Gates of Eden: Starter Library

by Theophilus Monroe

  Annabelle! Hush! I’m trying to play it cool!

  I smiled widely. “Yeah, every day this week… four days, thirteen hours, twenty-five minutes until my date with Mikah! Just like that, counting down the days, hours, and minutes.”

  Annabelle! Stop!

  I grinned. “I don’t think she wanted me to tell you that.”

  Mikah shook his head. “I haven’t been counting the minutes… but I know exactly how she feels.”

  “All right,” I said. “Just give us a minute. Wait until you see her. She’s looking gorgeous.”

  Mikah rolled his eyes. “You two share a body… she looks just like you.”

  “Exactly,” I said, smiling smugly. “But before we do this, you think you’ve got a good remedy to try for the headache afterwards? So far I haven’t been able to avoid it unless we swap the reins in Guinee.”

  Mikah pulled a vial of something from his pocket. “I think so. Based on how you healed in Guinee, if you can infuse this with a bit of your magica and down it as soon as you take back over, it should at least take the edge off.”

  “Should I even ask what’s in it?”

  “It’s something we collaborated on,” Roger interjected. “Mikah’s been on the reservation all week working on this with me. Something of the best from both of our traditions.”

  I almost blushed. “You know, that’s pretty sweet of you… even if it is for Isabelle’s sake.”

  “It’s for both of you,” Mikah said.

  I nodded, though I couldn’t help but feel a few butterflies churn in my stomach. This was Isabelle’s date, but as much as I wasn’t about to admit it to her… I was starting to look forward to it.

  To be continued…

  Book 2: Grim Tidings: https://theophilusmonroe.com/series/gates-of-eden-the-voodoo-legacy/

  Book 2: Grim Tidings

  THE VAMPIRE’S BODY turned to smoke and dissipated into the portal that Beli, my soul blade, had cut into his heart.

  Another one, behind you! Isabelle screamed from within the confines of my mind. I felt her magic build up in my brow, connecting my and Isabelle’s will to an oak that stood to my right. The tree responded, and its roots shot up from the ground, plunging through a second vampire’s back and into its ashen heart, intercepting the vamp before he could pounce onto my back. I quickly struck him with my soul blade for good measure. My blade wasn’t just a blade—it was an elemental spirit, the spirit of a gatekeeper dragon. When I struck the undead, the blade seemed to know where to send them, channeling their essence through a temporary portal into the land of the dead.

  “Good call,” I told Isabelle, my soul-bound familiar whose possession had the convenient side effect of giving us some pretty kick-ass abilities. Combined with my own newly acquired Voodoo abilities, we were a fairly formidable force.

  I looked across the field and spotted Ashley running my direction.

  “Did you get them all?” my older sister asked.

  “Pretty sure. I mean, Isabelle can’t sense vampires. So your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Wait!” Ashley shouted. “Behind you!”

  I quickly turned as another vampire leapt out of nowhere—a fury in his red, glowing eyes reflecting what I assumed was his hunger for human blood. I gripped my soul blade with both hands. The vampire hesitated.

  “What are you waiting for, bloodsucker!” I shouted.

  The vampire smiled widely, flashing his elongated fangs.

  “Have you ever heard of orthodontics?” I asked. “You should get that shit fixed.”

  “Brian?” Ashley asked, interrupting my attempt to provoke the vampire. When they hesitate, I’d found, a few well-timed verbal jabs was usually all it took for their rage to take over, which usually meant a charge directly into my soul blade.

  “Wait, you know this guy?”

  “This was Brian… you remember?”

  “Junior prom Brian?” I asked, still keeping the snarling vampire in my sights.

  “Yeah, he tried to get into my pants. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  The vampire shrugged.

  I shook my head.

  “Not going to get any empathy from me, asshole. Unlike my sister, I went to an all-girls school.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Vampire Brian asked.

  I shrugged. “Girl power?” I charged the vampire, my blade held tightly in both hands and aimed directly for his chest.

  He quickly parried to the right. I spun around on my left foot, swinging my blade around in one hand and slicing him right between the legs.

  Black blood shot from his crotch as a look of horror struck his face before his entire frame dissipated—my soul blade redirecting its victim to hell.

  “That’s what you get for messing with my sister,” I said.

  “He must’ve been newly turned,” Ashley said. “What a shame.”

  I raised my eyebrows, detecting the sarcasm in Ashley’s remark. “How do you know how recently he was turned?”

  “Saw him at our homecoming a couple years ago,” Ashley said. “He was his typical self—still a misogynist, flirting with every single girl in our class who showed any skin. Either way, he’s been a vampire for less than two years.”

  “All these vamps seem new. Driven by rage and hunger. Not like the one we staked last year.”

  “I agree,” Ashley said. “But it still makes no sense. I’ve renewed our wards three times this month. They shouldn’t lose their strength so quickly.”

  I shrugged. Ashley had spent the better part of the last year on the Choctaw reservation learning Shamanism from our friend—now her boyfriend—Roger Thundershield. She was pretty good at it. Good enough that Roger had said there was little left he could teach her. So it didn’t make much sense that her wards kept failing. And even more odd, it was unclear what they were trying to find on our property. Don’t get me wrong, more than one supernatural showdown had occurred on the plantation through the years. But I couldn’t think of anything here that would draw in the vampires.

  One more… to the left.

  I turned, and Isabelle was right. One more vampire, a female this time, lurked in the shadows. I quickly re-summoned my soul blade and charged after it. She tried to dodge out of the way, but these vamps were still newbs. For the first month or two after reawakening they tended to be consumed by hunger. It made them fearless. It also made them clumsy and careless.

  “Was that four this time?” I asked. “Seems like they always come in threes.”

  “Someone is sending them here,” Ashley said.

  I nodded, releasing Beli—my soul blade—and allowing him to dissipate back into the ether.

  “I think you’re right… but it doesn’t make sense. Whoever is sending them should know by now that we can handle three or four at a time without much trouble. Maybe he’s just trying to distract us.”

  “Probably… but from what?”

  I shrugged.

  “This shit started about the same time everything went down at the Academy. It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “You’re right… when I brought Baron Samedi back, he said that his reawakening might bring out the vamps, but I thought we’d handled that.”

  Baron Samedi was what the Vodouisants call a “Loa”—a kind of demigod with powers dedicated to a particular cause. They are neither pure good nor pure evil—usually a combination of the two, kind of like most humans. This one was the Loa of death, basically the Grim Reaper. I’d spent most of my life afraid of this particular Loa—but when we needed him to put another Loa who was even nastier than he was in his place, I had traveled into Guinee to reawaken him. But like death itself, there’s a dark side and a light side to his essence. Whenever his dark side walked the earth, there was a risk that any who’d been infected with his aspect in the past would become vampires—blood and soul sucking creatures that dwell in darkness. But we’d locked Baron Samedi back in the realm of Guinee. My classmate, Nico, had fashioned a Voodoo d
oll using some dark magic and basically gave himself up to ensure that the Baron wouldn’t return. Over the last six months or so I’d tried to find Nico, tried to figure out exactly what happened… but so far I hadn’t had much success.

  The whole ordeal basically left the headmaster of the Voodoo Academy dead—or at least as dead as a Loa can get. In truth, I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to Papa Legba, but I knew his absence meant that the whole Academy was temporarily defunct until a new headmaster could be appointed. The Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, was overseeing the project and intended to reopen the Academy no later than was necessary once she investigated everything and was sure that courses were ready to resume in good order. If anyone knew what was going on with these vamps, it would be Marie Laveau.

  “I need to call Mikah,” I said.

  “Isabelle probably wants to see him. You realize it has been more than two weeks since you let them go on a date together.”

  Yes, Isabelle said. I’d like to see him…

  I didn’t often let Isabelle take the reins—but I recently allowed her to take control of our body so she could date Mikah, one of our classmates at the Voodoo Academy and also a member of College Ogoun, one year our senior. He was a good guy, no doubt. But having to play the third wheel in my own body while Isabelle and Mikah did their “thing” was always a bit awkward.

  “That’s not why I need to call him,” I said. “But you’re right. I did promise Isabelle I’d be more… understanding.”

  Oh that’s right, you promised… I’d almost forgotten!

  I rolled my eyes at Isabelle’s sarcasm. It used to be that I never let her take the reins, because whenever I took my body back over—which could happen quite easily if I saw anything that triggered intense emotions—I had the worst headaches that basically made it impossible to function. They usually lasted several hours, sometimes as long as a day. We remedied that issue not long ago—Mikah, who was a great Voodoo herbalist, had worked with Roger to combine his insights with those from Shamanism to create a pretty powerful remedy. For the most part it worked. I still had headaches afterwards, but they were more of an annoyance now than anything else. That is, so long as I had a vial of the good stuff to take within the first few moments after regaining control over my body. If I waited even five minutes, the headache would rage too strongly. At that point, the remedy was rendered useless.

  “So why do you need Mikah, then?” Ashley asked.

  “Well, his mom is Aida-Wedo… a part of the Academy. He seems to have inside knowledge on all the politics going on there now. You know, advantages that come with being the child of a Loa.”

  “Do you think he can get us an audience with Marie Laveau?”

  “We can try… but that might be a bit above his pay grade. I mean, she’s the fucking Voodoo queen.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to try, right? I mean, if she’s really investigating everything that happened, it’s kind of weird that she hasn’t even asked you for an interview.”

  I shrugged. “She must not be very close to figuring it all out.”

  “But if she knew anything at all, she’d be speaking to you. None of what happened would have made sense at all if not for you and your abilities.”

  “I suppose that’s true…”

  My thoughts were interrupted by the tune of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”—my most recently chosen universal ringtone. I retrieved my phone from my pocket.

  “Hello?”

  “Miss Mulledy?” a female voice said on the opposite end of the line.

  “Yes… this is Annabelle Mulledy.”

  “My name is Dorothea Collins. I’m the new head nurse at St. Louis Manor.”

  I cringed a little. The previous head nurse had been like family to us. Always gave Ashley and me hugs every time we came to visit. But she’d retired a few weeks ago, and while we try to make it over to the manor at least once a week, we hadn’t made it for a while. All these vampire attacks had us on edge and, truth be told, we hadn’t really left the plantation much.

  “Yes, I know who you are. They told us you’d be joining. We meant to get up there this week. Is everything okay with Mom and Dad?”

  “Well, I don’t want you to panic. But they aren’t here.”

  I gripped my phone tightly. “What do you mean they aren’t there?”

  I looked at Ashley, who looked dumbfounded by what I was saying.

  “It isn’t uncommon for adults in their condition to try and leave the facility. Sometimes they think they’re going home. Living out a memory from earlier in their lives. We almost always find them.”

  “Almost?” I asked.

  “We always find them, eventually. Sometimes the police will bring them in. But usually it’s the family who knows them the best, can look at places that might be meaningful to them, places they might be likely to go.”

  I sighed. “All right, we haven’t seen them yet. But my sister and I will be there in ten. I assume you can get us into their apartment?”

  “I can do that, Miss Mulledy.”

  I hung up the phone.

  “Sounds like our vampire problem will have to wait…”

  I shook my head. “If these vampires are tied to the Baron’s essence, it might be connected.”

  “What do you mean?” Ashley asked.

  “When I talked to Baron Samedi in Guinee, before bringing him back, he said anyone he’d ever bitten while in his red aspect… would probably become a vampire at some point after his return.”

  “You don’t think… I mean, it’s been months since all that shit went down, and they’ve been just fine. Well, as fine as they could be. And there’s no reason to believe the Baron got out of Guinee.”

  “But when they were bitten, back when our family was attacked… that bite was connected to the zombies that carried the Baron’s aspect. If what he says is true, and if he really is back somehow…”

  “Or it could just be two dementia patients wandering off,” Ashley said.

  I nodded. Ashley was right, of course. This wasn’t all that uncommon. The nurse had said it happened fairly regularly. But ever since the Baron told me that might happen, I’d been waiting for this particular shoe to drop. Something in my gut told me this was something more… something I feared, because if they’d been turned, there’d be only one thing I could do… and it wasn’t something I wanted to think about.

  Bloody Hell

  Copyright © 2020 by Theophilus Monroe.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover art by Deranged Doctors Design

  https://www.derangeddoctordesign.com/

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information : www.theophilusmonroe.com

  1

  PROLOGUE TO THE Legacy of a Vampire Witch

  Present Day

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been to hell, though on this occasion it was by my own insistence. It was also the first time I’d been here in the flesh. And I went with the girl who would later become the Voodoo Queen. It was a delicate relationship between me and Annabelle Mulledy; we hated each other, but we also needed each other. It was in her interest that I continued to deem her an asset, of more use to me than not.

  They say that hell is all fire and brimstone. I’m sure parts of it are like that, but I never went there. I was more interested in the cold, dark part of hell. The place where cursed spirits roam, including the spirits of presently-staked vampires—and, thanks to a witch, my brother.

  “Edwin!” I cried out, hoping my long-dead brother’s spirit might respond. He had been dead for
more than a century and the better part of another. But it was his soul, cursed by the remains of my vampiric heart, that kept me alive.

  A wraith darted past my face, the cold chill of the vampire spirit frosting my cheek. This was the part of hell where vampires went when they were staked. I’d sent more than my share here myself. After what had happened to me, I could never bring myself to burn their hearts—the only way to ensure a vampire never comes back.

  I was the only exception to that rule. More than once, hunters who had heard of my exploits tracked me down and staked my chest. The horror on their faces when I laughed and sank my fangs into their necks after they’d staked me was the real prize. It isn’t the blood itself that we vampires crave—it’s souls, and human souls cohere in their blood. The more terrified the soul is when I feed upon it, the better it tastes.

  A second wraith struck me in the chest. I extended my wand and zapped it with sunlight. You can’t kill the dead, but sunlight on a vampire’s wraith makes hell itself seem like a vacation. He wouldn’t fuck with me again. Annabelle didn’t know I was also a witch—and with her, I was playing my cards close to the chest. I quickly pocketed my wand. Thankfully, she hadn’t seen it. Annabelle was here on an errand of her own, a fool’s errand my sire had effectively blackmailed her to complete. If she knew the full reason I was here, she’d hardly comply. And we needed her. She was the only person we knew who could cut a literal gate into hell. It was the only way I could come here in the flesh.

  In my human life they’d given me the name Mercy. Mercy Brown. I still used the name—my first name, anyway. I relished the irony of it. In my human life, before I was turned, I’d been a witch. Only recently did I resume my practice of the Craft. As much as I relished the flavor of human souls, the dark arts gave me a different kind of thrill. Another source of power. And nothing tastes better on my palate than power. Besides blood, of course.