Authors: Jocelynn Drake
“Whose house is this?” Lily asked as I put the car in park.
“Her name is LaVina and she’s a witch of sorts,” I replied as I unlatched my seat belt.
“What’s that mean?” Lily demanded as she slowly released her seat belt as well.
“LaVina specializes in voodoo, but has expanded her practices to various forms of earth and blood magic. Several months ago, she helped me to locate Mira,” I explained, and then got out of the car before she could ask her next question.
Lily followed behind me as I picked up a silent Mira from the backseat and carried her up the front steps. The old wood planks of the porch creaked under our combined weight, announcing our arrival.
The front door opened, revealing an old black woman as thin as a skeleton with her gray hair drawn back into a tight bun. Her bony hand wrapped around the door handle of the screen door, holding it shut.
“You shouldn’t have hung up so quickly,” she criticized in a heavy Southern accent. “I would have told you not to bother to come.”
“Just take a look at her,” I said, ignoring her comment. I wouldn’t be turned away.
“What am I supposed to do with a sick vampire?”
“She’s been drinking from a warlock,” I said quickly, hoping to pique her curiosity. “She’s been hearing and seeing things. Ghosts from her past. Savannah needs Mira. You know that. She’s not going to last much longer as she is.”
“Bah!” she scoffed, a frown drawing down the corners of her mouth. “Who’s the young one?”
“Lily. A friend.”
LaVina stared at us for another few seconds before she finally released the door handle and shuffled into the house, leaving us to follow.
“Danaus, are you sure about this?” Lily asked in a low voice as she took a step backward.
“Everything will be fine,” I said, raising one corner of my mouth in what I hoped looked like a reassuring smile. “What’s wrong? See something?”
“No, and that’s the problem. She doesn’t have an aura,” Lily whispered.
It was strange enough to give me pause, but not enough to stop me from opening the door. Mira needed help and LaVina was my only option at this point. I could only hope that maybe the child was tired and possibly mistaken. Or maybe LaVina was powerful enough to cloak her aura from others. Either way, it really didn’t matter. I was desperate.
“Just stick close to me,” I said as I entered the house. Lily was quick to obey, as she followed close enough to bump into me when I suddenly stopped outside the living room.
With her hands on her narrow hips, LaVina stared down at Lily, clucking her tongue at the girl. “You’re a bit of a ragamuffin. Need something to eat? Let me get you something fixed up.”
“That’s okay. Gabriel’s getting some pizza. I’ll just have that when we get back to Mira’s,” Lily quickly said.
“That’s no meal for a girl your age. You need some real home cooking and you’re not going to get that with some vampire,” LaVina argued with a dismissive wave at Mira, who lay limp in my arms.
“It’s okay, LaVina. We can’t stay long. We just need you to look at Mira,” I interrupted.
“Fine. Fine. Have it your way,” the old woman said, throwing her arms up. “Follow me.”
Suppressing a sigh of relief, we followed LaVina down a narrow set of wooden stairs into her basement. The old witch waved her hand as she descended the stairs, causing dozens of candles to flicker to life. To my surprise, a low giggle escaped Mira as she raised her hand. All the candles went out again, plunging the basement back into complete darkness.
“Oh, so the corpse is awake,” LaVina said as she lit the candles again.
“Sorry, LaVina,” I said, descending the last few stairs to the dirt floor. “Mira hasn’t been thinking clearly the past few days.”
“Bite me, Danaus,” Mira said as she finally started to stir in my arms.
“Just set the bloodsucker on the floor over there,” LaVina directed, waving one hand toward the far wall as she fiddled around on a workbench covered with all sorts of strange odds and ends.
I sat Mira on the floor so that her back was against the concrete wall and she was facing the bench where LaVina was busy pulling together whatever she needed. I remained closer to Mira while Lily sat down on the stairs, refusing to come any farther into the tiny, claustrophobic basement. There were no windows and the walls were covered in all manner of symbols, none of which I could identify. The air was musty, filled with the rich scent of dirt, dried flowers, and a hint of incense. Beneath it all was also the faint odor of dried blood. Creatures had been sacrificed in this small cloistered refuge from the modern world.
LaVina hummed a nameless melody to herself as she went about lighting a bit of incense and pulling down little bottles of unknown liquids and fragments of plants. Jerking open the door of an old wooden birdcage, the old witch plunged her hand inside and quickly pulled it out again, holding a small bird in her grasp. With a speed and ease that bespoke of years of experience, she picked up a small blade from the table and chopped off the creature’s head before it could make a single chirp. I quickly looked over at Lily and was instantly relieved to find that she was looking at Mira and me rather than the witch. She didn’t need to be exposed to any more violence and death than she already had been.
I was beginning to think that bringing her here had been a serious mistake. LaVina was eccentric at best. When I had seen her the last time, she had stood naked in a ring of fire in her backyard, her body smeared with the blood of a dead dog, demanding the spirits of the dead tell her where I should go to hunt the Fire Starter. I might not be a believer in her methods, but the next night, I finally encountered Mira and our journey together began.
“Good dirt,” Mira suddenly murmured, shattering the silence that had dominated, other than LaVina’s soft humming. I looked down at the nightwalker to find her digging furrows in the dirt with the fingers of her right hand. She picked up a handful and let it fall through her parted fingers. Her head popped up and she looked at LaVina for the first time. “This isn’t Savannah dirt,” she ventured. “Peruvian?”
LaVina took a couple slow steps toward the nightwalker, her brow wrinkled with surprise and her fingers stained red. “Good guess,” she replied softly. “Some of the dirt was shipped in from the Sacred Valley in Peru. I also had some brought in from the Black Forest in Germany and from the Blue Mountains in Jamaica. Strong bits of earth for spell casting. But I’m surprised you could tell such a thing.”
Mira shrugged her shoulders as she dropped the last of the dirt back to the ground. “Like I said, it’s good dirt. I’ve slept covered in Peruvian dirt.”
“But still,” LaVina pressed as she edged closer. “No nightwalker should be able to sense such a thing. All nightwalkers lose their connection with the earth upon rebirth.”
“Yes, well, I’m special,” Mira said, curling her lips in such a way that she briefly flashed her fangs. There was also no missing the sarcasm that laced every syllable of that statement.
To my surprise, LaVina knelt on the ground next to Mira and clasped the nightwalker’s chin between two thin fingers. She tilted Mira’s head up, looking into her lavender eyes as she once again clucked her tongue. “You, my child, should never have been reborn as a nightwalker.”
“No kidding,” Mira replied snidely as she tried to turn her head away, but LaVina jerked Mira’s head back to face her.
“You were destined for many great things,” LaVina continued. “Being a nightwalker may have delayed, if not completely deterred those things. So sad.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked when Mira just stared mutely at the old witch.
“Nothing specific,” LaVina quickly said, releasing Mira’s face. “Just idle dreams and broken nightmares.”
Using the blood that was still on her fingers, she traced a symbol on Mira’s forehead that caused a knot to form in my stomach. I knew a few old symbols from my travels, and this one felt positively ancient. Older than the pagans, older than Mesopotamians, older than most civilizations that had crawled across the Earth. The monster that lived wrapped around the remains of my soul recoiled at the sight of it and my skin crawled. While I couldn’t name the source of the symbol, something told me that I was looking at the original marking for chaos.
Energy sizzled in the air around LaVina and Mira, as the old witch started speaking in a tongue I had never heard before. My ears started ringing and the air started to grow too thick to draw into my lungs. I thought I would soon begin choking. Mira lay as still as death while LaVina worked her magic, her eyes closed, but a glimmer of lavender light still shined beneath her eyelashes. I didn’t like this.
“LaVina?” I pressed, touching the woman’s arm. The witch immediately stopped what she was doing and smiled at me. She placed her hand in mine and I helped her to stand again. She walked back over to the bench where she fiddled around with some unseen objects.
“So, you were saying that this nightwalker has been drinking from a warlock,” she said, changing the subject to the real reason we had come to her in the first place. I was tempted to pull her back to our previous topic, but decided to drop it. It was more important that we got Mira well and sane again.
“Yes.” I sighed.
“Powerful one?” she asked, glancing over her bony shoulder at me.
“Very powerful.”
“Hmmm…” she said as she slowly turned around again. She leaned up against the bench and crossed her arms over her middle. “Did you know different types of blood affect nightwalkers in different ways?”
“I’m not surprised,” I said, shoving my hands into my back pockets. “Naturi blood is poisonous to nightwalkers.”
“In that same vein, some nightwalkers can’t drink shapeshifter blood. They’re too close to that nature tie, and it makes them sick for several nights on end.”
“Mira can drink shifter blood,” I countered, recalling Mira’s special meal with the lycanthrope Nicolai in Venice.
“Hmmm,” she said again with a nod. “I’m not surprised by that. For some, shifter blood can temporarily make a nightwalker stronger, heighten senses, and satisfy the thirst for longer. However, blood from a powerful witch or warlock does none of those things.”
“Then why drink it?” Lily inquired. I looked over my shoulder to find her rising and walking down to the stand on the last stair.
“Because it can have special side effects,” LaVina said, smiling up at the girl.
“Like what?” Lily asked.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell us, Mira?” I asked, turning my attention back to the nightwalker. Mira had dropped her head and was once again running her fingers through the dirt. She refused to look up at us, but there was a new stiffness to her shoulders.
“Go to hell, Danaus,” she muttered.
“Oh, think about it,” LaVina chided. “Weakness, trembling hands, circles under her eyes, hallucinations. At the root, Mira’s still human.”
“She’s not sleeping,” Lily murmured. My gaze jerked from the teenager to the nightwalker. Her shoulders were now slumped as if she were cowering away from me. Could it be something as simple as not sleeping?
“That’s not possible,” I said, pinning my gaze on Mira. “You can’t be awake during the day. Nightwalkers can’t be awake during the day.”
“Ryan’s blood is special,” Mira admitted in a low voice. “I drink it and I can stay awake during the day.”
“How long has it been since you last slept?” I demanded.
“I need this,” Mira said, clenching her fists in the dirt. “It’s my only edge against Aurora. What if she sends someone for me during the daylight hours?”
“How long?” I repeated.
Mira pushed to her knees so that she was now facing me, her fists clenched at her side. “She’s going to come for me during the day! I won’t be helpless against them.”
“How long has it been?” I shouted back at her, taking a step toward her.
“Ten days!” she shouted back, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I’ve not slept in ten days!”
Pacing away from Mira, I shoved my hands through my hair, but managed to hold my tongue as I caught sight of Lily intently watching me. Ten days. Humans were known to hallucinate after just a few days without sleep. Vampires were resilient creatures, but even their minds couldn’t possibly withstand such an extended period of deprivation. James had mentioned that Mira was up during the day, but it never occurred to me that she was never sleeping. I had just thought that she was waking earlier in the evening or maybe staying up a couple hours past sunrise—not staying awake the entire day.
“How long did you think you could keep this up?” I demanded, losing my tenuous grip on my temper.
“Months, if I had to. Whatever it takes!” she shouted at me.
“Leaving you at Ryan’s mercy.”
“Better at the mercy of a warlock that is just trying to help me defeat the naturi than at the mercy of an entire race that wants to see me dead.”
“You think Ryan is a better option than the naturi?”
“Of course he is.”
“Ryan doesn’t care about you,” I snarled, taking a step closer. “He only cares about how he can use you. You’re a member of the coven. You’re one of the most powerful vampires in all the world. How could you think something so stupid as this notion that he cares about protecting you?”
“Fine, maybe he doesn’t care about me, but he at least doesn’t want the naturi to succeed in wiping out humanity. At least we have that in common! Keeping me alive helps that goal. We can’t let the naturi win.”
“I don’t want the naturi to succeed either, but this isn’t the best way to beat them.”
“They’re going to come after me again.”
“I know,” I murmured. I knew it like I knew the sun was going to rise in a few hours and that Gaizka would come hunting for the rest of my soul. Little inevitabilities that we couldn’t escape. Once Aurora had her forces pulled together, she was going to come after Mira again and she wouldn’t stop until the nightwalker had suffered a gruesome, excruciating end. If the naturi won, Mira faced a horrible death.
“I won’t let Aurora have me without a fight. She’ll come during the daylight hours when I am vulnerable. They’ll steal me away again and no one will be able to find me. Not even you and all your magic tricks. I swear I won’t sleep again until Aurora is dead,” Mira vowed.