I caught Nina in my periphery preparing a spell, her hands stretched out toward this hostile witch, her fingers curled. Lightning whipped above once, twice, and I knew, the lightning was coming because she was willing it. With a thought, she’d send streaks of lightning directly into this witch and burn her to a crisp. That was all it would take. But the way this witch had moved made me question whether she’d be able to conjure the magick fast enough, or if this witch would be too quick on her feet to be struck down like that.
Recalling one of my older incantations, one I hadn’t used since my first few days training under Remy, I made a cup shape with my hand and keeping my eyes fixed on the witch, said the words, “Aurem, rego, fira.” An instant later, tongues of fire erupted around my arm and coiled along my fingers. A bright ball of flame burst into existence in the palm of my hand, and there it burned bright, embers flying in all directions.
The witch stared at me, then slowly set her containers of pig’s blood down. I knew if I gave her enough time, she could come up with a counter to my fireball, but she’d have to choose whether to counter my magick, counter Nina’s, or remove herself from the situation entirely, assuming she was fast enough. The choice was up to her.
She did none of those things.
The witch, instead, started toward me, making a single motion as if she were going to break into a run, and then almost disappearing right in front of me as her movements became too quick to track with my own eyes. It was like trying to keep track of a bullet as it sailed through the air—totally impossible.
Without thinking about it, I set loose my fireball, throwing it directly across from me, but the fireball didn’t hit the witch, and instead sailed into the side of a car, which exploded with enough force to send me staggering to the floor. The car went up in a ball of fire, glass shattering, metal groaning as it bent under the heat.
Then the witch was on me, her hands around my throat, her lips so close to mine we could’ve kissed.
“I have waited a long time for this,” she whispered, then she arched her head back, opened her mouth to reveal a large set of razor-sharp fangs, and plunged them into my neck.
The sensation was sharp and cold at first as her teeth pierced my skin, but then as my blood started to flow into her mouth, the feeling became warm and nauseating. I tried to grapple with her, tried to wrestle with her, but my strength was leaving me in a hurry, draining away from me with every drop of blood.
I felt my consciousness start to float away from me, like a balloon without a tether, wandering aimlessly up, and up, and up, all the way into the clouds. There was no pain to speak of. In fact, there was a little part of me that didn’t want her to stop. My heart was still pumping hard, my body was warm, and my stomach was fluttering. It was a delicious feeling, one I could wrap myself in even though I knew it would kill me. A sensation so wonderful, when she let me go, I could’ve cursed the very Gods.
My head fell back and hit the floor, making my ears ring. The witch—no, the vampire—who’d had me in her grasp had been pulled away from me… by Jared! He grabbed her by the shoulder, spun her around, and struck her across the face with a fist that trailed green fire and smoke. There was a loud roar as the punch connected with her jaw, but the witch wasn’t felled.
She hissed, baring her fangs in an aggressive gesture, though one side of her face was now blackened and burning green, and then she became a moving shadow again, and disappeared.
I lay on the floor, staring up at the sky, feeling the rain touch my face as it fell. Jared came up to me and started to speak, though I couldn’t hear him for the ringing in my ears. I blinked hard, shook my head, and tried to sit. My bones ached, my muscles did too, and my body felt like it weighed way too much, but I managed to sit and eventually stand.
“Are you alright?” Jared finally said.
I touched my neck, and my hand came away red, the blood washing off with the falling rain. “A witch just bit me, and I feel like I’m gonna throw up, but I’m okay. I think.”
“C’mon,” he said, “We need to get out of here…”
“What about all this mess?”
“We’ll figure that out later. Let’s just go. Now.”
I followed Jared to his bike, hopped on the back, and rode off with him noting that Nina was following us in her car. He’d take us to the mansion, and there we’d regroup… there we’d try to figure out how a vampire had attacked me in the middle of the morning, and how that same vampire had known magick.
CHAPTER TEN
Night had gathered, and we were all back at the mansion. I stared at my reflection in a mirror, looking carefully at the medical dressing around the spot where I had been bitten. There were two tiny specs of red, there; remnants of what had happened to me a few hours ago. The decision to come back here and summon Jean Luc and the other vampires had been an easy one to make, having to wait for sun-down until they could show up, though, wasn’t.
My mind was uneasy. There was too much going on. First the attack on the street, then Nicole, and now this. A half-vampire, half-witch, like Delphine, only who could walk during the day… this had to have been the person who stopped me from killing the vampire the other night, the witch who had intervened. How was her magick so strong?
It made sense, of course, that a half-vampire who could walk during the day would be acquiring copious amounts of pig’s blood. The butcher down the road from where I lived probably wasn’t the only butcher’s shop she went to, which meant she lived in the area somewhere—inside the Garden District. Of course, the possibility that she’d fled the coop, especially now that she’d been ousted, was high. If she did live in the Garden District, she didn’t anymore.
There was a lot to think about, but also a lot of plans needed to be made. By the time I headed out of the bathroom and went downstairs, Delphine, who was still staying with us, had woken up and had joined Jared and Nina. Delphine was being told what had happened, so I remained quiet until they told her the story, at which point she turned around and stared at me. “So, it’s true,” she said. “You were bitten…”
“In broad daylight,” I said, pointing at my wound.
“It wasn’t exactly broad daylight,” Nina said, “I’d created a storm…”
“Regardless,” Delphine said, “The cover of a storm would not be enough to protect a vampire from the powerful, cleansing rays of the sun. This woman, this witch, was not vampire—she was dhampir.”
“Dhampir?” Jared asked.
“Half vampire,” I said, “I’ve heard of this. Vampires who can walk during the day; vampires who are alive, but still need to drink blood in order to survive. Have you ever met one before?”
Delphine shook her head. “Not that I can remember. I have heard whisperings of dhampir within Jean Luc’s circles. They are spoken of as being the harbingers of a great curse. Thin of blood, weak of spirit; they do not have the benefit of walking during the day while the rest of vampire kind is confined to the night—they are impure, and not worthy of the night.”
“This one seemed pretty pure to me,” I said, “She was fast, she had magick, and she would’ve gotten the better of us if Jared hadn’t been resistant to her curse.”
He shrugged. “Demon blood,” he said, smiling smugly. “It’s tough to put me down, even tougher to keep me down.”
The doorbell rang. I walked over to the front door and opened it to find Jean Luc standing there with several other vampires, all who looked flushed, and warm, and fed. That was probably a good idea. Vampires who had fed were better fighters than vampires who hadn’t… which said a great deal about the one I’d faced a few hours ago, thinking about it.
She was carrying the pig’s blood, supposedly to drink it, and she’d still been more than a match for me… what was she going to be like once she’d fed.
“Jean Luc,” I said, “Welcome.”
He nodded. “I apologize for not coming sooner…”
“It’s fine, I understand. Please, come in.”
>
Jean Luc and his people walked through the doors and followed me into the living room, where the others were assembled. Pleasantries weren’t exactly exchanged, though that was normal behavior as far as vampires went. Jean Luc instead entered the room and bowed his head toward the others, who acknowledged his arrival in the same way.
I walked in behind he and his people, but then went around them to stand next to Jared. “Thank you for coming,” I said.
Jean Luc’s eyes narrowed. “I assume the bandage around your neck is the reason I have been summoned?”
“Yes.”
“Another vampire attack? Where, this time?”
“Here… and in broad daylight. It happened this morning.”
“In broad… are you sure it was vampire?”
“It was dhampir,” Delphine said, interrupting.
The vampires assembled in my living room weren’t like regular people. They didn’t shock and awe as easily, they didn’t murmur much, they only looked mildly surprised by what was being said. Maybe they didn’t quite understand the gravity of what Delphine was saying, or maybe they didn’t believe her. Maybe they didn’t care. Whatever it was, there was quiet among the vampires present, save for Jean Luc.
“Dhampir have not been seen for centuries,” he said, “Even before my long sleep, they were a myth; things of legend.”
“Well, this myth just dragged itself out of history and bit me in the neck,” I said, “It also tried to put a curse on Jared and almost killed me the other day, too.”
“The other day?” Jean Luc asked.
I nodded. “I’m sure she was the same person who attacked me in the French Quarter—the same witch who prevented me from killing that vampire. If that’s the case, then we have to assume she’s working with Marie, and that makes her all the more dangerous.”
“Assumptions are dangerous.”
“Okay, so here are some facts. You’re a half-witch, but you’re more vampire than witch, and you don’t have the ability to walk during the day. She’s a half-witch, but she’s more witch than vampire, and she can walk during the day. That makes her incredibly dangerous. If I didn’t think she was a threat, I wouldn’t have called you over here, but we need your help.”
“My help?”
“Well, we were just dealing with Marie, but now we’re dealing with the dhampir, too. If there’s one thing I know pretty well it’s that it takes a vampire to track down a vampire. I think the more of you try and track her down, the quicker we’ll find her. If we can find her and knock her out of the fight, then Marie is going to lose a powerful ally.”
“The assumption that she works with Marie is little more than that, remember.”
“I know that. But if she is the one, then remember, she’s the one who stopped me from using my magick the night of the attack. Why she didn’t do it to me again today, I don’t know—maybe it was because she hadn’t fed before we got to her. I don’t know how a dhampir’s powers work; this is way out of my league.”
“If she’s so powerful that she can prevent you from using your magick,” Jean Luc started, “Then why did she not do that to you again when you fought her?”
“Because spells like those take time and patience. You can’t just do that to another witch on the spot. You just can’t.”
“I’ve never seen anything like what happened earlier,” Nina said, “And I don’t like to think that she could’ve been capable of even more than what we saw.”
I walked around the room to a spot where everyone could see me, took a deep breath, and thought for a moment. We had to find her, talk to that dhampir, and find out if she really was who we thought she was. She’d been hostile to us, but then again, we had cornered her and given her little choice but to fight us. She could just as easily have been anyone else, fighting for her life, and we’re standing around talking like she’s one of the damn horsemen.
“Alright,” I said, taking the crowd’s attention. “Here’s what I suggest we do. Jean Luc… this woman is a half vampire, which means she’ll think like one of you, at least where blood and self-preservation is concerned. I have a strong suspicion that she hung her hat in the Garden District, so if you and your people could move through it, trying to sniff her out, we’d be that little closer to finding her. Go in packs, not alone, and remember that this woman is incredibly dangerous.”
“Do you think she’ll even still be in the Garden District?” Jared asked.
“No, but considering the amount of pig’s blood she was consuming, wherever she was staying, probably smells strongly enough of it that a vampire will be able to sniff it out.”
“Unless she bleached her place every night,” Nina said, “Or she was really careful.”
“Then in that case we’re dealing with someone much cleverer than we thought, which is where we come in.”
“Us?”
“We’re going to use whatever magick we can to try and narrow down when she last used magick. If she really has fled the Garden District, she’ll have run off in a hurry. You know of any witch who doesn’t use magick when they’re in a hurry to accomplish something?”
“Good point…”
“How does that sound to all of you?”
Jean Luc looked over at Delphine, but she didn’t give him her eyes. She was still frosty, it looked like. He then turned his head to look at me. “We will spread out and search the Garden District for signs of blood,” Jean Luc said. “Perhaps we will not find her, but we will find the place she called home, and that may help us learn where she has gone to next.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Jean Luc. We appreciate your help.”
He nodded, then Jared raised his hand. “Not sure what my mission here is,” he said.
“You should watch over Nicole,” I said, “Nina and I will need to concentrate if we’re going to have any hope of sensing any free floating magick and tracing it back to the person who cast it.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. Meanwhile—”
The doorbell rang, a sound that for some reason froze me to my core. Were we expecting anyone else? No, we weren’t. At least, I didn’t think so. I hadn’t called any of the other witches, and everyone who needed to be here was here. My heart wedged itself into my throat and started pounding hard, then the doorbell rang again, and I knew I had to answer it. All the lights were on. Whoever was out there knew there were people in here—may even have seen us talking through the French windows looking out of the living room.
Jared was the first to move for the door, heading through the hall and into the foyer, Jean Luc closely following behind him. I moved after them also, preparing myself for whatever could be waiting on the other side. Marie? The dhampir? Tamara? She didn’t strike me as the kind of person to do as she’s told, and even though I’d made her leave New Orleans, would she really stay away if what she wanted to do was come back?
I took a breath. “Open it,” I said.
Jean Luc went for the handle, twisted it, and pulled the door open. What I saw standing on the other side, I was not prepared for.
It was tall, easily six foot. It had matted, black hair, skin as pale as ash, dried up eyes that had gone white—post-mortem, I thought, morbidly—and black lips that had already started to peel back to reveal yellowed teeth behind them. Its clothes looked tattered and old, burned almost, fraying at the seams, and the thing stank like death.
“What the fuck?” was Jared’s first question.
Jean Luc looked about ready to strike the thing down, but it wasn’t moving, it was just… staring at us. This thing that looked very much like a zombie, wasn’t attacking us. I could see its pupils, almost totally white, scanning us like it was… looking for someone. I moved past Jared and Jean Luc, though both men tried to get me to stay where I was.
“Who… are you?” I asked the thing standing by the door.
It looked at me, tilted its head to the side, but didn’t speak. I noticed, now, that its skin wasn’t just ashen grey—it look
ed cracked, black lines running along its neck and lower jaw, then again around its hairline and disappearing into its head. It was almost like its skin was made of paper, dry and shriveled up.
“What do you want?” Jared called out from over my shoulder.
The thing’s eyes widened, and it pointed—not at me, but past me, past Jared and Jean Luc, to the two women standing behind them; specifically, Delphine.
She frowned, a gesture I wasn’t used to seeing on her delicate, porcelain face. “Me?” she asked, approaching. “What business do you have with me?”
Still, the zombie didn’t speak. Instead it pointed more urgently at her, like it wanted to say something but couldn’t, like it wanted to get a message across, but was limited only to hand gestures and limited body language. One thing was clear, it wasn’t here to hurt any of us, even though it looked like it probably could’ve, given its size and stature.
I had never in my life come across a creature like this one, which made this the second weirdest thing I’d encountered in my life to happen all in the same day, and there was still time for a third. Maybe Eliza had written about others like this creature before? Maybe someone else had. I needed to learn more about it before I could decide whether I could trust it or not, but I had a feeling I was going to have to learn the answer to that question on the field, and soon.
“Delphine, do you know this… thing?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I do not…” she said, though the slowness with which she spoke made me believe she was trying hard to think, like there was a memory there, somewhere.
“Can we get him to speak?” Nina asked.
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