Chapter 21 #2
But Sabra has the knowledge and skill we need.
Back in the day, Sabra and I finally learned how to connect spirit energy back to the specific plane a spirit originally came from.
It took a lot of trial and error over many months, but we discovered a system that involved all three of us working together.
Phoenix, Sabra, and me. Together, we provide the fuel, the framework, and the fine-tuning, respectively.
Without one of us, the entire system falls apart.
We absolutely need Sabra for this.
I pull open the door to the computer lab, only to find Phoenix already sitting at her console. She’s showered and changed into fresh clothes.
Which really shouldn’t surprise me at all.
“Find anything?” I ask while walking over to stand behind her chair.
“No,” she says without looking away from the screen. “Ammit’s not in Sectors One, Two, Six, or Five, so she’s not headed north or east. That leaves just Sectors Three and Four to search.”
Phoenix pulls up a detailed map of the city on another monitor.
I nod while sitting down in the chair beside her.
“The bots are working their search pattern outwards from the center. But you might have been right about Ammit hunkering down somewhere to hide. Still, she had to have gotten off the riverbanks at some point to find shelter. Some camera somewhere had to have caught at least a glimpse of her.”
“Or they will as soon as she pops her head up to move,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “Coffee?”
Phoenix nods distractedly while clicking through the data collected from the night before. I stand up and head over to the espresso maker in the corner of the lab.
“You still like it the same way?” I ask over my shoulder.
For the first time all morning, she actually looks over at me. “You remember how I take my coffee?”
“I remember everything about you.” Our eyes lock for a long moment before she tears her gaze away to look back at the screen.
“Yeah, I take it the same way.” Her voice has gone softer.
I allow myself a brief smile as I prep the portafilter carefully. I tamp down the espresso powder and brew four long shots into a ceramic mug. Then I add steaming hot water to make it an Americano.
“What are we going to do when we actually find Ammit?” I ask while pulling another few shots for a second cup. “Have you called Sabra yet to coordinate?”
She’s quiet for a long moment before she finally answers. “No, I haven’t called Sabra.”
I finish making the second Americano and bring both of our coffees over to the console. I hand hers to her carefully.
She takes the cup from my hands and inhales deeply.
Her eyes fall closed. I don’t even pretend not to watch her in this moment.
Coffee was always one of the few pleasures Phoenix ever allowed herself in her disciplined, driven life.
It’s always been a pure joy to watch her pause and actually enjoy a simple cup of coffee.
She slowly takes a sip and lets out a little satisfied noise that does things to me.
Then she opens her eyes and looks at me as if coming back to the present moment and real life after her brief vacation.
A small frown settles on her mouth. She finally answers the unspoken question hanging in the room between us.
“No, I haven’t called Sabra. Because I don’t want to just send this spirit back where it came from. ”
I feel my eyebrows bunch together in confusion, but she continues speaking quickly before I can ask. “I want to kill it. Permanently.”
I sit up straighter in my chair and almost spill hot coffee all over myself. “What? Why would we do that?” More importantly, “How would we even accomplish that?”
“Think about it,” she says while setting her coffee down carefully on the table beside her keyboard. “Opening portals to other planes was what started this entire mess in the first place. If we keep doing it repeatedly, who knows what else could go wrong in the future?”
“Last time, there were extenuating circumstances,” I point out carefully. “Your grandfather interfered with the ritual—”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” she interrupts with frustration in her voice.
“There’s always going to be something unexpected.
There are too many variables we can’t control.
Too many unknowns and the powers we’re dealing with here are beyond our understanding.
” She takes a breath. “Ammit is a relatively small spirit and one we should be able to take care of with comparative ease. Which is why I think we need to eliminate her on sight rather than trying some complicated inter-planar return operation. We just need to destroy her like your brother did with the Devourers. That’s the only real solution to any spirits who manage to break into this plane. ”
I can only blink at her in shock. “You really mean that?”
“This world is no place for spirits from other realms. You’ve seen what Ammit does to her victims. She’s a power this world doesn’t know how to handle. Her only language is destruction. Spirits can’t just come to this place and wreak havoc on unsuspecting humans who have no defense against them.”
I stand up abruptly and turn my back to her. Her words are like knives cutting into me.
I thought just like she does now, once upon a time.
Back when I tried to send my brothers back to the Great Hall where the angels live.
It’s where the Spark of Life inside us originally comes from, yes.
But returning them there would have meant separating them from their wives and the mothers of their children.
All I could see back then was our destructive natures.
I couldn’t see the change and growth and good we were capable of achieving.
“Layden,” she says behind me. “Wait, you don’t think I mean you, do you?”
I feel her hand land gently on my back. I can’t help stepping away from her touch. Even the lure of her hand on me isn’t enough to hold me in place. My shame is stronger than my hunger for her.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says with something like desperation in her voice. “I didn’t mean you. You’re one of the best people I know.”
I turn to face her with an incredulous expression.
“I’m exactly what you just described. My Creator-Father and his kind broke their way onto this plane ages ago.
You know he set me and my brothers loose to be plagues upon humankind for millennia.
I inflicted my hunger on millions of innocent people.
I starved them to death.” I speak through gritted teeth.
“Trust me when I say it’s a horrible way to die. ”
“But you changed!” Her voice rises with emotion.
I stare at the wall instead of at her. “We still deserve to be destroyed for all the terrible things we did in the past.” I certainly don’t deserve happiness or love.
That my brothers have managed to steal happy endings for themselves in spite of the way we all began is miracle enough.
It’s just pure greediness to think that I could do the same.
“No,” Phoenix says with adamant force. “Not you.” She turns away from me. “But some of us deserve to be destroyed for the harm we cause.”
Us? “What do you mean by us?”
“I’m not who you think I am.” Her voice has gone quiet.
“Phoenix?” I’m so confused by how this conversation has suddenly turned. Phoenix is perfect in my eyes. Is she saying she thinks she deserves—
She spins around and glares at me with wild eyes. “I lied to you.”
“What?” What is she even talking about? “How? When did you lie?”
“Every single day you’ve known me. I’m a lie!” Her voice breaks on the last word.
I try to reach for her, but she snatches her arm away before I can make contact.
“Then tell me the truth now.”
“You thought I was nineteen when you met me, but I was much, much older than that.”
I frown because I don’t understand what she’s getting at. “Okay,” I say slowly, but she shakes her head violently.
“I’m ancient. More ancient than you are.
But most of my existence was spent in a dark, dark place.
” She shudders visibly, and again, I want to reach for her to comfort her.
“There was only darkness and no light at all. It was so cold there. I didn’t even know how cold and freezing it was at the time, only that each moment of existence was a misery until I finally glimpsed light and warmth from this plane. ”
Her eyes close tightly. Her features twist into a mask of horror.
“They say that hell is a hot, fiery place, but I know the truth. It’s cold.
Frozen with no light anywhere. So, so dark.
” She’s shuddering so hard now that all I want to do is pull her into my arms. She’s in so much pain I can’t stand to watch it.
But again, when I try to hold out a comforting hand, she yanks herself back.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“No.” I shake my head in confusion. “Not at all.”
“I was a spirit!” Phoenix says while flinging her arms out to the sides. “I still am one. I come from another realm.”
I can only blink at her, completely shocked.
“You’re a…” My mind races. I suppose the angels must have theoretically just been beings…
spirits from another plane that sensed this one at one point and managed to break thru, but— “But how? Are there more of you that broke through, like the angels did?”
“No.” She shakes her head impatiently. “It was just me, at least that I know of. I glimpsed this plane when some mage or other was experimenting like Sabra does with her circles. They were trying to make contact with planes beyond this one. It wasn’t even a trained mage—just a woman in the middle ages with innate blood magic who kept crying out in powerful desperation to whatever spirit might help her. ”
Phoenix breathes out hard, eyes on the floor, hands fisted. “I latched on to her call and answered it. I fed her impulses on how to save herself from her situation…”
Phoenix’s eyes finally lift to mine again. “… But it came at a terrible cost. I was desperate, too. I was— I was so hungry for life and warmth that I would have done anything to get into this world.” She flings an arm out again. “Just like those spirits breaking through the barrier now.”
“Wait,” I reach for her but she jerks away. I want to understand even as I want to comfort her. “So you… lied about Vlad taking you from your mother and father? You’re not actually related to Vlad at all? Is he… another spirit pretending to be human, too?”
“No, no,” she shakes her head impatiently.
“I used him. Don’t you see? I used all my blood magic ancestors down through the generations.
” She looks at me with wild, desperate eyes as if she needs me to understand this.
“I felt the warmth coming from this plane when I was trapped in the other realm. I felt their pumping blood with all its potential and all the life force here. I didn’t know much about this world, but I knew the blood was important.
The blood was the key. It was the way in. It drew me like a moth to a flame.
“That first human with blood mage potential who made contact with me was the first Vlad Dracul’s wife.
The Vlad Dracul who was a King, like where we get all the Dracula myths from.
But really it was her. History doesn’t even remember her name, but it was her who called out into the darkness of the spirit realm, begging for help.
“She had no idea it would be me who answered her call. Me she was making a bargain with. A blood oath, just like Vlad used to entrap Sabra’s mother, and you in this marriage, and countless others over the centuries.
“Don’t you see? I started it all, as a spirit in the dark realm.
I created the first blood oath. I made it with her—to save her life in exchange for the baby boy in her belly once he became a man.
A son named after his father. Vlad. A son who would become the first vampire, when the bloodlust first came upon him as a man of twenty-five.
To pay for how I saved his mother. And the blood sacrifice of his victim…
it fed me and gave me a tie into this realm. ”
Phoenix’s voice drops to a dry, horrified whisper as she continues.
“But I didn’t bargain only for him. It was for his son, too.
And his son after that. Generation after generation after generation.
They would drink the blood of humans for me, feeding me their life force until I had enough power stored up to finally, finally get myself born into this world twenty-nine years ago as a living baby incarnate. ”
Holy shit.
So that’s where vampires originally came from.
I have so many questions racing through my mind.
But right then, a loud beeping alert comes from the computer behind Phoenix. We both spin to look at the screen simultaneously.
Then Phoenix leaps for the mouse to click on the flashing alert. “Oh my god! It’s Ammit.”
“Where is she?”
Phoenix clicks through rapidly to get to the specific camera feed that caught Ammit’s image. She clicks play on the footage. Then she swears viciously. “I’ve got to call John Paul right now.”
“John Paul?” I ask in confusion, then remember that’s Professor Dickhead’s first name. “Wait, Ammit’s at the university?”
Phoenix stabs frantically at the buttons on her phone.
“She’s headed straight toward the building where he’s got his morning class in just a little bit.
Maybe he was trying to hunt her down himself and somehow managed to make contact with her?
Or she heard about his research on ancient goddesses?
It can’t be a coincidence that she’s heading directly there, can it? Dammit, pickup the phone!”
The phone’s on speakerphone mode. I hear it ring several times before going to voicemail.
She grabs me firmly by the hand with genuine fear in her eyes. “We’ve got to get there now. We’ve got to help him before Ammit kills him.”
I nod in agreement. Together, we sprint for the garage at the opposite end of the compound. Me and my goddess wife, who bargained and lied and stole her way into this world through a path paved in generations of blood.
A wife who just told me she’s actually an ancient spirit who possessed her own bloodline in order to be born.
A wife who I’m somehow falling even more in love with despite everything.