The Vampire Fate (Dark World: The Vampire Wish Book 4)

by Michelle Madow

  I was starting to realize why the witches had wanted to stick Geneva in that ring all those decades ago and throw the ring into a cave that no one was supposed to ever be able to access.

  “I believe you,” Raven declared.

  “You do?” I was shocked at how easily she’d trusted me, given the circumstances. “Why?”

  “I’m good at reading people.” She shrugged. “Plus, your story is so far out there that I sort of have to believe it. If you were trying to lie to me, you would tell me something normal—something I would be more likely to buy into. It’s either that, or you’re all crazy. And given that I’ve seen some of your powers already, I know that’s not the case.”

  “I suppose so.” I smiled slightly, since she had a good point. “I truly do feel awful about what you went through. I didn’t intend to hurt innocents—especially not any humans—but I’m still the one who made the wish. So it’s my fault. For that, I’m so, so sorry.”

  Beyond telling us her name, Susan had barely said a sentence this entire time. And she’d only told us her name because Mary had compelled her to do so.

  I assumed she was still in shock.

  “She wasn’t like this when she was first brought to the prison,” Raven said, glancing at Susan. “She was confused, but she spoke. Then she saw the vampire—Princess Stephenie—suck all the blood out of that squirrel, and something broke in her. She hasn’t been the same since.”

  “What she saw goes against everything she’s ever thought possible,” Mary said. “It makes sense that she’s in shock.”

  “It does.” Raven nodded, her eyes strong and determined, and sat straighter. “And you say you’re on our side. So—what do you plan on doing to make this up to us? Because after everything we went through, you owe us a lot.”

  “I suppose we do.” I sat back, thinking about my answer and trying to put myself in their positions.

  After I’d found out about supernaturals, what was the one thing I wanted most of all?

  I’d wanted my regular life back. I’d wanted my family back, and to return to my regular routine of school, gymnastics, and homework. I’d wanted to go to college—University of Florida had been my top choice, but of course, I had some backups in mind as well. I’d wanted to compete in my college gymnastics team. I hadn’t been sure what I’d wanted to major in yet, but my parents had told me that was okay—I could take all the general requirements to get them out of the way and hopefully figure out my major from there.

  All of that had been ripped away the moment vampires had cornered me and my family on that ski vacation over a year ago, killing my parents and brother and kidnapping me to become a blood slave of the Vale.

  If we hadn’t been on that exact ski trail at that exact time, my family would still be alive, and I would be starting the second semester of my freshman year of college.

  Because my family had been killed, I could never get my life back. But Raven and Susan’s families hadn’t been harmed because of their kidnappings.

  They could return to their regular lives.

  They just needed to forget about everything that had happened to them since they’d been taken by Geneva.

  “I have an idea,” I said to Raven, who was watching me expectantly. “Would you mind if I spoke with Geneva and Mary privately first to make sure it’s possible?”

  “That’s fine.” She glanced around the tiny cabin. “Where should we go?”

  “No need to go anywhere,” I said, and then I turned to Geneva. “Create a sound barrier around me, you, and Mary so the humans can’t hear us.”

  “Done.” Her voice was clipped and icy.

  “They can’t hear us?” I needed to make sure before continuing.

  “Correct.”

  “Good.” I turned to Mary, who was much more receptive than Geneva. “I think we should wipe their memories of everything that’s happened to them since being kidnapped.”

  “It makes sense,” Mary agreed. “I can compel them to forget everything since then. But they’ve been gone for so long that we’d have to replace their memories with something else—a reason why they’ve been gone. A potion would be more effective than compulsion to replace their memories with new ones.”

  “I assume you can make this potion?” I asked Geneva.

  “I’ll need the right materials, and the potion will take a few hours to brew, but yes,” she answered.

  “We have all the materials you’ll need in our apothecary,” Mary told her. “I can call on one of our witches to bring you there.”

  “Perfect,” I said, and then I turned to Geneva, needing to make it official. After the stunts she’d pulled so far, I needed to be extra careful about how I phrased my commands. “You’re to go with Mary’s witch to the apothecary and immediately create the potion to erase all of Raven and Susan’s memories from the moment you captured them and replace the memories with stories we’ve approved. Once the potion is complete, you’ll immediately return here and give it to us. You’ll go nowhere else but the apothecary and this cabin.”

  “My witch will remain in the apothecary with you the entire time you’re brewing the potion,” Mary added. “Once the humans have taken the potion, I’ll have witches of the Haven return them to their homes.”

  She didn’t say it directly, but the implication was clear—if Geneva went off-plan, Mary would find out, and there would be consequences.

  “Once they’re home, you’re not to get near either of the humans ever again,” I told Geneva. “Understood?”

  “Yes, master.” Her tone was laced with sarcasm.

  “Perfect.” I turned back to Mary, ignoring Geneva’s attitude. “I doubt they’ll like what we have in plan for them, but I truly believe it’ll make them happier in the end.”

  “As do I,” Mary said. “I’ve been alive for centuries. In my lifetime, I’ve compelled away memories of the supernatural from many humans. None of them ever want to lose their memories, but it makes most of them happier in the end.”

  “Most?” I asked. “What about the others?”

  “There are always a handful that spend the rest of their lives searching for something they know is there, but can’t quite remember,” she said. “It’s occasionally gotten them into trouble. But that’s the exception, not the rule. And the rule is always the safest bet when it comes to decisions like this one.”

  “It’s probably best that they don’t ask any more questions,” I said. “Can you compel them to go to sleep?”

  “I can,” she said. “But sleep is another one of those things that’s best handled by a potion—not by compulsion. Don’t worry, though. I’ve got it covered.” She pulled out her phone, tapped on the screen a few times, and held it to her ear. “I need you to bring two doses of sleeping potion to my cabin right away,” she said to whoever was on the other side of the line. “I give you permission to teleport straight inside.”

  A few seconds later, a woman appeared in the center of the cabin. She had dark hair and skin, and she wore the same all-white outfit as everyone else in the Haven.

  “Bring down the sound barrier,” Mary told me, and I repeated the command to Geneva, who did as I asked.

  “Two sleeping potions.” The witch held up the vials and smiled at Mary. “Just as you asked.”

  “Sleeping potions?” Raven’s eyes went wide with alarm. “You’re giving those to us?”

  “Relax,” Mary said to the humans, her voice full of compulsion. “Stay where you are. When I hand you your vial, you’ll drink it with no complaint.”

  She walked over to the witch and took both of the vials. When she handed a vial to Susan, the older woman uncapped it and drank the potion just as instructed. Before she had a chance to fall, Mary caught her mid-air and laid her down on the bed. With her vampire speed, it took her only a few seconds.

  Then she took the second vial and handed it to Raven.

  The girl took the vial as she was compelled to do, but she was slow, as if trying to fight off e
ach movement. “You betrayed me,” she said to me, her eyes burning with rage as she uncapped the vial and drank the liquid inside.

  She blinked a few times, as if trying to fight off the haze of sleep, but she succumbed to it a few seconds later.

  I caught her and laid her on the bed next to Susan.

  After all, Mary wasn’t the only one here with super speed.

  Guilt wracked through my body as I looked at their unconscious forms. Should I have given them a choice? I suspected Susan would have been willing to forget everything she’d been through, but Raven… I highly doubted the stubborn, fiery girl would have ever agreed.

  “This was the best choice.” Mary placed a hand on my shoulder, bringing me back into focus. “They’re humans. You and I both know that humans never fare well in our world.”

  “We do.” I nodded, since it was true. The only humans I knew of who knew about the supernatural world were blood slaves to the vampires.

  I would never wish that life upon anyone.

  Mary turned away from me, focusing on the witch who’d brought the sleeping potion. “Escort Geneva to the apothecary,” she said, back to business now that the humans were asleep. “She has a memory potion to brew.”

  Annika

  “Geneva is hurting,” Mary said the moment her witch and Geneva were out of the cabin.

  “She’s pissed at me.” I crossed my arms, irritated at the witch for the attitude she’d been giving me all morning. “I have no idea what I did to her, but she’s definitely pissed.”

  “You killed Laila,” Mary said, and then she looked at me, her eyes widening. “You didn’t know,” she said. “Did you?”

  “Know what?” I asked, since obviously I didn’t.

  “Let’s sit down.” She returned to her place on the couch, and I did the same, giving one more glance to the humans who were sound asleep on the bed. “Now,” she said once we were situated. “What do you know about Geneva?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Just that she’s from the time of the Great War and that she’s the most powerful witch in the world. She helped the vampires and witches in the war against the Nephilim.” I paused, the word Nephilim holding a lot more weight now that I was a Nephilim.

  Had I always been a Nephilim? Or had something happened to me in the throne room—when I’d driven that stake through Laila’s heart—that had turned me into one?

  “I’ll answer all of your questions about your kind soon,” Mary said, apparently sensing my desire to know more. “But now that Geneva’s not here, we must discuss her first.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, resisting the urge to bombard Mary with a million questions at once. Because she was right. With Geneva occupied with making the memory potion, now was the time for me to learn all about this snarky, powerful witch that I’d literally had in the palm of my hand since touching the sapphire ring in that cave.

  “What more do you know about her?” Mary prodded.

  “After the Great War, the witches became scared of Geneva because of her power,” I said. “They couldn’t kill her, so they banded together and created the spell to lock her inside the ring. Then they tossed the ring into the Crystal Cavern, where no one was supposed to be able to get it. Until me, of course.”

  “Yes.” Mary smiled. “Until you.”

  “I guess that’s all I know about her,” I said. “She helped me come up with the plan to get into the palace so I could try to kill Laila, but beyond that, she hasn’t mentioned anything about her past.”

  And I hadn’t asked. At the realization, I felt terrible.

  I’d been so consumed with what I’d been doing that I hadn’t bothered to ask Geneva anything about herself. Of course, with all the snark she’d given me since the moment she came out of that ring, I didn’t get the feeling that she wanted to tell me anything about herself, but still. I should have tried.

  “Do you know why the witches felt the need to lock Geneva inside the ring?” Mary asked.

  “They were afraid of her power.” I knew that much—it had been one of the first things Geneva had told me when she’d come out of the ring.

  I’d also already said that, which left me wondering where Mary was going with this.

  Only one thought came to mind—there was a lot more to this story than I knew.

  “They weren’t afraid of her power,” Mary said. “They were afraid of what she was trying to do with it.”

  “What was she trying to do?” I asked.

  “She was trying to become immortal,” Mary said. “So she could be with Laila forever."

  Annika

  “Geneva… and Laila?” I blinked, since I must have misunderstood.

  Geneva had been helping me in my plan to kill Laila.

  Hadn’t she?

  “I see you’re confused,” Mary said. “To put it simply—back when they were fighting in the Great War together, Geneva and Laila fell in love.”

  “But I wanted to kill Laila,” I said, stunned that my initial feeling after what Mary had told me had been correct. “Geneva was helping me kill Laila.”

  I said it, but at the same time, I was starting to realize that maybe everything hadn’t been as clear-cut as I’d originally thought. The entire time in the palace, Geneva had reason after reason about why I needed to wait to kill Laila. She hadn’t even seemed to have put much of an effort into figuring out how I was going to kill Laila.

  I’d assumed the delay had been because killing a vampire queen was a difficult thing to plan.

  It was only now starting to dawn on me that much, much more had been going on beneath the surface than had originally met the eye.

  “Geneva was using me to get herself closer to Laila,” I whispered. “She never intended for Laila to die.”

  “Correct,” Mary said. “Geneva is extraordinarily dangerous. If that ring had gotten into Laila’s hands…” She shook her head, apparently not wanting to voice the possibilities aloud.

  “That was her goal, wasn’t it?” I held the ring tightly on my finger, as if that could make it stay put. “She didn’t want me to have the ring. She wanted Laila to have the ring.”

  “Maybe,” Mary said. “Geneva’s tricky—I can’t say exactly what her goal was. But before she was cursed, she was determined to become immortal.”

  “Couldn’t Laila have just turned her into a vampire?” I asked.

  “She could have,” Mary said. “But then Geneva would have lost her magic—and she’d be a lower rank than Laila. She wanted neither of those things. She wanted to be an immortal witch.”

  “Does that even exist?” I asked.

  “Not that anyone knows of,” she said. “But that didn’t stop Geneva from trying to create a potion for immortality. You see, the story you heard is only partway true. The witches were intimidated by Geneva’s power, yes, but that’s not why they locked her in the ring and cursed her for eternity.”

  “What did she do?” My stomach dropped in anticipation.

  “While experimenting with inventing an immortality potion, Geneva needed to test out her creations,” Mary began. “So she kidnapped other witches—less powerful witches who lived in small covens within the human world—to use as test subjects. She kept them in the dungeon of the Vale’s palace and made them drink her creations. It killed most of them, and those who survived were left in so much pain that they were driven crazy by it and eventually had to be put down.”

  “Oh my God.” I sat there in shock, my insides twisting with horror at what Geneva had done. I almost didn’t believe it, except that I knew what she’d done to Raven, Susan, and Princess Stephenie.

  Geneva clearly had no limits to the terrible things she would do to get her way. I could see now why she and Laila had fallen for each other. And I’d trusted her. I’d thought she was helping me.

  I felt like the biggest idiot ever.

  “It was horrible,” Mary agreed. “After each failed attempt, she kidnapped more witches to experiment on. But the witches refused to allow h
er to continue. They couldn’t kill her—they couldn’t even reach her. So they had to curse her from afar, which is an impossible task, even for the strongest witch.”

  “But they did it,” I said, my fingers still tight around the ring. “How?”

  They used their Final Spell to lock Geneva inside the ring.”

  “Final Spell?” I tilted my head, since I’d never heard the term before. “What’s that?”

  “A witch’s magic is their lifeblood,” Mary explained. “The stronger the witch, the more magic they have. Think of the magic like a well—a witch can use their magic until nearing the bottom of the well. Once they get too close to the bottom, they need to take a break to recharge so the well is full again.”

  “So the stronger the witch, the deeper the well,” I said.

  “Exactly.” Mary nodded. “Witches naturally know how much magic they can use, and when to stop using it. But occasionally, they have the need for a spell so strong that it requires all their magic at once. If they choose to cast that spell, they deplete their magic entirely. Without their magic, they can no longer live. Thus, when a witch uses all of his or her magic at once like that, it’s called their Final Spell.”

  I shivered at the thought of anyone feeling so desperate that they chose to do that to themselves.

  “It took the strength of seven witches—each a leader of his or her coven—to band together and cast their Final Spells to trap Geneva inside that ring and send the ring to the Crystal Cavern.” She glanced at the ring on my finger when she spoke of it, and continued. “They sacrificed themselves to make sure no other witches became one of Geneva’s experiments. Since the ring was inside of the Crystal Cavern, they assumed it would remain there until the end of time.”

  “Except I was able to enter the Cavern,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because of your Nephilim blood,” she said. “Thousands of years ago, the Crystal Cavern was blessed by an angel as a place for the Nephilim to safely store dangerous magical objects that couldn’t be destroyed. The cave is enchanted so only those with Nephilim blood can leave the cave unscathed. Anyone else who enters will be cursed to die.”