I ducked into a dark alley. All I needed was one person… one person foolish enough to take the shortcut through the alley from the pub to the road on the other side. It was a cold and windy night, which I hoped would encourage more pub-goers to take the shortcut. No one would want to be out in this weather any longer than necessary. So far, no one had taken the bait. It was still relatively early in the evening. We figured there’d be less traffic earlier than later, when the pub closed. I couldn’t take a crowd—too risky. I needed to wait for someone who might dare to take the alley alone.
Then I heard footsteps… not from the direction of the pub. They were coming from the opposite way. I was glad I still had my flask. I could see well enough in the dark to make out the frame of a petite female, though her face was wrapped in a scarf. I debated for a moment whether to take the victim. They wouldn’t be drunk—but I also didn’t know the chances of finding another person who was all alone, and the craving was becoming unbearable.
I heard her heart beating quickly as she moved at a fairly brisk pace—most women, if they move through an alley, want to get in and out as quickly as possible. She wasn’t quicker than me, though. As she passed, I quickly grabbed her around the waist. She started to scream, so I ripped off her scarf, put my hand over her mouth, and looked her in the eyes—I had to catch her in my allure.
Her eyes went wide.
“Alice?” I asked, recognizing the girl who’d been my roommate at the sanatorium.
“Mercy…”
I cringed. She’d been nice to me—gave me her cotton balls, in fact… I didn’t want to hurt her. But if I did this properly, she wouldn’t be harmed. She wouldn’t remember this at all. “How about a drink?”
“I don’t drink,” Alice said.
I cocked my head. It was the first time, under my allure, anyone had rejected an invitation for anything.
“Take the drink,” I said, offering her my flask.
Alice smirked. “Tell me, Mercy. What does it feel like to die?”
“What do you mean?” I asked as my mind started to turn. She knew I was dead… which meant she knew what I’d become.
Alice quickly threw something over my head—I recognized the paralyzing feeling… bulbs of garlic. I could move, but not well. In a quick motion, she slammed a stake into my chest. “By the Order of the Morning Dawn, to hell with you, devil!”
I smiled. “That doesn’t work on me.”
“And I consumed holy water before coming to meet you. Your allure won’t affect me,” Alice said. “I didn’t expect the stake would work, but figured it was worth a try.”
Alice stepped back a pace. I heard another set of footsteps as a man in a black robe appeared. He held what looked like a cross…
“Really?” I asked. “Crosses don’t affect me.”
“This one will,” Alice said.
I looked back at the man; the cross now emanated a bright golden light. Sunlight. “By the Morning Dawn, demon, I vanquish you to…”
Before the man could finish, Nico grabbed him from behind and sank his fangs into the man’s neck.
A look of horror struck Alice’s face.
I reached up with all my strength and grabbed the strand of garlic hanging around my neck, and with a scream I tore it away. “Alice, Alice, Alice,” I said. “Such a shame. I really liked you, too.”
I grabbed the girl by the hair, exposing her neck, and drank her dry. Her body collapsed in the middle of the alley. “A pity,” I said. “To survive consumption, but to die so young. Shame on the Order for getting children to do their dirty work.”
“Mercy!” Nico shouted. “Come quick. There might be more.”
I ran toward Nico—but before I followed him, I had to see the face of the man, the one Nico had killed. I quickly pulled back the man’s hood.
I gasped in horror. “Dad!”
“Fuck!” Nico exclaimed. “It’s too late for him. Come, quickly.”
“But I… My dad… He…”
“Mercy, we have to run!”
I didn’t think. I couldn’t think. Too many thoughts. The pain, the betrayal of my own father… all of it running through my mind. But I could run. And following Nico, I ran long and far. We stopped somewhere in the woods.
“We have to get back to Moll,” Nico said. “If they followed us here, if they set us up, they know we were there. They’ll be going after her next.”
We ran again… It didn’t take us long, at our speed, to arrive at Moll’s house. Her door had already been kicked open.
“We’re too late,” I said.
Nico nodded. “We have to find her. Maybe she hid somewhere…”
And then I smelled it… the smell of burning… of flesh burning…
“No,” I said. “Do you smell that?”
We followed the smoke into the basement… and there, tied to one of the building’s supports was Moll’s corpse, blackened by the flames still billowing around her body.
I fell to my knees. “Moll…”
I looked at the ground. Someone had scattered salt in what looked like the shape of a sun… a half-circle, as if rising from the horizon. Beams of light also made from salt extended around it. “Is this…”
“The Order of the Morning Dawn,” Nico said. “They used the salt to nullify her magic… We need to leave. Someone will be back.”
“Wait,” I said. “I have to get my wand. And Moll’s grimoire.”
Nico nodded.
I quickly ran to Moll’s room and opened her chest of magical artifacts. I was surprised the Order hadn’t taken these with them, too. But they were probably acting quickly. I couldn’t take them all; even with my enhanced strength, the chest was too large, and we needed to move quickly. I rummaged through the chest…
“Found it!” I said as I retrieved my wand. It was wrapped in a cloth, a letter attached to it. I’d read it later. I continued rummaging through the chest. Her grimoire wasn’t there. Without Moll, retrieving her spell book was the only chance I’d have to advance any further in the Craft.
I had to find it. A part of the problem was that I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. I’d never seen it. Moll was always paranoid that it might fall into the wrong hands. A powerful book, she insisted. One full of necromancy and all kinds of infernal magic. Undoubtedly it contained the spell she’d used to bind my vampiric life to my brother’s soul.
Nico put his hand on my shoulder. “Mercy, we have to go.”
“But her book… her grimoire. I have to find it.”
“There’s no time,” Nico said as he took me by the hand. “The Order has to expect we’ll be here. It’s a risk to come here at all. If you can’t find the book, they probably won’t, either.”
I took a deep breath. I wish I’d known what happened to Moll’s grimoire. But as careful as Moll had always been with it, chances were she had it hidden somewhere safe, somewhere even I couldn’t find it. Maybe the letter she attached to my wand would tell me more. But now, we didn’t have time to even stop to read it. If the Order took down Moll, and they knew what they were dealing with in Nico and myself, they surely had a plan for us, too.
I nodded, squeezed Nico’s hand, and we ran.
11
WE NEEDED TO find cover before sunrise. Nico’s motel, where he’d stayed before, was out of the question. We couldn’t go anywhere we’d been before. Too risky. If the Order tracked us to Moll’s, if they found us outside the pub, there was no telling where else they knew we might have gone.
“We need to bury ourselves in the earth,” Nico said.
“Dig our own graves?”
“We have little choice. It’s the safest option. Just for one day…”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “My father… I had no idea he was a part of the Order.”
“I am sorry,” Nico said. “I had no idea it was him…”
“Don’t be sorry. I would have done it myself If I’d known.”
“Maybe you should read Moll’s lett
er.”
I unfolded the letter that Moll had left with my wand and read it aloud.
“Dearest Mercy. If you’ve found this letter, then I fear what I anticipated has already befallen us. And I fear, if such has occurred, you already know the truth. Your father was a member of the Order of the Morning Dawn. In truth, he was more than a member. He was the highest-ranking cleric in the region. But I must tell you more—you deserve to know the truth. It was no mistake that you and I met when we did. You were young, impressionable, and undoubtedly hurting from your father’s abuses.”
I cringed as I read those words. My father was, in fact, a difficult man. He’d laid his hands on my sister, me, and especially my mother more than once. Never Edwin. He’d never hurt Edwin… But we were women, and he thought we should be subservient, obedient to his demands. The slightest display of independence on our part would earn us a lashing. I’d never spoken of it before… and I could only wonder how Moll knew about it. I took a deep breath and continued to read, even as Nico placed his hand on my shoulder.
“I recruited you to the coven in order to undermine your father’s efforts. To perhaps punish him for all the witches he and his Order had burned, for all the lives he’d taken…”
Again I took a deep breath… How had my father done all this without my knowledge?
“But then you displayed a particular talent for our art. You were more than an average witch. You were gifted, I dare say, even more than I was at your age. At that point, I devised greater plans for you. Not merely to undermine the Order, but for you to one day replace me as our coven’s first witch. When you fell ill, I simply could not allow the unfortunate coincidence to derail such plans. So, I found a solution in the form of Niccolo the Damned.
“I knew from the start your chances of surviving the first few months of your transformation were slim. That you were caught feeding on your brother is also my own fault. I must beg your forgiveness for this deception. He awoke at my insistence. It was the only way to expedite what I knew must come to pass. Thereafter, I took a great risk. I exposed who I was to your father. But he did not know at all that I knew who he was. He’d always been fickle in his resolve, more moved by his own ambition than his genuine belief in the Order’s mission.
“I appealed to his desperation and offered what he thought was an opportunity to save young Edwin. And thus, you became what you are. Though I fear, in light of these events, my initial hope for you to lead the coven may no longer be possible. Instead, do what you must to survive. Grow stronger. Master your abilities—seek out other witches, if you must. I’ve sent my grimoire elsewhere for safe-keeping. I simply could not risk letting it fall into the Order’s hands. But there are other books, other grimoires. Seek them out, and destroy the Order of the Morning Dawn. May the Great Horned God guide you and preserve you unto this worthy task. Moll.”
I wiped a tear from my eyes. “I don’t know what to make of this… of any of this…”
“We can talk about it in the morrow’s night,” Nico said. “For now, we must take our rest.”
I nodded, slammed my fist to the ground with fury and rage. I dug my own grave… and a part of me never wanted to rise from it again.
Nico dug alongside me—a grave large enough for us both. And we covered ourselves with dirt. Nico wrapped his arm around me as we lay beneath the earth. I shivered—not on account of the cold, but out of anger, out of desperation, and out of sadness.
I was angry at Moll—she’d set these events in motion. But I understood why she’d done it. More than that, I was angry at my father. And I prayed, not aloud, but in my mind—I’m not sure if it was to God, or to the Horned God, or even the devil… perhaps to Baron Samedi… I didn’t much care which deity heard me, I only hoped that one of them might…
I begged to whoever might have heard me that my father would burn forever in a bloody hell.
12
FIVE DAYS LATER
Before we left town, much to Nico’s chagrin we broke into the mortuary and retrieved Edwin’s ashes. With my father dead, too, there was no one willing to pay for his burial. So the standard course of action was to cremate the dead. I imagined they’d intended to bury his ashes with my father. I wasn’t about to allow that. I know it was just a symbolic gesture, but the idea of my father resting with his dearest and favorite child at his side wasn’t something I could allow. Not to mention, Edwin was damned on my account. I felt like I owed him something—keeping his ashes would remind me that my new existence came at a cost. I’d never take anything for granted. It was the only thing I kept from my human life, apart from my wand.
That was all I needed from my old life—everything else I was ready to leave behind.
Nico and I went on quite the tear through the country as we made our way south. It suited many vampires, Nico told me, to be nomads… moving place to place. I was beginning to understand why. No worries about being found out. Feed one place, we’d be miles away the next. Long gone before anyone grew the wiser—before the word of an attack made its way back to the Order or other rogue hunters. It was the rogues we’d have to worry about in New Orleans.
The Order was more of a New England thing, tied to the old English colonies. And in New Orleans, superstition ran high—people believed in the supernatural and, more importantly, were more inclined to turn a blind eye to it. Within reason, of course. We still had to keep our killings to a minimum. For while we enjoyed more freedom to roam about in New Orleans, the vodouisants who lurked here in the shadows, who had their own domain beneath the city, had other ways of dealing with us if we became too much a nuisance.
The vampire alliance with the Voodoo community was no doubt aided by the fact that Nico himself had been involved with the late Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau. A woman of great power who found vampires alluring, though not on account of our natural abilities to enthrall people by their passions. Rather, the allure she possessed was something more academic, an intrigue. She hoped to understand us. After all, Baron Samedi was a part of their pantheon, a Loa many of them revered.
Nico also had a place here—a place he called Casa do Diabo, the Devil’s House. He got a kick out of the name—a particular vampire, one he’d inadvertently turned some years before, had lived there, couldn’t control his bloodlust, and killed his own brother. He’d also, according to legend, gathered an odd collection of human body parts which he’d buried at the base of a lime tree in the courtyard gardens just outside the house. Now, apparently, the vampire who’d done it—Ramon—was staked just beneath the surface of the ground surrounding the very tree he’d so often fertilized with human remains.
Nico had freed Ramon off and on through the years. Though while he was now several decades old since his turning, he’d never completely conquered the craving. He was good for a few days, maybe even a week or two, but it wouldn’t take long until bodies would start piling up again in the courtyard. Inevitably he’d find himself staked again beneath the lime tree.
When Nico came to Rhode Island at Moll’s behest, he’d staked Ramon for good measure. Why not just eviscerate his heart and be done with it? Apparently Ramon was also quite useful. No one, Nico said, knew his way in and out of the back alleys or could weasel his way into more prime “feeding” spots than Ramon. And apparently he was a great decorator. A Frenchman, he brought with him a refined sense of style from the old world. And Nico found the things of the old world calming.
When I saw the inside of Casa do Diabo, I couldn’t disagree. The place was elaborate—more gold than one might imagine. Not everyone we lure, Nico said, must become a meal. We could use our allure to draw favors from many of the well-to-do. We could influence politicians. And Nico, it seemed, had quite a network in New Orleans at his behest.
Something drew me to Ramon the first time I saw him. Even with grave dirt still hanging from his clothes, and his shirt torn through where the stake had been, Ramon was exceedingly beautiful. And by the way he looked at me, I was pretty sure he reciprocated the at
traction.
“Mercy,” Nico said. “This is Ramon. Ramon, meet my newest progeny, Mercy.”
“A pleasure,” I said as I extended my hand.
Ramon took my hand delicately and kissed it. If I had any blood in my body at all, I would have blushed.
“Ma chérie,” Ramon said, his accent thick and seductive. “Perchance you’d give me the privilege of showing you around our glorious city.”
“I’d love that, Ramon.”
Nico narrowed his eyes. “Ramon, can I trust you to stay out of trouble?”
“But of course, Nico!”
“No dismemberment, understand?”
Ramon feigned offense at the suggestion, pressing his hand to his chest. “What do you take me for, a monster?”
Nico smiled and looked at me. “You two go have fun. Be smart. And if he gets too out of hand, Mercy, a stake to the heart will do the trick.”
“Noted,” I said, smirking. “I presume you’ll be back before sunrise.”
“I will,” Nico said. “I have many business affairs in the city I simply must attend to. I fear a pile of issues have likely cropped up in my absence.”
“Vampire business?” I asked.
“Prostitutes,” Nico said. “It’s quite the lucrative venture in these parts.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Nico shrugged. “We drink human blood, and you have no qualms about that. Don’t pretend for a moment you have moral objections to my line of work.”
I smiled. “No objection at all,” I said. “Presuming they are all treated well.”
“Monsieur Nico treats the girls with the utmost respect,” Ramon said. “They live in transcendent luxury.”
“In exchange for being whores,” I added.
“An acceptable exchange,” Nico said. “The girls in my employ were mostly beggars before I found them. And should any desire to leave, they are free to go at any time and take their earnings with them.”
Gates of Eden: Starter Library Page 79
