Chapter 21

 

I had to see Ashley first—I had to tell her alone. She took the news about Dad about as well as can be expected. He’d died a hero—that was all she could really say. More like he’d died trying to play the hero and got himself killed in the process. But I wasn’t going to let my pessimism water down whatever mind games she wanted to play with herself to elicit some comfort out of the fact that Dad was gone. Truth is, we tell ourselves all kinds of bullshit to make us feel better when people die. We know, deep down, that that’s all it is. But we swallow that deep-down stuff as deep as we can because, well, we have no choice. We have to go on living, we have to press on. And now, more than ever, we didn’t have time to feel the loss. Too much was at stake—and we had a narrow window of opportunity to try to stop Kalfu.

In the short time since I’d been gone, I was impressed—and somewhat intimidated—by the sheer number of people who’d flooded into Vilokan. There would be more—these were only those who lived close enough to get here quickly. But Sauron and Mikah were still gathering more. Perhaps more disconcerting, however, was the number of vampires Mercy had gathered. Vampires move quickly—and they had to in order to make it before first light—but Vilokan was swarming with more vamps than vodouisants two to one, at least. There may have been two hundred of them. Who would have ever thought so many vampires existed—much less lived close enough that they could make it here in such short order. Even with vampiric speed, they weren’t going to be traveling far and wide. Vilokan was a good-sized city, all things considered. But if things continued at this rate, it wasn’t going to be large enough.

“Holy shit, Mercy,” I said, pulling her aside. “How many vampires are there in the world?”

“Not many,” Mercy said. “Only a few hundred in every state, a few hundred thousand worldwide.”

“A few hundred thousand!” I exclaimed. “And these who you brought in?”

“Just those who live—well, exist—in Louisiana.”

“I thought you all were rare. I seriously only expected a hundred or so.”

Mercy laughed. “Nico didn’t let many survive whom he’d turned. He staked them out pretty quickly when he couldn’t tame their cravings. Sometimes he staked them just because he couldn’t be bothered. But even one youngling gets out there and starts biting people, the shit spreads like a coronavirus.”

I shook my head. “And I suppose vampires don’t engage in social distancing to prevent the spread?”

“Of course not. Vampires don’t do take-out. The world is our buffet.”

I shook my head. By the smirk on her face it was evident that she had no idea how fucked up that sounded. Or maybe she did, and she just enjoyed seeing me squirm.

“Well, I think I might need your help. With Hailey…”

Mercy raised one eyebrow. “It takes a vampire witch to handle a vampire witch, I suppose.”

I explained to Mercy what had gone down. She seemed completely unsurprised—as if she’d seen it all coming. I’m pretty sure it was just Mercy’s way of playing it cool, acting like due to her almost two hundred years of existence she’d seen it all and wasn’t taken off guard by anything. I knew better. I’d seen her face when Kalfu bit her—she definitely hadn’t seen that coming, and I was reasonably certain she hadn’t seen any of this coming either. Who could have?

“Bottom line,” I said. “I think we’re going to try to bring Hailey here. See if we can convince her to turn on Kalfu.”

“And you need my witchery to do that?” Mercy asked.

I shook my head. “No. I just need you to be Mercy. She’s just like you—hungry for power.”

Mercy huffed. “You sell me short. I want a lot more than power.”

I ignored her comment. “Thing is, you turned on your sire. In a manner of speaking. You bit him to get his power, didn’t you?”

“Well yes, but—”

I raised my hand to stop her. “I know what your reasons were. We’ve been through it already. Doesn’t matter. What you need to do is convince her to do the same. Convince her that Kalfu took advantage of her, broke his deal… reneged on his promise to give her power.”

“Why would we do that?” Mercy asked. “Even if she decides to turn on him, she won’t stand a chance. Kalfu has too many powers right now.”

“Which is why we need to convince her to fuse herself to Isabelle…”

“But why wouldn’t we just get Isabelle back and put her back inside of you?”

I sighed. “I won’t be able to get close enough. Kalfu will have the vessel that contains her soul well guarded. Even with Pauli, there’s no way we could get in and out of there with it. But Hailey could.”

“If Kalfu doesn’t see it coming,” Mercy said. “Besides, you’re seriously asking me to trust that girl again? After what she did the last time?”

“Trust her? No. But hell, Mercy, I don’t trust you either.”

“Fair enough. The feeling is mutual.”

I nodded. “But we share a common goal. Hailey made it clear to me that she was with Kalfu only because of what he could give her. She wanted my dad’s power.”

“But why would she want that power so bad?” Mercy asked.

I honestly hadn’t thought about it. I mean, Mercy had a point—what would a young vampire witch do with an ability to untangle fused souls? It was a pretty impressive power in our context, but in most situations it would be pretty useless.

“Maybe that isn’t the power he’d promised her after all,” Mercy said. “Just the power he had to give her so he could claim Isabelle for himself.”

“If that’s true, there might be something else he promised her. Something that was contingent upon her gaining that ability.”

“Possibly,” Mercy said. “But if she really was as perturbed by Kalfu taking that power as you suggest she seemed to be, maybe it’s the scope of your dad’s power that we’ve underestimated.”

“You mean the untangling of souls is just a side effect of something else his power does?”

Mercy nodded. “And Hailey betrayed us before we even knew your dad had that power.”

Again, I heard a muffled voice from my burlap sack. And again, I retrieved Legba’s head.

“The vampire makes a good point,” Legba said. “Vampires tend to manifest abilities that reflect their personalities. While the power is grown from the pieces of souls they collect, their powers are a reflection of something they desired desperately when they were still human.”

“So, Mercy,” I said. “As a child you were a control freak? Just wanted everyone to do what you said?”

“Actually,” Mercy said, “that’s not far from the truth. Not that I was a control freak, but I’d always felt like I was out of control of my life. Like my family had planned everything out. That’s why I started with witchcraft to begin with, to get control.”

“And what was your father like?” Legba asked.

I shook my head. “I barely knew him. I mean, I was nine when he was bitten, and he and Mom were never the same since. She started losing her mind first, and all Dad ever did until his mind started to go was take her from doctor to doctor, quack to quack. He was determined to fix her.”

“To fix her, you say?” Legba asked. “Just to make things right again, to put things back in their place.”

“So the untangling of souls… are you saying Dad’s ability is more about trying to put people back where they belong?”

“The dead should be dead, the living should be living, free of supernatural interference. Spirits bound to Kalfu don’t belong.”

“And why would a young girl like Hailey want that ability for herself?” I asked. “I mean, she’s a vampire, she’d get her own abilities eventually.”

“She’s a young girl somehow estranged from her family, am I right?”

I nodded.

“It sounds to me like that’s something she’d like to fix.”