Day of Execution

by Lily Luchesi

  Sean nodded. “They still creep me out,” he said.

  “Can’t imagine why,” Daniel said sarcastically. “I had Pops put your books in your office. He told me you two want to start hunting again.”

  Angelica nodded, noticing that she had some blood in her hair. “Yeah. I figured it’s fun, it keeps people safe, so why not?”

  “Not sure I’d call it fun,” Sean muttered. “You want me to call Alec and get him and Danny in the conference room?”

  Angelica nodded. “Daniel, would you mind if I sat in on the session?”

  “No, be my guest,” he said. “We’ll wind up telling you everything anyway.”

  Angelica led Daniel to the elevators and to the conference room, where Danny was standing near the water cooler, pouting, and Alec was sitting down at the table, looking amused.

  “What’s your problem, Pops?” Daniel asked.

  “He hasn’t said a word,” Alec spoke up. “You must be Mr. Castorini. I’m Alec Lynx, mental magician, occasional shapeshifter.”

  Angelica walked over to Danny and gently pressed her hand into his. “Hey, whatever’s going on, you don’t have to sit there like someone stole your AB-negative. We’ll get it sorted.”

  She led him to the table, sitting across from him and next to Alec. The older magician had a calming presence, and she could tell he was already working on Daniel. Danny, not so much.

  “It wasn’t a dream or nightmare,” Danny blurted out suddenly. “My other powers are returning. I had an instance of psychometry yesterday.”

  All three people at the table looked at him in surprise.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Angelica asked, not sure if she was more worried or pissed off.

  “Because I didn’t want to admit it happened!” Danny cried, his eyes flashing red. “I’m scared, damn it, and it’s not a feeling I’m used to.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened. “Is that why you asked me if my furniture was pre-owned?”

  Danny nodded. “I sat down and got a vision of someone sitting in that chair … dying.” He ran his hands through his curls, a familiar gesture Angelica found endearing. “Why is this happening to me?”

  Everyone was quiet until Daniel spoke up. “It might be me, right? Jump-starting your brain?”

  Alec nodded. “Yes. You see, most psychics who turn into vampires lose their powers, but technically Danny didn’t turn into a vampire. He already had that blood in his system. So it stands to reason that he could still access his powers. He just needed a … conduit. That turned out to be you, or so I think.”

  “So, Danny’s got his powers back, a little. What will this do to him in the long run?” Angelica asked.

  “I am afraid I cannot answer that. This isn’t a typical case, Angelica,” Alec said. “I need to study them both, to pick their brains … so to speak. In some time, I can hopefully strengthen Mr. Castorini’s powers and see what Danny’s returning powers are doing to him, if anything. But you cannot expect that to happen overnight.”

  Angelica sat back in her chair, her turn to pout. “I hate waiting.”

  “The mind is delicate. I may not be able to get into your husband’s head on my own, but I can through Daniel, helping them both at once. And it cannot be rushed, lest we run the risk of breaking both their minds at once,” Alec explained. “You concentrate on being a wife and a friend to them both, and leave their minds to me.”

  Angelica smirked. “You just asked me to leave a problem in someone else’s hands. Alec, I thought you knew me a little better than that.”

  Danny smiled at her from across the table. “Doesn’t hurt him to try, right?”

  Alec nodded. “Now, we are going to have a few sessions a week, I’d say at least three, possibly four. Not to overtax you, but to keep your brains stimulated. Obviously night time works best for you, Danny. What about you?” He turned to Daniel.

  “Yeah, night’s fine. I have classes during the day,” he said.

  “Good. We’ll work on strengthening your powers, getting you more in control of them. That way they won’t come upon you accidentally during the day, startling you. You can also learn not to see and hear every single projected thought and feel every emotion from the people you interact with.

  “You,” he turned to Danny, “are going to be a special case indeed. You’ll help me train your great-grandson’s powers, while I study you and see if we can either stop your powers from fully returning, or make sure that you don’t lose your mind when they do return.”

  “So one of you is going to feed into the other, going around into one big circle of psychic energy?” Angelica asked.

  Alec nodded.

  “Why am I getting a picture of The Human Centipede?” She gave a playful shudder.

  “I’m getting agita,” Danny muttered, rubbing his chest. “I thought I was done with all of this shit.”

  Daniel looked downcast, as though he was a child. “Is this my fault, Pops?”

  “You didn’t give me these powers to begin with, so no,” Danny replied, patting him on the back.

  Angelica smiled a little, glad to see them getting along, though they looked more like brothers than grandfather and grandson. When she’d gone to change Danny, she’d been able to bring him back to his prime age, which she thought was about forty-seven, as he had been when she met him. But as he got used to the blood in him, he looked much closer to forty than fifty, having always also looked younger than his age when he’d been human. Daniel was the same way, looking closer to twenty than thirty thanks to the ancient vampire blood that flowed through his veins.

  Her cell phone beeped. It was Sean, saying he had a case for her.

  “I’ll see you later, all right?” she said, leaning over and giving Danny a kiss. She took the elevator up to the top floor and entered Sean’s office, where he was impatiently waiting for her.

  He was in a half-zipped coat, his weapons ready. “We’ve got to go … now.”

  “What is it?” Angelica asked.

  “Vampires. Apparently Dakota’s rally cry kept some of them riled up. They’re at Lifesource, the blood bank.”

  Angelica wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or hit her head against a wall. Vampires were holding up a blood bank. What was this, a bad supernatural crime drama? She had a free blood bank at the PID, every vampire knew that. So they wanted more than the blood, obviously.

  She checked her weapons and then grabbed Sean by the waist.

  “Um, won’t Mancini get pissed at this?” he joked.

  “We need to move quickly. Hold on — if I drop you, it’ll take a long time even for you to heal,” Angelica said. She had time to register Sean’s concerned look before she took off at vampire speed, making it to the blood bank in mere minutes.

  Once they were outside, Angelica could smell the blood that had already been spilled, and she hoped it was stored, not fresh. The city was too loud to hear anything inside.

  “How many?” she asked Sean, who was still getting his bearings.

  “Three, according to the nine-one-one report.”

  “I want one kept alive,” she said. “I want to question it. Because there’s no reason for this at all.”

  “Gotcha… There’s only one way in,” Sean said. “We won’t have the element of surprise on our side.”

  “It’s three vampires, Sean. The day I need stealth to help me take on three bloodsuckers, please decapitate me.” She reached into her pockets and pulled out two blades, while Sean took out his gun. “Let’s go. You wound, I kill.”

  Angelica slipped into the front door, surprised by what she saw there. Some of the blood she had smelled was from burst bags, but six humans were dead. What were all those humans doing here at this late hour?

  Four more humans were huddled in the circular reception desk while three blood-soaked vampires stalked them, smiling, their long, needle-sharp fangs on display, jaws distended to accommodate them. They were playing with the humans, hunting them as a human would hunt a buck in the
woods.

  Once again, Angelica was disgusted with her own species, and even more so because she knew and loved the feeling of the hunt. The only difference was, those she hunted were never innocent.

  At their intrusion, the vampires all looked over at them, as did the humans.

  “I hope you enjoyed yourselves: this was your last meal, after all,” Angelica said, stepping forward. “I’d ask you to surrender, but even I’m not that optimistic.”

  “Smart, Miss Cross,” one vampire said, his blond hair resplendent in the fluorescent lighting. He leapt forward only to be shot down in midair from Sean’s excellent aim with his Rutger.

  His body thudded to the floor, unable to heal because the bullets had been soaked in holy water.

  Angelica sped over to him and said, “It’s Mancini now, you uncultured swine,” before she easily severed his head from his body. As she moved toward the other two, she caught a whiff of something rotten. It wasn’t bad blood, and the corpses weren’t old enough to be decaying yet. What was it?

  She didn’t have time to wonder as one of the other two vamps launched herself at her. Angelica caught her before she could make full-body contact, shredding the skin of the vamp’s arm with her blade, and slightly cutting her own palm in the process. She shoved the woman back and sliced outward, only cutting into her curly hair.

  The vamp lengthened her claws and managed to get two deep cuts to Angelica’s cheek, but the Empress didn’t mind the wounds, because she was able to grab the woman’s wrist and twist. There were loud, wet cracks as the bone broke, a piece peeking through her skin.

  The woman screamed, but Angelica cut it off as she shoved her blade straight through her jugular, through the other side of her neck. Flicking her wrist, the head was severed and Angelica let the body drop to the floor, nearly on top of her already decaying nestling.

  She looked over to see the Sean had fared well. The third vamp was bleeding in multiple places by non-fatal gunshot wounds. He was now cuffing the vamp’s hands and legs. It looked like he had a fat lip, black eye, and slightly twisted ankle.

  “You good over there?” she called.

  “Yep. This guy’s nothing compared with Nazis and their soul suckers,” he replied, hauling the vamp to his feet. “No wonder Mancini loved being a cop: this shit’s fun.”

  Back at the PID, Angelica threw the vamp into a holding cell and made him wait while she grabbed some blood to heal her wounds. She stared into the one-way glass at the seething vampire. He hadn’t moved, probably so he didn't open the wounds any more than they already were, and was staring at his feet.

  “What did we miss?”

  Angelica looked up and saw Danny, Daniel, and Alec walking toward them. The older wizard looked so out of place in his long green cloak and high-necked black shirt, but somehow he seemed to be a part of this group without meaning to.

  “Vamps,” Sean said. “We brought one in alive … Undead. Whatever.”

  “I want to question it,” Angelica explained, noticing that Danny’s already pale face seemed to lose even more color. He despised her version of interrogation, always had, and that would never change.

  When they’d been facing the skin changer, Dakota, she’d had Daniel help her with one, interrogating a witch working for the enemy. Unlike his ancestor, the young man had no problem with Angelica slicing off the witch’s skin as she screamed in order to read her mind and gain intel.

  “We need to know if it’s what Dakota stirred up, or if there’s more to this sudden rebellion. I’m betting on her,” she continued.

  Daniel turned and was staring at the vampire quizzically, his cool brown eyes searching. “Um, what’s wrong with its chest?”

  “The gunshots? They’re soaked with holy water. Don’t you remember —”

  “No,” Daniel cut Danny off. “Look. His chest is swirling with black smoke. Like, from the inside out.”

  Angelica felt her heartbeat stutter in her chest as she instinctively reached for Danny’s hand. He grasped hers tightly and they walked closer to the window, not that she could have seen anything.

  “My God,” Danny gasped. “The vampire’s been possessed by a demon.”

  4

  “A demon?” the other three said in unison.

  “You’ve gotta be fucking with me,” Sean added after, his eyes wide and fearful. Angelica knew what he had gone through in World War II, and again in twenty-seventeen when the demons the Nazis controlled had returned. He didn't want to face any more demons, and she couldn’t blame him. After the last massacre with Leander Price leading the pack, demons were not exactly a welcome sight.

  She’d sealed all portals, but some still managed to sneak through, usually ones with so little power, they were undetectable. Until they started dropping bodies, of course. But why would one possess a vampire? And were the others possessed, too? If they were, that meant they could still be alive.

  “I guess the interrogation should commence,” she said, her voice subdued. “Who’s with me?”

  “Sounds interesting,” Daniel said.

  “Yeah … I guess I am. Since it possessed one of our subjects,” Danny said, though he sounded like he’d rather face the sunlight while eating garlic bread.

  “Anyone else fancy a nice cup of tea?” Alec asked weakly. “I’m usually up for anything, but demons are where I draw a line.”

  Sean snorted. “Never in my life have I ‘fancied a nice cup of tea’, but buddy, I’m with you. … Sorry, Angie.”

  “Cowards,” she said, but her heart wasn't in the joke. “All right, gentlemen, let’s do this. If demons are targeting the vampires, I will waste no time enlisting every Catholic priest I know in battling against them.”

  She opened the door, and noticed that both men flinched. It must have been from the nefarious energy, and she was again thankful that she didn’t have their powers. They seemed like too much of a burden.

  The vamp/demon looked up at them, smirking. “What, no letting me stew in my own juices a bit? Is it that close to sunrise, Empress?”

  “Oh, quit playing around,” Angelica spat. “Why did you possess a vampire?”

  The demon sat back, smiling still. “That was fast. It must be nice having psychics at your disposal.” He gestured at both men. “But if you think that I’m going to just start spewing information for you, you’ve lost your mind.”

  Angelica took a blade from her pocket and said, “Well, it might be in your best interest to do so. If you cooperate, I’ll send you back to Hell. If you don’t, I’ll obliterate your soul for eternity.”

  He cocked his head. “You’ll have to do better than that, sorry.”

  “Fine. It’s your funeral,” she snipped.

  “Yeah, and this is your subject’s vessel you’ll be torturing. He’s still in here, you know. He can feel everything you’ll do to me,” the demon said.

  Angelica leaned over the table and said, “You’re trying to guilt me, but demons drive whomever they possess to madness, so I’d have to perform a mercy killing anyway. Nice try.”

  The door opened and an agent brought in syringes filled with multiple substances. She put the tray down and left without a word.

  Angelica realized that she’d brought in what would be needed for vampire torture, not just demons. Both creatures were vulnerable to holy water, but vampires could also be harmed or killed by dead man’s blood and garlic oil.

  She glanced over at the demon/vampire, noticing how intently it was watching her. It was still smirking. Did it think she wouldn’t do it? Then it didn’t know her very well at all.

  Angelica had been tortured, both mentally and physically. She still bore the emotional scars of all of it, particularly when Leander Price had had his demons kidnap her and hold her in Hell for what was, essentially, three weeks. Torture wasn’t appealing to her, but she never let on how much she truly hated it. Usually, she pretended to enjoy it much more than she really did.

  She turned back to the demon with a syringe in one
hand, blade in the other. “Were the other two vampires demons, too?”

  “That you don’t need to torture out of me,” the demon said. “No. I didn’t even enter the vessel until I saw that this was the one you were going to capture and not kill.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Danny said. “Why did you want to come into the PID? You can’t have thought that you’d get very far.”

  The demon glanced coldly at Danny from around Angelica’s waist. “Oh, are you taking part in this, too, Detective? Us demons, we talk amongst ourselves. We know you killed our old Lieutenant.”

  “So you want revenge?” Angelica asked. “I had no idea you freaks were so loyal.”

  “Actually, I wanted to thank him. We all like our new one much better.”

  Worry snaked into Angelica’s heart. Leander had wanted demons and vampires to team up, and had wanted her, as the Empress, to facilitate that merger. Now that he was gone, was this new Lieutenant going to just possess vampires, taking them by force? And what would that mean for humanity?

  She asked the question, to which she received nothing but derisive laughter. She yanked open the coat it was wearing, bringing the wounds into the light, and squeezed a little bit of the garlic oil into one of them.

  The demon gasped when it felt the poison enter its system. “What is that?”

  “You took over a vampire. That means I have even more ways to hurt you,” Angelica said, smiling tightly. “And that vampire blood will stay in your body, because you’re possessing it and garlic oil can’t kill a demon. I hope you remember that you brought this upon yourself.”

  It coughed, a wracking sound she knew well. “You bitch.”

  “Please. I’ve called myself worse than that,” she said. She yanked it by the vessel’s hair, exposing its throat. Its vessel had been interesting as a human, tattoos telling his life story before turning. Angelica almost regretted having to cut through the beautiful artwork. Almost.

  She trailed the edge of her holy water-soaked blade down its throat, just barely cutting through the first layer of skin and drawing blood. She cut through the shirt, revealing the wounded, tattooed torso.