by Rob Cornell
A squealing echoed down the hall outside the room. The sound rivaled nails on a chalkboard, turning the skin up the back of my neck into gooseflesh.
The noise grew until it came from right outside the door.
Then Wendy, wearing a flowing black robe, entered the room, pulling a flat cart with wheels long in need of oiling. On the cart rode a cage holding a snorting pig rustling in a bed of straw.
I grimaced. Not because I had anything against pigs, but because I knew its fate and wasn’t looking forward to the sight.
Once Wendy pulled the pig into position between the pentagram’s two bottom points, she shed her robe and joined her coven sisters in complete nakedness. From the cart, she picked up a dagger with a curved blade and an ornately carved golden hilt.
I shared a glance with Sly. He looked as squidgy as I felt. But when dealing with black witches, I guess animal sacrifice came with the territory.
Without hesitation, Wendy flung open the cage door, reached in, and sliced across the pig’s throat. It started to squeal at nearly the same pitch as the cart’s rusty wheels. But the squeal quickly turned into a gurgle. The pig jerked back and forth against the cage walls, shaking the wire frame. The door’s hinges rattled and clacked.
It seemed to take forever for the pig to finally thump onto its side and go still.
Again, Wendy didn’t pause. After the last of the pig’s death throes, Wendy stuck her arm into the gaping wound all the way to her elbow. She twisted her arm around in there as if searching for something. Did she have to yank out its tongue or something?
I’m not a squeamish guy, not after so many years chasing the nastiest of things and seeing the mess they often left behind. But for some reason, watching Wendy work on the pig got my stomach juices roiling.
When she drew her arm out of the pig, she didn’t have anything clutched in her hand, but blood completely coated her from fingertips to elbow. The blood dripped off her arm like too much wet paint. And, as if her hand were a barn brush, she drew a thick stripe from her chin, down between her breasts, and straight down to her pelvis.
A light sparked in her eyes like a lens flare: there and gone in an instant. She pushed the cart back with eerie nonchalance. Then she stepped up to the base of the pentagram. She looked me straight in the eye.
My scalp prickled.
“This is going to feel a little funky,” she said. “And if you hear demons whispering in your ear, ignore them. They’ll go away after a few seconds.”
I tried to swallow, but the lump in my throat wouldn’t go down. “Great.”
She winked at me, then raised her hands out at her sides. “Let’s begin.”
All at once, the Maidens began to chant in a language I didn’t recognize. Not Latin, Aramaic, or Greek. Not any of the tongues often used for magical rituals. Maybe black witches had their own language, or one they borrowed from those demons Wendy warned me about.
A couple of minutes into the chanting, a clammy sweat broke out over my entire body. I could feel the moisture rolling down the insides of my thighs and along my spine. The air grew colder and colder. But I didn’t shudder. This cold was…different. Not of this Earth. It didn’t have anything to do with wind or air. This chill belonged somewhere else.
As the cold peaked, my vision turned hazy, then completely dark.
My heartbeat kicked hard in my chest. “I can’t see.”
“Relax,” Wendy said from the blackness. “We are giving you new eyes.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Cracks in the old gymnasium floor had sprouted weeds. Something in a far corner, tucked up by the ceiling, looked like a nest, but it was hard to tell with all the shadows. The only light came through slatted windows high on the outside wall and the propped open metal doors on the other side of the gym. Pale moonlight. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought it might be a full moon. Too bad I didn’t have any werewolf friends—not that they were particularly friendly. But I’d take a wolf over a vamp any day.
The air blowing in from the open doors carried a thin mist with it. This was probably the coldest place in the whole school. I didn’t feel it, though. I couldn’t feel much of anything outside of my own body.
Two minutes before Goulet was due, I saw headlights run across the blacktop beyond the open doors. The doors led to a back parking lot. Fiona would have told him exactly how to find me, and it looked like she had.
The lights winked out. The sound of car engines purred in the night. Sounded like at least two vehicles. I figured he would bring lackeys, but I was still a little disappointed. Nothing could go easy.
The engines quit. A beat later, I heard car doors open and slam shut.
My gut tensed.
Footsteps approached the doorway, and a pair of silhouettes came into view against the moonlight. One had a clearly masculine build. The other I recognized from size and posture alone.
Mom.
“This is a rather dismal place for our first formal meeting, isn’t it?”
Goulet’s voice had the lilt and cadence of an academic, but with a little grit thrown in—Mr. Chips meets Wolverine.
“I thought vampires liked old dark places that smell like decay. At least, the ones not lucky enough to crash in the mayor’s mansion.”
He chuckled. “Another wiseass fighting the good fight against us deplorable creatures of the dark. What a cliché.”
“A mumble-mouthed stiff playing the villain. Cliché, for sure.”
He stepped into the gym, pulling my mother by the arm along with him.
My vision had already acclimated to the dark as much as it could, so once Goulet and Mom cleared the doorway and moved out from in front of the moonlight, I could make them out a little better. Goulet wore a brown three-piece suit, his coat open so I could see his vest and the flash of a silver chain hanging from the watch pocket on the vest. I had no way of knowing for sure, but I bet that chain belonged to my father’s watch. Pretty ballsy wearing that, since it was made of silver, which would have been like me wearing a hot iron. One accidental brush with the metal and ouch!
Speaking of chains, I could now see the golden shackles on my mother’s wrists. Goulet must have had them enchanted somehow to keep her from casting, which would explain how Mr. Greasy had gotten her without a fight. Other than the shackles and the fear in her eyes, she looked well. She wore a clean pair of slacks and a blouse. Her hair was brushed. She didn’t look at all hurt.
It did bother me, though, that she hadn’t yet said a word. The shackles might have kept her from speaking as well. I didn’t care how cared-for she looked, chaining her like that turned the edges of my vision red. I clenched my hands into fists.
“Let her go.” My voice echoed in the large room.
He grinned, showing his fangs. He wore his long hair down and must have had some product in it, because the moonlight made his curls shine.
“Come to me, Sebastian.”
Without any intention of my own, I took a step forward.
I clenched my teeth and kept myself from taking another. The effort made my nerves feel like hot wires threaded through my body.
Goulet cocked his head. “Sebastian, you must come to me.”
The hot wires tugged in Goulet’s direction. But I resisted.
“Your thrall isn’t going to work on me, Goulet.”
He poked the tip of his tongue out between his fangs and grinned. “Interesting.”
“If you want me, you’ll have to let her go. No tricks.”
“Tricks,” he said as if the word turned him on. He pressed a hand against my mother’s back and shoved her forward. She lifted off of her feet, sailing a good ten yards, then hit the floor and rolled across the dirty, cracked tiles until finally coming to a stop on her back.
She hadn’t made a single grunt or cry, but the lines in her face deepened as she grimaced.
So the cuffs did have her silenced, too. That son of a demon spawn. I wanted to charge him, pull that pistol Sly had given me, a
nd put a magazine’s worth of silver bullets straight through the vampire’s chest. At the moment, none of that was possible, though.
Mom quickly recovered from her fall. She got to her feet and hurried toward me. She reached out her shackled hands to me.
It killed me to have to pull away. “Not yet, Mom.”
Her teary eyes searched my face. She opened her mouth, but no sound came from her throat.
I turned to Goulet. “What about the shackles?”
“I think it best they remain on her until our business is complete.”
“How do I know you’ll hold up your side once you have me turned?”
Mom’s eyes flared. The chain on her shackles jangled as she reached for me again. And again, I had to shirk away from her touch.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. Then I set my jaw and waited on Goulet to answer my question.
A dim red glow rose in his eyes, his glamour slipping away enough to reveal a little more than just his fangs. I think I’d pissed him off a bit.
“Don’t make this any harder than it is,” he said. His red gaze intensified as he stared at me. “Come, Sebastian. You’re my child now.”
The sensation of those wires inside of me burned hotter. I couldn’t believe his thrall was so strong that he could affect me despite the witches’ little trick.
I had to face facts. He wasn’t going to unlock those shackles until he had me. I just had to hope we could figure out a way to get them off when this was all over.
I pointed toward the doors behind me that led into the school’s central hallway. “Head out there and to the left,” I said to Mom. “Sly’s there. He’ll get you to safety.”
Her wide stare slowly turned toward Goulet. Her lip curled, then she spat on the floor. That done, she gave me one last questioning look.
I tried to reassure her with a nod. Not much consolation, but I worried if I said more I would blow the whole game.
Thankfully, she must have figured that out for herself. She nodded back and ran out of the gym.
Goulet watched her go without any sign of concern. “So you brought friends after all.”
“Like you didn’t?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Neither of us is that stupid.”
“Jury’s still out on you.”
He laughed. “How is your alchemist friend? Did he give you a hubris potion before coming here?”
How the hell did he know about Sly? Not that ours was a secret relationship, but I didn’t think someone like Sly would be on the radar of Detroit’s eldest vampire.
He clearly noticed my surprise. His predatory grin made a good match for Angelica’s, only the fangs gave him an unfair advantage in the freaky department.
“I have a friend, too,” he said. “I think the two of you know each other.” He tucked his fingers into his mouth and whistled sharply like a cowboy calling his horse.
Another figure stepped into the doorway, silhouette framed by moonlight.
My scalp prickled while my belly felt like it had split open to let the cold air chill my entrails. Like with Mom, I thought I recognized the shape she cast. When she continued on in to the gym and joined Goulet at his side, I saw I was right.
“Fiona?”
Fiona had always been petite, but when she stood next to Goulet, the contrast between their forms made her look tiny. Meek even. And in any other circumstance, I would have never thought of Fiona Templeman as meek.
“Hi, Sebastian.”
“Hi? I’m thinking he could be torturing you or worse, and you hit me with hi?”
“Sorry.”
“What the fuck is going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Of course she’s fine,” Goulet said. “I always take care of my friends.”
Fiona looked down, hunching her shoulders up and making fists at her sides. “I’m not your friend.”
“Perhaps not. Just as I doubt the Maidens of Shadow are Sebastian’s friends.” He reached over and stroked Fiona’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. “And yet here they are, helping him. And here you are…helping me.”
The heat shooting through me this time had nothing to do with Goulet’s thrall. For a moment, I forgot all about the plan—only vaguely wondering how he knew about the Maidens—and stalked toward the vampire.
“Yes,” he said as I approached. “Come to me.”
Lucky for me, his words had the opposite effect, reminding me I couldn’t touch him. Not yet.
I stopped. I looked at Fiona, realizing the reason Goulet knew about Sly and the witches was because Fiona had told him. The only thread keeping our plan together at this point was Wendy’s insistence they not tell Fiona the details of their set up in case Goulet used some means to force the information out of her. Shifters were typically immune to a vampire’s thrall—even one as old as Goulet—but there were other ways to force a person to talk. So Fiona knew the terms to deliver to Goulet and nothing more.
Still, it appeared she had told him all she did know.
“What did you do to her?” I shouted.
“Not a thing.”
“Bullshit. She wouldn’t be standing next to you without you forcing her somehow.”
He rested a hand on Fiona’s shoulder. “Would you like to explain, or do you want me to tell him?”
She lifted her gaze to me. The moonlight filtering through the slats on the windows above made the tears in her eyes shine. “I’m sorry.”
“That wasn’t much of an explanation,” Goulet said and laughed. “What she’s trying to say is that she’s been playing for our team the whole time.”
I felt sick. I looked at her and kept shaking my head. It didn’t make any sense.
It doesn’t? What about that bullshit story about Mr. Greasy?
I couldn’t deny the false ring to her excuse about how the vampire got into her apartment. Not in retrospect. My feelings for her had made it too easy to swallow a lie. Greasy wasn’t some random vamp from her past. She had invited him in that night specifically to let him get to Mom.
She had been a part of this…
My nausea doubled.
“From the beginning?” I asked.
Fiona wouldn’t answer. Goulet took obvious pleasure in answering for her.
“Her job was simple,” he said. “Watch over your mother. Keep tabs and report on Mrs. Light’s ongoing condition.”
Impossible. Her care for Mom had been genuine. You couldn’t fake that. Not with the consistency and depth Fiona had shown. I shook my head. “No way.”
“I would think the same thing in your shoes. But it appears Fiona made the mistake of honestly growing attached to your mother. And then, unfortunately, to you.” He waved a hand toward me. “Unfortunate for you, at least. But Fiona had infiltrated your lives more than we could have ever hoped.”
“Why?”
“That’s a story we can share once you’ve joined me.”
“I wasn’t asking you,” I snapped. “Fiona, why would you do this? What’s in it for you?”
“My mother…”
“You’re mother’s dead.”
She shook her head. “They’ve had her…for years.”
“That’s ridiculous. They’ve held your mom captive just to make you their spy? Where have they been holding her this whole time? Hell, why you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s bullshit.”
She hung her head. Her body wilted like some of the weeds in the cracked floor.
“That whole story about your mom’s cancer, the tears in your eyes when you told me about it… That was all an act?”
She didn’t answer.
Goulet rested a hand on the back of her head. She flinched at his touch, but didn’t pull away. “The things we’ll do for our mothers.”
I gaped at the two of them, not sure what to say. I lost track of everything else around me. The world had shrunk until the gym was all that remained. “She’s telling the truth?”
&n
bsp; “Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There is so very, very much you don’t understand. Betrayals, bargains, bloodshed. As I said, I’ll tell you everything once you have given yourself to me.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but you ain’t getting any of me.”
“About that.” He approached me, the sound of his shiny shoes on the gym floor echoing with each step. His gaze bored into me as if he could see straight to the back of my skull. He stopped with only a couple feet between us. He smelled like the inside of an old crate—or coffin.
I should have moved away, but I felt compelled to stay close to him, the effects of his thrall somehow working through the witches’ illusion.
He swiped a hand out at me. When it passed through my body, I felt a tickle like the bubbles in a hot tub.
He smiled. “Astral projection?”
“Metaphysical avatar.”
“Nicely done. If I were a fool, it might have worked.” He did his cowboy whistle again, the sound vibrating against the cinderblock walls. “Do it,” he shouted.
A scream echoed through the hallway.
A second later, I found myself back in the classroom, standing in the center of the pentagram.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The reason why the spell broke was pretty obvious and right in front of me. Wendy stood with a vampire behind her, his arm wrapped around her neck while he chewed into her throat. Blood poured down her naked shoulder, too much pouring from the wound for the vamp to suck it all. Wendy’s eyes rolled back into her head, and her body went limp in the vamp’s embrace. But he hadn’t gotten her without a fight. The ceremonial knife’s golden hilt stuck out from his leg, the blade embedded in his thigh.
The rest of the Maidens were all on their feet. Sly stood by the desks where he had laid out his weapons. His hand was on the shotgun, but he had frozen before getting it up and trained on one of the vamps.
Another six vamps besides the one feeding on Wendy stood between us and the door, automatic weapons aimed in our direction. No one was getting out of there without serious perforation.
Mom hung by Sly's side. Her mouth formed a straight line. She still had the shackles on. If she hadn't, I had a feeling this whole room would be full of dust. But even one of her spells might not fly fast enough to outrun all those bullets. No matter what, if any of them fought back, one of them, probably more, would die.