by L.H. Cosway
I wince in disgust, but say nothing. I find it difficult to imagine Theodore having sex, he’s a man but there’s something gender neutral about him. He seems to want a reaction and I am not going to give it to him. I feel like asking him if his style is inspired by one of the cabaret clubs, because the frilly shirt and coat tails are a little over the top. But I refrain. I have no idea what kind of man I am dealing with.
After a minute Theodore begins speaking again. “Do tell me dear child, what is your name?”
I feel like laughing, because with all of his magic he can cause buildings to rise out of the earth, keep a room frozen in time, yet he cannot figure out what my name is.
“Tegan.” I answer, not bothering to lie.
“Tegan,” he repeats, “do you know it has been almost nineteen years since I last came across a female of die Äußerste Macht? What a surprise it was to find you standing there, among the crowds at my homecoming.”
I swallow down what feels like a hard lump of rock in my throat. “And what did you do to the last woman when you found her?” I ask, though I can hardly bear to hear the answer.
“I hunted her down. She had been evading me for some time,” Theodore answers. “I finally tracked her to some woods in a back water town out in the suburbs. She gave a good chase, I’ll admit that,” he pauses, a reminiscent smile on his lips. “But I caught up to her eventually. I kept her for a while, and then, well, quite inevitably she died.”
What Theodore says about chasing the woman down in some woods strikes me. It sounds exactly like that vision of my mother, she had been running through trees in the dark when someone had caught her. Had it been Theodore who killed her? This is all so confusing, and I still don’t understand why Theodore could want me. My blood is only of value to vampires, perhaps he plans on selling me off, or holding me to ransom.
“And why are you so interested in women like me? What value do we hold for you?”
“The liquid that runs in your veins is not only of use to vampires you know,” he answers. “It is also a highly powerful magical substance, and when used in a spell it can achieve almost anything the caster wishes.”
I suddenly recall the fact that Rita had needed my blood in order to cast the spell that would banish Theodore to another dimension. Funny, I hadn’t thought to ask her why at the time. I need to get out of here and get to her before it’s too late.
“Can I ask you one thing?” I say, turning to face him head on.
“Of course, my little diamond,” he replies with false tenderness.
“What was the name of that woman, the one you caught in the woods?”
Theodore pauses a moment to think. “Well now, let me see. I think it was Doreen? Dorian? I’m sorry, I don’t quite remember.”
Tears fill my eyes and my hands begin to shake as I continue to stare at him. “Dora,” I whisper.
Theodore slaps his hand down on his thigh. “Why yes, I do believe that was her name.” He stops then, and a sickening satisfaction fills his eyes. “She wasn’t any relation of yours, was she?” he chimes, his nostrils flare as he savours my heartache.
I jump up from my seat, grabbing a tray of drinks out of the waiter’s hands and throwing them directly at Theodore. “She was my fucking mother, you evil monster!” I scream, and my voice seems to echo through the room. The spilled wine and smashed glass quickly falls off of Theodore, not leaving a single stain or scratch. I let out an almighty wail, but none of the party goers seem to hear me at all. They continue to chat and enjoy themselves, the pianist over in the corner continues to play. Theodore has not stopped watching me since my outburst, and his expression is absolutely blank, empty.
Finally he blinks, and his usual smug grin returns. “You should think about where you direct your anger, my dear. The next time I will not be inclined to overlook such behaviour.”
Then he calls on the waiter to clean up the mess on the floor. No more than a minute later Theodore tilts his head to the side, his ear sticking out almost as though listening for something far away. He rises and goes to peer out the window. A quiet expletive escapes his lips before he turns back around.
“I am afraid we must cut our enjoyment short tonight,” he says, addressing me pointedly. “We have some unwanted guests on the premises.” His eyes turn purple for a moment, and when he lifts his right hand, making some bizarre gesture, I am suddenly outside in the freezing cold, sitting on a seat on the big wheel as it makes its rotation around and around. I look down just in time to see a group of bodies crowd around the front door of the mansion, one person uses a gun to shoot open the lock, and then they disappear inside.
I can’t make out who they are as I’m at the very top of the wheel, but I hope to God that Rita is among them. She’s the only one with a chance of outwitting Theodore. A yacht floats on the shore just off the island. I wonder who it belongs to, although the style has Antonia written all over it. Then nothing happens, all the action is going on inside of the mansion, and unfortunately I can’t see through walls. The icy air cuts into me as I’m still only wearing the slinky velvet dress Theodore so creepily put me in.
My skin goes even paler than usual, a stark white against the black sky as I rotate on the gigantic wheel. I shake as the cold penetrates deep into my body and I begin to count the rotations in an effort to calm myself down – and heat myself up. One. Two. Three. Four. I rub my hands over my arms to the beat of the count.
I get as far as forty seven rotations when I begin to simultaneously count the turnings of the merry go round below me. Twenty more rotations of the big wheel and twenty five of the merry go round pass before anything happens. Every window in the mansion smashes outwards, the glass flying in shards, and a blinding multi coloured light pours out of them like a dazzlingly harsh rainbow. It’s both beautiful and terrifying.
Then a stream of people come running out the front door, the rainbow vanishes and is replaced with a horde of flying rabid crows that caw and snap and try to bite those they are chasing. The crow must be Theodore’s totem animal or something. The smaller crows are even more frightening that the giant one. They seem crazed. Hungry.
As the wheel turns and comes closer to the ground I can finally make out who is here. Ethan, Lucas, and Delilah. Rita, Gabriel, and Finn. Antonia and her bodyguards, along with some of the other nameless vampires who had been present in the club last night.
“Rita!” I shout as she runs toward the big wheel, though she hasn’t yet seen me on it. She looks up and her eyes go wide in shock at the sight of me. The kind of shock that accompanies the face of a person who thought you were dead. She must have come to some bad conclusions when I hadn’t shown up to meet her. She has a heavy looking bag around her shoulder as she continues her way over to me. The others use what weapons they have to fight off the crows.
Finn is crouched over by the chair-o-planes, a bow and arrow stretched out in front of him as he shoots at the small flying monsters. I watch as one of his projectiles flies straight into the centre of a crow’s chest, his shot perfect. Dru and Antonia’s other bodyguards shoot at the birds with their guns, while maintaining a protective circle around the evil bitch of a predator they are paid to keep alive.
Ethan and Lucas swing swords at the creatures that come at them, and it’s a more efficient way of killing than I would have thought. Because of their speed the two vampires are able to cut off the birds’ heads with quick, clean swipes before you have even seen them raise their arms.
Delilah’s method of defending herself is perhaps the most ingenious and strange. She’s sitting on a horse on the merry go round, her swift arms swing out and grab the birds as they fly by, and quite plainly she snaps their wings and legs before throwing them away. If they can’t fly anymore then they are harmless. I wonder if she has some kind of moral compunction against actually killing them. Or perhaps she prefers them to suffer the agony of broken limbs before they finally meet their maker. The birds have difficulty getting at her because she’s constan
tly moving on the ride, and if they do get close she cripples them within milliseconds.
Rita is standing on the platform of the big wheel now. “You need to find a way to get off of there,” she calls. “The motors are being worked by Theodore’s magic so I can’t stop the engine.”
“Do you have what you need for your spell?” I ask her, shouting so that she can hear me.
“Yes,” she answers, “everything except for your blood.”
“Okay. That’s good. Get down underneath the platform and make a start, I’ll figure out a way to get off this ride and I’ll meet you down there.” I hadn’t noticed until now, but Gabriel is right behind Rita and a look of confusion passes over his face. I know what he’s wondering. He’s wondering why Rita needs my blood to perform her spell. Nonetheless he follows her as she crawls under the shallow space beneath the platform, and once they’re gone I panic, because I know that the only way I am getting off this wheel is if I jump. But at least I can wait until it gets to the closest possible position to the ground before I leap.
I suck in a deep breath for courage, as I rise up to the top of the wheel and then slowly lower to the ground. I pull my feet up onto the seat with me and crouch, getting ready to leap over the safety bar. But as it gets close to the ground my heart begins to hammer and my hands shake, I start forward but I just don’t have the courage to make the jump. Okay, I tell myself, the next time I really will do it. Unfortunately my cowardice plays up and the wheel has gone around another three times and I still haven’t moved from my position on the seat.
On the fourth try I finally let go, but my fear makes my jump sloppy as hell and my knee whacks off the safety bar as I fall onto the damp, muddy grass below. Most definitely I’ve broken a bone somewhere, I’m just too filled with adrenaline to figure out where yet. Although the fact that I landed on my wrists means I have definitely damaged them in some way. My knee screams in pain, and I realise with a manic laugh that this the second time I have been injured in the last twenty four hours. I have got to get away from the vampires, as soon as is reasonably possible.
I decide there’s no point in trying to stand up since I have to go to Rita and Gabriel, so I simply crawl forward on my injured wrists. When I join them I find they have set out a wooden board on which they have placed all sorts of intricate looking spell ingredients, and not just the herbal kind Rita had used before. The light of a torch shines on us as it leans against one of the support beams, illuminating the space, and on the board I notice a small bowl of dead spiders, and another containing slimy earth worms, the kind that populate your back garden when it’s damp out. They wriggle in the bowl, still alive.
“I know,” says Rita, gauging my reaction, “the things required to open up a portal into a hell dimension are a lot less savoury than my usual gear.”
“You can say that again,” I reply, eyeing another bowl that holds a mixture of maggots and dead cockroaches. Completely out of place though are the chopped up lemons, I wonder what they’re for. Perhaps they’re used drown out the smell of the other ingredients.
Rita hands me a blade that looks exactly like the one my mother had used to cut herself when she cast the spell to protect me. “It’s not the same one,” says Rita, practically reading my mind. “But it needs to be silver for the spell to work, so it’s sort of similar to the one she used.” I turn it over in my hand, watching as the light of the torch glints off it and shines in my eyes.
“Are you okay Tegan?” Gabriel asks gently, speaking for the first time.
“Yes, I’m just a little out of sorts,” I laugh nervously. “It’s only to be expected.”
“Yeah,” says Rita. “But do you mind me asking what on earth you’re wearing?”
“Don’t. Let’s just say that Theodore is even more insane that we thought. He put these clothes on me while I was passed out.”
“Eww, creepy,” Rita replies, while crushing ginger over the dead spiders. I don’t bother to ask about it. I assume she knows what she’s doing.
Then she gives me a small glass vial. “Here,” she says. “I need you to fill this with your blood. Cutting down the centre of your palm will probably be easiest.” I nod and brace myself for more pain.
Gabriel coughs. “Um – why do we need Tegan’s blood?” he asks, trying to sound casual. I stare at Rita for a minute, deciding what to say.
“You might as well tell him,” she says. “We might not survive the night anyway. If we do you can blackmail him into keeping it secret. Say you’ll lie and expose him as a cross dresser on the weekends or something.” She grins at Gabriel who scowls in return. I nod and prepare myself for the revelation. But I can’t get the words out so I ask Rita to tell him. She shakes her head and looks directly at Gabriel.
“She has die Äußerste Macht blood,” says Rita simply. “That’s why I need it for the spell.”
“And,” I add, “that’s what you and Marcel and all the rest of them have been so eager to find out about me. You were right, it was my mother who’d cast the spell on me. She made it so that my blood would be hidden from the vampires and the slayers. And apparently the magic users too, since I’ve recently discovered it can be used to cast very powerful spells. Like this one,” I finish, gesturing at Rita’s display.
I expect Gabriel to exclaim shock and interest but all he says is, “I am sorry I allowed Marcel to convince me to help him unravel the spell. Die Äußerste Macht is not something people should know about you.”
It surprises me that he is expressing his apologies rather than looking at me like he wants to drain me of my blood and keep it for his spells. I’m almost certain that’s the way Marcel would have reacted. I slice the blade down the centre of my palm, just like Rita instructed, and it is surprisingly sharp for silver. I squeeze my hand tight and allow the drops to fall down into the glass vial.
I hear somebody scream wildly out where the others are fighting. “I’ll go check what’s happening,” I say to Gabriel, and he nods while Rita continues preparing her spell. What I find when I get out from under the platform is Theodore standing atop the steps leading up to his house, he has Delilah’s red hair twisted around his fisted hand, and he pulls her down each time she tries to get away from him.
I keep low to the ground so as not to be spotted, and watch as Ethan steps forward, addressing Theodore. “Let her go and we will leave,” he says. “It is clear we are no match for you.”
“I will let her go just as soon as you return my human to me,” Theodore replies. “I can see she has been taken.”
“What human?” Ethan asks. “We didn’t come across any human.”
I freeze, realising that I am who Theodore is talking about. The fact that he referred to me as his human makes me want to punch him in the face. I don’t belong to anyone, and I will not go down without a fight. If Theodore wants my blood he’s going to have to pull it from my cold dead hands. Metaphorically speaking.
“You know exactly who I am talking about,” Theodore goes on. “Tegan is her name and she is of great value to me. I had transported her to a safe place and now she is gone. Return her and I will return this one,” he finishes, pulling down hard again on Delilah’s hair. She lets out another scream, and a scream like that can only mean that Theodore has definitely pulled out some roots. Ouch.
“Tegan?” says Ethan, mildly confused. “She does not belong to you, and if you have taken her I will make sure you suffer.” His bravery on my behalf touches me. But I doubt he’d have much of a chance going up against the Sorcerer.
“Ah, so you are aware of her value,” says Theodore. “I have always found that the blood of die Äußerste Macht was notorious for evading those of the vampire race. It’s ironic really, since it is vampires who have the most to gain from finding it.” I presume this is a jibe at the fact that the DOH tend to find girls like me and kill us before the vampires can benefit from feeding from us.
“That’s what she is?” Ethan almost whispers, the puzzle pieces finally fitting
together for him. An explanation of why I am immune to his vampire abilities at last presenting itself.
“Excuse me,” Antonia interjects. “Did I just hear you correctly? Am I to believe that this girl is one of the power blooded females?”
“True indeed, fair Governess,” Theodore answers, with false sincerity and an even falser smile. “But you can wipe that hungry expression off your greedy face,” he continues. “I discovered her, therefore she belongs to me now.”
“She belongs to nobody but herself,” Ethan spits, and his words surprise me. He had never struck me as the type to value the free will of the women he wanted to bed. He’d actually said some fairly sexist things to me in the past. Although the circumstances had been unusual, I’ll give him that. But even more surprising is the fact that he doesn’t claim ownership of me the way Theodore does in relation to my blood. I had thought Ethan would be the first to want to feed from me and gain access to a life in the sun. Apparently I’d been wrong. Apparently he is actually quite valiant, and views me as a person rather than a necessary food source.
“Well, well, what is this now?” Theodore asks in vicious amusement. “A blood drinker with a sense of justice and nobility?” and then he gives Delilah’s hair another yank for his own personal enjoyment. What a bitch.
Before I can hear Ethan’s response I crawl back under to see if Rita is making any kind of headway.
“Tegan, come quick,” she says when she sees me approach. “We need you here to create the circle.”
I know it’s not a time for playful comments, but I can’t seem to help myself. “What, you can’t do it by yourself?” I grin and then make a “tut tut” sound with my tongue. “My mother could after all, you really are slacking Rita.”
She only bumps me with her shoulder and tells me to shut up, then says, “What your mum did shouldn’t be possible, but don’t worry, I intend to look into it as soon as all of this life and death stuff blows over, happy?” she finishes.
