“Tara, are you okay?” said Lucius as he helped me to my feet.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice weaker than normal as I rubbed my aching neck. “He almost popped my head off my neck.”
“And yet he doesn’t look like he has super strength,” said Lucius, glancing at Shawn. “But at this point, I’m not convinced that he’s actually human.”
It was hard to argue with Lucius’ opinion, because Shawn certainly wasn’t acting like a human. He rose off the floor abruptly, almost like a puppet being jerked up by its strings, and then stood bent over and with his hands held like claws, a bestial snarl escaping his lips. His hair was becoming whiter and whiter, the same color as his eyes, as well as longer and spikier. He looked like some kind of goblin or ghoul, the kind of thing I’d see in my nightmares, only much worse.
Shawn leaped at us. I drew Domination from its sheath and slashed at Shawn, but Shawn ducked and kicked me in the gut, making me double over with pain and nearly drop Domination. Lucius slashed his claws at Shawn, but Shawn jerked backwards, again like a puppet, narrowly avoiding Lucius’ claws. Making strange clicking sounds, Shawn climbed the walls and ceiling like a spider, moving almost too fast even for my eyes to follow.
He was too high for me to slash with Domination, so instead I threw a fireball at him. But Shawn dropped from the ceiling just before my fireball hit him and, landing on the floor with surprising gentleness, rushed toward me on all fours. He tackled me to the ground, making me drop Domination as we wrestled on the floor of the tunnel. Shawn constantly snapped at my face with his increasingly sharp teeth, while I used all of my strength to hold him at bay.
“Lucius!” I cried out, my voice strained with effort as I did everything I could to keep Shawn from ripping my face off. “Help!”
Lucius grabbed Shawn’s shoulders and pulled him off me. But Shawn whirled around and slashed Lucius across the face. Lucius cried out in pain and staggered backwards, clutching his eye, but then Shawn kicked him in the gut, sending Lucius falling onto the floor. He jumped on top of Lucius and started clawing at his face, mad laughter escaping his inhuman lips.
Breathing hard, I grabbed Domination and threw another fireball at Shawn. The fireball struck him directly in the back, setting his robes aflame and making him screech in agony. That gave Lucius the moment he needed to kick him in the gut and throw him off, sending Shawn rolling away across the floor.
Sensing my opportunity, I rushed up to Shawn and, raising Domination, brought it down on his chest. Domination pierced Shawn’s chest, going directly through his heart.
I expected blood to gush out of Shawn’s wound, because that was usually what happened to people when they got stabbed. Human or vampire, everyone bled, and getting stabbed in the heart was definitely something that would make blood appear.
But instead of blood pouring out of his wound, something bright and white began bubbling out of his heart. At the same time, Shawn’s eyes and hair started to turn from pure white to gray, while his skin rapidly decayed into dust, leaving behind nothing but a skeleton wearing rags lying on the floor with Domination’s blade stuck in its chest.
The white bubbly stuff, on the other hand, rose above me. It looked kind of like smoke or mist, but the way it whirled and spun told me that this was far more than mere gas. Two red eyes appeared within its form, while claw-like hands—similar to the clawed footprints Lucius and I saw earlier—formed out of the mist.
“Holy silver,” the creature hissed. Its voice sounded vaguely like Shawn’s, but completely bestial. “Wielded by a half-vampire, of all things. The Mistress was right.”
Before I could ask what the creature was talking about, it reached down and grabbed me with both of its huge claws. The claws wrapped around my body totally, squeezing my arms and legs together. I struggled to break free of their grasp on me, but even my enhanced half-vampire strength wasn’t enough to break this creature’s grip on me.
“Die, half-vampire,” the creature said in a low growl. “Let your kind be extinguished from the earth, as you deserve.”
I couldn’t speak due to how tightly the creature was holding me. All I could do was stare up at its inhuman face, which had formed a simple mouth that smirked with animal-like glee.
“Stop.”
The creature froze. Its eyes shifted from me to just above my head, causing me to look over my shoulder to see who had spoken.
It was Lucius. He still stood on the other side of the tunnel, one hand covering his eye, the other held out. He looked much like a prince giving orders. I mean, he normally looked strong and in charge, but he looked even stronger than usual now, as if he was a king who had returned to claim his throne.
“Your voice …” the creature trailed off. “You’re not an ordinary vampire, are you?”
“I’m a Pure,” said Lucius, his tone every bit as authoritative as his body language. “Of course I’m not ordinary.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” said the creature, shaking its head. “Your voice reminds me of the Mistress. The power behind it is something I have not heard in centuries. It is truly unique.”
“I don’t care what you say it is,” said Lucius. “I ordered you to stop.”
“Just why should I listen to you?” said the creature. “I recognize your obvious authority, but you are not my Mistress.”
“You’re right,” said Lucius, nodding. “I’m not. But I can still make you obey me.”
Lucius balled his hand into a fist.
All of a sudden, the creature’s hands let go of me and the entire creature contracted into a small orb of white mist. Its red eyes still glowed within, but they were now one of fear rather than bestial hunger.
“What?” said the creature. “Why is my form … limited? What are you?”
“That’s irrelevant,” said Lucius coolly. “Tell us who your Mistress is and why she sent you to kill us. Otherwise, I will—”
“Never!” the creature snarled. “My loyalty to my Mistress is eternal! She is beauty, she is grace, she is—”
“Very well,” Lucius interrupted. “Then die.”
Lucius raised his hand and brought it down in a smashing motion.
At the same time, the creature slammed into the floor and exploded into a small mist cloud. The mist cloud rapidly dissipated, however, leaving behind nothing but the robed skeleton it had once possessed, which smiled up at me as eerily as ever.
I whirled around to look at Lucius with a questioning gaze. “What was that?”
Lucius loosened his fist. “What was what?”
“What you just did,” I said, gesturing at the skeleton. “The mist creature … thing. What did you do to it?”
Lucius grimaced. “I’ll tell you, but first, my eye needs help.”
I was incredibly curious to learn how Lucius did what he just did, but his eye probably did need urgent attention right now. I moved forward and removed his hand from his eye and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Shawn had not succeeded in tearing out Lucius’ eye entirely, but his claw had torn through it pretty thoroughly. Black blood was splattered around the eye socket, while what remained of Lucius’ eye was dripping out of his eye socket like egg yolk. It made me sick to my stomach, forcing me to put his hand back on his face and say, “Good God, Lucius, how are you not screaming for your life?”
“I’ve experienced worse,” said Lucius tersely. “But it still hurts and it is still in the way. Can you heal it?”
I bit my lower lip. “Dad has been teaching me healing spells recently, but I’m not very good at them yet. Still, I could heal you if you—”
Lucius shook his head. “Don’t bother. Healing spells are complex, particularly when it comes to dealing with eyes. I don’t want you to accidentally make my eye worse, or heal it wrong.”
“But shouldn’t we find a way to deal with your eye anyway?” I said. “You can’t just walk around with it like that.”
“You’re right,” said Lucius. He started digging in
his pockets. “I think I’ve … ah, here we go.”
Lucius pulled a long, thin bandanna out of his pocket. With amazing skill, he tied the bandanna around his eye, making a makeshift eye patch that hid his ruined eye well. If I hadn’t just seen the condition his eyes were in myself, I wouldn’t have even guessed that there was anything wrong with them.
“There,” said Lucius, lowering his hands. “That should suffice until we can get out of here and find a proper healer.”
“Wow,” I said. “Do you carry around a bandanna just for these occasions?”
Lucius shook his head. “Not for this specific situation, no, but bandannas are incredibly useful for fixing all kinds of problems. That’s why I always carry at least one around with me at all times.”
“What about the pain?” I said. “Doesn’t the pain, well, hurt?”
“I’ll manage,” said Lucius.
He walked past me toward the skeleton that had once been Shawn. He nudged it with his foot once or twice and then, completely without warning, brought his foot down on the skull, shattering it into pieces. The sudden smashing of the skull made me jump.
“What did you do that for?” I said. “That skeleton wasn’t a threat.”
Lucius turned to look at me, his one good eye looking quite serious. “I wanted to render that skeleton useless. Without a complete skeleton to control, Mysterias are usually harmless.”
“Mysteria?” I said. “What the heck is a Mysteria?”
Lucius folded his arms in front of his chest. “The creature I just killed. They’re evil spirits, usually stitched together by spirits wandering the Earth. They like to possess corpses and skeletons and use them to do whatever they want. They’re extremely rare, to the point where even many vampires I know think of them as myth, but they’re no myth, as you just saw.”
I shuddered. “Then you mean that Shawn—”
“Has been dead for a while,” Lucius finished for me. “Yes, assuming his name was ever really Shawn and that wasn’t just a story the Mysteria made to trick us. Which, given the deceptive nature of Mysterias, is extremely likely.”
“Where do Mysterias even come from?” I said. “You said they’re made of spirits which wander the Earth, but I don’t know what that means. Who stitches them together?”
Lucius’ expression darkened. “Only one class of beings is capable of making Mysterias, which is a horrible act in itself, because it effectively removes the individuality of each spirit and leaves them as nothing more than building material for creatures which should not exist.”
“What class of beings are you talking about?” I said. “Vampire Lords?”
“No,” said Lucius, shaking his head. “Even Vampire Lords would never think of creating a Mysteria. No, the only beings who would do this are witches.”
“You mean sorceresses,” I said.
“No,” said Lucius. “Witches. There’s a difference, one I believe your father mentioned to you when you first became a half-vampire, if you remember that far back.”
I paused and thought back to my first day as a half-vampire. I recalled Dad and Lucius answering my questions and explaining what happened to me and then I realized what Lucius was talking about. “Yeah, I remember. Dad mentioned something about witchcraft being different from magic, but he refused to explain what he meant by that.”
“I don’t quite understand all the differences myself,” said Lucius. “But I understand why Richard didn’t want to talk about it. Sorcerers and witches get along even worse than sorcerers and vampires.”
“Tell me what a witch is, then,” I said.
Lucius took a deep breath and said, “As I said, I am not entirely familiar with all of the details about how witches differ from sorcerers, but what I do understand is that witches take their magical power from the Darkness, rather than the Origin like sorcerers do.”
“Wouldn’t that make them vampires, though?” I said.
“They’re humans who have managed to control the Darkness,” said Lucius. “Or at least think they do, but the Darkness corrupts them anyway. It doesn’t turn them into vampires, but it does make them … evil.”
“How evil?” I said.
“Sacrificing children to dark gods evil,” said Lucius. “That’s how evil.”
I gulped. “How common are witches?”
“Not too common, as far as I know,” said Lucius. “Most sorcerers want nothing to do with the Darkness, because as you said, it could turn them into vampires. Witches, on the other hand, are sorcerers who have embraced the Darkness wholeheartedly. They aren’t very common, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous. They’re a bit more common than half-vampires, but not by much.”
I looked at the skull-less skeleton which now lay at Lucius’ feet. “If witches, then, are the only people who create Mysterias, and there was a Mysteria here—”
“Then that means that there is a witch somewhere in this place,” Lucius finished for me. “Likely looking for the Vampire Flame, just like you and me.”
“Do you think that that was the ‘Mistress’ the Mysteria mentioned?” I said.
“Probably,” said Lucius. “Mysterias, as a general rule, are loyal to their creators, to the point where they refuse to obey orders from anyone else. That’s part of what makes them so dangerous.”
“But that Mysteria obeyed an order from you, didn’t it?” I said. “How did you manage to control it?”
Lucius looked down at the remains of Shawn, like he wanted to avoid my gaze. “Did I ever tell you the story of how I became a vampire?”
I shook my head. “No, you never have.”
Lucius looked at me again. “Then perhaps I should, given how it is relevant to this situation. And, I think, it may hold the key to figuring out just what is going on here.”
Wondering how Lucius’ conversion story could possibly be relevant to our current situation, I said, “Go ahead. Start from the beginning.”
“Very well,” said Lucius. He rubbed his eye, like it was itchy. “Three hundred years ago, I was a young man living in colonial America. Well, I guess America wasn’t America just yet, considering how the Declaration of Independence wouldn’t be signed for another sixty years or so, but I was still in the land that would be called America. I used to travel around the colonies, doing whatever work I could find, because my parents died when I was young, so I was left to fend for myself for my whole life.”
I listened closely. I had never thought that Lucius would ever feel comfortable enough to share his past with me and I didn’t want to miss one word of it. I didn’t even want to ask any questions, because I was afraid of interrupting his flow of thought and making him forget what he wanted to tell me.
“On a cold December day, I found myself in the middle of a huge blizzard in New York,” said Lucius. “I thought for sure I was going to die, because I was all by myself and had no shelter to take. That is, until I found a seemingly abandoned cabin in the middle of the storm, which had a light on in one of the windows, which was how I knew that it must have someone living inside it. I knocked on the front door incessantly, until it finally opened and I found myself staring at an old woman I had never seen before.”
“What did this old woman look like?” I said.
“Bent over and crone-like,” said Lucius. “She had long, stringy hair and wore patched clothing that didn’t seem to fit her right. She wasn’t the kind of woman I would ever say hi to if I was crossing her in the street, but I was so desperate for warmth that I begged to be let inside. Thankfully, she was merciful enough to let me into her cabin, at least until the blizzard ended and it was safe for me to continue my travels.”
“Sounds like a nice woman,” I said.
Lucius scowled. “Oh, she was not a nice woman by any stretch of the imagination. As it turned out, she was a witch by the name of Abigail Horton, who lived by herself to avoid the rest of humanity. When she let me into her cabin, she made me her prisoner, using her magic to keep me from escaping even
long after the blizzard exhausted itself.”
“What did she do with you?” I said with a gulp. “Did she torture you or—”
“Not really,” said Lucius, shaking his head. “She used me as an experiment. She forced me to drink these strange green potions she would brew, which always made me feel sick to my stomach. I thought she was trying to poison me, at least until one day a week after I went to her cabin, when I found out what she was actually trying to do.”
“What was she trying to do?” I asked, despite not really wanting to know the answer.
Lucius looked down at the remains of Shawn again. “She wanted to make me her apprentice. She was trying to turn me into a witch.”
“What?” I said. “Why?”
“Because she was getting old and was dying,” said Lucius. “She had no children of her own, so she didn’t have anyone else to pass her knowledge and skills onto. She was feeding me potions with the intent of giving me magical powers, because I was a Powerless human at the time and couldn’t use any magic at all.”
“Did it work?” I said.
“Sort of,” said Lucius. “It’s impossible to make a Powerless human into a sorcerer, but somehow she gave me the ability to control Mysterias. I still don’t know how she did that—I don’t think even Abigail knew exactly—but it was an effect of the potions nonetheless.”
“And what did you do with that new power?” I said.
Lucius looked up at me again. “Used it to have one of Abigail’s Mysterias kill her when she was sleeping. I had pretended to have changed my mind and wanted to serve her, but secretly I only did that to make her lower her guard. Once I was convinced that she didn’t suspect me of trying to escape anymore, she got careless, which was when I killed her and escaped her cabin. And I didn’t just escape her cabin. I outright destroyed it and all of the books and papers within it that contained her evil knowledge.”
“So she’s really dead?” I said.
Lucius nodded. “Yes. Witches are hard to kill, but they’re not immortal or invincible.”
The Vampire Flame (Vampire Sorceress Book 3) Page 6
