“You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“You know I would, though.”
“I know.” Ashley bit her lip. “And that’s what frightens me.”
I snorted. “The people you love shouldn’t scare you.”
“The people you love are the scariest people in the world,” Ashley said, looking up into my eyes.
I was crying now. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done so. “Promise me you’re going to live the life you deserve. Have children. Just be happy.”
Ashley reached over and put her hand against my face. It was warm in the freezing cold. “I wanted to have children with you.”
“I can’t have kids. It’s something magical,” I said, not yet knowing the source of my ailment. “Besides, we could never bring them up in this environment.”
Ashley looked like she wanted to tell me something, reveal some fact of life that would change everything. Instead, she closed her eyes. “You would have made a great father.”
“It’d be hard to be worse than my dad.”
Ashley leaned in and pressed her lips against mine. There was an immediate spark and everything felt topsy-turvy. My vision grew blurry and I pulled away, unsteady on my feet. It was not the reaction I expected.
“What was that?” I said, feeling like I could collapse at any second.
“I closed away the parts of your mind that contain our feelings and built a barrier. No one will be able to read your mind about tonight or influence you to forget. We’ll always be linked, Derek Hawthorne, and I want you to be as happy as me.”
“I can’t be happy without you,” I whispered.
“You will be.”
I don’t recall much of what happened thereafter, but Penny drove me home and I spent the next few days in bed. My father pretended to be fooled that I’d executed Ashley in cold blood and everyone outside of my family started treating me like I was evil incarnate.
Christopher was a comfort, and I learned the value of friends lay not in quantity but in quality. I renewed my relationship with Lucy, Sakura my secretary, and a half-dozen other people who served me better than the dozens I’d thought I could rely on. I’d had one other partner than Christopher and Ashley Morgan, but the less said about Solomon the better. I shit you not, he died getting gored by a unicorn. I mean, it shouldn’t be funny, but it was.
With Christopher, I took my revenge out on the supernatural world. We became one of the most effective pairs of agents in the House as well as the most ruthless. I needed to hit something to make myself feel better and Christopher needed kills to improve his position. We both got what we wanted and became infamous for the damage we did to enemy plans—sometimes when softer approaches would have worked better. The images of the carnage, bloodshed, and mayhem threatened to drown me. I’d gone mad after Christopher’s disappearance, and it took Penny to draw me back. I realized I couldn’t count the number of people I’d killed. Human and monster.
Four hundred thirty-seven, a spectral voice whispered in my ear. Those are the ones you’ve killed personally. The number is much higher incorporating those you’ve killed indirectly, via orders, or as part of a group.
It sounded . . . approving.
437? Holy shit.
That was insane. That meant I’d killed more than four people a month. I didn’t want to calculate an exact figure, lest it expose just what sort of fucked-up psychopath I’d allowed myself to become.
Not a psychopath, a warrior, the spectral voice whispered. The Wrath of God on a fallen world.
I tried to regain some sense of control over my body, but it was like I was trapped underwater, my body moving of its own volition.
Who are you? I asked, speaking inside myself.
A friend, the voice said, its tone now feminine and seductive.
I don’t have any friends who like murder, I spoke back to the voice.
My dearest Derek, Son of the Morning, Child of the Dragon, those are the only friends you have, it whispered.
My eyes burned as a sudden brightness washed over them and I found my body rising out of the water I’d felt myself drowning in. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw I was stepping onto one of the beaches of Nassau. Its beautiful hotels were visible just off from the sandbar and I was getting stared at by a dozen people getting tans with their families.
I was soaked to the bone with seawater, my trench coat hanging off me like a shroud. The sun was shining bright in the sky and I wondered if I’d swum for an entire day. I didn’t feel tired, though. More like numb. Even more troubling, I saw my right hand was clenching the handle of the Bloodsword. The accursed artifact seemed welded to my fingers, my tight grip around its steel something I could no more influence than the movement of the Earth around the sun. The Bloodsword looked different now, no longer a cutlass but a Chinese jian or longsword. Its seductive power was unmistakable, though.
The weapon had bestowed upon me the physical strength to survive falling out of a plane, had pushed my body to be able to travel to land, and had kept my arms and legs going while distracting my conscious mind. These acts had drained it of its immense mystical strength and left a raw overpowering hunger for more bloodshed. It needed to be fed.
You, I thought to it.
Yes, the Bloodsword whispered. I am at your command.
Let go, I commanded, feeling my body continue to walk to the roads beyond the beach. A spell washed out from my body, causing everyone around me to go back to their vacations as if a man rising from the sea were a commonplace occurrence.
Soon, the Bloodsword said. We both need to feed first.
“No,” I muttered, shaking my head.
Yes, the Bloodsword said. Sleep, my Angel of Death. I will handle everything.
I tried to resist, tried to draw on my Red Room training, but it seemed a poor defense against the power inside the sword. I was exhausted both in mind and body. I found myself falling asleep as the weapon hijacked my body. A flood of pleasant images from the romances of my life drowned my attempts to fight back.
Everything went black again.
The Bloodsword was in command now.
Fuck.
Chapter Thirteen
I regained control of my body days later, possessing only the vaguest sense of what had happened in the meantime. I sensed darkness, violence, magic, and death. Waking up was simultaneously refreshing and disgusting. The disgusting part coming from the fact that I awoke coughing up blood into the sink of a bathroom. I was naked except for a pair of expensive new black silk boxer shorts, the kind with pockets. My head hurt worse than when Dracula messed with it.
The bathroom had a black marble floor, six different kinds of towel, and walls decorated in heraldry-covered green wallpaper. I was in a hotel. A high class one, too. It was the kind of place I’d used to stay in when I was richer than God and not on a mission. I didn’t miss those days, but it made me wonder what I’d been up to.
Looking up into the mirror, I saw my bare chest was sporting a number of new tattoos. Representations of the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac were across my chest, arms, and legs in a dizzyingly beautiful intertwined pattern. I could feel mystical power buried within the ink. Corrupt mystical power.
Even the dragon tattoo on my back I’d had before my blackout felt like it had been redone. Reaching out with my limited sixth sense to touch the tattoos, I could hear screams of those whose blood had gone into creating them. Someone, probably me, had killed people in order to harness their life energy. It was extra disturbing because I could feel a lot more power running through my ki centers, or chakras. My entire adult life, I’d struggled to do even the simplest spells compared to my father and siblings. Last year, I’d had a breakthrough, but even then, I lagged behind them by decades. Now I felt strong.
I was never going to be the kind of magical Mozart my father was, nor would I ever use the kind of power my sister, who was more Billy Joel, wielded. I thought I’d come to terms with it but I hadn’t. Here, c
overed in black magic-enhanced tattoos forbidden by the Red Room for centuries, it would have been a lie to say I wasn’t the least bit excited. I coughed a bit more and ran the water in the sink to wash away the blood. It didn’t feel like I’d done so out of disease or injury. No, it felt more like I was spitting up something I drank.
Shaking my head, I muttered, “Man, I am messed up.”
In the mirror, my reflection took on a life of its own and crossed its arms. “Well, we knew that. The big question is what we are going to do about it?”
Normally, a person might find this sight unsettling, but my mirror reflection was quite chatty. One of the consequences of my awakening was that my soul was capable of communicating with me whenever it wasn’t pleased.
Which was most days.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked, hoping my reflection knew more about what had happened during my blackout.
My soul frowned, shaking his head. “Perhaps you should look in the bedroom for answers.”
“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
Taking a deep breath, I turned around and walked to the wooden door of the bathroom. Reaching down, I turned the door handle and opened the door. On the other side was an abattoir.
The walls were covered in crimson mystical sigils and there was a lovely dark-haired woman, with her heart missing, laid out on the bed. She was not wearing any clothes, and it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to piece together what had happened.
Turning my head, I saw the Bloodsword resting on top of a corrupted Daoist shrine built on my dresser. It had incense burning in front of a trio of pictures. Computer printouts of Ashley, Penny, and Shannon’s images formed a trinity in the shrine’s center.
The room looked like the home of an occult serial killer.
Which, I suppose, it was.
Unable to say a word, I walked over to the woman’s corpse and placed my hand to her neck. It wasn’t to check her pulse—I wasn’t stupid—but the act somehow made it real that I could have done something like this. Touching her skin, I remembered driving the Bloodsword through her chest while holding her down.
I also remembered the woman flashing her fangs at me.
“She was a vampire,” I said, taking a deep breath.
Palpable relief flooded me.
“Does that make a difference?” my soul said, stepping out of the bathroom mirror and walking into the room behind me.
“Honestly? Yes. Yes, it does.”
My soul glared at me.
“What the hell happened to me during this time?” I asked, looking around and trying to figure what the hell sort of magic I’d been working around here. Blood magic wasn’t forbidden by the Red Room, but I didn’t know how to cast even a tenth of the magic worked here.
There was a lot more sorcery worked into these walls than could have come from a single blood sacrifice either, even if the victim were a vampire and had much more magical oomph inside her. No, someone had done multiple kills here.
Treating the whole thing like a crime scene—ignoring the fact that I, having been mind controlled by a magical sword, was the perpetrator—made me less inclined to flip out. And I was on the verge of a flip-out.
“You’ve been exterminating Nassau’s vampire population for the past seven days. Together, we have killed sixteen Captains or higher in their organization.” A female voice came from the foot of the bed and I turned my head.
Sitting on the edge of the bed was a woman wearing grease-paint, her red hair in girlish braids like Lucy, a blood-red corset like my sister favored, and a pair of black leather pants with a Little Red Riding Hood-like cape around her back. Her eyes were a beautiful shade of blue, similar to Shannon’s. There was something both unsettling and familiar about her, as if she combined a dozen people I knew into a single entity who looked like all but none of them.
“Oh great, it’s you,” my soul said, rolling its eyes. “I was hoping you’d taken the night off.”
Reaching out to sense what sort of being she was, I pulled back as I detected the largest concentration of dark magic I’d ever felt in my life.
“You’re a demon,” I said, scared I’d sacrificed my soul and sanity by using the weapon.
“A mortal term,” the woman said, shrugging her dainty shoulders. “I’m not a fallen angel, just a spirit of bloodshed and murder.”
“Oh, my mistake,” I said, faking shock at my faux pas. “Clearly, I misjudged you as someone evil.”
She smiled with blood-red lips. “I was created when Cain first killed Abel.”
“I’m pretty sure cavemen were killing each other well before Aaron wrote down that parable. There’s no Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, or Eve in my beliefs. Just evolution and hominids smacking each other around.”
The creature turned to me as her eyes glowed bright green. “Most stories have a grain of truth to them. There was an Adam, and an Eve, and they had children in Eden. It was just in a different place than the world you know.”
My soul snorted. “And demons never lie.”
“You assume angels always tell the truth,” the demon snipped at my soul.
“Admittedly, true. What should I call you?”
“Bloody Mary,” the demon said. “One of my previous masters had an obsession for sending me to kill foolish boys and girls who spoke my name in front of mirrors. I found it tiresome and demeaning work.”
“Killing children usually is.”
“I agree,” the demon said, smiling. “We already have something in common.”
“Derek, this is dangerous,” my soul said behind me. “Don’t engage this monster. I’ve been trying to fight her off this entire week.”
“And what a bang-up job you’ve been doing.” I turned back to our new guest. “What do you want?”
“To help you, my love.”
“Sorry, Mary, I don’t date demons.”
Bloody Mary stood up and walked over to the altar, where she looked at the Bloodsword. “You kill with me, though, and that’s what I want. It’s why I left Dracula’s service for yours.”
I was having a conversation with the One Ring. That was how I felt right now. “I’m pretty sure Dracula has killed more people than me.”
“He preys on the weak. You prey on the strong. It has been centuries since a true warrior’s hands have held my grip.” Bloody Mary’s tone made that sound dirty.
“So, you expect me to believe the Bloodsword has decided to serve a guy who wants to bring peace to the world,” my soul said behind me. “No matter how violent he is.”
“Hey,” I snapped at my soul. “I get enough of that shit from other people. I don’t need my conscience nagging me.”
“That’s what I’m for,” my soul pointed out.
Okay, he had me there.
“I come bearing gifts,” Bloody Mary said, aiming her fingers at my boxer shorts. “Look at your ring.”
I reached into my boxer shorts’ right pocket and found my wedding band there. I hadn’t worn the ring in years, but there it was. The ring’s golden color had been replaced with a beautiful black sheen. It also felt heavier. I touched it with my extra-normal senses and was bombarded with nightmarish images. They were familiar images, too. I saw the Wazir, the vampires I cut to pieces, and two hundred other victims—all mine. The power in the ring was tremendous. The tattoos were one thing, but the magic in the ring was even more powerful. I could be a real wizard now.
Bloody Mary seemed amused by my reaction. “Magic begins in belief and emotion. However, the most powerful sorcery is born from two acts—the giving and taking of life. Men have always feared and coveted the former power when wielded by women. They have always wielded the latter, though. You are an exquisite murderer, Derek Hawthorne, and I would like to see you reach your full potential.”
“Men are involved in the life-giving process too,” I said, avoiding her question. The magic available to me was clouding my judgment.
“Which is why your father has sired so many children and keeps them so close. His seed so freely spread has given him great power that he’s turned against his enemies. I could reveal more of his secrets.”
Ripping my ring off, I tossed it against the wall. Holding my hands to my head, I focused on positive feelings and tried to summon the necessary energy to banish the darkness before me.
I failed.
Bloody Mary narrowed her eyes, not even looking like she felt it. “Thinking me away won’t work, Derek. You have far too much imbalance in your soul. If you want to be alone, though, you only had to ask.”
The demon disappeared, leaving me alone with my soul.
“We are so fucked,” I said, rubbing my temples.
“Technically, there’s no ‘we’,” my soul said. “You’re going to have to clean this up.”
“I’m a little more worried about the fact that I’m Jack the Ripper,” I said, disgusted at all the carnage surrounding me.
“If it’s any consolation, I think you only lured her here with the promise of sex. Also, she was going to kill you anyway.”
“It’s really not.” I took a moment to try and gather my wits. “So, we’re on the verge of war with the Vampire Nation, Shannon is close to breaking up with me, there’s a possible conspiracy within the Red Room, and I’m possessed.”
“I’m glad you have your priorities straight,” my soul snarked. “I’m sorry about this, Derek. We should have more mental resistance to Bloody Mary. It’s just—”
“I used the weapon’s power a half-dozen times, which in terms of magical law is an invitation for the demon to possess me.”
“Yes.”
“Fucking Christopher,” I grunted. “Why did I ever trust him?”
“Because he’s your friend.” My soul took an oddly reassuring stance. “The weapon seems to want to help you. You were close to death when you emerged from the ocean. Every bone in your body was broken and your organs near-liquefied when you hit the water. The Bloodsword and its power kept you going, and these sacrifices repaired your body. The Vampire Nation is on the run. Nassau has been their capital for centuries, and half the undead population has fled. They aren’t used to being hunted in their home territory.”
Eldritch Ops Page 11
