I had no choice.
I had to kill the Baba Yaga.
Chapter 16
Seven o’clock. Camille had picked me up fifteen minutes ago, and had kept on barraging me with questions all the way to the cemetery. We’d parked and gotten out of the car five minutes ago, and now we were standing between the wrought-iron fences leading to the graveyard.
Dean fidgeted, as he seemed as nervous as I felt. He was probably nervous about digging up a corpse, though, which I had to admit didn’t exactly rank very high on my list of fun-things-to-do either.
I was nervous for a completely different reason, though. Reason numero uno was that I was afraid Arthan wouldn’t show up. What if he ditched me? What if he decided that, despite the connection I’d felt to him last night—which I was certain he’d felt too—it was just too much work to hang out with me? That it had been all fun and games when we could just hook up for a game of blood-exchanging, but anything more than that was too complicated?
I couldn’t really blame him. Maybe he was okay with playing the knight in shining armor once, but he was still a vampire, and everything lore had told me about them was that they were selfish, obnoxious, narcissitic, powerful, dominant, controlling, and so on, but nowhere did it ever say they were caring, courageous, helpful or friendly.
So, either all the lore was wrong, Arthan was the exception to the rule, or he would stand me up, which would be totally in compliance with everything I knew about vampires.
“Are you going to keep on standing there?” A voice from behind us said with a soft chuckle.
I turned around, and an army of butterflies raced through my stomach. Arthan.
He was clad completely in black, his usual attire, which was a nice contrast with the lighter colors of the tombstones around us. He had a shovel in his left hand, which he was leaning on. “I already got a headstart, but you guys better get some work in too.”
Camille blinked a few times, slowly taking him in. Then, she shot me a look, wiggling her eyebrows. “Damn, girl. You know how to pick them.”
I lightly slapped her on the arm. “Stop it,” I whispered, afraid he’d overhear.
“Now I understand what Nathalie was going on about.” She whistled through her teeth. “Mia-aauw.”
“Did you just mimic the sound of a cat?” I asked her. “Why?”
“Stop with all the drooling,” Dean said while he lifted up the shovel we had brought and headed toward Arthan. “You’re like a bunch of squealing sophomores.”
Camille giggled. “You’re just jealous, Dean-io,” she shouted after him before she elbowed me playfully in the side. “I really mean it, Kieran. That guy is drop dead gorgeous.”
A hot blush crept on my cheeks. “I know,” was all I could say before Camille walked away, trailing after Dean.
My legs seemed to move on their own, bringing me toward where Arthan was standing. He smirked at me, and the armada of butterflies in my stomach made a tumble upside-down.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” I blurted out when I halted in front of him. His eyes, the brown bordering on red, sparked in the moonlight.
He frowned a little. “I told you we’d meet here at seven, right?”
For a moment, we gazed into each other’s eyes. Blood raced through my veins, so fast I could feel it, like a burning desire. I wanted to touch him, feel him, pull him and close… I wanted his fangs to sink into the skin of my neck, feel the sweet release of my blood being able to escape the constraints of my body… I wanted to feel his lips on my neck, on my face, everywhere…
“Uhum.” Camille coughed. “We’ve got to dig up a body, I believe?” She raised an eyebrow at me, a taunting smile on her lips.
“Oh, uhm, sorry.” I stepped away, putting more distance between Arthan and I. “Yes. A body.”
“I already started on this one.” Arthan gestured at a gravestone a few steps away from me. He’d pushed the tombstones to the side, so that the earth underneath was visible. He’d already started digging, a small pile of earth was already forming next to the tombstone.
“This is wrong on so many levels,” Dean said while he moved next to Arthan, and pushed his shovel into the dirt. “What if we get caught?”
“Don’t worry,” Arthan said, waving his concerns away. “I’ll take care of that.”
Dean stopped digging and looked up at the vampire, his features frozen in fear. “Wh--… what do you mean?”
Arthan stared at him for a second, and then burst out laughing. “I wouldn’t really ‘take care’ of them as in ‘kill them’. That’s so stereotypical of you humans to believe that.” He rolled his eyes mockingly. “If we went around killing people at whim, there wouldn’t be a great many humans left, I can assure you.”
“What did you mean then?” Dean sounded annoyed that Arthan had laughed at him.
“I meant I can control people’s minds, I can make them believe they weren’t here, or that they came here and saw nothing. It’s no big deal.”
Camille frowned, looking worried for the first time since we’d came here. “You mean, you can control our minds?”
Arthan looked slightly uncomfortable. “I mean… Yes… But it’s not like I would do it. I only do stuff like that if it’s absolutely necessary.”
“You shouldn’t do those things, if they’re necessary or not,” Dean snapped before he focused back on the digging.
“What else can you do?” Camille moved next to me, giving Arthan curious glances. While she’d been all fun and games at first, she looked more serious now, as if she was really considering him, and if he was good enough for me or not. Like a mother scrutinizing a child, she had her arms crossed while she stared him up and down.
Arthan seemed to find it amusing more than threatening. “A lot. We drink blood to survive, but I guess you know that from the myths surrounding vampires. We hate sunlight. It doesn’t necessarily kill us, not right away, but it drains our powers so fast it could end up killing us if we don’t pay attention to it.”
“Here’s an important one,” Dean chimed in. “Do you sparkle?”
Arthan frowned at him for a minute, then cracked a smile. “So, you’ve read Twilight. No, we don’t sparkle. We’re more alike to the old-school type of vampires, but we’re not all evil. Some are, some aren’t, like you’ve got with humans.”
“Old-school vampires…” Camille mused. “Meaning you can turn into a bat and stuff?”
Arthan nodded. “Bingo. We can shapeshift into bats because of our inherent connection to them. It’s said vampires were made by a witch combining human blood with bat blood and some other mojo-jojo.”
“Any weaknesses?” Dean asked. “Stake to the heart?”
I just kept on staring at Arthan, who was answering their questions while shoveling away pile after pile of dirt. In all the time I’d known him, I’d never bothered to ask him anything of the sort. I knew a lot about his kind already, but what I knew came from hearsay and books, and while ours were more accurate than the human variety,
“Could probably kill me,” Arthan admitted. “But so would cutting out my heart, or stabbing me with a knife. All heart-related stuff, really. Or cutting off my head, that would do the trick too, I assume.”
“And you don’t kill humans? At all?” Camille didn’t sound convinced.
A dark look shot across Arthan’s features, and I stepped in between them. “Listen guys, questionnaire hour is fun and all, but we’ve got some digging to do, and those bones aren’t going to whisk themselves away to the bone witch.”
Arthan hesitated for a second, but then went back to digging, wordlessly. I shot Camille an angry glare, but she shrugged, as if saying, ‘so?’
I shook my head at her and then turned back to the guys. “Need me to take over from you?” I asked Dean.
“Nah,” Dean said, although he looked as red as a tomato by now. “I’m fine.”
Arthan who, for some reason or another, seemed mad at Camille’s last comment, kept on digging wi
th a new fury. Given vampire’s superior strength, it was impossible for Dean to keep up even though he sure was trying to.
“Can’t you just magic all the dirt away?” Camille asked me while she crossed her arms in front of her chest and leaned against a headstone. “That would be easier. Although I do like seeing Dean sweat for once.”
“Blood magic, remember? Apart from that, just potions, hex bags, all mundane things. I can’t make chairs fly, I can’t will dirt to disappear.”
“I thought witches were cool, but you’re pretty boring,” Camille joked. “Anyway, I have to say I wasn’t 100% sure you hadn’t gone off the deep end with all the witchy talk and the surprising lack of evidence but… This guy here convinced me.” She gestured at Arthan. “The two of you can’t both be crazy.”
This seemed to bring Arthan back from his sour mood into a happier mood. Camille’s humor had that effect on people. She was the kind of person who could make you upset one moment, and make you laugh the next, and Arthan seemed susceptible to that too. I felt a pang of jealousy for a second, but quickly suppressed it.
It was good that Arthan and Camille were getting along, and it was crazy for me to be jealous about it, right?
Dean’s shovel made a thumping sound as it collided with something. Camille and I veered up, and leaned over the small hole the guys had dug so far.
Dean looked as pale as a ten-day-old corpse. “I think… I hit something.”
“The coffin. Keep on digging, I’ll grab a prying bar.” Arthan jumped out of the hole, and vanished in the distance.
“I don’t like this,” Dean said.
“Scared of seeing some bones?” Camille joked, but her voice trembled too, her earlier bravado forgotten. She was pretending to be tough, but she was probably as worried as Dean was.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, going around disturbing people’s graves. It’s not proper.” Dean shook his head, looking disappointed in himself, in me, in Camille. It made me feel guilty. Because of my stupidness, I’d dragged my friends into this.
“Here we are.” Arthan reappeared, holding a prying bar. While the three of us stood to the side, he starting prying open the lid of the casket.
Maybe it was my imagination, but I felt the wind picking up all around us. It’s not that bad, Kieran, I tried to tell myself. Bone witches do this all the time. The dead don’t mind, these are just bones.
Still, if I never had to do this again, I would consider myself lucky.
The casket sprang open with a sickening thud.
“There we go!” Arthan rubbed his hands, the only one of us who was excited about this. He frowned at us. “Why are you three looking all doom and gloom?”
“It’s not respectful to dig up the dead,” Dean said sullenly. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here.
“Now, come on,” Arthan said. “This corpse has been lying here for at least a century, I paid particular attention to that when I started digging; the older, the better. Civilizations all over the world have always dug up their dead after a while, it’s common practice.”
“Let’s just get on with it,” Camille said gloomily.
Arthan shrugged, tilting the lid to the right so that the inside of the casket showed.
Camille swallowed hard and Dean looked away, but I peered inside. The corpse was indeed nothing more than bones, and the smell coming from the casket barely did anything to my stomach. It wasn’t as bad as I had thought, but I still couldn’t imagine doing this on a day-to-day basis, like bone witches sometimes did.
“I’ll grab a few. Kieran, can you hold open the bag? I dropped it there.” Arthan pointed at a patch of grass a few meters behind us, which was occupied by a black bag.
“Sure.” I took the bag, went back to the grave and watched as Arthan tossed a few of the bones from the skeleton’s arm in the bag. Some of the bones were already loose, the others came loose quite easily.
“We don’t need all of them?” Camille was still breathing hard, but she seemed a bit more composed than she was seconds ago.
“No, no, just a few.” Arthan grabbed the elbow bone of the skeleton and tossed it in the bag. “There, should be enough. Ready to close this up?”
Dean waited until Arthan had closed the lid of the coffin before turning back toward it. He still looked like a Grim Reaper, as pale as death himself, but he grabbed the shovel and moved the earth back into place, covering up the coffin again.
What kind of people had I forced my friends to become? The kind that spent their nights in graveyards digging up coffins and stealing bones from a grave.
I felt horrible. Camille probably noticed because she put an arm around me, pulling me close. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Dean will get over it. He’s just a bit of a crybaby.”
“I heard that,” Dean said, but the usual conviction was lacking in his voice.
I shivered. “I’m just sorry for dragging you guys into this. I know it seems wrong and this… It might be the least ‘wrong’ thing we’ll have to do tonight.”
“Hey, hey.” Camille rubbed my arm. “If my sister were in danger, you’d be the first one to offer to help me. I’ve known you since kindergarten. I’m there for you, all the way.”
“Same for me, but please don’t ask me this again,” Dean said grumpily while he threw the last piles of earth on top of the coffin, making it disappear from sight again.
“I’m lucky to have you guys.” I smiled at Dean and squeezed Camille’s hand, letting them know I appreciated them. Then, I glanced past Dean, at Arthan who was witnessing our little exchange.
I couldn’t read the expression on his face. It wasn’t anger or disappointment, but was it… Was he jealous?
Arthan caught me staring at him and quickly turned away. “Get out of the way,” he cautioned while he moved the heavy tombstones back into place.
Dean looked impressed that the vampire could move the granite slab all on his own, and Camille’s eyes widened. “Well, if I didn’t believe you earlier, I certainly believe you now. No human could do that on their own.”
Arthan shrugged. He seemed distracted, maybe slightly annoyed. Was it still due to the friendship-exchange I’d had with Camille and Dean earlier? Did he feel left out?
“Let’s go,” he said as he lifted up the bag full of bones. “We’ve got a bone witch to see, and luckily it’s not far.”
Chapter 17
Not far was the understatement of the century.
“She lives on the graveyard? For real?” Camille’s eyes just about fell out of their sockets.
“In the mausoleum at the end.” Arthan pointed at the mausoleum with elaborately-carved sculptures and iron door located at the end of the cemetery. “Bone witches love graveyards. And she’s been around for a while.” That comment generated a sad smile from him, which I didn’t quite understand. How long had he known this witch?
“And why couldn’t she go dig up a corpse then?” Dean asked. “I mean, she lives on the freaking place.”
“You’ll see.” Arthan led the way for our little party.
I felt strangely hollow. As if all the nerves of the past few days were catching up to me, bringing me down. I was about to go fight a Baba Yaga. Me. These were the kind of things that should be done by my heroic sister, Samantha. Not by silly old me.
Arthan halted in front of the mausoleum. He knocked on the door once, paused, then knocked two more times.
The door opened, but there was no one on the other hand. Had it opened up all on its own? Was there a mechanism, or some type of magic?
“Agatha, we’re here,” Arthan shouted into the darkness in front of us. It took a while for my eyes to get used to the scarce amount of light in here—there was a light at the end of the mausoleum, but it was faint and far away.
“Come closer.” The voice sounded old and withered, but far less ominous than the Baba Yaga had sounded.
Arthan descended the three steps into the mausoleum, and then walked ahead of us, further and f
urther into the crypt.
“This is spooky as hell,” Camille commented, sticking close to me. When a spider crawled past her left side, at eye level, she grabbed my arm and dug her nails into it. “Really spooky.”
“Calm down, nothing here will kill you,” I told her while I patted her arm.
We came closer and closer to the light source, which turned out to be a candle standing on one of the coffins. Next to the candle sat a woman who looked as old as time itself. Her cheeks were fallen in, her eyes were buried in their sockets, and all her skin seemed to be pulled down by gravity itself.
“Agatha.” Arthan nodded at her, and then put the bag down on the floor. “We brought the bones. Thank you for helping us.”
The bone witch—Agatha, I presumed—smiled at him. She had no more teeth in her mouth. How old was this woman? Never before had I seen anyone so consumed by the hand of time. I’d seen people of one hundred twenty on TV, the so-called “oldest person in the world”, but all my instincts told me this woman was far older than that.
“Three-hundred and forty-two, to answer your question.” Agatha turned her smile toward me. Unlike with the Baba Yaga, there was no malice in her smile.
I felt pity for the woman, like the kind of pity you could feel toward a person stuck in a nursing home, or could barely function because of old age. What was a woman her age doing in a filthy mausoleum on a graveyard, surrounded by the dead?
And… three-hundred?
Witches tended to get older than humans. Evangeline, my grandmother, had been one-hundred thirty-one when she died, and she had barely looked a year older than seventy. But this was extreme.
“Three… hundred?” Dean mimicked my question. “Excuse me, Madam, but… How?”
It was almost funny; Dean was always nice to elderly people, since his mother worked in a nursing home and he’d practically grew up in the place.
“I couldn’t begin to explain you how.” The old woman chuckled. “Even compared to the other bone witches, I’m one of the oldest. Anyway, you haven’t come here to talk about me. Arthan said you needed my help.”
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