Chapter 8

 

A cold, damp floor pressed up against my limp body as I gradually regained consciousness. I tried to look around, but wherever I was, it was completely dark.

I coughed, clearing my lungs of phlegm. I took in a breath and coughed again. If we were in any other city, I’d assume I was in a basement—the musty smell certainly fit. But this was New Orleans. It was no basement.

“Isabelle, you there?”

I… where? Here?

“Yeah, I’m a bit dazed, too… need to channel a little magic, just enough to illuminate my eyes so we can get some light in here.”

Okay… yes… need to see… we were drugged?

“A tranquilizer dart, I think. Explains why you weren’t able to take over when I lost consciousness.”

Could have healed us… if I knew what happened… if we had more time…

I suppose it could have been a coincidence that whoever had attacked me used a tranquilizer. Somehow, though, I doubted it. Whoever it was knew about me… they knew about Isabelle. A strike in the back of my skull risked her healing me, or even allowing her to take over. The tranquilizer, though… it knocked us out completely before she even had a chance to act. And whoever did it didn’t want us dead, either. A well-placed bullet in the skull could have done that, and whoever shot me with the dart must’ve been a dead-shot. My neck is small—not the easiest target. And it ensured a quick delivery of the sedative. Isabelle and I were unconscious in seconds.

“Sense anyone… sense anything?”

No… but that doesn’t mean we’re alone.

Considering the fact that we were lurking outside a suspected vampire lair before we got tranqued, chances were we weren’t alone, and Isabelle couldn’t sense vampires. They don’t have auras… they don’t radiate life.

I inhaled—not that I needed to, but something about drawing the power of creation through Isabelle was like breathing. If I actually inhaled, it helped me focus, to ensure I drew in just enough for what I intended to accomplish. And virtually any amount of her magic would illuminate my eyes enough to get a peek at the room around me.

A tingle spread across my brow, and from there flooded through my body like a low-power electric current. I opened my eyes, a green glow flooding the room. It was a smaller room than I thought. I moved cautiously toward one of the walls—all of them seemingly containing large, rectangular placards. I reached out my hand, running my fingers against the cool, smooth surface of one of them. I pressed on it slightly, and I felt the surface move slightly. I felt an engraving. Letters, perhaps? The green light that emanated from my eyes gave me some visibility, but it was still hard to focus. I squinted, kneeling slightly to get a better look.

“Alberto De Leonne,” I whispered.

This is a mausoleum…

I pressed on the placard a little harder, feeling the weight of what I was sure was a casket behind it budge slightly.

“He isn’t in there, mon amie.”

I jerked myself around, startled by the voice. I gasped.

“Ramon? I thought…”

“You thought you’d staked me, mademoiselle? Oui, oui… so you did.”

My heart skipped a beat as sweat gathered on my brow. Ramon looked just as he had the last time I’d seen him. His skin pale, his clothing styled to a prior era. Only now he had a gash on his neck, black blood dripping down his neck onto his shoulder. “I don’t understand… your grave, it was undisturbed.”

“Désolé de décevoir, mademoiselle,” Ramon said. “I barely spent a night in that grave after you staked my heart.”

“Someone raised you, again?”

Ramon raised a hand to his cheek. “Of course I had a plan for that, mademoiselle. It was my intention that you should stake me from the beginning.”

I tilted my head. “What do you mean it was your plan? Why would you want me to stake you?”

“L’intelligence, mon amie! His Highness required a test of your… abilities. Yours and hers.”

“Mine and my sister’s? Who would want to test…”

“Not your sister, mon amie! Or, should I say, mes amis!”

I bit my lip. My French wasn’t great—but living in New Orleans you pick up a little, here and there. Combined with the year I’d taken in high school, I could tell the difference between the singular and the plural. “You refer to me as though I’m more than one… as friends?”

“C’est vrai! It is true that you are more than one. The power you call upon is not your own.”

“You still didn’t answer my question. Who sent you?”

“His Highness has been known by many names… his life, spanning the centuries. He knows the past and also the future. He planned all of this, mademoiselle, before your birth. And in his grace, he granted me this last opportunity.”

I squinted, the light that illuminated the room dimming slightly. “Opportunity for what?”

“For revenge!” Ramon shouted as he lunged toward me.

His hands gripped my neck, his jagged nails digging into my skin. Ramon reared his head back, exposing his fangs. One thing I wasn’t about to let happen was to get bit. I quickly focused my will and screamed, “Beli!”

I felt my dragon blade form in my hand, though this time it wasn’t in the shape of a blade, not like I was accustomed to. Instead, the elemental formed into something else—a stake, illuminated with pink and green energies. I tried to press Ramon away from me with my opposite arm, but he was too strong… too powerful.

Through his back! Isabelle shouted.

Gripping my soul weapon tightly, I pressed it through the middle of Ramon’s back, praying I’d strike his heart.

In an instant, Ramon’s body dissipated, sent by my dragon blade—or in this instance, my dragon stake—back to the land of the dead, Samhuinn, the dark side of Guinee.

I reached for my neck, coughing and gasping for air before drawing on Isabelle’s magic to heal whatever damage Ramon might have done to my neck and esophagus. As it healed, I felt some blood gather in the back of my mouth, which I promptly spit into the dirt.

“Bravo!” Another voice said—a male voice, deep and smooth. Whoever approached was clapping his hands.

I turned to look. His whole body was covered in a black robe, a large hood obscuring my view of his face. A red glow emanated from beneath his hood. He held a scythe in one hand. Another figure, shrouded similarly but shorter and more petite in stature, lurked behind. The second figure stood, long hair flowing out from her hood, her hands folded in front of her waist.

“The Grim Reaper and his apprentice, I presume? You can’t be serious,” I said.

The figure released a raucous laugh. “But it’s fitting, Mulledy, don’t you think?”

“Who are you, and how do you know me?”

The figure snapped his fingers, and torches mounted in all the walls surrounding me lit aflame. I released the energies I’d been channeling from Isabelle—chances were I’d need some extra magic to spare sooner or later. “Think hard, Mulledy. From your perspective, it wasn’t that long ago. From mine, I’ve waited centuries for this very moment.”

“Look,” I said, “I don’t know who you are or what you want with me. But you’ve got my parents in there.”

“All part of a plan I’ve been orchestrating for some time, but I can assure you, your parents are well. They have a craving, of a sort. Something you are sure to find distasteful. But I should say, once the aspect within them awakened upon my return, their memories and minds were healed. It’s remarkable really.”

“You’re Baron Samedi? The red Baron?” I asked, my heart thumping in my chest.

“Ha!” the cloaked figure said. “He wishes…”

“Tell me who you are… and what do you want with my parents!”

He’s not a Loa, but not entirely a vampire. There is an aura, an energy. Something human that remains…

“Your parents are simply leverage… to ensure your compliance. You owe me a favor, Mulledy.”

“A favor? A favor for what? I don’t even know you.”

“But you do,” the figure said as he drew back his hood.

I gasped. The face that looked back at me… I couldn’t believe it. His features were all the same—good-looking, a smooth complexion, but flush of color. Not full of life like he had been before. He had that disdain in his eyes he’d always had for me, but now it seemed to be mixed with pain, with wisdom. There was a depth there I hadn’t seen before.

“Nico… I… I can’t believe it’s really you. How did you…”

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for nearly a thousand years.”

I scrunched my brow. “What are you saying?”

“You left me in Guinee. You brought me there without my consent. You asked me to save you. Then you left me there.”

“I tried to get back…”

“How do you measure time when you are in a realm outside time itself? It felt like a lifetime that I battled with the red Baron. For a long time I held him in check, but I grew tired, and he was resilient. He just wouldn’t stop. No matter how many times I crushed him with the doll I’d made, he kept coming. I just couldn’t do it anymore… I accepted his bargain.”

“You made a bargain with the red Baron?”

“Do you judge me? I would have before, but what would you have done? I kept thinking you were out there, trying to find me. Trying to get me back. I trusted that you weren’t such a bitch that you’d suck me into another realm to save your ass, then leave me there forever. But I should have known better. You were always a bitch.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine what he’d been through… what I’d put him through. I never liked Nico, but he was right. I used him. I left him in Guinee. And I failed to bring him back. “I’m sorry, Nico. I tried, I really tried.”

“You didn’t try hard enough!” In a split second, Nico was behind me. He grabbed me around the waist and yanked at my hair, exposing my neck.

“Nico, please!”

“Are you going to drive that stake through my heart, too? Are you going to send me back to hell… again?”

“I won’t… I can’t…”

Nico’s cold breath struck my neck, sending shivers down my spine. “For centuries I wanted nothing more than to hurt you, to bite you, to taste your blood. What would it taste like? The blood of two souls mixed into one?”

Give me the reins! I can stop him.

In truth, I was oddly relaxed in Nico’s grasp. I could have given Isabelle control. I could have stopped him. But for a second I knew how Nico had felt, stuck in Guinee, fighting an unending battle. At a certain point, everyone breaks. He sacrificed himself in a bargain. I didn’t know the terms of the bargain he’d made—clearly it had turned him into this… vampire… this creature he’d become. But could I blame him? I’d been fighting this shit my whole life. Ever since I was nine. The idea of letting him win, letting him sink his fangs into my neck… I’d regret it later. But there’s a freedom in resigning, in giving up.

Nico released me, pushing me down as my body hit the cold floor at the feet of the second figure, the apprentice who stood behind him in the shadows. I looked up at her, and I could see her eyes. They were black, but there was something else there, too. Something good, even beneath the veil of the demon she’d become. I could almost feel her empathy as she looked down on me. But then her empathy faded. Her face, though cloaked beneath the shadow of her hood, turned furious. Her heeled foot crushed down on the side of my head. I screamed in pain.

Nico’s laughter echoed through the mausoleum. “Give in to her power, Annabelle. Kiss the sole that crushes you. She is my apprentice, but your goddess. You are nothing compared to her.”

I writhed in pain as the girl’s heel pressed into my temple.

“With just a little pressure, she could kill you. How does it feel to be at the mercy of someone else… hoping, praying, for mercy?” Nico chuckled. “How ironic, for that is her name. Annabelle, meet Mercy. But don’t let her name fool you. She is merciless. And you just staked her boyfriend. You sent Ramon to hell. I couldn’t blame her if she did the same to you.”

“Please,” I begged. “Don’t do this…”

Annabelle! I can stop this!

But Nico wasn’t going to kill me. He’d said it himself. He’d waited for centuries. I wasn’t even sure how that was possible. But he’d been longing for revenge. He wasn’t going to give up his chance in order to teach his apprentice a lesson in brutality. But if this girl really did love Ramon, the vampire I’d just staked and sent to Samhuinn…

“Beg for Mercy!” Nico shouted.

I had too much pride for that. At least I typically did. But all Nico wanted was my humiliation. He wanted me to feel powerless, to feel trapped. To feel like I depended on someone else’s power. So I did it… I shouted, “Mercy, please!”

She released me and pressed the sole of her shoe to my lips.

“Kiss it,” Mercy demanded.

I gulped… and kissed the vampire’s shoe.

“Doesn’t it feel good to know your place, bitch?” Nico asked. “To finally realize you’re nothing compared to me, nothing compared to even my apprentice.”

“I’m sorry, Nico…”

“Stand up. This was for my… amusement. And as much as I’d like to ruin you, I’m going to do what you never did. I’m going to give you another chance. A chance to atone for your sins.”

I briefly made eye contact with Mercy, who had pressed her lips together. A lot can be said through a glance, through a single expression. I could see it in her face—pain, viciousness, and regret. There was a darkness that loomed over her countenance, but there was something else. A goodness. And pain. Something I knew she was hiding from Nico, something she didn’t want him to see. But she wanted me to see it. Whatever it was. There was more to this girl… I wanted to help her, somehow. But there was nothing I could do.

“You find her… alluring, don’t you?” Nico asked.

“She is beautiful,” I said, quite honestly, as I returned to my feet.

“No mortal I’ve met can resist her charms. It’s what makes her so brutal, so dangerous. It’s what I love about her. But we’re not here to talk about Mercy.”

“Then what do you want with me, Nico. If you aren’t going to get your revenge, what do you need?”

Nico sighed as he began to pace. “I’ve been testing you, Annabelle. The vampires I’ve been sending to your plantation—all young acolytes, all hungry, but foolish. I’ve been watching how easily you eliminated them. Ramon begged me for a chance to do the same. I warned him against it, but he insisted. So the way I saw it, he’d either eliminate you, in which case it would show you were too weak to fulfill the purpose I require. Or he’d serve as another test. A stronger, more experienced vampire… a formidable foe. But you handled him quite quickly.”

I glanced back at Mercy, who still held her head low. Did this girl really love Ramon? Can vampires love at all? Why couldn’t they? I mean, we think love is a human emotion. But it’s more than that. It’s a divine emotion, and if the divine is in all things, why wouldn’t that include these creatures, these monsters?

“So you were testing me… to do what, exactly?”

Nico folded his hands, released one of the crypts that I presumed held… someone… and leaned against it. “Why don’t you take a seat yourself. To tell you what I need of you requires I tell you more of my story. How I came to be what I am.”