by J. R. Rain
“I’m reasonably certain the priestess who conducted the ritual is the great-great-granddaughter of Marie Laveau. Oh, and they were all chanting to something named Zonbi. Had a giant snake in a cage, whole bunch of naked people dancing in a circle, too.”
“Hmm.” He leans closer, gesturing for my hand. “Allow me?”
Whatever. Not like he’s going to roofie me or anything. I extend my right arm, palm upturned. He cradles the back of my hand while fishing around inside his jacket. A moment later, he extracts a small, silver bottle. With a deft one-handed motion, he unstoppers it and pours three drops of a dark green liquid into my hand.
The puddle bubbles on contact, as if my hand had the heat of a skillet. Brilliant gold light swims around the edges, popping with various colored sparkles. Delacroix tilts my hand a little to the left, making the puddle creep a few millimeters. The edges go pale brown, the interior lightens from emerald to grass green. Emitting a dull hiss, the small puddle abruptly turns jet black with a red glow around the edges. The highlight fades soon after, leaving me holding what appears to be India ink. Before I can even ask what it all meant, the substance wisps off into smoke.
Delacroix shifts his gaze up to my eyes, no other part of his body moving. Fear wafts off him stronger than the cigar smoke in the room. He whispers, “You are a vampire.”
“I’ve been accused of worse. Look, I’m not here to harm you, or any persons. My sustenance comes from cows, pigs, whatever I can find.”
You are weak, Sssamantha.
I suppress the urge to roll my eyes. “The only thing that’s important to me is getting back to my children, who are still in 2015. I may be what you think I am, but before anything, I’m still a mother.”
He casts his gaze upon my hand again. “Curious. Most curious. I thought I recognized your aura at first, yet you walk out and about while the sun shines. Though, I see now how you are managing that.” He leans in and looks a little closer at my rings. “Alchemy?”
“Of course.”
“Looks like the work of... do you mind?”
“Sort of. No touching them.”
He nods and gently takes my left hand again. He turns it this way and that, examining each ring, one of which sits on the middle finger and the other the index. He glances at my mint julep. “I assume the opal is for the drink?”
“You assume correct.”
“This is the work of Archibald Maximus.”
“And you say this why?”
“It is his handiwork. Besides, he is the only one of us interested in working with... well, you know.”
“Vampires.”
He nods and releases my hand. “He has always been overly fascinated with the, ah, undead. Then again, he predates most of us by many hundreds of years and was integral in The War.”
“The War.”
“The war—the secret war—with the dark masters, of whom his mother...”
“Was one of them,” I said. “I know.”
“You know the Great Master?”
“Great Master?”
“Master Archibald, of course. He is a Master’s Master.”
“A Master’s Master?” Wow. I had no idea.
“Yes, Miss Moon.”
“And, yeah, I know him. Who do you think gave me the rings?”
He nods, confusion playing out over his face. Finally, he shrugs. “Who am I to question the Master?”
Meanwhile, we have attracted some attention with all the hand touching, and so I send out a rapid shotgun prompt for those around us to mind their own business. A half-dozen men turn back to their drinks and table companions.
That done, I wag my eyebrows at Delacroix and take a deeper sip of the mint julep. “Thank you, by the way. I’ve never had one of these before. It’s tasty.”
“Pray tell they have not gone out of style. Two-thousand-fifteen, you say? Surely there must be all manner of wild things where you are used to. Such sights and wonders you could scarcely explain them to me.”
“It’s sad to say our greatest claim to fame so far is online shopping. Unless you count boy bands.” I sigh.
“Boy… bands?” He leans back, combing at a few strands of hair where it drapes over his chest. “Should I ask?”
“No, you shouldn’t,” I take in some air. “Mr. Delacroix, I need your help to get home before something happens to my children. Our lives are… crazy to say the least.”
“Are they like you?” he asks, a note of alarm in his voice.
“No. They’re both very much alive—mortal, that is. And very much in danger.”
Delacroix pats his shoulder then drums his fingers at his collarbone as he thinks. “You do not need to worry about imminent harm befalling them, Miss Moon. I am inclined to believe you about what happened. I sense an aura of powerful magic surrounding you of a type I have not before seen. It may be indicative of chronomancy, or time manipulation—though that is a field few study due to its extreme difficulty and danger.”
“How, exactly, does time travel magic being risky mean my kids are not in danger?” I ask, a little louder than intended.
He leans back, shifting nervously in his chair. “Miss Moon. The most potent of the effects on you is still active, which tells me that your presence here is able to be dispelled. If something were to break the magic, you would snap back to where you belong as though you had never left.”
“As though I never left? So… you mean that I’ll appear at the same instant I disappeared from?”
“Essentially.” He nods.
Essentially? Wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. Still, it’s something. I sit back in my chair and sigh like the weight of a thousand ages has been lifted from my shoulders. My kids aren’t missing me. No one back home even knows I’m gone yet. In fact, time isn’t passing concurrently back at home as it is in the 1860s. If I’m hearing him right, nothing will happen after the moment I left off from until time gets there again. Ugh. Time travel hurts my head. “Okay, I think I understand. It’s linear, not concurrent.”
Delacroix blinks at me. “You are rather educated for a woman.”
“Sweetie,” I whisper, “where I come from, things are a lot different.”
He grins. “It pleases me to hear that. And you are essentially correct. Events proceeding forward from the instant you experienced this magical effect are not happening because the world hasn’t gotten there yet.”
“All right, but what’s to stop me from getting caught in the same magical explosion and landing right back here?” I ask. “Again and again and again. Ad nauseam. Ad insanium.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Well, because magic doesn’t work that way. It has already been released and affected you and… assuming you are able to dispel it, that particular invocation would be broken despite the temporal reality of its phases. The part which has not yet occurred, the part which had occurred, and the part which you destroyed. The universe tends to figure out how to abide by its own laws.”
“Except I don’t know the first thing about magic. That’s why I’m here… I was kinda hoping you would be able to help me get home.”
His posture stiffens. Brief flicks of his fingers rotate the empty wine glass in front of him. “Ordinarily, I would be driven by curiosity. However, due to certain commitments, I am unable to help creatures such as yourself.”
“Creatures?” I cock an eyebrow at him.
“Would you prefer forces of darkness?” He offers a wan smile.
“Oh, let me guess. They have Light Warriors back in the 1800s, too?”
Shock pales his cheeks. “You know much, Samantha Moon.”
“More than you know. I’m not the usual vampire.”
No, Sssamantha. You are weak. You deny your potential.
Oh, blow it out your ass. Be happy you talked me out of waiting around a century and a half. Come to think of it, if I was able to stop the attack that turned me and go back to having the perfect family, the next woman she inhabited might not be able to hold her a
t bay and who knows what kind of cataclysm she’d unleash after rallying the Dark Masters back from the Void. I sigh out my nose without a sound. Fate handed me this responsibility—not that I wanted it—but better the devil you know, or something like that.
“That’s a rather interesting story.” Delacroix waves his glass at the serving girl. “Your kind are rather known for trickery and manipulation. It would be against what I stand for to aid one such as yourself, regardless of the circumstances, and regardless of the Master’s inclination.”
I narrow my eyes, debating what I could possibly say to convince this guy to help me.
The serving girl walks over and refills his wine. “Care for another mint julep, ma’am?” she asks.
“Thank you, but I’m afraid I’m far too delicate for so much drink at once. It is lovely, but I’m still working on it.”
She nods and hurries off.
He smirks at my use of ‘delicate.’
“Do you believe in fate, Mr. Delacroix?” I ask, leaning closer.
“If you’re about to ask me if I think I’m destined to help you, I would say no.”
I shake my head. “No, I merely wish to inquire as to your opinion of an idle mental wandering of mine.”
“All right.” He drinks a much larger portion of wine than he’d been taking per sip, eyeing the room as if weighing his odds of surviving more than another few minutes.
“In theory, since you pointed out that my children are unaware of my departure and not in danger, if I were to simply exist in this time and allow the months and years to pass…” I explain my idea of protecting myself that night I went out for a run, thus preventing my ever being made a vampire at all. “Do you think that plan would work, or would the bastard simply attack me another time and place, maybe do worse? Am I fated to contain this great darkness?”
He thinks for a long moment, sipping wine and staring into nowhere. “If you were to prevent the attack, you would most likely not have found yourself in the situation to encounter the voodoo priestess who sent you back here in the first place, correct?”
“Yeah. I’d still have my day job.”
“Then you would not have been able to go back in time to prevent your attack on that night. I think it would create a paradox. The instant you stopped the attack, you also stopped your ability to go back in time to stop the attack.”
“And since I am here now, I obviously never stopped the attack.”
“True.”
“So the attack must happen, or everything will cease to be.”
Delacroix gives me an indecisive shrug. “Something like that. Time prefers to continue as ordained. Were you to change that, certain events would undoubtedly shift to prevent you going back in time. It is better to focus on breaking the magical spell that brought you here, rather than creating paradoxes that reality will be forced to resolve in, perhaps, undesirable ways.”
I slump in my chair. He may be full of shit or he may be totally correct. I have no way to know. Still, wasting more than a century for what now sounds like a high chance of being useless is not happening. A note of relief radiates from Elizabeth at the back of my mind. Yeah, yeah. She still thinks she’s going to talk me into letting her out and becoming this witchy super-vampire or something. Either way, I know I’m not going to try waiting this thing out.
“Delacroix…” I stare into his eyes. “I think you want to change your mind and help me.”
The veins in his forehead swell and his face reddens. A moment later, he calms and smiles. “Well, I suppose it would be rather ungentlemanly of me to leave a lady such as yourself in a state of distress.”
“That is most kind of you, sir. How would you go about breaking this spell? Can you do it soon?”
“Alas.” He shakes his head. “The magic on you is uniquely powerful. A rare type of darkness that draws its power from the loss of a human life. All the energy of a soul goes into it. I will need more than what I have here in Richmond to break it.”
I cringe inside. That priestess didn’t simply kill Angela—she destroyed her. Much like what’s going to happen to me if I ever experience the ‘big sleep.’ My soul is out of the cycle of creation, thanks to the whole Dark Master invading me thing. I suspect that whatever ghost or part of Angela that would’ve gone back to be reborn is currently clinging to me as magical energy. “But you can do it?”
Delacroix nods. “I believe so, yes.” He holds up his left hand, showing off an ornate silver ring with a red opal set at the top. Black lines engraved on it form a pattern that’s familiar in a way, but I can’t place it. Aztec perhaps? “This, I use as a focusing object. Think of it like a magical scalpel. However, the bigger problem is the amount of power necessary to interfere with what is affecting you. Another human sacrifice would be an obvious choice, but that is not the sort of thing I am inclined to partake in.”
Delacroix slips out of my control at that notion, of sacrificing a human being.
“No,” I say, forcing my way back into his thoughts. “I most certainly do not wish to harm anyone. Sacrificing is completely out of the question. How else can you find the necessary power to break the magic without requiring death?”
“I have equipment back at my laboratory in New York that should be up to the task. We will need to travel there.”
My turn to smile. “Then we shall.”
Of course, it’s also my turn to grumble and curse a lot in my head. I can’t say I’ve ever been to New York before, so I don’t trust myself to picture it well enough to teleport there, especially with a passenger. Taking someone along for that ride is a little trickier than just going myself.
Delacroix reels a bit from my second mental whammy, and a trace of the dazed-loverboy effect comes over him. Ugh. I do so hate that aspect of my supernatural nature. I can’t be romantic with a mortal man without turning them into a vapid love slave. And I need this guy to stay mentally competent to send me back home to my own time. Interestingly, I never had that problem with Danny because after I became a vampire, well, we were rarely, if ever, intimate. I sigh at the thought of Danny. Yes, I should be more upset at his death, but after all the shitty things he did to me and the kids over the years, I just can’t find it in me to feel sad about it. The Danny I married died long before his body did.
“Something is bothering you, Miss Moon?” asks Delacroix. “You seem suddenly afflicted by a pall of despair.”
“Oh, I’m just homesick.” I force thoughts of my ex-husband away. “So, New York. We leave tomorrow? You were wanting to get out of Richmond as soon as possible anyway.”
“Capital idea.” He taps his wine glass to my mint julep.
We drink to it.
Hmm. I wonder if Mary Lou ever had one of these. I bet she’d like them.
Chapter Four
After lifting the knowledge of how to make a mint julep from the man at the bar (hey, Mary Lou would probably want to try one), I return to the table and escort Delacroix up to his room, pretending to be his lover.
I entertain a little temptation to do more than pretend in that regard, but I don’t want to enslave the poor guy. That’s one big downside to being what I am. If I get romantic with a mortal, it affects them in a supernatural way that turns them into subservient creatures eager to do whatever necessary to please me. Especially since if everything works out for me, I’ll go back to being over a hundred years in the future and leave him pining for a woman he couldn’t possibly live long enough to even see again.
Well, hang on. He’s an alchemist. Maybe he could live that long.
Still. Don’t want to risk something weird happening. Watch it be my luck he finds me before I meet Danny or even have my kids. Do I really want to risk a one-night stand in 1862 possibly rewriting my whole family life? Argh. Did I mention time travel hurts my head?
Not to mention, I had a boyfriend, even if that boyfriend wouldn’t be born for another seventy years. He was alive and well in my heart, and cheating is cheating, even if the hairy ap
e was decades away from being conceived.
Sssuch a goody-good.
Yeah, well, goody-goods help make the world go round, too. Not all of us can be evil and reckless, and, well, cheaty.
It’s not cheating if the wolfman hasn’t been born.
A technicality I refuse to acknowledge.
Since I know the inevitable rise of the sun is going to slap me unconscious, I take a good twenty minutes and make sure to mentally program Delacroix to simply sit here and be a good little boy while I’m out cold. Implanting commands in mortal minds is pretty simple, and the odds of it working are rather in the vampire’s favor, more so when the command is simpler. ‘Sit there and do nothing’ is about as simple as can be, so I’m confident he’s going to play mannequin after sunrise.
I’m not looking to be mean to him, so I let him have the bed. It’s not like my muscles will cramp or anything if I sleep in a chair. I give him the command to sleep deeply for five hours, knowing I needed at least six hours to be able to function at all. He is to awaken and sit at the edge of the bed and wait for me silently. He nodded. Good enough.
At sunrise, I lose a half-dozen hours in a blink as my body obeys its innate need to retreat into a state of rest. Consciousness drags itself from the abyss in no great hurry, and when I realize I’m awake, I’m far from happy about it, like I’d stayed up late on a case and have to go back to HUD after only three hours of sleep. Delacroix is sitting quietly on the side of the bed as commanded with a bewildered expression. He’s got the look of someone who’s just walked into a room and forgotten why.
Perfect.
“Good morning,” I say, or think I say. My voice sounds distant and not quite my own.
“It’s nearly noon,” he mutters. “I can’t quite remember what I intended to do today.”
I stand, stretch, then walk over to him. He glances up at me when I put a hand on his shoulder. I look him dead in the eye. “We’re going back to New York so you can help me get rid of this spell, remember?”
“Oh, yes. Now I do. How strange of me to have forgotten.” He claps his hands on his thighs and stands. “Very well then. Let us be on the way before Richmond succumbs to a hail of cannon fire and screaming.”
