“I wasn’t sure. In truth, his presence has driven me absolutely mad. He’s constantly in my head telling me to do horrible, brutish things.”
“Like what happened when he took the reins and went on a rampage through the French Quarter?”
I nodded. “Thank God you were able to put him back in his box.”
“I was able to suppress Edwin’s consciousness, bring yours back to the forefront of your mind. It was more challenging than when I simply had to heal myself after biting one of the infected. But we also learned a lot in the process.”
“What did you learn, exactly?”
“We think the demons aren’t trying to possess humans. Otherwise, they’d stay in a human and do the sort of crap like they usually do to torment a host. They’re poisoning humans so they can come after vampires. Something about the infection, it makes us susceptible to being taken over. It was, in a strange way, dumb luck that you happened to have another person inside you already. It’s why he came out—the infection suppresses the vampire’s hold on her own consciousness.”
“Demons want to possess us?”
Hailey nodded. “That’s our theory. I mean, think about it. When they control human hosts, all they can do is possess one at a time. But if they take over vampires, they can replicate themselves just like we can. They can create more hosts…”
“They’re trying to take over… trying to claim the world for themselves.”
“Exactly.”
I took a deep breath. “So why lock me away, then?”
Hailey sighed. “Annabelle wasn’t convinced that my spell would keep Edwin at bay. I mean, she more than most knows what it’s like to be possessed by a familiar. But here’s the thing: if you’ve been infected and cured, it’s kind of like a virus—you can’t be infected again. I don’t know if you develop antibodies, or if the magic I used to cure you just lingers in your system. But if anyone isn’t at risk right now, it’s you.”
“How do you know that’s the case?”
Hailey smiled. “I experimented on myself.”
“You bit someone who was infected again?”
Hailey nodded. “I had to know for myself.”
“And you didn’t even have to cure yourself again?”
Hailey shook her head. “The infection didn’t even get ahold of me the second time. The blood was still totally undrinkable. So there’s that problem—if the demons infect everyone, we won’t be able to feed.”
“If they infect everyone, if they ever managed to possess vampires, they wouldn’t be able to feed themselves.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“That fact doesn’t really make the situation for us any better, though. They would have the advantage of knowing who they didn’t infect. For us, every time we feed it would be like a game of Russian roulette. Or worse, they’d find a way to corral the uninfected humans and hide them from us.”
“The bottom line is, we still need you, Mercy. We need more vampires who can utilize the Craft. It’s the only way. With only a couple of us, even if we cure everyone we find, we won’t be able to act quickly enough to stop the spread. Once they start possessing the vampires who are infected, if they haven’t already, just one or two of us won’t be enough.”
“So you’ve come to get me out of here?”
“Not exactly,” Hailey said. “Annabelle doesn’t know I’m here. She doesn’t agree… she thinks it’s still too risky to let you out.”
“But you don’t agree with her.”
Hailey shook her head. “I need you. Hell, the world needs you right now. You and me, we’re the only ones who stand a chance against this threat.”
“But they won’t let me out, I’m supposing. Not without Annabelle signing off on it.”
Hailey nodded and placed a book on the table. It was an old book. So far as books go, it was ancient. Its cover was well worn, black and frayed on the edges. I flipped it open. I could barely believe it when I read the title page: Grimoire du Papa Honorius. I knew a bit about the book—it was supposed to have been written by Pope Honorius III in the thirteenth century. Copies were rare, and while Moll claimed to have access to a copy, I wasn’t able to find it when we cleared out her house. It was supposed to convey spells and magic meant for medieval priests to perform—a shortcut to sainthood, if you will. An ability to perform what they’d call “miracles.” It was supposed to contain spells of necromancy—the very spell, I believed, that Moll had used to bind my existence to Edwin’s soul. Call them “resurrection miracles” if it helps you sleep better at night. If it allows you to engage the Craft while keeping your sense of piety intact. But make no mistake about it, what the book contained was necromancy, pure and simple. Witchcraft with papal sanction.
The Church had largely discounted it as a seventeenth-century forgery, falsely attributed to the Pope. According to Nico, who was actually around when it all went down, it was a massive cover-up. The Pope was nothing short of a warlock himself—a fact that the Church since found embarrassing. It was the sort of thing that the later inquisitions were keen to stamp out, a chapter in history they intended to rewrite.
“Holy shit,” I said as I carefully turned the pages. “How the hell did you find this?”
Hailey smirked. “Do you think you’re the only vampire or witch the Order of the Morning Dawn has targeted?”
“You got this from them?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
“I stole it from your progeny.”
“From Alice?”
Hailey nodded, reached out, and held my hand. “And I have something else you might find useful.”
I felt something slide from within the arm of her jacket into my hand. I gripped it—I knew what it was the moment I touched it. “My wand? How did you…”
“Ramon asked me to get it to you. Before Annabelle staked him.”
“But how did you sneak it in here?”
Hailey grinned widely. “The nurses here might be warded against our vampiric allure, but they’re helpless against magic.”
“That might be true. But now I have to sneak this wand out of visitation.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” Hailey said, “but I brewed a helpful little potion and incanted your wand with something you might find helpful.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You did what?”
“Sorry if I overstepped. I know a witch’s wand is sort of personal…”
“No,” I said. “It’s not that. I just didn’t know you were so… advanced…”
Hailey shrugged. “The incantation is simple: ‘It may be there. It may be here. But now my wand will disappear.’”
I laughed. “My guide in the Craft, back in the day—she used cheesy rhymes as incantations, too.”
Hailey giggled. “I know it’s cheesy. But it’s important to use incantations that are both easy to remember but also unlikely to be spoken by accident.”
“That’s exactly what my guide used to say.”
Hailey shrugged. “I guess some wisdom never dies.”
I nodded. “Yeah, funny. You still have a coven around here?”
Hailey smiled. “I wasn’t a part of a coven. I’m more of a hedge witch.”
“Impressive. You learned everything you know on your own?”
“Not exactly,” Hailey said. “But I’ve always found a way to get what I need. No matter the cost.”
Chapter Thirteen
I spoke Hailey’s cheesy incantation. It made the wand invisible, just as promised, though not non-existent. I’d still have to be a little crafty about sneaking it out of the visitor room. One thing they never tried to pat down was my hands. No need to do that since they could see if you were holding something. So I held my invisible wand between my fingers while one of the security guards flipped through my newly acquired grimoire to ensure no weapons were stowed away inside. A grimoire isn’t a real weapon on its own. It could contain the deadliest spells ever incanted, but without a wand, without the right ingredients for a cauldron to incant the wand, the bo
ok contained no real power.
I could hear the security guard’s heart race as he ran the back of his hand down my legs. I didn’t blame him for being anxious. I mean, while I still had my sunlight collar on, I was a vampire and he was a human. Not to mention, the sound of his heart beating caused my stomach to stir. Sipping donated blood was getting old, and my cravings were starting to increase. I’d gone longer than this a few times in my existence, but not by much. The bottles of donated blood just weren’t cutting it. If anything, they were making my cravings worse. There’s a reason why appetizers are called appetizers. They’re just a tease, a little sampling of food that makes you that much hungrier for the real meal.
Thankfully, with my wand in hand and a few spells already incanted within it, I had everything I needed to get out of here. But Hailey gave me this grimoire, too—not like I could use it without a cauldron, and God knew what kind of exotic ingredients its spells called for. But clearly there was something in this book she wanted me to find, something I should learn and study.
“How was the visit?” Nyx asked as I strolled past her usual lounging spot in the common area, my grimoire in hand.
I smiled. “Not who I expected. But she came with reading material.” I opened the grimoire and showed Nyx.
She scrunched her eyebrows, eyeing the tome with curiosity. She might be the closest thing I had to a friend in this place, but I also wasn’t sure that revealing my wand was wise. Nyx wasn’t a snitch, but we were still in full view of the cameras.
“What is it?” Nyx asked.
“A book of spells,” I said. “In the Craft it’s known as a grimoire. Magical rituals, potions, all kinds of shit.”
“Anything that could help us get the hell out of here?”
“Sure,” I said. “If you happen to know where I might find a cauldron, the severed foot of a rabbit, and the entrails of a gopher.”
Nyx shrugged. “If only I’d known. I just used the last of my gopher guts this morning.”
“Sure you did.” I cracked a smile out of the corner of my mouth.
The sound of footsteps and chains alerted my attention. Seconds later three people emerged, their ankles shackled one person to the next. They looked fairly young. Two men and one woman, maybe in their early twenties. The men each had long, stringy hair, and the woman looked as though she might have been attractive once, but had such a sour expression on her face, her mouth seemingly stuck in a perpetual frown and a dazed look in her eyes, that I could tell she was hiding some kind of trauma or pain.
“What’s their deal, and why are they in chains?” I asked Nyx.
Nyx shook her head. “Full moon tonight. They’re brought in every month or so. Usually stay for a week before they’re released.”
I narrowed my brow. “Are you suggesting they’re werewolves?”
Nyx nodded. “They’ll change tonight. They’ll only be wolves for one night, but the mind… it doesn’t return so quickly. Every month it’s the same. They come in, feed before the transformation. Never seen people eat so much. It’s like their bodies are taking in as much as they can so they have the energy for what’s coming. Then tonight… I’ll just say not many folks around here will get a lot of sleep.”
“It’s that loud?”
“Their howling… the banging as they each try to bash their way out of their cells. But it isn’t just the noise that keeps everyone awake. It’s fear.”
“Have they ever gotten free before?”
Nyx shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. At least not since I’ve been here.”
“I can smell them from here. Like wet dog and piss.”
Nyx cocked her head. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Vampires have heightened senses, especially when we’re hungry. It’s sort of a mixed bag. Comes in handy on the hunt. But there are things that you’d rather not smell. Werewolves, it seems, have now risen to the top of that list. Just below porta-potties and teenage boys.”
Nyx chuckled. “I didn’t know teenagers smelled so awful.”
“Trust me, nothing smells worse than puberty.”
“Not even the porta-potties?”
“It’s a tough call. Little known fact: if you’re being pursued by a vampire, the best places to hide are in an outhouse or a high school gym class. Not that we couldn’t get in, but it’s just not worth it. Plenty of fish in the sea, as they say.”
“It’s true. I’d know. I’ve spent most of my existence in the sea. I wasn’t aware that vampires ate fish.”
I shook my head, grinning. “It’s just an expression. It means, at least as I used it, that there are plenty of humans to feast on.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. Humans don’t taste like fish.”
“Right, they taste like chicken. It’s just a metaphor. It means there are plenty of other humans out there I could hunt. Why bother going after one who smells?”
“But all fish smell… you know, like fish.”
“Some humans smell like fish, too. Again, the metaphor applies.”
Nyx nodded and narrowed her eyes—as if the whole plenty-of-fish idea was some kind of deep philosophical truth she just couldn’t get her mind around. “It still doesn’t make sense.”
I shrugged. “Why not? I mean, back when you were in your natural form, if some nasty human came strolling by wouldn’t you wait for a better meal?”
Nyx shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. We just sense a human, and if we happen to be hungry we shift and hunt. It’s pure instinct. Practically automatic. If our prey stinks, we don’t really have a lot of options. But thankfully we don’t have such a keen sense of smell. I suppose being water elementals, taking in air isn’t something we’re especially evolved to do.”
“Then consider yourself lucky. There are delicious smells in the world, don’t get me wrong. But most things smell bloody awful.”
“Bloody awful? I thought you liked the smell of blood.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s a curse that Nico, my sire, picked up during his time in Britain, and I kind of latched on to it. I suppose ‘bloody delicious’ would make more sense in my context. But human curses don’t make sense, either.”
“You’re telling me. I heard one of the nurses say, ‘You’re shitting me’ the other day and I must say, the mental image that evoked…”
“Dear Lord! I hadn’t thought of that… Just so you know, if someone says, ‘Fuck you’ it isn’t an invitation. In fact, if they tell you that, that’s probably the last thing they want from you.”
Nyx bit her lip. “Good to know. Humans are so weird.”
“You don’t know the half of it. I mean, I used to be one and they still confuse the hell out of me at times.”
“The hell?”
“Another expression… Though in my case, I wish someone would scare the hell out of me.”
“Because of your brother?”
I nodded. “He hasn’t bothered me much in a while. But the next time I’m on the hunt, I’m pretty sure he’ll be in my head again.”
“Cain still doesn’t believe that he’s literally inside you.”
“I don’t think he does. He thinks I’m manifesting his voice in my head because I have daddy issues.”
Nyx nodded. “Who cares what Cain thinks, anyway?”
I shook my head. “I don’t, really. He told me the whole reason he won’t refer to you as a female is because you haven’t insisted on it. He thinks you need to be more assertive about your desires.”
“I couldn’t care less what Cain thinks of me. It isn’t that I’m not assertive. It’s that, in his case, I just don’t care.”
I shrugged. “Cooperating might help you get out of here.”
Nyx grinned. “Why bother with that? I mean, aren’t we going to break out of here anyway?”
“And I have another gift from my… visitor… something that might help with that.” Grinning, I gently poked Nyx with my invisible wand.
“What is that?”
“My wand,” I said. “It has an invisibility spell attached to it.”
“And you know a spell that can break us out of here?”
I glanced at the three werewolves who were gorging themselves on pizzas at a table on the other side of the room. “They only shift while the full moon is in the sky, correct?”
Nyx nodded. “I believe so.”
“Then we have to break out of here tonight. Without any clocks, any way to tell day from night, it was always going to be a risk that if I broke out it would be in the day. I think our three guests just gave us a way to tell time.”
“You know a spell that will help us escape?”
I nodded. “I know a few that might help. I should be able to get through the locked doors.”
“But your collar. As soon as they see you trying to leave, they’ll turn it on.”
I smirked. “You had the idea before. I’ll have to seduce a nurse.”
“But that’s not something you can do over the course of a few hours. Is it?”
I smiled. “I have a spell for that.”
Chapter Fourteen
It wasn’t a foolproof plan. The spell I intended to use wasn’t as reliable as my natural vampiric allure. With my allure, I could convince someone to do nearly anything. It wasn’t a compulsion—not like the ability I used to have. It still required work, a process. But eventually, once I had a victim captivated by my allure, they were like putty in my hands. They’d do almost anything I said provided they were convinced it would please me.
This spell was trickier. It manipulated someone’s affections, gave them the sensation of being in love. But what people will do out of love varies from person to person. Some will forsake anything and everything for love. Others, while still driven by love, won’t compromise their values. Just because someone is in love, for instance, doesn’t mean that someone would kill for their beloved, or commit a crime. Not just any nurse would do. I had to pick one who I thought might be desperate for love. Someone who had been without it for so long that they’d even risk their job, their reputation, for the sake of it. The most obvious choice was Nurse Rutherford.
Bloody Mad: A Dark Urban Fantasy Story (The Legacy of a Vampire Witch Book 2) Page 8
