Vile Magic

by Holly Hook

  "I like to think she's there for Leon," Xavier said, breaking into a jog. "That might help us get her to turn against Thoreau. We need everyone against him that we can get."

  "But she hates us," I said. "She's just as bad as Thoreau. I'm shocked she didn't go to his side sooner." I jogged behind Xavier while George kept up. He was pretty fast, too. I was glad to have him along.

  "I know she does," Xavier said. "We have to keep all our options open."

  I knew that Beatrix probably just wanted a slice of the new world Thoreau wanted to make. She'd fit in great, being a half-demon.

  Xavier reached another ladder, climbed it, lifted the cover, and peeked out. "We're on the side of Beatrix's market," he said. "I didn't think we'd get this close. Come on. We can either break the doors down or we can find another way in. There might even be a way into The Pit inside the market itself."

  I pulled my hood back over my face and braced myself to go back out in the daylight, but Beatrix's alley wasn't bright at all. In fact, there was an awning that hung over it, blocking out the sun so much that I was able to take the coat off without any ill effects. The double doors that led to The Pit were set under the veggie market and could be accessed from the alley. I could smell the produce inside the main building. It was already starting to go bad in the heat. Power had been cut to Beatrix's cover business.

  "It looks like Beatrix likes this area dark," Xavier said, looking up at the striped awning that hung over the alley. "She must keep it this way for her other patrons. I'm surprised the authorities haven't noticed this until now."

  I faced the double doors which were closed and on the bottom of a flight of concrete steps. George was silent. I could smell his nerves. Werewolf adrenaline smelled a lot like human adrenaline, but I had no urge to bite him. Most other Abnormals seemed to be off limits to me.

  And besides, the dread from Thoreau's blood was still there.

  Xavier stepped forward and hesitated, hands up and ready to summon a charge, but nothing happened. "We don't know if there are ATC people here," he said. "Beatrix and her people did flee. They might even be down there, dealing with things right now. I don't want to create any noise and alert them."

  "We can take them," I said, looking at George.

  He nodded and frowned. "I think we can," he said.

  "Hey, if you can do what you did at the airport, you can do this," Xavier said. "If there are agents inside, there won't be that many. I haven't seen any ATC vans parked around here. And besides, they expect Beatrix's people to never come back here. There won't be many."

  I sniffed the air. "I don't smell anything." This was a dead part of town.

  Xavier summoned a magenta charge and threw it at the door. It struck and faded, leaving only a tiny dent in the steel doors.

  "This is going to be hard," he said. "I might drain myself before we get in this way. Maybe there's another way through the market."

  "There could be," I said. "That will be easy to break into. I don't think it has power, so no alarms, right?"

  We walked around to the back door of the market. There was so much graffiti on the brick walls of these old stores. There weren't just shady Abnormals in this area. There were plenty of shady Normals, too. It was just plain a bad part of town. Much further down this back alley there was a car parked and a guy leaning into it, talking to someone. I had a few ideas as to what was happening down there and averted my gaze. A breeze blew from that direction and there was something strange in the man's blood. It did nothing to make me hungry.

  There was a back door to Beatrix's market. Xavier was able to take that down without a problem, even though George and I were ready to kick it in. We all entered the store and closed the door the best we could, barricading it from behind. That was a bit tricky since Xavier had busted one of the hinges.

  The produce smell overtook everything for a moment. We stood in a store room where tons of apples were stacked on shelves next to us. The place smelled like an orchard but now it was hot in here from the lack of refrigeration. Some of the apples were starting to get too sugary and were spoiling. Beatrix's market had been shut down, all right. The ATC had been here.

  But then a different scent cut over it all.

  Blood.

  It was faint like it had dried, but the smells of salads, tacos, burgers and soft drinks rode on the smell. Blood had been spilled here. It must have been if I could pick it up when it was drying.

  George must have detected it, too. He sniffed and we exchanged looks.

  "There are bodies here," he said. "I don't think they're on this level, but they're here."

  Xavier tensed, too. "I can't smell anything."

  "Something happened," I said. "Maybe Beatrix took out some of the ATC agents before she fled."

  "That sounds like her," Xavier said. "My throat almost got ripped out here once."

  "What kind of place is this?" George asked.

  "Don't let The Pit form your opinion about the entire Abnormal world," Xavier told him. "There are good and bad people when it comes to both Normals and Abnormals."

  I tensed when he said that.

  I just might be one of the bad people. I had killed, after all. I knew that the man deserved it, but every time I thought of him, I wondered if he had a family. My emotions wouldn't stop tormenting me. It was almost as bad as hearing my mother's disgusted screams.

  But I had been down in The Pit before. George hadn't and I had the feeling we were going to see something ghastly.

  George took a breath. "Okay. I'm ready."

  We walked around the dark market for a while, through aisles where produce was marked down and ready to go. The fans above were off and the air in here was stifling. There was a counter where Beatrix must have spent her days checking out old ladies and health-conscious Normals. The thought of that made we want to laugh.

  But there was nothing funny now. The blood smell was stronger and it seemed to be coming from below. The floorboards creaked and Xavier walked behind the counter. The sound was most audible there.

  "Stop," I said. "Check for a trapdoor down there."

  Xavier leaned down. "How do you know there's one?" he asked.

  "The floor sounds hollow there when you step on it," I said. "You can't hear it but I can."

  "There's a lock on the floor," he said. "There might be a key around here somewhere."

  "Or we can just tear the door up," George said. I could tell he was shaking by the vibration in his words. He walked around the counter and his nose wrinkled. His smell was definitely better than mine. "What's down there? A whole pool full of blood?"

  The thought made even me want to gag. Xavier and George leaned down and pulled at a trapdoor that was set underneath Beatrix's counter. So many people must have gone in and out of this market, not knowing what was really under this building. It turned out George had some supernatural strength even in human form, because he was able to rip up the door and break the lock. I couldn't have done it better myself.

  A ladder led down into darkness. The blood smell got very strong, hitting me like a thick cloud. There had to be a lot of it. It was making me dizzy and even though my stomach rumbled a bit, I also wanted to throw up.

  Xavier stepped aside. "Ladies first," he said with a smile.

  "Um, no," I said. I was used to blood but not that much.

  "It really doesn't smell good down there," George said. "You go down first. You can't smell it."

  "I should," Xavier said, the smile dropping off his face. "My magic's still strong. It should be me who goes down first in case there's a demon."

  "It smells like there might have been," George said.

  "I don't smell any sewage," I said. I didn't know what to make of it.

  George was the gentleman and offered to go down before I did, not that it mattered. We were heading into something bad and we all knew. I climbed down the ladder after George through a brick shaft. It was a long ladder and I left the trapdoor open above me in case we had to exit qu
ickly. I kept space between me and George to avoid hitting him with my sword.

  Xavier jumped to the bottom. He must have descended a hundred feet into the earth. It wasn't long before George and I stood on the floor as well.

  And did I mention that the blood smell was now ten times worse?

  My gray vision started in the pure dark. The three of us stood in a store room full of spare light bulbs, CD's and bottles of booze. There were even bottles of what looked like blood and something faintly glowing that might be a special potion. I didn't know much about potions. Some Mages were said to brew them but the practice wasn't very common today as not too many of them still had cauldrons. I guessed that the potion on the shelf wasn't a friendly type.

  The door to the store room was closed. I heard no sounds coming out from the rest of the place. I had no doubt we were in The Pit. It was out there beyond where we now stood. It felt empty for everything but Death.

  "Where are we?" Xavier asked.

  "Store room," I said. "There's a door right ahead of us."

  "Do we dare to open that door?" Xavier asked. "Even I can smell the blood now."

  "We have to," I said. "Maybe some of it is demon blood." It was a long hope that we'd have an easy way to open a portal. I smelled nothing out there of the sort. It all smelled like Normal blood to me.

  I grimaced and opened the door.

  It was bad.

  The ATC had been here, all right, and they were still here, lying all over the floor in dark puddles. There were both male and female agents on the floor, dressed in their thick protective vests that hadn't done a thing to save them from whatever had done this. There must be a dozen agents and none moved. Some of the blood had already dried on the floor.

  I had never seen anything this ghastly.

  I wanted to throw up. At the same time that fact gave me some hope for myself.

  Xavier was lucky that The Pit was dark and he couldn't see what I could. From the looks of it, George couldn't, either, but he tucked his nose inside his shirt in a futile attempt to keep out the scent.

  "What did this?" I asked.

  "Did what?" Xavier asked.

  "You don't want to know," I said. I would close my eyes and see this for the rest of my life. I didn't like the ATC in the slightest, but even they hadn't deserved this. These people were scattered around the night club, around the bar and near the booths. A couple had fallen on the dance floor.

  "Is anyone alive?" George asked.

  "No," I said. "No one's breathing." I yearned to be Normal so I wouldn't have to see this. The blood was getting to even me. I knew why. I only took what I needed and I hated it every time. Whoever had done this had done it for the thrill. They didn't have to kill the agents to escape from here.

  "How many bodies?" Xavier asked.

  "About a dozen," I said. I sniffed again, but there was no scent other than blood. Most beings would have left a trace behind. "I think a vampire did this."

  "How do you know that?" Xavier asked.

  "The injuries are all on their necks. There's the lack of scent. A werewolf would have left some smell here. These people haven't been dead long."

  "I'll take your word for it," Xavier said.

  I took a bold step into the room, hand tight on my sword. I wondered if I could summon that death magic again, the green glow around my weapon, but I wasn't sure how that would affect our enemy. I had the feeling these people had simply been checking the place out and had gotten attacked. Perhaps one of Beatrix's people had stayed behind, waiting, but I couldn't imagine how they could have taken down twelve ATC agents. A taser lay on the floor. So did a regular pistol and even an automatic weapon. I tensed even more. They had taken down armed agents. I couldn't come close to that. Whoever had done this was stronger than me. I had only my strange magic on my side.

  But my fire magic could take out vampires. I had learned that with Russell Fox.

  I lifted my sword in front of me. Every muscle tensed. Xavier and George walked in behind me and I stepped over a body. The blood smell was overbearing now. It was destroying my hunger, something I did not expect.

  George nearly slipped but Xavier caught him. "This is disgusting," George said. I could hear his stomach heaving. He was about to be sick. "That wasn't just a wet floor I slipped on, right? Why did I sign up for this?"

  "Hold it down," I said. "We don't need to make this scene any worse."

  "I can't guarantee that," George said.

  A few quiet footsteps sounded from the balcony above and I snapped my gaze up.

  A woman walked along the balcony, holding the railing.

  I held my hand up to tell the others to stop. They did. I stood there, a body between my feet with ghastly bite marks on his neck. The man must have been only in his upper twenties and he had been ripped from his life way too soon. It was a thought that swirled through me and made me want to destroy the culprit. I was ready for a fight.

  The woman was skinny, graceful, and shrouded in a black dress with black gloves. A thin veil covered her face, leaving it a shadow within, but even so I could tell that she was stunning and would knock most men dead. She had her hair tied in a bun underneath her veil, so she wasn't a succubus. Besides, succubi didn't usually kill their victims.

  Russell Fox hadn't even done that.

  The woman grabbed onto the railing with the other hand and stopped. I had no doubt she knew we were there.

  I sniffed the air. Even through all the drying blood, I could tell that this woman carried no scent. She was too calm. Too confident.

  "Why hello, Alyssa. I wasn't expecting you here."

  Her voice was ancient beyond belief and so loud that Xavier and George must have heard it. It was the voice of a young woman and an old woman, strange and dangerous.

  "Huh?" I asked. The fact that she knew my name was bad news.

  She jumped down from the railing and landed on the floor with barely any sound. Xavier summoned a magenta light and my color vision kicked back in, revealing her in all her detail. Even through the veil, I could spot the red in her eyes. This woman didn't bother with colored contacts. She was a vampire, all right, and the cruelest one I had ever seen. There was something unforgiving about her beautiful face and her perfect skin, something that was pure evil.

  I pointed my sword at her, willing my fire magic to get ready. She didn't flinch. In fact, she didn't even seem to notice the sword. It was as if my weapon were a fly that she could swat away in an instant.

  "Who are you?" I demanded.

  The woman smiled. "The mother of all vampires," she explained. "I am ancient, from times before history. I have had many names through the ages, but most know me as Elizabeth Bathory."

  Chapter Eight

  Behind me, Xavier choked.

  It took me a couple of seconds to recognize the name she was giving me. "Excuse me?" I asked in horror. "Do you mean you're that crazy countess that used to bathe in the blood of young girls?"

  It just came out. I had heard the stories, but historians thought that Bathory was just a crazy Normal who wanted to be Abnormal, like those people who let themselves get bitten by vampires for a chance of gaining immortality. It was known that what she did was disgusting, but wasn't she tried and killed for her crimes? This couldn't be her standing here, smiling at us.

  I glanced at all the bodies and the blood again. Maybe the historians were wrong about Bathory just being a crazy Normal and very right about her love of blood. They'd been wrong about dragons being extinct, after all.

  "You are correct," she said. She spoke with a strange accent that I couldn't place. "I am much older than what they believe. It is I who spread my gift around the world in the first place. You have me to thank for your gift, Alyssa."

  I kept my sword pointed at her heart as terror, then rage, crept into me. If she was who she said she was, we were up for a very difficult fight.

  "Gee, thanks," I said, trying not to sound panicked. Behind me, Xavier kept the magenta light going. I
t made The Pit look even creepier. The glass around the bar shone and the dance floors were silent and barren in the flickering glow. "That's awesome. Let's clear something up. Are you a member of the Dark Council?" I could see it coming.

  "Of course," Bathory said. "You are intelligent."

  "Stop complimenting me," I said. There was no way I wanted to be associated with this monster in front of me. This was a real beast. Why else had she slaughtered all of the people lying on the floor? She could have taken what she needed and let them go. "Now answer this next question so we can get it out of the way. Am I descended from you, too?"

  I should have known that one of the Dark Council members was a powerful vampire. My own condition was one of the five parts that Thoreau wanted active for his rite. I already knew about it--I had since I was two--but I had never met the one responsible for it in the first place. No one knew how the turning gene had gotten into the human population, since it was spread all over the world, but this might be the answer standing in front of me.

  "Yes and no," she said. "I have never had children in the Normal sense, though I used to be Normal. It was thousands of years ago I discovered that I loved blood--the feel of it, the taste of it, everything. My dabbling in forbidden magic attracted the demon you now call Thoreau, who was more than happy to help me achieve the immortality I sought from young blood. Through a complicated rite and with his help, I became the first vampire."

  I shuddered, thinking about what that rite might have involved. I had even more reason to hate Thoreau now. He was partly responsible for me being this way. "Please don't describe what you did," I said.

  "I will not," Bathory said. She shifted, careful to keep her skirt out of the blood. "It is our secret. When I turned, I was invited to join Thoreau's Dark Council. Through the ages, I have continued to experiment with blood, including my own. I traveled all around the world, transfusing my blood into Normals, trying to create another like me. I failed, but I soon learned that when I bit the descendants of those I transfused my blood into, they turned. They became like me, only not quite as powerful."