I'm finally here!! I want to express my deep gratitude to everyone who gave this little story a chance. It means so much that some folks out there dig it. I'm still feel very much a beginner in the writing journey but I'm better than I was and one day I'll be even better still. Thank you everyone for your feedback. I'm considering self-publishing after a few more rounds of revision of the story as a whole, under the title "That Which Haunts You." Thank you again to beta readers Berry, Ash, James, who has always been so forgiving of my tendency toward split infinitives.
It wasn't a tumble but a precise leap, his legs hugged tightly into his chest. As if he dove, cannonball-style, into a pool but out the window. Rhea looked at Lucy, who shook her head. "Prick," muttered the vampire.
Rhea scurried over and stuck her head out. Patrick was gone. A befuddled bystander stood by frozen; he was a tall man with a well-muscled body, in a shiny purple dress shirt and fitted trousers. He looked up as if to see if something else might fall from the sky. Rhea resisted the urge to duck back inside.
"Did you see that?" said the bystander, his voice pitched high. The lighting on the side of the building was scarce and Rhea couldn't see his face, only his brown skin and long black hair.
"Something flashed by the window. I thought someone fell," Rhea called back.
"Someone did!" the bystander called back. "Then they just...disappeared. Into a mist. Right before he hit the ground." The bystander's voice trailed off. He shifted in place, fearful, as if he could not believe what he himself saw.
"Huh," said Rhea. "You said a mist?" She gave Lucy a pleading look. Lucy shrugged her shoulders.
"I, uh. I gotta go," the bystander managed. He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced away without another word.
"Patrick jumps out of a lot of windows," observed Rhea as she ducked back inside.
Lucy stared at the shattered glass from the window on the floor. "He does," she answered. "A new habit, I'm afraid." Lucy then looked at Rhea and smiled. "Should you eat something? There's nuts in the cupboard and we can get you some food on the way."
Without waiting for a response, Lucy began work on hanging a sheet over the smashed window, which was tall and narrow to match the high ceilings, much higher than Lucy could reach. Rhea shuffled over to the cupboard Lucy had pointed to. She fished out a bag of cashews and tossed a few in mouth.
Rhea turned back and saw Lucy crawling up the wall with smooth, rapid movements. Like a spider, Rhea's mind offered as she watched the vampire, now parallel to the highest point of the broken window. Her knees were splayed outwards beneath her, one angled higher than the other. She held a length of duct tape in one hand and taped a corner of the sheet to the wall.
Rhea's breath shallowed as she watched Lucy. She had seen this up close only once before. On a hunch Greta sent her to study a few months with a solitary witch, unaffiliated with any coven, who was well-connected among vampires. It was here Rhea discovered her rare talent: she could control the death magick within the vampire body and thus the body itself. The ability was rare and manifested blindly among necromancers. The teacher's vampires were wary of her from that moment on and soon refused to work with her altogether.
"They fear you," her teacher explained. Both witches and vampires draw their power from death's magick. But witches wield the power themselves, while they live at death's mercy." To be fair the burgeoning power wasn't entirely within her control in those early days and, for reasons neither she nor her teacher ever figured out, Rhea kept snapping their femur bones.
Rhea wondered if Lucy's first few years after death were spent in an awkward grapple with her new powers. She couldn't imagine it now; she watched as the vampire crept across the wall with the same ease as crawling along the floor. Lucy's bicep flexed as she propelled a body freed of the limits of gravity around the frames that hung on the wall and eased herself back to the ground. She looked at Rhea through shadowed eyes over her shoulder. Her mouth twisted into a narrow smile. And then, whether by vampire magick or Rhea's wearily-warped mind, Lucy was across the room. Rhea let her body melt against the strength of Lucy's form. Lucy's arm pressed into her and it felt like arching her back over a guardrail and baring her heart towards the sky. Lucy kissed her.
Rhea brought a hand to Lucy's face. "We shouldn't," she whispered. The concealment magick on the door would be overpowered by the noise. Lucy held fast. "Then you shouldn't have looked at me like that." Lucy pressed her forehead into Rhea's; her breath was labored. Rhea gripped Lucy's hair as the reasons not to grew faint. Then her stomach growled and, hearing it, Lucy pulled away. "We should feed you, darling," she said.
They left the apartment. The vampire hissed through her teeth as she locked the door, the enchanted tape the only barrier between her store of irreplaceable books and thousands of dollars of couture. "Still not worth getting maimed by sunlight," Lucy said. They went again to Lucy's car and Rhea directed her to a 24-hour taco shop. Rhea ordered a burrito and scanned the old fridge behind the cashier. She pointed to a glass bottle filled with a bubbly soft pink soda.
"Guava," offered the cashier.
He was a young man, about nineteen, with a sparse black mustache. His brow furrowed in concentration as he tapped Rhea's order on the tablet screen and answered questions through a headset for a customer waiting in the drive-thru. He handed Rhea her receipt and pivoted to a window where a car pulled up. Soon there was a tray in Rhea's hands that carried a stuffed styrofoam carton and the soda. Rhea sat across from Lucy who waited at a table. The vampire was quiet. Rhea only managed about a quarter of the burrito before nerves bottlenecked her appetite.
"She snuck up behind me." Lucy finally said. The vampire shook her head as if she still didn't quite believe it. "I didn't see her, I didn't hear or smell anything. I opened the door for the double and turned away."
"So Lara must be good at concealment magick," answered Rhea. "Even before she started murdering people. And after, the power she took allowed her create concealment spells that deceived even Greta." It explained how Rhea had no suspicions she was hexed with the sac for months. There must have been scores of unnamed victims that came before Janice, all fodder for Lara as she perfected the spell. Anonymous murders within a sprawling metropolis. To which the coven paid no mind, because the victims weren't witches.
But it was Janice's life that made Lara what she was now and gave her magick that defied an order Rhea had thought natural. The hole in the door. And Sweetwater's silence. The cyclone.
"One moment I was walking back to you and then I was on the floor," said Lucy. "I thought--" Lucy shook her head. "But then it was just gone. I was free. I ran up the stairs as fast as I could go."
"It just... evaporated?" asked Rhea. Lucy nodded.
Rhea nodded. "That's probably when I slashed her throat." Rhea could feel excitement growing as the pieces together. "It must have weakened her. The wound couldn't heal and sustain the hex at the same time," said Rhea.
"Spells shouldn't end like that?" asked Lucy.
"Not for a witch who's practiced," answered Rhea. "Remember at the full moon ceremony, when I hit Patrick with a bunch of spells at once?" Lucy smiled at the memory as she listened, "Some of the spells couldn't be undone, they had to wear off. As a witch becomes more adept their spellwork becomes stronger and self-sustaining. Nothing makes a spell permanent but some can last as long as they are maintained. Lara's spells can't sustain themselves." She wondered what that meant for the fiery cyclone. When its image surfaced, Rhea did not feel fear. In fact, she was beginning to suspect they would
succeed.
And what then? There was a harsh light overhead that illuminated the patio. It made the faint blue of Lucy's eyes look like dark water. Rhea felt an ache that started deep within her that now pushed against her edges. She knew the risks of getting involved with a vampire but had leapt anyway. Now, hard questions were becoming hard to ignore.
"She's strong," nodded Rhea, "but I think together we're stronger." Rhea latched the burrito box closed.
"If we can find her, we can draw her out," said Lucy, her voice laced with possibility. "And if we can weaken her enough, that will end the spell?"
"Or give us enough time to figure out how to break it." Rhea looked at her phone. "We should go, I need some sleep and we won't find her before sunrise."
They loaded themselves back into Lucy's car and headed to Patrick's place. His apartment was suspiciously similar to Lucy's, though less tidy and contained fewer books. There was soft, recessed amber light and overstuffed leather furniture. One chair was covered in jackets and wrinkled t-shirts, another overloaded with some unopened packages and a wicker basket stuffed with miscellaneous knick-knacks, a baseball hat, and a tray of watercolor paints. Shipping envelopes and opened boxes clustered in a pile on the floor.
"Did you decorate for him?" asked Rhea as she walked towards the kitchen to stash her food in the fridge. It was empty and had the peculiar stink of new appliances, somewhere between rotting fish and plastic. He must not have many human visitors, thought Rhea, but then remembered his key to Janice's apartment. Maybe he just didn't stay here often.
Lucy stretched upward. "Patrick needs a lot of caretaking. He has no idea who he is though he's had a century and a half to figure it out."
"It must be hard to be far away," said Rhea. She meant it as a casual comment, but a heaviness weighed the air.
"It can be. I try to pop in a few times a year and check on him." said Lucy. Her voice sounded tired, but the sort of fatigue that went beyond tonight. It came from caring for someone long after they stopped caring for themselves. Rhea crossed the room and pressed a kiss to Lucy's lips. The vampire's arms slid round her waist. The kiss was tender and languid. They swayed as one, only the stark sounds of the kiss that cut through the quiet of the space.
"Do you need blood?" whispered Rhea, her face close to Lucy's.
"Stop," Lucy said and tried to pull away but Rhea held her.
"Why?" whispered Rhea.
"Both of us are weak. It's dangerous."
