Chapter 12
The three days trudged by so
slowly for Luca. He was starved. Since their second time together
he couldn’t bear to even think of feeding off a human. He was
ruined.
She
had
ruined him. And though his beast couldn’t cajole him into feeding
on those delicious, succulent humans scurrying all around him, it
was trying its best to tempt him with the witch’s blood. Whispering
in his ear how wondrous, how earth shatteringly delicious it would
be to devour her the next time he had her in his arms.
His dreams, so shocking to finally
dream after three hundred years, were of nothing but making love to
Min. And in each and every dream he felt the hunger for her so
searing hot, and with each dream the anticipation was all the
worse. He knew what he was about to do, and loathed himself as much
as he hungered for it. Every dream ended with him feasting on her
neck, sucking her life force out of her very veins until there was
nothing left beneath him but a flaccid, cold corpse.
The dreams scared him as much as they
left him hungering for more. He hated himself, but as the three
days ticked away he found himself feeling that same anticipation in
the waking world. His beast was growing, its hunger almost
overpowering his need for her. Was it love he felt? Could something
like him even feel such a thing?
Maybe he should just let the beast have
her, if it could indeed break through her magicks. At least then he
could return to how he was before she came into his life. He’d been
so blissfully happy; now he was miserable.
Miserable or not, pulling
against his two hungers—that for her flesh, and that for her
blood—he found himself standing on the witch’s doorstep, on the
appointed night, as he’d been told.
I am
her faithful lapdog.
The beast inside him roared for her
blood. It demanded vengeance for the witch possessing him so. But
Luca swallowed that hatred, for there was something inside him,
something outshining the terrible burning of his bloodlust. It was
what it was, and though he couldn’t yet face it, he recognized the
feeling. And though he hadn’t felt it since those long ago days
when he was human, it was indeed love.
When Min at long last opened the door
to him, the tension and warring emotions inside him simply
evaporated. He gazed down upon her, utterly besotted by the sight
of her, by the mere nearness of her proximity. He knew then and
there he was hers. But even with this devoted feeling, the beast
still called out to him, relentless, but seemingly farther away
than was possible, like the distant howl of a wolf.
She didn’t smile. She didn’t look up
into his eyes with her usual flirtatious manner. Her expression was
so very careful, nearly blank, but for some telltale grave lines.
She was hiding something. Luca knew he should be wary. It wasn’t
safe to enter, and yet he moved forward when she invited him, and
again, he felt the magicks that guarded the door, like electric
sparks on his flesh.
She was dressed not in the silky robe,
or a thin, wispy gown, as he had shredded the last time. But in
funeral black: slacks and a blouse, and black leather boots. Her
hair was pulled back from her face in a tight bun.
With a wave of her hand Min beckoned
him to follow her. Walking straight to the stairs, Min didn’t even
look back at him. Her shoulders were tight, and she smelled of fear
and something else, something tangy, not as sweet as fear,
something more complex…guilt maybe. The upstairs was dark except
for the light from one burning candle. She led him right past her
bedroom, its door closed, to the end of the hall and stopped at
that doorway, resting her hand against its dark stained
wood.
“
Forgive me…” she whispered,
“I have no choice.”
Luca felt something cold rolling out
from under that door, something supremely evil. He didn’t want to
go into that room. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he tried to
turn and walk away. But Min had not told him he could leave her, so
he stood and waited for her to open that door.
She walked into the room as if she
couldn’t feel the pulsing, freezing evil contained within. She was
a witch of light, and yet she couldn’t feel the malevolent presence
in her own home? Had he been wrong? Was she indeed a dark
sorceress, and communing with demons? If so, he was in grave
trouble. A dark witch, a black one, lived to control things, to
play with the living and the dead with gruesome results.
Min whispered a sibilant chant, and
candles lit all over the room. A bedroom. An old woman was lying on
the bed, the covers drawn up to her chest. Her face was so pale,
and her hair so utterly white, he thought for a moment she was a
statue. Her eyes were open and staring up at the
ceiling.
“
She is dead,” he
said.
Min hissed. “No she’s not!” She moved
over to the bed and sat alongside the pale woman. “She’s asleep…”
she placed her hand over her mother’s frigid hand.
Luca gasped, grasping at his hand,
staring down at it as if it were a snake. “She’s cold…colder than
any ice…I think she is no longer in there.” He raised his eyes to
meet Min’s.
She dropped her eyes from his gaze.
When she spoke again, her voice shook frightfully. “You’re right.
Her spirit is not inside her body. Something sucked the soul right
out of her a little over six months ago. Put her in some kind of
suspended animation. I’ve been hunting for a cure ever
since.”
Luca saw a hard look
overtake Min’s face. She stared at him with cold eyes, much like
her sleeping mother’s. “But then a few days ago I found a spell, in
the pages of an ancient tome. At first I thought it was just some
crazy speculation.” She laughed, and she sounded quite
mad—
like Elaina sounded
—but then she sobbed and just sounded scared and
desperate.
“
I mean, a vampire with a
soul…” she turned away from him. “It’s just ridiculous!”
Luca felt his entire body
stiffen.
No. It can’t be. She can’t mean
me. The little trifling spark in me? It couldn’t be counted as an
actual soul.
“
And then I saw it.” She
whirled back around, her glistening eyes wide and frightened. “I
saw a divine spark in your eyes. A besouled vampire—I knew it had
to be fate.”
No, not fate. A fucking
tragedy
. Yes, of course his soul was still
there. It was making him weaker and weaker by the day. But if Min
was pinning her obviously deceased mother’s resurrection on his
puny, weak little soul, then her prayers were doomed.
He opened his mouth to tell her just
that, but she told him, “Don’t say a word, and stay where you are.”
He stood there, mutely cursing to himself. It was going to be worse
than he had ever imagined.
He looked about the room and saw a
pentacle drawn in multicolored chalk on the gleaming hardwood
floor, and a line of dried herbs and other ingredients, all
gathered by a marble bowl, and a medicinal crusher sitting right
alongside . Beside that lay a cruelly sharp, long dagger, shining
silver. He wanted out of that room, but she had told him to stay
where he was. It would end badly, whatever she was planning to do
to him. He knew it would hurt, physically and metaphysically. And
then it would hurt because he’d fail her. His puny soul wouldn’t be
enough to work what magick she needed, and she would fall apart
when it failed to revive her mother.
But then again, maybe it would work. If
the magicks only needed but a spark, then maybe his soul might be
sufficient. Maybe it was exactly what he needed. To finally be done
with this needling, niggling spark. Yes, to finally be free of it,
free to kill and feed without feeling anything but the hellish
hunger inside him being sated once more.
He knew then and there, that the moment
his soul was removed, he would try with all his strength to break
the bonds the witch had put on him. He would kill her first. He
would kill Min. And that thought made him sick. He wanted to rush
to her and beg her not to do it. The mere thought of taking her
life was too unimaginably terrible.
First, she lit a dried stick of sage,
and walked around the room. The redolent smoke the herb gave off as
it burned would cleanse the air of all bad and evil spirits and
magicks. Unfortunately, it didn’t even touch the cold evil that
permeated the room, the power Min could not sense.
When she’d finished the ritual
cleansing, Min started the ceremony, obviously having memorized the
spell beforehand. No reading from a book, not even any stuttered
phrasing. Min knew exactly what she was doing. She pulverized the
ingredients she added to the bowl, mixing drizzled oil that stank
of cloves and blood. And finally she struck a match. The flame of
which was queer black tipped with an eerie blue light. The bowl lit
up inside, and dark, ominous black smoke began to spread through
the room. Everything in Luca told him he needed to get out of that
room. Even his beast knew nothing good was going to come of all
this. Nothing but pain, maybe blood. Probably,and unfortunately,
his. And just as he thought it, she reached for the knife and
turned toward him.
“
Give me your
arm…”
He could tell she was about to say
something else. He wished he knew what it was. He wished that she
was about to call him by his name, but thought better of it. But
then again, she might’ve just been about to call him vampire…and
likewise had thought better of it. Either way, it was a kindness
she didn’t say it, whatever it was. But part of him still
desperately wanted to know.
As if he had absolutely no control over
his body’s movements, he held out his arm to her. She unbuttoned
the cuff of his silk shirt and pushed it up until his arm was bare
and gleaming in the candlelight. And then she cut him, a long,
shallow cut, letting the blood smear over the silver blade. Silver
hurt, for a cut made with it healed only human fast. And it seared
and burned every agonizing moment of that time. She took the blade
and walked back to the burning bowl of ingredients. Chanting, she
dripped his blood into the bowl and the black and blue flames
turned green. The very green of his eyes. The smoke turned a dusty,
rusted orange color, and the scent of his burning blood filled the
room.
He hadn’t heard Latin being spoken
since his sire had stolen him away from his church, from his life.
He hadn’t dared to enter a house of god since. Though she had tried
to get him to, it had been finally just too much for Elaina to ask
of him. She could devise no torture so great that Luca would dare
cross the threshold of any church. And he had never touched one of
god’s people. No priests, no nuns, no monks, not even a
vicar.
But now the gypsy witch, his Min, was
reciting something in his long forgotten Latin. But it wasn’t all
Latin. Many of the words he knew were nothing he had ever heard
before. But when she spoke the word for soul, he felt something
deep within him tug and burn. He called out as he hit his knees.
The spark inside him couldn’t get out, but it wanted to, as if she
were the Pied Piper and it a lowly rat. It was excruciating. He
growled and howled as Min chanted with more and more force, calling
his soul out to save her mother. Suddenly he knew every word she
spoke, and with it he knew that she would get what she wanted, at
least in part. She would get his soul, no doubt about
it.
But then he felt a gust of winter cold
wind. It was blowing in, cold and strong as any arctic wind, up
under the bedroom door. And there was darkness in it. It muted out
the orange smoke it came in contact with, it ate the candlelight,
and it crawled across the floor, encroaching on Min. She didn’t see
it coming, and Luca couldn’t even breathe, for he was now covered
in the darkness: wet, freezing darkness, sticking to him, pulling
him even further to the floor.
Then it finally struck out at her. She
fell to the floor as well, and then her mother sat up and turned to
look upon her. There was something, someone, looking out through
those frosted blue eyes, predatory and evil. The smile that
stretched across that face wasn’t human; it was as cold and
calculating as any demon’s. And then he smelled it, full and strong
and so very, very sweet. And what he smelled both excited him and
sent the most horrible chill up and down his spine. It was a
faerie. A Sidhe, from the smell of her. And it was a she…and she
was monstrously powerful, to take him and the witch, and so easily
take possession of the dormant mother, and all from a distance.
They were being attacked by something high up in the Winter
Court.
Unseelie.
She spoke, and the voice was bitter
with frost, yet as smooth as silk. “Silly, arrogant gypsy…you could
never fathom my power.”
That power struck out at Min, slamming
her into the wall of the bedroom.
“
But that doesn’t mean you
can’t appreciate it.” Her mother’s corpse held up a hand and black
light, if there was such a thing, burst from her palm and filled
the room.
Min cried out as the blazing darkness
engulfed her. It didn’t seem to be burning her, but she writhed and
wailed as if it were eating the very flesh from her bones. The
Sidhe’s voice laughed with fiendish delight as Min’s mother’s eyes
glowed like blue moons in her skull. The room was so cold, and so
full of Min’s cries for help, that Luca couldn’t stand it. He was
frozen to the spot, helpless to defend her, his hands in fists, his
fingernails cutting deep into the flesh of his palms.