A Wild Conversion

by Katherine Gilbert

  If she weren’t chasing killer vampires, it would be a cool place to wander. She kind of understood the welcome center now.

  With Evan’s spell taken care of, the others went to work. Noticing Patrick tilt his head, leading them over to the restrooms, she didn’t even want to speculate when he opened the ladies room door. Still, when he pointed to the inside of it, she could see that the lock had been ripped clear off. Obviously, someone’s hiding place had been discovered.

  Evan looked worried, glaring at the gryphon, his voice very soft. “Is this something you heard about, or is there a hostage out there somewhere?”

  Or another victim?

  Patrick only gave his bird shrug, which didn’t do them much good, but that was gryphons for you.

  Although she saw Evan’s annoyance, now wasn’t the time—not that she was certain there would ever be a perfect moment for questioning the creature. Well, you can try, but Patrick only ever says what he feels like saying, so you’re pretty much only talking to yourself.

  Seeming to come to the same conclusion, Evan shook his head a little and leaned in to Carrie. “I’m going to need you out there to take the lead.”

  His whisper was so low she could barely hear it, but she suspected that none of the others were having the same problem.

  “We’ll all be watching or close. If you find them, or they find you, take them down and try to question them. We’ll be there to help.”

  Carrie had several internal reactions to such a plan. One was, What did your last vampire bait die of?—but since it was pretty clearly Susannah, which made the answer uncomfortably obvious, she didn’t ask.

  The second was a slight shock from seeing how much faith he had in her—and she was certain, looking at him, that his plan was based on his total belief in her abilities. While it was far more than she had in herself, it was strangely heartening, too.

  The last was that she had to curl her fingers in to try to keep the lightning hidden. Having Evan whisper in her ear in his husky British accent was causing sensations she didn’t really know her body could experience—and had no idea at all what to do with emotionally.

  This latter reaction was probably the one which shocked her the most—even more than her feelings about the whole, Go take down the rampaging vampire, dear plan. Also, it was definitely the one she had the least opportunity to think about now.

  Tenderly, he put his hand on her arm—which did nothing to stop the little flicks of lightning—and whispered, “Are you all right with this?”

  Only her brain responded.

  Why, of course, Evan, dear. I’ve never even been on a hunt before. I’m just longing to get sent off on my own as bait with orders to take down an immortal, fanged creature with only a little lightning and some luck as weapons and then question someone who’s been bespelled or brainwashed or something about how they got that way. Piece of cake. By the way, where did you say you wanted that last star on the left moved to—Alpha Centauri?

  She took a deep breath, keeping the snark internal. “Just ducky.”

  Okay, most of the snark, then.

  When he looked at her worriedly, she got trapped by the depth of his gaze. His eyes were so green, pulled her in. A thousand emotions were there: fear, desire, protectiveness, anger . . . too many to even name.

  Although he didn’t want to do this, she could see, wanted to keep her safe, he was also convinced that she was about 10,000 times stronger than he was, than any of them. He thought she could move the moon.

  She smiled slightly. For him, she probably would.

  For a moment, she thought he would kiss her. For a moment, she wished he would try.

  The moment passed, as Susannah gave a small noise—a grunt, maybe?—followed by a “Vampires are waiting, guys.” Whether she meant her own family or the ones they were hunting, Carrie didn’t know.

  Discover more of Carrie and Evan’s paranormal secrets here: https://storyoriginapp.com/universalbooklinks/e87acb90-55a4-11ea-96d7-8b1d557e3d27

  Looking for a taste of Katherine Gilbert's next novel?

  Here's an exclusive, sneak preview of the first chapter of Children of the Gods, a quirkily-humorous urban fantasy/paranormal romance, upcoming in Spring 2021:

  There was something about being dead which made actors even more unruly than they usually were. While Michael was watching, he was already bored.

  “Now, in this scene, Juliet . . .”

  “Uh, wrong play. This is Julius Caesar.”

  That had gotten the first one going, but the minor arguments which covered the stage were many. The Bickering Twosome were the worst, though, being the only ones who had known each other while alive.

  “You never could find the spotlight.”

  “Why do you think I'm dead?”

  A detailed description of her death followed, but her old rival had apparently heard it many times already. She interrupted to argue about costumes. He focused elsewhere in the mishmash of actors at the Terminally-Confused Ghost. He had never bothered to learn their names.

  “I thought it was, ‘Ecru, Bruté.’”

  The ghost near him rolled his eyes. “You are a freaking moron, my friend.”

  Michael sort of agreed but knew better than to try to interrupt. He was in the back of the theater, just watching, until he was needed for something. It wouldn’t take long. One mission or another would soon make their captor send someone to get him. He was always needed eventually.

  In the meantime, he watched the daily ritual of Ghost Rehearsal, which was always more like one giant undead argument. The old theater housed the spiritual remains of many actors, apparently many from suicides. Having just one director kill himself to herd the unruly bunch seemed to be too much to ask.

  The Lady in Red was having her say now. She was apparently the theater's most famous post-life resident, mostly for her habit of hanging out in the men’s dressing room, flashing the living actors. It wasn’t really her fault. It had been the women’s dressing room during her time, and she was a bit prim about noticing the living. Apparently, she considered it bad form. To her mind, the theater was still hers. Why acknowledge the ridiculous creatures with pulses who happened to inhabit it now?

  She had managed to make her way to center stage with ease, the other ghosts giving her a pathway wherever she wished to be. He wasn’t even certain they realized they were doing it.

  Her voice was deep and mellifluous, reaching to the very last seat without any seeming effort. “You’re all being very silly.”

  She had struck a pose quite naturally, really did have a nice profile.

  “Shakespeare is so old-fashioned. Ibsen is so much more real.”

  The arguments around her had stopped momentarily, but he wasn’t certain that the ex-people who had been having them really noticed.

  “In my last role, I was playing . . .”

  Every single ghost around her finished the thought. “Hedda Gabler, we know.”

  There was a series of disgruntled noises from them, and Michael thought—not for the first time—that they were mostly upset at having been so fascinated by her, if only for a moment. The Lady in Red simply raised her eyebrow at them and turned, and their complaints trailed off, as every one watched her slow retreat.

  Say what you would about her. She did have a fabulous presence.

  Michael, too, was caught in her spell for a moment, till he was interrupted by a smiling voice beside him. “Watching the chaos?”

  Looking up, he saw Isis settle in a chair next to him. Despite the fact that he was certain she had been sent by their captor, he couldn’t really be angry at her. She was just as trapped as he was. And the long legs she stretched out onto the seat in front of her were rather distracting, as well.

  He tried to pull his attention back from them, partly because he realized she was noticing. Their captor had been using her for seduction missions when he found an excuse for them. She was very good at them, but he didn’t want to encourage her in that direction. I
t wasn’t really her traditional role, and he wasn’t certain that any of them were doing any good by helping their captor more than they actually had to.

  In many ways, this was a sore spot for him. While he knew that there must be some reason why The Lady had allowed all of their captures, he was still highly unclear about what it might be—and playing along with the whims of their tormentor had never sat well with him.

  Of course, they weren’t being tormented particularly at the moment, unless you counted the ongoing, repetitive arguments on stage.

  Isis smiled at the ghosts with a sort of maternal affection, and he wondered again at her patience. His gaze also traced along her lovely face. If he had to put up with their captor’s nonsense, at least he had some interesting companions in his pain. He might wish her better, but she never complained, and he wondered whether she too knew there must be some reason for all of this. If only either of them could discover what it was.

  “If you keep staring at me like that, I won’t be able to concentrate for rehearsals,” she smiled.

  Laughing a little, he looked back to the stage, and she flipped the long, dark waves of her hair behind the chair. A few of them caught on his jacket, and he wondered at the luck of the fabric. Still, he was determined not to give in to touching them while they were in public—and that said nothing about the guilt he felt over her. He was well aware that he was simply her distraction.

  He had never fought this, instead, went back to business. “How soon do you think he'll come with another mission?”

  It was Michael’s constant worry. So far, he had managed not to do anything too irreparable on their captor’s orders, but he knew the man wasn’t happy over this fact. Michael was no stranger to war, but just because he was good at fighting—and even killing, as necessary—didn’t mean he enjoyed it. That had been true even with The Lady. For their current master, he had no guarantee over the guilt of their targets—rather the opposite, in fact. So long as he continued getting results, he hoped to avoid taking such a path again.

  Of course, this was not the reason their captor had called him into being, but he cared little for that. No slaves in their right minds would ever care much for the happiness of their masters, except as it shielded them from harm. All any of them could do was try to get by, until they understood what the man wanted enough to discover how to break free.

  Still, this didn’t seem to be happening any time soon. It had already been several years of captivity on this painful plane of existence. He had always had a sympathy for those in the physical world, for all of The Lady’s creations. While there were compensations to all the torments and annoyances of material existence—his eyes slid over to his companion’s long legs again, and he caught her smile from the corner of his eye—he knew that, for many of those here, there was little more than suffering. All those lost souls on the stage were only one example of this truth.

  They were bickering even more heatedly now, seemed to have teamed up to be rehearsing at least four different plays simultaneously. He counted a Jacobean revenge drama, two Shakespearian tragedies—The Lady in Red hadn’t talked them out of that one, apparently—and what appeared to be the opening of Edward Albee’s The Sandbox. The cacophony they presented would have made the most avant-garde producer proud.

  Isis sighed, watching them tenderly. “Y’know, someday soon, someone’s going to catch on that all we do is ‘rehearse’ and expect an actual opening from us.”

  Although he doubted it, Michael smiled. Every time there was too much suspicion on them, their “tour” simply moved on. There was always something else their captor wanted and some better place to use as a base to get it. “Maybe we can put the ghosts on, instead.”

  One eyebrow raised, she looked at him.

  “If nothing else, it will confuse them.”

  The eyebrow went higher. “An empty stage?”

  Shrugging, he half-acknowledged her point. Only a psychic or those in their position would actually be able to see the performance. “What’s the old saying: ‘If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your . . .’?”

  He had trailed off, and Isis shook her head. He knew she found his unwillingness to curse amusing.

  Still, he had been The Lady’s servant too long. Not that she would care—she could manage a good blue streak when annoyed—but, as her representative, sometimes a terminal one, he felt the need to be a bit more formal. Still, it wasn’t something he wanted to explain. It made him feel the ache of how far he had fallen too much.

  He was just about to try to distract Isis again, when their captor finally appeared. He always did, eventually.

  Michael didn’t move, as the man came up to them, but Isis did tuck her feet back down. She might give into his orders for the seduction of some outsider, but she never courted their captor’s eyes.

  The man was brusque, as always. “You’ll need to go out tonight. I’ll leave the address with Hermes when I have it.”

  Michael sighed, seeing no point in arguing—but that didn’t mean he had to be polite. “What is it you want this time?”

  Their captor raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment on his tone. “You’ll know it when you see it.” He grinned—not a pretty sight. “It’s a spear, a rather old one.” The evil in his eyes deepened. “You may even recognize it.”

  Damn him. Michael hated this, understanding all too well whose spear it would be.

  The man’s awful grin continued. “I don’t think your ‘lady’ will miss it much.”

  Michael said nothing.

  “And don’t give me that glare.” The man started to stalk away. “You’re not a goddamned archangel anymore.”

  His look burning, Michael knew this. But, as soon as he could, he would end this—and get back to The Lady with as much of his soul as he could salvage.

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  About the Author

  Katherine Gilbert has always believed in the ordinary, everyday magic of kindness and empathy. She writes stories filled with the kind of characters she’d both like to be and know and hopes that her readers also enjoy their time spent in her universe where the good guys and gals not only win but remain loving, humor-filled people while they do so.