Buch lesen: «The Witch's Thirst»

Chapter 1

Evette—Evee—François watched as black and pus-yellow liquid flowed from Bailey’s arm when Daven clawed through it. Both were Nosferatu and hell-bent on destroying each other. Aside from Bailey and Daven, six more Nosferatu had paired off, each viciously attacking the other. Her head captain, Pierre, supposedly in charge of the two-hundred-plus Nosferatu they forced to remain in the catacombs and allowed out only for feedings, did his best to stop the fighting. He’d stretched his bulk of a body to its full eight feet, had morphed into his natural state—bald head with a large, throbbing vein that started at his forehead and then extended over the crown of his scalp like tree branches. His fangs, the longest and most lethal of all the teeth possessed by the Nosferatu within the catacombs, were bared. His hands had balled into fists. And when he shouted, the walls seemed to vibrate with the fierceness of his voice.

“Enough! As leader of this clan, I say enough! Return to your assigned spaces at once!”

Instead of listening to Pierre, more Nosferatu began to fight. They hissed and shrieked, and Evee let out a heavy sigh. She noticed that the Nosferatu who weren’t fighting were either hiding behind a crypt or had rolled onto a grave shelf, seemingly content to watch, but not wanting to engage in any brawl.

“We’ve got to get them under control before they kill one another,” Lucien Hyland said emphatically. He took hold of the two steel bars from a floor-to-ceiling gate that separated the outside world from the catacombs of St. John’s Cathedral. He shook them, then pulled the thick chain and padlock that secured the gates. Neither gate nor padlock budged.

“Cousin, get your hands away from the bars—” Before Ronan Hyland could finish his warning, two Nosferatu slammed into the gate. Both reached for Lucien.

Lucien sprang backward, away from the gate, then looked from his cousin to Evee, who was leaning against a stone column, arms crossed over her chest.

“Why aren’t you doing something?” Lucien asked Evee, his emerald green eyes ablaze with anger. “You’re acting rather nonchalant over this ordeal. Why? Can’t you see they’re going to kill each other? Can’t you see all the...blood?”

“No one’s going to die—unless you stick your hands back there again,” Evee said. “They’re fighting, yes, but it’s not to kill one another. It’s out of boredom. They’re not used to being cooped up at night.”

Ronan, who Evee had learned was the more serious of the cousins who’d been assigned to her, shook his head. “I don’t understand. The Nosferatu aren’t senseless beings. Don’t they know that keeping them here is for their own protection?”

Evee tossed him an exhausted look. “Imagine a room full of children and a huge storm is blowing outside. The children know the storm is dangerous, but that doesn’t stop them from getting antsy and squabbling with one another when they’re forced to stay indoors.”

Ronan cocked his head as if considering her words.

Lucien let out a huff of frustration.

Evee closed her eyes for a few seconds. She’d felt exhaustion before, but never to this degree. She wished she had the power to turn back time. Two weeks of time at least.

Two weeks ago, things had flowed normally in her life. Well, as normal as life went when you were the middle sister from a set of triplets, and the triplets happened to be witches. The fact that she and her sisters, Vivienne and Abigail, were responsible for the Originals, those being the Nosferatu, the Loup Garous and the Chenilles, twisted the definition of normal all the more. By human standards, of course.

Along with the Originals, throughout the centuries, sprouted their offshoots, like vampires, werewolves, and zombies, etc., each created from either crossbreeding, malicious intent by some sorcerer with a wicked streak, or possibly an off-the-radar, wayward coven. Fortunately, others were in charge of the netherworld offshoots.

Evee and her sisters only tended to the Originals. She and her sisters were known as a Triad, which were triplet witches born from a triplet witch. The first set had been born in the 1500s, somewhere in France. According to legend, the first Originals and the chaos that went with them occurred when the first set of triplets got pissed off at the men they were supposed to marry. Evidently, the night before the triplets were to wed, they found their betrothed fooling around with other women.

Women scorned, men be warned, Evee thought. She supposed that creed existed even back in the 1500s because the anger of the first Triad played a huge part in creating the Originals. This caused the Elders from their sect, known as the Circle of Sisters, to punish the first Triad and the punishment carried to each generation of Triads that followed.

Evee thought cursing whole generations of Triads for something someone had done long ago was bullshit. She and her sisters had nothing to do with what had happened in the past by the first Triad. To her, it was simple. If a puppy peed on its owner’s carpet, the owner might bop the pup on the snout with a newspaper to teach him “no.” However, that didn’t give that owner the right to go popping every pup born thereafter because the first one tinkled on a carpet.

Regardless, the creation of the Originals by her ancestors way back when must have been equated with peeing an ocean on a Persian rug, because Triads were still paying for the deed to this day. And there wasn’t a damn thing she or her sisters could do about it.

So they’d simply lived with it. The Originals were assigned—Vivienne, or Viv as everyone called her, and the oldest of the three by ten minutes, took care of the Loup Garous; she, or Evee as she preferred being called, handled the Nosferatu; and Abigail, whom everyone called Gilly, managed the Chenilles. Once their routines had been established, life hadn’t been so bad. Complex at times. But not terrible.

Until now.

For the last couple of weeks, they’d been stuck in a nightmare that wouldn’t go away, that no one seemed capable of waking them up from.

It wasn’t like they hadn’t run into issues with their broods before. Odd incidents were the norm when dealing with those from the netherworld. But for some reason, when the cousins—Lucien, Ronan, Gavril and Nikoli Hyland—arrived, all hell seemed to break loose.

They’d appeared at the Triad’s front door, four extraordinarily handsome men, claiming to be cousins—although only two were with her right now—and swearing to protect the sisters and the Originals with their lives. They called themselves Benders and claimed their purpose was to save the Originals from monstrous creatures that hid in dimensional folds. They called the creatures Cartesians and said these were bent on annihilating the entire netherworld, especially the Originals and the Triad. With each netherworld creature’s death, a Cartesian absorbed the powers of the creature it destroyed, then brought the essence of the kill to its leader, allowing the leader to grow stronger, which empowered him to create more Cartesians.

According to the Benders, the Cartesian leader meant to be the sole power of the netherworld, and once he had completed the task of absorbing the powers of every netherworld creature, humans were the next target. In essence, the Cartesians—specifically their leader—meant to control the very universe.

When Evee first heard the Benders’ claims, she thought all four of them were a few cards short of a full deck. But in the days that followed their arrival, she’d seen much more than she needed to for truth to set in. Cartesians and the danger they presented were very, very real. She’d yet to see one of the creatures for herself, but her sisters Viv and Gilly had, and their descriptions had been all too vivid. Huge beings that appeared to be at least ten feet tall and had the expanse of body to match their height. They were covered with matted brown, gray and black fur, which hid thick scales like armor beneath it. Their teeth were all needlepoint incisors, and their claws were none like they’d seen before on any creature. At least four inches in length and razor-sharp. And the worst part was that they seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

The Cartesians’ entry into this world came from rifts in the sky. The initial rifts were caused by natural disasters, odd cosmic alliances or an erred declaration. Their first experience with the Cartesians came after Viv, responsible for the Loup Garous, had told her brood in frustration that “she quit.” She hadn’t meant what she’d said, but exasperation could cause a person to throw caution to the wind. Once she’d uttered those two words, a small rift had occurred, and the Cartesians had gnawed, clawed and forced their hideous bodies through the opening and into this dimension.

So far, Viv had lost many Loup Garous to the Cartesians, and Gilly, some Chenilles. As if that wasn’t bad enough, even stranger occurrences added to the Triad’s terror. Something they couldn’t understand, much less keep from occurring. Some of the Originals had gone missing. Simply vanished from their safe zones, from places that she and her sisters had controlled with border spells for years with great success. To date, Viv had nearly one hundred and fifty Loup Garous dead or missing; Evee had ten Nosferatu on the loose; and Gilly, fifteen missing Chenilles, plus two dead.

The missing Originals planted their current situation in the dirt of dire straits. Humans were now in danger. If they couldn’t find the missing Originals and bring them over to the feeding grounds located at the North Compound in Algiers at their regular feeding time, which occurred in the wee hours of morning, they’d be seeking food elsewhere. They’d be looking at humans to satiate their hunger.

Adding to the dilemma, the wayward Nosferatu, Chenilles and Loup Garous were now open targets for the Cartesians. Evee had to find her brood so they could be watched over and kept safe from the enemy.

You would think that she and her sisters being witches could easily defuse the situation. But such wasn’t the case. Along with the mayhem and confusion they faced, their powers and natural abilities like clairvoyance, channeling and mirroring seemed to be diminishing or worked haphazardly. Even the Triad’s Elders, Arabella, Taka and Vanessa, appeared to be at a loss and utterly useless in helping them through the situation.

The only people they had to count on now were each other and the Benders, whom they’d decided to pair off with in order to cover more territory. Viv with Nikoli, she with Lucien and Ronan, and Gilly with Gavril.

So far the misfit teams seemed to be barely holding their own. At last count, Viv had located one of Evee’s Nosferatu, whom she had Pierre fetch and return to the catacombs. Viv had also located at least twenty of her Loup Garous, whom she’d teleported to the North Compound, where Viv had them encamped.

Without question, the François sisters were torn in far too many directions. The missing Originals had to be located before humans were attacked, and the Originals who were already confined needed protection from the Cartesians. It didn’t take a world of common sense to realize they couldn’t be everywhere at once.

To aid in the matter, the Benders had established a plan and built an electric field charged by their scabiors, the weapons they carried. The field, which the Cartesians couldn’t penetrate, canopied each location where the Originals were kept. The North Compound for the Loup Garous, the Louis I Cemetery for the Chenilles, and, of course, the catacombs beneath St. John’s Cathedral for the Nosferatu. The idea was to keep the Originals they now had safe within these electric domes, which would give each team time to search for the Originals who’d gone MIA.

The first time Evee witnessed the Benders’ scabiors in action, she’d been nothing short of amazed. Alone, a scabior appeared toylike. A steel rod approximately eight inches long, its circumference about a half inch. A quarter-size bloodstone capped one end. But handled by a Bender, that which initially appeared benign turned into a weapon like no other Evee had ever witnessed.

A quick flip of the Bender’s wrist, and the steel rod twirled between their fingers with a speed that seemed to defy the laws of physics. Once the scabior was charged and aimed at a Cartesian, it shot a bolt of electricity that pushed the monstrosity back into the rift, out of one dimension and into the next. The Benders’ goal was to push the Cartesian back to as many dimensions as possible. The farther the dimension, the longer it took the Cartesian to find its way back.

With the electric dome charged, they could search for missing Nosferatu again.

It was dark outside, but barely, which meant she, Lucien and Ronan had plenty of time to search for the missing Nosferatu before feeding time arrived.

Suddenly, someone took Evee by the shoulders and gave her a gentle shake, breaking her reverie. It was Lucien.

“Evee, you have to do something to get the Nosferatu under control,” Lucien said. “I realize they’re impatient and want freedom, but keeping them under the scabior dome’s protection is crucial. Do something. A calming spell, anything that will keep them from destroying one another.”

Evee took her time responding. She was overtaken by the depth of Lucien’s green eyes bearing into hers, his shoulder-length hair the color of a black stallion’s mane, his neatly trimmed beard and mustache that barely hid two prominent dimples that appeared whenever he smiled, something he definitely was not doing now. Evee guessed Lucien to be in his midthirties. He stood about six foot three and weighed maybe one seventy-five. Since she was only five foot seven, Evee had to look up at him, which she did feeling hypnotized. She couldn’t help it. It made her feel like a slug, ogling him despite the fighting going on inside the catacombs, but it seemed beyond her control. She wanted nothing more than to breathe in Lucien’s scent, a mixture of earth and musk doused by a fresh summer shower.

She was about to answer Lucien when Ronan suddenly appeared at her side. Another over-the-top hunk of a man who made it hard to concentrate on the task at hand.

“Evee, whatever malaise has overtaken you, you really need to snap out of it,” Ronan said. “I know things may seem hopeless to you right now, but if the Nosferatu continue fighting this way, I’m concerned it will weaken the electric dome over the catacombs again.”

“What makes you think that?” Lucien asked.

Ronan pointed to the dome. “Look.”

Sure enough, the sparks of electricity that came from the four bloodstone-attached steel rods in four different directions had begun to flicker.

“We must calm them down,” Ronan said.

Evee studied him for a moment. His collar-length black hair combed just so, his five o’clock shadow that accented a square jaw. His black eyes held such an intensity in them he could have melted a gold bar simply by staring at it and concentrating. Although he appeared a few years younger than Lucien, his height and build were similar to his cousin’s. The biggest difference between the two men was Ronan’s serious nature and the ease with which Lucien smiled.

Because there had been four cousins and three of the Triad, Evee had been paired with two Benders. Although they were two of the most handsome men she’d ever had the pleasure to meet, her initial intention had been to not allow attraction to enter into the serious business at hand. She’d never wanted to be drawn to either of the two men, although their good looks were second to none and each possessed unique qualities. But slowly and surely something other than the electric dome they’d created with their scabiors had begun to pulsate. Every time she looked at Lucien, she felt a jolt of electricity flow through her. When she studied Ronan, she felt sparks flutter through her, but not with the same intensity as she felt with Lucien.

Not that either mattered. They were men. They were human. She had no choice but to stay at arm’s length.

Lucien pulled Evee away from the pillar she’d been leaning against and stood her upright, facing him.

“Please do something now, Evee,” Lucien said.

Evee shook her head slightly as if just waking from a deep sleep. “I don’t even know if my spells will work. Even my sisters seem to have problems with theirs.”

“You have to at least try,” Ronan said. “It’s the only thing I can think of that’s causing the dome to fade.”

“What thing are you talking about?” Evee asked.

“The energy coming from the fighting Nosferatu.”

“That can affect the dome?” she asked.

Ronan pointed to the arcs over the catacombs. “What else could it be?”

With a sigh of resignation, Evee went to the gates of the catacombs, pressed her body against it and raised her arms up by her sides and began to chant.

“Quiet now, ye creatures’ mind,

Let thy actions turn from rage to kind.

See thy angst, fear and pain in vain,

So it is said.

So shall it be.”

No sooner had Evee finished speaking the words than the Nosferatu that had been ripping into one another broke apart. They looked about, seemingly confused, as if unable to comprehend what they had just been doing. Each shuffled off to a corner and sat licking wounds, which immediately healed. A quiet hum soon filled the catacombs, except for an occasional impatient grumble from one of the Nosferatu.

At least the fighting had stopped.

“Why didn’t you do that earlier?” Lucien asked.

“I—I don’t know,” Evee said. “I guess I was afraid it wouldn’t work. Just another failure.”

Lucien took hold of her chin with a thumb and forefinger and turned her head so she faced him. She had no choice but to look into his eyes.

“None of this is your fault. Whatever is causing the sporadic instabilities of your spells is not your fault. The Cartesians are powerful creatures, and their intention is to create havoc, to destroy the Originals and the Triad. Don’t give up on your powers. Don’t let the Cartesians see or feel your weakness, because that’s what they’ll focus on. We need to make sure you and your sisters stay safe, and the way you can help make that happen is to remain strong.”

Evee nodded, reprimanding herself silently for having succumbed to complacency. There was no room for it when it came to protecting her Nosferatu, for it was her job to keep them safe.

Ronan nudged Lucien. “We need to strengthen the canopy again, then go hunting for more Nosferatu before it gets any later. It’ll be feeding time before we know it, and the ones that are missing are going to be looking for food. That could mean attacks on humans if we don’t find them and bring them into the fold.”

Without a word, Lucien pulled his scabior from its sheath, which was attached to his belt, and Ronan followed suit. Together they did a quick flick of their wrists, twirled their scabiors around their fingers with lightning speed, then aimed them at the opposing poles. From the bloodstones that sat atop their scabiors shot a fierce bolt of lightning into the poles. They did the same with the remaining two poles, setting them alight until the catacombs lit up like a football field at game time.

Nosferatu scattered from the brilliance of the light, hiding behind crypts or crawling onto death shelves.

“Looks like that should hold them for now,” Lucien said.

Evee nodded and then motioned Pierre, her overseer, to the catacomb gates. She told him what they had in mind, and that he was to keep tabs on all the Nosferatu within the catacombs just as he had been doing prior to them getting out of control.

Although Evee trusted Pierre with her life, she feared that if they didn’t hurry and collect the missing Nosferatu and get all of them to the North Compound for feeding time, more fights would break out. Then they might lose the protection of the scabior canopy, and the Cartesians would find her Originals and annihilate them. Then it wouldn’t be long before humans throughout the city would die senseless, useless deaths.

Evee feared that might be going on even now with her Nosferatu. She felt in her gut that somewhere in the city more deaths had already taken place. She could only hope she and her sisters wouldn’t be next.

The Benders seemed very confident in their abilities and seemed to have a solid plan in place, or as solid as one might have in such a situation.

Evee, on the other hand, had not known this much fear—ever.