when a spurt hit the back of my throat with force, and a pulse of its own.
Eliza’s struggles became more frantic until, eventually, she stopped altogether and sagged in my arms. The weight of her pulled me down with her. Only when I was sure she was unconscious did I pry my teeth from her neck and let go with my hands. I was soaked in blood.
I only just managed to stand up when I doubled over, the sheer amount of blood I’d consumed rising, and I vomited all over the ground.
I vomited for several minutes, and dry heaved further. Eliza didn’t make a single movement the entire time I suffered beside her. Like my dreams of comatose vampires, she was lost to this world. The only sign that she wasn’t, in fact, dead was the closing gap in her throat. The burns from the silver remained.
With shaky, bloody hands, I pulled my phone from my pocket, the keys sticking with red as I typed.
Blaise, Joel, Charlotte and Emerson arrived in Joel’s car sometime later. The adrenaline crash made me lose time for a while so I couldn’t say how long between ringing them to them arriving had passed.
They emerged from the car as one group, two witches and two vampires, unsure what to expect. There wasn’t much hiding the situation from what it was once they caught a glimpse at me.
Blaise threw up at the horror movie set in front of her and ran back to the car parked on the other side of the broken hedge. I didn’t blame her. Just because she’d been tasked with obscuring our location didn’t mean she was anything other than a normal witch who went to uni, had a boyfriend and lived in an adorable cottage in the middle of nowhere. The sight of a teenager covered in blood with what looked like a corpse by her feet was understandably unsettling.
Emerson let out a series of expletives. Charlotte approached Eliza’s body on the floor whilst he flickered in and out of my vision, standing meters away, then right in front of me the next second.
‘Are you hurt? Are you okay?’ he asked more questions, but I didn’t really process them.
‘I’m fine. Chill out.’
‘Chill-? You drive me insane! What the hell were you thinking?!’
I itched the dried, flaking blood from my chin, uncomfortable to say the least. ‘Do you want the short answer or the long one, because both are going to piss you off no matter what.’
Emerson just shook his head at me, and pulled me in tight towards his chest. ‘Stop running. For god’s sake, stop running and trying to be the martyr.’
‘I am very much not the martyr,’ I told him. ‘And you told me I could run.’
‘I said you could run as long as you told me you had to go!’ Emerson angrily told the top of my head. He wouldn’t stop hugging me. I didn’t mind. I’d had a really, really shitty past couple hours and I’d honestly believed I’d never see him again.
‘But you’re right,’ I admitted, or rather, mumbled into his chest.
‘Of course I am!’ Emerson said. He wouldn’t let go of me, but p
ulled back a little to look at my face. ‘But what about?’
‘No one in their right mind would choose to bite someone. It’s awful.’
Emerson let out a choked sound that I realised was a laugh. He pulled me back in close, whispering into my hair insults. ‘You insane, stupid, idiotic-’
He was only hindered by the sound of Joel’s voice.
‘Charlotte, what are you doing?’
Emerson and I turned towards her. She was crouched down beside Eliza’s body, but had pulled back like she was offended.
‘Nothing. I swear, she just started… breathing.’
Vampires breathed. Of course they did. They had heartbeats, they needed oxygen for their brain and body to function. But they also needed blood. Comatose vampires were only unconscious because they had no blood to circulate that oxygen and therefore breathing ceased. Eliza did not have any more blood. We were practically swimming in pools of it, and vampires couldn’t reproduce it by themselves. Until she fed, that was it for her.
But even with all those facts running through my mind, I could see the rise and fall of her chest. It was slight, barely noticeable, but it was there.
‘What…?’
That’s when I saw something more. The glamour, that imperceptible thing to other humans that I’d always been able to sense, flickered out of my sight. But instead of a death visage, Eliza’s features remained the same.
‘I think my sight’s going funny,’ I said. Emerson held me steady, worried it was a sign I was going to faint. ‘I can’t see her glamour anymore,’ I admitted, worried this was another strange change happening within me.
‘I don’t think it’s you,’ Joel said.
Emerson agreed. We all watched as the vamp-glamour around Eliza flickered in and out with her breathing until, finally, it disappeared altogether. Colour returned to her cheeks as her shallow breaths evened out, and the marble pallor and supernatural beauty dissolved into nothing.
What was left on the floor was a woman covered in blood, alive, breathing, who looked like something – if I wasn’t mistaken – human.
*
Despite what Eliza had been, she was taken to hospital and put under observation, given blood transfusions, an IV and numerous tests. I assumed it was a private hospital for lamia only – the Order member who had come to the cottage to check on us afterwards confirmed that was the case.
‘It seems impossible- It should be impossible-’
The Order official stopped and started his sentence several times. He was human like every other Order member, but had come to the cottage with two members from Blaise’s coven.
I had been wary ever since he stepped through the door. I’d told Blaise and the Sons of the warning Ali had given me before we’d called Blaise’s coven to get their help with Eliza. Charlotte had immediately worried that Grayson wasn’t actually okay and that the Order had simply informed her that he was to keep us in England or from panicking and ruining their plan.
Whilst Blaise called her coven, Emerson held onto me, and Joel paced around wondering what the hell was going on, Charlotte had repeatedly tried to get into contact with Grayson.
It had been Ali who eventually manged to patch us into the other Son. He was fine, and had no idea of the plan to use me as bait to lure Eliza in and trap her. He had started forming his future rant to them right there on the phone with us. About how dumb they were, how ridiculous and short sighted they had been. That if they had even thought for a moment that plan would work shouldn’t they have had a team already on location? By chance I had survived and taken Eliza with me, but because of them if luck hadn’t been on our side, all of us would be dead now.
Grayson had worked with the Order for decades, but this was the first time he doubted whether lamia should ever trust their human counterparts.
The Sons and I stood on one side of the dining table, the Order member on the other. He had taken the offer of tea by Blaise, but it sat forgotten about in front of him. Blaise and her coven members were the mediators. From the hostility radiating off Emerson and Charlotte, I would have thought the Order official might have been a little more uneasy, but he was completely oblivious.
The babbling and exclamations were getting annoying.
‘Why exactly are you here?’ I asked.
The Mors Exercitus threat was gone. The secret wasn’t in danger, and nor were any humans, or vampires (not that they apparently cared about the last one). The only reason I could see them being here was because of what had happened when Eliza had changed. But I wanted to know what about that had led them here: for answers? With answers?
‘Grayson informed us about Circe’s reading of you,’ the elder of the two witches told us. ‘And the spell that bonds you to Emerson. It’s our belief that, just as vampirism is transferred through a bite, the spell intended the reversal to be transferred in the same way.’
I blinked at the witch.
‘You’re saying Liv cured Eliza?’ Charlotte asked.
‘I wouldn’t say “cured”-’ the witch said, diplomatically.
‘She’s lamia again?’ Emerson asked.
The three new arrivals nodded.
‘Every test we’ve put her through concludes as much,’ the official said.
It had been three days. I wondered how many tests they could perform on someone in that short a length of time, especially if she no longer had a vampire’s ability to heal. Despite who she was and what she had done to me, my family and all those over the years, it still sickened me to think of them experimenting on her like someone from Cassidy’s casefiles.
‘She’s your lab rat now?’ Blaise asked. As one of the only people in the room to be informed about Eliza’s treatment, who didn’t have a personal vendetta against her, she was the only one to verbally come to her defence.
‘She’s an anomaly.’
That didn’t really answer Blaise’s question.
‘You say I cured her – changed her back-’ I interrupted myself as the witch who had an issue with the “cured” terminology twitched. ‘But the spell bond me to Emerson. Not her. It wasn’t a universal spell.’
Charlotte nodded. ‘It was designed specifically to give Emerson his choice back.’
‘Ah,’ the Order official said. ‘But as I hear it, you didn’t get into the particulars about how that would happen.’
‘I. Died,’ Charlotte said, the pause between words was like a knife. Unlike when she’d snapped back at Grayson the time he’d said something similar, Charlotte looked like she actually wanted to rip into the human’s throat.
‘You were turned,’ the older witch said.
‘I know what I said.’
Emerson grabbed Charlotte’s hand, trying to steady her.
‘We believe that when the spell created for Susanna and the one for Emerson intertwined within the Morgan bloodline, the process of the spell became similarly entangled.’
The younger witch finally spoke up. ‘In the Emerson grimoires, Susanna’s spell required her go through two deaths. In the first death – which Susanna successfully went through – Gabriel bit her and the venom within his bite worked as a conduit for the spell killing her immunity one cell at a time within her body as a virus might.
‘Her second death required her to leave this earthly plain and be returned by no magical means so that when she was bitten for the second time and her body had to die once more, it could be brought back entirely by magic.’
‘That relates to Emerson and what I did… how?’
‘Like Gabriel’s bite transferred the spell into each cell, that – essentially – is what your bite does. Your “venom” doesn’t transform a mortal into a vampire, but the reverse. You revert lamia back to the moment they made their choice… or at least that is what we believe.’
‘With only one… case,’ the Order official said, he had been quiet through all of the spell talk. ‘It is hard for us to say whether our speculations are entirely correct.’
‘You want me to st
art biting vampires willie-nillie so you have more test subjects?’ I bitterly asked.
‘No, at least not right away. We would like to be given the opportunity to study your… gift.’
Unlike when witches called their magic “gifts”, it didn’t come across that way on the official’s tongue. To be lamia: both witch and vampire was a choice. The sharp way in which Charlotte had been reprimanded when my bite had been called a “cure” was brought to the forefront. Even by a human, it was seen as wrong.
Emerson and Charlotte were suddenly in front of me.
‘You want to experiment on Liv?’ Charlotte hissed.
Emerson’s voice was cold and flat when he said, ‘you’re not putting one hand on her.’
‘Not even if it would mean you could become a witch again?’ the older witch from Blaise’s coven asked.
‘What exactly do you mean by “study” her gift?’ Blaise asked.
She shared a look with me. I knew she was reminding me of the conversation we’d had over my wanting to complete the spell for Emerson. And I did. But however selfishly it might be – I didn’t want to have to go through what those poor lamia in the Grimm casefiles did to get there.
‘Nothing inhumane,’ the Order official said. ‘Simply a series of scientific and supernatural tests. The supernatural stuff shouldn’t hurt at all, and from your medical record I doubt there would be much comparative pain.’
If these experiments were anything close to being shot in the stomach, even a small amount of “comparative pain” would be too much. But… this was Emerson. This was what I had been born to do. If they could somehow figure out how I’d changed Eliza – and if they could prove to me that Eliza was well and wasn’t going to one moment take on the centuries of damage and die – then I owed it to him to go through with it.
‘I’ll do it,’ I said.
I shocked everyone in the room, bar the official. The smug bastard didn’t look like he’d doubted I’d decide to be involved at all.
I turned to Emerson who had a tinge of anger to his surprise. He wasn’t pleased with me. ‘I want to know if my cure is safe. We don’t know how Charlotte’s coven not completing the spell will impact its results and I don’t want to just… bite you, and lose you.’
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