Circle of Death (3 page)

“You have a nice collection of books.” He said, as if continuing a conversation.

“I had too much free time.” I answered, laughing lightly, while he got up and put the book back on its place, in the study room.

I sat on the couch he had been in, waiting until he came back to the living room. That was as good a time as any to get to know a bit more about the person who was going to live with me indefinitely.

“So… Why did you move here?” I asked, doing just like him and acting as if we had been talking for a long time.

My question took him by surprise, and he sat on the other couch with vampiric speed.

“What?” There was something restrained in his voice, and his expression was closed.

“Why did you come here?” I repeated, even more curious.

“It was pure chance.” He said quickly, and I sighed. There was no way to make an evasive clearer than that. Well, if he didn’t want to talk about it, I wouldn’t insist.

“Keep your secrets.” I shrugged, getting up to go back to my room.

“Kelene, wait.” He asked.

I turned around, surprised. I had imagined that he would be happy to get rid of more questions. But the expression on his face, and especially on his eyes, was strange, unexpected, and incomprehensible. What did Lucio hide?

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk, it’s just… I don’t want to think about it. Don’t be offended, please.” His words came a little too fast, and he caught me with his eyes in that way that only vampires could.

And now I understood his expression. Like many vampires, he wanted to be accepted by what he was. I had done that, without many questions, without fear, and he didn’t want to lose it. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I sat beside him.

“You didn’t offend me. I know vampires usually don’t like to talk about their past.” I said, following my intuition. His expression revealed that I was right, and he held out his hand, hesitant. I took it, and he gave me a half smile. His skin was hot, showing that he had fed not long ago. “I didn’t think that question would be so connected to your past. Forgive me for that.”

“There is nothing to forgive.” He took my hand to his lips and kissed it. I felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the fact that a vampire’s lips were always cold, and barely managed to stay where I was. My whole body seemed on fire, and my only thought was to get away from him, get away from what was making me react that way. “You are a unique woman, Kelene.”

I sighed, memories that weren’t mine and at the same time were coming to the surface, remembrances I tried to ignore most of the time. All of my barriers went up in an instant, and Lucio let go of my hand. His expression made clear that he understood his words had awakened some bad memories.

We stood there for a while, in an uncomfortable silence, while I tried to send the past back to its place.

“And why did you come here?” He asked, finally, using my own question. His voice sounded light, as if I had taken a great burden from his shoulders.

“What?” And I gave back his answer, not sure if I had understood what he meant.

“Students from the country live in dorms, students from the city stay with their parents. And you bought an apartment.”

I smiled, aware that the expression didn’t hide my sadness. That had been the price of my choice. And I had learned that my decisions would never affect only me.

“My family always had some money. My parents died just after my eighteenth birthday, and everything went to me. I bought the apartment because I didn’t want to live alone in our old house. And then I sold everything from before…”

“It must have been hard.” He murmured, looking uncomfortable. He probably didn’t expect that answer, and I had said only the truth.

“It was. But I learned to get out of difficult situations when I was still very young. My parents wouldn’t want me to let my life fall apart just because they weren’t here, so I kept going on.”

He nodded, hesitating for an instant before speaking again. “You really are unique, Kelene.”

He was watching me carefully, waiting for my reaction, surely, to know the limits of what I would accept. But this time my memories kept quiet. It was as if, finally, I had cleaned those words from the meaning they had carried for so long. With a smile, I looked away, and I’m sure that I blushed. And then someone slammed the building’s door, breaking the moment. I looked at the clock, using the opportunity to get away from a conversation that didn’t go as I had expected.

“It’s late and I have to be up early tomorrow.” I said, getting up.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

I was already in front of my bedroom’s door when I turned.

“And… Lucio?”

“Yes?”

I hesitated. Should I really say that, or was it too early? A glance at the vampire’s face made the decision for me. He also hid many secrets, and feared what was about to happen, I noticed. He feared what
I
might say.

“It seems you are the best person who could have answered that ad.” I said, at least, smiling before closing the door.

Where had those words come from? I didn’t know, but they were the truth. It didn’t matter that I would have trouble to keep what I did in secret, he was undoubtedly the best person who could have come to live with me. That was what my instincts were telling me, and I trusted them with my life.

Kelene closed the bedroom’s door, and I tried to assimilate what she had just said. It was hard, I was still trying to deal with the fact that she had been so close to me, even knowing that I was a vampire, and there had been no traces of fear. This had only happened once before, in all my existence. With those words, she was conceding me an honor I had never known before, but that didn’t stop me from questioning. Why would a vampire be the best person to live with her? By all that is sacred, what did that woman hide?

But my roommates’ secrets were a matter for another time. It was time to find out how the balance of power in the city was, and if it would be safe to stay there. I retrieved a stack of sheets from one of the suitcases in my bedroom and carefully slipped them into the internal pocket of my jacket. I wanted to get to the people who could answer me before midnight, as the Witches’ Council didn’t keep the same hours a vampire did. I couldn’t go to the vampires, the local Master was weak and would sell me to Seth as soon as he saw me, even though we were in Semele’s territory. And I had no idea of what to expect from the Fae after so many years without any contact with them. But the Witches’ Council was powerful and had honor. And I had just the right thing to bargain with.

The phone rang when I was almost at the door, and I turned back to answer it, in case Kelene was already sleeping. But it wasn’t the phone at the living room that was ringing. The sound came from the woman’s bedroom, and she answered it a second later.

“Yes?”

I was too far to hear the other end of the conversation, and I shouldn’t do it, anyway. But that second phone line made me even more curious, and I added it to my growing list of questions. Shaking my head, I locked the apartment’s door behind me and went down the stairs.

The complex was built around a curved street, and Kelene’s building was one of the last ones before the back wall. Going out, I could see the lawn on the other side of the street, with a couple of park tables near the walls. The building just beside the lawn didn’t let me see its real size, but it seemed big enough. I followed the street, going up, past what seemed to be a recreational area with a soccer and basketball court. They were empty now, as it was almost eleven PM. A couple of buildings later, a smaller street crossed the main one, also flanked by buildings. I could see some people sitting on the building’s stairs and talking, even though it was late, and a loud laugh reached my ears. Another street crossed the main one, and a group of young people was sitting in a circle at the street corner. They looked warily at me, and I noticed when one of the girls widened her eyes and smiled.

Shaking my head, I went up the last block, leaving the complex. In front of it, on the other side of the street, was a big technical school. It was already empty, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t traffic. That street was always busy. I crossed it, waiting for the bus that would take me close to where I wanted to go. Sometimes I wished those humans stories about us were closer to the truth, it would be nice to be able to just turn into a bat and fly anywhere.

I got off the bus in one of the main avenues of the city, the Contorno, which had this name because it skirted the entire central area. This place hadn’t changed at all since the last time I had been here, even though it had been before the Otherworld showed itself to humankind. With quick steps, I entered one of the side streets, noticing that it was still filled with stores. But while once they had been mostly clothing stores, now I could see a “Herbs & Supplies”, a “Karina – Special Party Clothing”, “Personal Charms”, and a number of other stores that were obviously for the witches and those Fae who practiced mundane magic – influence of being so close to the Witches’ Council head office. There had always been a lot of witches living near the Council, and the Fae mostly lived near the witches. They worked well together.

A couple of blocks and some turns later I saw the house that was the Council’s head office. It had two floors and didn’t even seem too big, just a nice middle class home, blending perfectly with the houses around it. No human would look twice at it, even if they knew the office was around there. But anyone with Otherworld blood would feel the power behind those walls.

And this had changed. The witches here weren’t that powerful the last time I had passed through the city.

The metal gate opened as soon as I stood before it, and I crossed the small garden I had seen from the outside. I stepped on the porch, and the power seemed to hold me for a moment, measuring if I was a threat or not. I could be, but I choose not to. I already had too many enemies. The power disappeared, and the door opened with a click, a clear invitation. I stepped in the large reception room, bigger than it seemed from the outside, and walked to the counter on the other side of the room. The witch sitting behind it raised her wary eyes to me, her shields firmly in place in case I tried to take her mind.

“I request an audience with the Council.” I said, keeping my voice light.

“What is the reason?” She asked, her eyes slightly glazed. I felt an itch on the back of my neck, my reaction to an active use of magic. She was communicating with someone.

“I found records of old spells that I think the Council will want to know about.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, as that was what I had brought to bargain with.

She gestured toward the chairs spread across the room. “They will call you in a moment.”

Her gaze held mine, and there was determination besides the wariness. She expected me to cause trouble because they hadn’t invited me in immediately, and was ready to fight me however she could. Without saying anything, I sat down to wait.

A few minutes later, the witch called me and pointed to a side door. I opened it, and another witch waited for me. My escort. The man was obviously strong, a mage, probably, but I couldn’t be sure. He didn’t say anything as he led me through a hallway, down a flight of stairs and into a large open space that shouldn’t have been there and through another hallway. The large wooden doors in front of us were obviously the entrance of the Council’s hall. The witch opened them and I entered, ignoring the sound of the closing doors behind me.

The hall was a circular space, with dozens of chairs in concentric circles, following the walls. I hid my surprise, realizing that I had seriously underestimated the strength of the witches at Belo Horizonte. They might have been a small group the last time I had been there, but they had turned into a real power. Those chairs meant that almost two hundred of the witches in the city were strong enough to be considered part of the lower council. In most cities that number never reached one hundred.

The circles of chair were open right in front of the door, making a path to the center of the room. In front of it was a raised dais, and over it a simple table made of black wood. The two witches that were the Witches’ Council sat behind it, on chairs made of the same material and with golden details.

I didn’t know who those witches were, I had stopped paying attention to their politics ages ago, but their flaming red hair didn’t leave any doubt about their power. And I knew that witches didn’t have power plays among themselves, which meant that the people who served as Council would really be the best of the best.

They stared at me when I approached, without saying anything. Keeping the silence, I took a couple of sheets from the block on my pocket and put them in front of the man. He glanced at them before passing them to the woman on his right, not even bothering to hide his surprise when he looked at me again.

“What brings you here?”

“I ask for absolute secrecy about this meeting. These pages are a compensation for that. If you decide to help me, I have the rest of the spell with me.”

The man didn’t say anything while the woman carefully read the manuscript. They were the beginning of an ancient spell, something I knew the witches had tried to recover for years, unsuccessfully. But I knew where to find all kind of knowledge lost in history.

She looked up, meeting my eyes without fear and with a power that almost threatened me. “This is genuine. These pages were written by Death herself. How did you get them?”

I took them from Death’s library, of course. But nowadays no one even knew that place existed. Even those from the Otherworld who knew about Death’s Sanctuary had never heard about the library. And it was better if they never did.

“It doesn’t matter.”

The woman glanced at the man, nodding.

“You’ll have secrecy.” He said. “What do you want in exchange for the full spell?”

“I guess you know the stories of the birth of the vampires. Especially about the two firstborns, now known as Seth and Lucius.” I began.