Vampires & Vinca (Hawthorn Witches Book 4) (8 page)

Chapter 8

I don’t know if it was frustration or anger, or maybe a total accident.

I shoved him away. The look of surprise on his face was probably mirrored on mine.

I remained as still as I could, but inside my mind, I was panicking. I was still mostly wrapped in a sleeping bag, and if it was needed, a speedy getaway wasn’t going to happen.

Vince suddenly scrambled backward and got to his feet. Still staring at me without blinking, he raised a hand to his mouth. He ran from the cabin without a word.

My heart was pounding, and the rain was really starting to come down. I hesitantly raised a hand to where he had nearly bitten me, and wiped away saliva with my shirt sleeve. I withdrew my hand and stared at it.

No blood.

There was no blood, but I had come that close. There was no cure for werewolfism.

A noise outside made my veins flood with a new wave of adrenaline, and I looked up to see Charlie standing in the open door. The look on his face was one of pure shock and disappointment. The only move he made was to snap his fingers.

I was back in my apartment, and Charlie was nowhere to be seen. I was sure he had run off to tell Kendra, and I braced myself for the big fight.

But when he returned alone, his first words surprised me. “You’re not going to stop, are you?”

I opened my mouth to reply, and then I looked at the floor. I was too shaken to be making a decision like that.

“Are you?” Charlie asked, this time sounding more surprised.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Things are complicated.”

He set something down on the table. It was a green plant adorned with white berries.

“This is mistletoe,” he said. “It’s poisonous, but it stands a far less chance of killing you than Vince does. I shouldn’t be giving it to you, because it will make you sick. But if you make a tea from it, it can prevent the infection for up to a day afterward. I would prefer to give you a talisman or a satchel charm, or even a rune tattoo, which was Stark’s preference, but Lyssa or Kendra will notice any of those. If you’re going to keep doing this, and you’re going to try to keep it a secret, this is your option. If he had actually managed to bite you just now, there’s nothing we could do about it after the fact.”

I crossed my arms and looked down. Somewhere, Vince was roaming the woods in the rain, and I didn’t know why I was the one feeling ashamed all of a sudden.

“Thank you,” I said. “You’re not going to tell Kendra?”

He gave short laugh. “She understands. If I start telling on you, I’d have to start telling on her. And if we’re keeping score, she’s done worse than you have.”

I wanted to know what he meant, but I just smiled and let it go. He wasn’t going to tell Kendra that I actually had screwed up this time, or very nearly so, and I was immensely grateful.

“Do you need anything?” I asked. “Anything for your spell?”

“It’s your day off, Thorn,” he said with a wink. “Try relaxing. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

He left me alone in my apartment, and no more than thirty seconds later, my cell phone rang. It was Vince, and I wasn’t ready to answer. I let it go to voice mail.

Then I got myself a burrito, sat down on the couch, and tried to forget.

He left me seven voice mails and at least a dozen texts before giving up. I didn’t want him to feel guilty, but I knew he did. It wasn’t his fault.

Adeline had warned me this would happen.

I didn’t know what to say to him, and I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, so I kept my silence and waited for my head to clear.

I avoided him clear into the next day, when I found myself miserable and sitting alone as I tried in vain to make the vinca grow. Kendra stood by, sighing as she held a hand to her mouth.

She shook her head. “You’re the least natural witch I’ve ever met, Annie.”

“Thanks,” I said bitterly, standing up and brushing the dirt from my jeans.

“I don’t mean it as an insult,” she said lightly. “It’s just a fact. Where are you going?”

I spun on her, frowning. “To get some water. It’s been two hours.”

As I left, I heard Charlie telling her to lay off. I had never been able to work a spell on command, except for summoning Charlie, and he thought the key was to just let me be. I quietly thanked him, and hoped he heard.

Grabbing a bottle of water from the refrigerator, I looked down to see Martha standing by my feet. She gazed up at me and gave a quiet meow.

“Huh,” I said with a weak smile. “You’re the lucky one here. If you had hands, she’d find a way to make you work.”

Martha meowed.

“Why stay, anyway?” I asked. “You’ve got to know somebody who can help you out. I mean, I get that only Charlie can remove the cat skin, and he’s not likely to do that, but I bet you know someone who could give you your voice back, right?”

Meow.

“Is she keeping you here with a spell? I bet she is.”

Meow.

I sat down in the chair behind the desk, and Martha jumped up to face me at eye level. Someone had bought her a new, red collar and strung it with a silver bell. I stared at her, wondering why she had remained so good-natured toward all of us, even in her cursed state.

“I met another vampire,” I said to her. “His name was Samuel. You know him?”

Meow.

I shook my head, taking another drink from my water. I wondered if she missed talking with people; she had been a very social person in the time I had known her.

“He thinks we stole you from your house,” I said. “Sounds like a pretty crappy place you come from, if you can
steal
a person instead of
kidnapping
them…”

Martha turned her head to the side and ducked it a little this time, and I smiled lightly. She was trying to shrug.

And that was when I remembered.

“He said you had a sister, too,” I said, furrowing my brow. “Alice?”

Meow.

“My mom’s name was Alice, too.”

Meow.

Martha was staring at me intensely, and then she started to bob her head. She wanted me to ask, and I felt my stomach sink. I already knew the answer.

“They’re the same Alice, aren’t they?”

Charlie appeared behind the desk, lifting Martha up to set her on the floor as she let out a series of hisses and growls. Kendra came bursting into the office, and Martha went running out, her little bell jangling all the way.

I frowned at Charlie. “That feels an awful lot like taking sides.”

“That feels an awful lot like an explanation is owed,” Charlie growled.

I had never heard him so angry, and as he turned toward Kendra, I realized it wasn’t me he was angry with. Kendra shrank back against the wall.

She shook her head and looked at me. She chastised me all the same, but seemed to know that the gig was up.

“You shouldn’t be her friend,” she said, deflated. “I’m letting her roam free on the grounds because I feel she’s been punished enough, but she could still turn spy. Don’t tell her things.”

“You’re her friend,” I said. “You do an awful lot of ‘do as I say, and not as I do,’ you know that?”

“Yes. I’m her friend, and look where it got me. I’m probably the most hunted witch in the world right now, Annie, and you shouldn’t aspire to that.”

“Kendra,”
Charlie growled again.

She slowly turned back to him. “Get Lyssa. Now. I’m not telling this story more than once.”

Chapter 9

Lyssa wasn’t happy to be dragged back to the greenhouse so soon. She sat on one of the stools at the workbench, holding her head in her hands as Kendra went to get Gates out of the side yard, where she had been trying to pull a natural spring up from the ground.

“Has she been spying on me?”

The question caught me off guard, and I looked over at Lyssa in surprise. She looked thin and exhausted, and having been brought back early seemed to have frayed her every nerve.

“No,” I said cautiously. “Why?”

“No reason.” Lyssa took a deep breath and tried to sit a little straighter. It made her appear more alert, but there was no hiding the bags under her eyes.

Kendra was walking back toward us with Gates and a miffed Charlie in tow.

“What’s up?” Lyssa asked in an upbeat tone.

Kendra gave her a wary look, and then gestured for Gates to grab one of the empty buckets nearby to use as a chair.

“A little more than thirty years ago, Draven Luthor approached me about the Hawthorn Grimoire. Necromancers are witches at their core, though we’re on different sides of the spectrum. He kept it very private, which I appreciated, but his father was very a well-known vampire—necromancer royalty, in a fashion—and I knew he wanted something. He wanted the book, to bring glory to his family and destroy rival families, or some nonsense like that. But he was willing to play by our rules, so I let him. He wanted to make an arranged marriage between my brother and his sister.”

I groaned, burying my face in my hands. Lyssa continued to stare.

“And?” she asked sharply.

“And, they went on several dates, and the dates went very well. House Luthor was powerful and a valuable asset back then, and I thought having them as allies would be good for the Hawthorns of future generations. I explained to Draven that I would pass the book on to my brother’s children one day because I did not have a desire to have children of my own. We had an understanding,” she said, suddenly looking sad. “And when he demanded I give
him
the book on the day of the wedding, things went bad.”

Lyssa looked baffled. “Are you saying my dad—
our
dad—was married before?”

“Oh, my god,” I hissed under my breath. “She’s saying
mom
was one of
them
, Lyssa! Try to keep up!”

Lyssa looked back at Kendra, dismayed. “But that can’t be right. Mom didn’t know any magic. She was a normal human. She didn’t practice anything, not what you do, and certainly not what they do. Dad doesn’t even know about any of this. That can’t be right—”

“He used to.” Kendra said shortly. “They both used to. When I wouldn’t turn over the book, he demanded an annulment and declared war on us. But your mom and dad didn’t want an annulment, and when your mom refused to go along with Draven, he threatened to kill her, too. Vampires have a sort of vaguely interconnected memory as part of a spell. An oath of loyalty that they make to their family. They can find each other very easily for that reason, and that meant that I had to take extraordinary measures to get your parents to safety. The only way I could hide them was to erase their memories, so that Alice wouldn’t inadvertently call out to her family, and your dad wouldn’t do or say anything that might risk jogging her memory, and put bring here. It was close enough to Stonefall that I knew I would be able to hide in the crowd and keep a watch over them.” She cast a mournful glance down at the floor, and Martha. “But the spell was complicated, because one can only do it on a blood relative, and the closer the relationship the better. I could do it for my brother, and I had to ask Martha to do it for your mom.” She took another deep breath, and looked angry even as her eyes started to well up. “And it worked, all of these years, until Martha decided to come and lay eyes on you, because the moment she did, Draven knew where we were!”

Martha barely dodged the kick that Kendra sent her way, and then went running from the room with her ears folded.

Everything was quiet for a minute.

Then Lyssa scooted her stool back across the floor with a loud screech and stood up.

She faced Kendra without blinking. “He’s going to come after us. The whole family?
My
family?”

The remorse on Kendra’s face settled deep, and I thought for a moment that I could see wrinkles on her unnaturally young visage. “He might think he has ownership of you. You, and Annie, and Rosie. That might spare your lives, if he’s desperate enough for family blood to trade with his enemies. I fear for the rest of us.”

Lyssa’s face turned red, and she marched from the room, mumbling something under her breath.

I looked from Kendra, to Charlie, and finally to Gates.

Her large brown eyes were wide. “Sorry, Annie… that sucks.”

I raised my eyebrows and sarcastically nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m property. I’m pretty sure that book can only be read by you, though, as long as you’re still alive. And Draven seems to really want that book. How’s that magic working out for you, now?”

Gates looked sharply back at Kendra, who had pressed her fingers together and raised them to her lips. She slowly shook her head. “If Gates dies, the book loses all meaning. He needs her to translate, just like me. And I’m sorry, Annie, I had nearly forgotten… he won’t spare you. As Martha said, in the most politically incorrect way, you’ve been touched by the darkness and you’re not fit to be a member of the House.”

Gates looked back at me, and then off into space. I took it to mean that if we lost this fight, I was dead, and Gates was likely to spend the rest of her life as a servant to a megalomaniac vampire.

“Do they drink blood?” Gates asked distantly. “Like vampires in the movies?”

“Yes,” Kendra said without hesitation. “Among other things, and worse. The way we view this garden is the way they view every living being on the planet. We’re their garden. They grow and prune and train us, and when they want items for spells, they harvest them. They steal life force, and it gives them unnatural longevity. Their magic is more virulent than ours, but it isn’t any stronger.”

“Can it be learned?”

Kendra made a face. “Oh, Gates…”

“Can it be learned?”
she asked again with more force.

“No,” Charlie supplied, throwing Kendra a sharp look. He hadn’t known about any of this, and he seemed just as surprised and angry as the rest of us that she would hide it. “Necromancers and vampires are witches. They’re born with their abilities, and none of it can be learned. I assure you, warlocks can do just as bad, if—”

“You’re not teaching her anything Stark had,” Kendra said flatly.

Charlie narrowed his eyes. “I believe the situation warrants it. Have you ever even fought a vampire, instead of running away? Because I have. And if you hold to your principles, you’re going to lose, Kendra.”

She started to stalk away. Charlie snapped his fingers, and they both disappeared.

I sat with Gates for a while, but neither of us had anything to say. We were royally screwed this time, and even Charlie thought so. Charlie was usually right.

After a while I got up and found my way back to my apartment. There wasn’t any getting out of this one. Not now, and not soon, and not ever.

Kendra had said that the vampires had unnatural longevity, and that meant that unless I killed Draven, my uncle—as strange as that felt—he would hunt me the rest of his life. And even if I did kill him, I had no idea how many relatives stood in line behind him to continue the quest. They would outlive me, and I would run forever.

If I ever got to live my life, it would never be normal again.

I picked up my phone and dialed Vince.

He picked up just before it went to voice mail. “Hello?”

“I need to see you. Now.”

“Um…” I heard him shifting around. “Sure. Is everything okay?”

“No,” I said. “I just really need someone to talk to.”

Blake’s voice was in the background. “Who is it?”

“No one,” Vince said back to her. He came back on the phone. “I’ve got to go.”

And then he hung up.