I flipped through the book’s brittle pages carefully. With each turn of the page, I could hear the binding crack a little. I wasn’t sure how old the book was, but it was more than a few hundred years old.
The book was divided into two sections: celestial and infernal magics. Until I’d met Alice, who claimed to wield “celestial” magic, the terms hadn’t meant much to me. The magic of angels and demons? Since we were under a demonic attack—at least our food source, the humans, were being poisoned—it couldn’t be an accident.
I traced my finger down the book’s table of contents. Under the second part—Infernal Magic—I noted a chapter indicating the binding and loosing of souls. Could it be that this book might have a solution to my Edwin problem? That would make sense. If Hailey could show me that she’d found a way to exorcise Edwin from my mind without it resulting in me meeting the truth death, it would be as much of a “cure” to the supposed problem that Annabelle had used to justify locking me up here to begin with.
I carefully opened the book to the chapter on soul binding. There were a number of spells, but one jumped off the page. It involved granting one eternal life by binding one’s life source to the soul of one damned to hell. It was a long, complicated spell—but much of it was horrifyingly familiar. The ashes of one’s heart being fed to the one who would be damned. But it wasn’t the details that shocked me the most. This was the spell, I was sure, that had been used to bind my life to Edwin’s soul. What startled me were the faded markings in the margins. Some of it looked like complete nonsense. I wasn’t sure what it meant. But then I saw my name. And my brother’s.
“Holy shit,” I said out loud as I looked up at Nyx, who was casually examining the nails on her left hand for any chips or cracks.
“What is it?”
“This grimoire… I don’t know how Hailey got it. But it was Moll’s… it was the grimoire containing the spell she used to bring me back to life after they cut out my heart.”
Chapter Eighteen
I turned through the pages as quickly as I could while still being careful not to damage them. If there was an answer, a way to untangle our souls, it had to be in this book. Alice had told me that her celestial magic could separate us—she anticipated it would just be a matter of time before he’d become such a nuisance that I’d rather die, I’d rather her untangle our souls, than go on existing as I was. She didn’t say it in as many words, but it was implied. What did she know?
My father was a Puritan, not a Catholic. Still, he was involved in the Order. He’d used a crucifix that emanated sunlight when he attacked me—moments before Nico and I ended his life. Was this also the very book that the Order had used to acquire their so-called celestial magic? It was written by a pope, presumably. And Moll used the same text—this very copy of the grimoire—to redeem me.
One thing about all that had happened: when Moll and my father “teamed up” to save Edwin by cutting out my heart, it never made sense. My father hated witches and vampires—he was some big honcho in the Order of the Morning Dawn. So why would he work with a witch like Moll? I’d assumed before that he’d done it out of desperation. But if the Order got their magic from this book, and so did Moll…
Maybe the Order didn’t have their own edition at all—they’d sold themselves out to Moll in exchange for access to so-called celestial magic. Whatever Alice was using hadn’t come from an angel—it had come from a witch! She’d taught it to my father, which was why he’d allowed her to attempt to save my brother. But she’d betrayed him—she used the spell in this book to save me instead while damning my brother to hell. And that’s why the Order ultimately killed Moll. But the Order still used celestial magic. They might have sold themselves out to Moll, but I suspected my father was the only one who’d made such a proverbial “deal with the devil” to acquire such power. A move I was sure he’d likely justified to himself because the grimoire containing celestial magic had been written by a pope. Not that the Puritans are, generally speaking, great friends of the popes. But sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your friend. And if my father believed that Pope Honorius had gotten this magic from the angels, he might have been willing to set aside his religious prejudices to acquire it—yes, even if that meant compromising with a witch.
Was this the puzzle Hailey wanted me to figure out? If so, how did Hailey and Annabelle come across this book? And they could read Latin? Oh yeah—Google translator. A technology that almost made me resent the time Nico had—for reasons I didn’t ever understand—insisted I learn classical Latin. I mean, French is useful. Spanish is more useful all the time. But Latin? Until now, truth be told, I hadn’t had any use for it at all. Had Nico foreseen my need to know Latin at this very moment? Surely not… but why else would he have been so insistent on learning a mostly dead language?
And what did werewolves have to do with it all? If the wolves were connected to the Order of the Morning Dawn, and they’d gotten their magic through this grimoire, it followed that there’d be something in this book about werewolves. Unless, of course, the Order acquired the wolves in some other way. Still, too many facts were aligning at once. There had to be something about werewolves in this book.
The grimoire of Pope Honorius was a massive tome—and this particular edition must’ve been an original. It contained pages upon pages that had been eliminated from later editions. It was handwritten, not printed from a press. That suggested, at the very least, if this wasn’t the original text penned by Pope Honorius himself, it was a pre-sixteenth-century copy. I had a hunch, though, that this was no copy at all. A one-and-only edition—an original autograph—that was later thoroughly edited, no doubt on account of the embarrassment it likely caused the Church. This was a one-of-a-kind grimoire. No wonder Moll went to such great lengths to see it protected. And if Annabelle and Hailey somehow came across it, the very fact that they trusted me with it—in spite of locking me up in this godforsaken institution—meant they had more faith in me than I’d supposed.
I flipped back to the table of contents. There were two entries—one in the section on celestial magic, another in infernal magic. Lupinotuum Pectinem—translation: werewolf.
I found the section on infernal magic first and stuck my wand there to hold my place. Then, I flipped back to the page on celestial magic.
“I think I found something,” I said out loud. Nyx was still examining her nails. “Several somethings, actually. But two sections in this book on wolves.”
Nyx raised her brows, dropped her hands, and her disgust faded as she looked at me with wide eyes.
“Break a nail?” I asked.
“No,” Nyx said. “They’re fine. Just growing out. This place sucks for mani-pedis.”
I shrugged. “I saw one of the nurses filing Ed’s hooves the other day. Maybe she can do nails, too.”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “I’m not even going to dignify that comment with a response. I do not have hooves.”
I smirked. “I know. Just giving you shit. Check this out. This book has two sections on werewolves. One under celestial magic, the other under infernal magic. I’m thinking that the Order only has access to the celestial magic this book contains.”
“What does it say?”
“Bear with me,” I said. “I’m translating from Latin as I’m reading this. But essentially, under celestial magic it says what we already know. A wolf’s bite is harmful to a sanguisuga…”
“Sanguisuga? A bloodsucker?”
I nodded. “You know Latin?”
Nyx shrugged. “I don’t know how I know any language, truth be told. I assume human form and speak the language of my prey. I suppose the vampire who bit me last must’ve known it.”
I nodded. “There’s more to it. The wolf’s bite doesn’t just hurt like hell. When a werewolf bites a bloodsucker, the only real cure for the pain is exposure to sunlight.”
“So the Order sent these wolves after you just so they’d bite you.”
“Bite me and make me choose betw
een either suffering the burn for a century or more, or exposing myself to sunlight and scarring my flesh.”
“But why don’t they just use sunlight lamps and crucifixes?” Nyx asked.
“Because the wolf’s bite is not only cured by sunlight, but it makes the rest of my body even more vulnerable to it. According to this, if bitten the bloodsucker is forced to either endure the hell he—of course they’d only use male pronouns in these old books—deserves, or end his own life by burning in the sun.”
“Damn,” Nyx said. “That’s awfully harsh.”
“Something makes me suspect that, with all the sunlight lamps and collars in this hellhole, they aren’t planning to give me the choice.”
“You said there’s another section in the grimoire about werewolves?”
“Yes, under infernal magic.” I flipped to the page I’d marked previously with my wand. I glanced at the words and hesitated a moment before reading them out loud. Still, Nyx deserved to know. “The bite of a bloodsucker can seize, albeit temporarily, the werewolf’s strength. Such has been my own experience consuming the blood of other magical creatures. For a time, sometimes for a decade or more and in other instances for only a few moments, I acquire something unique to their nature.”
Nyx shook her head. “The vampire who bit me… stole my abilities.”
“And if he knew about this, chances are he did it on purpose. I mean, if a vampire had your capacity to shift, it would make them very difficult to find or kill.”
Nyx nodded. “But if you bite a wolf…”
“This is what it says—if I bite one while in human form, I acquire something of its strength. Though the pope who wrote this warned against biting it after transformation. He writes that after attempting such a bite, he found himself covered in a dark fur for nearly a year.”
Nyx chuckled. “You’re a pretty girl, but I don’t think even you could get away with fur.”
“Oh trust me, I don’t intend to bite one of those monsters. But if I can get ahold of one of them, just one of them, after they shift back into human form…”
“What about this one, here?”
“He’s dead,” I said. “Blood loses its potency after it’s been out of a living body, out of contact with its soul, for anything longer than a few minutes. It’s why those drinks they give me here suck so much ass.”
“But these wolves… when they shift back, do you really think they’re going to let you anywhere near them?”
I shrugged. “I don’t think the Order knows about this part of the book. Though honestly, I don’t know that I need the wolf’s strength. They’ll have to catch me first…”
“But there’s a problem with that,” Nyx said. “When the wolves become human again, it means the sun will be rising. And now you’re more vulnerable than ever, if what it said about the wolf’s bite making you more susceptible to sunlight is true.”
“Then I have one option,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “I’ll do my best to make it through the day without being blasted by sunlight. And if I make it through the day alive, there will be hell to pay upon nightfall. They’ll regret the day they ever tried to lock me up.”
Chapter Nineteen
The biggest challenge I would face was avoiding the sunlight lamps. By now, I was reasonably certain, the love spell I’d cast on Rutherford had faded. If she hadn’t realized it before—and her actions against me really were due to the resentment stemming from unrequited love—now it would be obvious what I’d done. She’d tell Cain. They’d have a plan to come after me, and not just as a vampire—they’d know I had my wand. Were they in the bag with the Order of the Morning Dawn, too? Or was it just the wolves? Someone here was—because someone let the damn wolves out of their cages and became one themselves.
I knew Rutherford wasn’t the wolf. I’d bitten her already, and I hadn’t gained any real power from it. Chances were it wasn’t a patient. While I suppose I didn’t know for certain, I was relatively sure only humans could become werewolves. This was an asylum for the magically and mentally demented. Most of the inmates—I’d call them “patients” if any of them were free to leave—weren’t human. But there were other nurses and orderlies, and least a half dozen who would have been here on the night shift.
We had to know who it was. And there was only one way to find out.
“I think we need to get out of here. We need to see the wolves when they shift back at dawn.”
Nyx nodded while using a paper towel she’d robbed from the nurses’ station to polish the wolf blood off her stiletto. “I was having the same thought. I just figured you’d think I was crazy to suggest it.”
I smirked. “We’re in the asylum. Crazy is par for the course.”
“How’s the leg? Can you move well enough to avoid getting bitten again?”
“Stings like a bitch, but I’ll survive. If you can run in heels, I can run through the pain.”
Nyx grinned. “It really isn’t that hard.”
“Sure it isn’t.”
“How much worse can it be than trying to run in those worn-out slip-ons they issued you?”
I cringed. I hated these shoes. They were almost as bad as the gown they’d put me in. “These things suck for walking, much less running. But they aren’t heels. At least they’re flat. Just remember—the goal isn’t to take these wolves out. We just need to avoid them as best we can until morning comes. But we want to know where they are at all times so we can see who the fourth wolf is.”
“Alright. Well, I sure don’t plan on getting clawed a second time. If we had any idea what time it was, this would be simpler…”
“No way to know from in here, but as long as it’s been since the wolves shifted, morning can’t be too far around the corner.”
Nyx nodded, put her newly polished shoe back on her foot, and strolled to the door like a supermodel. I don’t know how she did it—male body or not, she had a way of rocking a hospital gown like it was nobody’s business. All about the attitude. You can wear a garbage bag, and if you have enough confidence and spunk, pull it off well enough to earn a fashionista’s praises. Just watch some of the bullshit celebrities wear on the red carpet at the Academy Awards and you’ll get my point. Yes, most humans found me irresistible, too. That was a part of what made me so deadly. But I had a definite style. Nyx had a way of making anything look stylish. She was the style—whatever happened to be on her body was graced by her glamorous demeanor.
Nyx flipped her hair back and pressed her ear to the door. There weren’t windows on the doors, so we had to go by what we heard.
“They’re just down the hall,” I said.
Nyx shook her head. “Vampire hearing. Right.”
I nodded. “If we leap out the door and hang a left toward the common area, we should be able to keep a good distance.”
“Alright, I’m ready.”
I counted to three and opened the door. I took off full-speed, Nyx running a few paces behind me. We took the wolves off guard. It took them a second to react—but when they noticed we’d left, they were hot on our tail. The asylum wasn’t laid out in a way particularly suited to evading a pursuer. I imagined that was by design—the last thing a nurse wanted to deal with was a supernatural crazy on the run. Several of the hallways were dead ends. Three of them joined at the common area, which gave us something of a loop we could follow so long as the wolves didn’t get wise to what we were doing. If they split up and each guarded one of the three hallways, they could capture us in the common room. We were banking on the idea that werewolves were more instinctively “wolf” than intellectually human.
It was a bit repetitive. Down the hall, through the common room and down another hall. Break at the nurses’ station, back down another hall to the common room again. Since we were both faster than the wolves, all we had to do was keep it up until they started to shift back to human form—which I hoped would be sooner rather than later.
But the damn wolves figured it out. They split up, each takin
g a hallway and blocking our way out. Our only option now was to play Dodge the Wolf for as long as we could. They each stood at the entrance to one of the three hallways while Nyx and I stood as far away as we could on the other side of the ping-pong table. We were at something of a stalemate. If one of them left one of the halls, we’d be down it before they could catch us. So instead they approached us in unison, closing in on our position.
I grabbed the ping-pong table and hurled it at one of them—the wolf swiped at the table as it flew toward him, breaking the table in two. It was just enough of a distraction that I thought we could make it to the hall.
We ran, but the wolf was just quick enough to catch Nyx by the hair. I extended my wand and attempted the incantation I’d used before—the one that imprisoned the wolf—but as one wolf dodged the magic as it shot out of my wand, another one dove after me, sending my wand flying end over end through the air. I ran after it, but the third wolf beat me to it and blocked me.
I had to get to Nyx… if a wolf scratched her, or worse, bit her, I don’t know if she had enough hair to close a wound of that size. I charged the wolf that had Nyx by the hair. The wolf released her.
Nyx leapt out of the way, reached for a chair, and smashed the wolf over the head. It didn’t faze the beast. He grabbed me by the arm with his massive paw—which, truth be told, was more like a talon, some kind of mangled combination of a wolf’s paw and a human hand. Whatever it was, the wolf had a strong grip. The beast reared its head back, its jaw wide open.
Bloody Mad: A Dark Urban Fantasy Story (The Legacy of a Vampire Witch Book 2) Page 11
