Magic's Not Real

by J. L. Hendricks

  Chapter 6

  Jenna

  The vampire took me to an old, abandoned factory. My view from hanging upside down over his shoulder, was that of dirt mixed with cracked asphalt. When he slowed down, I spied one single daisy growing up from a mound under the broken ground.

  I lifted my head to see the skeletal remains of factory buildings. This was one of the areas hardest hit by hurricane Katrina. There were murky shadows up on the sides of the buildings that held on for dear life. They marked the water level when the levees broke. From my angle, it looked as though only the roofs peeked up from the water.

  I couldn’t see anything that had been rebuilt. It was like we were in a warehouse graveyard. I shivered thinking about how no one would hear me scream. No one paid any attention to my screaming as this undead creature whisked me away from my family. At first, I couldn’t scream. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up. We moved so fast, I couldn’t make out shapes. He threw me over his shoulder and took off like a rocket.

  Then, once I got myself under control I screamed as loud as possible. I had to sound like a train pulling its horn as it chugged through the city. No one was visible from my angle, so I assumed no one heard my cries.

  “Who are you?” I never did get his name. He stopped in front of a warehouse that still had doors on their hinges. They creaked like a haunted house when he opened it.

  The whole time he kept an arm on me. When he used the arm holding me to open the door, I leaned up and pushed against his shoulders. Before I could get off him, he slammed his arm back around my waist. “Aaaahhhhh,” I screamed from the force of his arm.

  He ignored my cries of pain and ghosted to the back of the room. This creature was impossibly fast. He threw me into a corner of the room where I banged my head. “Ouch! What’s wrong with you?” I rubbed my head as I sat up against the back wall. The cold seeped into my skin and I shivered.

  “What do you care? You practically gave me over to the vamps! So what does it matter now? I’m a vampire, an evil agent of the night.” The vampire shook his arms above his head and started pacing in front of me.

  Drama queen, much? I thought to myself.

  “It does matter. I’m truly sorry I couldn’t help you, but I’m not a witch. If I were, you wouldn’t have been able to capture me. Do you really think a real witch would have allowed it?” I raised an eyebrow and looked into his face. Even though I was scared to death, I wasn’t going to allow myself to become a simpering wimp who died at the hands of a melodramatic vampire.

  “Shut up! You lie! I heard your customers talking about the love potion and the aphrodisiac chocolate you sold them.” His hand flashed out, and I put my arms up in front of my face just in time. His slap echoed through the empty warehouse, and knocked me over on my side. My elbow and hip dug into the crusty cement floor. I knew I would be covered in bruises, if I survived this.

  “Alright, the potion you tried on me didn’t work. Did it? So that must mean I’m not a witch, right?” I continued trying to use logic until I saw the crazed look in his eyes. The vampire was seething and his eyes kept wandering to my neck. My logic was falling on deaf ears.

  “Mike. Call me Mike.” The vampire paced in front of me as he rubbed his face. “If I kill her, the coven just might kill me. If I don’t kill her, her pack friends will find me and kill me. So I might as well just drain her dry.” He continued to pace and mumble incoherently to himself.

  “Jenna, no matter what, it’s too late. You have to die.” My mouth dropped open as he casually told me he was going to murder me.

  I stood up and started screaming as the person standing in front of me turned into a monster. His eyes changed from a deep blue to a bright red. Then his eye teeth elongated into fangs. I tried to run out of my corner, but he caught me around the waist with ease.

  I pounded on his chest. “Let me go! If you promise to leave us alone, you can live. I swear.”

  “Your pulsing heart is calling to me. Just asking me to take a taste. Did you know that once a new vampire starts to feed they can’t stop themselves? It’s true. We have to feed in front of our coven with one of the acolytes to serve us. When I should stop, I can’t. So our coven leader forces me to stop. They say it takes a year to learn control. But I don’t want to learn control.” He said before licking his lips.

  His eyes moved down my face to my neck and his wide smile showed the glistening fangs before he latched onto my bare neck.

  When his sharp fangs pierced my neck right above an artery, I closed my eyes and screamed with everything I had. I pushed and kicked trying to get away from him. He was too strong for me to even budge an inch. When I had exhausted the air in my lungs, he pulled back and watched me take a deep breath before letting loose another scream. I chanced a look when I realized he wasn’t sucking my blood and saw him laughing.

  I couldn’t imagine what was going through that disgusting brain of his. Then he leaned back down and licked the blood off my neck. For a split second I thought he might stop. Then Mike opened his mouth to bite down again. I felt his fangs graze my neck and I began to scream again.

  Before he could pierce my skin for the second time, he was yanked away from me, and thrown across the room. Now there were two monsters in the warehouse with me. I crawled on my hands and knees away from the corner that had served as my torture chamber.

  “Rico! Oh thank goodness! That is you, right?” I exclaimed, holding my neck, trying the staunch the blood flow. My head started to spin as the blood oozed out from between my fingers. I had only seen his wolf form once. This wolf looked like him.

  Rico’s wolf growled when he saw the damage to my neck and he turned to see the vampire approaching him. The wolf positioned himself in front of me and howled.

  I could feel the rumble of his howl deep within my soul and knew I was going to be alright. I leaned back against the wall and tore off the bottom of my shirt. I used it to put pressure on my neck. If the blood didn’t stop flowing soon, I would pass out from all of the blood loss. The headache was already worse than the pain in my neck.

  Mike narrowed his eyes at the wolf and growled. One wolf couldn’t stop a vampire, especially one who fed so recently. He didn’t need a lot of blood to give him superior strength. What he took from me was enough to give him the leg up on a wolf. “You should have left well enough alone, wolf. I have fed off her already, and you have no hope of besting me.”

  Rico just growled and stood his ground. I had no idea what he was doing, or how we were going to get out of this death trap. As a human, I couldn’t help fight against a vampire. Rico continued to growl and wait as the vamp moved closer and closer to us.

  The vampire looked at me and licked his lips. I shivered as I recalled the feeling of his fangs burying into my neck.

  The two monsters of the night stared each other down before the vampire leapt at the wolf. The vampire didn’t have the long, sharp claws like what I read in books, although he did have very strong nails and a grip like a vice. He darted toward the wolf and made to grab its neck.

  Rico anticipated the move. He jumped to the side and got his large maw around the vampire’s shoulder and chomped down as hard as he could.

  “Ahhhh!” The vampire felt the sting of the bite and folded his right hand into a fist and slammed it into the side of the wolf.

  The wolf whimpered at the pain, and the vamp took advantage. He rammed his fist into Rico again, causing him to fly through the air and fall at my feet. Rico jumped back up, and I noticed he kept his right side facing me. That was the side Mike punched him. I wondered if he was injured. Poor Rico, he stumbled just a bit, but held his ground.

  Blood dripped from the mouth of the wolf and he spit as much out as he could. Vampire blood couldn’t taste good to a wolf. It smelled like week old butcher blood that had flies swarming around it and possibly worms coming out. Rico spit again and growled as Mike attempted to slowly move closer.

  Mike’s shoulder had blood oozing out. Even though h
e had accelerated healing, I hoped the legends were true - a wolf bite took longer to heal from. However, he saw me behind Rico and I could see his eyes focusing on me as he licked his lips.

  Several howls pierced the night and caused the vampire to turn his back to the wolf in front of him. Rico howled and those outside returned the howl. Inside the warehouse the noise bounced off the walls around me making it sound like the entire pack had come. I picked out a few distinctive howls and knew it was at least six wolves against one vampire.

  Rico jumped the vamp from behind and pinned him to the ground as his pack joined him and began ripping limbs from the vampire.

  The vampire screamed in pain as his arms were yanked off his body by the wolves attacking him. He tried to bite into a wolf who came near his face, but he missed. The wolf back pedaled and snipped at the vamp.

  I watched this supernatural battle happening in front of me and couldn’t believe my eyes. My muscles wouldn’t move. I sat there frozen with wide eyes and mouth gaping. The wolves all looked to be in some sort of frenzy. For a moment I wondered if I was going to be next. Tears flowed down my cheeks and finally my body moved. I turned my head away from the gruesome sight in front of me, and closed my eyes for a moment. I tried to clear the image from my mind.

  When I opened my eyes, Rico looked back at me and tilted his wolf head. He changed back to his human form and approached me as though I was a wounded deer. “Hey, are you alright? I mean, besides the bite in your neck, are you okay?” He went to put his hand on my back, and I flinched.

  Rico explained to me, when I first learned about them, how their transformation was based on magic. Instead of bones breaking and going through an agonizing metamorphosis to a werewolf, they shimmered and became a wolf. When they changed back to their human form, it was as though their human form had never changed. They had the same clothes on along with anything they were holding at the time. It was still shocking to see it.

  “Don’t touch me.” I whispered. I could barely see him, and my speech was slurred.

  “Hey, how much blood have you lost?” Again, he moved his hand to me, and I swatted it away.

  “I don’t think you’re alright, Jenna. You need a doctor and possibly a blood transfusion. There’s a lot of blood on you. Hold on, I’ll call Joseph to come help. He’s also a trained paramedic. You’re gonna be alright.” Rico pulled a phone out of his pocket.

  “Joseph, we need your medical skills right away.” Rico told Joseph where we were located and put his phone away.

  “Don’t kill me, please.” I mumbled before I passed out against the wall.

  Rico

  I laid her down on the cold, hard concrete and put pressure on her neck. The blood had slowed to a trickle, but I wasn’t sure if it was because she had run out of blood or if it was clotting on its own. “Jenna, stay with me. I’m not going to let you die.”

  I smoothed the hair away from her face and leaned down to kiss her forehead.

  Damien walked over to where Jenna lay. “Is she alive? She looks like she might not make it.”

  “She’s lost a lot of blood, I called Joseph. He’s on his way. I just hope he has what he needs with him to help her.” I looked up at my friend and saw my own agony mirrored in my friend’s face.

  “You could help her. She would survive if you changed her.”

  “No, we don’t change people who haven’t chosen this life. She still has time to survive on her own. I won’t choose this for her.” I looked down at Jenna’s pale face and my shoulders slumped forward with the realization that she might not survive this.

  “I hear a van. Do you think it’s them?” Damien looked outside the building and saw the old, white van coming closer. “I’ll go flag them down, and they can drive right up here.”

  Damien ran past the remains of the vampire’s body, and his pack mates who were moving the parts to the side. Normally, we threw vampire body parts outside so the rising sun could dispose of the pieces, but right now they just wanted to make room for the van to enter and get as close to Jenna as possible.

  “Jenna, sweetie? Can you hear me? Joseph’s here, and he’s going to take good care of you.” I held Jenna’s hand and whispered in her ear.

  Kat, Indie, and Sam all ran out of the van and up to Jenna. “What happened? Why isn’t she awake?” Kat pressed her fingers to the side of Jenna’s neck that hadn’t been bitten. “Oh, thank the heavens! She has a pulse. It’s weak. Joseph, how are you going to help her? Shouldn’t we get her to a hospital?”

  Joseph and I looked at each other, and Joseph said, “We can’t take her to a hospital. They won’t understand. Cops will be called, and we could all get into trouble. This would take too long to explain before they realized she needs blood. She would most likely die before they gave her a transfusion.”

  “So what does that mean?” Kat was in mother-hen mode. “Do you have blood for her?”

  “Not here. We don’t have time to get back to my place. The only thing that will work is if one of you is a match for her. Do you know what her blood type is?” Joseph looked to all three girls.

  “I think she’s O negative. She said something one time about being a universal blood donor. I know I can’t give her my blood. Last time I tried to donate blood, I was told I have some really rare issue and should never donate. They said something about HH levels, I really didn’t understand it. But it might make sense if my dad or mom was a shifter, right?” Kat looked to Joseph for confirmation.

  “Correct, we can test your blood later. But now I need to know your types, Indie and Sam. Do you know what your blood type is?” Joseph asked.

  Sam responded, “I have AB positive blood. Will that work?”

  “No, it won’t. What about you Indie?” Joseph asked.

  “I think I have the same as Jenna. The nurse joked and said Jenna and I are blood sisters. We all went to donate after Hurricane Sandy. Neither of us knew our blood type until she mentioned it, and she asked if we were sisters. When we said we were adopted sisters, she said we were also blood sisters. So I guess I’m a match for her? Would that be right?” Indie looked wide-eyed between Joseph and Kat.

  “Yes, you’re a match. I need to set you up to give her enough blood so we can stabilize her before we move her. Afterward, I want to take her to my house where I have some blood stored. I’ll give her more there.” Joseph grabbed his bag from the van and ran back to Jenna.

  He took out several long tubes which looked like they came from a hospital. They were wrapped in sterile packaging. He put on his gloves and opened up one bag and prepped Jenna’s arm to receive blood from Indie.

  We all watched, quiet as a mouse. Joseph ran a line from Indie to Jenna and let the blood flow from one sister to another. I paced and ran my hands through my hair wondering if she would survive.

  It took about twenty minutes to get what Joseph felt was enough blood into Jenna. He closed off the line and removed the needles from both girls before he cleaned and bandaged both.

  “Alright, slowly lift Jenna and bring her to the van.” Joseph directed Damien and I as we lifted the still unconscious Jenna and put her in the van.

  “Jose, I need you and two more wolves to stay behind and finish the clean-up. We can’t leave any proof that there was a fight here. Do your best to obscure Jenna’s scent. Even if you have to come back with some bleach. I don’t want the vamps to catch her scent mixed with the blood sucker’s.” I ordered before getting into the van and closing the doors.

  Chapter 7

  Jenna

  It had been a few days since I almost became dinner for that vampire. I woke up in Joseph’s bedroom. He had taken good care of me, but I needed to go home. I’m not one to sit around and do nothing, so this time in bed had made me restless. “Joseph, thank you for all of your help, but I think it’s time I go home. My sisters can take care of me. The danger has passed.”

  “The danger may have passed, but you aren’t ready to go back to work yet. Your body is still healing. I
only gave you enough blood to get back on your feet, figuratively, not literally. You are still making new blood and your body is trying very hard to store up what you need. If you do too much, you could seriously hurt yourself.” Joseph said.

  “I just want to sleep in my own bed. Is that too much to ask for? I promise, no work. Kat has already cancelled our gigs for two weeks. Please, let me go home.” I clasped my hands together in front of my face. Kat told me I would not be able to go home unless Joseph approved it.

  “Fine, but you’ll stay in bed, and I’ll check on you twice a day.” He looked at me and raised his brows. “Deal?”

  “Deal! I promise. I won’t go anywhere.” I bounced up and down on the bed and squealed with delight. I had never been a good patient. Rarely did I ever get sick, so sitting in one place for very long wasn’t something I was good at.

  By the time I got home, I understood what Joseph meant. I was exhausted. “Girls, thank you for getting me home. I need a nap.”

  Sam helped me to get in bed and left me alone. I overheard the girls talking in the living room. “Kat, I think she might have overdone it just coming home. She’s really pale. Should we call Joseph?”

  “No, let her sleep. Joseph said he would come by later to check on her. Maybe this is good, and it’ll help keep her down for the rest of the week. Maybe she won’t complain too much.” Kat said, and I heard them all laugh.

  I was tired, but my mind kept working and wouldn’t let me sleep. I lay there, wondering what I was going to do now that the cat was out of the bag. How could I go back to my regular life when I knew my nightmares were true?

  THE END, OR IS IT?

  I hope you enjoyed the prequel to the Voodoo Dolls series! Books 1 & 2 are available via Amazon, see universal link below. If you want to find out more about this series, or others written by J.L. Hendricks, check out my website below: