The man holding her turned his eyes away from Alicia and Foster, as if the sight of the glowing specters unnerved him. Alicia rushed in, arms outstretched, preparing to deliver another bolt of her ghost-lightning.
“No,” Jerusa cried out to Alicia. “Don’t.” She couldn’t stand another blast of white pain.
“Stop fighting us,” the man in front of her said. “Come with us to Purgatory. Help us dispel the ink of ignorance and bring the light of truth unto the world.”
“And what truth is that?” Jerusa asked, struggling to speak.
“That there is more to the world than mortality,” the man said with a glass-eyed expression. “That the failed reign of man is at an end.”
Jerusa didn’t know how to answer that. The lunacy of his face, the brainwashed look of a devoted acolyte, drove any response from her mind. He took her silence as dissidence and his eyes went cold and blank.
“Very well.”
His shirt pulsated and out from the bottom came the vile umbilical cord. It bobbed back and forth, the sharp barb waving before her eyes.
“You can’t,” the jaundiced man said. She struggled against his grip, but he squeezed her all the tighter. “We must take her back. Besides, I’m the one that needs fresh blood.”
“Just a quick sting to make her compliant,” he said. “Once she’s secured then you can find a donor.”
Jerusa dug her feet into the ground, pushing back with all her strength, but she only managed to drive the one holding her back a foot or so. She glanced at Alicia, who was standing at the ready. Jerusa considered unleashing her ghost friend, but the attack would only affect her and the jaundiced man. The other wasn’t touching her and wouldn’t receive the shock. He’d be free to attack her while she was down. She needed to get a hold of the other man, but he was staying out of her reach as though he anticipated her plan.
“Maybe you should sting her,” he said to the jaundiced one.
She kicked at his legs, drove her head back into his face, but no matter what she did the creature wouldn’t release her. A deep and primal panic flushed through her, igniting her into a wild frenzy. The very touch of these creatures was hideous enough. She couldn’t bear the thought of being stung, as her mother had.
Something shiny glinted in the darkness, off in the distance, traveling toward her at incredible speed. It came silent as the darkness and before Jerusa could even register that she had seen it, the jaundiced creature fell away from her, shrieking in pain. She spun around to find him writhing on the ground, with a long spear penetrating his eye and exiting the back of his head.
Jerusa recognized the spear sticking out of the beast’s head. It was the same one that Ralgar had used on Taos. He had called it his skewer.
They came out of the night like a storm prepared to lay waste to the land. Shufah and Taos grabbed her by her arms and dragged her away from the creature still standing. Ralgar rushed in, flipping through the air like an acrobat and snatched his skewer from the still squirming beast on the ground. Ming stood poised to attack, though she held no weapon in her hand. Three other vampires appeared that Jerusa had never laid eyes on.
The injured creature stood to his feet. His wounded eye healed almost immediately.
Ralgar cocked his head in mild surprise. “That’s different. Why aren’t you going savage?”
“They aren’t vampires,” Jerusa said. She replayed the attack on her mother over in her mind and had to fight back the urge to vomit.
“What are they then?” Ming asked.
The beast that had attacked her mother stepped forward. “We are the umbilicus. The new kings of this world. Feel free to bow anytime.”
Ming raised her hands, as did one of the other vampires—a tall skinny man with a large Adam’s Apple and long, stringy hair falling back from a bald spot. The umbilicus rose from the ground with a cry of shock and slammed into each other midair. They remained floating in the air, reaching for the ground as though they could claw their way back to the earth.
“Ralgar. Quinn,” Ming said, her eyes still fastened to the umbilicus. “Burn them.”
Jerusa looked up at the two creatures—beasts that were neither human nor vampire. She wanted to watch them burn. A dark and consuming hatred filled her. They had attacked her mother. She hoped they burned slow. Though she was no longer a human, Jerusa still considered herself a member of the natural world. She continued to think, her heart kept on pumping blood, she hungered, she tired, she felt joy and pain, but these abominations were not natural. How the Light Bearers Society had created them, she didn’t know, but every facet of her being told her they didn’t belong in this world, or any other for that matter. Even the savages were not as alien as this pair. They needed to die. Not just die, but be erased.
The air around Ralgar and the vampire Quinn (a short, stalky man with a thick black beard and matching eyebrows) became distorted with heat waves. Orbs of fire danced between their open palms. The umbilicus regarded the flames with defiant hisses. The orbs grew, pulsating almost as though they were alive. Ralgar and Quinn thrust their hands forward in unison and a gushing fountain of flame erupted forward, blanketing the umbilicus.
Jerusa pulled away from Taos’s grip and stepped closer. She wanted to relish this moment. The umbilicus shrieked in horrible agony and she forced her hands away from her ears. It was a heart-wrenching sound, but she told herself it would be salve for her aching soul. Their clothes turned to ash, their skin blackened, yet they didn’t die. Pity rose into Jerusa’s throat, threating to choke off her rage and she had to fight off the urge to beg for mercy on their behalf.
Ralgar and Quinn flashed a concerned look at each other, then looked to Ming.
Ming’s eyes were wide, glistening in the firelight like jewels. Jerusa’s stomach twisted into a knot. Something was wrong. This band of assassins, killers of humans, vampires and savages, had finally come across something their training and preternatural gifts had not prepared them for. And they were frightened.
“Stop toying with them,” Taos said. “Just get on with it and kill them. That noise is just going to attract unwanted eyes.”
Shufah touched his shoulder, staying his rage for the moment. “They are trying to kill them.”
Taos stepped forward, summoned his own fire and thrust it at the umbilicus. Their black skin cracked like desert clay, yet the fire didn’t consume them. Their shrieking gave way to fits of guttural coughs, as though they were choking on their own boiling guts.
Jerusa felt a spark of hope that their end would soon come, but that didn’t last long.
Both of the burning umbilicus turned their attention to Ming and the tall vampire. Their eyes glowed like hot coals. Jerusa tried to convince herself it was only a reflection of the light, but she was not so sure. The umbilicus opened their mouths and from their long pointed tongues they vomited out a thick, oily liquid. The liquid ignited as it came through the flames and rained down upon them like a cloud of napalm.
The fiery liquid burned their arms and lit their clothes on fire. Ming and the tall vampire reeled back in pain. The moment their concentration broke, the umbilicus dropped to the ground like wayward comets, sizzling against the wet, muddy earth. They sprang to their feet and fled, with great speed, into the darkness of the forest.
Ralgar, Quinn and Taos extinguished their fires and the world returned to darkness.
The fifth member of the Crimson Storm, a petite beauty with a pixie-style hairdo and bright blue eyes, attended to Ming and the tall vampire, whom she called Mikael. Taos came over to Jerusa and tried to search her for injuries, but she shrugged him off.
She caught a subtle noise drifting through the night, like the rustling of leaves in a great wind, and her breath caught in her chest. It was a voice—her mother’s voice—alive and calling out for Jerusa.
CHAPTER NINE
Jerusa scooped her mother up from the floor. Her skin had turned to the color of old newspaper, except for her lip
s which were pale and dry. Her eyes rolled listlessly in their sockets and she uttered a raspy moan. Jerusa carried her mother to the couch and laid her down as though the woman was made of glass.
Debra reached out and Jerusa snatched her hand. She had the urge to hold it tight, but she knew if she wasn’t careful that she could crush every bone in her mother’s hand. It had been less than fifteen minutes since the attack, but already Debra’s body was on fire with a deep fever.
The other vampires entered the house, lining up behind Jerusa. No one spoke, or even made a sound, but she knew they were there. Debra’s roaming eyes flickered, startled, toward the undead visitors abiding in the shadows.
“I see terrible things,” her mother said in a wispy voice between shallow breaths. “Are they here for me? Am I dying?”
“No,” Jerusa said, a bit too harsh. She smoothed her mother’s hair back away from her face. “They won’t hurt you. And you’re not dying.” She hoped her voice sounded more convincing to her mother than it did to her own ears.
“What happened?” her mother asked. “I had a terrible dream. Are you all right?”
Jerusa nodded, forcing back tears. It would do her mother no good to see drops of blood running from her eyes. “Everything is fine. We’re both going to be just fine.”
A great, wet cough erupted out of her mother like an angry volcano belching sulfer. A non-stop roll of thunder welled up from her lungs, shaking the tiny woman mercilessly until she fell back against the cushions, her eyes closed, struggling to catch her breath.
“What happened to her?” Shufah asked.
Jerusa wiped away the welling blood-tears from her eyes and watched as it reabsorbed back into her own skin. “We were arguing, about me leaving for Rome.” She caught something change in Ming’s eyes—an almost imperceptible twitch—but it was gone before Jerusa could evaluate it. Her heart hurt too much to care. “I didn’t hear them come in the house. Maybe they were already inside. I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?” Ralgar asked, his words shooting out like spurts of venom. “You didn’t hear their hearts or smell their flesh? Are your senses so dulled?”
Ming held up her hand, demanding Ralgar’s silence. He closed his mouth like a chastised child, but retained his irritated scowl. Ming motioned for Jerusa to continue.
“They made no sound or smell unless they wanted to.”
“What do you mean?” Taos asked.
“Just what I said. They made no sound, not even a heartbeat, until I noticed them. And they had no scent, until they began to sweat.” Jerusa looked down on her mother who was still unconscious. She wished that she would wake up, would help her tell the story. It all seemed like a dream now, the kind of nightmare that vanishes with the daylight, but still leaves you with a film of dread even if you can’t remember why.
“It was some kind of pheromone,” Jerusa said looking up at them. “Something in their sweat caused us to become docile. Compliant. Mom walked right into one of their arms without hesitating. I would have to if not for—” She almost said Alicia but a stern look from Shufah told her to omit any mention of her ghost friend. That wouldn’t be easy. The two shared one heart, literally in a way, and there could be no tale of Jerusa, the vampire, without Alicia, the ghost.
“Go on,” Ming insisted. “If not for what?”
Jerusa averted her eyes from Ming’s probing glare. She glanced at the pretty vampire with the pixie hairdo. She watched Jerusa with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. A tiny smile curled at the corners of her mouth making her look more human than the other vampires. She nodded and Jerusa couldn’t help but feel that the gesture meant that it was all right to lie to Ming. Not just all right, but necessary.
“I guess it didn’t affect me like it did my mother. I came to myself just in time. I attacked him with a knife, then jumped out the window so that the fresh air could clear my head.”
“What did it do to your mother?” Ming asked. “Describe everything.”
“It fed off of her, except they don’t seem to have any teeth. It pierced her neck with its tongue.” She gently turned her mother’s head so that they could see the tiny wound, no larger than the circumference of a pencil. “There’s something hidden within their stomachs. It was hidden by their shirts, but it looked like an umbilical cord, except with a stinger.”
“Makes sense,” Taos said. “They referred to themselves as the umbilicus. I guess coming up with clever names isn’t one of their strong suits.”
Jerusa would have laughed had she not been on the verge of falling apart. She swallowed the lump in her throat and it went down like shards of glass. “It stabbed her in the chest—in the heart—with its umbilical cord. It used it to replace my mother’s blood with its own. I can’t explain why, but I got the sense that it wasn’t feeding, not like we do.” She felt weird saying we since she had never fed before. Nevertheless, she was still a vampire.
“Why do you say that?” Ming asked.
“It didn’t seem to take any pleasure in drinking blood. It seemed more like a tedious act to it.”
“Anything else?”
Jerusa tried to think if she had missed anything important, but she felt dizzy and she couldn’t focus. “There is one thing. They wore some kind of device on their wrists. I’m not sure, but I think it had something to do with blood toxicity.”
“We need to burn her,” Ralgar said to Ming. His words came so fast and unexpected that they were like a slap across Jerusa’s face.
“Wait. What? What are you talking about?” For a moment Jerusa thought that Ralgar had been referring to her, but a sickening heat flushed throughout her body when she realized he had meant her mother. “No. No. I won’t let you. Come near her and I’ll kill you!”
Shufah and Taos immediately positioned themselves between Jerusa and Ralgar.
“She must be burned,” Ralgar insisted to Ming. “She has the blood of that umbilicus inside her now. She could turn any moment. You saw how resistant they were to my fire. We must burn her before it’s too late.”
Jerusa stood to her feet. Taos caught her by the shoulders, in an attempt to halt her, but she shoved him off, as though he were a child. Shufah reached out and pressed a gentle hand upon her chest where her scar lay hidden beneath her shirt. No one had ever touched her scar before, not even her mother. The anger drained from Jerusa, from her head down to her feet, leaving her feeling oddly hollow inside. Shufah’s eyes once again warned her to tread lightly and to let her handle the Hunters.
“It is not your place to make this decision, Ming.” Shufah’s low, melodic voice seemed almost like a song instead of a warning. “Jerusa is part of my coven and this is her mother, therefore she is also of my coven. You cannot violate the sanctity of my coven without cause or direct order from the Stewards. To do so is to forfeit you own life.”
“Don’t quote us the laws,” Ralgar spat back at her. “We have cause. And even if we don’t, it is but a simple matter of contacting the High Council.” He looked to the vampire with the pixie hairdo. “Contact the Watchtower, Celeste. Have them inform the Stewards of the situation.”
Celeste turned her doe-brown eyes to Ming, her eyebrows raised, awaiting confirmation. A dull throb pulsed throughout Jerusa’s body. A deep weariness, the kind only brought on by terrible sadness, overshadowed her mind. The world seemed strange all of a sudden, as though she had slipped into a rambling nightmare where all the edges were fuzzy and the Earth no longer spins east to west.
“No, Celeste, that won’t be necessary,” Ming said.
Ralgar started to protest, but she shut him up with a snap of her fingers. Mikael and Quinn watched in silence. Celeste retained her upbeat and cheery little grin. On any other face that smile would have seemed pretentious or even mocking, but from Celeste it looked pure and angelic, as though no matter what circumstance happened upon her, she simply enjoyed being alive.
“We’ll take the human with us,” Ming
said.
“Her name is Debra,” Jerusa said, nearly shouting. Her emotions were boiling beneath her skin like a kraken preparing to breach the surface of the ocean. “Debra Phoenix. She’s a person, not some vermin to wrinkle your nose at.” A soothing hand touched her shoulder. Jerusa looked back to find Alicia standing behind her. The ghost’s eyes radiated sympathy, her mouth pressed into a tight, lipless line.
“We will take her with us,” Ming continued. “The Stewards will decide her fate, though I can’t imagine it will be any different than what Ralgar proposes. Nevertheless, we will honor your coven, Shufah. But know this, if she changes, if she becomes one of those things, we will protect our own and leave you to deal with the mess. It is only because of Marjek that we extend you such hospitalities.”
Shufah flinched at the mention of her maker. She nodded without retort, then turned toward Taos. “Will you please carry Debra to the car? We need to collect Thad.”
Taos moved to pick up Jerusa’s mother, but she shouldered past him. “Don’t touch her. I’ll get her.” Taos seemed hurt by this and the look on his face stabbed her with shame. She wanted to apologize. For better or worse, Taos was her friend. He deserved better from her than to be treated like this. Yet, she couldn’t force the words past the hole in her chest.
Jerusa pulled her mother into her arms, holding her like a baby. The reversal of roles brought a bitter smile to her face. For the first time in her life she understood just how her mother had felt all those years, sitting there helpless, watching with baited breath, wondering everyday if this would be the day that Jerusa’s heart would take her away. It had been the fear of loneliness that brought out that overbearing monster in her mother.
Jerusa could feel that same ill spirit struggling to rise within her. She stood fixated on her mother’s breathing. The shallow, inconsistent rise and fall of her chest was maddening to behold, and though Jerusa no longer needed to breathe, she couldn’t help but feel suffocated by the sight.
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