by Colleen Tews
“Fine.” He threw up his hands in defeat and huffed his way over to Father Khel in the opposite corner. He folded his arms like a stubborn child that didn’t get his way. Which I guess in some ways was true.
I crouched in front of Capron. “Hi. My name is Veronica. You’re Capron?”
“Yes.” She shuddered. Her eyes jerked around the room.
“It’s okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you again. It’s just you and me. Okay?”
Her head sagged to the side doubtful. Her thin mouth frowned. Blood caught on her bottom lip.
“Let me help you.” I unfastened my coat. I then tore off a piece of my black dress and used the cloth to clean off her face. I cupped her chin in my hand. “There you are. I see you.”
For the briefest of seconds a quick lip jerk turned that timorous pout into a timid quirk of a smile. That instant of trust, of hope, was all I needed to accomplish what I had in mind. I raised my power within to bend people’s emotions to my whim. Like a light breeze on a flame I helped that trust grow. I made her feel right at home, safe, and happy.
Her smile grew. She showed off ragged yellow teeth. The corners around Capron’s eyes relaxed. Despite the deformities she had beautiful green eyes. “You have lovely eyes.”
“Thank you.” Her smile softened.
I relaxed back into a cross-legged position on the floor in front of her. I flopped my hands in my lap and struck up a conversation as if I were talking with a life long friend from childhood. “So, what brings you to town?”
Oblivious to anyone else in the room; she responded like this was just another night. “I came to watch. He wants me to find out who he can trust in town.”
“And by ‘he’ you mean Lucian, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, of course, sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t word things right all the time either.” I waved my hand at her. “Where are you going to meet with him to tell him what you found out? I mean I’m sure there is some designated place where you two meet up. Will you tell him you can trust me?”
Hairless eyebrows shifted high on her brow. “I would love to tell him I trust you, but I wouldn’t want to put you in harms way. You are much too nice to do half of what the people in our group are supposed to do.”
“Thank you. But Capron, I want to help you and if that means helping Lucian then I want to do whatever it takes.” That thin line between truth and lie blurred around the edges. I feared that soon it would fade away entirely.
“Well?”
I heard the hesitation in her voice. “Capron, come on you can trust me. Do I have to meet Lucian first at this special location?” I touched her knee. Through the skin-to-skin contact I pushed against her defenses with kindness.
Deep in thought Capron closed her eyes. She started rocking her head in small, decisive nods. When she decided on her train of thought she opened her eyes. “Okay. There is a warehouse about fifteen minutes west of the student center in Stow where I meet Lucian every now and then. But lately there’s just been Sasha.”
Time to play stupid. “Who’s Sasha?”
“She’s Lucian's second from Artyom House or was. Sasha is kind of messed up in the head, but nice I suppose. I’ll have to run everything by her before you can officially join.”
“I'd appreciate that.”
I wanted to ask her what she meant by 'was', but throughout the conversation Raphe circled behind Capron. Over her shoulder I saw him mouth, “Get an address.”
With a slight nod I delved further than I intended. “Hey Capron, just so I can figure out how far away the warehouse is from my house, where is it precisely?”
She rattled off directions from the student center. Capron correlated everything from that central location. “The cross street dead ends right into it. You can’t miss it.”
“You’ve been wonderful help, Capron. Lucian would be proud of how devoted you are to his cause.” I patted her leg. A sudden question jumped into my head. “Why did you join him?”
“Me?” She shrugged. “I’m tired of the lies. All the propaganda the Cabal Ministry and the Ubilazian Order have spouted out for the last few hundred years needs to be stopped. Instead of living peacefully we have been living in terror, and that’s not right. Not right at all. It’s time we came out to the world.”
It was strange hearing her say what I was thinking as the library burned. Every vampire lied to cover-up our existence. One lie begat another. That sprouted into a third and so forth and so on. It was the never-ending cycle of chaos that Lucian wanted to stop. He and his followers were the monkey wrench in the system all along.
Her smile was so refreshingly friendly. I hated to remove the enchantment I had cast upon her. “I wish you would've joined sooner. Now you should just leave town all together. Things always get worse before they get better.”
"How so?"
Her eyes glazed over. "I don't know what will happen to our movement now that Sasha is in charge."
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Raphe froze. "Lucian isn't leading the revolt?"
She shook her head violently. "He's dead. Gone. No one's seen him in days. That's why I didn't tell them anything, to give Sasha a chance to regroup. But she's crazy. You need to get out of here tonight. She will have no problem burning this city to the ground."
Khel set his hand firm upon my shoulder. I jumped at his sudden touch. “You’ve done enough my child.”
I shrugged off his hand. “I am not your child.”
The spell broke. Capron’s trust washed clean away like a wet sponge wiping chalk off a chalkboard. Her system was slammed by reality’s ugly hammer. She searched around her as she took back in her true state of mind. Her eyes flooded with raw pain as she realized what I got out of her. Tears streamed down her clean face. She dropped her head and wept.
Until then I didn’t know which form of torture was worse: physical, mental, or emotional. Physical pain healed. Mental pain didn’t register until long after the fact. Emotional seemed to envelope all the three states. You had to think to understand why you felt the way you did and your heart was broken.
I turned to Grump numb. “You have what you need?”
He simply nodded. He was a wise man.
Then to Meisha I said, “If you can help her forget tonight and let her go. Please? She’s been through enough.”
“Consider it done.”
Raphe came to my side. I held him at bay by signaling him to stop with a pause of my hand. Right then, I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him.
Brutus slouched against the wall. He studied me with a wicked grin. "That was badass."
Without another word I headed back up the stairs. I didn’t require moral, idealistic views on evil to understand that I was a monster. I was dishonorable and selfish. Now Capron, Lucian, Sasha, and the rest of the army would pay for my indiscretion. I identified with the true nature of this war and slapped it in the face. So what more could a monster say after she broke a person’s heart?
Chapter 37
"Veronica wait up." Raphe ran up the steps.
"Not now. I just want to go home and take a very hot shower, alone."
In the kitchen he grabbed my arm and turned me around. "Will you stop for one second."
"Why?"
"This is why-" He forced me to look him in the eye. I jerked away. He grabbed me again. "This is why I didn't want you down there."
"Bully for you."
"You know I don't mean this as an 'I told you so' moment."
"But you did."
"That isn't the point. I shouldn't have started that way. I know what it's like. I've tricked so many people into doing what I want them to do over the years. Now I don't have a problem with it. You do. You're too compassionate to do the type of things I do."
"Like convincing a stranger into thinking I care about them just to get what I want." Like you, I thought.
"Right. Some how you've been able to hold onto an innocent part of your
humanity that most of us lost long ago, especially after what I saw down there. I'd never seen a Vadimasian manipulate emotions to the point where their mark forgets the rest of the world like that. The room got hotter. The coals burned brighter. To be able to do that and not let it take you over; it's part of what makes you special."
"I'm not so certain about that anymore." I brushed his hands off my face and turned to leave. I rounded the dividing counter when a rush of enormous power hit the two of us like a sledgehammer. I teetered back into Raphe. He caught me and we collided into the counter.
"You feel that?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Feel it? My head is pounding."
Then as quickly as the energy channeled its way into the room it slipped away back out into the night from whence it came. Only it left behind an empty green, plastic, twenty-ounce soda pop bottle in the middle of the dining room table. I went to examine it. Raphe white-knuckled the marble.
The original label had been stripped clean. In its place was a piece of paper held on by clear packing tape. The new label read, “Drink Me.” I turned it over in my hand like it was an alien artifact that I had unearthed. Sadly, it was only a plastic bottle. It didn’t dance or sing. No shiny lights were set off when I touched any particular spot. There was nothing inside it. Then why did it have this message on it?
With two hands I held in front of me and stared at the twist top. I briefly wondered what would happen if I opened it. What harm ever came from opening a soda bottle?
"Don't open that." Raphe said a touch too late because I twisted off the top. Then held the opening near my eye I peered down inside the bottle. I saw nothing but the bottom of the bottle.
Another burst of power pushed its way out of the bottle. The sudden rush slammed me back against the wall. I sank to the floor with a thud. A thin gray wisp of smoke exited the hole. The smoke grew stronger and darker until it became a storm cloud that billowed and twisted around us at a hundred miles a minute. The cloud culminated into a whirlwind that hovered between Raphe and I. It transformed into a shadowed silhouette. The cloud took the form of a faceless male figure. Then it solidified into Lucian.
He looked just like I saw him the other night. Only the look on his face was that of cold, concentrated fury. He took in account of his surroundings. After his gaze circled the room it landed on me. I stared up at him slack jawed. His eyes softened.
"Get away from her!" Raphe punched Lucian's chin.
The hit knocked him against the chairs. He spun and regained his balance so he faced his attacker. "Oh it's you. I've been looking forward to this." He raised his palm to Raphe. The lights dimmed. Darkness crept along the walls. Shadowed serpents slithered out from the window ledge, crown molding, and in from the hallway. They encircled Raphe's feet and slid up his pants.
Chaos ensued as every Cabal member rushed upstairs. They burst through the door and began shouting at each other. I couldn’t make out a single word they said. My two worlds had collided in a harsh wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am sort of way.
"Some other time perhaps. Shame." Lucian dropped his arm to his side. He stepped back into the darkened corner and vanished. Once he was gone the lights returned to normal and the serpents went poof.
I came back to reality when Meisha snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Hello? Earth to Veronica, are you all right?”
That was a stupid question. Of course I was not all right. I freed Lucian from a plastic pop bottle. The better question to ask was how he got in the bottle in the first place. Last I knew that was not a talent any vampire possessed. Putting people in bottles like genies was not our forte. However it wasn’t like I could say everything I thought. “What just happened?”
“That’s what we are trying to figure out.” She rested her hand on my shoulder. Raphe and Grump huddled together, whispering. Khel inspected the corner. Anthony guarded the basement.
“I’ll tell ya what you fuckin’ did, you stupid bitch!” Brutus stomped past Meisha. He squatted in front of me. “You just ruined our chances of keeping that asshole trapped forever!”
“And how do you know that?”
Vinchenzo stood by his chair with his cell phone to his ear. He placed his large hand over the small receiver to talk with us. “He doesn’t, but that doesn’t matter.” He returned to his call.
I clung to the bottle in my lap. There was a good chance that I couldn’t have saved him. He could have been in that bottle forever or someone could have followed the instructions on the bottle.
“I didn’t know what to do. The bottle appeared out of nowhere with a stupid label on it. Then bam. The next thing I knew he was standing here.”
“It’s okay.” Meisha sat down beside me.
“Please don't placate me."
Meisha gave me a sympathetic grin like I said something cute. “Don’t listen to Brutus. He's an idiot.”
“I’m right here.”
“So, what? You are." She took the bottle from me. "We’ll take care of this. It wasn’t our last chance to get him.”
“How did you get him in a bottle? Was that the spell Elizabeth told me your House was working on?”
“I didn’t.”
Grump said, “A necromancer did.”
“What’s a necromancer?”
Meisha held the bottle to the light. “A necromancer is a person that has power over the dead; ghosts, zombies and apparently us.” She stood up and went to Anthony. She gave it to him.
“It isn’t exactly a power over vampires.” He corrected her. “More like a power over the essence of the human we once were. Check out these runes.” He traced his finger along the bottom.
“Power over our immortal souls.” Father Khel sat at the chair farthest from me.
“For lack of a better word, yes.” Anthony said as he traced the markings.
Brutus stalked Meisha to look at the plastic prison. “But we ain’t got no soul. That’s one of the perks of being us. I mean what’s the point of being able to kill a lot shit if ya gotta worry about where ya’ll end up if some hunter sticks it to ya.”
Khel shook his head with pity. “I’ll pray for you, my son.”
I braced against the wall and slid up. “Was the contract you finalized in California with this necromancer?”
“Yes it was, but it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.” He caught me dropping my eyes. “And that’s not your fault. The bottle wasn’t supposed to come here. I set up the deal so the necromancer would send it to Meisha’s house.”
Brutus scoffed. “So this big powerful necromancer was able to trap Lucian in a pop bottle from 300 miles away, but had trouble on delivery. Maybe he should have dropped it off at the post office.”
His joke broke some of the tension from tonight’s escapades. A couple of the others laughed with me, but most snickered. It was one of those times where you either laughed or cried. Downstairs we all thought Lucian dead. My last minute crazy random happenstance soured their win. It made me slap happy. I helped the bad guys and the man I loved in less than twenty minutes.
I raised my hand when the giggles subsided. “Now what?”
“Now,” Grump turned to Raphe, “we prepare for battle. We know where he'll be. Get the word out cause tomorrow we attack.”
Chapter 38
The jolly playfulness that Christmas brought turned into a drunken bar fight that captured the city as a whole. The decorations that brought the downtown area to life were torn and tattered. They dangled from the poles they garnished earlier that week. Children were forced to stay in their homes. College students attacked one another by day and ravaged the bars they once celebrated in by night.
I walked up Main Street barefoot and wore a silk, white dress with large, dark blue ivy-leaved morning glories. Streamers, strings of light, and the occasional burst of flames leapt out from display windows into the night air. Looters broke in and decimated the merchandise they didn’t care for. With a thunderous metal clash a blue sedan and a red pickup truck col
lided at the top of the hill. Other cars on the street had broken windows, slashed tires, and like the stores, a couple vehicles were on fire. The ruined historical district astonished me.
The city was now the war zone I feared it would become. The chaotic nature of the vampire war reflected in lives of the mortals that lived here. The harsh reality of our hidden world affected the emotional state of the very people who still believed vampires were nothing more than a figment of their imaginations.
“Veronica!” Raphe called for me from down the hill.
I stopped halfway up between the ravaged remains of jewelry store and a pagan shop. In order to turn around I stepped over broken shards of glass.
He stood in the middle of the intersection. Raphe was as handsome as ever in a tight, black leather vest, matching pants and boots. Wooden spikes were slipped through small loops on the vest. His black hair flew all around him in an icy updraft. He yelled over the sounds of destruction. “You need to stop this now!”
“I’m not doing this.” The wind that circled him soared up the hill and hit me in the face with its breathtaking chill. “This isn’t my fault."
“I can’t hear you!” He took a step forward. My mustang screeched into the intersection. The tires slipped. The car slid sideways.
“Raphe look out!” The mustang crashed into him, over him. “God! No!” I slipped and slid as I ran down the hill. I cut my feet on sharp glass shards that pointed to heaven.
By the time I reached the accident I was too late. Raphe’s body lay broken and bloody. His face was hidden under the car. Only his mangled legs were visible.
A thick stream of dark blood flowed across dirty snow to my feet. The river of blood shimmered in the climbing infernos. As the warm liquid was about to reach me it parted and encircled me. I was stranded in a small island of clean, untarnished snow. The ripples moved faster as they turned into a whirlpool. The blood burst into a towering geyser, trapping me in the middle of a ferocious vortex, and devoured me into the pit of its tumultuous depression.
