by Jack Knight
Something about this made me wonder how they could possibly justify what they were doing. Sure, Atasha had a good reason, but still, they were dooming the world for revenge? It made me curious as to what Torn’s motivation was.
Atasha shrugged. “Maybe everyone spills the secret, maybe not. Would the world really be so bad if everyone knew about the supernatural?”
“Yes,” I answered promptly.
Atasha gave a soft laugh. “Then, the Reapers can keep them in line.”
“Oh yeah? All eight of us?”
“Ezra wanted to start recruiting soon. In a few months, maybe a year, the Hunters will be gone and the Reapers will be strong enough to keep the secret, if we choose.”
Not if I have anything to say about it.
There were more things I was curious about, though.
“How did Torn fake his death?” I asked.
Atasha gave a quick bark of a laugh. “He didn’t, I did. Necromancy and healing are two sides of the same coin, I’m great at both. I just molded one of the failed attempts to look exactly like Torn. Because he was vampire before he died, he had no blood in his system, so we dumped the body and it would look like a vampire killed him.”
Well, that was one mystery solved.
Atasha pulled the car up to another building. This time, there was nothing else around for blocks. The building had symbols drawn all over the outside, Warding Sigils. I recognized them from the grimoire Asher was teaching me out of. They would stop people from being able to find it, stop anyone from looking in from the outside, and some of them were meant to ward off normal humans. Torn was really smart.
“We didn’t need anyone looking for Torn when he had to leave to focus on our project. We need to get it perfect. Soon, I will be made into one of these new vampires, and I can tear the Hunter’s throats out myself,” Atasha said with a grin as she unbuckled and got out of the car.
I followed her, careful not to let her get too far away. If anything happened, I needed to be ready to stab her at a moment’s notice.
Atasha led me right up to the building and opened the door without having to knock or unlock it. Apparently, Torn was confident that nobody would be able to find the building unless they were invited in.
When I passed through the door, I saw the words “Property of St. Augustine’s Hospital” printed on the inside wall.
“This is the place you told Gen couldn’t be the vampire factory,” I realized aloud as we started down a short, dark hallway with concrete walls.
“Correct. My reason for staying with the Reapers, instead of faking my death like Torn did, was so that nobody would know what was going on here until the plan was far enough in motion it couldn’t be stopped.”
We exited the hallway, and started down a corridor lined with cells, it looked exactly like prisons that I saw in TV shows and movies. A long stretch of hallway, cells pressed up against each other, pale, depressed looking people sitting on uncomfortable looking beds in each cell.
“As you see, not all of Torn’s creations immediately take the pledge,” Atasha explained as she gestured to the caged vampires. “Torn doesn’t enact the final change on them until they do, so these ones are all just normal vampires.”
That brought up a lot of questions, but I wasn’t about to start chatting with this bitch, I continued walking behind her, my knife at her back, as we passed dozens of vampires, looking out at us with expressions of fear.
At the end of the hallway, we hit a cross section. Atasha turned down the right hall, which led to a metal staircase. We climbed slowly up to the second floor, and down another short hall to a door with a keypad on the wall next to it. Atasha punched in a series of numbers, and the door beeped.
She pushed the door open and strode into the room, with me a step behind her.
The room looked like a mix between a Satanist hideout and a chemistry lab. There was an altar on one side of the room, lots of candles, splatters of blood all over, and a bowl of what I assumed was still more blood. The rest of the room was filled with powders, bottles, and all other things that I had seen used in spells, clustered together on tables, stacked near beakers and flasks filled with bubbling, colorful liquids. It would have been kind of cool, in literally any other situation.
Finally, I saw Torn. He was on the side of the room opposite the altar, sitting in a swivel chair in front of a desk covered in maps and scrawled writing. There were three people standing near him, all wearing black, button up shirts and jeans. All of them clearly members of his new race of vampires.
“Maddison,” Torn said calmly, his expression completely blank. “So nice of you to finally join us.”
It was hard to know whether I should be pointing my knife at Atasha or Torn. Atasha was closest, so that was what I stuck with, but I didn’t feel like that was definitely the best decision.
“Not feeling talkative, that’s fine,” Torn said with a growl. “I’ll talk. Join me, agree to keep all this,” he waved his hand, as if to indicate his entire diabolical plan, “a secret, and you can walk out of here, no problems. Or, I can kill you. I honestly don’t care which.”
“Very nice offer,” I scowled. “How about you shove it up your ass.”
Torn nodded. “We will be attacking the nearest Hunter stronghold, soon. The creation of a new species of vampire didn’t quite garner the attention we were hoping for, but if we were to slaughter a few dozen of them, the rest might come to clean up the mess. Once we kill the majority of them, the stragglers will be easy to deal with.”
It sounded like Torn was ramping up to another deal, or another threat. I stayed silent and just waited for the inevitable.
“So,” he continued, “I can’t have someone running around, trying to get others to help shut this down.”
There it was. Called it.
“If you truly won’t join us, we’ll have to kill you. And, before you think that little knife of yours will be enough, you should know, we aren’t the only Reapers bent on wiping out the Hunters.”
That caught me off guard, but only for a second.
“Alright, give me a list of names, that way I know where to start after I slice your throat open,” I answered.
Torn sighed and then looked up at the vampires standing over him. He gave a short, dismissive wave toward me, and all three of the vampires lunged toward me.
I jumped back, surprised at how fast they moved, even for vampires. Atasha took the opportunity to run toward Torn, and then the three vampires had a clear shot at me.
When the first one was close enough, I stabbed at his stomach. My knife bounced off, like it had run into steel. They were invulnerable again.
“Ignis!” I shouted as I stretched my hand out toward the vamp, but my palm never reached him.
From behind me, something clamped onto my elbow and yanked my arm back. Then, something cold clamped around my wrists and slammed them together behind my back. I tried to wrench myself free, but I couldn't budge an inch. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed that one of the vampires had gotten behind me, and was holding my hands in his.
“Take her to meet her old friend,” Torn commanded as he turned back around in his chair.
“You bitch!” I managed to scream before the vampires shoved me back through the door.
Once I was forced out of the room, one vampire holding me, one walking along on either of my sides, I realized fighting was pointless. I couldn’t take these guys on. The only good news was they didn’t bother to take my knife, so I still had it clenched in one of my bound hands. I would just have to wait for an opportunity to strike.
The vampires led me back down the stairs. Instead of turning left and walking down the hallway I had entered through, they shoved me straight, along the hallway Atasha had ignored before. We walked past a dozen doors before one of the vampires at my side quickened his pace to walk a few steps ahead of us. He punched in a code on another mechanical keypad and I heard the beep of the door unlocking.
Faster tha
n I could take advantage of, one vamp opened the door, the one holding me shoved me so hard I stumbled forward and lost my balance.
The door clicked shut behind me right as I tripped and slammed into the ground. I spun around as fast as I could, but the door was already shut.
I sighed, stood up, and looked around the room. There were several other doors, but I was otherwise just in a big concrete box with long, fluorescent lights running the length of the ceiling. I figured punching in codes on the keypads until I got it right was the only way out, so I walked toward one of the doors.
Before I had even crossed halfway toward one of the nearest exits, a door across the room opened and someone else was shoved in. I held up my knife, just in case, but whoever had been thrown into the room with me hit the floor and writhed around as if in pain. The door behind him shut before I could move.
Instantly, a bad feeling spread through me. It had just hit me that Torn had said to reunite me with a friend.
“Matt?”
The person on the floor looked up. I was right, it was Matt. Sort of.
He was holding his mouth open, and his now red eyes were bulging out of his face. It almost looked like he was suffocating, and I knew exactly why.
Matt’s teeth had changed. He now had two long fangs protruding from his upper row of teeth.
Matt would never have agreed to help Torn destroy the Hunters, but they had Turned him into a vampire anyway. He was starving.
And, he was locked in a room with me.
Chapter 26
“MATT, PLEASE, FOCUS. It’s me, okay?”
Mat had stood up from the floor. He kept gaping, like he was trying to get air, and clutching at his throat. It seemed like he was trying not to look at me, but I knew that wasn’t going to work forever.
“Can’t... breathe!” Matt screamed to himself. He sounded hoarse and desperate. Not good signs.
Vampires couldn’t control themselves for long when they were starving, that much I knew. If I wasn’t locked in a room, I would’ve just snapped his neck and run away. He could heal from that, and I would have been far enough away that it wouldn’t matter.
Since we were both stuck, I needed another option. I couldn’t just “kill” him over and over again. Besides the fact that it would just make his hunger worse, I didn’t know if I had it in me to do that to him.
There was still my knife. I could stab him in the heart. My knife had wood and was magic, Matt would die, for good, but I would be safe. Obviously, I couldn’t do that, either.
“I’m sorry... Maddi...” Matt wheezed as he raised his eyes to look at me.
Shit, time for a hail mary.
I started carving a sigil into my left forearm. Asher had explained to me how the spell worked, but I had never tested it out. If I got the sigil even a little bit wrong, the spell wouldn’t work at all, but it was the only thing that I could think of.
“Listen, Matt,” I growled as I sliced through my own arm, “we’re going to get out of this, I just need you to focus! You aren’t actually suffocating, you’re a vampire.”
I finished the sigil, blood leaked out of the mark in my skin and trailed down my arm, but I was pretty sure it was correct, and I looked up to see Matt running toward me.
His face was contorted in animalistic rage, his mouth was open, his long, white fangs were coming straight at me. I didn’t have time to waste.
“Celeritas de ventus, invocis te!” I shouted.
The tingle of the magic ran through me. It felt like every molecule of my being had pulled apart, leaving me as mostly open space. I had no idea if I looked any different, but man, it felt really weird.
When Matt was only a few feet away, I dodged and tried to run to the other side of the room. Instead of moving, my feet carrying me from one place to another, I was suddenly just there. In the blink of an eye, I had moved from five feet in front of Matt to fifteen feet behind him.
“Bad. Ass!”
Matt turned toward the sound of my voice, but his face wasn’t his. He was going full starving-animal. I didn’t think appealing to his emotions was going to work. I didn’t want to hurt him, but this spell would wear off eventually.
Matt ran at me again, this time sprinting. A second time, I thought where I wanted to go, and I was suddenly there. If this kept up much longer, I was going to need to think of something else. I knew Asher had taught me a sleep spell, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
“Ready to reconsider, Maddison?”
Torn’s voice had sounded all around the room. I took my eyes off Matt for just a second, because he was still headed in the wrong direction, and looked around. In each of the four corners of the ceiling, there were large, black speakers. I didn’t see any cameras, but I suspected that Torn was watching me.
“Eat a dick!” I shouted back.
Matt was coming at me again. I blinked to the other side of the room, and I started to feel the tingle of the magic fading. There was less than a minute left on the spell, I could feel it.
How did that sleep spell work? I had spent like a half hour learning it, because it seemed so important!
“You agree to my deal, we’ll give Matt a blood bag, and you’ll be let out,” Torn offered over the speakers.
“I promise you, I’m going to slice your fucking throat!” I screamed back.
Matt was racing toward me again, but Torn was pissing me off. I couldn’t remember the stupid spell anyway, and I only had a few seconds of speed left.
I let out a roar of frustration as I raced forward. I sheathed my knife as I sped across the room to Matt, which meant the spell was barely working, I had time to move while I was running. I still didn’t want to hurt Matt, though. Not anymore than necessary, at least.
Before Matt could realize what happened, I was behind him. I reached out, grabbed his forehead and his chin, and twisted his head as hard as I could.
There was a loud crack, and I let Matt’s limp body fall to the floor. His head was twisted just a little too far, and his eyes were still open, looking over his shoulder with an expression of surprise. It was horrible to see Matt like that, appearing dead, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever.
Fire, beheading, wooden stake through the heart, I had learned the mantra well. Anything else, even deadly wounds, couldn’t kill a vampire. It would just knock them out until the magic that animated their dead bodies could heal them.
“Now,” I shouted at the ceiling as I turned away from Matt’s corpse, “let me the fuck out!”
“I’ll be honest, I expected you to avoid hurting him,” Torn admitted, his voice resounded around the room. “But, no matter. If you continue to resist, I can’t let you leave. Maybe you just need a few more vampires.”
There were three consecutive beeps, and then three doors, all spread out across the room so I couldn’t figure out where to run before the last of my Speed Sigil wore off, opened one after another. Through each one came one of the vampires that had been with Torn in the room where I had spoken to him.
My knife was in my hand before the first vampire reached me. I tried to cut his head off before the others could catch up, but he dodged, my blade barely even grazed his arm. At least they weren’t still invulnerable.
Before I could do anything else, the other two reached me. Three vampires at once would be nearly impossible. Three of these super-vamps, I didn’t stand a chance.
Going down fighting was a cool way to die, though.
They started trying to grab me, and I did my best to dodge them, swiping my knife at any part of them that was close enough to reach, but they all moved too fast. They were staying back, probably afraid of my knife, but they were clearly trying to catch me, not hurt me.
Finally, one made a mistake. It wrapped its arms around me from behind, clasping his hands together in front of me, and pinning my arms to the side. That would have been a good move, but my knife was in my hand.
I spun the knife around, and brought my arm down as hard as I could. The blad
e sank all the way to its hilt. I didn’t know where exactly I had stabbed the vampire, but I felt my knife pierce into him.
The vamp let out a scream and released me. I yanked my knife free of his flesh and spun it around in my hand again, ready for a fight, but I never got the chance.
The other two moved too fast. They each grabbed one of my arms with both hands. As if they had choreographed it, they knocked my feet out from under me and slammed my back to the concrete floor. Pain exploded all through my head and I saw stars bursting around my field of vision, but that didn’t matter.
What mattered were the fangs that I could still make out, coming toward my neck.
I knew I had seconds, and I knew I had no other choice. Still, the only idea I could come up with was not a good one.
“Quisquis pellus meae tactant, dolor de mortus percipis!”
This was not the usual tingle crawling across my skin. This was horrifying.
A cold, dark feeling burst out of me. I had never actually died, but I knew exactly what this feeling was: death.
Immediately, all of the vampires around me were gone, and I felt like I had just run a thousand miles and had never slept in my life. It took every ounce of willpower I had to push my body, which felt like it had gained a thousand pounds, off the floor.
When I sat up, I saw the three vampires were all against different walls. Their eyes were open and blank, but none of them were moving. I guessed the spell had worked.
I moved to stand, but when I put my left arm against the floor, it gave out and I fell back to the ground. An annoyed groan escaped me, I was obviously too weak to move, but I still had shit to do.
Then, I saw my arm. Black spots were forming along my skin, spreading from where they started, like they meant to cover my entire arm, just like what had happened to Magnus. I could feel it dying, excruciating pain wracked my entire arm, like it was burning from the inside out.
I had overdone the magic. Asher had warned me not to use that spell. Apparently, there were consequences.
