Clann 03 - Consume

by Melissa Darnell

  Then we were off. To Savannah and me, the summer night felt pretty good, but as soon as we exited the trailer, Emily started muttering about the heat and humidity. The heat of her unborn baby, which already kept her temperature higher than normal, made the heat almost stif ling.

  “Hold your breath, sis,” I said.

  Emily took a deep breath.

  With a quick nod to Savannah, I wrapped an arm at Emily’s back, Savannah took her other side, then we vamp blurred across the cement bridge, took a right at the intersection and continued without stopping past block after block of colonial and Victorian homes. Along the way, crepe myrtles scented the air with their nearly overpowering f loral perfume. We knew the instant we reached the downtown area because of the sudden wall of orange-ish-brown brick that rose up on our left side, at which point the map had said Jefferson Street turned into Front Street. Now the residential homes were replaced with brick buildings that housed shops and restaurants both historical and relatively new. Roughly half the buildings were two and three stories tall, and most of these featured balconies with intricate black wrought-iron railings, which reminded me of pictures and movies I’d seen of New Orleans.

  We didn’t slow down until we turned left down Trudeau Street, which gave access to the parking lot and private courtyard for the apartments Mac’s foster family lived in. Though the parking lot had a nice wrought-iron and brick fence, it wasn’t gated. So we had no trouble entering the premises and slipping right up to the back of the L-shaped building. When we paused, Emily let out her breath, grabbed the small of her back and winced.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  She nodded.

  I scouted out and found the staircase that led us to the second-f loor balcony. From there, it was a simple matter of finding the right apartment.

  I wished we could read minds through walls and doors.

  It would make this a lot safer. But without that ability, we were forced to take the old-fashioned route and use our eyes and ears, sneaking peeks through the window and listening for any sign of people inside.

  Sounds like a TV’s on in one of the back rooms, Savannah thought.

  I glanced at Emily to make sure she was in place. She stood with her back against the building’s brick exterior. The plan was for her to stay there until we’d secured the apartment, then we’d call for her to join us inside. Her scowl indicated how much she loved this part of the plan, but I’d refused to back down on this point. Without the ability to do magic, this was the only way I was comfortable letting her come along.

  Okay, let’s make this as fast as possible, I told Savannah. I’ll bust the door open and take the lead. You stay behind me in case— Excuse me, but I’m perfectly capable of taking the lead. Savan nah arched an eyebrow.

  She had a point. Fine. Would you like to go in first? She hesitated. Nah, that’s okay, you can go first.

  Grinning, I thought, Okay, so like I said. I’ll bust the door in and you stay right behind me. Any descendants, hit them with a sleep spell. We should minimize actual damage to anyone as much as possible. Once we find the kid and are done questioning him, we’ll erase everyone else’s memories. Hopefully there won’t be a trail to lead back to us.

  She nodded then reached out and squeezed my hand. Love you. Now let’s get her done.

  Appreciating her attempt to use humor to keep herself loose, I grinned then softly grabbed the apartment’s door handle and checked my watch. The entire silent conversation had taken all of two seconds thanks to the speed of vamp thought. Nice. Any descendants inside probably hadn’t had time to sense our presence.

  Tapping Emily’s shoulder to get her attention, I held up one finger human slow, two fingers, three fingers, then shouldered the black wooden door open. The wood frame gave way like softened butter smearing across toast. At the same time, Savannah raised her hands and put out

  a silencing spell to cover the entire apartment so the neighbors wouldn’t hear anything.

  I scanned the living room and adjoining bar area. Clear.

  Savannah entered the room behind me, trailing me as I moved down the hall, checking a bathroom and master bedroom suite on the way. The video game noises grew louder as we vamp blurred to the end of the hall to the last door and opened it.

  A boy, sitting on his bed playing an XBox, slowly peered up through a sideswept mass of dark brown hair. Or maybe it was the adrenaline rush combined with the vamp ref lexes that made his reaction seem so slow. His eyes widened. He dropped his game controller in his lap, both hands rising through the air as if to throw a spell at us.

  I was faster, hitting him with a freezing spell as Emily had coached me to do on the way to Louisiana.

  He froze, then his shoulders slumped and his facial muscles went slack.

  “Are you Mac Griffin?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Savannah, tell Emily she can come in. The apartment’s clear.”

  Savannah disappeared then reappeared three seconds later.

  Emily joined us several seconds after that, muttering a string of curses and complaints as she rammed her shins into objects in the dark along the way.

  “This him?” she asked when she finally found the bedroom.

  “Yep. What should we ask him?” I said, maintaining eye contact with Mac.

  “Let’s start with the night of his parents’ deaths,” Emily said.

  “Mac, tell us about the night your parents died,” I repeated. Emily had warned us that only the person performing the truth spell could make the commands. Anyone else’s directions would simply be ignored.

  “I went out with some friends to a movie. It was a Quentin Tarantino movie, lots of blood and stuff. Mom would have killed me if she had known I was seeing it. We had to bribe the ticket guy an extra thirty bucks to let us in since it was rated R. He’s such a pr—”

  “Tell him to get to the point,” Emily grumbled. “I don’t want to still be here when his foster parents get back.” “Skip to the part where you return home,” I told Mac. “Jason was our driver that night. He lived three houses down from us, so I walked home. On the way, I felt…” He hesitated, frowning. One hand drifted up to slowly rub the

  center of his chest. “I don’t know, weird. Something made me

  stop by the cars parked at the curb. And then… And then…” “What happened then?” I said.

  His face screwed up into a frown. “I…can’t remember.

  Something. Something important. Something bad…” “Push him harder,” Emily said.

  I stared into the kid’s eyes. “Try to remember.” I pushed out some willpower with the words.

  “I…I can’t remember.”

  Pinpricks erupted over my skin. Clann power. Someone else was using nearby.

  CHAPTER 25

  “I’ll check the entrance,” Savannah whispered before disappearing.

  Rubbing her forearms, Emily asked, “Are they back already? We should get out of here.”

  “Still clear,” Savannah called out in a stage whisper from the living room.

  Emily and I frowned at each other. “Maybe a spell on the apartment somewhere?” I suggested.

  Emily looked at the kid, crossing her arms above her rounded tummy and rubbing a finger across her lips. “Why can’t he remember?”

  I saw her line of thought. “A memory spell. It’s got to be.”

  “Mmm-hmm. But where?” I glanced around the room. It was pretty Spartan in here, just a desk with some papers and pens, the small f lat screen on the wall and the XBox console with a short stack of games beside it.

  “If someone doesn’t want him to remember that night, they’d have to put the spell directly on something he’d keep close to him at all times.”

  I looked the kid over, then froze. His left wrist sported a round watch on a black leather band. It had to be charmed. He wasn’t wearing anything else except clothes, which I doubted anyone would charm since he’d change them daily.

  I unfastened the
watch and lifted one of the bands. On the tan underside of the leather was stamped a Celtic braid design.

  “Looks like a vamp ward,” Emily said. “Could be double charmed as a memory confuser, too, though.”

  Remembering how one of Emily’s vamp wards had knocked Savannah out and nearly killed her, I cringed. Good thing we’d made those vamp ward blockers before coming here. But it was another reason we’d have to hurry this interrogation along before the vamp ward wore out the blockers or vice versa. If this vamp ward was anything like the ones my mother once made for me and Emily, it would trigger a silent alarm to its maker to signal that the ward had just been taken off.

  “Mac, you need to be quick now. Can you remember what happened when you got home?”

  He shook his head.

  I looked at Emily.

  “Try taking it farther away from him.”

  I whispered Savannah’s name. She appeared at my side, took the watch and disappeared back to the living room.

  “How about now?” she questioned.

  “Mac, now can you remember?”

  The frown melted from Mac’s face. “Whoa. Yeah, now I can. I was walking up the street toward my house, and I saw two guys leave my house and cross the street. They stopped by a big black SUV to talk. Something about them looked wrong. That weird feeling got stronger.” His heartbeat sped up, its thumping filling the room. I swallowed hard and tried not to pay attention to it. “I crouched down on the sidewalk and snuck closer to them, using the parked cars to hide me, so I could hear what they were saying.”

  Emily and I both leaned in closer. “What were they saying? Did you recognize any of them?”

  Savannah reappeared in the room without the watch, which she must have left in the living room. But instead of joining us by the bed, she circled it and opened the window. Don’t listen to his heartbeat, she told me silently. It’ll trigger the bloodlust in you if the fear pheromones haven’t already. He’s afraid of the vamps he’s describing. One of them must have been Gowin.

  “Go on,” I said, working not to inhale through my nose as Mac’s heartbeat seemed to grow still louder.

  “They were talking about ‘the next hit’ and how it was all too easy. One of them wanted to try to find me, but the other two said something about blood trees and how they needed to go somewhere safe for a while first.”

  “Blood trees?” Emily said.

  “Blood memories,” Savannah said. “He probably just heard them wrong.”

  “What did they look like?” I asked him.

  “One of them was short with light hair, pale skin, red lips and teeth, and white eyes like yours. He was kind of blurry around the edges, like he had some kind of spell on him that was trying to hide him but it wasn’t strong enough or something. The other guy I recognized. He’s Mr. Williams.”

  I froze. “Are you sure, Mac?”

  Mac slowly nodded. “He came back later to pick me up from the police station after I found my parents and called 911 for help and the police took me there. I didn’t want to go with him, but he grabbed my wrist and then…and then…” He frowned. “And then I woke up here with you guys. Right?”

  Whoa. That must have been one heck of a memory confusion spell Mr. Williams had put on Mac’s watch to make him lose whole months of time.

  “How could it have lasted this long without wearing out?” I asked, focusing on the memory confusion charm because the thought of Mr. Williams teaming up with a vampire was just too much for my mind to accept.

  “The foster parents,” Savannah whispered. “They must be reenergizing it to keep it going. Which means…”

  “They’re in on it,” Emily finished for her. “Or at least partially.”

  “Mac, let me make sure I understand,” I said, forcing myself to speak human slow as the second rush of adrenaline made me feel like I was trapped inside a slow motion movie. “Are you saying Mr. Williams and a vampire murdered your parents? And then Mr. Williams took you from the police station afterward and you don’t remember anything that’s happened since?”

  He nodded, his frown returning. “Why? Has it been a long time? What month is it?”

  Emily waved an impatient hand at him. “Relax. We’ll get you caught up later. We don’t have time for that now.” She sighed and turned to me. “Well, this explains how Mr. Williams knew where to hit the vampire council headquarters. Gowin must have told him its location.”

  “But why would Gowin team up with him?” Savannah said. “I read Gowin’s mind that last night in the Circle. He didn’t need Mr. Williams to tell him where the descendants were. He found that information himself when he broke into the Keepers’ records on the Clann genealogy. And once he was filled up on Clann blood and learned how to do simple Clann spells, he would have been able to attack descendants without help.”

  “Unless he needed help for the first hit,” Emily said. “Weren’t the Griffins the first victims?”

  I nodded. “So Mr. Williams helped him get close enough to kill them, and he took it from there.”

  “But why would Mr. Williams help him?” Savannah asked, pinpointing the part I was having the most trouble understanding. “And why would Gowin tell him where the council headquarters were when that would endanger Gowin, too?”

  Gowin’s half of the equation was easy to figure out. “Gowin had to trade something for Mr. Williams’s help,” I thought out loud. “Maybe he figured Mr. Williams could take out the council if Gowin couldn’t manage to do it on his own at the Circle.”

  “And Mr. Williams teamed up with Gowin to help get rid of Dad, and he was supposed to kill you, too,” Emily said. “He thought that would clear his path to becoming Clann leader. But he forgot about the rule allowing Mom to take over in Tristan’s place.”

  “But Mr. Williams hates our kind,” I said. “He’d never voluntarily speak to a vampire, much less help a vamp kill his own people.”

  “Not unless it was the only strategy he could come up with to become Clann leader,” Emily said. “Think about it. How else would he be able to take out both you and Dad? Neither of you trusted him enough to let him get close enough somewhere alone to do it himself. He had to have help from a totally unexpected angle. Maybe he even figured he’d kill Gowin once Gowin was no longer useful to him.”

  “But to murder fellow descendants…” I murmured.

  “Tristan, ask him if his parents were anti-vamp,” Savannah asked, her voice soft.

  I repeated the question for Mac.

  “No. And that was the worst part of it. Seeing their necks ripped out like that after they spent years supporting your father’s peace treaty with the vampires… They believed peace was safer for everyone in the Clann than another war.”

  Savannah’s and my eyes met as the final piece clicked into place. Mr. Williams saw the chance to temporarily cross enemy lines and make an alliance that helped him not only remove what he believed to be all competition to Clann leadership, but to also take out a few vamp sympathizers in the process. And then he’d suppressed his only surviving victim’s memory, killed my mother and framed Savannah and me for her death to help cover his tracks and ensure the vote for him as Clann leader. He’d probably been banking on the fact that his reputation as a vamp hater would clear him of any suspicion in helping Gowin behind the scenes to take out his own people.

  If not for that one mental slip around Emily, he might have gotten away with it.

  Outside the apartment, car doors slammed. Savannah disappeared. A second later she whispered in the living room, “Two people are headed toward the stairs.”

  “Mac, you are freed of my hold,” I muttered, putting some willpower into it to end all my spells on him.

  “What are you doing?” Emily protested. “Are you crazy? What happened to making him forget we were ever here?”

  “We can’t leave him here, Em. He’s just as much a victim in all of this as we are.”

  Mac blinked. His eyes widened as he sucked in a sharp breath of air.
<
br />   I stepped back and held up my hands palms-out. “We’re not here to hurt you, I swear. All we want is to help. Do you remember what happened to your parents?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He cursed under his breath.

  “We’ll leave right now. You can pretend you never saw us,” I said even as my ears picked up the sound of footsteps thudding along the cement balcony toward us. “Or you can come with us, tell everyone in the Clann what you saw and help us take him down and make him pay for what he did to both our parents. Your choice.”

  “Tristan,” Savannah hissed, her voice barely a sound at all as she reappeared in the bedroom doorway.

  Silence on the balcony as the descendants discovered the broken door. Needles of pain ramped up over my skin in warning as they gathered power.

  “Time’s up. Decide.” I looked at the girls and jerked my head at the window. “Back exit?”

  Emily f linched but followed Savannah over to the window, where Savannah put her hands on the edges of the screen and looked to me for a sign.

  “I’ll help,” Mac said, rolling across his bed and jumping up to stand with us. When I held out a hand, though, he hesitated. “No offense, but if you’re planning on carrying me, could she do it instead?” He smiled shyly at Savannah, his cheeks turning pink.

  Jealousy, quick and pointless, f looded me.

  “Sure,” Savannah said with a smile. “Wrap an arm around my waist like this.” She put her arm around him and he followed suit.

  Whatever it takes to get him on our side, she thought, throwing a meaningful glare over the kid’s head at me.

  Sure. Within reason. I grabbed my sister and nodded at Savannah to push out the screen. Then Emily stepped on my foot and I jumped with the other out the window and down two stories to the cement below, making my free leg absorb all of the impact from both our bodies.

  “The baby okay?” I muttered while Savannah brought Mac through the window and down to the ground beside us.

  Emily frowned, touched her stomach with one hand and the small of her back with the other. “I think so. But I must have landed wrong, because my back is killing me. I’ll be okay, though.”