The Vampire's Reflection (20 page)

Valek ignored Lusian’s snickering leer as he passed him. Instead, he made his way to the small Witch, sitting cross-legged in the corner with her nose buried deep in one of her books of shadows. She did not look up at him.

“Sarah?”

“What?” Her response was quick and biting. He deserved that.

He looked around himself at the coven once again. Every set of glacier-colored eyes was locked on him, fishing through his thoughts—what he had just done upstairs, what his intentions were now. It was impossible to have a private conversation, living with a group of these mind-reading heathens. Valek could swear the only noise in the entire house was the fire crackling and Sarah’s little heart racing like a mouse’s in her chest. Doing his best to guard his thoughts, he cleared his throat and looked back at her.

“Would you please accompany me outside?”

“No,” she snorted and dug her nose deeper into her book.

Valek gritted his teeth. “Yes. You will,” he insisted, hoisting her off the ground by one arm. It wasn’t much of a struggle.

Sarah dropped the book, squealing, and he let her arm go. She rubbed at it, shooting another dirty look at him.

“That will bruise tomorrow, I hope you know,” she shot back bitterly.

“My apologies. Accompany me on that walk, won’t you?” His tone feigned politeness this time as he quickly linked arms with her, tugging her over the threshold and into the foyer.

Hearing a meek voice call for him, Valek stopped and turned to look up the darkened staircase to see Charlotte standing on the top stair with her hand gripped to the polished balustrade. Valek realized it hadn’t been her voice that called for him, but rather, her mind.

She was frowning, her eyes cast to the spot where Valek’s arm linked with Sarah’s. A million of her insecurities flooded him from the top of the staircase. He mentally heard the sound of Charlotte’s heart beginning to rupture with fierce envy as she stared at them, her eyes welling up. It sounded like the violent roar of wind and hail assailing the top of his head. Filling his ears. Deafening. He immediately released Sarah’s arm and the sounds stopped.

“We’ll be back shortly.” He gave a faint smile and grabbed Sarah again, pulling her out into the night, ignoring Charlotte’s many mental questions like a tornado of zillions of tiny voices, each overlapping the other.

Once out in front of the house, Sarah wrapped her arms around herself, teeth chattering. But Valek remained unaffected by whatever the climate was as he continued his persistent crunching through the frost and dead leaves. Sarah yanked her arm free from his grip, though the tug might as well have been a feather washed away from his hand by a small breeze. He did relinquish it, however.

“I’m going to get my coat.” She whirled around on the heels of her shiny, burgundy flats, but Valek caught her and spun her forward again. This time, he placed one of his arms around her shoulder, not to make her warm, but rather to keep her there.

“I don’t think so. I need to speak seriously with you, and I want to do it right now.”

She wrinkled her pixie nose at him. “I should probably inform you that I am not
your
house Witch. Now that Francis is gone, I will be a slave to
no one
. If I want to go back inside, I will,” she huffed.

Valek stopped walking, placing both hands on her shoulders. “I do not mean to speak to you as my slave, Sarah. I mean to speak to you as my friend. I need your help,” he begged, watching her scrutinize him, confusion filling her eyes. “I need your help…as my friend.”

The look in Sarah’s eyes immediately lightened.

“May I take you for a drink?” He smiled.

She pulled away from him, arms flying up in the air. “No!” She clasped her hands around her throat. “Get your light magic somewhere else, bub!”

Valek sighed. “I mean, can I treat you to one at the pub?” He indicated the small establishment wedged between an arcade of shops and the old Elven church just down the square. The doors were set open, welcoming patrons to escape the frigid air for a spirit or two.

“Oh.” Sarah’s cheeks flushed as she dropped her hands. “I can’t be too sure anymore now that your palate has been trained for…other tastes.” She looked him up and down.

Valek chuckled. “Only when I need it. And anyway, Witch’s blood is from a darker magic. It doesn’t appeal at all to me. You should know that.” He didn’t want to sound impolite by going on to explain how sour her blood was. It actually smelled like rancid milk disguised by lumps and lumps of sugar. “About that drink….”

“No, thank you. I don’t drink. And at any rate, I am mad at you!” She stomped her foot.

“Right. You’re not the only one,” he sighed. “Tea, then. You will have tea. And that’s fine. You can stay mad at me,” he offered and glanced behind them, at his home. Just as he expected, Charlotte was standing in the bedroom window, watching them. She still looked just as hurt. “But still, we must talk.”

Sarah refused to budge. “What of your little experiment? What was your conclusion? That she is uncontrollable? Her desires are almost as bad as
yours!
”

“The conclusion is that she dies,” he said. “If she suffers when I am around, I have to give in, lest she be in unimaginable pain. I cannot bear to listen to it any more. If I am to leave, she will slowly die and remain miserable, as will I. Her addiction is not an addiction at all, but rather an incurable disease that kills her from the inside. It’s an infection.” His shoulders slumped. He truly did feel desperate. The future had seemed so bright once they had been successful in escaping the Regime. Occult creatures could cross borders freely without the fear of being killed. There was finally a sense of liberation. With any sort of order destroyed, their world was quickly sinking into chaos. Monsters were already beginning to invade human cities. His own coven had proved that to be true. To think about the consequences those actions may have on the future was enough to make even Valek dizzy. He needed to restore order, and he needed to begin with Charlotte.

Sarah glanced over her shoulder to what Valek was looking at, seeing Charlotte angrily disappear back into deeper parts of the house. Sarah turned again and began walking ahead of him. “Fine. Come on,” she called. “But you will listen to everything I say.”

Valek caught up with her easily as they made their way farther down the bleak and snowy street. “I will not change her.”

“We are going to try a different way,” Sarah explained. “I’ve been thinking about this just as fervently as you have, believe it or not.”

The Occult had become so forsaken, ransacked since the fall of the Regime. Mostly the older inhabitants remained, afraid of the outside world after being caged off from it for so long. But those younger creatures that had tasted freedom for the first time flooded over the Occult borders like bats out of hell. A lot of the shops in the center square had been looted, the windows broken, though the Elven church still stood perfect and quiet as it always had.

Valek and Sarah entered through the archway to the gloomy inn. Even this tavern, that had always been crowded every night only a few, short months before, had fizzled to a gathering of a mere handful. Firelight was the only source of illumination over the quiet, shadowy faces. As Valek walked in, an eerie, hushed feeling fell over the room. Glasses stopped their clinking. Elves and various types of Phasers stared maliciously at him as he moved slowly, deeper into the tavern. It was so quiet, Valek swore he could count the pulses in the room.

A pair of portly Trolls sitting at one side of the bar turned to glare Valek down. They winced at him before turning to each other. One whispered, “What’s a leech doing here?”

The other responded, “There ain’t no blood bein’ served at the bar.” They each chuckled quietly before turning their attention back to him.

Noticing this, Valek grabbed Sarah’s arm, stopping her from going any farther. He could predict the Troll’s next actions all too easily as he watched them slowly stand from their bar stools. One of them cracked his knuckles—a warning that he intended them to make impact with Valek’s face.

“Hey!” One called out to him, reaching around to scratch his rear. His paunchy gut, poked from between his stained shirt and tattered slacks. Thin suspenders stretched out over the tremendous size of him. He snorted the thick contents of his nose, gulping it down his throat. It was enough to make Valek’s stomach lurch.

“Blood suckers aren’t welcome here!” The Troll gripped the neck of his ale bottle and chucked it toward Valek’s head.

Valek swiftly dodged it, the glass shattering all about the floor, beer spilling in a puddle around his shoes. The rest of the tavern patrons reacted to the noise with hoots and quiet giggles.

He lifted his hands in surrender, his attempt at a white flag. “Gentlemen, we do not come seeking trouble.”

The other Troll hocked the slimy contents of this mouth to the floorboards. “How unlucky for you, then, parasite.
Trouble
is exactly what you’ve found.” The two snickered, slowly pursuing Valek and Sarah, who stood frozen behind him.

“Well, isn’t
she
a pretty thing….” The other grinned when he noticed the Witch. “Bring her here!”

Valek’s eyes shifted black as he crouched like a wild cat. His talons seemed to lengthen as a minatory hiss slipped from his throat. If they took another step, he would tear out their jugulars and empty them there on the tavern floor.

The larger Troll pulled an axe from his tool belt. The other one shouted, “Chop off his head!”

Valek roared, baring his fangs—his only weapon. They lunged at each other, the Trolls’ masses seeming to be of no hindrance to their agility. Despite their stealthy moves, the floorboards thumped under their immense weight as they ran at him.

“
Congelo
!” Sarah chanted with her arms raised into the air.

The entire world bent to her command with a wave of light that seemed to explode from her hands. Valek, as well as the pair of Trolls, hung suspended in mid-air as time stood still. A twinkling light formed in the space between the Witch’s arms, stretched above her head. It spun and swirled, the bright, white center seeming to plunge downward like the dripping sands of time as she walked slowly forward. Things that had been in motion seemed to take on an odd sort of gelatinous form, slowly rippling like a pond surface in slow motion.

Valek was conscious in the freeze, but the sensation was strange. He’d never experienced anything like it, as though his solid body had suddenly been reduced to liquid, as he looked at the world around him.

He watched as Sarah carefully lowered her arms, the light still hanging brilliantly above her in the air as if it were balancing there. She dipped her hand into its starry center and pulled out a fistful of light. Snickering, she blew it like grains of dust, in the direction of the Trolls, causing their flies to unzip, their pants to drop around their ankles. The Witch moved quickly around back of them. With one, swift kick in each of their inflated rears, the two hurtled out of the tavern doors and into the town square.

“
Impetus
!” Sarah chanted and Valek dropped to his knees. He attempted to stand up, but regaining his balance after what had happened proved to be difficult, even for him. His knees still felt like gelatin.

“Sarah!” He gasped. “Where did you learn to do that?”

Sarah said nothing in response, quickly moving to the tavern doors. She pushed them closed, bolting them together with the giant, wooden barricade.

“It doesn’t matter. I have no tolerance for racism.” She dusted off her hands and gracefully flitted back over to the bar. A large, female Troll, the bartender, stood with her hands clasped over her mouth. “Black tea. Straight. No sugar,” Sarah demanded. She peered over her pointy little shoulder at Valek, who still stared, astonished. “You?”

“Nothing for me.” Valek grinned at her.

“Oh. Right.” She blushed and turned back to the barmaid. “Quickly.” She tapped a nail down on the polished, wooden surface. “Or I’ll do the same to you and retrieve the drink myself!”

Yelping, the barmaid quickly obliged and scrambled for the makings of Sarah’s order. In a few moments, the two of them had taken seats by the fire and the barmaid delivered Sarah’s tea in trembling hands before dashing away to hide in the darkest corner of the tavern.

Valek leaned on his elbow in the chair across from Sarah, unable to stop the enormous grin spreading across his face. “You are fabulous. Have I ever told you this?”

“You didn’t have to.” Sarah returned the satisfied grin and sipped at her tea. “Francis taught me not to take crap from lowlifes. Now,” the Witch began, “tell me why we could not discuss this at home.”

Valek leaned forward, his elbows to his knees. “I did not want to discuss this at home for fear that Charlotte would try to listen. I think we need to find Francis. He’s banished to the Dark City. I believe he is with the elders of my kind. He’s the only connection I have for me to seek counsel with them. I do not wish to turn Charlotte, so that makes them the only ones who might have a different answer to my problem. More importantly, there was a man.” Valek frowned down at the floor, struggling with the idea that Sarah might find him mad. “A dark man. I could not see his face. It was the other evening. I had been alone in my study, sitting for hours, just thinking about Charlotte’s predicament.

“Out of the corner of my eye, I see this dark figure leaned against the hearth of my fireplace. He was just standing there, watching me. And then he spoke.” Valek narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping the floor. Sarah watched him silently, her eyes wide. “He said he was from Abelim—a member of the Parliament. He told me I would be joining them soon…alone. Without another word, he vanished, only moments before Charlotte appeared in the doorway and came seeking comfort in my arms. She didn’t see him.”

Sarah blinked at him once before setting her tea down. “That’s impossible.” She leaned forward. The glow of the firelight danced around the delicate planes of her face, creating an intense darkness about her shiny eyes. “We’ll have to go to them. It would be very dangerous. You’re aware you’d have to leave Charlotte here.”