Chapter 10 – Alex
Dirt clouds around my feet as I climb the steep bank of a hill deep in the mountains. Sprinkles of moonlight drift through the thick canopy overhead, lighting spots along my path in the darkness. My vampiric speed can only help me so much at an elevation like this.
“Damn it, Morgan,” I mutter under my breath as I reach the top of the hill. “Why did you choose to live all the way out in the middle of nowhere?”
But of course, I know the answer. Morgan never lives where there is an abundance of people. She prefers her privacy, and for good reason.
I’ve kept tabs on Morgan over the years, even if I haven’t visited her in some time. I just hope coming all the way out here to speak with her will be worth the effort. I need to find Lorianna as soon as possible. Otherwise, Aurelius will become more suspicious of me. Worst case scenario, he will order another vampire to hunt her down, and I’ll have to kill my own coven mates to protect her.
The other problem is, although I’m confident Morgan can find Lorianna for me, the question will be, is she willing? After the way we ended things before, it’s possible she’ll tell me to fuck off and never return.
If I had any other choice, I wouldn’t come to her at all.
Beyond the hill, I scan the forest floor and the boughs of tall trees as I walk for any sign that I’m heading in the right direction. There’s a slight clearing in the trees up ahead. Nothing huge, but enough to make moonlight sparkle on dew-covered grass.
I step in that direction, and a wave of invisible tension brushes across my skin. As if stepping on the surface of a lake, I tumble through to the other side, swallowed whole by the ripple of magic.
As soon as I realize what it is, it’s too late.
I open my mouth to announce myself, but the movement only throws me deeper into the illusion, dragging me like an ocean current to the perilous, impossibly dark bottom of the ocean. I attempt to lift my arm toward the hilt of my katana, but the muscles are frozen, not just held in place, but cold. My whole body is captured in an icy sensation, shivering while the magical trap wraps me in its noose.
My lungs strain for air, but breathing only spreads the pressure further inside me, making it seem like I’m being crushed from the inside out. My bones flex and strain against the invisible force. A human would fall into a broken pile of pure blood and agony inside Morgan’s magical traps, but I’m reinforced by death and don’t fall so easily.
I stop struggling, letting my entire body float as if I were really at the bottom of that ocean. My peripheral vision blurs and narrows, and when I close my eyes, I welcome blackness. I concentrate on the air around me, beyond the darkness, the real air that’s not an illusion of an endless ocean.
Morgan!I shout with my mind. It’s Alex.
The water wraps tighter around my throat, and I gag. Fuck, of course, she knows who I am. That’s the whole reason she’s making me fight this fucking trap in the first place.
Aurelius is on the move. I need your help to save someone precious to me. Please, Morgan, I don’t have anyone else to rely on for this. You’re the only one I know who is truly good, through and through.
My intentions swirl in my head like a whirlpool, spreading outward into the water and hopefully past the illusion to Morgan. I tremble in the trap’s hold, but its grip loosens by a fraction. Enough for me to open my eyes and stare into the hazy illusion, water cresting around me like the murky bottom of a lake.
In the shadows between light and trees, the indistinct figure of a woman comes into focus. She raises a hand, snapping her fingers.
The illusion cracks.
Air rushes into my lungs, and I suck back an enormous gasp. I lose my sense of weightlessness, and all my 200 pounds of pure muscle slam back into me like a truck, throwing me onto all fours. The brine of saltwater stings my mouth and nose, and I gag into the ground even though the water doesn’t exist.
“Aw, hun, I know ye’re used to bowing to that old fuck of a boss of yers, but ye don’t need to do that for wee, insignificant me. Thanks, though.”
I throw my head back and wipe the sweat and hair off of my forehead while I glare at the woman standing between the trees just ahead of me.“Morgan,” I manage.
Long black curls frame her youthful face and cascade down her back. Her blue-gray eyes are the embodiment of an ocean’s unyielding current. On the surface, they are calm and pristine, like an alluring tropical oasis. But if you search deeper within, the true extent of her wisdom and danger lurk in the deaths, ready to strike. Everything about her appearance is misleading, including her age.
The last time I saw her, about fourteen years ago, she looked exactly the same. Like a woman in her early 40s who could be on the cover of a magazine. The only difference is the long, gray streak through her hair that she wears proudly down her shoulder.
“Why, hello there, wee child o’ mine. Here I was thinking, as I watched ye sputter and gag like a grounded fish, that I was going to have to save yer sorry behind again.” Morgan’s smile manages to be smug and innocent at the same time, as if she is amused by nearly killing me with her illusion. She snaps her fingers again. “I’ll be taking that, my dear. Hope ye understand. An old witch can’t be too careful these days.”
A spark of blue flashes between her fingers, and then my katana is flying from my belt. The lacquered sheath decorated in golden blossoms lands in her outstretched palm.
I smooth over my expression and all the intrepid feelings welling in my stomach, and drag my exhausted body to my feet.“Are you accusing me of coming here to kill you?”
She brings a hand to her mouth and laughs. “Great oceans, no. We’ve played that game once already. We’re beyond that point, wouldn’t ye agree?”
“I will never lay a hand intended to hurt you again.”
“It’s a general rule around here these days: no weapons.”
“That isn’t a problem, assuming you give it back when we’re done.”
“Now begs the question, what would bring my foolish, prideful Arcien back to shadow my door? Rethinking all those nasty things ye said to me last time I saw yer ugly mug? Better be here to grovel and beg forgiveness, wee fishie.”
“The same reason anyone would bother tolerating your vexing personality.”
“Fourteen years and ye’ve only become grouchier, wee one.”
“And I didn’t think you’d lose so much of your mind to end up in the fucking mountains,” I grumble. “What is a sea witch doing all the hells away out here?”
Morgan cackles. “Can’t an old lady have some fun? Lay off, city boy.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I had any other choice, but a lot has happened in the past few days.”
She rolls her eyes, then turns and waddles toward the clearing. “I might be old, but I’m not deaf, dumb, or blind. I do keep an ear to the ground and listen to the songs and chattering of the birds and squirrels. There is a lot of troubling anxiety shifting about these days, isn’t there? Come on, ye better come inside. Have a feeling these ancient branches o’ mine won’t stand the test of yer tale.”
Morgan’s gait favors her left side, an old injury that didn’t heal right. As stout and old as she is, she wields the presence of a being on the same level as Aurelius despite being at least 400 years younger. Rather than being built to intimidate, she wears a guise prepared to deceive.
That is why I so readily made an attempt on her life 80 years ago. Part of the story, at least. She’ll never let that go, but I don’t think she actually holds it against me. It was a tricky time in both of our lives.
And entirely separate from our current tensions.
Morgan snaps her fingers, and a wave of magic dissipates like falling stardust in the clearing before us to reveal an old log cabin. It has a makeshift quality to it, built up of uneven and mismatched boards, bark, and branches, stitched together with tender love, sewn tightly with magic. If it wasn’t for the last ingredient, I’m sure it wouldn’t be standing at all. Fortunately for Morgan, she doesn’t have to worry about silly things like physics.
The shimmering veil settles back into the earth by the time we near the doorway. The ground and roots of the ancient trees sparkle as they soak up the magic and pull it back into the earth.
I follow her into the hut, which is just one room with a curtain separating the kitchen space from the rest of the structure. On this side, there are shelves of glass jars stuffed with herbs and all sorts of unusual ingredients Morgan uses for spells—pickled bird eyes, chicken feet, hundreds of different plants. In one corner of the space, she has an old fire-powered stove, where the wood is burning and there’s already a kettle boiling on the stovetop.
Morgan stashes my katana behind the rows of jars, then plucks several different herbs from different containers, custom-making a tea blend that she places inside the steeper over two separate cups. She pours the hot water over the leaves before bringing it over to the table. Once she’s seated, I pull out a gnarled chair and join her.
“Aurelius is on the move again,” I tell her. “Gilbert Monroe and I have been cooperating to undermine his efforts to dominate humanity, but Gilbert was caught. Now, I… I’m trying to pick up the pieces.”
“Tell me about the young woman ye’re trying to save.”
“I’m not trying. I will save her.”
“Don’t be a child, wee fishie.”
A growl rises in my throat. “Lorianna Monroe. Carmen and Gilbert’s daughter.”
“Their daughter? Ye don’t say.” Morgan raises a thin black eyebrow. “Funny ye’d trust me with her life. I do recall the last time I had the displeasure of hosting ye in my home ye called me… what was it, ‘a fake who preys on people’s hopes and dreams, and if I had any real clairvoyant abilities, I’m more interested in pushing people around like game pieces in a direction that favors me rather than trying to help them.’ Innat right?”
I stir the tea, letting the leaves swirl and breathe in the hot water. I can’t stop the corner of my mouth from lifting in amusement. “Isn’t that exactly what you do, Morgan?”
“Oh, aye, but it’s pretty fucking offensive to call me a fake. Everything I see is real. Just because yer fat head can’t make sense o’ heads or tails don’t mean my visions are any less important.”
“Any visions about Aurelius lately?”
She turns her nose up at me. “Do ye really think I’d tell ye anything after the last time ye threw a fit when my reading didn’t match what ye found out in the world?”
“That’s because nothing you see is real,” I hiss. “You told me Carmen would escape. You told me our plan would work. She was supposed to lead a happy life away from Aurelius and everyone else who wanted to hurt her. Her AND Lorianna. But then—but then—Carmen died, and Lorianna barely survived. You were wrong. How can you look me in the eye and tell me that is anything close to what happened?”
Morgan sighs deeply and pulls out the strainer holding the tea leaves and herbs from the cup of steaming water, then turns the strainer upside down on a plate beside her. “Some pathways to the future are not what they seem. Visions play tricks on the mind. If I made a mistake that caused harm, there was no intent behind the action. My goal is the same as it always has been, little fishie.”
“Carmen’s death is on your hands as much as it is on mine. Do you have any idea how much of a burden this has been over the last fourteen years? I haven’t told a soul. And you won’t even acknowledge what happened. You won’t admit that you fucked up.”
Humming, Morgan lifts the strainer and examines the way the leaves fell on the plate. Her eyes flick around as if she’s reading language written on paper.
“You knew Carmen was going to die, didn’t you? You knew it, but you told us everything would be fine and to go ahead with our plans anyway because her death would bring you closer to your ultimate goal, whatever that is,” I sneer. “Tell me the truth.”
Her eyes don’t leave the tea leaves. “Calm yerself, Arcien. I don’t deal with men who show their tempers around me.”
At first, I don’t know what she’s talking about, but when I flex my hands, wood scrapes beneath elongated claws. Claws I never intended to use. They gouge into the wood of her kitchen table, leaving claw marks as I hurry to retract them. I brush away the thin trails of sawdust, and my anger deflates, but I don’t apologize for what I said.
“Did you know or not? I need to know, Morgan. I want to be able to trust you.”
Finally, she drags her eyes away from the tea leaves. The deep, mysterious pale blue swirls like a current as she stares at me, and then the motion blurs and stills.
She wasn’t just reading the leaves. She had another vision.
Curiosity tugs at me, but I don’t let it take me far. Unless she gives me answers, I will never trust her clairvoyance again. Her other abilities, however, are far more reliable.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. If we will ever be able to finally kill Aurelius, I have to believe that time is coming soon.
“Carmen’s death is not what I saw, no,” she says. “But I can tell ye no more than that.”
“What the fuck does—” I bite down my temper, clenching my fist around the teacup before slamming back some of the sweet golden liquid. After a breath, I try again. “What does that mean, Morgan?”
“It means ye do not need to know.”
I tilt my head at her. After Carmen died, I did say those horrible things to Morgan about her abilities and her qualities as a friend. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t mean them. I was cruel, but it was how I felt. Maybe Morgan isn’t a fraud, and there is a discrepancy between what she sees and what she shares. There always has been—I just didn’t know better until the details she left out killed my friend.
I’ve been around Morgan long enough to understand what that really means when she says I don’t need to know—if I did, my actions could somehow alter the predicted domino effect of reality. Somehow, this means that fourteen years later, the consequences of the actions made on that fateful day haven’t finished playing out yet.
It has to be something to do with Lorianna, doesn’t it?
Without a doubt, Morgan has had a vision of Lorianna. Something soon, critical to her efforts. I don’t like the sound of that. I need to find her.
Outside the window, a glint of light catches my eye. I didn’t realize how much time had passed, but the dark sky has faded away, the pale gray and blue of encroaching dawn rising all around the world beyond. I wasted too much time here; I’ll be stuck with Morgan until nightfall.
“Fine,” I sigh. “It doesn’t matter what happened—I’m not here to dredge up the past. I need your help protecting the future. And not through one of your visions. I need something concrete to tell me where Lorianna is so I can find her.”
Morgan’s eyes flash bright azure. “Yes, ye must find her,” she says with urgency. “She is more important than ye understand, and ye are the one who must keep her safe. Watch over her. Protect her with yer life.”
“Morgan.” My voice twinges with warning as it hisses out of my teeth. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She blinks the blue glow away. “She is a witch. Not any witch but a descendant of a special bloodline—one we must protect if we are ever to defeat Aurelius.”
“What are you going on about?” A growl crawls up my throat. “Lorianna isn’t a witch. I would know. I’ve watched her like a hawk for the last fourteen years.”
“She is. I felt Lorianna’s presence the moment she connected to the Well for the first time. The conduit of the earth does not lie.”
I sit back in my chair, letting the wood creak beneath me. My head spins as I relive every memory I have with Lorianna and Carmen, trying to uncover any truth about what Morgan is telling me. But none of my interactions with either woman ever led me to question whether it was possible that they had magic. Nothing. Never.
I’m less than half of Morgan’s 300-some-odd years, but I’ve still met a lot of witches in my time. I know what magic feels like.
“There must be a mistake. I’ve worked with The Monroe family for over thirty years. I would have noticed any magic.”
“I don’t doubt that, but Lorianna’s bloodline must have been latent. It did not awaken until she needed its power.” Morgan purses her lips, scrutinizing me. “You drank her blood, didn’t you?”
I shift in my seat. My instinct is to lie, but Morgan would see through it. “Yes.”
A streak of sunlight crosses the room, stretching across the kitchen table between me and Morgan. She rises from her seat and grabs the curtain, but instead of closing it like I expect her to, she rips it open.
Sun flashes across my skin. “What the fuck!” I hiss in anticipation of the agonizing sunburn and duck my head away from the glow. But there was no pain, nothing but a tingling sensation. “What the fuck?”
“As I expected.”
I stay behind the table, out of the light’s trajectory. “Do you want to explain what’s going on yet?”
“This is all the proof ye need that Lorianna is a witch. She is a rare specimen, one with light in her blood. As a vampire, this means that just a taste o’ her is enough to give ye temporary resistance to the sun. Go on, give it a try.”
“Not a fucking chance. Are you trying to get me killed?”
She throws her head back with a laugh. “Far simpler ways to do that, wee fishie. Stop yer cowering this instant and look.”
I keep my feet planted in place, still eyeing Morgan with suspicion. She seems so sure of herself, and I can’t deny that I felt something special when I drank Lorianna’s blood. I attributed it to our unique entanglement; not quite romantic, not quite sexual, not quite friends, but somewhere oddly in the middle of all three. The taste of her made me feel fucking invincible—is it possible the magic within could be the reason why?
Could she be a witch?
I raise a hand, creeping it toward the edge of the table from below. My fingers grasp the edge, my body tensing in anticipation of the searing pain that I experience whenever I’m exposed to direct sunlight.
It never comes.
“See?” Morgan smirks, then goes to grab the curtain. “Told you.”
She starts sliding it closed, but I brave the knot in my chest and slowly rise to my feet before she can. Sunlight spreads across my face, a wave of warmth that feels like it’s illuminating all the way through the shadows within my soul, cleansing them one ray at a time.
For the first time in over a hundred years, the sun touches my skin.
I turn my hands over in awe. My skin prickles but doesn’t burn. It doesn’t hurt at all.
“Impossible,” I murmur. My gaze swings to Morgan. “How? How is this possible?”
“Her blood is the antithesis of vampirism. With a steady supply of her blood, a vampire could walk in the light for hours at a time without fear o’ getting burned. It’s possible that, with the right spells, her blood could be used to cure vampirism altogether.”
“You mean…”
“Aye. Ye could be human again, Arcien.”
Until that moment, I was sure Morgan was fucking with me, that there was no way Lorianna could be a witch. But now, with the sun shining on my face, I know that not only is she a witch, but she’s also incredible. I’d never thought it possible that she could be a part of my world.
In a daze, I turn toward the door, fling it open, and walk into the light.
My skin tingles all over, but although I can withstand it, facing so much of the sun at once leaves a sharp pain beneath it all. Still, I stare up at the sun in all its blazing glory as it begins to rise for the new day.
Morgan follows out after me. “Alex, ye’re going to hurt yerself if ye do that,” she whispers.
When I don’t move, she plants her hands on my back and whispers a few words. A surge of magic pours through me, and the sharp scraping pain on my face and arms diminishes to an itchy sensation.
For the first time since Morgan fished me out of the Caribbean Sea over a hundred years ago, my chin rises to follow threads of gold painting the tops of fir and pine trees, spreading up through the sky like magic. The whole world is enveloped in a heavenly halo that makes the darkness inside me shrivel.
I wish Lorianna were with me, that we could watch this together.
It breaks my heart that I could have experienced this with her had I known just what she was capable of. How extraordinary it would have been to watch my first sunrise in over a century with her by my side.
“My spell only boosts the effects o’ her blood,” Morgan says. “Ye’re not human yet, far from it.”
I stumble back into the house in disbelief. With Lorianna’s blood and some magic, I could walk in the day with her. Be by her side at all hours, not just during the night.
But… if any other vampire took her blood, wouldn’t they experience the same effects? She could be in significantly more danger than I ever realized if anyone else discovers the truth.
“We can’t breathe a word about this to anyone,” I tell Morgan as she closes the door and returns to the table. “If Aurelius ever so much as suspects what Lorianna is capable of, he will hunt her to the end of the earth. This time, it wouldn’t be to kill her—it would be to imprison her and siphon her blood to figure out how to make all vampires loyal to him immune to the sun. That way, humans would hold no power over him anymore. They could freely terrorize humanity without repercussions. That’s exactly what he’s wanted all these years. He would be unstoppable, Morgan. We cannot let this happen.”
Morgan nods gravely. “This is why ye must protect her at all costs.”
“That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
“Aye, but this isn’t a task ye can do alone. Ye can’t walk in the light with her, not yet.”
“Neither can Aurelius. So long as I’m with her at night—”
“No. Listen to me, Arcien, and listen to me well. There are many threats to Lorianna out in this world, not just vampires. I bid ye to consider employing vampire hunters to watch over her during the day. She has another man, doesn’t she? Luke Lewandowski. The two o’ ye must work together to keep her safe.”
A shiver courses through me at that fucking name. “I will never work with a vampire hunter, let alone that fucker. “Luke tried to kill me. He’s manipulated Lorianna countless times. He’s bad. A bad person and bad for her. The only credit to his name is that he’s hunting Aurelius, but if I ever see his face again, I will kill him.”
“Never said it would be easy, did I? The two o’ ye are not so different, however, if ye stopped thinking like an animal. I told ye to protect her. I tell ye now what yer promise of ‘any cost’ will entail. Do with that information as ye will.”
“I need to find Lorianna as soon as possible. What’s it going to cost me?”
“Nothing right now.” She sips her tea thoughtfully. “But later, plenty.”
“Please, Morgan, no more riddles. We’ve already established how important it is that I find Lorianna. Just tell me what I need to strike a deal.”
She smiles, but it’s not smug or patronizing. A faint wisp of true happiness. “Let it be the first o’ many helping hands I give ye on the path to restoring our friendship. It is that friendship which will cost ye dearly in the end, wee fishie.”
“All friendships barter in pain, don’t they?”
It’s not really a question, even though I phrase it as one. Love and pain are facets of one another. Inseparable. This is a fact I readily accepted when I was a man but took me almost a hundred years to learn again as an immortal.
Morgan holds out a hand expectantly, and I pull the pieces of gold and rubies from Lorianna’s necklace and drop them into Morgan’s hand. “Will these do the trick?”
She fingers around with the pieces. “It’s not as good as if the necklace was whole, but I can find her with this. Just give me a moment.”