Danse Macabre

by Katerina Martinez

  “Yes…” my eyes floated over to Marie, who was still busy with Jared but was winning the fight. Her claws had made it through his tough, demonic skin, and he was bleeding. Every fiber of my being ached to tear her apart one piece at a time. A bolt of pain shot through my jaw, and then I felt the tips of sharp fangs resting against my lips, fangs that hadn’t been there before. I’ve been turned. The words churned around and around in my mind like a thrumming heartbeat… which I had; I could hear it pulsing against my ears, my temples.

  I’ve been turned… but I have a heartbeat.

  “Use your magick, Madison,” Delphine said, “Quickly!”

  I blinked once, twice, listened to the thundering heartbeat inside of my chest, then I watched with horror as Marie struck a blow across Jared’s face that made more than just green sparks flash out—she drew blood. Jared fell to one knee and put his arm up to protect against another attack, but her claws ripped through his arm, tearing through his flesh to find more blood underneath. An angry heat rose inside of my chest powerful enough to make my entire body tremble, then shake uncontrollably. I felt the magick inside of me rise like a ferocious tide, and with an outward push of my hands, I caught Marie before she was able to deliver a third blow and sent her hurtling through a large, metal warehouse door that hadn’t been touched in years.

  Something different happened to me, then—a new sensation appearing like a light turning on, one that had never turned on before. I licked my lips, and they were dry. My throat was dry, too. This wasn’t just a strange feeling, it was entirely alien to me. The use of magick had never made me feel this way before, and it took me a moment to get used to the feeling, but a moment was all Marie needed.

  Like a bat rushing out of the mouth of a cave, Marie came at me, rushing out of the darkness with her hands extended, claws gleaming, and her mouth hanging open, her fangs prominently on display. Only I could see her legs move this time; this time she wasn’t a blur. Which meant this time, when I readied a telekinetic strike, I could anticipate her movements enough to send it right where it needed to go.

  The ball of magick struck Marie in the chest, picked her up, and sent her smashing into a concrete wall which cracked under the force of the impact. She fell to the floor on her knees, but before she could recover, I was on her, having moved at the speed of thought to where she lay. I grabbed her hair and tilted her head up, forcing her to look at me.

  “It’s over!” I yelled at her over the sound of the roaring rain, “You’ve lost!”

  Marie, who at first looked surprised, suddenly started grinning. “You think you’ve won?” she asked, “Look at what you’ve become. You will now know what it’s like to be that which you hate so much—a parasite, sucking on the blood of people in order to extend your miserable life. You didn’t win, my dear; you only beat me, and if you think there aren’t more like me, you’re going to spend the rest of that miserable life learning a hard lesson.”

  For an instant I thought about what she said, thought about what it meant that I had now become… what I was. I thought of the permanency of it, because as much as my power was incalculably more than it had ever been, my condition wasn’t one that was going to go away. Ever. I had become a dhampir, and as much as I may have hated every word that came out of Marie’s mouth, she was right about one thing.

  I would need to drink blood in order to survive, and that wasn’t something I was ready for.

  Marie sensed the hesitation, and she pounced on it, twisting my grip on her and pinning me to the side of the warehouse by my throat. I struggled against her, but her physical strength was too much to contend with.

  “Don’t be sad,” she hissed into my face, “I’m about to rid you of this burden. You can thank me when you’re dead.”

  She opened her mouth and went to plunge her fangs into my neck, but was stopped by an invisible hand. Slowly, I watched her head turn to the left, and there I saw Delphine uttering words of power, words I had shown her. I had lost the psychic connection I’d had with Nicole, but I could feel Nicole and even Nina now, empowering Delphine, their magick working in unison and channeling through the vampire’s body.

  I could see the strain on Marie’s face as she tried to fight the hold Delphine had on her head, but the fight went out of her, and her neck snapped all the way around with a sickening crack. Her body went limp and she fell to the floor, releasing me. I dropped to my knees beside her, clutching my neck, coughing, trying to bring in some air, then Jared called out to me.

  “Maddie!” he yelled, “Catch!”

  I glanced up in time to spot a stake flying in my direction, one Jared had pulled out of rapidly decaying body of a vampire that lay dead on the ground. I reached up and snatched it out of the air, then without hesitating, I thrust it into Marie’s chest, through her ribs, and into her heart with all the force of a hammer. Marie’s eyes opened and she shrieked again, flailed wildly, and then after a moment that seemed to last hours, she simply… stopped.

  I knelt over her, watching as the droplets of water falling on her face gently stripped the skin away; watching as, slowly, bits of bone started to show. “She’s dead,” I said, heaving the words out of my mouth.

  Delphine’s hand wrapped around my arm and she helped me up. She pointed her finger around the area, helping me to identify the vampires that were still lurking in the shadows. I didn’t know if they were going to strike, now that their leader was dead, or if they would simply slink away to plot their revenge. It had to be one of those two. But it wasn’t. The vampires remained, skulking, observing. One of them finally approached, a woman, followed by a man, and then another woman. One by one, the vampires started walking out of the darkness and into the clearing that was now littered with the decaying bodies of their kin.

  “You killed her,” one of them called out.

  Jared, who was starting to look a little less like he’d gone six rounds with a several centuries old vampire, stood by my side along with Delphine. “Talk to them,” he said.

  I swallowed, then licked my lips. “I did,” I yelled, “The next move is yours, now.”

  “Will you kill us, too?”

  “That depends on how loyal you were to Marie, and how loyal you will be to me.”

  “Why should we be loyal to you?” spat one of the vampires in the back.

  “Because I’m one of you, now, and I’m giving you the choice. A clean slate for those who want it, but those who want it have to declare themselves right now. You will never harm another witch of this city, and you’ll live by my ruling. For those who don’t, I know your faces now. You are to leave my city, and if I see you in New Orleans again, I will kill you like I did her.”

  Several of the vampires exchanged looks, but none of them moved until the first vampire that had spoken came up to me and knelt on the wet ground. “I never killed for her,” she said, “I was turned against my will less than three weeks ago and forbidden to see my family. If you’ll let me see them one more time, I’ll be loyal to you.”

  “I’m truly sorry that happened to you. Whatever we can do to help, we will.”

  Other vampires now started approaching and kneeling before me, but there were some who slunk back into the shadows, disappearing from my senses entirely. With any luck I’d never have to see them again; they’d have taken the hint and left. But Marie’s words rang true in my heart—there were more vampires out there like her, and just because she was dead didn’t mean we’d never have to deal with another Marie in the future.

  Right now, though, there would be peace.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I stared at the cup in my hand and at the almost black liquid inside like it was some kind of weird creature about to jump out and rip my face open. Of course, it wasn’t a weird creature at all—it was blood, pig’s blood, and I was being made to drink it. For two days I’d fought the urge, the need, the craving, but I needed to behave like an actual, living person tonight, and I didn’t have much of a choice.

  “Dr
ink it,” Suzanne said.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  She was watching me from across the kitchen counter. To her credit she’d been doing what she could to help me adjust to life as a dhampir, and there were some parts of the gig I really liked. I could hear conversations happening inside the house across the street, I could feel the beating of Jared’s heart even without touching him, and somehow, food tasted better than it ever had. I had never known true taste until I tucked into a rare sirloin steak last night. If I hadn’t been around people, I’d have picked that thing up with my hands and eaten it like an animal.

  This, however—the blood drinking part—I hated, and I hated Suzanne for being the one to make me do it.

  “You have to. I know you want to. The hunger calls to the blood.”

  “Sure, sure… but that came from a pig.”

  “Would it be better if you drank the blood directly out of a human’s neck?”

  “That’d be pretty gross too.” The idea of it was gross, but the reality of it, I knew, was going to be incredible if only I allowed myself to do it.

  No. I’d decided the moment I was turned that I’d subsist on pig’s blood the way Suzanne had been doing it this whole time. She also didn’t feed off humans, not because of some strict ethical code, although she did have one, but because feeding from humans was messy practice for a day walker in 2018. We had the urge to feed, but we didn’t have all of the predatory instincts of our vampire cousins, so finding the right spot, even picking the right human… these weren’t things that came so naturally to the dhampir, and in an age of constant surveillance, precautions like these needed to be taken.

  “Maybe it can wait until after?” I asked.

  “It can’t. You’re already looking too pale. Do you want people to see you like this tonight?”

  “No…”

  She slammed her hand against the table. “Then drink!” she snapped, and her sudden movement and the sound of her palm against the marble counter made me reflexively press the glass against my lips and tip the cold, crimson ooze into my mouth.

  There was a moment where I wanted to gag, and I had to fight the instinct with everything I had to stop myself from painting the counter red with blood. Pinching my nose and pretending I was a child, and this was awful medicine, helped, but then something strange happened. When I was done with the glass, and I was done with it quickly, I found myself wanting another, and then another, and suddenly the taste wasn’t so bad; I almost kinda liked it.

  What I liked more was the buzz it gave me. My fingers and toes tingled, my lungs felt like they were taking in more air, and my brain seemed to shift into high gear. “Holy hell that was good,” I said.

  “Good is a stretch,” Suzanne said. “I do miss drinking human blood, but this will keep us going—and just a little sip of it will make everything you do better. Eating, working out, sex…”

  “Sex?”

  “Oh, yeah. Big time. But chew some gum after you drink it, otherwise—”

  “—right.” I didn’t think Jared would be terribly turned on if I walked into the bedroom with pig’s blood on my breath.

  Nina stepped into the kitchen as I was cleaning the cup out in the sink. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  I set the cup down. “I think so. What’s it look like out there?”

  “It’s good, but they’re waiting for you, now.”

  I nodded. “Alright… it’s showtime.”

  Nina gestured, and I walked ahead of her, through the kitchen doors, down the hallway, and into the ballroom where many people had assembled. Vampires, witches, dhampirs, demon-bloods—even imps—the place was packed. The imps seemed to dominate in terms of numbers. Many of them were perched atop light fixtures, others hung from the chandelier, others still sat crowded on top of the grand piano, Gelrot among them. The other groups, however, had formed into clicks, with vampires on one side of the room and witches on the other. There were still tensions between our two peoples, but that was ending tonight.

  Nicole, who was standing on top of a stage with Jean Luc by her side, addressed the crowd as I arrived. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “I would like to present to you our host, Miss Madison Collins.”

  A round of applause moved through the room. Jared, clapping, gave me a comforting nod and a wink as I walked past him, and I squeezed his arm in return. Without wasting any time, I headed onto the stage and stood next to Nicole, then I waited for the crowd to stop clapping before I addressed them.

  I took a breath.

  “It’s a strange feeling, standing here,” I said. “I’ve been dreaming about this day for a very long time, though in my dreams I never quite imagined I’d have received the kiss of the vampire before I made it to this point. Were it not for Delphine and the innate mastery of her secret, hidden magick she was able to unlock the night I defeated Marie, I would be dead. Were it not for Suzanne teaching Delphine all she could in the short span of time we had, I would be dead. Were it not for Nicole, and Jared, Jean Luc, and Nina, and everyone else who has bled in this fight for peace, I would be dead.”

  I turned my head and looked over at Jean Luc. “You and your people have done a remarkable job,” I said, “We are all incredibly grateful for your sacrifices.”

  “As we are to you,” Jean Luc said, “The journey here has been long and paved with the blood of kith and kin, but Marie is dead, her hold on many has been severed, and we may now move toward peace between our kinds.”

  “Which is what brings us all here tonight,” I said, turning to the crowd again. “Tonight is the night that New Orleans is declared a free city, where supernaturals of all colors may live, and love, and laugh, so long as the rules we have set are followed. Tonight is the night that peace, everlasting—real—peace, is forged between vampires and witches, and we move into the future not with animosity and distrust, but with friendship.”

  My words were met with applause which started on the witch side, but pushed into the vampire side. Even the imps joined in, pink tails swaying, little hands clapping. I raised my hand, urging the crowd to simmer down.

  “But we have work to do, still,” I said, “Which is why I am opening my house, our school, to vampires who wish to learn the same things witches are learning. Here, we learn how to fight, how to defend ourselves with and without magick. We also learn about the supernatural history of New Orleans so that we’ll never forget what happened here, and now, we’ll even write some of our own.”

  More applause. I turned to my right and offered a hug to Jean Luc, who took it and hugged me back while the crowd continued clapping. When we were done embracing, I turned to face them again and took another breath.

  “I just want to finish by saying this… while there’s peace and quiet today, tomorrow there could be another Marie—someone else who wishes to do us all harm, to divide us, to take what isn’t theirs. We should always be vigilant, and we should always remember who we are and who our friends are. Together we have the power to overcome any challenges our community faces, but we must all pledge to do so now. We’ll bicker amongst each other, and we’ll squabble as all families do, but if anyone ever tries to come between us all, our message to them must be clear… New Orleans is our home, we are a family, and if you come for one of us, we’re all gonna fuck you up.”

  There wasn’t just applause, now, but also the stamping of feet and whistles. Imps were swinging from the chandelier, making it sway a little too much for my liking. Witches were cheering, vampires were clapping, and all around me it looked like we’d accomplished some of what Eliza had been fighting to have. Peace. Unity. I could feel her presence around me, filling the room, bathing in the joy of the moment. We had made her proud today, and while the road was still long, I was content in knowing she was still here with us, reaping what she’d sown.

  THE END.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Katerina Martinez is a widely known author who writes supernatural fiction with a creepy, thrilling, and romantic bent. A veteran of many years of writing, she is the author of Dark Siren, the first book in the breakout Half-Lich Trilogy which became an instant bestseller in 2016. She continues to expand her back-list with books such as Magick Reborn, The Dead Wolves, and Smoke and Shadows. Though she took a brief pause during 2018, she is now back with her brand new Magic Blood series, which she intends to expand into a huge universe of interconnected novels and characters.

  Also by Lee Dignam & Katerina Martinez

  Magic Blood Series

  The Warlock

  Book 1: Demons and Deception

  Book 2: Mages and Masquerades

  Book 3: Scions and Sorcery

  Book 4: Hellfire and Homicide

  Book 5: Warlocks and Wickedness

  Magic Blood Series

  The Primal

  Book 1: Hunter’s Calling

  The Blood and Magick Series

  Book 1: Magick Reborn

  Book 2: Demon’s Kiss

  Book 3: Witch’s Wrath

  The Half-Lich Series

  THE HALF-LICH BOXED SET

  Book 1: Dark Siren

  Book 2: The Void Weaver

  Book 3: Night and Chaos

  The Amber Lee Series

  THE AMBER LEE BOXED SET