by Karen Ranney
I’m not sure if my reaction had anything to do with what they were saying or because my own self-defense mechanisms were being activated. I was protecting not only myself, but a baby I’d wanted for years, never mind that I didn’t know if it was human or a little Vlad or Vladerella.
No witch was going to harm us.
I felt the air grow heavier, as if power were suddenly being injected into the oxygen. I took deep breaths, forcing myself to calm, even as my natural inclination was to run for the hills. Even if I hadn’t agreed to stay and be tested, I wouldn’t have left now. I had the feeling that if I showed fear it would be used as a weapon against me.
Chapter Thirteen
I Was A Wampire Or A Vatch
Janet shoved both her hands into the pockets of her robe, pulled out something and threw it at me. The air was instantly inundated with blue sparkles, not unlike the night Maddock had attacked Mike.
What had Dan said it was? A potion, something that the witches had developed to contain vampires.
Why the hell was she throwing the stuff at me now?
A swirling cloud hung overhead like a stationary cyclone. She was doing to the blue sparkles what I’d done with the tornado of air. I didn’t know if she was performing that trick to prove that she was as powerful as I was or if the blue sparkles were supposed to affect me.
I took a step toward her and her eyes widened. Her face was tinted blue by the reflection from the sparkles. Blue was definitely not Janet’s color.
She glanced around the circle and the witches, including Nonnie, raised both their hands in my direction, palms toward me. A burst of energy hit and held me, almost as if ropes were being wound around my arms, holding them tight to my body.
Charlie chose that moment to step in front of me, sit on my feet, look up at Janet and bark once. Even I was a little taken aback by the authoritarian tone of his bark. If I’d been another dog, I would’ve been cowed. I don’t know if my familiar was supposed to be a guard dog, but that’s the role Charlie had assumed.
My gaze hadn’t left Janet’s face, but I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Dan’s stance had altered. He no longer stood there with his arms folded. Instead, he looked like he, too, was preparing to come to my defense.
Closing my eyes, I forced myself to calm down, remembering the time in my room when I had vanquished the witches simply by imagining them gone. Those moments had been close to an out of body experience, one I hadn’t duplicated since.
I took a deep breath, envisioned the invisible ropes holding me dissolving, the strands falling to the floor. I created a force field between me and the witches, a space resembling an inner tube that was effectively a dead zone. They couldn’t reach me. They could not touch me with their powers.
I tilted my head back, opened my eyes to find the blue cloud still swirling above me. It was beautiful as it rotated, catching the light from the stained glass around us. What a pity that most of the events held here would be at night and the participants wouldn’t be able to see the majesty of the windows.
I lowered my head, looked around me first to the left and then to the right, finally settling my gaze on Janet.
If she expected me to retaliate, she was going to be disappointed. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want to prove anything. Mostly, I wanted to be left alone. It was important, however, to let her know that the witches couldn’t intimidate me and that her power, drawn from this group of women, had no effect on me.
“Are we finished?” I asked. To my surprise, my voice came out louder than I intended, almost as if it were magnified.
Charlie growled as if to add his sentiments.
Janet glanced at her circle and one by one, the witches lowered their hands, looking to her for guidance.
She nodded, just once.
I thought it was over, I honestly did. That only goes to show that I still have some naïveté.
Instead of disbanding, the witches began to chant. I’ve never been in a room with great acoustics when twenty women were speaking in unison, but the effect was startling. I felt like a medieval sinner being drummed out of the church for being unclean.
The swell of words rose up like a brick wall being constructed by a manic mason. I could almost feel the syllables stack layer by layer, interlocking as they created a fortress.
Each witch had her eyes closed, hands loosely clasped in front of her, as if they were focusing only on the spell to the exclusion of anything else, including the possibility of my irritation.
Evidently, I didn’t intimidate anyone. I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue in the meek and mild Marcie Montgomery role. How did I achieve a happy medium? How did I assert myself without being dangerous? Or scary, for that matter?
Why was I even worrying about that?
I didn’t know anything about being a witch, but it seemed to me that the greatest power Janet and her buddies had was intimidation. Use a person’s own fear against them, turn outward emotions inward. If you’re scared, you’re now twice as frightened because your fear has magnified.
If you’re confident, maybe the reverse was true.
I remembered the first time I stood in the sun after becoming a vampire, feeling the warmth of the sun’s rays on my skin. I surrounded myself in that memory, expanded and multiplied it until I could feel it encompass me. I recalled the joy I felt when I realized I wasn’t just undead but living for perhaps the first time. The perfect beauty of that moment, the smell of the honeysuckle from the nearby bushes, the soft breeze blowing the tendrils of my hair off my cheeks, the smile I could feel down to my toes - all these sensations were suddenly there in the darkened ballroom as if I’d left them and visited the past.
I heard the gasps and slowly emerged from my memory to discover that I was standing in a capsule of light, so bright that it took a moment to see beyond it to the shadows, lightened by the white shapes of the witches.
Janet was smiling, the look on her face one that I’d felt in that exact moment on my patio. I looked to the witches on either side of her and they, too, wore a rapturous expression.
I closed my eyes again, pushing down my elation, knowing that it had been transmitted to the witches. Somehow, I was recreating the emotions I’d felt and transmitting them as well. Would it work with a scary memory? That was too easily recalled: the afternoon at the doctor’s office when Maddock had shut the door and smiled at me. Terror had ricocheted around in my chest like a .22 caliber bullet.
My breath grew tight; my heartbeat escalated. Fear became another entity invading my body. My stomach clenched in that moment as if my baby felt and responded to it. I placed both hands on my waist to calm him. In my memory I was running after having zapped Maddock. I knew that he was going to catch me, but I had to try to escape. In seconds, he was on Mike, his jaws open so wide it was like he had a special hinge, his teeth like stalactites in a blood red mouth.
“Marcie, stop.”
I opened my eyes to find Dan standing in front of me, one hand outstretched, but hesitating before actually touching me. The first memory had been one of joy and sunlight. The second was blood and horror. I’d been bathed in light. What did I look like now? I looked down at myself cautiously, half expecting to be covered in gore.
“Marcie.”
I blinked in order to focus. Only then did I realize that the witches had disbanded.
“What happened?” I asked, my lips feeling numb.
“Something you did,” he said, but his tone wasn’t accusatory. Instead, he’d adopted his usual non-judgmental way of speaking, as if he were reserving his opinion until more facts came to light.
“I was remembering,” I said.
“Not a particularly good memory.”
“No.”
I bent to pet Charlie, disturbed to note that he was trembling. What had I done? I grabbed his leash, stepped away from Dan and went to where Janet was standing, looking down at my grandmother kneeling beside another white robed woman, her hands on the woman
’s chest.
“Is she all right?”
Nonnie glanced up at me. “She’s an empath. She felt what you were doing very strongly.”
I glanced around the room. Of the twenty or so witches, five had been felled. I wouldn’t have done that if I’d known I could.
“Are they going to be all right?” I asked.
“Yes.” Janet said, her tone icy.
“You’re the one who wanted the test.”
Pardon me for being snippy, but I was a little tired of learning all these new things about myself. Reliving the experience with Maddock hadn’t been a piece of cake for me, either.
I advanced on Janet, stopping a few feet from her.
“I’ll concede that you’re a scary bunch of women. Okay? I get it. Are we really going to continue this? Wouldn’t it be better to simply join forces and combine our abilities?”
The fact was, I was always drained when I exerted myself, and I wasn’t feeling spiffy at the moment. I had another life to protect, one that was more important than this showdown. If she wanted me to concede, I would, gladly.
“The vampires want to get their hands on me,” I said, stating the most important point. “Do you want that to happen?”
When she didn’t answer me, I continued. “The OTHER want to equalize us and make everyone the same. I don’t want that. I don’t think you want that, either. You’re going to have to choose, though. Either you consider me an enemy or an ally. Your choice. Are we done here?”
“Yes,” Dan said before his mother could comment.
Charlie and I headed for the entrance to the ballroom just as the shutters were opened and light streamed into the room again. Dan was right behind me and I didn’t fool myself by thinking he was going to leave me alone. He probably wanted to know what that little demonstration had meant. Who was I other than a Pranic vampire?
Hell if I knew.
The only thing I did know was that everything came down to emotion.
I could zap someone if I concentrated my emotions. Now, evidently, if I recalled those times when I was strongly moved, I could convey that as well. It was a form of zapping, but more concentrated and involving the mind and the emotions rather than the body.
Maybe everyone would be a lot better off just as long as I was kept happy and contented. I was all for trying that, myself.
When we got into the elevator, I expected him to immediately launch into a third degree, but he surprised me. Who am I kidding? Dan always surprised me.
“The consortium of witches has agreed to meet again,” he said.
“Oh, goody. If that meeting goes as well as the witch test, I’m in trouble.”
“The test went fine,” he said.
“Which means what?”
“You’re a witch.”
“I am not.”
The corner of his mouth curved up a little.
“My mother isn’t happy either, if it makes a difference. You’re a very powerful witch. She didn’t expect that.”
I looked at him again, “Which means what, exactly? That I’ve made myself an enemy? That she’ll do anything to destroy me? What?”
For the first time, Dan looked uncertain. I couldn’t blame him; I’d put him in a difficult position. Either he evaluated his mother objectively or he lied for her. Either one wasn’t fair.
“Look, I get it,” I said, deciding to cut him some slack. “Her natural instinct is to protect her own. That means both you and the other witches.”
He made something go all soft inside when his eyes warmed like that, too. I really wish he wouldn’t do that.
“You’re very understanding.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m a little jealous.” Too much honesty, Marcie. “I wish my mom had been that protective of me.”
I thought about my own little bundle of joy and my mother’s behavior toward me was incomprehensible. I would do anything to protect my child and he hadn’t even been born yet.
“How’s Mike?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.
Thinking of my baby made me a little weepy and I didn’t want to break down in front of Dan. Not that he wouldn’t be kind and supportive. He’d also be curious, and I wasn’t ready to divulge all.
“The doctor says he’s stable.”
Shouldn’t he be healing by now? Especially if my blood was super duper like everybody thought it was? I couldn’t spare any more so all those little corpuscles needed to do their thing.
“When’s the meeting with the other witches?”
“After Thanksgiving.”
I blinked at him. “Thanksgiving?”
“Two days from now.”
I’d let time get away from me.
“I’ve invited your grandmother,” he said. “We always have a big dinner here at the castle.”
I didn’t want to do Thanksgiving dinner, but it would be rude to refuse. I was trapped by manners. I bit back my automatic, “I’m sorry, but I have other plans,” and forced a smile to my face.
“It’s going to be in the banquet hall.”
Of course Arthur’s Folly had a banquet hall. Didn’t every self-respecting castle?
“If you’ll be there at two,” he added. “I’ll take care of everything else.”
When the elevator doors opened, he glanced down at Charlie. “Do you want me to take him to the kennels?”
If Charlie was as exhausted as I was, maybe a meal and a nap was called for.
I nodded and thanked him as I left the elevator. I was polite. I was gracious.
But I was not a witch.
Janet had to be wrong. Was all this stuff I could do only because I was a witch and not a goddess? How odd to have fought against that label for so long only to miss it now.
Still, I didn’t think I was just a witch. I was a wampire. A vatch. A combination vampire and witch, plus I was myself. Maybe that’s what Pranic really meant: confused. Whatever the hell you are, you’re screwed.
I lay face down on the bed and debated having a little cry, but I fell asleep before I could decide.
Chapter Fourteen
Vagabond Vampire, Disconnected Dirugu
I woke four hours later, famished. My morning sickness had subsided and since I’d expended so much energy during the witch test, I needed to refuel. One thing about the vampire metabolism, however, I really didn't have to worry about weight. Neither did they, but they subsisted on blood, while my lunch of choice was two grilled cheese sandwiches, a fruit salad, and two slices of cheesecake for dessert. I wondered if being pregnant would change all that. Maybe instead of eating for two, I’d look like two people by the time I was finished.
Until then, I certainly hoped the kitchen never ran out of cheesecake.
Oh, I also had some unsweetened iced tea with lemon. As much as I loved coffee, coffee didn't love me right now. I wasn’t certain about caffeine, either. I needed to hit Google or confide in Dr. Fernandez. Nope, Google it was.
The kitchen had even sent up a treat for Charlie, little sausages that smelled like liver. I set them aside for when he came back to the room.
When I was done, I almost ordered more food, but refrained because I didn't want anyone in the kitchen to think I was a glutton. If I'd been on my own – and safety wasn't an issue as it always was nowadays – I would've gotten in my car and driven to the nearest fast food place. Or two.
Yes, I was a binge eater.
I settled back on the chaise, enjoying the view of the Texas sky as day turned into night The weather was normal for November, mid-sixties and breezy. We might get down to forty at night, but rarely lower than that. Sometimes, our summers lasted until December, but this year we were experiencing in early winter. Our definition of winter, that is.
I didn't reach for the tablet on the table or the TV remote. I didn't want to hear the radio and I didn't want to read.
For a good fifteen minutes I was at complete peace, doing nothing more taxing than simply noting the sunset. My hands were interlaced over my
stomach, but I didn't even think about the months to come. I didn't want any conflict in my thoughts right now.
Someone knocked on the door.
I sat up on the chaise, swung my legs over and contemplated whether not I should answer it. Few people would invade my sanctuary. One of them might be Janet and I wasn't in the mood for another confrontation with her. Nonnie might visit me. I wasn't sure I wanted to see my grandmother right now, either. It might be news about Mike. Was I feeling strong enough to hear something bad? No, not really. Or it might be Dan. It probably was Dan. He was the only one who would keep knocking.
Unfortunately, I was feeling mellow and friendly and happy, the wrong emotions to have around him.
But Dan wouldn’t go away. I knew that. Or, if he did, he’d just come back later.
I went to the door and opened it. Just like I thought, Dan stood there.
It might be a function of my hormones, but he got better looking every time I saw him and he’d been handsome from the beginning. I seemed to notice his physique more than I had in the past. His shoulders seemed broader. His chin more chiseled. I even noticed his hands, and I couldn’t remember noticing a man’s hands before.
I wasn’t short. I was an inch or two above average, but not model’s height. Still, I felt almost diminutive around him. Delicate, which was a howl. I’m not sure how I felt about that intellectually. My feminist sisters would probably rise up in protest. How dare I feel cherished by a man. Didn’t I know I could cherish myself?
Sure, but it didn’t feel as good.
He tilted his head a little, looking at me quizzically. I realized I’d been standing there staring at him as I held the door with one hand.
I felt the warmth rise to my cheeks. He was the only man who had ever reduced me to blushing. In fact, I didn’t even know I could blush before I met Dan.
“Yes,” I said, in answer to nothing. “Hello.”
