Unturned- The Complete Series

by Rob Cornell

  I felt a little more sorry for him. But I tried to tamp the pity down. No matter how pathetic, a vamp was a vamp. I had little doubt Toft would raise his newborn into a fine and capable bloodsucker. I only hoped Toft would raise him tame, too.

  “I can tell from the look in your eye,” Toft said to me, “that you believe I turned Odi. You are mistaken.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Really.” I had no reason to doubt him, because he had no reason to lie about it. Natural instinct kept me wary, though.

  “Indeed.” He reached to his side and gave Odi’s arm a squeeze. The fatherly gesture looked so bizarre because of their reversed ages. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it. “I found the boy abandoned by his maker. On the streets of Detroit, starving because no one had guided him through his first feed. A newly turned vampire can carry some…baggage over from their mortal lives. It’s sometimes difficult to get over a bit of squeamishness.”

  The personal trials of a baby vamp. Details I didn’t want to know. Especially since I had come so close to suffering through them myself.

  While Toft spoke, Odi hunched lower and lower in his seat as if he wanted to drop straight through the floor. He clearly had self-esteem issues. I wondered if those came from before joining the undead or after his vampire daddy or mommy orphaned him.

  “I really need you to get to the point, Toft.”

  He sighed. (Vampires can breathe, they just don’t need to.) “You’re spoiling this for me, you know?”

  “I’ll shed a tear for you later.”

  He pouted again—still no dessert for little Tofty. Then he took Odi’s wrist and pulled the kid’s hand onto the table. Odi let Toft stretch his arm across without protest.

  “I want you to do me a favor,” Toft said. “Take the boy’s hand.”

  I wrinkled my brow. “Why?”

  “Will you please trust me?”

  “Nope.”

  Toft tugged Odi’s hand toward me a few more inches, forcing Odi to lean against Toft. Odi glanced at me, then quickly redirected his gaze.

  “If you don’t trust me,” Toft said, “then you’ll want to touch him all the more.”

  I looked down at the kid’s hand. He wore a silver band around his thumb and another ring around his middle finger that looked like pewter, with Celtic knots carved in a row all around the outside. Otherwise, it looked like a perfectly normal hand to me.

  “For the devil’s sake, Sebastian. Why must you be so difficult?” He grabbed my own wrist with his free hand.

  I tried to yank loose, but his grip might as well have been an iron shackle. He easily straightened my straining arm until he pinned my hand to the table beside Odi’s. I clenched my hand into a fist in lame protest.

  “Stop struggling before I accidentally break your wrist.”

  An involuntary wave of power flowed into my clenched hand. I could feel warmth coalesce around my fist and slowly increase. If I pushed a little more will behind the energy, I could light up my hand like a torch.

  Toft cocked his head at me with a warning look.

  I consciously relaxed, and the power dissipated into the air. A complete waste of magical energy. Not that it amounted to much. But my new miserly ways took note of every expenditure, no matter how slight. I couldn’t help it.

  Toft released our wrists, lifting his hands away with a magician’s flourish.

  “Now be friendly, Sebastian,” Toft said, “And shake your apprentice’s hand.”

  There was that word again. I was about to wonder, for the tenth time, what the hell he meant by it, but when I opened my fist, before I even touched the kid, I felt it. The familiar hum of magical energy. Not the kind I felt from a pending spell, or from a spell’s after effects. This was dormant power. Natural power. Raw and uncontrolled. But still contained. In other words, the energy flowed through Odi the same way his blood rolled through his undead veins. It was a part of him.

  When Odi took my hand, the resonance of his power struck me even harder. The kid had juice. Serious juice. But to look at him, I didn’t think he had any idea how much.

  Still grasping Odi’s hand, I turned my gaze on Toft. “He’s a sorcerer.”

  Toft smiled.

  Odi, on the other hand, drew his eyebrows together. “I’m a what?”

  As Odi’s confusion and anxiety rose, I could feel his energy grow in tandem. I found myself relieved he was so shy and unassuming. A kid at his age, with this amount of magic coursing unchecked through his system, could cause a lot of damage if he had a temper.

  All the tumblers fell in place. Toft’s use of the word apprentice made perfect and uneasy sense.

  I pulled my hand loose. The break in our physical connection cut off the intensity with which I felt his power. But now that I was conscious of it, I continued to sense it surrounding him. “Who are your parents?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I dunno. I’ve been an orphan as long as I can remember. In and out of, like, a zillion foster homes.”

  “Two times an orphan,” Toft said. He sounded honestly sympathetic.

  Didn’t know his parents? An orphan? Raised by strangers who had no idea of the power within him? Which meant not even the kid himself knew he was a sorcerer. Which also meant he grew up without a lick of training in the magical arts. Eighteen years old. The most formative years in a child’s education a decade behind him. At this point, it was probably better he didn’t know about his mystical lineage. It was too late for him.

  Meet your apprentice.

  I propped my elbows on the table and hung my head in my hands. I could feel the start of a headache behind my left eye. A bitter taste filled my mouth.

  “Please, don’t,” I said.

  “The boy needs direction, Sebastian. Someone devoted. Someone who won’t abandon him like so many others have.”

  I checked on Odi to see his reaction to all this talk about him as if he weren’t in the booth with us. He ducked his head and scratched behind his ear. One corner of his mouth twitched as if he wanted to speak up but was too afraid.

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “Sorcerers start learning to be sorcerers almost the second after they’re born. This shit isn’t like wizardry. You don’t apprentice a sorcerer. You raise them.”

  “Be that as it may…” He straightened, turned his head to face Odi, then turned back to me. “As you swore by blood, I must insist you take Odi Crossman under your wing, and teach him how to use his magic to the very best of his ability.”

  My chest tightened. My spine turned to a stiff, icy rod. In my head, I told Toft to go to hell. Aloud, I said, “Agreed.”

  Chapter Nine

  “So what am I?” Odi asked, finally getting the nerve to speak. “A vampire or a sorcerer?”

  “You are both,” Toft answered. “A truly rare thing. Almost as rare as the Unturned.”

  I clenched my teeth. “Stop calling me that.”

  Toft lifted one shoulder. “I need a martini. Let me slip out and the two of you can get acquainted.”

  Odi’s jaw dropped. “Vampires can drink stuff?”

  Instead of letting him out, I stayed put. “I don’t have time for this, Toft. You’ve had your show. Now I need some answers.”

  He ignored me to answer Odi. “We drink blood, do we not?”

  “Can we get drunk?”

  “Whatever taints the blood taints us.”

  Odi fell silent, contemplating Toft’s response.

  Toft cleared his throat to get my attention. “May I?”

  I slid out of the booth.

  Toft stood and tugged on the cuffs of his suit to straighten the sleeves. He had all his suits personally tailored, but to me he still looked like a little kid playing dress up in his dad’s clothes.

  “So, like, we can get AIDS, too?” Odi blurted.

  Toft smiled without a hint of impatience at the kid’s questions. Maybe he would make a good vampire daddy after all.

  Yeah, right.

  “We can suffer from some
mortal diseases,” Toft said. “But we also have uncanny healing ability. And, really, it’s quite simple to dilute diseased blood with a healthy supply. Getting sick is not a serious concern for the undead.”

  “Whoa,” Odi said. “I was kinda bummed when I got bit. But this could turn out pretty cool.”

  Oh, brother. I rubbed my temples as my headache started to spread. I couldn’t tell if this kid was naive in the extreme or downright stupid. He reminded me of one of those overly sheltered kids on their first day at college, faced with more freedom and choices than they’d ever dreamed, one kegger away from a total loss of innocence.

  Toft excused himself and made his way to the bar. Mortimer came in through a door behind the bar and started putting together Toft’s drink without a word between them.

  “So,” Odi said, “you’re a big time sorcerer, right? And, like, half vampire?”

  I still stood after letting Toft out. I decided to stay on my feet so the kid had to look up at me, establish my sense of authority from the get go. It didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. He stared up at me with a cock-eyed grin and puppy dog eyes, his excitement momentarily curing his bashfulness.

  “I am a sorcerer,” I said. “I am not even the smallest fraction of vampire. I’m infected, but have found a way to keep myself from turning.”

  “That brand thing, right?” Odi pointed at me. “Mr. Kitchens told me about that. So crazy.”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  He drew his shoulders up toward his ears and dropped his gaze. “Sorry.”

  I hadn’t a clue how I would go about training this kid to use his magic, but the first thing I knew I had to do was give him a dose of reality.

  “He’s using you,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Toft isn’t your dad, your foster parent, or your friend. I’m not sure how he came to find you, but you ought to know right off the bat, the only reason he’s taken you in is because, if you can learn to use your magic, you will make a hell of an asset to him.”

  He made a face while staring at the black rose candle holder in the middle of the table. “No. Mr. Kitchens saved my life, dude. He’s cool.”

  “First of all, you don’t have a life to save. You’re undead, which is just another version of dead. However Toft wants to gussy it up, the fact is, you are now a demon who drinks blood. And the majority of vampires are, at the least, distrusted, and in most cases, reviled.”

  “Jeeze, man. You don’t have to be so mean about it.”

  Before I could say anything else, Toft rejoined us carrying two martinis. He set one down in front of Odi. “It will take a good deal more than one martini to give you a buzz, but at least you can experience what it is like to enjoy mortal delights as a vampire.”

  Odi gazed into the martini glass as if it were filled with precious jewels. “But I’m not old enough to drink.” He looked up at Toft. “Won’t you get in trouble for serving me?”

  Toft exploded with boyish laughter. “We live by our own rules, son. You’re a vampire now. You are not the one who must worry about trouble.”

  I snorted. “Aren’t you overstating your case a bit? Kid’s gonna have to learn about the Ministry. And about what they hire guys like me for when you vampires get too cocky for your own good.”

  Odi looked confused. I accepted that I’d have to get used to that look.

  “I’m a sorcerer by birth,” I explained. “But I’m a demon hunter by trade.”

  The kid’s sharp Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Is he serious?”

  Toft arched an eyebrow. “Don’t let Sebastian spoil things for us. He’s a notorious killjoy.” He raised his martini glass. “To a glorious future.”

  Odi eyed his own glass doubtfully, but screwed up his courage, picked up the drink, and swigged it like cheap beer. His whole face puckered, and for a second I thought he might spray the drink all over the table. He gulped it down, though. Followed it up with a gag.

  Toft laughed. “It’s horrible, isn’t it?”

  “Then why do you drink this stuff?” Odi put a fist to his mouth and coughed into it.

  “It’s one of the more dignified ways to catch a buzz. Tequila shots are tacky. Screwdrivers are gauche.” He shrugged. “If martinis are good enough for James Bond, they’ll do fine for me.”

  “Dude, you are so weird.”

  I smirked. “Kid’s not completely clueless after all.”

  Toft sipped his drink. “What have you come to me for, Sebastian?”

  He’d had me so wrapped up in all this crap about Odi, I’d almost forgotten I had come to him for my own reasons.

  “Last night a large and heavily armed group of vampires attacked my house.”

  He nearly choked on his martini. “Again?”

  “We’re talking a whole nother level. AK-47s and flamethrowers.”

  “Flamethrowers? They couldn’t have been vampires. They wouldn’t dare play with fire like that.”

  “Trust me, they were vamps.”

  Odi plucked out the olive speared on a plastic sword from his martini and tossed it onto the table. Vampires could imbibe, but their dead insides had no way to digest solid food. Which made me wonder why he had Mortimer bother with the olive. Probably for appearances. Toft was big on appearances.

  “I find it insulting,” he said while staring into his glass, “that you assume I know the dealings of other vampires simply because I am one myself.”

  “These aren’t any old vampires,” I said. “Every one of them was dressed in a suit and tie, even the females.”

  His eyebrows drew together. He set his glass on the table next to where the olive had landed. He still had plenty left in the glass, but once he set it down, he seemed to forget all about it.

  I noticed Odi staring at us from his seat in the booth. He had shoved his own martini an arm’s length away. When he saw me looking at him, he returned to his default ducked head and hunched shoulders posture. The kid was a vampire and a sorcerer—exactly the kind of thing the vamps had wanted to make me last summer. What was he so afraid of?

  “Flamethrowers and suits,” Toft said slowly as if the words had a mildly pleasant flavor.

  “They also drove black vans that looked awful similar to the one my abductors drove the first time they visited me.”

  “But no suits then?”

  I shook my head.

  He laced his fingers together and pressed them to his chest. He paced toward the stage, then he turned again to face me. “I haven’t a clue.”

  I clenched my fists. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Don’t get angry with me. As an abider of Ministry law, I seldom mix with the majority of my undead brothers and sisters. Certainly not those wielding flamethrowers.” He shuddered at that last word.

  “I’m sure all your vampire friends are perfect gentlemen.”

  “And ladies.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Toft. You have to know something about a group like this. They made a hell of an impression.”

  “They did indeed. But as far as I know, it was merely the first.”

  I strode toward him. All the rage and fear I had tamped down last night to stay strong for Mom welled up inside of me and chose Toft as its target. Not that I could hurt him. I didn’t have a stake to jam through his heart, or a chain of silver to garrote him with, and probably not enough power to burn down a vampire as old as him, little kid body or not.

  None of that stopped me from marching right up to him and grabbing him by the lapels of his ridiculous little suit.

  “They burned down my house!”

  I held on for all of a second. Then something hit me in the chest, and I was sailing up off my feet. I landed on one of the freestanding tables. The single stem connecting the tabletop to its base bent on impact, the tilted table dumping me to the red carpeted floor. The table’s ceramic black rose tumbled down and shattered a foot from my head.

  I stayed on the floor and took an inve
ntory of my aches and pains. Nothing seemed broken. I poked at a sore spot in the corner of my mouth and tasted blood, so I had cut my lip on something. At least I had all my teeth. Based on the dull pain across my ribs on my right side, I would have a pretty purple bruise there soon.

  Toft remained by the stage. None of the stage lights were on yet, but one of the hanging lamps spotlighted him, giving his slick blond hair a high gloss, and making his red lips stand out against his pale face. His expression was unreadable.

  Odi had abandoned the booth and gaped down at me, his hands held out as if he meant to offer me a lift up. He wasn’t standing close enough, though, and he showed no sign of approaching, or moving at all for that matter. He did look genuinely worried for me. Which was sweet of him.

  I guess.

  “Never,” Toft said, “lay hands on me.”

  He didn’t sound angry. He did sound deadly.

  I pushed myself up to a sitting position. A sharp pain bit me in the lower back. By the time I got to my feet, Mortimer had arrived from somewhere carrying a round table like the one I had broken. He held it out in front of him like a dinner platter, showing no visible strain from the effort. He set it beside its fallen brother, then lifted the damaged table and carried it away as easily as he had brought in the new one.

  “Dude,” Odi said.

  Toft watched me expectantly.

  I gulped down my pride. “I’m sorry.”

  “Any other time, you would have tossed a ball of fire my way, would you not?”

  I shrugged, real casual, while my insides quivered. “I need your help. You’re no good to me crispy.”

  “Oh, I’m sure.” He tilted his head down and looked at me from under his brow. “But that isn’t what I meant.”

  “Don’t test me, Toft. I’m crabby enough as it is.” I braced my hands against my lower back and arched my spine until I felt a pop. Some of the aching eased. “You’re telling the truth? You don’t know anything about these vamps in suits or the purpose of their attack?”

  “I can guess their purpose, as I’m sure you already have. The Unturned is an affront to many of my kind. I would assume they either want to kill you or turn you.” He frowned. “I’m sorry about your home, by the way. They tried to burn it down with you inside?”