The rest of the coven hissed and howled in agreement—everyone but Jorge who stayed solemn, tailing the rest like he didn’t have a choice.
Lusian could never be what Valek was. Soft. Mortal in a devil’s shell.
Lusian meant every bit of what he said. He was tired of acting with discretion. With Francis gone, and little threat to his existence, Lusian would be under no one’s thumb. Valek can shove his self-righteousness up his ass.
Once the group arrived over the foothills near Kojakovice, they slowed, gathering together to appraise the narrow streets, the few golden streetlights speckling over the dark rooftops like stars.
The entire town was asleep, every house and tavern light turned dim.
The coven hesitated at the edge of the plowed road, each set of hungry eyes fixating on the first home they’d take. It didn’t really matter whether this town was small or not. The destruction of an entire village would most certainly show up in mortal news. What would they blame it on, Lusian wondered? A religious extremist? A twisted serial killer? A terrorist angered at society—the government—their parents? Whatever explanation they’d try to desperately weave, it would only be a matter of time before humans became aware again of the monsters walking among them. Lusian reveled in the idea.
Dusana shot off first, northward. Lusian heard in her mind that she’d claimed one of the smaller houses on the furthest edge of the settlement near a cornfield. It was her style, set far back and away from the commotion brought about by everyone else. She preferred to feed alone in quiet. When she’d finish there, she’d move on to the farmhouse a kilometer to the east.
The twins followed milliseconds after, though they flew to a clump of smaller cottages on the west side of town. Sasha and Jorge went next, until finally, Lusian was the only one left standing on the lonely, cracked road.
One, tiny house with a smoking chimney stack sat at the very center of his focus. Only one light was on, though it was faint and white. A reading light. A night owl.
Perfect.
The Girl Who Was Already Dead
Loud arguing startled Charlotte awake.
“Guess it was a good thing it was just you!” It was Sarah’s voice. She’d never sounded so angry. “If the others had been around, they would have probably torn her limbs off.”
“It is never a good thing!” Valek thundered back and Charlotte gasped, shooting to sit up in her bed, though wincing as lightning pain flashed up her spine to the top of her skull.
She clutched the side of her neck, gritting her teeth, leaning back against the headboard, and willing the pain to fade.
It wasn’t the bed she normally shared with Valek. She wasn’t even in his room. Instead, she slit her eyes to evaluate the lilac walls, the white curtains, and the trunk over-flowing with frothy skirts. She was in Sarah’s room. It was the bedroom that had once belonged to Charlotte before they’d been captured by the Regime. Upon arriving home, the Witch claimed it as her own.
Charlotte’s head gave another nasty throb and she swallowed a cry. She struggled to pay attention to what Valek and Sarah were arguing about.
“Do you think I enjoy hurting her?”
“She doesn’t believe you are hurting her! She doesn’t think any of you have hurt her after the way you’ve rationalized this in her mind!”
“There is nothing rational about this, Sarah! She is sick!”
“Yes, because you tricked her into sacrificing something huge, and now it’s even worse because your selfishness has made her ill!”
“You know there was no other choice when I brought her to Francis!” He sounded exasperated. Exhausted. “You know what the consequences were! Let them use her, lest she die!”
“Guess he got his way! Look at her! She is dying! And now you want to go on the run again?”
Charlotte’s eyes welled as she pressed her hand to her lips to keep from gasping. Dying?
“You’re right. I should not have… done it again,” he mumbled bitterly. “I won’t. No matter what. We just need to find a way to fix this.”
The last few days were a muddy blur in her mind. Another collapse flung her into a terrible, prolonged dream; just teeth, blood, pain and a black void.
Oh no.
Hesitating, her fingers crept to find a bandage wrapped tightly around her neck. Why was there a bandage there? His bites usually always healed themselves. She wanted to tear it off and see what was underneath, but Valek’s next string of words stopped her.
“I can’t hear her thoughts anymore,” he admitted quietly.
Charlotte bolted upright again, but that resulted in another streak of intense pain.
“What?” Sarah whispered back, sounded positively dumbstruck.
The door was cracked open to the hallway. Charlotte could see their shadows moving against the wall. She watched Sarah’s shadow draw closer to his and rest her hand on his arm.
“What do you mean, Valek?”
“When she lost consciousness last night,” he hesitated. “She…dropped. Her eyes lost their light.” His voice wavered as he recounted. “And then everything just went…silent. No thoughts. No pulse. Nothing. For a moment, I thought she…died, Sarah. Her whole body just…froze.”
The Witch hushed him, running her hand up and down his arm.
“And then—” Charlotte heard him inhale sharply. “She came back. It must have been ten seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. All at once, she came back. Her heartbeat, the life in her eyes—everything but…her mind. I still can’t hear it. And I don’t know why.”
“You should have told me before.” Sarah’s shadow fell back, slumping against the opposite wall. Even though Charlotte couldn’t see her face, she could sense her anguish.
“That is why must go. We need to leave. All of us. Whoever is left of the Regime knows where we are. If we remain in Bohemia, we’re only playing with fire. I will do everything in my power to keep her safe.”
“Feeding from her is hardly keeping her safe—”
“When she’s in pain, I respond the only way I know how—”
Charlotte pressed her back hard against the headboard. Several moments of intense silence passed. Charlotte’s heart hammered in her ears. She felt cold from the top of her head to her smallest toe.
Why can’t you hear my mind?
She felt lost—even more barred from him than before. She stood from the bed, and though her legs were a bit stiff, she crept slowly to the edge of the room. With her back against the inside of the doorframe, she slid down until her rear met the floor, her knees hugged to her chest.
Around the other side of the doorpost, she could see Sarah wrap her arms around herself. Her face was streaked with moisture. Valek’s shoulder and the toe of his shoe peaked out as well. Charlotte shrank back even more so they wouldn’t notice her there.
“Occult society is no longer safe for her,” Sarah sniffed. “Charlotte was never one of us.”
Never one of us. The words circled miserably.
Charlotte’s heart broke in half.
“Congratulations,” he said dully. “You’ve found my dilemma. And what do you propose we do? How was I to anticipate this?” He jabbed a talon in Charlotte’s direction.
She jumped, scooting back and curling up tighter against the wall. Clearly, he’d heard her movements within the room. Just because he was barred from her mind didn’t mean his acute hearing had been limited as well. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, nausea churning in her center.
“I told you. The only way to cure her and to solve everything is to change her! She is human, after all, Valek! They grow weak and then they die. What do you expect will happen to her in about sixty years? It is her fate! Unless you change—”
“Not another word.” Valek’s tone turned twelve shades darker, the most threatening he had ever sounded. Charlotte could tell Sarah’s suggestion had infuriated him.
Fate caught up with her. Sarah was right. Destined to die. There had been so many times death sho
uld have claimed her, yet she had evaded it. She glanced down at the fate line in her palm, the one that linked her eternally to Valek, remembering how it diminished in her dream. What did it mean for them now? Toying and twisting Andela’s ring around her right ring finger, Charlotte closed her eyes, leaning the back of her head against the wall. She inhaled deeply. She must only choose between death and dying.
“Here…take these…” she heard Sarah whisper.
“Why are you giving these to me?”
“Because…it will happen again. And it will continue to come more frequently until she perishes. I know you. You won’t withstand a single minute of her suffering. You’ll give in…even if it kills her.”
Then it became too quiet. Charlotte wondered what Sarah had given him. She sat still as she could on the floor, measuring her own heartbeat, counting each drum of it.
The side of her throat itched and she tugged at her bandage.
Next second, she heard Valek clear his throat and it was quite loud.
Breath hitching, she glanced up to find him looming over her in the doorway. He looked upset, his brow furrowed and his jaw muscles strained.
She’d never seen him in such a way. Strung out. Dark circles under his eyes—darker than usual. His shirt was un-tucked, and though she knew it was impossible, he appeared to have aged at least a decade. A single tear ran cold down her cheek as she returned his pensive look.
Without saying another word, Valek swept her up in his arms, his expression firm. He carried her out into the hall where Sarah was blockading their way to the staircase. Her arms were crossed.
“There must be a solution and I won’t give up until I’ve found it,” she promised.
Red welled under the lower lids of his eyes. Vampire tears.
“Tell me then, if you have all the answers. Tell the doctor…” His words dripped with vitriol. “How do I cure her without killing her?”
Sarah remained silent, her eyes narrowing to slits. They regarded each other for a final moment.
Valek proceeded to carry her downstairs. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe. Instead, he entered the library, finding the long fainting couch. Placing Charlotte over it, he turned and began clearing ornaments from the tree still situated in the corner of the room.
The new year was upon them now. Yule was over.
One by one, he tossed them back into the crate, each one making a sad sort of clink when they hit the wood. The weight of his melancholy pressed down upon her shoulders. Usually, they kept the tree up until the second week of January.
“How do you feel?” Valek forced a smile over his shoulder at her, though the lines crinkling his brow revealed more of his misery.
“Why didn’t I wake up in our room?”
“Sarah doesn’t think you and I… should be in such close proximity,” he sighed, sounding exhausted. He tugged off a few more ornaments, bells clanging, rotting needles raining down over the floor. “She believes my very presence triggers your disease.” His tone was bitter then.
Then came another hollow thud of a few wooden snowflakes dropping into the crate.
“Wait!”
He did.
Charlotte reached for the one still in his hand—her favorite—the little wooden owl with moldavite eyes (a special stone only found in the Vltava River).
“May I hold onto that one?”
Glacier-colored eyes giving it a quick once-over, he smirked before handing it to her. “No reason you shouldn’t.”
“I remember when you gave this to me.” She turned it over, marveling at the detail.
“It was our seventh Yule together,” he began wistfully. “You’d been obsessed with owls for some reason,” he scoffed, but the memory seemed to brighten his features a bit. “Drawing them all autumn. You’d filled every page of your journals with wide eyes and wings.” Lines formed around his ponderous smile as he continued to strip the tree. “I remember how excited you were to show me your latest… scampering into my office each night, not caring whether I was taken up by a patient or not.” His chuckle was short and hollow. And then his face fell again and he grew quiet. “Sometimes… you still remind me of that little girl.”
Her throat constricted as she trailed her thumb over the intricate craftsmanship of the breast pattern in the wood, the tail. She recalled some vague memory of Valek whittling it in front of the fireplace, pipe dangling from his lips.
“This is still one of my favorite things.”
“Couldn’t get you any more pencils or drawing books, could I?” His smile widened a bit. “To this day, I don’t believe you’ve used up every page.”
She appreciated the light topic of conversation, but her mind continued to roll over more crucial issues. Dying. Fixation. Normalcy still ebbed back to her. A dull ache still prodded against her temples.
“Is it true,” she began again, her voice quieter so Sarah wouldn’t overhear. “Can you really not hear my mind anymore?”
Valek finished with the last of the silver bells and sighed. Crossing the room, he sat down next to her, the cushion dipping so that their knees touched.
“You should see something,” he muttered, his smile fading again. “Look at what landed on our doorstep this evening.”
Bending to the other side of the couch, he produced a large, familiar-looking periodical. He stretched out a fresh printing of the Weekly Cackle in front of his face. Charlotte’s heart plunged into her stomach.
“Doesn’t take that Quipp very long to smear someone, does it?” he grumbled. “An abomination.”
Folding the page over, he revealed Charlotte’s horrified gray scale face. The photo took up half the page under a headline that read: WILD CHILD OF THE DREADED VAMPIRE RUZIK: ANGEL OR DEMON?
“They’ve printed your image all over too, now, Lottie. Other presses are picking up the story now. Some say I hold you against your will. Some allege you’re not human, but rather some sort of Halfling,” he snorted. “They’ve reported I am building an army! What army? All I want is to be left alone!”
Balling up and chucking the first article into the fire, he produced a smaller inquirer and then a different gazette—the Cackle’s rival paper—the Paranormal Post. Each of them published their own variation of Charlotte’s identity. At first glance, the stories seemed unbiased enough, but the tones of each article highlighted the savageness of her and the Dreaded Vampire Ruzik, or so was his new claim to fame.
“As you can imagine, this makes things very dangerous for us all,” he said.
“They’ll come for us,” she whispered.
“Yes. If they have not set off already, I would be surprised. But, as it seems, Quipp has made me out to be quite the dangerous criminal. A ruthless murderer.” His laugh was dry. “I imagine whoever comes for us will be afraid enough to approach with caution. It is a good thing he does not know about your malady. If they sense weakness, it will be a matter of hours until an enemy appears on our doorstep. I stand by what I said. We should not have come home. And I strongly suggest our departure.”
“Where do we go?” She gulped, miserable at the thought of abandoning home again.
Sarah flitted into the room, her face blanched, cheeks stained with the evidence of old tears. She was carrying a tray filled with pastries and a large teapot. Creeping around Valek, she shimmied her way between them on the couch. The tray landed with a loud clatter over the coffee table, the sound dashing an end to their conversation.
“You should eat something,” she sniffed.
“I’m not hungry….”
“That does not mean you shouldn’t eat!” Sarah snapped, her eyes wide and watery.
Charlotte traded a quick glance with Valek.
“S-sure. Fine….” Even though her stomach continued to toss, she thought better of arguing further. And she was still stung by what Sarah said: Never one of us.
Valek leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and sighed deeply again. “My apologies, Lottie. You should not have heard any part
of our conversation.” He threw a new glare at Sarah.
The little Witch folded her arms and padded over to the window, sniffling quietly, wiping at her eyes with her handkerchief.
“Then it must all be true,” Charlotte concluded.
The room sat in uncomfortable silence until Sarah hissed, “Drink it!”
With trembling fingers, Charlotte reached for her teacup, attempting to sip at it. It tasted bitter. Sarah hadn’t bothered to mask the magic with sugar this time. Then something surged at the side of her throat—the scar. Charlotte winced, but tried not to react—to control the urge. This was very very bad.
“Hurts again, Charlotte?” Of course Valek was the first to notice her flinch.
Dropping the cup to the floor, tea spilling out, she stood, ripping at the foamy gauze around her throat.
“What is this? Get it off!” She growled, and didn’t even recognize her own voice.
The back of her esophagus was on fire. All her muscles constricted. Sharp pain wound up and down one half of her body.
Valek stepped toward her, but Sarah threw herself between him and Charlotte again, her arms spread wide. “Don’t you even think about it!”
He paused.
Against the dull firelight, the room started to lose focus.
“Valek?” Charlotte managed to croak, but it sent a flare like serrated glass over her tongue.
“I cannot….”
“Why don’t you just say it?” Charlotte wheezed. She felt impulsive, like she no longer had control of what she might say. “Out loud. I am dying!”
“No!” Valek shoved all his hair behind his head, growling quietly, his eyes bulging.
Her scar flared angrily as if it understood what he said. He dashed out of the room, leaving her alone with the Witch, still trembling. Seething.
“Please, try and drink some more. It’s one of Baba Yaga’s healing potions from the grimoire you gave me. It’ll help.” Sarah’s voice was small.
Of Blood and Magic Page 16
