“Wait,” Keomany said, “I thought Christ himself was the first vampire.”
Octavian took a deep breath. He had learned so much in Hell . . . so much that the rest of the world had forgotten.
“Okay, quickly,” he said, “you’ve all read the story by now of how the Christ faced demons in the desert, and how they savaged his flesh. Had he been anyone else, he would have become evil, a twisted mockery of life wearing his own face. But the divine power in him prevented the taint from spreading in him . . . up until he died, and Divinity—what Christians call the Holy Spirit—left him. When God had no more use for the shell once inhabited by the Christ, it became something else. Something new. Shadows, like Charlotte . . . what we think of today as vampires . . . are a combination of demonic contagion, human flesh, and the divine influence passed down from that conflict in the desert.
“But those creatures . . . the things Jesus fought in the desert . . . they were the original vampires. Pure evil, with no trace of human emotion or divine light to temper that darkness. They haven’t been seen in this world for two thousand years, not since the Christ himself eradicated them.”
“What does any of this have to do with the Seven?” Keomany asked, her voice filled with an urgency he understood quite well. They needed to get out of this room, out of this hospital, and find something to fight, before they lost control of themselves.
“Short version—”
“Too fucking late for that,” Charlotte snapped.
Octavian ignored her. “This ancient vampire species, the Innin, were never born. They were created in a storm of chaos that tore holes in the walls separating the human world from the demon realms, as if a chemical reaction of dark magic and our reality spawned them.”
“Holy shit,” Officer Moschitto muttered.
They were all staring at him, but Octavian ignored them, forging ahead.
“Do you think these wraiths are—what did you call them—Innin?” Amber asked, pushing her hair behind her ears.
“I don’t. Maybe they’re related, but I think they’re something else entirely. That’s the point. This maelstrom of magic . . . other cultures that existed at the same time as the ancient Chaldeans claimed that it’s where the Maskim came from, too. Like the maelstrom, that chaos was some kind of womb that gave birth to monsters.”
“But where did the storm come from?” Miles asked.
Octavian looked over at the rain-slick window. Charlotte stood looking back, and he saw that she had bitten into her lip and now licked the blood from her mouth.
“According to one of the clay tablets found by de Sarzac during the excavation of the Sumerian city of Lagash, the storm had a mother.”
The people in the room had fallen silent, staring at him. The rain pelted the window and the wind shook the building. Hospital noises continued in the corridor, but in that room, no one breathed, until at last Amber spoke.
“Navalica,” she said.
Octavian studied her frightened eyes and saw the moment when grim determination made her stand a bit straighter. She wanted to live. She wanted to fight. He admired her for that.
“Time had eroded some of the tablet. No name could be found for the mother of the maelstrom. But I suspect it may be her, yes. The pieces connect.”
“But why here?” Chief Kramer demanded.
“Why anywhere?” Miles whispered.
“We’ll find an answer,” Keomany said. “While we’re all trying to stay alive, we’ll find an answer.”
“The important thing,” Octavian added, “is that all of this is going to get much worse if we don’t stop it.”
He looked at the young man in the hospital bed. “I believe if we can get that iron chest, we’ll understand much more about why here, and why now. If Amber’s visions hold true, your father means to get it and bring it to Navalica. We need to get the chest before he can do that.”
Tommy brightened, looking for the first time like something more than an injured child, and more like a man. He glanced from Chief Kramer to Amber and then pushed himself up into a sitting position.
“He doesn’t know where it is,” Tommy said. “The last my dad knew, it was on the boat. We left it there when the ambulance came to take him to the hospital. But I went back yesterday after I left the hospital. I . . . I thought it might be valuable and I wanted to make sure no one took it.”
“He’s under the influence of the goddess,” Keomany said. “It’s possible he can sense the chest. That he’ll find it anyway.”
Chief Kramer stood straighter, grasping at something he understood, a purpose he could claim.
“Maybe, but this gives us a chance of getting to it before he does. Where is it, Tommy?”
“I brought it over to Mr. Hodgson’s house,” Tommy said.
“Bill Hodgson, the lobsterman?” Chief Kramer asked.
Tommy nodded. “He’s always telling stories about diving on old wrecks and things he brought up from the bottom. I thought he could figure out where it came from and what it might be worth.”
Chief Kramer looked at Octavian. “I’ll get my car and meet you out front.”
Octavian nodded. “Let’s go. We’ve wasted too much time already.”
But as they all began to move toward the door, Amber shouted and blocked the way.
“No,” she said, eyes wide, shaking her head. “No way. My family is . . . they’re infected or something. The only reason I left them was to find help. I know you had to figure this all out, and I get that you have to find this treasure chest, or whatever the hell it is, but I can’t go anywhere but home. I
left
them, don’t you understand? I need
help
.”
Octavian glanced at Keomany and Charlotte.
“We’ll help,” Keomany promised.
But Octavian’s attention had caught on a single word.
“What do you mean, ‘infected’?” he asked.
“They’re changing,” Amber said, taking Miles’s hand. “They’re changing into those things.”
An icy shudder went through Octavian. “Wraiths, you mean? Like the one that killed Professor Varick’s mother?”
Amber nodded. “My great-grandmother looked like she was changing, too. I tried to wake her, but I couldn’t, and then I ran out of the house, and saw Miles, and we thought if we talked to Tommy and figured out how it all started, we could stop it. I could save them.”
Octavian didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“Chief Kramer,” he said, “Keomany, Charlotte, and Professor Varick will go with you. I’ll stay with Amber. Whether you get to the chest before Norman Dunne or not, catch up with me at Amber’s house.”
Amber’s expression softened. “Thank you.”
Octavian said nothing. He had seen these wraiths in action, and it had never occurred to him that they might have begun as humans. Nor had Chief Kramer mentioned anything about people vanishing, or any other instance of such a transformation.
Charlotte stood next to him. “You don’t want me with you?”
Keomany shot her a sharp glance that could only have been jealousy. The chaos that had been unbridling the urges of so many had created a dangerous dynamic among the three of them, almost without Octavian’s realizing it. Much better for them to be parted for now. He thought of Nikki and wondered if she had begun to worry yet that she hadn’t heard from him. The lust that rose in him, the animal passion of it, looked at Keomany and Charlotte—a witch and a vampire—and wanted the magic in them, something he could never get from Nikki. He wondered if it was only the chaos, or if the desire had been in him all along.
“You stay with Keomany,” he told Charlotte, aware of the others all watching him. “If you run into trouble, the two of you are better off together.”
Chief Kramer had his radio out as he went into the corridor, Officer Moschitto at his side. Amber thanked Tommy Dunne, and then she and Miles followed the policemen. Charlotte went next.
Keomany said nothing, only walked over to Octavian, took his hands, and pressed her body against him. A fire of lust ignited inside him. He could feel every curve of her, and it felt to him as though she burned with a heat that prickled his skin, even through his clothes. She stood on her toes and pressed her lips to his throat in a kiss that weakened him for a moment.
Then he pushed her back, held her away from him.
“No,” he said.
She turned her face from him in shame. “I know. It’s making me crazy.”
“It’s going to make us all crazy before too long.”
And then Keomany was gone, she and Charlotte hurrying down the corridor with Moschitto, Professor Varick, and the chief. Octavian turned and thanked Tommy, who stared at him in fascination, and then walked out into the corridor, where Amber awaited him.
“My family,” Amber said as the two of them rushed down the hall. “Do you think you can help them?”
“I’ll do whatever I can,” he said.
Octavian wanted to reassure the girl, to promise her that her parents would be all right, but he didn’t have the heart to lie.
CHAPTER 14
THE
storm had grown worse. As Octavian sped through Hawthorne, the rain drummed on the roof of the car and punished the windshield with such force he thought the glass would crack. He bent over the steering wheel in search of a clear view, but the hot rain had turned even more oily, and the wipers did little more than smear it into long streaks. As he rounded a corner, the tires skidded on slick pavement, forcing him to slow down.
A wraith flitted across the street, black smoke and skeletal piping outlined in the headlights, before vanishing into the rain. Octavian tapped the brakes, slowing further.
“Don’t stop,” Amber said from the passenger seat. “Please.”
Reluctantly, he drove on. She was right, though. The only way to help the people of Hawthorne was to find Navalica and destroy her, to end this storm and send the wraiths back to wherever they had come from.
“There are more of them, I think,” Amber said, peering out her window.
They had seen at least a dozen in the scant miles they’d traveled from the hospital, clinging to houses and perched on roofs, slipping through windows and doors. The chaos magic that prickled Octavian’s skin and suffused his heart with a simmering violence and lust had gripped many people in Hawthorne. The evidence was all around them. Though most of the residents remained indoors, they had seen a mob chasing a man down a narrow side street, three separate bloody brawls, and various couples fucking savagely on street corners and up against buildings. In the storm of anarchic magic, illuminated only by flashes of crisp blue lightning, it had become impossible to tell the difference between sex and rape.
A wraith flashed by the window, flying ahead of the car into the churning storm, dragging an amorphous butterfly of color-shifting light beneath it on the hooks of its curved blades. What were they taking from people, Octavian wondered. Souls? Vitality? Morality?
“There may be more,” Octavian said. “Or they’re just not as worried about being seen now. The storm’s getting stronger. It’s building to something. Whatever purpose they serve, they’re not trying to hide it anymore.”
Octavian thought another moment, troubled. The girl beside him was beautiful, her body young and ripe, and he could sense that the chaos had worked its dark, twisted magic on her hungers just as it had on his own. But she was young, still in college, and he was in love with someone else. There was nothing between them. They didn’t even know each other.
He noticed her squirming in her seat and saw her frustration. The things the chaos did to her were making her angry. Like Octavian, she refused to give in to those baser instincts. But the wraiths had no such hesitation.
“It could be that they’re just excited,” he said quietly, his voice barely audible over the pounding rain. “They’re in a frenzy.”
Amber settled back in her seat, gaze lowered, as though she no longer wanted to see what the storm had brought to her hometown.
“So, what, they’re like sharks when there’s blood in the water?” she asked.
Octavian didn’t think she meant for him to answer, so he kept quiet. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the blue lights of Officer Moschitto’s patrol car flashing. Chief Kramer had decided that they should have a policeman with them to add an official element to whatever actions Octavian might have to take. The chief did not understand that
official
meant nothing now. The police might help some of the people in town make it through the next few hours, but when it came to surviving to see another sunrise, the chief and his officers were not a factor.
“Turn left on Herman Street, right up here,” Amber said.
Octavian signaled for the turn, that tiny gesture a small victory for order.
But then he saw the car ahead. An old Honda had gone over the curb, scraped its passenger side along a telephone pole, and then crashed into a stone retaining wall in front of an old Victorian set back from the road.
“Mr. Octavian,” Amber started.