The Vampyre Legal Chronicles - James (7 page)

"Now that you're helping us, does this mean we're best pals?"

The question was a total piss-take and by the dark look he received from Ezekiel as his reward, Marcus knew he was skating on very thin in ice. He opened the rear entrance of James and Charlotte's house and let the witch take the lead.

He headed for the kitchen. "Isn't it amazing how the love of a good woman mellows a vampyre prince?" drawled Ezekiel.

Marcus knew the statement was a wind-up, but he still took the bait.

"You just keep my good woman out of this."

"She's an empath who did an excellent job of keeping Charlotte calm. Anais is in
this
whether you like it or not."

Hell, that was nothing but the truth, so much for him keeping his wife safe and out of harm's way. It didn't mean he had to like Anais and Ezekiel's special relationship either.

"Do you have
any
idea what we're looking for?" Marcus opened and closed cupboard after cupboard in his brother's state-of-the-art kitchen.

Ezekiel strode to a tall cupboard. "Wine. She mentioned claret."

"Are you certain her illness is caused by black magic?"

"Her blood and organs are contaminated. I felt it as soon as I saw her."

Marcus spoke his thoughts aloud. "Who the hell would want to hurt Charlotte? And why?"

The witch opened a door in a large dresser and hissed out a breath as if stung.

Marcus peered over Ezekiel’s shoulder and saw an opened case of wine.

"Ten bottles, she’s drunk two," he said.

Ezekiel took a step back.

"You open one. I cannot touch it."

Marcus lifted out a dusty bottle and read the Italian label.

"Looks like one of Cristophe’s estate wines."

He picked up a wine opener from the shelf above, uncorked the bottle, poured half a glass and took a careful sniff.

Compared to a human a vampyre’s olfactory senses were spectacular.

Marcus recognized the vintage, 1978, but there was something else.

Frowning now, he took another sniff.

Ezekiel met his eyes. "What is it?"

Marcus placed the glass on the granite worktop and took a careful step back.

It wasn't an act of cowardice.

It was an act of self-preservation.

No way was he going to drink anything imbued with dark magic.

"Blood of a vampyre."

"So, Charlotte had been ingesting vampyre blood
before
James took her vein?" muttered the witch, as if talking to himself.

To contaminate an emerging newborn vampyre with the blood of another vampyre before she fully emerged was strictly against their laws.

The penalty was death.

Marcus had a very bad feeling about this.

"No vampyre would dare approach her while she's under my brother's protection. How, why and where the hell did she get it?"

Arms crossed over his chest, Ezekiel studied the glass, the bottle, from a safe distance.

"Eleanor. I can smell her taint from here."

Shit
, thought Marcus, Eleanor had had the hots for James for years. But surely, even for her, poisoning Charlotte with dark magic was a step too far? "James will send her unto The Fade for this."

"One step at a time, prince. Before we bring in Cristophe and the Juristic Rulers, we need proof."

Ezekiel stretched out his arms, palms up and started to hum a gentle chant low in his throat. The air immediately began to crackle and stir. Marcus took a couple of steps back as the witch braced himself. A black, oily vapor spiralled from the wine and the corked bottles still in the case.

Marcus had the most peculiar feeling of icy fingers caressing his spine.

The urge to run had his vampyre push to emerge. But Marcus wasn’t about to lose face in front of Ezekiel, plus he’d never before seen magic used up close and personal.

Then the eyes of the witch went clear and white.

Christ, it seriously freaked him out but the darkness rising from the bottles coalesced and took the shape of... a demon? The creature had eyes of shocking yellow. Its fangs were a black and shiny jet. The dart of its split tongue was so fast even Marcus had trouble keeping up with the speed of it.

Ezekiel flinched as a flick of that tongue sliced into the flesh of his hand but he never faltered and now the chanting grew louder as a wind blew around the witch whipping his ponytail around his harsh face.

Marcus narrowed his eyes as the ground beneath their feet shuddered and a portal, a void of velvet darkness, opened right in the middle of the wall in his brother’s kitchen.

Holy Christ.

And the creature, the demon, was dragged kicking and screaming towards the portal as Ezekiel’s voice roared above the noise of the wind. Marcus realized the witch was repeating an ancient chant over and over again.

It all happened so fast that if he’d blinked he’d have missed it. With an unearthly shriek the demon grabbed the case of wine before leaping into the void.

Marcus’s ears popped as the portal closed with a clap of thunder that shook the very foundations of the property.

The scent of spent fireworks sizzled in the air.

He blinked as the witch simply strolled over to the open bottle of wine and rammed the cork home.

"What the
fuck
was that?" Marcus wanted to know, and cursed the fact his voice was very far from steady.

"A shade obeying its master." Ezekiel lifted the glass and sniffed before taking a careful sip and spat it out. "The vampyre who contaminated this wine is most definitely Eleanor."

Before Marcus could utter a word about Eleanor and what the hell she was doing dabbling in black magics, the ground under them trembled and lifted.

This time Ezekiel thrust the bottle into Marcus's hand and gave him a hard shove.

"Get out. NOW!"

When Marcus did nothing except stare as if hypnotized at the lights flashing in the room as another portal opened, Ezekiel grabbed him by the throat and squeezed.

"Get out and take the wine to Saira to test in the lab. This is the only proof of Eleanor's duplicity we have. Hurry."

Marcus emerged from James’s house to find his brothers Daniel and Adam and a battalion of Centuri waiting for him. Together they took to the air and flew fast for the hospital as the ground beneath them started to lurch and heave.

An earthquake.

Marcus didn’t look back.

And he wondered if the witch would live to fight another day.

***

Ezekiel's mind sent out a distress call to his personal guard.

No response.

As the portal grew a flash almost blinded him and made him take a step back.

Well, he'd used magic, a lot of magic, to dispense with the Shade of evil in the wine. He knew at the time he'd taken a calculated risk.

And now he'd been found.

Two seven foot Shades, armed to the teeth, stepped through the portal.

Ezekiel reached behind, slid swords from the sheath on his back and crouched into a fighting stance.

To face one shade was bad enough. The creatures were magic born and taught to fight to the death as soon as they slid from the womb. A vampyre fighting two of them, and surviving, had never been done. The shade to the right of him grinned, showcasing fangs the color of jet, dripping with a poison lethal to humans and vampyre alike. The other flicked out its tongue, which slashed open Ezekiel's cheek exposing bone. He didn't flinch, or attempt to wipe the blood dripping to the floor. Again he used his power to send a call for help.

Nothing.

He was on his own.

Ezekiel decided today was as good a day to die as any other.

His vampyre rose and he leapt.

Two days later, Charlotte's vampyre fully emerged.

She sat, an alabaster statue dressed in a kimono of red silk, in a high backed chair. The pain in her bones, her muscles and especially in her head eased somewhat if she kept absolutely still. Her mind focused purely on the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Even that small movement made her ribcage endure a wretched misery. She stared, unseeing, out of the bedroom window and into the inky darkness. Clutched in her hand was an empty plasma bag of hemoglobin, designed and tailored to her specific needs. Its ingredients based on a myriad of tests to her blood. Earlier in the day, she'd been moved, under a close guard of four Centuri medics, from the vampyre hospital in the basement to the penthouse suite. The silvery light of the moon peeked from behind a black cloud. The rays from the satellite were almost a caress on her cheek, as she stoically bore the heavy burden of suffering in her mind and the sound of a human, her host's, soft weeping.

"How are you feeling?" asked Anais in a gentle voice.

She moved into her line of vision.

The newborn vampyre that was Charlotte Gillespie, attempted to smile at the beautiful young woman who'd saved her very sanity over the past days, but her fangs, her jaw, hurt too much. Every movement an exquisite lesson in sheer agony, she handed Anais the empty bag of blood.

"Much better." Her voice was rough in a throat scraped raw from all the screaming the human had done. "The pain is beginning to ease somewhat."

Anais smiled, her dark brown eyes warm and gentle. "Another step in the right direction."

Then she sat in the chair next to Charlotte and very gently placed her hand over hers.

"James is becoming impatient to see you."

The vampyre blinked.

The human inside her mind cringed and turned her face away.

"She does not wish it," the vampyre said in a tone utterly devoid of human emotion.

Silence.

Anais sighed.

"Do you remember how Saira explained it is very dangerous for you to remain in control of your host's mind, her body? Charlotte must emerge and face her destiny."

The vampyre blinked, once more her mind turned inward.

'You are a coward and a little fool,'
she hissed at a cowering Charlotte.
'You will destroy us.'

Once again the human cringed, curled tight into a fetal position.
'Leave me be. Get out of my head. Leave me beeeeeee.'

The vampyre blinked again and turned to Anais.

"She is deeply traumatized. She fears me."

"Will you let me try once more to reach her?" Anais held out her hand, palm up.

The vampyre nodded, she placed her hand in hers, and Anais closed her eyes.

Anais might be a newborn vampyre, but she was getting plenty of practice as an empath. This was her fourth attempt to reach a frightened and panic-stricken girl trapped in her own subconscious.

Taking a deep breath for courage, she stepped into Charlotte's thoughts and stepped into chaos.

It was a world beyond pain.

Memories swirled.

Feelings, emotions of a confused terror, of blood, the scent of vomit, the horrible agony of broken bones. And underpinning it all, the heartbreak of betrayal. Anais felt her own heart kick with a mix of pity and worry as all those emotions and more whirled into her own mind. Her eyes filled and she let the tears fall.

She felt... everything.

Charlotte's will to live was steadily but surely diminishing because the husband she adored, beyond all reason, had lied and betrayed her. He'd
hurt
her so badly.
And he wasn't even a man
, sobbed Charlotte.
He was a vampyre. A monster. Only a monster could have done this to her. God, she couldn't live like this. She didn't want to live like this.

And all while, watching, waiting, her presence in Charlotte's mind a silent and quiet threat, sat her vampyre.

"Charlotte, talk to me. Please, talk to me," whispered Anais to the back of the girl's dark head.

Silence.

But this time, no matter the personal cost to herself, Anais dug deep to find the courage she'd need as she prepared to wait Charlotte out.

After an eternal moment, the face that turned to her now was parchment white, the green eyes frantic, like a feral animal held captive. And like any animal cornered with nowhere to go, Charlotte attacked.

"Why won't you leave me alone? Did I invite you here? Did I ask for your help?"

Anais desperately wanted to hold her, tell her everything would be alright, but she knew that would a disastrous mistake.

The girl was hanging onto her sanity by the merest thread.

Perhaps the time had come for tough love.

"No. You didn't," said Anais. Her tone a whiplash. "But out there, in the real world, is a man desperate to see his wife."

Charlotte's eyes went wild with temper.

"He
betrayed
me," she screamed the word.

Anais knew that now was not the time to go into the science of what had happened to Charlotte. The girl was in no fit state to listen never mind hear it. Saira had already explained in detail to Charlotte's vampyre how Eleanor's blood, tainted and imbued with black magic, had done the most damage to her internal organs. The girl who was rocking and wailing in front of her now was in no condition to hear about witches or empaths or other supernatural beings. She was in shock, on the verge of a psychotic break. And since she was linked psychologically as well as physically to her vampyre... the worst case scenario... they'd have a psychotic vampyre on their hands.

The future for Charlotte and her vampyre, was not looking good.

"I know what it feels like to have something done to you without your permission. It's a kind of rape, a violation of what it means to be human." Anais spoke from the heart. And something, maybe a sincerity laced with a real anger, got through to Charlotte. Face still turned away, she stopped rocking, stopped wailing and for once, listened. "Marcus did to me what James did to you. He took away my right to choose my own destiny. Trust me, he knows he was wrong and believe me he is more than sorry for it. I didn't suffer the way you suffered and suffer still. But to lose a part of me, a part that made me human, was beyond agony and I was so scared, so angry, I could have killed Marcus with my bare hands. Don't ask me why I still love the bastard, but I do. I love him with my whole heart. There are explanations for why bringing us into their world went so disastrously wrong for me, and for you, too. Hiding here and refusing to face your reality will not give you the answers you need and will eventually destroy your mind, Charlotte, as it will destroy your vampyre. A vampyre who will fight to the death to survive. In many ways, James is as broken as you are. He loves you so much. Please, give him one chance to try to put right the terrible wrong done to you."

Silence.

Shoulders slumped in defeat, Anais turned to move away and realized everything had gone eerily quiet in Charlotte's mind. There was still the scent of real fear in the atmosphere, but the girl was most definitely listening hard to what she'd had to say.

Anais could only hope she'd done enough.

She felt the hand in hers squeeze once, twice.

And opened her eyes to find the vampyre with the strange amber eyes staring right into hers.

"I will see him," said the vampyre.