by Greg Howard
“Chances are he would not have believed you. Besides, I am sure you do not wish to put him in danger, and that is exactly where he will be if you bring him into this. Alexander will destroy anything or anyone that stands in his way.”
Cooper looked down at her, his stomach twisting. Her stoic expression told him all he needed to know. “You’re serious.”
Betsy nodded, her dark eyes trained on him. “It is imperative that you stay away from Alexander and Warfield. No matter the cost.”
Cooper was silent. Numb. Her words seared into his flesh like a red-hot branding iron. “No matter the cost? You mean Lillie Mae. But you said if I left there with you, you would help me get her back.”
Betsy looked down. She straightened out the hem of her coat and absently brushed unseen lint away. “I would have said anything to get you out of there. Too much is at stake, and you are too important.”
Cooper’s blood boiled in his veins. “Lillie Mae is important. And I know she’s there. She called out to me—in my head, somehow. At least for a moment. Then she was gone.”
Betsy stood and walked over to him, so close he could feel her frosty breath on his cheeks. “Alexander likely blocked her mental connection to you. He is resourceful and more powerful than we imagined he would be at this point. We have underestimated him.”
“So why the hell would Lillie Mae want me to leave her there with him?”
Betsy put a hand on his arm, sending a chill down his spine. “Because she understands the danger you are in, Cooper. She understands the stakes.” She bit her lower lip before she finished. “And because she’s dying.”
Betsy’s eyes transfixed him. He searched them for the falsity of her claim, but found none. He stepped back, breaking contact. Lillie Mae had exhibited all the normal signs of declining health for someone her age, but to be told she was dying—from a complete stranger, no less—was like a sucker punch to the gut. She was the only family he had left, and, absurdly, he’d never imagined his world without her in it.
“I am very sorry, Cooper,” Betsy said. “I know that must be hard for you to hear.”
Her face was devoid of emotion, though her unreadable eyes had softened, as if she shared his pain. As much as he wanted to doubt her, he couldn’t.
Betsy closed the gap between them. “I heard her last night as well. I saw into her mind. Yes. She is there at Warfield. And someone is with her.”
Cooper stared at her, dumbfounded. “Who?”
“I don’t know. Whoever it is, she cares a great deal for them. Alexander blocked our communication before I could find out who it was, and Lillie Mae was too weak to stop him.”
The proximity of their bodies unnerved him, so he edged over to the sofa and sat back down.
He scratched the crown of his head and then slammed his fist down onto the coffee table. “Christ. What’s he doing to her?”
Betsy walked over to the mantel, leaned her back against it, and crossed her arms. “My guess is that she is fine for now. Alexander doesn’t want her. She is Divinum and special, like you. However, she is old and sick. Her power is fading.”
Cooper looked up at her, a word sparking in his brain. “That’s what the blond guy called me. Divinum.”
Betsy nodded. “It is who you are and why you can do the things you can do.”
“Like a witch?”
Betsy sat on the arm of the sofa and flipped her hair over her shoulder with the back of her hand. “Humans call them witches. Another insulting term, if you ask me. Divinum are not your standard variety wiccans or conjurers. Those beings, with their limited and unrefined powers, are the result of the diluted bloodline of true Divinum.”
Cooper didn’t want to believe anything that came out of her mouth, but damned if every word didn’t ring true deep inside.
“The Anakim are nearly extinct,” Betsy said. “We only know of a few hundred still in existence. They have been dying off in vast numbers for the last seventy years, but new ones have popped up in Montgomery’s wake for years, which should not be possible. Somehow he has been procreating. He has remained strong and virile since the outbreak of the virus, creating a small army he keeps hidden around the world, lying in wait. Biding his time. We could not figure out how he did it until he took Lillie Mae. Then I started putting the pieces together. Alexander must have had a unique blood source with which he has been inoculating himself all these years. A blood source that is linked to Lillie Mae. And to you.”
Cooper looked up at her. “You act like I know what the hell you are talking about.”
Betsy’s mouth pinched at the corners, and her eyes went blank. “The war between the Divinum and the Anakim lasted for centuries and spread across the globe. Anakim numbers had grown to unmanageable proportions. They had set their sights on world domination, no longer satisfied with living in the shadows. They meddled in the affairs of the human world, infiltrating governments and populating armies with their own soldiers. They started wars. Instigated acts of terror. Pitted human against human, all while waiting patiently to make their move to gain the upper hand. It nearly worked. They had decimated our numbers. They were winning. Then Jericho changed tactics and landed the deciding blow in the conflict.”
Betsy glanced over at Cooper, no doubt detecting the maze of confusion twisting his face. She stood and walked the length of the room to the front window, peeking out between the curtains as if she stood watch.
“Jericho is a secret elite army of soldiers and spies made up of mostly Divinum, but also some reformed Anakim like myself. We even have a handful of key human allies sprinkled over the globe. We exist to protect the human race from the Anakim and eradicate them from the earth. We track, hunt, and kill every single Anakim we can find. But their numbers grew faster than ours. The near immortality of the Anakim makes their eradication challenging. They spread their disease through human populations like a plague, creating soldiers by turning humans faster than we could recruit and train our own.”
Cooper thought it odd how Betsy spoke of the Anakim with an air of disgust like she wasn’t one herself.
She turned back to face him. “Realizing that the only chance we had was to keep them from reproducing, Jericho scientists developed a pathogen. It took years and many failed attempts until they were finally successful with a virus called Sterilus-A, susceptible only to Anakim, that could easily be spread and distributed through their food supply.”
Cooper stared across the room, his eyes locked on a homemade clock with a crocheted face plate hanging above the television—the words I Need Thee Every Hour expertly stitched above the number twelve. Then it hit him.
“Humans.”
“Yes.” Betsy crossed her arms and walked toward him. “The virus is not harmful to humans or animals, and is completely undetectable. Almost seventy-five years ago, Jericho dispatched its soldiers around the world, adding the virus to human water supplies. Rivers. Lakes. Wells. Creeks. Purification plants for bottled water. Any human infected with Sterilus-A would carry the virus until death and infect other humans through blood, saliva, all bodily fluids.”
Cooper shook his head. He really needed that drink. Bad.
Betsy stood behind the wingback chair and slung her sable mane back even though it had not fallen forward. “The Anakim infected themselves when they fed on humans and spread the virus amongst their race as well when they drank from one another—a disgusting habit, often enjoyed during the throes of passion. The virus spread through both the human and Anakim populations like wildfire. It was supremely effective. A real coup for Jericho and a game changer in the war.”
Cooper leaned back into the sofa cushion and stared up at her. “Sterilus-A. You sterilized them.”
Betsy nodded. “When infected, it weakens them, making them much easier to kill. But more importantly, they are no longer able to turn humans.” She gripped the top corners of the seatback and shifted her weight. “We stopped their reproduction efforts cold, allowing us to fight them on an even playing
field. The surviving Anakim scattered like rats to the far corners of the globe. So now we hunt them. One by one. Ridding this world of their diseased pestilence once and for all.”
Cooper stood and went to her side, careful to keep a couple of feet between them. “But you’re one of them. So what about you and the other reformed Anakim in this Jericho army? And what the hell does that even mean—reformed?”
Betsy’s eyes darkened more than Cooper thought possible, sending a chill scampering over his skin. She stabbed the air with a finger pointed only inches from his chest. “We do not feed on humans, for one. Not under any circumstance. We would lose our heads for such an infraction. No questions asked.”
“So you get a pass. On the whole eradication of the race thing.”
The corners of her mouth edged down and her pointed stare bore right through him. “Of course not. After our work is done, we will present ourselves for extermination and free ourselves of this infernal curse.”
Cooper studied her. Searched deep into her bottomless eyes. Resolve etched her face like carved letters on a granite headstone. Her fervor was almost religious. He believed her.
He edged back, giving her space. “If both Lillie Mae and I are Divinum, aren’t there others? Why does this freak have such a hard-on for my family? Why does he want me?”
Betsy glided around the wingback chair, sat, and crossed her legs with the elegance of a supermodel. “You are the last of the Phipps line of Divinum.” She said it like she was bestowing some royal honor on him. “And also the last of Sally Parker’s seed. Thanks to her, your blood is unique. And without it, Alexander and the entire Anakim race will cease to exist.”
Chapter Ten
Cooper barely registered the weight of her words. The Divinum part he still had trouble processing, but was no longer a surprise. The Phipps part made no sense at all. As far as he knew, Phipps House had been named after the original owners, who were not connected to his family in any way. Lillie Mae and Grandpa Joe had lived there his entire life.
“The Phipps line can be traced back for centuries,” Betsy continued. “The power inside you is unusually potent, and has been altered with other, dangerous properties—a unique mix of meticulous Divinum breeding and dark Vodoun alchemy.”
A knot formed in the base of Cooper’s throat the size of a baseball. He sat on the sofa, his mind swimming and his stomach churning. He looked up at Betsy. “Voodoo?” God, he couldn’t believe the word just came out of his mouth. “Are you kidding me with this shit?”
Betsy gave a curt shake of her head. She uncrossed her legs and slung her silky hair over her right shoulder. “We believe your blood contains the antigen to the Sterilus-A virus. It is the only thing that makes any sense. So far, we think only Alexander and Stephen have discovered this anomaly in the Phipps bloodline, likely due to Stephen’s intimate knowledge of the family’s history. I have my suspicions about the blood source he has used all these years to start building his army. It makes sense that Lillie Mae went with Stephen when he came for her.”
Cooper stared up at the ceiling, organizing his thoughts. He sorted through the impossible barrage of information he’d just been given and applied it to his brief encounter with the Anakim at Warfield.
“Alexander is not interested in just curing his race of sterility, is he?”
Betsy shook her head slowly, leaning forward in her seat. “This is his chance to father a new line of Anakim. The only line. Generations of monsters loyal only to him. He would be their king, the father of the race. Once the remaining Anakim find out about you, they will hunt you to the ends of the Earth, and Alexander does not like to share.”
Cooper sank back into the sofa and rubbed his eyes. It was all too ridiculous for words, or the woman could just be batshit crazy. He’d much prefer that option, though her words somehow rang true to him.
Betsy clasped her hands together and rested her elbows on her knees. “I am afraid it is all true, Cooper. We have been hunting Alexander for decades. He always eludes us. He is descended from an ancient and powerful lineage himself. And his newborns are the worst kind. Alexander turns murderers, rapists, serial killers, you name it. He usually keeps a horde of changelings around him for protection. We have not been able to find their nest here in Georgetown.”
Cooper cocked his head at her. “Changelings?”
Betsy shook her head dismissively. “His half-baked little monsters. Just pray you never encounter one.”
Cooper’s head throbbed. He stood and walked over to the fireplace, massaging his temples. He stared at a framed photo of himself and his older brother on the mantel. It had been taken when they were eight and eleven, both dressed in matching short pants and white T-shirts. It was that summer. The summer of Warfield. The summer of Blue. Kevin wore a smile that stretched from ear to ear. Not Cooper. Lines of worry had already defined his eight year-old face.
He looked up and stared at Betsy’s reflection in the mirror hanging over the mantel, admittedly surprised he was able to see it. Another old wives’ tale, he guessed. “I am no match for Alexander. He’s not even human, for Christ sake. If he wants me that bad, how the hell am I going to stop him?”
Betsy stood and eased over to his side. “Your power. You must embrace your power in order to protect yourself from Alexander. It is the only thing that will save you. Or Lillie Mae for that matter.”
Cooper’s skin soaked up the heat of the room like a sponge. Beads of sweat trickled down his neck, and his throat closed up at the idea of using his cursed magic. It had caused so much damage in the past. The memories made his bones ache.
Cooper shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “I can’t do that.” His voice was small and beaten down, even though he tried his best to give it weight. “I just can’t.”
Betsy raised an eyebrow. “Not even to save Lillie Mae?”
Cooper’s face flushed hot with anger. He turned toward her, fingers curling into fists at his side. Their faces were only inches apart. “Don’t you dare use Lillie Mae for bait, too. I don’t care what the hell you are.”
He stared her down, but she had him. She knew he would do anything to get Lillie Mae back and he hated her for it.
Cooper relaxed his fists and sighed. “I don’t even know if can anymore. I tried to use it earlier tonight at Warfield, and it didn’t work. Some kind of mental block.” Yeah. A real doozy of one named Trevor. “Besides, I never really knew how to control it anyway.”
Betsy put a hand on his shoulder. It was as cold as ice and the chill sliced right through his cotton shirt. “You have to try. Alexander will not stop.”
Cooper flinched and pulled away from her touch. The hurt in her eyes was hard to miss. Dropping her hand to her side, she turned and walked back to the front window with slow humanlike steps. She stood with her back to him, as if to make him feel more comfortable that there was plenty of space between the monster and the human. He couldn’t have felt more like a dick if he’d tried.
Betsy peeked through the slit in the curtains and then faced him again. “You lost control once. That was a long time ago.” Her voice was soft and soothing. “You are older, stronger now.”
“Older, yes. Stronger? You don’t know that. I could lose control again. What if I hurt someone? Christ, what if I hurt Lillie Mae?”
“Let me worry about Lillie Mae,” she replied. “Reinforcements are on the way. We will get her back.”
Cooper turned toward her and cocked his head. “Reinforcements. I shudder to ask.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the mantel. “So… what? I’m supposed to just stay here? Brush up on my wizarding skills and wait for the vampire cavalry to arrive? You said Lillie Mae is dying. I could go back to Warfield and look for her during the day. You people are passed out cold all day, right? Isn’t that a thing?”
Betsy crossed the space between them in a fraction of the time it should have taken her. “Yes. The day sleep is a thing. But Lillie Mae would not want you to put yourself in that
kind of danger. She warned you to stay away from Warfield because she knows that even if you save her, Alexander will just find another way to get to you. Do not underestimate him, Cooper.”
Cooper shook his head in frustration. “I don’t believe this.” He looked down at his hands, cursed by a unique mix of meticulous Divinum breeding and dark Vodoun alchemy, as Betsy so ominously put it. He opened his mouth to protest when a noise sounded on the second floor. The slightest thump—easy to miss. Betsy looked up. She’d heard it too. She stared at the ceiling, putting a finger to her lips. Cooper stood as still as possible, hairs rising up on the back of his neck.
Betsy slipped out of the room and into the hall without the slightest sound, holding firm to the handle of the dagger tucked in her belt. Cooper followed her, poking his head through the doorway. Crouching in the center of the foyer, Betsy held him at bay with her free hand and edged toward the staircase. His curiosity got the better of him, and he took a couple of quiet steps out into the hall. Betsy stopped at the foot of the stairs. Another bump sounded in the darkness above them. Cooper eased down the hall, his back hugging the wall. The floorboards betrayed him with a creak. Betsy shot a frown over at him to which he responded with shrugged shoulders.
She peered up the stairs, and they waited. Nothing. Another few seconds passed. Silence.
“It’s probably just a rat,” Cooper said in a whisper. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Betsy stared up into the dark, her eyes widening. “Cooper, run!”
He didn’t run. He couldn’t run. He froze. All of the air rushed out of his lungs as the heavy mass of snapping fangs and clawing talons barreled down the staircase, heading right for Betsy. A tornado of vicious snarls and piercing howls filled the air, ringing in Cooper’s ears so loud that he covered them with his hands, but he couldn’t look away. He had never seen anything like it before. Never glimpsed anything like it in his darkest nightmares, a grotesque creature formed of rotting flesh, oozing sores, and a misshapen head.
