by Dave Ferraro
Chapter Twenty-Four
Krystal followed the hurried footfalls of her companions, glancing back every minute to gauge the progress of their pursuers. They seemed to be closing on them fast, and would be entering the market shortly. She wondered, not for the first time, if she shouldn’t give herself up to Roma to spare her friends. If Roma was pursuing them with a band of vampires and loup-garous, she would catch them. And then what would happen to them?
A cart suddenly pulled up in front of Krystal and she stopped, startled, as the driver jumped out and restacked crates onto it, some having fallen over.
Panic surged through her chest as throngs of people blocked her from going around the obstacle. “Guys! Hey, guys!” she yelled, her voice swallowed by the crowd. With determination, she forced her way into a line of people going around the back of the cart, coming out the other side with a satisfied sigh. But when she looked around, she didn’t see her friends.
Closing her eyes, she decided to feel for Damien with her powers, and let the tendrils of necromancy course out from her, feeling her surroundings, blanketing them quickly. But there were too many vampires in the vicinity.
She felt a tap on her shoulder and opened her eyes with a start to see Serene standing before her. Relief flooded through her. “Thank god. I thought I got separated from you.”
Serene looked behind her and shrugged.
With a frown, Krystal followed where she had looked. “Wait, the others went ahead without us?”
Serene nodded.
Krystal looked thoughtful for a moment, then let out a deep breath. “Well, at least we have each other, I suppose. And we know where they’re headed.” She pointed to Blackwood.
Serene looked worried, but offered another nod, following Krystal when she began to walk in that direction.
“Pretty charm for the young witch?” a goblin asked, shoving necklaces in Krystal’s face.
Krystal frowned and pushed the charms aside. “I’m not a witch, and no thank you.”
The goblin glared, and seemed about to offer a retort when it looked behind them and suddenly ducked back into his booth.
Krystal glanced back and saw two loup-garous leaping over the cart in the middle of the road, earning protests from people as they were pushed out of the way.
“Uh oh,” Krystal mumbled, grabbing Serene by the arm and steering her into a nearby curtained doorway. She ducked behind the door frame and peeked outside as the werewolves passed them by, looking to and fro. As soon as they’d disappeared, she let out a sigh. “That was close.”
“Welcome, welcome!” a voice cackled behind them.
Krystal started and turned to see a hunchbacked woman pouring tea into cups at a table. She looked ancient, with wisps of white hair atop her head, and warts on her nose. She grinned with a mouth containing only half of her teeth.
“You came for tea, yes?”
Krystal looked around the room, noting the dried herbs and containers of dry flora and roots. She glanced at Serene uneasily. “Uh, no. Sorry, but we’re just looking.”
“Well, have some tea anyway,” the woman croaked, offering a cup to Serene, who took it with a nod. “You’ll see first-hand how delicious Miss Tra’s tea is.”
Krystal shoved past the woman as she pushed a cup in her direction, swiftly knocking the cup from Serene’s hands before the siren could take a sip. “No, thank you.” She ushered Serene out of the room as Miss Tra grumbled about “rude hooligans.”
Once outside, Krystal sent Serene an annoyed look. “No food, remember? No drinks either. Do you want to be stuck here forever?”
Serene looked crestfallen as she shook her head.
“Good, now don’t be taken in by these people then. Remember what we’re here for.” She pointed to Blackwood again. “Nothing else matters.”
“Oh, I beg to differ on that point.”
Krystal’s head whipped toward the speaker, horror drawing over her face. “Roma.”
Roma smiled. “Come now. Don’t look upset. I wouldn’t hurt you.” She paused as she considered Serene. “Your friends are a different story, however. I see what a terrible influence they are on your growth.”
“Leave them alone.”
“I don’t think I can do that.” Roma cocked her head and looked to the two vampires and one loup-garous in her company. “Dears?”
They immediately charged Serene as one.
Krystal clenched her hands into fists and with incredible force, sunk the tendrils of her power deep into the vampires, making them both to stop with a gasp. Then she immediately turned them on each other, whereupon they each ripped the other’s head off in fluid motions.
Roma looked shocked, then threw her head back and laughed as the bodies of her vampires turned to ash. “How delightful! You have some dark inclinations in you, after all!” She pulled Krystal close to her, fastening an iron grip over her wrist.
Krystal struggled against her, but found it useless. She was a fourteen-year-old in the grip of a strong adult woman. She had no chance if it were just the two of them. She looked up to see Serene dodging an attack by the loup-garous, a black-haired beauty with bloodlust in her eyes. Serene, while powerful as a siren, had lost most of her powers when she’d lost her voice. She couldn’t fly, couldn’t create claws, couldn’t lure people with her voice or wield great energy blasts. She was strong, but that was her only power. And Krystal doubted that it was enough.
She ducked her head as the werewolf went in for a killing blow. She didn’t want to see her friend die.
A gasp from Roma caused her to look up. And when she did, she saw that the loup-garous lay on the ground with a hole punched through the middle of her head, bone and blood spilling over the pavement. She lay twitching on the ground, with Serene nowhere to be seen.
Krystal felt a surge of hope filter through her chest. Of course, none of the hunters aside from Amelia had powers. Why had she given up on a powerful ally so easily? Serene had certainly demonstrated that she wasn’t helpless.
“Perhaps there’s more to your friends than meets the eyes,” Roma conceded, watching the loup-garous continue to shudder. “But don’t worry; loup-garous can only be killed by silver. This one will be fine.” She sighed. “Of course, we don’t have time to wait for her to regrow her head. We’ll have to leave her behind, regrettably.”
“A pity,” Krystal spat.
Roma chuckled and two more loup-garous were suddenly with them. She shoved Krystal toward one and Krystal found herself trapped in another iron grip. “Tell me, Krystal. When I kill your friends, where will you go? Who will teach you to control your powers?”
Krystal glared at her and said nothing as she was shoved forward, forced to walk with them toward Blackwood.
“That’s what I thought. When I kill your friends, you will be forced to come to me for tutelage.”
“I will never follow you.”
“You will when your powers overwhelm you. And they will, inevitably. I haven’t felt a necromancer as strong as you…ever. And even the weak get overwhelmed.”
Krystal shook her head. “Why are you doing this? Why won’t you just let us go?”
“Because that’s a sign of weakness,” Roma told her. “One must not show mercy. One must strike down her enemies, demonstrate consequences for defiance. That is the only way to retain order.”
“You could try being nice and generous.”
“Generous,” Roma repeated, then sighed. “This world has far too little good in it to waste time on generosity.” She turned to Krystal with a fire in her eyes that scared her. “Men are evil. Men are just as much monsters as we are, if not more so. Do you think that our practices are worse than the horrible crimes men have committed? Oh, no.”
Krystal was silent for a moment as they continued to walk along, then turned to Roma hesitantly. “What happened to you? Why are you so distrustful and unwilling to help people?”
Roma sno
rted. “Time and time again, I’ve seen that people only look out for themselves, and once they have power to change things, they only desire more power and forget those who helped them. It’s everyone for themselves.” She shook her head. “I’ve been around for centuries, Krystal. You don’t see it as easily today. Greed and power are present, but do not look as evil. It’s not as obvious. But it’s still there. Do you know how I came to New Orleans for the first time?”
Krystal shook her head.
“As a slave. My whole family was captured in Africa and sold into slavery, sold to separate owners. I never saw them again. I worked on a plantation, picking cotton. It was labor-intensive and my owners were cruel. I saw the most horrible practices…many of us were treated worse than dogs. When my powers began to manifest, I kept them a secret. And then a woman came to be with us, one rumored to be in league with the devil himself. But she wasn’t, of course. She knew some voodoo, and that frightened the people. But it was a glimpse of power. She made us charms and gris-gris that we kept hidden in our shacks. A little show of defiance that grew and grew, until we were discovered. And when my master killed that woman, I was furious.”
“What did you do?”
Roma smiled. “She was whipped to death by the hand of my master. He didn’t stop whipping her even after she’d fallen to the ground unconscious. He just kept furiously mutilating her flesh. And then I felt her flesh. Dead and calling out to me. I gave it a new direction. I made her stand and turn to face my master. I made her grab his whip and yank it from his hands, turning it on him. And when his men tried to intervene, they found that even bullets wouldn’t fell her. She killed them easily and quickly, but that would not be the fate of the master of the house. He deserved a slow, brutal death. And he saw it at her undead hands, while the rest of us watched.”
Krystal swallowed hard. “I’m sorry that you had to go through that.”
“Are you?” Roma smirked. “I believe that you are. But you can’t fully grasp what I’ve been through. It will take your own experiences to wake you up, to make you realize that there is no absolute good and evil.”
“But you want to rule over the humans. How does that make you any different than your master?”
Roma blinked. “Because I wish us to take our rightful place doesn’t make me evil, Krystal. We won’t treat humans as dogs. But we will no longer have to hide who and what we are. We will no longer cower in fear, in the shadows. We will be worshipped, as we should be.”
Krystal swallowed hard. She didn’t think she would be able to reason with Roma. Even if she was ultimately a sympathetic person, she was too far gone, too damaged, to see things beyond her warped reality. Necromancy had given her the power she’d needed to take control of her life, and that power had corrupted her so that she no longer knew the difference between what was right and wrong, as much as she tried to justify her actions. She was a cold-blooded killer and she had to be stopped.”
