Until it’s like my soul’s snapped from my body, like a broken rubber band has set me loose. Or maybe like Peter Pan losing his shadow. Either way, I’m falling from my body, from the scene above me into a dark ether below. Part of me wants to scream. Needs to stop. Even Lisette mentioned that I might never come back if I fall. Then again, a life without Carver is no life at all. If I don’t go forward with this, I’ll never stop Morana.
Damn it.
It’s like Reina is always telling me. I’m a Kresova. I’m more than that. I’m a fucking Dria, and I will do this. I’ve asked my consorts and my friends for far too much not to give my all into this as well.
The darkness overwhelms me, suffocating me until its all I can see. All I can feel. All I am. When madness threatens to creep over me, I’m brought to reality again. This time, I’m on a busy street in Brooklyn as it must have been one-hundred and fifty years ago. I see the bridge in the background, smell the stench of urine and poorly funneled sewage in the summer heat, and here the shouts of the horse-drawn buggies. It’s a loud, smelly, churning mess, even more real in some ways that New Orleans.
An even bigger mess.
As I watch, a poor Irish woman huddles on the corner. She’s selling charms from a small, woven basket. The charm currently is just a silver disc, one made of three intersecting spirals. When I first drew the ring’s center for Lucian, he told me it was called a triskelion, the melding of three Celtic spirals. It symbolizes the cycle of everything and can be a powerful talisman without added enchantments against evil.
Even standing her, seeing a shadow of how the ring started a hundred some odd years ago, I can feel the power rippling from it. God, if you added in Rochelle Montclair’s enchantment and Morana’s own fiendish power….the ring as it is today might be one of the most powerful talismans on earth.
Perfect.
Not like fate wanted to make things too easy on me or anything.
As I continue to watch, a slight woman with curly dark hair and skin the color of dark wood stops at by the Irish woman. Her thick brogue makes the Irish woman almost impossible to understand but Rochelle Montclair manages. She hands the woman a wad of bills and, I’m not expert on old timey money, but based on the redheaded woman’s expression, Rochelle overpaid. Or, well, the Irish woman didn’t know the kind of power she actually had on her was more likely.
Rochelle looks over her shoulder, her motions furtive and then hurries down the street. I follow her, slinking easily between the humans, my vampiric grace still part of me even here. When she turns down a dark alley, I pursue. I don’t expect the blown dried herbs to land in my eyes or send me into coughing fits.
What the eff?
“So, vampire, you have one minute before I call on the power of the sun to melt you to nothing.”
“I’m a fledgling. The sun clearly isn’t hurting me,” I say, still choking on her damn powder. Lisette didn’t mention that anything would hurt. “Besides, I’m…”
Rochelle narrowed her eyes at me and then looked down to the talisman. “You’re not from now, are you?”
Nodding, I rub at my watering eyes. “I just need to know how to remove your spell from that trinket there.”
“Didn’t you just ask me? Well, older me,” she asks, the creole French strong in her accent.
“I can’t.” I shrug. “I won’t tell you when I’m from, just that it’s over a century from now.”
Rochelle relaxes some. What I’ve said isn’t exactly a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either. Soon, Morana will come for her and then leave her defenseless from Marie Laveau, but there’s no reason to leave that sword dangling over her. It’ll be all Rochelle thinks about. It’d be cruel. Besides, I can’t risk this vision fucking up history either.
“All right, well, I’m going to do a basic spell to ask EgUnGun to bless this talisman. It already has had Fae from the old lands spell cast over it. That much I can feel on it. It’s powerful, adding the blessing from my ancestors will make it almost unstoppable.”
“I believe that,” I say, rubbing my arm. Morana throws quite a wallop and maybe part of that is her ring as well. “So, to stop it, I pray to EgUnGun?”
“You must bless a mirror first. Get an antique one with silver backing, spread rock salt along it’s bottom, and then say the incantation for the mirror realm.” She rattles off the chant a few times, and I wish I had my phone to just record it, but that’d be asking too much of mystical time travel. As she chants, I repeat the words after her and she nods. “Those are the words and that is the ritual. If you do that, you can pass through the mirror into the mirror realm. You must prove to EgUnGun that you are worthy to have this request granted. If you can please him, then the power of the ring will be broken. Fail…”
“And I die?”
“You catch on fast, vampire.”
“Great, so do I click my heels or?”
“You’re still very young, fledgling,” she says. Then, she presses a hand to my forehead and the world spins.
My stomach churns and pain rockets through me. Opening my eyes, I expect to be sitting back at the table with my friends and with Lucian. Instead, I know where I am instantly. It’s that same dank dungeon I saw when I first glimpsed Carver. I can’t smell anything this time, but I can see far too much. Carver’s strung up against a wall. Thick manacles encircle his wrists. He screams as Morana rakes her nails down his chest. She stops just before his cock, but make sure she tears his chest and hips to ribbons. Rivulets of blood flow down him and his skin is torn in chunks. If he ever escapes, even with Kresova healing, he’ll be scarred for eternity,
Morana’s eyes are even madder than usual. Maybe the blast has blown out whatever sanity she had left. Petite as always yet frightening, she leans up on tip toe to whisper in Carver’s ear. “Tell me where your whore is Carver? Do you think I don’t suspect what she is? She’ll never win. I have Abehartach hidden well. I’ve killed all the Daks.” Her grin turns feral. Vicious. Stepping back, she points to the cage that contains Jolie.
His sister is snarling like the beast she’s become. Her hair is hopelessly knotted and tangled, and her eyes aren’t focused. Maybe they can’t. She rushes for the strong, silver bars of her cage and knocks her head so hard that the blood vessels in her eyes burst. She screams and collapses in a heap on the cage floor
“My pet did that.”
“No! You bitch!”
Morana shakes her head and her nails close around his balls like a fucking vice. “No, Lord of Pleasure, you don’t get to command me. You’ve forgotten, mon assassin, I’m your queen---your only queen---and soon that pretender Aurora Hedvidge will be dead. They’ll all be nothing but dust after I tear their fucking heads off. Now, where is she?”
Carver screams as she claws in deeper, and then, she stops. Instead, she wraps a leg around his waist and then kisses his lips. In the cage, Jolie stirs again and circle the perimeter. Drool falls from her lips, and her teeth are yellow and jagged in a way no vampire’s have ever been before. Jesus Christ, it’s like looking at the gullet of a shark.
But even under all of this---the humiliation, the anger for his sister, his own fear---I can feel my consort. I can feel Carver. He has hope. God, he has such hope in me, and I won’t give up. No matter what, I will save him.
And that bitch will bleed.
Morana strokes Carver’s bleeding cock and, despite everything, it engorges and grows hard. “You used to love me, mon assassin, used to do anything for me. You knew every way to pleasure me. Did you really throw it all away for some ugly, American whore?”
“You’re the whore. And the monster.”
Morana backs away from him and then backhands his cheeks. Her ring, the ring that was once Rochelle’s pendant, tears the skin from his cheek. “Oh, we know this already. The great Marceau family. Part of the royal court once upon a time, now just the Lord of Pleasure, the vampire queen’s rent boy prostitute, and his monster of a sister, that ravening beast, Jolie!”
&n
bsp; The beast in the cage…no Carver’s sister raises her head up and howls and then starts to claw at her body, picking at the skin of her naked breasts until it bleeds.
Carver looks away, the sadness rolling off him in thick, palpable waves. “Morana?”
His voice is soft, and for a moment, I’m afraid she’s broken him.
Morana must have thought the same thing because she perks up and leans inches from his lips. “What, my favorite Tiruer? Are you ready to serve me again?”
Carver brings his head back and slams it into her forehead. The smack of skulls rings through the dungeon and blood blossoms across Morana’s face. “Go to hell, bitch.”
She wipes at her forehead and practically growls at him. “One day, I will, but you, Carvell Marceau, are already there!”
Morana strides out and leaves the broken brother and sister alone in the mess and blood of their confinements. Carver’s pain was so raw that it almost bowled me over and forced me to my knees through our bond. I stumble even as I start to hear Mama Lisette’s voice calling for me, summoning me back fully to New York now that I’m at least in the present.
I’m not sure how I can reach out to Carver, but I will as much love and strength as I can to him. To my surprise, he turns his head and smiles directly at me. “I know you’ll come, Aurora. Ma belle, I know you’ll come.”
Mama Lisette chants again and I snap back to my chair in one of the most luxurious hotels in Brooklyn, thousands of miles and a universe away from the horror Carver is living through. Tears are streaming down my face, and I can’t fight them. Lucian’s swept me up in his embrace and is rocking me. He must think I don’t know how to break the enchantment on the ring.
I do.
But I know now, having seen Jolie up close once again, oh how I know.
There’s nothing we can do to save her. She’s just the beast Morana wanted after centuries of experiments, just the perfect weapon.
We can’t save her, but we can’t let Morana have her.
Jolie must be put out of her misery, and Carver will never forgive me for it.
Chapter 14
Abe is still a mess, and he keeps asking to drink from me.
I almost feel sorry for him, because in my mind he’s as much a victim as Carver. To me, helping Abe was the same as helping my love, but surprisingly, Lucian held me back.
“He may look decrepit but he has more power even in his present state than you do. He could be compelling you to give up your blood, but he just wants to suck on your power. Don’t let him.”
Abe’s eyes flash and glow with a green-gold light that betray a strength of presence. “Leave her alone, fledgling,” he snarls.
“No. She is mine to protect and that I will do. We brought you enough bags of blood so that you shouldn’t be hungry.”
“Hunger!” Abe laughs, “You do not know what hunger is unless you spent hundreds of years without food.”
Reina comes up behind us. “Dude, you’re old and you’re not supposed to want to feed, so don’t give us that crap. My girl here has done more for you in a single night than any of your followers for the past few hundred years, so lay off her and her blood. There might come a time when you need her protection again, so keep the well filled and she’ll be able to do that.”
“Who is this human?” Abe sneers.
“Sam to my Frodo,” I say, “And in case you didn’t catch the movie, it was Sam that carried a weak-as-fuck Frodo up the slopes of Mount Doom so Frodo could destroy the one ring of power and save the world. So don’t diss my girl.”
The thing with older than dirt ancient being is that you can’t speak normally to them. Just like Lucian and Row screw of colloquialisms, they just don’t have the cultural frame of reference to understand what we are saying. And I didn’t think that an older than dirt vampire could pout, but this one did. He turned his face into a corner and spent a few hours muttering to himself about baby vampires and a lack of respect.
Too damn bad. We brought him out of the crypt for a reason. If he wants to be king again, then he damn well better hop on the “Destroy Morana” train real fast. So far he’s ignored our attempts to speak to him about it to the point where I wonder if a vampire could suffer PTSD.
There were no psychology books to consult on the effect of traumatic events on vampires and the internet was no damn help. And it makes me worry about Carver, and the torture Morana put him through. The vision of Morana slicing his skin to shreds with her nails haunts me at night, to the point that Lucian can’t let go of me at all. I doubt he’s slept either, but I’m still young and need to. But each time I close my eyes the pain that Carver endures plays like a horror movie in my mind.
I’m losing patience with the crotchety blood sucker. He’s stubborn and stinking up his room because he refuses to shower and get the musty smell off him. He refuses clean clothes too, and I’m really, really worried this guy is hiding in the happy cuckoo land to avoid further pain. We need to find Carver but Abe who probably knows more than God about Morana, won’t talk. I decided to put on my big girl panties and force the vamp to cooperate. Yeah. I know. Sometimes I’m more flash than cash, but fake it until you make it, right?
“Abe,” I say, “Look at me.”
He turns haunted eyes toward me. “You going to let me drink?”
I shake my head. He didn’t need my blood more than I did.
“Look, we need to find Morana and Carver. All that we have done so far will mean nothing if we don’t destroy her. So give it up.”
He shakes his head. “I’ve been imprisoned too long. I don’t know anything about Morana that will help you.”
“Well, then, who does?”
My spidey senses tell me he’s holding out. I’m not sure why, because it is to his benefit that Morana finds her unnatural end.
“Tell me, Abe, or I swear on Carver’s life that I’ll find a way to end you myself.”
A shadow of fear passes over his eyes and I get the hint that in someway I do present a threat to him. Or maybe it’s not just me, but me and the other two Dria we haven’t found yet. Instead of one Vampire Queen there will be three. What will that mean to Abe? How will he fit in the New World Order?
He might not know and it scares the hell out of him.
“Abe,” I growl. And I have to admit that a vampire growl is a mighty scary thing and it got his attention.
“My daughter, Lyra. She’s been in and out of Morana’s court for years. She even spent some time as one of those damn Le Tiere of Morana’s. If anyone knows anything about the bitch, she does.”
I wonder if this a wild goose chase Abe is giving me to take pressure off him, but I bring this to Lucian who nodded his head. “I’ll get my men on it.”
It still blows me away still that Lucian has “men” at his beck and call. But this, finding the daughter of the deposed vampire king who burrowed deep into hiding was a job worthy of the CIA, NSA, FBI and NCIS combined. Okay, maybe not NCIS, but I enjoy binge watching the New Orleans episodes. I had a secret crush on Scott Bakula since I watched Quantum Leap as a child and I don’t mind watching an older dude that is still hot as hell.
Heck, you could say I’m really into older guys.
And they are into me. And in me. Oh boy!
Reina and I sit our latest hotel room for the night, and Reina kept a running commentary on how much about New Orleans the show got wrong. But there is a wistfulness in her voice too and I can tell she misses home.
I would too, if I had a home.
Because as much as I wish New Orleans was still home, it’s not. When all this nonsense is over, Carver back in my arms and Morana destroyed we’ll have to figure out this whole home base thing. And that’s what I hold onto, despite the separation from Carver that is tearing me apart. Don’t get me wrong. I love Lucian, and that love grows stronger each day, but when I’m with him I feel that there is something missing. We, both Lucian and me, are like puzzles that are missing pieces. We fit together, but not quite, and th
e place that is reserved for Carver is the most missing of them all.
Reina hands me the popcorn, which the bitch mostly scarfed for herself, but for once in my life I am not hungry. And now I’m missing Carver big-time, and homesick for a home I don’t have and handsome leading men that I will never have don’t fill the hole in my gut. That’s when, thankfully, Lucian walks in, looking tired after a long day of whatever he does all day.
“Hey, babe,” I say
He sinks down next to me on the floor, which was unusual, and put his arm around my shoulders, kissing my cheek.
“Hey,” he says before his eyes flick to the television.
“I see you’re cheating on me again.”
“I am not.”
“With the way you drool over that human, you certainly are. At least you lust in your heart.”
“Baby, no. My heart belongs to you, and Carver—”
“And a man we haven’t met yet.”
Techinically . . . we had. I just hadn’t fully accepted him yet.
He looked so tired and I realized how much of the burdens he’s been carrying for us.
“Hey, Dude,” say Reina. “Have you fed?”
He shrugged.
“You cannot go without your iron supplements. Damn it, woman, aren’t you taking care of your man?”
“It’s my job to take care of her.”
“Great, wonderful. Because you are so busy taking care of her you forget to eat and when she really needs you, you’ll pass out from hunger.”
“I will not do that,” Lucian said peevishly. “I’ve been hungry before.”
“Well, there is no need. Especially with the fresh supply of meal supplements Row brings in.” She hopped up and dashed to the refrigerator leaving us alone in the living area.
“She’s right. Whatever is eating at you, don’t let it keep you from taking care of yourself.”
Turn: The Kresova Vampire Harems: Aurora Page 10
