Blood Hunter (The Grandor Descendant Series) (47 page)

“This is great,” said Ari, beaming up at Lea. “Ok, you go back and check on Chris, then try to work out how to reverse the curse. I’m going to tell Ragon that we can reverse the curse-”

“-you can’t tell him any of this,” Lea said sharply, and Ari looked down sheepishly at her feet; she knew the binding spell Lea had performed would prevent her from giving Ragon all the details, but she hoped she might at least be able to give him a little hope.

“I promise I won’t tell him,” she said, racing away to Cruor halls, then turning back around she yelled, “it’s not like I can anyway.” 

When Ari reached Ragon’s room, she knocked and waited. There was no answer so she gently prised the door open and to her surprise found Thomas. He was sitting at Ragon’s desk, his head in his hands.

“Where’s Ragon?” she asked, looking around hopefully.

“With Clyde; they are trying to convince the waeres to help but I don’t like our chances,” he said, a miserable expression on his face. “And the rest of the coven is trying to gather intel on who the blood hunter could be.”

“Are you ok?” she asked, then immediately felt stupid.

No; of course Thomas wasn’t alright; the person he loved more than anyone else was being held prisoner by a near invincible foe.

“Trust me,” said Ari, reaching out a hand to touch Thomas lightly on the shoulder. “We are going to get her back. I think I have found something that will-”

But Ari was cut off when Thomas stood, moving over to the window and looking out mournfully at the night sky.

“It’s funny… time. It passes us by so differently; though you might know that better than us immortals,” he added, looking at Ari.

“Um…”

“You know, when I first met Sandra, I had been a vampire for almost seven hundred years,” he said, reaching for the familiar cross pendant underneath his shirt.

“I didn’t know that.”

“This cross was given to me by someone I respected; a man who changed the world. I wear it because it acts as a constant reminded that with great sacrifice comes great hope,” he said, showing Ari the cross. “It’s odd, the man who worked the metal to make this pendant, was crucified on one also.” 

Ari’s mouth fell open. The words crucified and cross… but did that mean?

“Are you talking about Jesus?” asked Ari, looking up at Thomas in surprise.

“I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes; the man you call Christ was friend to a monster. He even allowed me to write in his great book. He was the one who taught me value in life, and he was the one who despite my infliction, granted me penance for acting as a disciple. It took me a long time to learn that; no wonder he called me doubting Thomas.”

“Are you saying that of the twelve apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke… you’re that Thomas?” asked Ari, recalling her Sunday school lessons at the Grace Valley orphanage. “Um, so you believe in God?”

“He sure as hell believed in me; he was a man when I knew him, but I have seen more than most; nothing is impossible! You know Sandra told me once, that when she first met me she knew that I could never hurt her. She said that she could sense it. From that day on, whether it was true or not, I always thought that she was right… until now.”

“Thomas,” said Ari, sighing deeply, “this isn’t your fault.”

“Unfortunately it is and now I must bear my cross. I knew when I turned Victoria that I was creating a blood line.”

“But… why did you turn her then?” Ari asked curiously, and not for the first time she wondered just what Victoria meant to him. 

“It was a long time ago. When I was made into a vampire, I left a family behind; I had a wife and a daughter called Rena. I watched them for their lifetime; watched as my daughter grew into a woman and bore children of her own. I was determined not to bring them into my darkness. I was afraid for them and so contented my existence with ensuring that my line lived on, though I alone would feel the sting of their mortality,” he said. “I was able to keep them safe in a world very different to the one we live in now; that is until my great, great, grandson had a daughter. The moment she was born I was reminded of Rena; they had the same heart shaped face and strawberry blonde hair, with tiny freckles lining their nose and cheeks. Her name was Victoria. When she was in her thirty-third year of life she became sick. We were in Europe and it was 1338 when the ‘black death’ swept through the lands. The plague took many lives, but I was only concerned with one- Victoria’s.”

Ari held her breath; she thought she knew what was coming next.

“At the time I was the patron and priest of a small church just outside of Venice. Back then the only hope for the inflicted was prayer, and so Victoria’s father took her to me. He did not know of my relationship to his family; he saw me only as a priest. The illness came quickly for Victoria and by the fourth day she was almost dead. Never had I seen a man more grievous than her father. He begged me to help her, pleaded with God to spare her, but she continued to worsen. When I knew the end was near, I took her into confession; she could barely breathe let alone talk, but I wanted to make sure she did not suffer. And so when I went to end her pain, she looked at me… and… I saw Rena. I couldn’t do it. It was then that I turned her and she became a vampire and my fledgling. For the longest time I hated myself for inflicting my line with vampirism. I had sworn never to turn a mortal, and I had just done so to the one person I loved most in the world. I believe in fate, which is why I know that this, Sandra being taken by a Blood Hunter, is happening because of me.”

“But there is a chance that any fledgling can become a blood hunter,” said Ari, hoping to shift some of Thomas’s guilt.

“Exactly, which is why after Victoria I promised myself that I would never make another vampire again,” Thomas said. “But when I found Sandra,” he added, smiling weakly for the first time, “it was as if history was repeating itself all over; I couldn’t let her die. She never knew it, but I was the priest who presided over her and her husband’s wedding. Before God I wed her to a monster. I knew it. So when the Naztechs came to burn John’s estate, I knew I had to save her. My weakness is the reason why she is suffering now.” 

“That’s not true,” said Ari, before glancing down at her phone and realising that it was almost 3am; she needed to get back to Lea and Chris, and help them to break the blood hunter curse. “Look, Thomas, I have to go,” she added, suddenly moving over to the door. “But none of this is your fault. You gave Victoria many, many more years than God would have… and you will give Sandra many more to come.”

As Ari rushed back to Omega halls, her mind was reeling from the story Thomas had told her. She still couldn’t quite believe that he was biblical, literally, although now that she thought about it, it did make sense. She remembered the first time that she had seen Thomas kill a man, when they were in Australia. He had been saddened by the loss of life and spoke of how precious it was, even going to the extremes of tattooing the man’s name on his flesh in penance. There had been other names there too, names that Ari recognised- Victoria Hardings and Sandra Wood. Now Ari understood why Thomas was so troubled when Victoria went missing. She wasn’t just a fledgling to him; she was his kin, almost like his daughter.

When Ari finally reached Chris’s room, she saw Lea sitting on the floor cross legged, flipping frantically through the ancient witch hunting book. Chris was slumped in his bed, still looking miserable.

“Have you found anything yet?” asked Ari, moving to sit next to Lea.

Lea, whose nose was turned up at an image of a woman being tortured on a rack, looked up at Ari and shook her head.

“We might have, if control freak over there would let me help,” said Chris.

“You’re not well,” said Lea, turning to stare at Chris incredulously. “The magic you did tonight, it doesn’t come without consequences. I may have helped you but you took most of the load on yourself. You can’t just ferry three people half way across the world and not expect there to be consequences. You need to rest.”

After her warning, Lea returned her attention to Malleus Maleficarum, while Chris made faces behind her back, causing Ari to laugh.

“Oh,” said Lea, trying to keep her voice casual, “I almost forgot to ask; did you tell Ragon… I mean did you tell him about the Grandor descendant?”

Ari faltered next to Lea. No, she hadn’t told Ragon yet and to be honest, she didn’t know how to. How could she explain to him that the reason she could stop time, see into the future and burst into sunshine was because it was her destiny to destroy vampires? She knew the truth would kill him and couldn’t bear the look on his face when he found out. Ari’s destiny would bring to light all of the initial concerns he’d had about their relationship. He had never understood why Ari could love him… how she could be in love with him. Ari knew that Ragon still thought of himself as a monster, despite everything she had done to try to make him think otherwise.

No, thought Ari; now as not the time to worry him with this. After their battle with the blood hunter she would tell him.

“I didn’t see Ragon,” said Ari, “he and the rest of the coven are trying to find out who the blood hunter is.”

For the next hour, Lea sat with the book in her lap and turned from page to page, reading the Latin text and mumbling to herself. Ari, who had become increasingly worried about Chris, finally turned to her, desperate for a progress report.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“There should be a sign in here, one that I will recognise so that I know which page the curse was written on,” Lea explained, not looking up.

“But how will it be on this copy?” asked Ari, thinking that there must have been many editions of this book.

“As long as this is an original it won’t matter,” Lea explained. “There must be an
Effingo
spell on the book, so that all original copies also have the details of the curse.”

“So what is this mark supposed to look like?” Ari asked, looking more closely at the book. “Maybe I could help?”

“It’s our family sign.”

“The one on your book of light?” asked Ari, recalling the image of a circle, crescent moon and bird.

Lea nodded, holding the book out so that Ari could also assist with scanning the pages. The book was very old and weathered, and though it had clearly been printed on heavy parchment, there were many stains on the copy they had stolen from the library. The further they got through the book, the more Ari worried that Lea’s family symbol might have faded, or been torn out and was no longer there.

“There!” Ari shouted, and both Chris and Lea jumped, startling at Ari’s sudden scream, “at the corner of the page.”

Lea held the book up so that it was an inch from her face, and stared at the partly torn page. In the corner, barely visible, was half of what was unmistakeably Lea’s family crest.

“Nice work eagle eye,” said Lea, smiling up at Ari before placing the book on the ground, open to the page of her family crest. “
Effingo
,” she whispered, pressing her index finger against the mark.

When Lea pulled her finger away, Ari was surprised to see that the mark was no longer on the page, but had transferred to Lea’s finger instead. Then something strange caught Ari’s eye and she glanced back down at the book. The tiny typed black letters of the print were glowing and re-arranging themselves, sliding across the page or else disappearing entirely.

“Wow, when you witches do something, you really go all out,” said Chris.

Chris had sat up in bed and was straining to see. His hair was messy and though his eyes shone with excitement, there was weariness behind them, as if he hadn’t slept for days. When he moved to sit on the floor next to Ari, it was not with the youthful spring of a boy in his mid-twenties, but more akin to that of an old man, well past his prime, when the joints were no longer smooth but degenerated from arthritis. Ari’s concerned eyes met his and he quickly smiled at her. The smile that Ari returned was not a happy one, rather it was worried and guilty, and Chris’s eyes became confused but he did not ask what was wrong; Ari thought that he must already know that his doing magic for her had cost him dearly.

Looking back down at the book, Ari saw that the new words which had formed on the page were in English and read them out.

“
The Blood Hunter Curse
,” she whispered, her heart hammering excitedly in her chest.

All three heads leaned closer as they began to read the glowing text. No one spoke, but scanned the lines in their heads, contemplating its meaning.