“Call Jade,” Jack ordered.
Jade was Hayley’s daughter. She was just a few months older than Sam, and they always got along really well. There was no reason for Sam not to call her. “Call her and I promise not to be an alarm clock for a week,” Jack said, knowing how much Sam hated it when he woke her up by calling her name over and over and over again.
She sighed. “If I agree to hang out with Jade for a few hours you’ll leave me alone before noon, not just for the week but from now on.”
“A month,” Jack offered. “After that you’ll be back in school, so you’ll be waking up early anyway.”
“For the rest of the summer, and any days I’m not in school.”
“Deal,” Jack said. “Now get up, get dressed, and I’ll go call Jade. You have thirty minutes!” He walked out of the room, giving Sam some privacy so she could get dressed.
CHAPTER 23
Sam got up out of bed and had a quick shower before brushing her teeth. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, not bothering to look at what she was dressing herself in before she put it on. She rarely ever paid that much attention to what she wore, at least not anymore.
Clothes didn’t matter. What was the point in dressing nice when no one was there to notice?
Despite the fact that she had fifteen minutes left before Jack would barge in and drag her outside, she used Magic to dry her hair. Not just because it was easier and less time consuming than using a hairdryer, but because ever since Sam had openly started using her Magic she’d used it for pretty much everything.
Drying her hair, mending clothes if they started to look worn, keeping the house clean, making food taste better. Since she’d turned fifteen Magic had become a part of her daily life.
She never used it to apply make–up though.
Not because she couldn’t use it for that, but because Magic for make–up was nothing more than a glamour. And people could see through glamours if they cared to look closely enough.
After spending about five minutes making her face look slightly more presentable she placed the amulet that Jack had given her on the counter beside the sink. Then, using a pair of scissors from her desk she cut her finger, allowing a drop of her blood to fall on the crystal.
The blood seeped into the clear teardrop shaped stone. It mixed around inside it for a few seconds, floating within the gem like a red mist. Then the amulet started to glow, before it went clear again.
Cool, Sam thought as she picked the amulet up and held it in her hand. She felt the warm pulse of ancient Magic seeping from it and thrumming against her skin, melding into her flesh and becoming a part of her.
She squeezed the gem tightly in her hand for a moment, allowing herself some time to adjust.
Then she put it around her neck.
Sam gasped as soon as the stone touched the skin on her chest. Her heartbeat momentarily increased. She felt a small stabbing pain go through her heart. Sam turned around and looked at herself in the mirror. A drop of blood ran down from her chest, directly behind the amulet, and behind her t-shirt.
For a few seconds breathing was more difficult than breathing should be. Then, after a few moments, the pain cleared and her breathing returned to normal, as another drop of blood—this time travelling from Sam’s heart—seeped through the stone and into the centre. But this time as the blood swirled around inside, it stained the amulet purple.
Sam ran the tap and used the water to wash the blood off her chest. By the time the amulet had relaxed, and grown used to Sam, she noticed that the colour it had turned was the same colour as her eyes.
Sam took a breath, then when she was ready, she put on a pair of shoes and walked downstairs. Jack was in the living room waiting for her. “Ready?” he asked turning to face her as she stepped off the last step.
“I guess,” Sam mumbled. She took her jacket off the coat rack in the hallway, then put it on, checking her pocket to make sure her keys were still where they should be. Sam opened the front door, and had taken just one step when she almost fell flat on her face. Jack, still in his corporeal form, reached out and grabbed her, keeping a firm grip on Sam’s arm, doing his best to keep her upright. Sam fixed herself, regaining her footing, before she let her gaze travel down to find whatever had tripped her up.
A vase was rolling around on the front porch, eighteen red roses spilled across the ground.
“The fuck?” she mumbled. Sam looked at the vase, then at Jack. He scrutinised the vase in confusion, obviously it hadn’t been there when he’d come in. He looked at Sam and shrugged.
Sam bent down, picking the roses up off the ground; she put them back in the vase, counting them as she did. She had been right, there were eighteen, and each one had the thorns removed from their stems. There was a card accompanying the flowers, though it was just a generic piece of white card. It didn’t say where the flowers had come from and it didn’t say who had sent them. All the card said was ‘Happy Birthday’.
Sam stood up with the vase in her hand. “Who are they from?” Jack asked, turning his head sideways to try read the card.
“I don’t know,” Sam answered, her jaw clenched as she spoke, while the back of her head whispered, Yes, you do. “It doesn’t say.” Sam brought the flowers inside, walking through the hallway quickly; she reached the back door, swung it open with her free hand, then dropped the roses, and the vase they came in into the trash can outside.
She heard Jack let a sigh and knew it meant he’d figured out who they were from. “You didn’t need to do that you know? A gift should be appreciated, even if you’re mad at the person who sent it.”
Without a word in response she walked back to the front door, slamming it shut behind her.
Sam had barely made it up the driveway to Jade’s house, when Jade walked out the front door with her jacket on. “Hey Sam,” she said. “Ready to go?”
Sam forced a smile and nodded. Jade walked past her, over to the fence where Jack was waiting for them. Before Sam turned to join them she noticed movement at the living room window in Jade’s house. She saw Hayley standing there, staring at her boldly, her lips curved in a smirk. Sam felt her teeth clench as she held back her anger.
She wasn’t sure what it was about Hayley that pissed her off so much. There was just something about her that seemed . . . wrong.
Sam turned to walk away, when she caught sight of a shadow in the corner of her eye. She turned back sharply to try get a better look at what she thought she saw. But when she looked, there was nothing there.
No shadows.
No monsters.
No Hayley.
There was nothing evil . . . at least not that she could see.
CHAPTER 24
Jamie walked down a dark and dingy street, the light that should have been emanating from the streetlamps was virtually nonexistent. Not that Jamie minded much, with his heightened senses he could have found his way through the streets blindfolded.
He turned off the dingy street, into an even dingier alleyway around the side of the seediest, most rundown hotel he had ever seen. As he moved forward, he suddenly noticed a hunched figure on the ground hidden behind the bins. Jamie jumped slightly when he first noticed him, then for a moment afterwards just looked at the man curiously.
He hadn’t sensed him before he’d seen him, which was odd.
But that was something that seemed to be happening to him a lot lately. Running into people that his senses told him didn’t exist.
Jamie cast his eyes over the spindly man. He was pale and dirty, his clothes worn and torn; he looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a month and he smelled as though he hadn’t washed since then either.
It didn’t take very long for Jamie to determine that the man was dead. He had no audible pulse, his chest was completely still, and no heat radiated from his skin.
Jamie peered over his shoulder at the vacant streets and wondered if he should call someone.
The police?
After a moment of waiting for someone who he could persuade to be the one to make the phone call, he turned, stepped past the man and walked to the door at the end of the alley—the one marked ‘Emergency Exit’—after deciding it would be simpler to inform the people within the club he was on his way to.
The door was broken, so it was easily opened. Beyond that door was another one that had been painted black, making it barely visible in the darkness. He stood in the small entryway, the door in front of him swinging open before the one behind had even closed.
Jamie was surprised but he hid it as best he could. Vampires, he thought, they can sense me.
A girl with vibrant red hair stood on the other side of the door. She looked at him curiously for a moment, then smiled widely as though she were trying to be friendly, but the width of her smile and the amount of teeth she exposed made the action look more threatening than friendly.
Jamie listened carefully, he could hear her heart beating steadily, and her lungs expanding as she breathed in and out. Human, he thought, overcome with disappointment, though he tried not to allow his disappointment to show externally. After all, the odds of him finding somewhere that was actually a club for Vampires had never really been very high.
She’s dressed quite oddly, Jamie thought as he did a quick evaluation of her attire. She was wearing a pair of thigh-high leather boots over what appeared to be leather trousers, a black long sleeved top, over which she wore a vest that appeared to be made of silver chainmail.
“Hi,” she said after a moment.
Jamie smiled nervously, her attire filling him with a slight unease. “Hello.”
“My name’s Heather,” she said, then slowly looked him up and down. “You’re new?” she observed, but stated is as though it was both a fact and a question.
Jamie wasn’t sure if she meant to the club or life as a Vampire. To the first one he was new, not so much to the second. Given the fact that she was clearly human, Jamie treated her as he would any other human and assumed she had no knowledge of what he was. He nodded to let her know that she was right, he was new to the club. “I’m Jamie,” he said.
“Jamie,” she repeated. “I like it, you can come in.” She stepped aside to let him pass.
He took a step forward, then paused when he remembered the man outside. “I actually need to ask you something first.”
Heather paused for a moment, and looked at him, her eyes widened and she looked around nervously as though she expected their interaction to end badly for her in some way. “Oh . . . what do you need to ask me?”
He placed his hand on the door behind him and pushed it open, pointing outside. “What should I do about him?”
Heather stepped forward hesitantly and poked her head around the doorframe to see where Jamie was pointing. She visibly paled at the sight of the dead man. “Oh,” she breathed and quickly turned away.
“Should I call the police?” Jamie asked. Feeling slightly guilty for exposing her to the sight of a dead body. He would have looked around inside and found someone else, but he was here for a purpose and he’d rather not waste too much time on things that didn’t fit into his plans.
Heather shook her head. “No, we can’t have police back here,” she replied, then turned to the door. “Nick!” she yelled inside. Less than half a second later a tall man showed up at the threshold, dressed in a pair of jeans and a red check shirt. Jamie was relieved to see someone dressed normally; when he’d first seen Heather he had been worried there would be some kind of chainmail dress code.
“What?” he asked, then gave Jamie a curious look. He has no heartbeat, Jamie thought excitedly as he smiled a hello. The man . . . the Vampire, Nick, nodded politely.
Heather just pointed to the body, still facing away from it as if she couldn’t bear to see.
Nick looked at the body for a moment, before he sighed in annoyance, as if this was something that he dealt with regularly. Then he walked to the dead man and slung the body over his shoulder. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said to Heather, before he disappeared.
Jamie watched Nick run away with the fascination of a child who had just witnessed something magical. He could run that fast himself, but to see someone else move at such a speed was an amazing sight to behold.
He’d done it; he had found another Vampire.
He was so happy he could have clicked his heels in excitement.
He didn’t . . . but he could have.
Jamie turned to look at Heather who was watching the place where Nick had been, her expression somewhere between amazement and fear. She was human, but obviously she knew about Vampires, which made him wonder how she knew and how—with knowledge of Vampires, which supposedly included knowledge of their dietary preferences—she had wound up working in a place such as this.
Heather turned to Jamie and gave him a queasy smile. “Come in,” she said, and led the way inside.
“What’s he going to do with the body?” Jamie asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
“He’ll take the body to the park, leave it on a bench then make an anonymous call to the police from the nearest phone booth.”
Jamie nodded his head as he looked around. The place was not at all as Sam had described it.
As his thoughts turned to Sam he felt his heart twinge with longing. He promptly washed the feeling away before it had a chance to grow.
Despite the dingy exterior, the inside of the club was quite . . . lush. The walls were painted a deep red and were decorated with black velvet curtains. The room he was standing in was lit entirely by candles, all safely contained in glass jars. Soft music could be heard over unseen speakers.
“The bar is through there,” Heather told him and pointed to a doorway framed with black curtains. “If you’re looking for a room you talk to me, I’ll get you a good one. It’s fancier on the inside than it is on the outside.”
“Thanks,” Jamie said. “Uh, you wouldn’t happen to know a Vampire by the name of Aleczander would you?” he asked. Hoping beyond reason that this human girl would have some helpful information.
The only reason Jamie had come to this place was because he was hoping to find the Vampire who had made him this way; a man who he knew nothing about apart from his name.
Heather shrugged. “I’ve only worked here for like a week,” she said. “But I do know that if you’re looking to track another Vampire, go into the bar, take a seat and tell Eric . . . the bartender, that you’re looking for Claudio.”
“Claudio?” Jamie asked.
Heather nodded. “Claudio is one of the oldest dudes around. He knows everyone, he’ll find whoever it is you need.”
Jamie nodded. “Thanks,” he said, and walked towards the bar.
“Remember to come to me if you want a room,” Heather called after him.
Jamie laughed a little to himself. “I will.”
He walked through the curtained doorway into the bar. Its decor was more or less the same as the reception area only with a countertop to the left of the entrance, lined with stools. There were about a dozen tables, and the walls, instead of being lined with black velvet curtains were lined with black velvet sofas that were partitioned to make little booths around the room.
Jamie sat down on one of the barstools. The bartender was there almost immediately. “What can I get you?” he asked. Jamie could sense no heartbeat from the man. Another Vampire.
“Um, I’m looking for Claudio,” he replied. The bartender nodded, this was obviously a familiar routine for him.
He pointed to one of the velvet sofas. “That’s him there.” Jamie allowed his gaze to follow the bartender’s pointed finger and found himself looking at a man who had his mouth on the neck of a brunette in a navy dress. The bartender turned back to Jamie. “He’ll be over in a minute. Can I get you a drink while you’re waiting?”
Jamie wondered if he was supposed to order blood or not. Was he expected to,
or would any beverage suffice? “I’ll have a beer, thanks,” he said, deciding he’d rather not ask for blood. He didn’t know where they got it from, or how fresh it was, or if it was even something they served.
“Any preferences?” he asked. Jamie shrugged. The bartender opened a bottle and set it down in front of him.
“Thanks,” Jamie said.
As soon as he took the first sip, Claudio sat on the seat next to him, fastidiously licking traces of blood from his lips. “You rang?” he asked with a curious glance at Jamie. “I don’t believe I know you.”
“My name is Jamie, and you don’t know me because we’ve never met.”
Claudio smiled at that.
The bartender placed a glass of brown liquid in front of Claudio. Jamie could smell it from where he was sitting, bourbon.
He leaned back on the stool and peered over his shoulder at the woman that Claudio had been feeding from. She was lying on the sofa with her eyes closed and a black jacket draped over her body. “What did you do to her?” Jamie asked and turned his attention back to Claudio.
Claudio glanced towards the woman and smiled. “I told her to sleep, so she sleeps,” he explained. “No one will touch her, they all know she is mine,” he added, as if assuring Jamie of the woman’s safety. “Do you know how to manipulate the mind?” Claudio asked conversationally. Jamie noticed that he spoke with a slight accent. French, maybe.
“Yes,” he replied. “I wasn’t Turned yesterday. I have learned a few things over the years.”
Claudio nodded, sipping his drink while he looked at Jamie as if assessing him. The corner of his lips twitched in a smile as he said, “What has you so shaken?”
Jamie stared straight ahead, choosing to ignore Claudio’s question. “I need help finding someone. I was told that you could help me.”
He heard Claudio chuckle. “Oh? And who might you be trying to find?”
“The Vampire who Turned me.”
“Your Sire?” Claudio sounded baffled. “When was the last time you saw him . . . her?”
“Last I saw him was the night before I woke up a Vampire . . . so, late August . . . eighteen-twenty.”
Immortal Souls: The Immortal Souls, Magic & Chaos (Book 1) Page 9
