“Annabelle!” Pauli said. “Thank God you’re back… it’s too awful.” Pauli was practically hyperventilating.
“Pauli, what happened?”
“The girl… the new vampire… she’s…”
“Hailey? What about her, Pauli? Just breathe…”
“She’s not just a vampire. She’s a witch… and Kalfu…”
I narrowed my brow. Hailey, the innocent girl who’d just been turned, who I left with Mercy so she could tame her bloodlust… was a witch, too? That didn’t bother me so much. I mean, who cares? As a Mambo, some people would think of me as a witch of sorts. Witches aren’t all little green ladies riding on broomsticks. Most are good people. But whatever had Pauli rattled was something else, something she’d done.
“What did Hailey do, Pauli?”
“The vampires… they’re gone. Kalfu got them all… all except for Mercy.”
“My parents?”
Pauli shook his diamond-shaped head. “I think they’re fine too. But the new ones… the ones from Vilokan… he got all of them, Annabelle!”
Chapter Fifteen
Betrayals seem to abound when Kalfu is involved. Alexa… Mikah… now Hailey. But in the case of Alexa and Mikah, they’d been bound by bargains, caught up under the threat of a curse. They did horrible things—but now they were soul-fused together, like Isabelle and me, and were on our side. They’d been freed from the curse—the Seelsorgerin I’d received as Dumballah’s blessing accomplished that. So I couldn’t allow myself to be filled with rage about what had happened with Hailey. She was young. Impressionable. Easily seduced into a bargain. And as a young witch who, with the little I knew about Wicca, could have been tangled up in a lot of things over her head, she was easy prey for one like Kalfu. I wasn’t upset at Hailey—I was angry at Kalfu. And at myself—I was the one who asked Mercy to take care of her. How was I supposed to know Kalfu had set it up, arranged her turning and everything, just so he could have an “in” with the vampires… so he could get to them, drain them, and steal whatever powers might be within them, active and dormant alike.
One thing was certain—Kalfu would be more powerful now than ever before. He’d be stronger. And perhaps even worse, we had no way of knowing exactly what he was capable of.
That is… unless Pauli could sense it.
“Pauli,” I said. “Any visions? I need you to try hard, focus like when we were in the sweat lodge. When you were able to tap into his mind. We need to know what his powers are, what his weaknesses might be.”
“I can try…”
I nodded. “Then, first, take me to Mercy. She’s probably pissed at me for bringing Hailey into all this, but we need her.”
Pauli zapped himself onto my shoulders, wrapped his serpentine body around me, and we disappeared.
We reappeared in Vilokan. Mercy had fled… to Vilokan? Most of the bodies were cleared out. I’d done a lot of the work already. But they place was still eerie. Revived, but not completely.
“I guess the vampire wards on Vilokan aren’t up anymore,” I said.
Mercy turned and looked at me. She eyed me up and down. “You…”
I nodded. “Marie Laveau coronated me as the Voodoo queen.”
“Unbelievable,” Mercy said.
“I’m not going to argue with you. I didn’t think I was ready…”
“Not that,” Mercy said. She was twirling something in her hand. A small stick—maybe a wand. “I haven’t touched this thing in almost a century.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Looks like a wand of some kind?”
Mercy nodded. “You know I lived my earthly life in Rhode Island. There’s always been an underground coven there… witches and warlocks. And I even told you that it was a witch who, at Nico’s insistence, vivified me even after my heart and liver had been removed and burned.”
“I recall the story,” I said.
“What I didn’t tell you was that I was a part of that coven. I was a witch. It’s the whole reason the people suspected foul play even after my death. I’m not saying they were wrong to suspect it. I mean, they were right. I was a vampire.”
“So you’re a vampire… and a witch?”
Mercy nodded. “I haven’t used this wand since I was vivified, since another witch—one who had been my mentor—brought me back. I wasn’t proud of what I’d become. I hated it, in fact. And I blamed witchcraft for making me what I was. Nico had meant to save me—but I was not just a vampire now. I was unnatural, even amongst the vampires.”
“But not having a heart… no one could stake you. Wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
“Not having a heart, even for a vampire, has its consequences. I’ve always said I’m heartless. I mean that both literally and metaphorically. Without a heart, I am a pure monster.”
I shook my head. “A heart is just an organ that pumps blood through the body, Mercy. Just because you don’t have a literal heart doesn’t mean you don’t have a metaphorical one. I’ve seen it.”
“Have you? How can you be sure it wasn’t all a ruse, a way to lure you in, to gain your trust… just so I could betray you?”
“I guess I don’t know for sure. Maybe you’re just surviving. Working with me because, right now, Kalfu is the bigger threat.”
“Why did you bring that witch to me?”
“I didn’t know she was—”
“You didn’t kill her. When she was turning. Kalfu was banking on the fact that you have a heart. You would heal her. Save her. Your heart, it makes you human. It makes you noble. But it also makes you weak, easy to manipulate. I would have killed that girl in a second—staked her out of existence before vampirism even got a hold on her.”
“And you think that means you’re cold, you’re heartless?”
“Of course it does. It’s also why I’m not about to let Kalfu get away with this. I’ll go through anyone and anything to destroy him. Unlike you, I have no limits in terms of what I will do, because I have no heart.”
“What does that have to do with your wand?” I asked. “Why did you pick it up again?”
“For more than a century, my vampirism was my strength. I resented witchcraft for what it had made me, but also feared it because if there was any power that could undo me…”
“So you resented it for making you like this, but you were afraid of it because it could undo what made you like this?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s like some people—the only thing they’re more afraid of than failure is success. They hold themselves back because success, like failure, means change. It means they have to come to grips with who they might become. And even when that looks like it might be a positive thing, it’s terrifying as fuck.”
“So you’re telling me that Mercy Brown—vampire and witch—set down her wand because she was afraid of becoming something more than a monster?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. When I pick up my wand, when I engage the arts, it forces me to work within the domain of nature, the principles of balance. When I’m just a vampire, I can hunt and kill. I can be the top of the food chain, with nothing in my way to stop me. It makes me vicious, it makes me cruel. But when that’s all I am, I don’t care. If I take up this wand again, I have to care. The principles, the magic that I could wield… it compels me to care.”
“That won’t make you weaker, Mercy.”
Mercy pressed her hands together. “You asked me to take care of Hailey. As a vampire, I can only do so much. I am not her sire. She doesn’t have one. Not really. But as a witch, I might be able to reach her. And if I can, if I can speak to her in a way she understands, in a way that Kalfu can’t—”
“Then even if she is bound by a bargain, which is likely, just maybe you can find a way to use her against him.”
“It worked for Mikah, even while he was bound to Kalfu, he found a way. A loophole.”
I nodded. “And you have enough faith in Hailey, in the youngling we’d barely met, to do this?”
&
nbsp; “I do,” Mercy said.
“One thing,” I added. “How do we know Kalfu hasn’t bitten her yet? If he drained all the other vampires, why not her, too?”
Pauli, now in naked human form, put his hand on my shoulder. I’d been so enthralled in my conversation with Mercy that I hadn’t noticed what he was doing.
“Because I’ve been having visions, Annabelle. And I didn’t realize the significance of it until now. I only thought it explained her betrayal… but Kalfu cannot bite her.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“The terms of her bargain with him. What she asked him for… it’s unnatural, but it’s also why he can’t bite her. She agreed to betray us if he could grant her immunity, immortality. If he tried to bite her—”
“He’d be the one cursed,” I said.
Can we tempt him to bite her anyway? Isabelle asked.
Paul smiled widely. “Now that’s an idea…”
“What is an idea?” Mercy asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “It was Isabelle. She said if we can find a way to make Kalfu bite her, to break his own bargain, then for once he’d be the one cursed.”
Mercy shook her head. “And how many times through all the centuries has he been the one to break a bargain?”
I shrugged. “No clue. Probably never.”
“So our plan, here, is to compel him to do something he’s never done before. That’s our shot at undoing him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t like the idea either. It means probably sacrificing Hailey. I might be able to heal her if I’m there—I mean, Isabelle probably can—but that’s one more complication to the plan that makes this even more difficult to pull off.”
“Difficult?” a voice said from behind me. “When has difficult ever stopped Annabelle Mulledy?”
I turned and saw Ashley—with Roger, Ellie, Sauron, and Mikah. I ran and gave my sister a giant hug.
“What happened to you?” Ashley asked.
“She’s the new queen,” Mikah remarked. Based on the looks on Ellie’s and Sauron’s faces, they’d already figured that out, too.
“Ashley,” I said. “Where are Mom and Dad? I thought they’d be with you.”
Ashley shook her head.
“There’s one thing I didn’t tell you,” Mercy said. “In the battle, your father began to manifest an ability.”
“A vampiric ability?” I asked, though I already knew the answer to the question. Of course it was.
Mercy nodded. “When Kalfu was attacking the vampires, he went after your mom. Your dad stepped in. So did Mikah. A rage came over him. He did manage to save your mom…”
“What happened, Mercy? You said he had an ability.”
“When he raged—that’s usually how a vampire’s abilities begin to manifest—a great aura surrounded him and enveloped all of us. All of Kalfu’s essences, the presence of Baron Samedi, all the souls he’d gained… for a moment they separated. It affected Mikah and Alexa, too. But it didn’t last. It was just a momentary burst. After that, everything went back to normal. But if your father learns how to master that ability…”
“It could be the key to defeating Kalfu. If he’s able to separate fused souls permanently…”
And it could mean we could be separated, too… if that’s what you want.
I bit my lip. That was a hard question to answer—did I really want that? What would happen to Isabelle? She’d die… not that death was that frightening of a prospect for her. But she did love life, even life with me. How could I take that from her? “So what happened to Mom and Dad? Where are they?”
“That’s the thing,” Mercy said. “Your dad saw Kalfu’s reaction when it happened. He thought it was fear, but I think it was something else. Your parents went after him. They think they can save Hailey. They think she’s just a girl who fell in with the wrong crowd or something.”
“Kalfu wasn’t afraid. He left so he could regroup, re-strategize… because my father’s ability is exactly what he needs to achieve his ultimate goal. He wants Isabelle, but until now he hasn’t been able to find a way to wrest her free from me unless I agreed to it, unless I entered into a bargain. Now he has another way.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Why are Mom and Dad so fucking dumb?” I asked Ashley—it was a rhetorical question. I didn’t expect an answer.
“You know they aren’t. Just idealistic…”
“They’re like baby vampires, barely have their cravings tamed and now they’re off to save a girl who betrayed us to begin with? And Dad probably doesn’t even realize he’s risking everything to save this girl, this girl we barely know… So… fucking… dumb.”
Ashley shrugged. “I’m as worried as you are, Annabelle. But think about it… they missed their chance to parent us. I mean, in any meaningful way. And what they were there for over the last nine years, they don’t remember. I don’t know Hailey—we weren’t here. But she’s still young, without parents. She was settling into a new world with no one but Mercy to guide them.”
“Mercy is older than Mom and Dad, by quite a bit.”
“As a vampire. But as humans, Mom and Dad were connecting to their human side, whatever of it still lingers. They couldn’t save us. They couldn’t spare us from a life of pain. Maybe they saw a chance to do what they wished they could have done for us.”
I rolled my eyes. “With a girl they’d barely met?”
“Look, it’s just a guess, Annabelle. Don’t ask me to psychoanalyze Mom and Dad.”
“I didn’t ask you to. I just asked you why they were so dumb, which was more of a statement than a question. You’re the one who started mind-shrinking them.”
“And now you want to go be the hero. Go save Mom and Dad again. Right?”
“They don’t stand a chance, Ashley. We just got them back. I’m not losing them again! And if Kalfu gets Dad’s new ability, trust me, Kalfu will have no problem mastering it. It’ll take him a whole five seconds to figure it out.”
Ashley glanced at the small crowd of people who’d gathered in Vilokan. My friends, and Mercy. I couldn’t include her under the “friends” moniker. Maybe I should have—but I still viewed my relationship with Mercy as one of mutual convenience. She was a friend only insofar as being the enemy of my enemy made her one. “And you think they can afford to lose you, Annabelle? Hell, do you think the world can afford to lose you? That hideous thing on your head suggests you have bigger responsibilities than taking care of Mom and Dad now. Put a little more faith in them.”
“It’s not hideous. It’s a Voodoo headdress!”
“It’s hideous, Annabelle.”
I chuckled. “I guess it sort of is, in a way. But there’s also a certain style to it. I could get used to it.” I removed the headdress. “I think it’s just a ceremonial piece anyway. It’s not like Marie Laveau wore the thing all the time.”
“Pauli has been standing there with his hand over his mouth fashion-shaming you since you two arrived.”
“No he hasn’t…”
“Look!”
I turned and looked at Pauli, who quickly pivoted away and covered his face with his hand, pretending he wasn’t staring stupidly at my newfound style sense. But I saw it. He was gawking, and not in a good way. It was the sort of ogle that happens when you spy Walmart people in all their unfashionable glory and you just can’t stop looking.
“Pauli!” I shouted. “Get some clothes on. You have no room to gawk right now!”
Pauli smiled wide. That boy, if he was going to keep shifting back and forth between human and snake form, was going to have to find some solution to the clothing problem.
“Hey, guys!” I said. “You all want to see something creepy?”
“Why would we want to see something creepy?” Ellie asked.
Sauron shrugged. “I’m game for creepy!”
I snickered. Loosening the drawstrings on the burlap sack, I retrieved Legba’s shrunken head.
Sauron shrugged. “Just a shrunken head. Seen thos
e before.”
“But you haven’t seen one like this!” Legba said, speaking through it.
Ellie and Ashley shrieked in unison. Sauron started laughing, and I joined her. Pauli smiled wide. Mercy was sulking in the shadows somewhere and didn’t seem to notice.
Noticing Mercy’s absence, my expression softened. I let Pauli take Legba for the moment—not sure how Legba felt about that, but these had been Legba’s students at the Academy as much as I had been. He surely had things to say to them as much as he did to me. Of course, his newly embodied self was still tending to Marie Laveau. Her condition was steadily deteriorating, and he nobly wanted to keep her company as her final days approached.
I stepped into the shadows with Mercy—not something I’d usually do with a vampire, but Mercy was on our team, at least for the time being.
“You okay?” I asked.
Mercy shook her head. “Just pissed. That’s all.”
“It’s not your fault. About Hailey.”
“I know it isn’t,” Mercy said, leering at me. “It’s yours!”
“Pardon me?”
“You should have staked her. The moment she started to turn.”
I nodded. “Maybe. Maybe not. To tell you the truth, Mercy, I don’t know what I’m doing any more than any of us do. This title—”
“The Voodoo fucking Queen of New Orleans?” Mercy said with more than a hint of disdain in her voice.
“I know I don’t deserve it. But Marie Laveau chose me. For whatever reason, she wanted me to lead these people.”
“It’s not about the title. This isn’t about your little Voodoo world for me. This is about vampires. If you saw it, how easily he took them out, one by one. He moved fast. Faster than I ever could. And Hailey’s spell… I was powerless to stop her because I was out of practice.”
“You mean in terms of your witchcraft?” I asked.
Mercy nodded. “She cast a spell that froze us all in place. Like some kind of stasis. How do you even fight back against something like that?”
I bit my lip. “Maybe Ashley and Roger can help. A ward of some kind?”
Voodoo Queen Page 8