Hex Life

by Rachel Deering

  “If I’d found you gadding about, I’d have burned you on the spot, Myrnin.” Shane felt a chill, because Oliver’s voice was no longer cool. It was vicious, and completely serious. “No one is more of a witch than you.”

  “Oh, I’m quite completely a vampire. But this Jane Penwell of yours is interesting. I really must stop in and find out her secrets.”

  Oliver started to reply, but Amelie’s voice sliced through like a guillotine blade. “The point is, Jane Penwell is an impossibility. She should not be here if she isn’t one of us; Oliver, you did see her die?”

  “Yes,” he said. “In 1648.”

  “And burned?” Amelie asked. She raised her eyebrows. “Please tell me her body was burned, and we are not dealing with a witch you failed to stop when you had the chance.”

  Shane looked at Claire, then at Michael. They were feeling the same weirdness.

  “Wait,” Claire said. “You-you sound like you actually believe in witches. Real ones.”

  “Of course,” Oliver said. “Try not to be idiots. True witches were rare, but they were quite powerful.”

  “Hedge magic,” Myrnin sniffed. “Hardly scientific.”

  “Says the man who thinks conducting an experiment is only valid if you do it at the right stage of the moon,” Claire shot back.

  “There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for—”

  “Guys,” Shane said. “Okay, so… witches are real, got it, but why exactly are vampires scared of them?”

  “Because they are an abomination of the natural order,” Amelie said.

  “Pot, kettle…” Shane murmured, and she at least pretended not to hear, which was good, because he liked his internal organs on the inside.

  “And they can kill us, of course,” Myrnin said. He sounded gleeful about it. “Very, very dead indeed. Or as close to it as makes no difference. It would be a useful question to answer, whether dead vampires ever stop actually thinking inside those decomposing, inert shells, wouldn’t it? Not that I’m looking forward to discovering the truth personally.”

  “Kill you how, exactly?” Hannah Moses asked. She’d been listening intently, quietly, and she managed to make the question sound like a concern, not an opportunity. Something Shane knew he couldn’t have pulled off, given his history with the vamps. “How much of a danger does she pose to the vampire population of this town? And does she also threaten humans?”

  “She can kill vampires with a single touch,” Myrnin said, and was suddenly at her side, gently poking a finger into her shoulder. “They are venomous to us by nature. They can take our life force from us and use it to refresh their own. Witches are predators, dear Mayor. And if we try to kill them, we must do so at a distance, using human weapons in order to…”

  That was weird, Shane thought. Not about whatever weirdness Myrnin was spouting, that was normal. No, what was strange was that he had pushed his chair back and he was standing up, every movement calm and natural even though he hadn’t intended to stand up at all, and he felt his hand on the gun that hung heavy on his belt and the safety snap coming off and he thought what the hell…

  She’s got me, he thought, and tried to fight it. He couldn’t.

  And then he drew his sidearm and fired three shots into Myrnin’s chest.

  The next instant, he was free again, himself, and Myrnin was staggering backward, mouth open in shock as he stared down at the neat holes punched in a triangle over his heart. The vampire’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he stumbled and fell.

  Claire screamed. The baby screamed too, equal parts distress and shock from the noise. Shane wanted to yell, too, because something was very very wrong here and then Amelie’s ice-cold hand was around his throat and he was bent backward over the heavy wooden table.

  “Take his weapon,” she ordered someone. Maybe Michael, Shane couldn’t see. It was wrenched out of his hand, and he heard the metal clatter across the table. Someone else had it now. Good.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Claire shouted. She was on her feet now, with the screaming baby cuddled to her.

  “Take the child outside,” Amelie said. “Leave.”

  “No!”

  “Now!” There was real tension in the vampire’s voice, and Shane realized that she wasn’t trying to kill him; she wouldn’t have to try. She was only holding him down. “It isn’t Shane’s fault. I won’t damage him.”

  “I’m not going.”

  God, his brave, stupid wife. He wanted her to go, but the hand around his throat choked the words off, and deep down he was glad she was here, that he could see her and sweet Carrie one last time and damn that was selfish, he wasn’t the one who was going to have to live with whatever happened next.

  Because whatever Amelie might say now, she wasn’t about to let him walk out of this room alive. He just put three bullets into her friend, and speaking of that, was he dead? No, of course he wasn’t. Vampires weren’t that easy to put down, especially not with lead. He saw Hannah rise up from near the floor, and with her came Myrnin—leaning on her, actually spitting chunks of metal, but definitely still undead and kicking. “I am very upset with you, Shane,” Myrnin said, and coughed up the third bullet. “And someone owes me new pajamas.”

  “Quiet,” Amelie said. She stared into Shane’s eyes. “Are you listening, Jane Penwell?”

  “Yes,” Shane said. Not him, exactly. But something inside him, oh Jesus, there was somebody talking through him and no matter how much he tried to stop, he couldn’t. “Do you like my new familiar? I thought he’d be useful. Oliver seemed concerned for his safety. Unusual. He normally doesn’t care about the mayflies.”

  “Is that what you call them now?” Oliver said. “Out of the boy, Jane. Now.”

  Shane felt himself laugh. She had him locked up in the back of his brain, and he wasn’t even remotely able to bust himself out. He couldn’t even tap a pinky finger.

  Oliver was right. That coffee was a bad idea.

  The coffee. Shane could feel it inside him, like a thick, oily weight in his stomach. It hadn’t gone anywhere. Maybe it couldn’t. It isn’t coffee, idiot.

  “Let the boy go!” Oliver leaned over, shouting in Shane’s face. Maybe, despite everything, Jane Penwell was just a little wary of him, because for just a second Shane felt her recede, shrink away… and in that instant he knew what he had to do. He had just enough space to control his hand. His arm.

  He jammed fingers into his mouth, deep into the back of his throat, and triggered his gag reflex.

  Amelie cursed in some language he didn’t recognize, a violent burst of syllables, as he threw up a thick, sludgy black on his face, his chin, her hand… She pulled away, wiping the mess off on his shirt, and Shane rolled on his side to keep vomiting the stuff out. There was a lot of it, but with every drop that emerged he felt more himself. Less invaded.

  Claire handed Carrie to Myrnin, who looked surprised and cautious, as if the kid might explode. Carrie stopped crying and opened her eyes wide at him.

  “Great,” Shane said, or tried to say; between the convulsive vomiting and the choking, he sounded like a rusty hinge. “Vampire babysitter.”

  “Perish the thought,” Myrnin barked, but he settled the baby comfortably into his arms. “You drank a potion, I see.”

  “Guess so.”

  “Coffee-based, was it?”

  Shane just nodded. He’d run out of words and energy. What if I’d shot Claire? The baby? If he’d had anything left in his stomach, it would have come up at the thought. He was supposed to protect and defend. Not harm. Myrnin could shrug it off. But those bullets might have gone into someone else just as easily.

  Claire pulled him off the table and into a chair, and used a wet wipe on his face. Baby fresh, he thought, and almost managed a laugh. He felt weak and empty and now he was shaking like he’d come off a three-day bender.

  The stuff he’d drunk this morning sat on the table in a wet, glistening puddle.

  “Hmm,” Myrnin said. “Well then. That mi
ght not be quite as harmless as it looks right now.” He flashed around the table, a flicker and then suddenly still, and gave the baby to… Oliver. That was not okay with anyone, including Oliver and Carrie, who took up her restless wail again. Oliver looked tight-lipped and awkward, but at least he didn’t drop her. “Do support her head, Oliver, there’s a good lad, while I…” Myrnin dug around in the huge pockets of his ragged coat. “Ah!” He came out with a stoppered bottle. Shane expected liquid to come out, but instead, when Myrnin opened it and tipped it over the black puddle, what came out was a thick, greenish fog that spread and clung to the liquid beneath.

  The liquid shuddered like a living thing. It tried to crawl away.

  “Jesus,” Hannah whispered, and pointed the gun at it, as if that would do any good at all. The puddle didn’t get far. It let off a foul smell, then bubbled, and then it turned dry, brittle, and apparently dead.

  Myrnin dashed over to the corner, retrieved a trash can, and used a fold of fabric over his hand to nudge the stuff off the table. It landed in the can with a resounding boom. Myrnin stripped off his coat and tossed it in after. “Burn that,” he told Amelie. She nodded. “And now Shane also owes me a new coat. Right. She’s opened her store to serve to our locals her particular potion and make them, ah, minions, is that the correct term?”

  “More or less,” Claire said. She rounded the table and took Carrie out of Oliver’s arms. The vampire looked tremendously relieved. He also retreated to stand next to Amelie. Oliver’s scared of babies. Shane was too tired to laugh. “We need to stop her. Now.”

  “Already done,” Amelie said. “Oliver warned me before this meeting that Shane might have been… compromised. We’ve been monitoring who’s come in and out; she’s only served two others, both humans. We have them in custody. I suppose a brisk course of emetics would be in order.”

  “Burn her out,” Oliver said.

  “And accidentally set half our town ablaze? No.” She turned on him. “What does she want, Oliver?”

  “My death. Obviously.”

  “She could have accomplished that with a brush of her hand across your skin. It seems she wants something more.”

  A new voice. “Oliver knows what I want.”

  Oh shit.

  Jane Penwell was standing in the corner. She shouldn’t have been there. She couldn’t have been there… but she was. Amelie and Oliver reacted instantly, but not the way they normally would, to attack; they retreated to the closed outer door, but when Amelie tried with all her strength to open it, the knob didn’t turn. She snapped it off. Oliver tried to punch through the door, but his fist bounced off the wood as if it were made of vampire-proof steel. He kept punching, his fist a blur, until Amelie caught his arm in an iron grip.

  Then he turned and stepped between Amelie and the witch standing in the other corner. “You want an apology,” he said. “For your execution? No. You were a witch. Are a witch. And you deserved it.”

  “Yes, of course I did,” Jane said. “And I know you will never apologize for doing what you think was your duty then, or now. You’ve always been a fanatic.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. The only one of them at ease right now, Shane thought. Hannah was pointing a gun at her, but Jane spectacularly ignored that; Myrnin hadn’t retreated, but he hadn’t gone for her, either, which for Myrnin was pretty amazing restraint.

  “Then what do you demand, Mistress Penwell?” Amelie asked. She stepped out, away from Oliver but no nearer to the witch facing them.

  “To right a wrong.”

  “What wrong?” Michael asked that in the silence, and Jane glanced at him with a strange kind of pity.

  “Child,” she said, “have you never heard of the witch trials? Countless thousands of us rounded up, put to the question, burned or drowned or strangled or hanged, all for the selfish security of vampires. Ask Amelie. Who began the witch trials? Who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum?” Amelie, silent, just watched with eyes so bright and silver they might as well have glowed. “The oldest of them knew what danger a real witch posed. And they decided that we had to die, for their safety. Hundreds of thousands of innocents slaughtered to find a handful of genuine threats. Isn’t that right, sugar?”

  “Yes,” Amelie said quietly. “But that began before my time, or Oliver’s.”

  “You took the cause up happily enough.”

  “It’s what we were taught,” Oliver said. “Is that what you need to hear? An apology for that?”

  “Oh no, sweetie. I’m not here for your regret. I’m here for your blood.”

  Shane could have sworn he saw Oliver flinch. “You’ll not have it. Kill me, and it’s useless. I’ll never hand it over willingly.”

  “You’ll get nothing for your spells from us, witch. Leave our town.” Amelie sounded angry now. That was very, very dangerous.

  “I think I’ll stay,” Jane said. “You’ve made it so hospitable.”

  “We’ll burn you out,” Oliver replied, and it was a promise. “Witches and fire. Never a good combination.”

  “I’ve had a long time to find charms against such things. You think I didn’t come here prepared for all your nonsense? I leave when I get what I want. Not before.” Jane straightened up and stepped away from the wall and toward the rest of them—a tiny woman, but it felt like a real threat. Michael hadn’t moved back with the others. He was in range.

  “Mike,” Shane said quietly. Michael shook his head. He had that look, the one Shane had known all his life—stubborn. Blindly determined. Sometimes that was a great thing, but it wasn’t right now. “Mike. Dude, watch yourself.” It wasn’t easy, but he got to his feet. He didn’t try to get his gun back from Hannah; she was a better shot anyway, and had been a cop longer than he had.

  “I’m okay,” Michael said. He walked toward the witch. She just watched him, but her eyebrows rose a little. “They’re scared of you. I’m not. I don’t have history with you. Why are you doing this?” Michael had charm, looks, and the gift of humility; the entire time Shane had known him that had never changed. But sometimes, he relied on that charm a little too much.

  “Poor thing. You’re so new at this you don’t even understand what it is you’re dealing with. I’ll tell you this: I’m going to let you and your human friends turn around and walk right out of here. I promise to leave you out of this.”

  “We’re not going,” Claire said before Shane had the chance to. “This is our town too.”

  “Well, it was,” Jane agreed. “My town now, until Oliver gives me what I want.”

  “He just said he won’t,” Michael said. He took another step closer, and Shane remembered what the vamps said… witches could kill with a touch. Didn’t Mike get that? “How about my blood instead?”

  “Michael!” Amelie’s voice snapped like a whip. “No!”

  “She’s not really my boss,” Michael said to Jane, and deployed his killer smile. Shane didn’t think it had much effect. “And I’m not afraid of you.”

  No, Michael, no, you definitely should be. Shane saw the warning flash in the witch’s eyes.

  “Back away from me, boy.”

  “Or what?” He took another step toward her. All she had to do now was casually reach out and brush her fingers over his skin. Shane saw Hannah’s body bracing to fire the gun she held, and he quickly reached out and pushed the barrel down. Pissing the witch off wouldn’t help. If it would have done damage, Oliver would have been roaring for them to shoot the hell out of her in the first place.

  “I have no quarrel with you.” Jane’s voice had changed now, dropped out of its affected Southern accent and gone back overseas into something much rougher and older. “Don’t offer up your blood for him.”

  “I’m not. I’m offering it up for this town. There are a lot of innocents here. You talked about how many were killed to get to you, right? I’d like to avoid that here. You said you need vampire blood. Any of us will do, right?”

  “She wants us all dead,” Oliver said. “Give her
what she wants and we’re all doomed.”

  “Death is the last thing I want from you.” Jane’s voice reminded Shane of freezing waves on barren shores. Cold and lonely. “Tell your friends how I died, Oliver.”

  “The times were different,” he said. Shane turned to look at him. Oliver looked… haunted.

  “The gibbets were thick with witches. But you didn’t do me the favor of hanging me.”

  Oliver didn’t speak. Myrnin did. “Did you burn her?” He sounded sober, and unexpectedly sharp.

  For a long few seconds, Shane was pretty sure Oliver wouldn’t answer, but then he finally said, “We pricked her for the Devil’s Mark, and found it on her body. I wasn’t wrong; she was a genuine witch. She demanded the water test.”

  Even Amelie seemed surprised by that. “You drowned her?”

  “No,” he said. “She floated. The witch floated.”

  “The whole story, Oliver,” Jane said. “Everything. Now. Or I will take the boy, then Myrnin, then your mistress. I’ll save you for last. I will hunt every vampire you’ve given shelter, and then burn this foul town to ashes. You owe me the truth.”

  “Jesus, Michael, back the hell up,” Shane said. Michael shook his head. He was probably thinking something dumb and brave, like being an obstacle between her and Oliver.

  Oliver must have thought that, too, because he did what Jane wanted. He said, “She wasn’t accused alone. Her husband John stood with her. A pair of witches together.”

  “And so you tied us together,” Jane said. “Bound us face to face, body to body. And when I floated, I could not save him. I watched him drown. He was an innocent, never a witch, and you wouldn’t even give him the decency of a Christian burial!”

  “I’m sorry, Jane,” Michael said. Shane thought he even meant it. “I really am. But this is a long time back. History.”

  “Not to me,” Jane said. “But I’m not here for vengeance. Only for justice. I want my love back.”

  “We can’t bring back the dead,” Amelie said.

  Jane laughed and made a wide gesture at the vampires in the room. “Really? You’re going to tell me that? But I’m not asking you to bring me back my dead as what you are. I’m asking for a drop of the blood of a vampire. Only a single drop, given willingly.” Jane looked at Michael. “Will you do it?”