Succession of Witches (14 page)

Jay blinked. “No I’m not.”

“Huh? But I thought
—”

“No mom, Mike is Jewish, remember?”

“Oh. Is he here?”

“Yeah, but he’s in the back—you know, because he’s Jewish,” added Jay helpfully.

There was an awkward silence. Liam and Dmitri exchanged confused glances. Even Nyesha glanced up briefly and looked at Annette incredulously.

“Mom, they’re just going to sing some prayers together and then I’ll be home, okay? Jay and I will take the bus together.”

“No, you will not. Your father is waiting in the car outside, and—”

Miri opened her mouth and began to sing.

“
When I had nothing, you saved me

When I was hurt, you comforted me,

For that I give you aught,

My shepherd, my honor, my king
….”

Sam and Cassie exchanged glances, awestruck. The vampire had a voice like an angel, as high and clear as a silver bell. Even Annette looked pacified. After a few more versus, Miriam finished and started rubbing the back of Nyesha, who had started sobbing softly. Khalil mouthed “abusive boyfriend” to Annette.

“Let me just finish listening to the songs, okay Mom?” Cassie pleaded. “They’re so beautiful.”

Annette sniffed. “Alright, but be quick. As soon as this is over, come get in the car—Jason, we’ll drive you home too. Your mother must be having a fit.” With that, she turned on her heel and stomped out of the shop.

There was silence for a few moments after Annette left. “Well, that was certainly interesting,” said Eugene, finally.

“We have to wrap this up,” said Sam, standing. “Khalil, your concerns are noted, but I have no choice but to believe Eugene. If I find out that anyone is being fed on against their will however, the deal is off.”

“Of course,” said Eugene.

“So we’ll form the contract tonight.” He turned to the members of his entourage. “I need everyone who isn’t a vampire to get out of here, now. Cassie and Jay, leave before that woman comes back in and starts talking again, for God’s sake.”

“You mean, we don’t get to see you form the contract?” said Jay, clearly disappointed. “Is it a big ritual, or—”

“None of your business,” Sam said firmly.

“Oh, it’s fun,” said Miriam with a suggestive lilt, crossing her legs and winking at Jay. Sam glared at her.

“What about Ethan?” asked
Cassie. “Should he stay? There’s no place for him to go.”

Sam groaned
softly and put his face in his hands. “I have no idea what to do about him.”

Eugene stood up and put his hands in the pocket of his tweed jacket; Cassie couldn’t get over how thoroughly harmless he looked, like a doddering old college professor who always forgot his keys. “Are you referring to the boy we saw earlier? If he needs a place to stay, there’s plenty of room in our hotel suite.”

“Yeah uh, no thanks,” said Khalil, sneering at Eugene. “Sam, the couch in my apartment turns into a bed. I can take him home with me for tonight.”

“Alright.
I guess one of the vampires can follow you home, keep you both safe. I owe you one.”

“You think?” said Khalil. Then he went toward the back to get his charge. “Hey, who wants to have a sleepover?”

It wasn’t fair, she knew; it was taking a short cut. They weren’t the ones who had done it, but they had done something. If nothing else, they had done enough, and now they would pay.

There was no doorman, it wasn’t that kind of building, so she just walked in. Her armor clinked, but the two people she passed didn’t even look at her; that was normal. Whether they couldn’t see her, or simply choose to pretend they couldn’t, she didn’t know. It had never mattered.

There were elevators, those strange boxes that moved on pulleys. She didn’t like to use them, so she walked. It was 16 floors up, the metal in her gauntlets creaking at every step, but she didn’t mind. She liked to draw out this process, the better to savor it. It didn’t give her pleasure exactly, but something else, something deeper: solace.
Satisfaction. Peace.

It was late, long past midnight, but somehow she expected them to be awake. Just as well; walking into a still bedroom and slitting throats was unsatisfying. She liked them to fight, to struggle against her blade, so she knew they were suffering. Suffering, at least a little bit, was important. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but after what they had done, a few moments of suffering was only fair, only logical.

When she came to 16-C, she paused briefly in front of the door, then kicked it open; others in the building would hear the sound, but wouldn’t act upon it, telling themselves it was the sound of a car backfiring, or a heavy object falling on a concrete floor. That was how it always was.

Her first target jumped to his feet, a bulky college student who had been playing an electronic game on the large, flatscreen TV in the front room.

“What the—” he gasped, and his fear was almost palpable, like a heavy cloud wafting through the slats of her helmet. It was thick, syrupy. Sweet.

He backed up until his shoulder blades were against the TV, still displaying the carnage of whatever imaginary war he had been immersed in. Despite his crime, there was something pitiful about him that made her wish to do this quickly. With a quick motion of her right arm, she drew her blade and separated his head from the rest of his body. There was something clean about it, like going outside on a spring day and picking a daisy. The rest of him would be dealt with later.

One of his companions entered the room just in time to see the first man’s body fall to the ground, and began to scream obscenities. He picked up a strange object, what looked to her like a plastic guitar although she wasn’t sure, and ran towards her, screaming hysterically. Him, she ran through first, waiting until he sank to his knees before quickly withdrawing her blade and decapitating him as well. Two down, one to go.

“Oh my God, Oh my God!” she heard from the hall where the bedrooms were. Her last target wasn’t visible, but he could hear what was going on. He would be hiding: she only hoped he would put up more of a fight than his companions. She used a lock of her hair to clean the blood off of her blade before she continued. One must always, always be clean.

It was tiny compared to their weekday morning rushes, but The Daily Grind did occasionally get a “Sunday morning rush.” Sometimes, one of the local bird-watching clubs would stop by on their way to the wildlife preserve twenty minutes away from the city, and that, combined with the usual batch of senior citizens and exercise enthusiasts, could provide a flurry of customers at nine in the morning—at least, for a little while.

It was during one of these rushes that Sam realized he had a problem. The first mug that shattered in his fist, he chalked up to shoddy craftsmanship; by the third, he was getting worried.

“Sam!” yelled Dwight as the cheap ceramic shattered in Sam’s hand. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Sam, turning from three half-finished drinks on the bar to tend to his bleeding palm. “It’s like I suddenly…don’t know my own strength…” he trailed off as he washed his hands.

Khalil, who had been filling the display case with fresh pastries, quickly sidled over to the espresso bar and took over for Sam. As he reached for a bottle of caramel sauce, he whispered in Sam’s ear, “You think this has something to do with last night?”

“Probably,” said Sam, reaching for the box of band-aids Dwight kept near the sink. He hadn’t gotten much sleep after last night’s bonding ceremony, and he was aware a curtain of exhaustion was keeping him from thinking clearly. Did he now have vampire-like strength because he’d contracted with vampires? Did that even make any sense?

He was going to have to call Serenus for guidance, and just thinking about that annoyed him.

He could sense the peaceful presence of Ethan, snoring rhythmically in a sleeping bag in the back room. It would have been nice if they could have left him in Khalil’s sofa bed to sleep, but it still wasn’t safe to leave him alone. Sam wasn’t sure if it would ever be safe, and that was disturbing.

Snatches of the bird watchers’ conversation pulled him out of his revelry. “So violent…I can’t believe this is happening here, of all places,” said one slender septuagenarian.

“Did you hear what they said on the radio? About the bloody footprints?” said another. “It’s absolutely unreal.”

Khalil and Sam exchanged worried glances. “Excuse me,” said Khalil as he placed their drinks on the counter. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re talking about? We haven’t seen the news.”

“Oh, it’s terrible,” said a bird-watcher with an expensive pair of binoculars around her neck. “They found three bodies before dawn, hacked up with some kind of blade—college students. Whole apartment was covered in blood.”

There was a pause as Sam, Dwight and Khalil processed this. Khalil recovered the fastest. “Wow. What is the world coming to these days? Please be careful out there, ladies.”

“Oh don’t worry about us,” said the most elderly of the group as they headed for the door, “I have a gun.”

It was another ten minutes before the shop emptied out enough for the men to talk freely. “Damned vampires,” said Khalil, wiping down a counter with more force than necessary. “Still think this was a good idea?”

“Don’t curse,” said Sam, thinking that he sounded like a broken record. He cradled his injured palm. “And I don’t think it was them.”

“Not them?” Khalil threw the wet towel he was holding against the wall. “
A clan of vampires come to town last night—last night—and this morning, there’s a bunch of dead people. How naïve are you?”

“First of all, they were here, with me, until late last night, so they didn’t have much time to go on a murder spree,
” said Sam. “Second of all—”

“—
They said the apartment was covered in blood,” interjected Dwight. “Doesn’t that seem odd to you? Why would vampires leave a bloody apartment? They like to
drink
the blood, not waste it by painting the walls with it, right?”

Sam nodded.
“Exactly.”

Khalil looked from Sam to Dwight. “What are you guys, best buddies now? Finishing each other’s sentences?”

Dwight didn’t take the bait. “Just being logical.”

Khalil snorted. “You honestly think this is a coincidence?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Sam, pacing slowly. “But… it’s hard to explain, but…they’re a part of me now. I think I would know.”

There was a pause.

“That’s not freaky at all,” said Khalil in a monotone.

At that moment, the phone interrupted them. Dwight picked it up on the second ring. “Good Morning, Daily Grind, yes we’re open…oh. Oh…okay. I see.” He held out the phone in Sam’s direction. “He threatened to turn me into a worm if I didn’t put you on immediately.”

Sam grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“You took something that belongs to me,” said an imperious voice on the other end. “Do you know what that means?”

Sam yawned. He couldn’t stop himself. “No. Why don’t you tell me.”

The demon on the other end of the line paused. “You’re making a joke out of this? Are you really that stupid?”

“No, just confused. I’ve acquired two things I didn’t even want in the last 24 hours, one familiar and one clan of vampires, and I don’t know which one you’re referring to. I’m also really tired, and I’m running out of patience, so do us both a favor and get to the point.”

There was another pause, then a sigh. “You stole my vampires.”

Sam took the phone into the back room, careful to give the sleeping Ethan a wide berth. “So you’re Quentin. But I didn’t steal them—they came to me. And it was perfectly legal.”

“Same difference.
I had them, now I don’t, and you’re the problem,” Quentin said. “What are we going to do about this?”

Before Sam even realized he was doing it, he had started laughing.
“We? We’re not going to do anything.”

“Excuse me?” Quentin said icily.

Sam took a deep breath. Whether he was giddy with exhaustion he wasn’t sure, but suddenly he felt better than he had in days. “I have a clan of vampires in my service, and you don’t. I have two high-quality familiars, and I’m pretty sure you don’t. If you want to attack me to settle the score, go ahead; I’ll kill you first. Where’s the problem?”

“I won’t do it alone, you arrogant idiot,” Quentin hissed. “If you think you’re invincible, you’re in for a rude awakening.”

“So what, you and your army of demon friends are going to come and fight me together?” Sam sneered. “I don’t believe you have friends. I don’t think you have anything, and you’re just desperate to get your precious toy back. What’s her name, Nyesha? She hates your guts, you know.” For a brief moment, Sam thought he heard his father’s voice coming out of his mouth. It sounded like something he would say.

There was a shattering sound, and then silence—Sam assumed that Quentin must have broken a glass he was holding. “You remember this conversation, Son of Sammael,” he murmured. “You have no idea who you’ve just pissed off.”

Yes, I do,
said a voice in the back of Sam’s mind.
A remorseless monster who’s going to try to make me suffer. But it doesn’t matter, because I am, and will always be, so much worse.

Ethan coughed, and Sam turned around.

“You were awake?”

“You’re such a badass,” the boy beamed at him, his brown eyes shining.

“Don’t curse, kid,” Sam snapped. Why did no one ever listen to him?