Valek sat up in the bed, focus not leaving Charlotte’s face. Her head rested delicately on the pillow as he tucked the thick, wooly blanket around her. Her scar from his first bite was red and inflamed, and as her eyes twitched, he could sense that the pain was still dying down.
Keeping one arm tucked beneath her sleeping body, Valek reached for his coat, which hung carelessly from one of the bedposts. From the pocket, he pulled out the two chocolate beads Sarah had provided him for the possibility that someday, he might go too far. She’d handed them to him only a couple of days ago, telling him to keep them safe. It was as if she knew this day was coming. He squeezed his Lottie’s jaws open and popped one of them into her mouth, lifting her head so that it would slide down her throat. The magic in them would help her blood replenish slowly.
Overwhelmed, he inhaled deeply through his nose. Cool, blood tears rolled down the sides of his face as he cradled her in the deafening silence. He licked at them as they fell down his cheek. In the past hundred years, not one night had gone by that had been more solemn than this. He reveled in it at the same time as he mourned its ending. It took every ounce of strength he had to leave her there. He lowered his mouth, pressing it to her fevered lips in a fierce kiss that she could not return. It was his final good bye.
“I will not be gone long, Lottie,” he growled into her hair as he held her against him. “You know I love you. I will always return. Find a safe place. Do not trust the others. Do not believe what they say. They only want one thing from you.” He knew his words sounded bitter, but he meant every one. After every disgusting act he’d witnessed committed by his own kind, not even his adopted coven was counted among friends anymore.
The bedroom door creaked slightly, and Valek looked to see Sarah standing there, with one foot inside the room. Her expression was dismal, her gaze heavy. Immediately, he pulled on a new shirt. He could hear the tired apathy in her mind.
“I have packed everything we’re going to need.” Sarah walked deeper into the shadowed room, the darkness swallowing her normally luminescent face. An ominous crease between her fine eyebrows replaced her bright smile.
“Please, give me just a few more minutes with her,” he pleaded.
“Until dusk, then,” she sighed and closed the door behind her.
Valek wheeled around and walked back to the bed and let out the long exhale he’d been holding. He crawled in again beside Charlotte. The sound of her light breathing mixed with the hushed beating of her heart pacified him temporarily, and he realized he was quickly running out of moments with her. Inching closer to the half-dead girl, he pressed his nose to the side of her head. He reached around, pulling her body close to his and held her there, feeling her warmth against his chest. He twined his claws around in her soft, vermilion hair. How could he ever depart from her for so long?
“Charlotte, if you can hear me, I am going to make you a new promise. A few months ago, I promised that soon everything would return to normal and you and I would be alone together again. I’m not sure if that is possible anymore. So here it is. You are going to be happy. No matter what, you will be happy.”
Chapter 25
Valek, who had been absently watching the fantastic, new bewitchment twinkle above the bed for the last several minutes, rolled over to find Charlotte still sleeping soundly next to him. She appeared a bit healthier than the night before. The dark circles under her eyes had disappeared only slightly, but any amount of progress would do, and the color returned slightly back to the apples of her cheeks. It must have been the power Sarah added to those chocolates. One of her arms was tucked underneath her head as the other gripped the comforter, pulling it up around her shoulders. She was cold, he heard in her mind.
Valek smiled and began to stroke her hair. “I am going to miss you so much, my Lottie.” He leaned down, his lips lightly brushing against her cheek. “I promise I will make everything right again.”
Her eyes fluttered slightly and a soft moan trailed from her lips. Valek immediately pulled away, afraid he might have awoken her prematurely.
“Valek…” she murmured quietly, though her eyes did not open. “Don’t leave….”
“It’s okay, Lottie.” He eased away. “Sleep now.” Gently, carefully, he grabbed on to her wrist, pulling it up to his mouth. He bit down gently and she let out a soft little half-asleep moan. The red seeped up in a small, delicate pool over his lips. Even the smallest amount of her washed him in brilliant new ecstasy. He could hear her fairly normal heartbeat begin to mellow once more and he released her arm. “That’s it,” he whispered, kissing the wound closed.
Gingerly, he pulled out the other chocolate bead from his pocket, made her swallow it, and got up from the bed. He laced up his shoes and adjusted his overcoat. He bent to retrieve a thick, wool comforter he kept under the bed for her on colder nights, unfolded it, and draped it over the sleeping girl. Walking to one of the large windows, he pulled back the drapes to reveal a brilliant winter dusk. Snow had fallen again during the day, and it twinkled like finely sanded crystals across the lawn, covering the cobblestone footpath completely. A full moon hung low in the sky, casting the Occult town in hues of light pinks and lavenders. He looked at Charlotte asleep in the bed one last time before exiting.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sarah standing by the open door, one leg outside. She looked up at him, small bags and suitcases around her feet.
“Ready?” she asked.
“What’s all that?”
“Never want to be ill-prepared,” she insisted. She waved her sewing needle through the air before her. Valek watched as the various articles of luggage shrank down to an impossibly tiny size and the Witch gathered them within the pocket of her skirt. “See? Not a problem.”
“At least you travel light.” Valek looked toward the other chamber that held Lusian and Dusana. He heard him just on the other side of their door, waiting for him to leave. He balled his hands into fists at his sides and looked back to Sarah.
“I change my mind. We cannot leave just her alone here. I know the others will take advantage of her.”
Mr. Třínožka emerged from the library and began scaling the staircase with his eight enormous legs.
“Not on my watch! Not no how,” he grumbled, bypassing Valek on the top stair and standing readily in front of the master bedroom door. “You see now, Valek, I’d never let anythin’ happen to our girl! You kin count on me!” His massive, knobbed mustache ruffled.
“Us!” Edwin amended valiantly as he also began to ascend the staircase from the foyer.
Valek looked down to Sarah once more. Sarah nodded at him. We have to go without her, the Witch thought at him. You have two choices. If she comes with us, she will die quicker than if she is left here without you. It’s up to you. How much time do you think she’ll last in your presence?
Valek narrowed his eyes at her, but made a fast decision. “Spider, you must do me an additional favor as well.” Valek stepped once toward him.
“Anything.”
“You mustn’t let Charlotte follow after us. Please. No matter how much she begs you, which she will. No matter how much she…cries.” Valek’s throat tightened, but he fought back his misery, his fists clenching at his sides. “You cannot.”
Mr. Třínožka lifted his front, right hand. “Not a problem, Valek. She’s under my watch now.”
Valek heard Charlotte begin to stir again, tossing in the bed, behind the closed doors. She was already waking up.
“You’d better go.” the Spider’s words came out somberly this time. “I’ll take care a her, Valek. I swear it.”
Valek only looked at him, unknowing of what to say next.
“You’ll be back soon,” he continued, his voice low and warm. “And when ya walk through that door, she’ll be here. Waitin’ fer ya in better condition than what ya left her in.”
Valek smiled at him, nodding once, before descending the staircase. His gait to the front door was slow. All he could think
about was the grim possibilities he faced now.
“Valek, he have to leave. Charlotte will wake up any minute,” Sarah pleaded.
Valek turned to look behind himself, one last time up the staircase. They would succeed, he assured mostly to Charlotte, who slumbered a story above. He had no other choice but to achieve a cure and find the Bone Mother. “Thank you,” he offered up to Mr. Třínožka and Edwin. He stepped over the threshold and out into the night, closing the door behind him.
Walking away from that house felt so wrong, like he would never see it again. But he saw how Charlotte rolled in pain every night—saw how she suffered. With so much danger awaiting the two of them, Charlotte needed to be at full health, if he didn’t want to risk losing her forever.
“I’m not happy about leaving her either, Valek. Do you think I want to leave the only family I’ve ever known? The only one who’s ever treated me like a friend and not a slave? It hurts just the same.” She threw one end of her scarf over her shoulder. Afraid of actually becoming emotional, Valek couldn’t respond to her. He swallowed his pain and continued stoically down the footpath.
Sarah and Valek walked silently next to each other for the last time through the empty square. He listened to Sarah’s laced, leather boots as she trudged through the packed snow. There was a rustling sound down a dark alley between shops, and the smashing of what sounded like a tin trash can and a hiss. A lizard Shifter chasing dinner. The sky since opened up and small flurries once again began to fall over the enchanted city. It was a peaceful wonderland, in contrast to the storm revolving within him. Valek noticed the little Witch walking too silently next to him again. She was only this quiet when something was severely bothering her. She wiped a few sparkling tears away from her high cheekbones.
“So, where exactly are we headed now?” he asked with a pained smile. It was his effort to distract her. “Are we marching our path to Abelim?”
“Nope! My grimoire gave me some inspiration.” She grinned a little more enthusiastically this time. “It told us to travel on hoof and spell. Well, you’ve got spell.” She indicated herself. “Now, we need hoof.”
The two neared the town stables that sat at the very end of the square, just before where the residential distract began. Valek could hear the horses moving around inside, their hooves crunching in the fodder. Sarah rounded the front of the stable, the large, wooden doors creaking as she pried them open.
“What are we doing?” Valek dropped the bags in the snow and moved to her side.
The stable smelled like cut hay and something foul. It was encased in darkness until she magically illuminated the candle within the little glass jar that hung from the center of the wooden beams. There were five different enclosures with a horse in each. One of them, a mare with a jet-black coat and a long, unruly mane, eyed Valek, whinnying and backing up within her stall. She began to rear and kick, screeching louder.
“She’s afraid of you,” Sarah mused.
“Rightfully so. What are we doing in here?” Valek asked again.
“You’re not going to approve,” she warned him, crossing her arms over her chest.
She walked over to the startled horse, reaching deep within her apron pocket, and pulled out a sugar cube. She hushed the animal, holding the treat out to it. “There, there.”
Valek stayed as still as he possibly could and the horse calmed after a few moments. It ate from Sarah’s palm as she reached up with her other hand to stroke its nose.
“That’s better.” She giggled.
“You want to steal a horse?” Valek chided. “Fine. Why would I not approve?”
“I want to steal two horses,” she explained and spun around to face him, her eyes bright. “Two Vampire horses.” Her lips formed into the most sinister smile.
Realization smacked him hard across the face. Valek backed away from her. “No. No. No.” He shook his head. “Do you know how reckless that would be? It is positively the most asinine idea I’ve ever heard. What if they run? There will be two demon horses terrorizing Europe! Animals are uncontrollable. Unpredictable.”
“Valek,” Sarah pleaded. “Just listen! We’ll get where we are going faster. You’ll get back to Charlotte faster. And they’ll be indestructible. We can run for days.”
“Terrific plan. Except you’re forgetting one thing.” He lifted his finger to her. “How are we going to run for days, when you’re dealing with one Vampire his damned harras?”
Sarah’s grin grew twice its size. She reached into a very familiar canvas satchel.
“That’s Charlotte’s.”
“Brilliant deduction, inspector.” Sarah pulled out two syringes and two vials filled with a bluish, black liquid.
Valek recognized what it was instantly. “Fae blood?”
“Yep!” Sarah said triumphantly and pulled out another jug full of the stuff.
“How did you acquire so much of it?”
“Went hunting…just like you do.” She smiled and tucked it back away. “Honestly, you think I’m only useful in the kitchen. I trust you still have enough in your bloodstream to be safe for now. I’ll just save this for a sunny day. Now, hurry! Change them.”
Valek looked toward the large animals in disgust and rolled up his sleeves. His stomach bubbled. He had never taken blood from a horse before. There had been the occasional rat, but that was only when he’d been particularly desperate. As he watched the animal buck and rear in the stall, he imagined this wasn’t going to be the easiest thing in the accomplish. Animals, like mortals, had a keen intuition. They knew when they were going to die. They knew what was going to do it, too. The horse watched his movements with fevered eyes as it bucked and whinnied again.
“Quickly! Someone’s going to hear all of this commotion. We have to move fast,” Sarah whispered, peering over her shoulder.
Valek curled his lip and moved slowly toward the horse with his hands up in an effort to make peace with her. He hushed her. Reached to pat her. Nothing worked. The animal continued to cry as it tried desperately to kick out the back wall of the stable.
“Now, Valek! Attack it!”
This couldn’t be a graceful effort, he realized, lunging for the animal, wrapping his arms around its massive neck to try and get a lock on it. The other horse in the next stall screeched and thrashed harder. Valek sank his teeth into the first, the unappealing ichor seeping down his gullet. He winced, noting the thicker, drier texture of it. The nutty aftertaste. Gamy. It was revolting, but he continued to drink as the animal’s massive heart slowed and slowed. It finally stopped bucking and he released it, gently helping the beast lower itself into the hay.
It tucked its hooves underneath its body, making slight noises as its round shiny eyes blinked heavily. Valek helped to keep its head up, patting it on the nose.
“It will be all right,” he soothed and patted the side of its jaw.
Sarah grunted and crossed her arms over her chest. “Take your time. Great idea! You know, I’ve honestly never met a humanitarian Vampire before.”
“Sarah, if I do not keep the animal awake, it might die and you’ll have to come up with an alternate plan. Let me do this my way,” Valek argued before he bit down on his wrist, and watched the blood slide from the puncture wounds down his arm. He held it up to the horse, but she only turned her massive face away.
“Well, you can lead a horse to blood….” Sarah chided.
“Funny.”
Valek was well aware they were running out of time. The longer he remained away, the worse danger Charlotte was in. So many obstacles. So many enemies. Valek gripped the horse’s jaw and forcefully propped it open as it struggled against him. Such a keen intuition, he thought again. He bit down on his free wrist one more time, as the wound had already closed, and quickly ran it across the horse’s tongue. It ripped itself out of Valek’s grip, whinnying again, as it rolled onto its side, shoving its hooves against the stable wall.
“What’s happening now?” Sarah approached slowly, her eyes fix
ated on the suffering animal. Valek heard how bad she felt for it, but this had been her decision.
“It is dying. This is what happens. They suffer. They die. And then they are reborn.” He recalled quietly his own agonizing transformation. The feeling of going under. Drowning. The eternal burning, like he had walked straight through hell and come out on the other side, a new being. The transformation seemed to last for lifetimes before he’d opened his newborn eyes to a completely different reality than the one he used to know.
“Quickly, while she is changing—do the other one.” Sarah pointed to the second horse.
Valek walked into the other stable while Sarah lay in the hay with the first dying animal. She stroked her massive nose and hushed her tenderly.
“Careful,” Valek warned her. “When they are new, they won’t know the difference between magic and mortal. Living is living. Blood is blood.”
Sarah slowly and cautiously moved away.
Valek drained the other animal, feeling the massive pulse in its neck throb against his lips. The taste was just as gamy and unpleasant as the first had been, but this feeling against his mouth still drove him crazy. He heard Sarah’s voice from somewhere behind him, calling for him to stop and he did, quickly feeding the animal from himself and allowing it to make its transformation as the first had done.
From somewhere close outside the stable door, Valek’s ears pricked with the sounds of footsteps. Someone was coming. He turned to look at Sarah, who was already staring wide-eyed at him.
“When will they be ready?” She looked to the first horse that had grown completely still in the stall next to her. The second one continued to thrash and cry.
Valek stood, monitoring both of the animals as well, though he continued to tune in to each pursuing footfall. “Every experience is different. Depending on their strength, their vitality, it could be minutes. It could be hours,” he explained. “It could be days.”
“Days? We don’t have days!”
Of Blood and Magic Page 31
