Lockhart's Legacy (Vespari Lockhart Book 1) (10 page)

Wynonna’s eyes met his, but he was steady, unmoving. She stepped back, out of his way, and he continued toward the hotel’s entrance.

“You owe me,” Wynonna said, causing him to stop just before the door.

He turned around. “What?”

“You saved my life,” she continued. “If you hadn’t been there, he would’ve killed me. I’d be dead now… and with my family if not for you. Instead, you saved my life, made me linger on with this vice gripping my chest. It’s your fault. I’m your responsibility now.”

“Y-y-you’re your o-o-own responsibility,” he replied, turning around and leaving the hotel.

He had no intention of taking an apprentice. He had no intention of killing this woman by virtue of training her to be a vespari. No vespari worth their salt died of old age. They died in agony, ripped apart by some creature or cursed like he was. He would not wish such a fate upon Wynonna. After adjusting a few items on the horse’s pack, Lockhart untied her and walked her over to the water. He refilled his canteen, mounted up, and continued north.

He didn’t know why his mad lotus vision had brought him to the Barrow Ranch and then to Delamar, but it hadn’t turned out like he intended. Something to do with the Gentleman maybe? The revenant had gone north as well, but he couldn’t waste time following him now. If he successfully dealt with the beldam coven, then maybe he could return for him later. What mattered was dealing with the Caustic Brand. So, trying to put Wynonna and her revenant out of his mind, Lockhart trotted along on the horse.

Guilt was one of the vespari’s most common thoughts, however, and forgetting the woman’s pain was easier said than done. She was better off without Lockhart though. At least, that’s what he continued to tell himself for the rest of the day. It got easier with time and distance. The longer he went on in that hot desert sun, the worse he felt. This wasn’t an internal feeling though. A heat swelled in his head, and his breaths grew quick and shallow. Sweat poured off him. Not just from the warmth, but from a fever brewing inside him.

The Caustic Brand, he told himself. It was finally starting. The beldam coven gave him more time than he would’ve thought. All the same, he would’ve been fine if they’d waited even longer. With his head spinning, he knew it was only a matter of time before he passed out. He pulled on the horse’s reins, trying to get her to slow down, but the mark overcame him faster than he expected. Sliding to the side of the saddle, Lockhart soon crashed to the ground. Darkness overtook him.

***

Lockhart found himself hanging from that pair of meat hooks and back in that cave once again. He knew it wasn’t real. He knew that immediately. This cave was simply a dreamscape that the beldams brought him into for their foul purpose. He remembered reading how the Caustic Brand worked back when he was just a young man. It would rip the energy from his body, and since this hex worked explicitly against a vespari like him, it functioned in a specific way. The beldams that had cast it on him would essentially consume the essence of every creature he had ever killed, draining it from his memory and taking a chunk of his own energy with it. From what he’d read about it, it was one of the most horrible ways to die.

Dangling from those meat hooks, the vespari saw the four beldams that had done this to him. They stood before him, watching him like a cook might watch meat sizzle on the grill. He could feel their hunger. They watched him, and he watched them. He searched for some clue regarding their whereabouts, but nothing immediately struck him.

Mabilia stepped forward, slurping up the pus oozing from her eye and then brandishing a stump of a hand to him. “Look what you did to me, you wretched little thing,” she spat in her deep, malevolent voice, vibrating off the walls of that illusionary cave. “You will pay for this.”

He said nothing. His eyes focused on every detail they could take in.

“Now, now,” Petronila said in her slithering voice. “You know that Alviva, as the oldest and wisest of us all, gets the first pick.”

Mabilia turned around and snarled at the slender, hunched over beldam, but she said nothing in response. Alviva then brushed past Mabilia, jiggling her fat with each step until she reached Lockhart. Her bulging hand pressed against the vespari’s gut, and she twirled him around to face the other direction, twisting his arms over his head. In this dreamscape that the beldams had brought him to, the cave had been transformed.

Rather than composed of simple rock and shaped by the natural ways of the world, the backside of the cave had a prison carved into it. Inside each cell sat a creature that he’d killed at some point in his life. He could hardly see where the sides and top of these stacks of cages ended, the thing sprawled on for so long. Looking at it, Lockhart realized that this was a buffet for the beldams.

“Let’s see now,” Alviva began. “What have you killed recently? I want something fresh.”

The beldam looked at the various monsters on display, tapping her fat finger against his abdomen. The cages shifted and moved in this dreamscape, as if magically controlled by her wishes. The most recent beasts and creatures he’d killed showed up at the front. That meant the ghoul he’d killed out in Delamar.

“A ghoul?” Alviva turned toward Lockhart with a scowl on her hideous face. “Well, now, that simply won’t do for a big girl like me. What else?” She looked back at the rows of caged creatures, and her eyes lit up. “Ahh, yes. A vishler. That’s more like it. So much taste in such a small package.”

Alviva pushed her fat, greasy hand against Lockhart, causing him to wobble and flail on the hooks, spinning back in the other direction. The beldam, meanwhile, walked up to the cage and opened the door. The vishler, a terrifying beast in its own right, scurried to the back of the cage, terrified of the sorcerous old woman. If there was a pecking order in the monsters of the world, beldams were certainly near the top. A coven of them even more so.

Lurching forward, Alviva grabbed the bones of the vishler with her enormous hands. The bony creature whipped its bird beak fingers at her, but the bones did nothing to harm her. She ripped and pulled the bones away, searching for the heart. The vishler screeched and wailed with every bone pulled from its collection, but Alviva didn’t slow in her pursuit of the one edible piece of this creature’s strange body.

Eventually, after discarding more than a dozen of the bones, Alviva found what she was looking for. She wrenched the little skull of the lizard off its belt, separating it from the vines and weeds that tethered all the other bones together. The vishler’s manufactured body fell in a heap on the cage floor, as Alviva pulled the heart out of the skull and tossed it in her mouth.

Turning around, she chewed it loudly and with her mouth open for all to witness. The organ shredded against her teeth, and the blood dripped in excess down her chin. “Delicious,” she said, spitting some of the heart out with the word.

“I’m next,” Mabilia declared, moving forward.

“You will eat when I tell you to,” Alviva shot back, pointing her fat, crooked finger at the beldam. “Wait your turn, Mabilia.” She turned to the short, fearful beldam in the coven. “Estrild, what would you like?”

Mabilia grumbled and backed away, while Estrild stared at the vespari, shaking and only managing to move forward a little. He scowled at her, and she took that one step back again.

“He can’t hurt you, Estrild.” Alviva assured her. “Go ahead.”

Still the little beldam quivered on the spot, staring at Lockhart’s grizzled face.

“Now, now,” Alviva said to him. “Stop scaring poor little Estrild.”

She reared back and punched him in the gut so hard that he lost his breath for a moment, gasping and swinging on those hooks.

“See?” Alviva told her. “He’s harmless. Now come forward and choose something.”

The little beldam teetered forward and stopped well to the side of Lockhart, with Alviva between the two of them. She stared at the cages of monsters, tapping her fingers together into tents and then releasing them as part of a nervous habit.

“Nosferatu!” Estrild shouted suddenly, hands rising into the air.

Called vampires in general, nosferatu were but one type among the family of creatures. Their kind, smarter than some other vampires, tended to dwell in cities, hiding amongst their victims. Before he traveled out to the desert though, Lockhart killed more than his share of nosferatu when he came across a nest. Estrild would have no shortage of choice in her meal.

“An excellent decision,” Alviva said.

Lockhart twisted his head around to see the cages. Again, these shifted at their will until a single cell came forward occupied by a female nosferatu. Lockhart had once known the name she chose for herself in an attempt to hide among the humans, but he’d long since forgotten it. She cowered in the back of the cage, just as afraid of the beldam as the vishler had been. As terrified as Estrild seemed of Lockhart, she held no such reservation toward the nosferatu. She pranced forward, a gleeful smile stretched across her face.

The nosferatu looked like a normal enough human. She had curly blonde hair, pale skin, and wore a rich noble’s dress. As Estrild moved ever forward, however, she began to shift to her true appearance. Red replaced the white of her eyes, as they sank back further into her skull. Claws grew out from her fingers. Fangs from her mouth which ripped open at either side, tearing into her cheeks. Black veins pushed to the surface of her pale skin. Her ears sharpened to points. Her body stretched, arching upward, as she swiped her claws down at Estrild.

The beldam, just as Alviva before her, was not concerned with this display. She reached her arm out toward the nosferatu, and a shimmering, magical force extended beyond her grasp. This magic gripped the nosferatu and dragged her to the ground. She dropped to her knees first, and then her head slammed hard into the floor of the cage. With an unnatural strength and speed, Estrild proceeded to rip pieces out of the screaming nosferatu, shoveling them into her mouth. She splattered blood, tossed chunks of organs, and cracked bones between her teeth in a disgusting display.

Once the screaming finally stopped, Estrild stood upright, grabbed the nosferatu by her hand, and pulled her back toward the other beldams. She looked not unlike a child dragging a stuffed animal, except this one left a trail of blood in her wake.

“Next,” she said with a little giggle. Estrild then plopped the body down and continued devouring her piece by piece.

“Petronila,” Alviva said, glaring at Mabilia.

“No, no,” the slender beldam replied. “I can wait. Mabilia should go first. After all, the vespari did maim her.”

Mabilia scowled at her.

“Well, hurry up then, Mabilia,” Alviva told her, tapping her foot on the cave floor so hard that it produced tiny echoes.

The large beldam stepped forward and grabbed Lockhart’s arm, her big fingers easily wrapping fully around his limb. She squeezed and glared at him.

“I want a lycanthrope!” Mabilia declared.

“Fine,” Alviva said, exasperated and stepping out of the way. “Have your lycan.”

Once more, the cages before Lockhart shifted and moved to adjust to the whims of these beldams. And just as with the nosferatu, the vespari had killed more than a few lycans in his time. Unlike the blood suckers, the shape shifters had spread out into the desert. Their curse tended to leave lycans more human than the nosferatu. Only when they transformed did they hunger for flesh. In their human state, they were no different than anyone else. Given this, many lycans had fled westward to escape the confined spaces of the cities and execution by the vespari. Regardless, their curse was immutable, and they had to die just the same as any other monster.

The one that the cages produced happened to be Lockhart’s first ever. Like the nosferatu, he’d killed it long before he traveled westward from his home and into the wastes. This one had killed a string of young girls and did so remorselessly. He claimed to enjoy the act, never repenting from these foul deeds. The vile man embraced the curse, and Lockhart was all too happy to have eliminated the beast.

Unlike the vishler and nosferatu before it, the lycan showed no fear of Mabilia, as his cage moved closer to her. His hair raised on end and he hunched forward, growling, fangs exposed and with beads of saliva dripping down from his mouth. He ran his claws along the bars of his cage, and dragged one foot backward across the floor in an attempt to get leverage.

Mabilia didn’t care. She proceeded to open the cage, and the lycan charged her. The beldam raised her one remaining hand and grabbed the monster by its neck. With a simple jerking motion, she snapped the bones, and its body went limp in her hand. Mabilia then flopped it to the ground, putting one foot on its body while still holding its neck. Pulling away, she ripped open the lycan’s body with a terrible snapping sound. With blood spurting out and muscle exposed, Mabilia dropped the body to the ground and bent over, shoving her whole face into the gory chunk of meat.

Alviva looked away from this scene and toward the last beldam. “Petronila,” she said. “I believe it is your turn.”

The tall, lanky beldam stepped forward. “I think I’ll have Gunnilda,” Petronila said.

Both Mabilia and Estrild stopped feasting on their respective monsters and Alviva made an aghast expression at this pronouncement. Even Lockhart couldn’t believe it. She actually wanted to consume the wraith that had once been a beldam in their coven. Though disgusted, none of the others moved to stop her or even said anything.