by Zoe Winters
Hadrian’s pulse slowed; time was running out. For the briefest moment, Angeline thought about letting him go. What if he wasn’t the right priest for her? He’d seemed almost resistant, even with all of her hypnotic powers thrown into the mix. He might be hard to tame. But she’d searched for so long already.
It would be a waste to let a fine specimen like Father Hadrian die and decompose. Worse than a mortal sin, even.
Angeline tore into her own flesh and held the priest’s mouth open, allowing the blood to flow into him. It was so poetic. Only moments ago he’d been inside her. Now she was inside him. It would link them forever and give her power over him—at least for a time. She vowed that by the time she was finished with him, by the time he got old enough and strong enough to break free, he wouldn’t want to. He’d want to be hers forever.
Her own sire had only wanted a toy to play with, someone to abuse and break, but Angeline wanted a mate. Surely Hadrian would see that in time. He’d come to understand that it was all for a greater purpose. He’d love her, and she’d find a way to love him back. That ability had to still be in there. She just hadn’t used it in a while.
It took only a few moments for her blood to revive him enough for his throat to start working of its own accord. She breathed a sigh of relief as his mouth formed a suction around the wound, and he drank with the desperation of a man who wanted to live.
That had to be a good sign.
***
Hadrian found himself bathed in a bright, yellow light. It was a light of judgment, the kind no evil could pass through. No one had to spell this out. He just knew. It was knowledge like the sun is bright and people breathe air—self-evident. A short man stood behind a golden podium in a white robe. In order to see over the top, he stood on a small ladder.
Hadrian looked down to find himself wearing his clerical clothing. It was the only normal thing in a sea of pure weirdness. He spun in a slow circle, taking in the vast, circular golden room with the many doors; he moved curiously toward one of them. His hand wrapped around a doorknob, ready to explore the environment further when a throat cleared behind him.
“Father Hadrian? I’m afraid you can’t venture beyond this waiting area.”
“Am I dead or am I dreaming?” They were the only two options he could think of.
“Neither. You’re transitioning into something else.”
The man didn’t have to say any more. The fuzzy memory became sharper. Angeline. Hadrian winced as memories of what they’d done—what she’d done to him—drifted through his mind. He had the vaguest sense of having drunk her blood, as well as the vaguest sense that it had been the best thing he’d ever tasted. Something was wrong with that thought.
“So this is where you go when you die?” He knew how things worked, but his training hadn’t included an afterlife diagram.
“It’s a sorting area, so to speak,” the man said.
Hadrian thought that was an odd reply. “Then why am I the only one here? Don’t many thousands of people die every day? Where are they?”
“You humans all think the same way. You’re so used to being bound in place and time, you have no idea the vastness of what is out there. Yes, many others are dying and encountering their own version of this room. Do you think we’re so poorly organized that we’d have you all in the same place, waiting indefinitely to be dealt with? Besides, this could all be happening in your mind, couldn’t it?” The man stepped down from the podium, collecting a large book that rested open upon it.
As he passed, Hadrian saw the book had his name on it, and he wondered if the stories inside were mostly good or bad.
“There’s nothing for me to do here, so I’ll be on my way. I may as well take a break before my next assignment.” The short man grimaced. “It’s such a waste of time when they do this to me, but you know… for a while, it can go either way. But the choice has been made, and there’s nothing I can do for you now.”
His gait was uneven as he shuffled across the floor to one of the golden doors and slipped a key inside the lock. As he pushed the door open he turned back to Hadrian. “Don’t try any of the doors. We have better security than it might appear on the surface. Oh and… when you get back there, try not to think you’re too invincible. Some day we might be having another conversation, and it would be a shame to have your evolution slowed by this detour.”
“Wait!” Hadrian’s voice echoed off the walls. His plea was useless. The door shut and the lock turned. Was this all happening in his mind? It must be.
Most likely his body was somewhere in or near the church, waiting for this transition to complete and his essence to come back. So where was he? Locked inside his head, while he thought he was locked inside this too-bright room? Or was he somewhere else entirely?
Only a few moments passed in existential crisis before a thick, black smoke formed in the center of the room near the podium. As the smoke grew thicker it made a hissing sound, then it started to spin like a cyclone until it transformed into something that looked solid enough—a demon.
The demon was a large, shiny black, and strangely dressed like Father Hadrian. The beast was larger than him by almost a foot in height and who knew how much in breadth? His eyes glowed a fiery red, and inside his mouth were the nastiest, sharpest teeth Hadrian had ever seen.
The priest felt around in his pockets for a cross, to no avail. He held a hand up to the demon and started to chant.
“Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursio adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio…”
The demon laughed. “That won’t work on me. I’m you.”
What? Father Hadrian was beginning to lean toward dream. Perhaps he’d gotten a bad burrito from the strip. Maybe the part where Angeline had revealed herself as a vampire and bitten him had been a dream as well. And the sex. The sex had been a dream. It was just one long dream. None of this could be real.
The hulking monster barreled toward him, his footsteps echoing in the vast space. Ordinarily, Father Hadrian wasn’t the type to run from a fight. Even as a priest, he could and had stood his ground—not that most had wanted to mess with him having both an intimidating presence and God on his side. But he had no weapons now, and the one demon-fighting ritual he knew appeared to have no effect, so he ran.
The doors went on forever even though that couldn’t be true since the room was a circle. He could see the whole thing and yet it expanded as he moved through it, growing bigger and more impossible to travel its circumference with each stride he took.
Each door he encountered was locked. He banged on a few, yelling for the old man to let him in. He was like a gladiator left alone in an amphitheater with an angry lion. But the demon didn’t look angry. He looked amused. In fact, he no longer chased Hadrian. He just stood near the podium, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I could chase you down, but it’s too schizophrenic for me. You’re smart. You’ll figure this out and get tired of trying to bust down the gates. The rules won’t be ignored or changed for you. You aren’t that special.”
Hadrian paid him no heed and continued to go from door to door praying someone might have left one unlocked. There were an uncountable number of doors, growing ever more uncountable by the minute. One had to be unlocked. It was a statistical certainty.
“Okay. I changed my mind. I am chasing you down. I’m not spending three days in here like this with you. It’s like watching a tiny puppy chase his tail.”
Hadrian turned in time to see the demon charging toward him. He felt himself slammed against the door he’d tried to get through. The priest expected the demon to tear him apart, but he was still standing, and the demon was gone.
Guess again.
It was his own thought in his own mental voice but sounded suspiciously like something the demon would say. Hadrian looked down at his hands and could see his human hands, but also the coal black hands with dark gray claws. Both seemed merged into one being, one laid on top of the other.
F
ather Hadrian feared possession and wondered why the exorcism ritual had no effect. Then he almost seemed to feel a sarcastic eye-roll inside himself.
I’m YOU. Don’t you get it yet? This is the infection. You’ve been infected, not possessed. This is just how a human mind processes the change.
Then, something turned over and clicked, and new information was suddenly available to him.
Vampires can’t be in the sunlight. Regular glass needs to be blacked out, but a dark hole or windowless room is preferable during the day. Stakes kill. Holy water and crosses are problematic but not fatal. Garlic: myth. Mirrors: reflection, yes, but you want to avoid them; it shows the demon, too.
Vampire fact after vampire fact filled his head, until, exhausted from the overload, he curled into the fetal position on the floor and closed his eyes, shutting out the vision of the doors and the yellow light.
***
One more night before Hadrian rises.
Angeline had been careful to avoid drunks and druggies while feeding. It was important she keep her wits about her if she was to find a good first meal for her mate. She felt the warmth still in her cheeks from her last meal as she wandered the strip.
She’d considered a few showgirls. With her dark one’s recent religious repression, a showgirl might please him very much. Then her jealousy had won out. No, she couldn’t be that generous. Besides, she had her heart set on a witch, but how would she find one?
It wasn’t as if witches were listed in the yellow pages. The closest thing to a witch that one could easily find in Las Vegas was a fortune teller. Many of them were fakes, but some truly had the gift and other gifts as well. It was the kind of power she wanted to give Hadrian to make sure he started out strong. She wanted him under her power, of course, but she hadn’t created a minion or a servant. She’d made someone to love.
Angeline looked up. Madame Tam’s Fortunes flashed in neon pink, giving off a humming noise like the light was about to go. She pushed a blue-beaded curtain aside and moved into the comfort of the shop.
A raven gave her a dirty, beady-eyed look, growing upset inside his cage. A familiar perhaps? Surely a therian wouldn’t allow himself to be kept in a cage, unless it was for show and he could come and go as he pleased.
As if on cue, the bird unlatched the door and flew out, landing on top of Angeline’s head, making clicking sounds and a deep, throaty rattle. Whether a shapeshifter with a human form or just a common bird, the thing gave her the creeps.
“Get off!” Angeline said, trying to knock the bird off her head.
Another beaded curtain in the back parted, and a young blonde woman walked in. “Henry, enough! That’s not how we treat patrons, here.”
The raven swooped back to the top of the cage where he perched, giving Angeline the evil eye and raising a fuss and squawking angrily before settling.
“I’m sorry about him. He can be a very trying bird, I’m afraid. I’m Tamara.” The woman held out a bejeweled hand. There was a ring on every finger. When Angeline took it, Madame Tam flinched, then tried to cover her reaction. A look passed between the raven and the woman—a private conversation, perhaps?
“Would you like your fortune told?”
Angeline nodded, absently. She tried to get inside the other woman’s mind, but a solid shield was in place. This one had power—quite a lot of it. Maybe she was playing with fire. As old as Angeline was, she wasn’t confident she could enthrall the girl, though the blonde couldn’t be older than twenty-two. How much power could such a young thing have? Angeline just hadn’t been in the company of a witch in a while; that was all.
“Won’t you have a seat?” Madame Tam gestured to a large, high-backed chair. The chair was an awful lime green with the stuffing coming out of it.
Angeline settled herself in the offered seat. The table between them was glass, covered with antique lace fabric and a gleaming crystal ball.
“I can scry, read your palm… or I could do your cards.” Tam was draped in multi-colored shawls that covered a much simpler white dress. Without the accessories, the simple shift would no doubt make her look like a medieval peasant. Once Angeline had her enthralled, she’d get rid of the shawls and jewelry and have her scrub her face clean of cosmetics.
“Cards would be fine,” Angeline said, becoming increasingly unnerved by the woman.
“Good choice. It’s what I’m best at.”
The vampire watched as the girl retrieved a small, wooden box from a nearby shelf. The box had esoteric carvings, and Angeline felt the power curling off it. She watched the woman, noting her delicate, elfin features. She was far too pretty, and Angeline was glad Hadrian, being new, would lose control and kill her. The last thing she wanted was to compete with a pet for attention.
Tamara glanced up, and Angeline forced a sweet and unassuming smile to her lips. The raven made the creepy gurgling sound again in the back of his throat. Fucking birds.
The crystal ball was carefully placed on the shelf, and the box with the cards inside was put in its place. The cards were wrapped in red silk and seemed quite old. “I’ve had these since time began, it seems,” the woman said.
“You’re barely more than a child,” the vampire replied.
A grin teased the corners of Madame Tam’s mouth as she unwrapped and shuffled the deck. “Here. Cut them any way you like, then hand them back.”
Angeline took the deck, made a few cuts in it, then passed the cards back to the fortune teller.
Tam laid them in a pattern on the table face down, then one by one flipped them up. In the center of the spread was a card with a skeleton that said “death” across the bottom.
The women’s eyes met, and Angeline tried to keep the guilt off her face. Wasn’t the reading supposed to be about her? There was no way the witch could know what she planned.
“Don’t worry. The death card almost never means death. It’s more a card about change, usually.”
The dread bird started making a fuss on top of his cage again.
“Henry, I said that was enough!”
What will she do if I can’t enthrall her? It had been a while since Angeline had faced off with a witch, back around the turn of the century. She’d narrowly escaped. Her hair had been singed by one of those electric purple balls some of them could conjure.
Start with something small, something you can back out of if she’s onto you.
The vampire took a deep breath. “Maybe I would be more comfortable having my palm read, instead.” She held her hand out, hoping the woman would take the bait. If they were touching and she could establish eye contact, she’d stand the best chance.
Tamara looked down at the cards, divining their meaning, no doubt unmasking Angeline for what she was, then she looked up. “All right. If that’s what you prefer.” She gathered the cards, wrapped them in the silk, then placed them back inside the box.
Angeline extended her hand, and Tam took it, skin pressing against skin.
“You have an unusually long lifeline,” Tam said. She looked up, smiling. “See? Maybe you shouldn’t have worried so much about that card.”
Angeline stared deeply into her eyes. “You should put the bird away. It makes me nervous.”
Madame Tam’s nose crinkled, her eyes drawn in confusion and Angeline thought she was caught, but then the woman’s face blanked out, her eyes staring but not seeing anything. “Yes. I should put the bird away.”
The raven fussed and flew around the room.
“Henry! Get in the cage.”
An argumentative squawk. The fortune teller spoke something to the bird in a language Angeline didn’t understand, perhaps a spell, because he appeared irritated but went inside and settled on his perch. Tam covered the cage with a dark piece of fabric then turned back to Angeline looking blank as ever.
“Come with me.” Angeline held out a hand, and the girl took it and followed her out of the shop, the perfect, pliant doll.
***
Hadrian’s eyes snapped op
en to darkness. There was a shroud or blanket wrapped around him—and the rich scent of damp earth. Suffocating. I’m suffocating. He let out a howl as he struggled in the shroud. Then he remembered: he didn’t have a true need for air. Something different animated him now.
Relax. Everything is fine.
His soul hadn’t been able to move on. It had been trapped, waiting to reanimate his body, waiting for his body to be able to house it again. But it wasn’t just his soul. There was something else. A darkness tainted him. Demonic instincts and abilities had knit themselves around his soul. And knowledge, so much knowledge.
Father Hadrian hadn’t been sure what would happen if he tried to exorcise a demon while being turned. He wasn’t even sure which demon he’d been attempting to exorcise: his own or Angeline’s. He didn’t know if the way his human soul and demon soul had merged and blended were the normal way of things, or if his ritual had caused it.
He felt like one whole thing. Not evil, not good, but something that could go either way. He’d been… awakened. Good and evil were passing shadows in the face of the greater whole. He just hoped his chanting had done what he’d believed it would. It wasn’t the standard use of the exorcism ritual, but the spirit of his intention had been the same—to gain power to protect himself from a demon.
Angeline grew impatient on the surface. Her blood was part of him, but he didn’t have the mindless compulsion he knew he was supposed to feel toward her. So far, so good.
Hadrian ripped through the fabric and tunneled up through the dirt with a strength and fluidity that surprised him. When he broke the surface of the ground, and fresh, clean air filled his lungs, he coughed, overwhelmed by how sharp and loud and crisp everything was. His senses were so heightened, he wanted to go away and be in a simple quiet room for a few days, just to get his bearings. But he couldn’t afford to do that right now; his freedom was on the line.
