The Lunar Magic (The Ayla St. John Chronicles Book 4)

by C. J. Pinard

  “Kellan, your turn,” Phil said, gripping him by the arm and ushering him into the cell next to mine.

  Whoever had designed this ‘jail’ was stupid. I could still see, touch, and talk to Kellan, as the only thing separating our cells were the thick bars, but nothing else.

  “I’m so disappointed in you, Maurice,” Kellan scolded, staring with sadness and anger in his eyes at the dark-skinned man he’d once called a friend.

  Maurice had the grace to look embarrassed and even sorry before using the same set of keys to lock Kellan inside. He reached through the bars and took off our restraints one by one, and then walked away without saying a word, Phil trailing behind him as they disappeared into the darkness of the basement—or, I guessed it was a dungeon, if I were being honest.

  I patted my pockets for my cell phone and wallet, but of course both were gone. “You have your phone?” I asked.

  Kellan shook his head. “No, just my wallet.”

  “Now what?” I asked quietly as I rubbed my wrists, feeling desperate and a bit scared, and hating myself for it.

  Kellan strolled to the middle of his cell and sat down on the concrete. He looked to the right and saw the cell next to his empty, then turned his attention to me. “We’re going to be here for a spell. You may as well sit and relax.”

  I raised my eyebrows, my arms folded over my chest. “A spell? Like, what does that mean? I don’t know about you, but I have no plans to stay locked up here. I’ll do whatever I can to get out of here. And once I find Linden, I’m gonna kill that motherfucker, spread his ashes all over my living room floor, and then I’ll put on Who Let The Dogs Out and twerk all over them.”

  Kellan grinned and shook his head. “I’ll never understand half the things you say, silly little wolf.”

  “Maybe I’ll show you some twerking later,” I said with a wink.

  I turned and looked at my surroundings. A metal bed with a thin mattress, pillow, and blanket on top, a metal sink and metal toilet in the corner. Better than peeing in a bucket, I supposed. There was a nothing else in the cell.

  “Well, this is cozy,” I muttered.

  I looked in the center of the chamber at the desk and computers, but nobody was manning it. There were no other prisoners in any of the cells that I could see, either. Just the two of us. I was surprised they hadn’t put us far away from each other, but that just confirmed my suspicions about Phil’s and Maurice’s intentions.

  Fake fire lanterns burned on the walls in the circular chamber where the desk was, and I craned my neck up to try to see the ceiling above it, but I did have a solid ceiling directly above me, so my vision was limited to what I could see from pressing my face up against the bars. The ceiling was so dark, it looked void and endless, but on the walls were balcony-type galleries where I imagined there might be seats. It was like some twisted coliseum, and I could only imagine what kind of shit had probably gone down here in the past bazillion years, or however long this place has been here. Aside from the computer screens, everything about this place seemed very old.

  “Think that dagger can cut through these bars?”

  I turned to look at him. “Do you see any security cameras aimed at our cell?”

  “We should probably say something out loud every once in a while in case there are. Might look odd.” He stared at me.

  I nodded. “Noted.”

  Kellan looked around and then back to me. “I see four, but none of them seemed to be aimed right on us.”

  “I have an idea just in case there are. Come close to the bars so we’re touching.”

  He walked forward and I put my back to the cell entrance and reached down and grabbed my dagger. “Reach through the bars and put your arm around my neck like you’re trying to hug me.”

  He did as I asked, and as our bodies were touching, I looked at him like we were having some kind of moment, and with my gaze locked on his, I ran the blade of my Dagestan dagger back and forth across the metal. It made a horrific screeching sound that made my teeth hurt, as I could never stand metal scraping on metal; it was like nails on a chalkboard to me.

  Kellan laughed at my wincing.

  I stopped trying to saw. “What’s so funny?”

  “If you could see what you’re doing from my perspective, you’d laugh, too. You look like you’re trying to jack yourself off.”

  I blinked at him, incredulous. “What?”

  “I can’t see the dagger, love, and the way you’re angling that thing…” He started laughing again.

  My lips tilted up in a grin, and I lifted the dagger and pointed it at him, lightly touching the tip under his chin. “It’s very much here, trust me.”

  His eyes went wide and he stepped back with arms raised in surrender. “Whoa, I believe you!”

  I re-sheathed the dagger. “It ain’t gonna work anyway. The metal is too thick and stubborn. Just like you.”

  “Just keep it up,” he said, chuckling. “I still owe you a lot of spankings.”

  “I can’t wait,” I quipped, walking over and sitting on the bed.

  We heard a noise and both looked over to see a woman with a shaved head and a perfectly flawless face and body go sit at the desk. She didn’t pay us any mind, and in fact, almost seemed unware of our presence.

  “You know her?”

  He stared at her, slightly turning his head as if he was thinking. “Yeah, she’s new here. Forgot her name. Definitely a vampire.”

  “Good. It’ll be easier to stab her.” I touched my thigh briefly.

  He chuckled. Inside my head. Didn’t think I’d ever get used to that.

  “Excuse me. Can I get some water in here?” I called out.

  The woman turned her head and narrowed her eyes at me. “There’s a sink in your cell. There’s a toilet, too, just in case you prefer to drink from it.” Then she made a soft woofing sound and snickered to herself.

  This bitch.

  “Shit,” I heard Kellan murmur. He opened his mouth to say something, but I shook my head at him.

  I took a deep breath, trying to hold my temper and my tongue, as I really needed her to unlock the cell door.

  “Well, I’m not like most dogs, ma’am. Could you please bring me a cup, and maybe some food? I’m hungry.”

  She sighed in annoyance, opened a desk drawer, and started rummaging around. She found what she’d been looking for and slowly got up from the large, black leather chair and made her way over to us. Her shiny red stilettos clacked loudly on the stone floor. I watched as she moved with the grace of a cat, wide hips and thick thighs encased in skintight black leather pants, and a dark-colored fitted tank top that showed off her huge boobs. As she got closer, I could see that her head wasn’t really shaved bald, it had just been buzz-cut and died platinum blonde.

  “She’s gonna make a pretty corpse.” I bit back a smile as I watched her come toward me.

  “She’ll be ash, that’s not pretty.”

  “Dammit. I hate it when you’re right.”

  With a key, she opened a small trap door about the size of a shoebox on the cell door that I hadn’t noticed before. The vampire shoved a plastic cup and a Power Bar through it, and then shut and locked the trap door again.

  “That’s all you get ’til tomorrow,” she said, piercing me with gunmetal-gray eyes.

  Creepy.

  “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” I said in an exaggerated Southern accent to her retreating figure.

  She stopped walking—sashaying—and turned to look at me over her shoulder. “Dog, you can cut all the ma’ams and fake courteous crap. Ayla.”

  I growled and pointed at her with one hand, the other gripping the bars as I lunged futilely at her. “Bitch, you need to watch the way you talk to me. Don’t use my name like you know me, when I don’t even know yours.”

  She chuckled and kept walking. “Bitch works, you can call me that. Wouldn’t be the first time, and most certainly won’t be the last.”

  “I’m gonna kill her.”

>   “I believe you.”

  I filled the cup with water from the sink and drank it down in one gulp. Then I sat on the bed and unwrapped the Power Bar, and began munching on it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, but I was gonna need some damn blood soon, too.

  Chapter 3

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d slept for, but I awoke when I heard the sound of the trap door closing on my cell door. I blinked rapidly and saw a clear IV bag full of red stuff land with a slap on the floor of my prison. I looked up to see Phil walking away and toward the bank of computers in the middle of the room.

  “Spike!” I called out, my face pressed against the bars.

  He stopped walking, but didn’t turn around. “Just drink it, Ayla. And don’t talk to me.”

  I scrambled for something to say that would get him to turn around. “I… I need a shower. How long am I gonna be here?”

  “I’ll get you a towel. You can use the sink to wash up, and I don’t know the answer to that,” he replied, still with his back to me as he began to walk again.

  Quietly, I said, “I know you don’t want to do this, Phil. Please just help us out of here. We won’t tell Linden you helped us.”

  Phil didn’t stop his strides, but I swear I saw the slightest of inclines of his head, indicating he’d heard me.

  “Did you see that?” Kellan asked.

  “Yes, I did,” I replied.

  I picked up the blood bag and used the tubing like a straw. As I sucked down the first mouthful, I pulled it away from me and made a face. “Ew.”

  “It’s probably been on ice for quite a while and then de-thawed.”

  I looked over at Kellan and saw him doing the same with his blood bag, only his was almost gone.

  “Ya know, I would have given you some of mine.” I held up my wrist.

  He arched an eyebrow and cocked his head to the right. “As tempting as that is, I’m fairly sure they’ll separate our cells if they see any of that going on. Besides, once I taste you, I will want to taste all of you. Not only that, you need to keep up your strength.”

  I set the blood bag down on the bed next to me as I plopped my ass on the pathetic mattress, feeling a little defeated. “What are we doing here?”

  Kellan dropped his now-empty blood bag to the floor of his cell and swiped his lip with his thumb. After quickly popping it in his mouth, he looked at me. “It’s his way. He wants us to sit here and fear him. As if he will appear one day and have us cowering in fright.”

  I snorted. “Right, I’m not afraid of him. He’s disgusting and I’m gonna send him straight to hell.”

  A scoffing noise came from somewhere in the jail, and Kellan and I both froze.

  “You hear that?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I got up and looked outside my cell and could see Phil typing away on the computer and was paying us no mind. But I didn’t think it was him who had made the noise. That had sounded closer.

  As we had been speaking in hushed tones, I said quietly, “Who’s there?”

  I got no reply, but remained quiet for several minutes, hoping to hear something, but there was nothing. Thinking it must have been Phil, I looked at Kellan in his icy blue eyes through the bars separating us.

  I plopped down and sighed. “I’m bored. Tell me a story.”

  He grinned, that smile melting me. “What kind of story, love?”

  “Tell me about what happened after Linden enslaved you to this so-called curse to serve him. Were you always with him?”

  Kellan looked hesitant and his brow dipped. “I’m not so sure—”

  “If the memories are too painful, then you don’t have to,” I interrupted.

  He sighed and unbuttoned the sleeves of his dress shirt. He rolled them to the elbows and then sat down on the cold stone floor in front of the bars. I mimicked him, and sat so we could touch through the bars.

  He grabbed my hand. “It’s not painful, it’s just… this place.” He looked around. “You have to understand I’ve been here before, lots of times.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure you’ve sat at that desk before, too, playing prison guard to whomever Linden decided needed to be chained up here.”

  He nodded. “Yes, you’re right. And I had no choice.”

  “So, the memories, they are too much for you?” I stroked his hand with the pad of my thumb.

  “Yes, and no. It’s just that, I know the walls have ears. We could do the mind thing, but I think you know that’s taxing on the both of us mentally to concentrate. And would raise suspicion.”

  “I agree, keep talking.”

  “So it’s probably not wise to—”

  “Wise to what,” I said, cutting him off and realizing that I needed to stop doing that. “Facts are harmful now? Who cares who hears? I’ve begun to suspect that, like you, Phil and Maury—and whoever else works for this vampire ass-clown—is probably in some kind of loyalty binding spell. If they want to listen in, who gives a crap? Maybe it’ll make whoever is listening grateful to me when I kill that sonofabitch and free them from him.”

  Kellan’s beautiful face cracked into a smile and he shook his head. “You’re never short on words, little wolf.”

  “I’m also always right, so there’s that.”

  He took a deep breath, and with his hands still holding mine, we sat, cross-legged in front of each other. He stared into my eyes, seemingly searching them for the right words to say.

  I nodded.

  “So after he bound me into servitude, I could do nothing but follow him and be at his beck and call. At first, he had me doing the most ludicrous things like fetching his meals and finding him humans to feed from. And I could never say no, or refuse.”

  “Did you ever try? To say no, or run away?”

  Kellan smiled, but there wasn’t any happiness in it. “Of course. The words wouldn’t come off my tongue. Like stuttering while trying to defy him. ‘N… N… N… dammit!’ The word no just wouldn’t come out. Back then, it wasn’t funny one bit. Now, it might be a little comical to see, I suppose. As far as running away, of course I tried. But I found the further I got from him, the louder his voice was in my head. Much like you and I talk to each other, except I couldn’t turn it off or tune it out.”

  Hearing him talk inside my head without his lips moving was weird, and I paused. “That had to be… awful.”

  He nodded. “It wasn’t pleasant. After leaving Danby, we spent many years in London. It wasn’t until the turn of the century that Linden decided he wanted to go to the New World and see what it had to offer. I, of course, had no choice but to follow. And to be honest, as much as I was afraid to leave my native England, I was very much excited to see America.”

  “Because it’s awesome,” I said proudly.

  “Well, it wasn’t that awesome,” he replied. “You know, back then.”

  I frowned. “Well, I get it. But it’s awesome now.”

  He grinned at me, my insides turning gooey at his look. “Indeed, it is. But it wasn’t so much then.”

  Staring at him, I nodded.

  “The boat passage was long and horrible. If I had thought I could perish by drowning, I’d have surely thrown myself overboard, but the thought of death by shark wasn’t my idea of a noble or easy death.”

  “This is probably a dumb question, but why was the boat trip so horrible? Just a long trip?” I asked, suspecting I knew the answer, but desperate to keep him talking as I was trying to think of a way out of the damn prison.

  “It was the early nineteen-hundreds. There were incurable diseases, and lack of resources. The crew was comprised mostly of humans, and since Linden had procured the ship, they all worked for us. He made up some bollocks about him having an allergy to the sun, and that I, as his manservant, would be tending to him below deck during the daylight hours. We chose to take the passage during the winter months, so that the days would be shorter. However, that choice came with consequences.”

  I crin
ged. “Like cold weather and snow.”

  He nodded. “Yes, love, exactly. A few of the crew caught a virus, which I now believe to be influenza or pneumonia, and died. It began to spread amongst the crew, and Linden and I panicked. We needed them to commandeer the ship during the daylight hours. We began sneaking our blood into their food and drink, and thankfully, we saved most of them. We also, obviously, needed them as blood sources. Turned out, they needed us as much as we needed them. It was quite the vicious cycle, really. The problem was, of the crew who had passed away, the other crewmembers insisted we keep their bodies so they could have a proper burial once we reached the mainland. We told them it wasn’t possible to keep bodies for weeks, and offered to give them a religious burial at sea instead, but they wouldn’t have it. At least a dozen bodies were stored below deck, and the stench became unbearable. Rotting corpses where we ate and slept, it was enough to drive anyone mad.”

  I made a face. “Okay, that’s just gross. What did you do?”

  “Linden had had enough. One dark, moonless night, once most of the crew had retired for the evening, we removed the corpses and threw them overboard. The next day, we used allusion on the crew, telling them they had wanted it that way. The dead bodies were just part of the unpleasantness of that trip. There were women and children aboard too, wanting to go to America. A few of the children passed and we had to listen to the wailings of mothers at night when they would cry. And because of the loss of the crew, and some inclement weather, we were delayed by weeks. What should have taken under a month, took us three. We began to run out of food and supplies for the humans. It was quite harrowing, but we obviously made it.” He ended on a small shudder.

  “That definitely did not sound very pleasant. Then where did you go?” I asked, intrigued.

  “Linden sold the boat to the first person who would pay him cash. Then he used allusion on the Immigration officer to give us legal papers and new identification. He chose to change his name to what he is today right then because, he said, it sounded like London. I choose to keep Kellan.”