“Well,” said the younger guy, who sounded a bit offended now, “I can’t confirm that unless I see her and perform the requisite spells myself. The Parliament won’t take your word for it.”
“They’ll just have to,” said Dad. “I wasn’t under their authority when I was younger and I’m certainly not under their authority now. If they want to know about my daughter so badly, tell them to come and see her for themselves.”
“I’m not sure where that is supposed to go in the report I’m supposed to file.”
“It goes where every other stupid thing they want you to document goes,” said Dad. “Now, are you going to leave or did the Parliament give you permission to use force if I refuse to go along with your request?”
I put a hand over my mouth to stifle my gasp. I knew Dad could be strict and even tough when he needed to be, but the way he spoke to this Parliament guy was very different from how I had heard him before. I wondered what else, aside from his magical heritage, that Dad was hiding from me.
I heard a chair’s legs scrape back against the floor and then the younger guy said, “Very well. I will inform the Parliament that your daughter is injured, but unlikely to transform into a vampire, and that there is therefore nothing to worry about. I will also inform them that you were of no help in this investigation.”
“Tell them whatever you want,” said Dad. “I don’t care.”
“Fine,” said the younger guy. “But if the Parliament tells me to return, then I will, regardless of what you think.”
“So be it,” said Dad. “Now, do you want me to show you the door or not?”
“No need,” said the young guy. “I can see myself out.”
A bright flash of blue light suddenly filled the hallway, making me cover my eyes to avoid getting injured. Once the blue light passed, I lowered my hand and saw that the hallway was the same as before, though it was very quiet at the moment.
Then I heard footsteps stomping down the hall and the door was suddenly forced open, making me stagger backwards and almost fall on my behind in surprise.
Standing in the doorway was Dad, who wore an expression of surprise on his middle-aged features. “Tara? What are you doing back so early? I thought you were going to spend the rest of the day training with Lucius.”
“Uh, we finished early,” I said, leaning on the foot of the bed for support. “Who were you talking to?”
Dad frowned. “Just someone from the Sorcerer Parliament, a new kid I’ve never seen before. He came to investigate the vampire attack on the church on the Parliament’s orders. He wanted to make sure that you hadn’t been bitten.”
“Oh, that’s nice of him,” I said. “I didn’t know the Sorcerer Parliament cared about me.”
“They don’t,” said Dad flatly. “However, the Sorcerer Parliament does keep a close eye on vampire attacks in public places. This is partly to deal with any new vampire converts who are created during these attacks before they can get too powerful, but also to ensure that knowledge of vampires and magic doesn’t make it out to the wider world. I’m sure they were more concerned with this attack possibly revealing vampires to the world than with your wellbeing.”
“Oh,” I said. “But why did you tell him that I didn’t get bitten? I was bitten. I’m a half-vampire.”
“I know, but the last thing the Sorcerer Parliament needs to know is that you’re a half-vampire,” said Dad. “Trust me, it’s for the best.”
“But why?” I said. “What, exactly, would they do if they found out that I’m a half-vampire?”
Dad looked me straight in the eyes. “They’d kill you, plain and simple.”
“They’d … kill me?” I said. “Why? I haven’t harmed anyone yet.”
“It’s got nothing to do with whether you’ve harmed anyone or not,” said Dad, shaking his head. “It’s an old law, one of the oldest laws created by the Sorcerer Parliament. Half-vampires are to be killed on sight. There’s even a reward for whoever manages to kill one, a very handsome monetary reward that could make the person who got it rich enough to never have to work again.”
I gaped. “I didn’t realize just how much the Parliament hates half-vampires.”
“Half-vampires are considered unnatural freaks of nature,” said Dad. He sighed and leaned against the door jamb, folding his arms across his chest as he did so. “Like vampires, sorcerers generally don’t view half-vampires as people. It’s believed that half-vampires need to be killed as soon as they appear, before they can join with vampires, because half-vampires’ unique access to human magic combined with their vampire powers makes them too dangerous to live. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t think any half-vampires have been killed in over three hundred years due to their practical nonexistence, but the law is still on the books and will definitely be enforced if a half-vampire should appear.”
I gulped. “So that’s why you didn’t want to tell them about me.”
“Right,” said Dad. “That law never used to bother me when I was younger, but now … well, now it does, for obvious reasons.”
I felt touched that Dad had gone out of his way to protect me from the Parliament, but on the other hand, that meant I would need to be even more careful than before. If any sorcerer found out that I was now half-vampire, then I could be killed out in the open, if I understood Dad correctly. Between the sorcerers and Lord Taranas, it was starting to look like I might have to become a hermit and never leave Dad’s house again if I wanted to make sure I didn’t get killed.
Thinking of Lord Taranas reminded me why I came here in the first place, however, so I said, “Well, I’m glad you’ve kept me safe, but I have some important information to give you about Lord Taranas that I learned while training with Lucius.”
I explained my vision of Lord Taranas to Dad. I left out no details whatsoever. Just like when I told Lucius about it, I could remember it all clearly, which was how I knew it was no dream, because I never remembered dreams that well.
By the time I finished my story, Dad looked as if I had just told him that God didn’t exist. He put a hand on his forehead and sighed deeply, closing his eyes and grimacing.
“Are you okay, Dad?” I said. “Because if you aren’t—”
“No, I’m fine, Tara,” said Dad, taking his hand off his forehead and lowering his hand. “It’s just … this is bad news, even worse than I thought. I thought at first that Lord Taranas was after me because of my past, but knowing that he deliberately targeted you for transformation is even worse.”
“If it helps, I still don’t know why he did that,” I said. “And I have no intention of joining him at all.”
“I’m glad you’ve said that, Tara,” said Dad, “but this is still bad news, especially with the knowledge that Taranas is after the Vampire Sword. I should have expected it, given Taranas’ obvious goals, but it’s still a very bad surprise.”
“What are we going to do about it, then?” I said. “Run and hide until Lord Taranas gives up?”
Dad shook his head. “No, that won’t work. Taranas is not the kind of Vampire Lord to give up easily. He’d find us no matter where we hid on the planet. We’ll just have to get ready to defend ourselves, which means learning self-defense techniques.”
“Lucius is already teaching me how to fight, though.”
Dad snorted. “He’s teaching you vampire self-defense techniques, but I don’t think that will be enough if Taranas comes after you. Vampires can kill other vampires, certainly, but sorcerers have developed far more efficient ways of killing vamps. Follow me and I’ll show you one of the better ways to deal with them.”
With that, Dad turned and left the room. I followed him out into the hallway, squinting slightly at the light, but it didn’t hurt badly enough to make me want to go back into my room. I did look back over my shoulder, though, wondering about Lucius and how he was doing and hoping I would see him again soon.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The attic was dark, dusty, and abandoned. It had b
een years since I had last been up here—since the end of high school, at least, when I helped Dad move some of my stuff up here for storage when I moved out of the house—but when Dad and I climbed the steps up into it, I found that it looked much the same as it did all those years ago. Large cardboard boxes covered in thick layers of dust stood everywhere, broken up by the occasional piece of furniture covered in white sheets. The window was covered with a curtain, but Dad, perhaps out of respect for my vision, didn’t open it. Instead, he pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and used its beam to help him navigate the dusty old attic.
“Dad, what are we doing up here?” I said, looking around the attic in confusion. “You said you were going to show me how to kill vampires, but I don’t see anything other than a box labeled ‘TARA’S STUFF’ and my old guitar case.”
“I put it up here a long time ago,” Dad replied as he shoved boxes aside, obviously searching for something, “and it should still be here. That is, the way to kill vampires. Unless your mother sold it, but I don’t think she did, because I made sure she knew how important that thing was to me and what I would do if she did that.”
I couldn’t help but smile when Dad said that. Back when she was alive, Mom had a tendency to go through the attic about once every three months and sell anything she found up there either in a garage sale or online. Usually, Mom tried to stick with things we definitely didn’t need, but every now and then she’d accidentally sell something Dad or I needed and we would end up getting into arguments with her over it. She always tried to justify it by saying that we could just buy a new one or that we needed the money, but she never explained how I was supposed to use the fifty dollars she got for my old guitar to buy a new one when guitars usually cost hundreds of dollars.
Despite that, I had a lot of fond memories of Mom selling stuff she found in the attic or sometimes the basement. Maybe it was because she was dead, so I focused on the good times I had with her rather than the bad. Also, Mom’s habit of selling stuff in the attic usually helped clear out the attic and make it look less like, well, an attic. Dad had clearly allowed the attic to go back to being a glorified storage room, which was somewhat depressing.
Shaking my head, I said, “Can I help find it, Dad?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Dad without looking at me. “I think I should be able to find it all on my—Ah! Here it is.”
I walked over to where Dad stood and looked down at what he’d found. Sitting underneath several smaller boxes was a large wooden box about three feet long. It looked old and seemed to be made out of solid oak. It looked like something from maybe the 1800s, if not earlier. A solid metal lock kept it closed shut, covered in the same thick dust which covered everything else.
“What’s this?” I said, looking at Dad.
“Don’t you remember?” said Dad, looking at me in surprise. “It’s my Treasure Chest. Remember? You used to be so curious about it when you were a kid.”
Now I remembered. Back when I was a kid—about nine or ten—I had been going through the boxes in the attic with Mom, helping her find things to sell, when I came across this chest. I had asked Mom what it was and she’d told me that it was Dad’s ‘Treasure Chest,’ that it contained a lot of Dad’s old treasures from his childhood. She wouldn’t tell me what they were, however, because she had said that that was Dad’s choice, but Dad wouldn’t tell me, either. He would just tell me not to worry about it and to forget about it and move on.
And I would have, if I hadn’t overheard Dad telling Mom an hour later not to touch the Chest or sell any of its contents online. Then I began making covert trips up to the attic as regularly as I could, trying to open the Chest to find out what was inside, but I never could open it, not even when I, uh, ‘borrowed’ Dad’s power tools. I could never find the key to the lock and even all of the lock picking video tutorials I looked up online failed to help me figure out how to open it.
After a while, I gave up trying to open it and went on with my life. Had Dad not shown it to me today, I probably would have forgotten about it entirely.
“Yeah, I remember,” I said, nodding. “It looks pretty much the same as it did when I was a kid.”
“Well, that’s because it hasn’t been moved or touched since then,” said Dad. “And I would have liked to keep it that way, but given this week’s turn of events, I’m afraid I’m going to have to break out Domination again.”
“What?”
“You’ll see,” said Dad. “Step aside. I’m going to open it and I don’t want you inhaling a bunch of dust, though I’m not sure if it would actually hurt you or not.”
I retreated a few steps from the Chest as Dad knelt in front of it. I expected Dad to pull a key out of his pockets and insert it into the lock, but instead Dad waved his hand in front of the lock and the lock popped open silently.
“Wait, you mean you had magically enchanted the lock to be unbreakable?” I said, understanding dawning in my mind. “That’s why I couldn’t open it when I was a kid.”
“Exactly,” said Dad. “Given how it kept even you from opening it, I think we can both agree that it was a smart move on my part. There’s no better security system in the world than magic, especially when you’re trying to keep something hidden from people who can’t or don’t know how to use magic.”
“You’ll have to show me how to use that spell sometime,” I said. “That could help me protect my apartment better.”
“Sometime,” said Dad, “after I show you what’s inside this Chest. “
Dad hefted the lid open. It must have been heavier than it looked, because Dad grunted when he opened it. And when it did open, it sent dust flying everywhere, causing Dad to hack and cough as he covered his mouth. I covered my mouth and nose, too, but it was probably unnecessary because I stood outside the range of the dust.
“Here we are,” said Dad, putting his hands into the Chest. “Just what I was looking for.”
Dad lifted something long and heavy out of the Chest. The object was wrapped in a thick blanket, but it was vaguely sword-shaped, though it could have also been a staff of some sort.
“What is it?” I said, looking at the object as Dad turned around to face me.
“An old friend of mine,” said Dad, looking down at the object in his lap with an expression of nostalgia. “Let me show you.”
Dad quickly unwrapped the coverings around the object, until he had stripped it completely, revealing the most beautiful silver sword I had ever seen in my life. The sword was long and sharp, but even in the dim light of the attic it shone with a light that I wasn’t sure was entirely natural. The sword had strange symbols running along its hilt, though they might have been spells of some sort.
But even though I thought it was an incredibly beautiful weapon, when I saw it, I also felt fear rise within me. It was the same kind of fear I experienced whenever I saw a snake in real life, which was causing my fight or flight response to kick in. Half of me wanted to pick up the sword and admire its construction, while the other half of me wanted to take that sword and destroy it.
“What is that?” I said, looking at the sword with a mixture of awe and fear.
“My old vampire-hunting sword,” said Dad. “I called it Domination. I killed a lot of vampires with this blade, including a Vampire Lord toward the end of my career. I used a lot of different weapons during my career, but Domination was my first and best weapon, always by my side even in the most dangerous situations.”
I said nothing to that, because my ‘flight’ response was growing stronger the more Dad talked. I wanted to run out of not just the attic, but the whole house, and put as much distance between me and that sword as I possibly could. But I stood my ground, keeping my fears in check, though that was growing harder and harder with each passing second.
Dad suddenly looked up at me, a questioning look in his eyes. “Are you afraid of Domination, Tara?”
“A-Afraid?” I said. “Well, maybe a little.”
Dad nodde
d. “I’m not surprised. Your vampire half must be reacting very violently to the mere presence of Domination. Silver is one of the deadliest substances to a vampire, so I imagine that your vampire half must want to either run away or destroy it outright. Doesn’t help that Domination is also a holy blade, which makes it extra good for killing vamps.”
“A holy blade?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“A Polish Catholic priest friend of mine blessed it one time when I was in Poland,” said Dad. He held the blade up, running a finger along its flat as gently as if he was petting a kitten. “That’s how it can kill Vampire Lords just as easily as Newborns. I wasn’t the only vampire hunter who used a silver sword in my day, but mine was the best bar none.”
“That’s … interesting,” I said. “But why did a Catholic priest bless a sword wielded by a Protestant?”
Dad smiled. “That’s a story for another time. For now, I want you to use Domination.”
I stepped back instinctively. “You want me to use your awesome old sword?”
“Sure,” said Dad as he stood up. He held Domination toward me with the kind of reverence he usually reserved for the Lord’s Supper. “By learning how to use Domination, you will be able to defend yourself more effectively from vampires than anything else you learn to do. I even still have the sheath.”
I eyed Domination warily. “If silver is so toxic to vampire skin, then won’t I hurt myself if I try to use Domination? What good is there in having a weapon that hurts you?”
“It’s true that any vampire who might try to use Domination would harm themselves, but you may be different,” said Dad. “Being a half-vampire, you might be able to wield silver-based weapons without harming yourself. At the very least, it’s worth a try, wouldn’t you say?”
I bit my lower lip. Every self-preservation instinct in me was telling me to run. It took every ounce of willpower I had to stay where I was, but I didn’t think I could gather more energy to actually go forward and touch the sword.
On the other hand, if what Dad said was true, then Domination would be an incredibly useful weapon. I might not even need Lucius’ training anymore, though given how ignorant I was of my vampire abilities, that was probably just me being delusional.
The Vampire Sword (Vampire Sorceress Book 1) Page 9
