by CC Solomon
“I reanimated the witch to find out what happened. Our town has been very peaceful outside of that attack by ghouls a while ago. I needed to understand why she wanted to destroy our moment of peace,” Shayla explained, looking around the table. “I woke that bitch up, and do you know what she said?”
Erik, Lisa, and I shook our heads in unison eager to hear more.
“Power. That’s it. She didn’t even say what she wanted to do when she got that power. She had no plans. She just wanted power for the sake of power.” Shayla threw out her hands in frustration.
Henry rested his elbows on the table. “One of our vamps went bloodlust. They didn’t attack a human. A librarian caught him lurking around the library and stopped him. His eyes were full red. He was gone. We had to put him down.” He looked down at his food, steak and mashed potatoes. His shoulder length black locks fell into his face, obscuring his brown eyes.
He was a good man, and I knew it hurt him to have to take out one of his own. A person he’d promised to lead.
Shayla rubbed his arm lightly, a look of sadness in her eyes.
He looked up, squeezed her hand, and gave her a slight smile.
“They won’t let any magical activity happen in town,” Chelsea said crossly, sitting next to me. She took a quick sip of her water as we waited for her to continue. “No witch magic, unless it’s to keep technology going. If you are a were, you have to shift outside of town. If you are a vampire, you can’t take donations from regular humans in town. It’s ridiculous.” Chelsea’s dark hazel eyes flared in anger, and she roughly ran her hands through her thick, strawberry blond hair. “We can’t be judged just because of a few bad apples.”
“It won’t be a few bad apples if this is spreading,” Henry said, looking at us with dark, solemn eyes.
“This is what Mae foresaw, the second apocalypse,” I whispered. “Every paranormal becomes their darkest most primal self.”
“How do we stop it?” Shayla asked, pushing her plate away. She looked just as frustrated as I felt. “It’s not airborne. The vampire and the witch both worked at the farmer’s market. We’ve been questioning all employees but haven’t found any other connections.”
“The whole town shops there,” Henry stated, picking up his knife and fork. He began to cut back into the steak, seemingly unbothered by the conversation which had left a pit in my own stomach. “Every paranormal in town could be infected. All we know is that it takes time to show up. The witch and our vampire went primal almost two months apart. The witch was first, and it was slow building for her. The vampire had called out of work for a week before he was spotted at the library.”
“This is all assuming it works like a disease,” Erik countered. He leaned back in his seat and rubbed his arm. “We were all changed at once when the supernatural first hit, maybe what’s happening lay dormant in us or was slowly growing. We grow more powerful with each passing year. Some more than others. This could be part of it.”
“Please watch out for the paranormal community here and any others you come across on travel,” I requested of Shayla and Henry. “For now, it seems like it’s progressing slowly. I know the government doesn’t allow for paranormal packs to form, but still tell the leaders of the groups to keep their eyes on their people regularly.”
Henry nodded, chewing his food. “We are. We can’t afford to let this grow. If another attack happens, the humans are going to try to kill us.”
“And then we’ll have to kill them,” Chelsea added with a tightness in her voice. Anger crept into her eyes.
She had to be recalling her time in that prison we were locked in. I didn’t blame her lack of patience for humans harming paranormals, but the last thing we needed was a human versus paranormal war.
Before we got on the road again, I took some time to talk to Chelsea on my own. Erik went to talk to some friends he’d made when we last spent time in Hagerstown, and Lisa remained with Henry and Shayla. We would reconvene at Erik’s car in an hour. In the meantime, I went to Chelsea’s apartment. Her place was located in the heart of the town, which consisted of low-rise apartments, houses, a shopping center, school, and a few other repurposed buildings.
“Can I offer you tea or something?” Chelsea asked, turning to her kitchen.
I shook my head and sat down in her sunroom, leaning back in the red loveseat. The day’s sun shone brightly through the windows giving a much needed warmth. I closed my eyes, resting my head on the back of the seat. Sunny days, even in our brutal winters, were always appreciated.
I felt Chelsea flop down next to me, but she didn’t speak. A full minute passed. “So, you’re going to let that monster continue to roam free?”
By monster, I was pretty clear she was talking about Phillip. “I need him active so that we can be as strong as possible against our enemies. But, Chelsea, he was under a spell. I know you don’t see it, but you have to trust me. He’s not who he was. If I really didn’t believe that, he’d be locked up.
“You’ve changed, Amina.”
I opened my eyes and turned to face her. “How?”
“You used to be all about doing what’s right.”
“I still am. I’ve gotten to know the real him and he’s not that person we saw at the prison.”
Chelsea scratched her scalp with both hands, messing her hair. “He needs to be punished.”
I raised my brows. Chelsea was like a dog with a bone, she wasn’t going to let this go. Not that I could blame her. I wasn’t sure I’d feel any different if it was Erik who was killed under Evil Phillip. “What good would that do when it was a dark spell that made him do those things?”
“Why are you being so naïve? How can you trust anyone nowadays?”
I shook my head slowly. “If we don’t trust anyone, we will lose this fight.” I looked up at the ceiling, suddenly feeling exhausted. “Maybe I am naïve. Maybe I’m silly. I should just grab my brother and my cat and go teleport somewhere far away. Someplace that my enemies can’t find me. I can hope for the best, and maybe this world will get back to what it was. Racism, sexism, disease. Or I can join forces with smart and powerful people and take out those who want to make this world shit. I don’t have to trust everyone fully to work with them. I just have to see the bigger picture and the bigger picture is all about building a tribe, a powerful one. I can accomplish a lot more with Phillip on my side than as my enemy, whether he’s roaming free or locked up. You can trust assholes. You just gotta sleep with one eye open for a while.”
Chelsea snorted and looked away.
“And about the dog.” I tilted my head. “What did that poor dog do to you?”
While Phillip and I had been away, Chelsea had sought her own revenge and killed Phillip’s familiar. I was disturbed on many levels.
“It was already dead,” Chelsea replied indifferently, brushing off a piece of lint on her sweater.
I stared at her with a carefully neutral face. It was becoming more and more apparent to me that my friend thought I was simple-minded. Clearly, being too kind and amicable made me a moron.
She glanced at me with sorrowful eyes. “I know. I’m a psychopath for killing a small defenseless animal. It was too much. I thought maybe if the dog really was his familiar, it might weaken him. I guess it didn’t.”
I shook my head, still not speaking.
Chelsea looked away. “I want you to stay away from that guy. He’s bad news. Spell or no spell. He’s going to make you a bad person, and when you finally realize that, it’ll be too late. You’ll have done things you can’t take back.” She spoke as if she knew the future. She was a vampire, which was not her gift.
“Why do you believe that?”
“I just do.” Her eyes were pleading. “Stay away from him. You guys together…it’s bad news.”
I nodded slowly. She didn’t have to tell me that getting too close to Phillip was bad news. However, it wasn’t in the same meaning she was saying. As much as I loved Erik, I couldn’t ignore that there
was some lingering unfinished business with Phillip and me.
Chelsea scoffed. “You don’t believe me. You know, you are so self-righteous. In the prison, you got on me for going out and mixing with the guards, and yet here you are hanging out with a man that everyone hates.”
“It’s not the same. Those guards weren’t under the control of dark magic.”
“They didn’t have a lot of options. The Sickness is still around, and the regular humans didn’t know if they were immune. It’s hard out there living in this world without having magic. David’s camp offered security for them.”
I thought of Ed and his regular humans-only village in Ireland. They seemed to survive well without the need to lock up paranormals and use their blood to make strength enhancing serums. “The people who ran the prison had options. They could have gone to a government town.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes. “Not every government town is as great as you think.”
“I know.” I didn’t like the idea of Hagerstown prohibiting paranormal gatherings like were pack meetings or threatening to kick out the paranormals due to a few attacks. Doing such things would keep them as outsiders. “That still doesn’t make that prison any less horrible.”
Chelsea tossed her hands in the air. “I’m so angry at you, Amina. You don’t get it. I just want things to go right, and everyone to be safe. I just want a win in life. My life was crappy before, in the Pre-World. I barely finished high school, my boyfriend was cheating on me, and my mom was always sick. Any money I earned went to care for her. I was never popular. People hated me because I was poor.” She looked down at her hands on her lap, which were tightly linked together. I could hear the pain in her voice, and I knew she was reliving those days as she explained her hardships to me. “Then I woke up as a vampire, and I thought, maybe things would get better. I was strong. My mom died shortly after that and, while it was sad, I was kind of relieved. I wouldn’t be burdened by her any longer. I know that’s crappy to say, but it’s how I felt.”
I reached over and squeezed her shoulder. I wasn’t the best at giving words of comfort and, what could I really say to something like that? Chelsea had had a rough go of it. She deserved peace, and this world seemed set on denying her of it.
Chelsea continued, her voice shaky. “But things weren’t that great. People are assholes. Paranormal or not. I’d find a community, and some jerk would ruin it. They’d kill someone or oppress people or rape people. And the groups that weren’t run by assholes would be too weak to defend themselves from other groups of assholes. It was kill or be killed. Be mean first, so others won’t be mean to you. Even as a vampire, I didn’t have any real power. I still had to bow down to someone, mostly men. And then to make matters worse, regular humans capture me. I was supposed to be stronger than them, but I still couldn’t beat them. Then to watch Jered die? You didn’t see it.”
My heart tinged a bit at the mention of his name. Without Jered, I wasn’t sure Charles and I would have escaped the prison. He had risked his life and got nothing in return but a horrible death. His body had been hung for all to see as a warning to those who tried to escape. At the thought, I wanted to kill David all over again. Monsters weren’t just the paranormal.
“Someone as strong as he was should be here now. His death nearly broke me. Without my boyfriend, Oscar, I might have given up. We talked about escaping and finding a place that was safe. A place just for us. He even asked me to turn him into a vampire. I think I would have when we were free. When you came with the others, I allowed myself to think that it was finally going to happen. That it was my time to be genuinely happy. Then, Phillip killed him and any happiness I had died. I just want a win in life.” She looked at me with watery eyes. “Why can’t I have a win?”
I felt so bad for her. We all hoped that one day the tides would turn and things would come out okay. It’s what kept us moving. She deserved to be happy. “I know how you feel.”
“Do you?” She wiped away a pink tear. When vampires wept, it was a mixture of blood, water, and some other fluid we weren’t sure about that gave it the pale pink coloring. Their tears looked like watercolors streaking down their skin, and it was almost beautiful. Almost. “You get new powers. Your brother dies but comes back to life. You get banished but you end up returning, and the man you left behind was there waiting for you.”
I pushed out a deep breath, dropping my shoulders. Sure, I’d had some positives in my life, but there were many negatives. And these new gifts were coming with expectations such as stopping evil soulmates from doing whatever foolishness they planned to spread across the world. I wasn’t a natural fighter, but the fates had decided that I needed to be put to work.
However, I had to admit, I couldn’t put myself fully in Chelsea’s shoes. She had suffered, and it wasn’t fair. I didn’t know how to make it better, either. “Chels, haven’t things been good here for you? Maybe you can get a win now.”
“Assuming they don’t kick us out.”
I really thought the leader of Hagerstown was a good man. I couldn’t imagine him really removing the paranormals. However, more importantly, I wanted my friend near me. “Then come to Silver Spring.”
She shook her head quickly. “Not with Phillip running the place.”
“He’s not running it now.” Of course, I didn’t tell her that we were planning to change that. I’d have to get her to forgive Phillip before then.
She narrowed her eyes. “Really?”
I smiled and rubbed her arm. “Look, you don’t have to come now, but if things start looking crazy here, you have a place in Silver Spring.” Of course, I’d have to resolve the whole Blake possibly being one half of the first soulmates thing before I pushed Chelsea to join that vampire coven. However, Chelsea didn’t need to know that right now. I’d be sure to fix all the problems by the time she packed her bags.
My chest tightened and I cursed myself for adding yet another thing to my stress.
I patted her knee. “But in the meantime, know that we love you and we need you. Happiness is going to come to you. We are going to get you your win. I promise.”
Chelsea gave me a slow smile. “I’m not sure you can make such a promise, but I’d like to see you try.”
I smiled back. I wasn’t sure either but I felt like I owed her, and so I would give it my all.
Chapter 6
The last time I was in Baltimore, I had been running on a broken sidewalk trying to reach my apartment and salvage what I could before leaving the chaos of the city. My parents, Charles, and his then-girlfriend had been with me. Most of the streets had been unpassable. Something beneath the pavement had been trying to break through, a large octopus-like creature that had expanded miles beneath the city. Some of its movement had shaken buildings, some of which had fallen. There had been ruble, death, and destruction. Somehow, we made it out unharmed.
The last I’d heard of Baltimore city, most of it was overrun by man-eating plants, ghouls, and vampires. Apparently, the underground octopus had been successfully taken out by the military, and what was left of the soldiers that came to Baltimore had been defeated by the other supernatural nightmares. This was a common theme with many cities in the country, especially the port cities. Traveling by water, although a smoother ride compared to the streets, was a risk due to the chance of not-so-friendly sea creatures. Some were big enough to swallow a boat whole. I’d met such a creature in Ireland, but fortunately, Andy, as I called the beast, was on the friendly side.
For a few reasons, teleportation became not only the quickest but safest way to travel, although it took a toll on the transporter’s energy. However, teleporting a giant bird creature wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Gary apparently preferred to fly, so when we teleported near the Inner Harbor overlooking putrid smelling water, Gary squawked, flapped his wings, and ran in circles. I had to pet him for a while to calm his nerves. It was clear that teleporting was not his thing.
“This place is a dump,” Charles announced, s
pinning around.
Baltimore, at least this area, looked even worse than how I had left it. Trash littered the place, practically covering the ground. The buildings were decayed or destroyed. Those left standing were boarded up, layered with graffiti, and surrounded by overgrown plant-life, some of which wiggled like snakes around the structures. We’d have to remember to keep our distance from those. The new world had a host of man-eating plants to watch out for.
Lisa shrieked.
A puppy-sized rat scurried past her.
She jumped into Charles, who wrapped his arms around her protectively, but he looked equally as perturbed.
I paused to listen for voices, nothing from where I stood. “Maybe they aren’t in this part of the city,” I said, moving closer to Erik as I heard several small animal noises not too far off in the distance.
“Is it abandoned?” Lisa asked.
Erik raised a hand as if to quiet me. He leaned his head back. “No, I hear voices in various parts of this area,” he answered. He began to walk to the east towards what used to be the national aquarium.
“How can we just pop up here? Shouldn’t it be warded?” I asked, knowing they wouldn’t know the answer.
“Maybe they dropped the ward so we could get in,” Charles surmised, putting his hands on his hips as he continued to survey the area. “They knew we were coming.”
That made sense, but it left me feeling more uncomfortable. What if they were watching us wander around? What if they were surrounding us like an invisible cloak ready to suffocate us? We had to be ready at any moment for an attack.
