by Aya DeAniege
But there she was, snarling and snipping, offering me nothing in return like so many other women of my past.
“There’s worse news than you threatening to kill my Progeny?”
“Posturing, we both know you’ll do it, but yelling makes you feel like you’re in control.”
I grumbled out something that was highly inappropriate about her father. She laughed in response.
“I think you and I are the only two people in the world who know for certain that that wasn’t true,” she said. “No, I can’t find her.”
“You already told me that.”
“This is a different kind of can’t find her. I don’t know where she is.”
My mind stumbled back. Something someone had said. Had that been to Wraith, or me, or… I couldn’t recall where I had heard it from.
“If I told you that the Great Maker and our target were once lovers, is that surprising?”
There was a startled, perhaps even jealous, silence on the other side of the call. “It is.”
“And if I told you that it'd been suggested that the Great Maker is currently tied up somewhere with a vibrator between her legs, unable to escape?”
“Oh ho ho, how delightful would that be? Can I leave her like that?”
“Would you then know where she is?”
“I would, that doesn’t answer my question.”
“No, you can’t leave her like that,” I said sternly. “Even if it’s a six hour—wait, is it a six-hour plane ride if she can step into the Archives and then out over here? Are the Archives like a wandering gas station, just drifting under the world?”
“You’re so weird,” Anna said. “But no, she doesn’t break the laws of nature and magic, only witches can teleport. I’m only allowed to call on the Archives to save our archives like I did tonight. Which just so happened to be why I’m here and why you didn’t get squashed by statues created by the Romans to contain the spirits of their gods!”
“Quit your belly aching, she probably learned it from you.”
“She most definitely did not, I’ve been nowhere near the girl, and I won’t be anytime soon.”
I gritted my teeth again and looked around the yard.
“Now, don’t be like that,” Anna said at my extended silence. “I may have made a promise, but neither of us counted on it happening just as you turned someone.”
Those words soothed my ego. They told me that Anna would have been there. They told me that the feeling was mutual, that she would have been there in a heartbeat, if not for Helen. Anna over Helen, that debated in my mind.
And then I realized.
Anna would demand that I make that choice. Helen would sigh and look away, but accept because she knew it wasn’t about sex. It was about the connection. She would be upset because she would feel like she couldn’t make that connection with me.
But Anna would make me choose between them.
Helen, however, would try to be better. She would try to bridge the gap between us.
There’s the choice then.
Anna was my ex. I had to shut down all thought and belief about her, to stop chasing a dream that I hadn’t had when we were together. She was nothing more than an echo of what I wanted.
“I know that.”
“And if you want a night, well, come visit me. But leave the girl at home. I can’t risk her learning what I can do.”
“I get that, I understand that, but for the next two hundred years she can’t learn things.”
“Quintillus quit being greedy. You can’t have a baby bunny and an androgynous creature whose genitals shall not be named. That’s not how the world works. There’s a whole line of ifs, but until all of those ifs are met, my answer is still the same. You and you alone come to me, or not at all. That’s the end of the conversation.”
“Yeah, no, I get that. I’m allowed to grumble and be unhappy about it.”
“And I admit, it delights me to no end to have you so grumpy over little ole me but that doesn’t change anything.”
“I understand.”
“Good, we’ll talk more once you screw this up and call me for help because she’s still alive.”
I grumbled again.
“And don’t you be talking about my father like that.”
The next thing I said, I deleted, but only because I don’t want anyone translating it and rediscovering a dead language. What I did say was basically a baited curse and a slandering of the creature I had loved and lost with a wording that implied I knew I was soiling the mute’s good name and that the words would be understood if only Anna went and screwed herself off a cliff.
I do love languages outside of English, they’re so colourfully... wonderful. German has entire words for odd feelings. There are older languages which have one word to describe an entire page of expressions.
Anna, in response, laughed and ended the call.
Which left me in a situation.
The threat to Helen had been very real, but Anna supposed I would behave per the centuries of characterisation. She knew that I had changed, that I was freer than I had been in the past. But she didn’t know how free.
I sent her a text. “I am Quin.”
I stared at my phone. It had a minute and a half fade. Which meant that I stared at my screen for well over a minute. Then it went dark. I lit the screen up and went into messages just to be certain.
The message had sent, there had been no response.
I grumbled and looked around. No one about.
I walked away from the door and pulled a smoke from my pocket. I lit it up and dragged in that rancid, burning death. Almost moaning, I held my breath as the nicotine burned through my cells.
Smoking is bad, very, very bad. Vampires maintain the stance that none of us likes smoking because of how godawful it is. With the things they added to tobacco?
Yeah. It’s pretty freaking bad.
But Bob’s stock way back when didn’t die of cancer and they partook in various forms. It’s just the chemicals and additives.
We maintained it, though. Smoking is very bad for mortals. We were willing to give in to pot. Er… Marijuana. The chemicals in the plant could help with so many things, and the usefulness of the plant as hemp? Amazing.
But, kiddies, mortals? Stop smoking.
Shut up, I can’t get cancer, and I was stressed out. I’m allowed to smoke.
Used to be, I’d take something, do something. Mm, drugs. But after a conversation with Sasha, suddenly it all sucked. I hadn’t understood that at the time, but now I did.
The Great Maker had denied me the ability to sink into addiction. One part of me wanted to tell her to go screw herself and die. The other was conflicted. I had cut off stock who were promising, but sinking into addiction before. I understood the stance.
But I was fifteen hundred years old, damn it, I could think for myself!
Annnnd suddenly I was a teenager having a tantrum.
I considered my cigarette and grimaced.
The Great Maker doesn’t like little brother being addicted.
I ignored the whisper and clicked the button to light up my screen again.
The message had been sent. Still no response.
I drew in a breath as the back door opened.
Helen walked towards me on the balls of her feet.
In the dark, quiet of the night, she was a sight to be seen. A woman walking in the dark? Oh, how I wanted her. She walked on the balls of her feet and every line of her body spoke of a commanding presence as she stalked towards me.
Barefoot and her hair down as she stalked me. I watched her come, smoke between my lips and quirked an eyebrow upward.
No, Helen did not know that I smoked. I hadn’t smoked since meeting her.
She reached out and plucked the smoke from my mouth, then placed it against her lips and took a drag. She held it in an almost expert fashion, then blew it off to the side.
“Wait. You smoke?” I asked.
“Aren’t
I supposed to ask you that?”
“No. Seriously.”
“When drunk, I’ve been known to bum a smoke off someone. But that’s usually the only time.”
“How are you not coughing that out?”
“Oh, my mother chain smoked until she found Jesus.”
I took a moment to appreciate both the serious tone and the sarcastic turn it took at the end.
Boy, was she going to have a hell of a time reconciling her view of the world with the vampire named Jesus. Pretty certain he had no relation to the man mortals called Jesus.
Considering the bloody fact that they got half or more of the information wrong and then had the gall to claim they were perfect record keepers.
Feel strongly about that point, do we?
I checked my phone again. The message had still been sent and was still unanswered. I’m certain mortals could relate to that moment. The sending of a message that one felt was all important and receiving no response. I had that odd annoying buzz that told me the message hadn’t been sent and I had to check again.
“Why are you smoking?” Helen asked.
“You visited the Archives.”
“Guessing you mean the one controlled by the Archivist, the immortal who is neither young nor old. Also, explains the moving statues. I’m also guessing I’m not to go back, hissy fits and such.”
“Helen.”
“No, I get it. Androgen doesn’t want me to go there again and told you to issue a command to keep me from visiting there ever again. I do get it.”
“Helen.”
“I shouldn’t go there. I could be dangerous given my background.”
“Helen!”
“What?”
“Don’t get sucked into that tradition nonsense. They left it wide open, for crying out loud, and you didn’t know what you were doing. What are the chances of you even pulling it off again?”
“Eating a wolf and then having a witch teleport me to just that spot?” she asked, sounding puzzled. “Sounds pretty easy to me.”
“They are at fault for you stumbling in, not you.”
“Yes, but I probably scared them something fierce.”
“And we’re doing them a damned favour,” I said, putting the cigarette out on a rock as it grew dangerously close to my fingers. “They’ve had this thing for centuries, trying to decide what to do with it. Have you two decided how to do this?”
“It’s a vampire heart,” Helen said, then shrugged. “Destroying it won’t destroy her. We’re a little worried that it could send her into that kind of almost dead thing we do. Rosalyn is worried that after being saturated with magic, that’d be a bad thing. So, uh, can you just like reach into someone’s chest and pull out their hearts like you see in movies?”
I considered her for a moment, then looked away.
“Something like that,” I said quietly. “Did Lucrecia tell you?”
“Tell me what, Mr. Fedora? That during your time with the Devils, you learned a thing or two? Or that while growing up with Lu, you developed an intimate knowledge of human anatomy from first-hand experience? It’s not hard to guess.”
“But ripping a heart from a chest?” I asked.
“It’s kind of bad ass, rip it out and show it to them as they gush blood everywhere,” she stopped talking.
It was her turn to look away as I studied her, wondering why she was suddenly so blood shy. I wanted to ask if something had happened in the Archives, to ask what had scared her suddenly, but I didn’t want to push the subject.
Then was not the time to be questioning her sanity. That might push her further into it, and we only had each other as backup. If she went spiralling into that cloud of guilt, I’d be dead by dawn, along with a good number of humans.
“We have a cooler, are we ready to go?”
“She ripped the eyes out of a jinn to make the mace, as long as the jinn is alive, she can use his magic. Why didn’t you just tell me there were jinn?”
“Some supernatural races are not truly a separate race,” I said. “Myth says that the jinn and the witches were once one. But the way of the witch is one of dominance and the way of the jinn is one of submission.”
“So they go together like two halves of a whole,” Helen said slowly. “The jinn are all male? A completely submissive male subspecies and the witches just cast them out?”
“The witches maintain that they are separate. That they and the jinn are like a horse and a dog. The rest of us keep quiet about it because what with having so much magic and history, you know, all that, it’s a bad idea.”
“Because the women don’t like it when you point it out?”
“I’m told that when they set their minds to disliking someone, stubbed toes and hit heads happen often. Things escalate until you apologize. Which is how they got Lu.”
“But, aren’t we poking the wickedest witch of all the whole wide world right in the eye?”
“That was a lot of alliteration.”
“Quin, I’m not affected by stubbed toes and smacked heads, but you are. And we kind of need you, you know, functional.”
“It takes time to build up. She hasn’t been wishing me my entire life. I’ll be fine. But don’t bring up the jinn and witches again.”
“Fine, I’ve got a plan to draw her attention. It’s pretty risky. Since, you know, she can catapult from the sky and all. But we need her to do it to remove and replace the heart.”
“Great, let’s go back inside, grab a blood pack for me and head out.”
“What about me?” she asked.
The tone of her voice was so heartbroken that it made me wince. I slipped to her, sliding an arm around her waist as I pulled her back towards the house.
“If you consume blood, it will speed up the process of removing the wolf blood. Unless you want to kill another one, you don’t get to eat until dawn.”
“Damn, I do want to stay alive,” she grumbled. “But I’m hungry.”
“So we should go slow, you mean?”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Walking around with a bright red cooler in the middle of the night,” Quin muttered. “This isn’t suspicious at all.”
I looked at him, then over at Rosalyn. The Oracle arched an eyebrow, then focused on the road.
“We need a parking lot,” she said. “Lots of space, vehicle or building damage may happen. What’s the biggest parking lot you can think of that’s nearby?”
“I walk everywhere,” I said. “But we’d want to avoid the side of downtown near the escarpment. Hospital. Accidentally killing sick people isn’t going to go over well with anyone.”
“She’d seek to cause as much destruction as she could, no?”
“She’d need the tool,” Rosalyn said. “She’d make certain to cause that destruction so that rescue crews would come in and then carry the illness further. You’ve got to think like you want to slaughter a bunch of humans with disease.”
“Dump it into the water,” I muttered. “Oh, the lake! Ten-minute walk at most, probably empty this time of night. Big parking lot. Well, big enough for a vampire fight.”
“Great, which way?”
I motioned, and we turned towards the lake.
It wasn’t just a lake. It was a Great Lake. Which meant that if Bau decided to go nuclear, there was less chance of destruction because half of her explosion would be over the lake, right?
Wrong, you assume the witches are pathetic meat sacks with no control.
It was worth a shot, damn it.
“So, how do you plan to bring her down?” Rosalyn asked.
“By saying her name, then standing in one spot for a while.”
“That’s dangerous,” two voices said as one.
I shrugged. “Quin has to remove the heart. Then I’ll slam the old one back into her and then Quin should be able to use his voodoo on her.”
“Only humans can use voodoo,” Rosalyn said.
“You know what I meant,” I said.
We walked for a ways in silence. The city was no stranger at that time of night as it is at any other time after dark. The lights were still on. Cars still passed on occasion. It might have been no later than nine at night, shops were closed so no one was wandering about aimlessly. There were even a few lights on in the houses that we passed, of people staying up late playing on their computers or watching television.
Close your curtains, people. After dark, anyone can see into your home and what you’re doing.
There were simply fewer humans around at that time of the night. Slash morning?
Damn it, I have no idea what time it is again.
Across the street, I spotted someone walking towards us, headed into the downtown area. I had seen him more than once in previous week, but Quin had always pulled my attention away. I assumed that was because the fellow was another vampire, one whom Quin didn’t want me socializing with.
Vampires.
This time, I watched him just long enough for him to look up and meet my eyes. He seemed startled for a moment, then he looked past me, to Quin.
Who reached out without looking and swatted my arm.
“Ow,” I said quietly.
“Next time will hurt,” he whispered back, never once looking across the street.
Does he even realize why he does it?
I grumbled silently and rubbed my arm. It felt a bit like I had been punched by one of my brothers, but a Maker could apparently have that effect on their Progeny. Not just by outright hitting us either, a flick of his finger could do that to me.
I didn’t want to find out what Quin had meant by his comment. The first warning smack had hurt, I’d hate to see what he did to me the second time.
And I desperately wanted to look back at the creature across the street.
“Necromancy and anything to do with the dead is frowned upon,” Rosalyn said to me. “The dead are dead. They are meant to be put to rest and kept there. Not brought back for our living problems. Not used in our magic. Certainly not eaten by immortals.”
I had trouble figuring out why she said that. Voodoo, as far as I knew, didn’t involve raising the dead. Though she may have been commenting either on the vampire that Quin had ignored, or on the necromancy magic that Bau was supposedly using. Had actually used, like six to nine thousand years before.
