58. Impossible
Chapter 58
Impossible
Rancho Bautista del Murciélago—The next day
C erissa couldn’t believe the council had moved so swiftly. A crazy mix of anger and fear swirled through her, coupled with a level of possessiveness she’d never known before, not even when she fell in love with Henry.
My child. They’ll never hurt my child. I’ll see to it, whatever it takes.
As soon as Tig and Jayden headed out, she immediately called Inanna’s answering service and left another message. She stayed up late into the early morning planning and plotting. Rolf and Henry made notes and kicked around ideas, what their defense might be, what evidence they could proffer to prove they’d returned to the Hill before the deed was done.
Karen sat there, looking stunned and frightened, playing with the ankle monitor.
Prior to the sun rising, Cerissa went home with Henry. They kept tossing around ideas via videoconference until the moon set at one thirty in the afternoon and the vampires retired to sleep.
She needed to rest, too. But she couldn’t afford to sleep, not with Karen under house arrest. She had to arrive at a solution—and quickly. She tried Inanna’s answering service again, and from the sound of it, she was irritating the operators on duty, but she left another message. The receptionist confirmed that Inanna hadn’t called in since Cerissa’s last one, so at least she wasn’t being ghosted.
But what else could she do? Maybe Inanna was still in Hawaii. She emailed the head of the Hawaiian community. She’d have to wait out the day, chewing her nails and wondering how to approach the council. Maybe she could ask Ari to track down Inanna. The ancient vampire had to have a digital footprint somewhere.
After exercising Bear, she put him in the dog run for his afternoon snooze in the shade, then showered. She’d barely dressed when her phone rang and she stared at the number.
Impossible. Is this some kind of hoax?
“Hello?”
“Cerissa?”
She instantly knew the voice.
Goddess, save me .
“Karen, what are you doing awake?”
“I woke up in Rolf’s crypt. It’s dark, and I can’t find a light switch and the door’s locked. I’m trapped inside. Can you come get me?”
What the hell?
“Uh, you’re a vampire now.” Cerissa took a deep breath.
Karen scoffed. “Then explain why I can’t see a damn thing except for my phone screen. It’s pitch black in here, my phone’s battery is dying, the flashlight app isn’t working, and all I’ve got is a gray dot.”
“Karen, you’re a vampire—”
“Why are you arguing? I’m mortal, not vampire.”
Was Karen losing her mind after all?
I should have said no.
This was what came of experimenting on friends. “You’re vampire. I turned you two nights ago, remember?”
“I remember you did, but I’m telling you, I’m mortal again now. No fangs. And my stomach hurts. I don’t feel well. Please, get me out of here.”
“I’ll be right there. Bye.” Cerissa grabbed her purse and med kit. How the hell had Karen woken in the middle of the day? The moon had already set today around noon, and tonight’s moonrise would occur after dusk, so the moon wasn’t waking her—besides, if the moon woke her, then Rolf would be awake, too.
Even more puzzling—why did she think she was mortal?
Cerissa flashed to their kitchen, flipped on the basement lights, then scurried down the stairs to the unpainted block wall hallway outside Rolf’s crypts—a very similar arrangement to Henry’s—and realized why Karen couldn’t escape. Both a manual lock and electronic security guarded the door.
“Karen,” she yelled at the door.
“Get me out of here, please.”
“I’m going to, but the door is locked. I don’t want to flash inside because I don’t know the furniture layout.” It’d been over a year since she helped Rolf wake in the middle of the day to testify at the Mordida courthouse on behalf of Sierra Escondida, and since then, they’d added furniture to accommodate Karen. “We’ll pick the lock and defeat the electronic alarm, but you’ll need to be patient a little longer.”
“We? Who’s we ?”
“I’m calling Ari for help.”
“Hurry.” The pitch of her voice rose. “I’m panicking a bit.”
Five minutes later, Cerissa had the door unlocked. Over the phone, she asked Ari, “Can I open the door yet?”
“Hang on.” He mumbled something inaudible. “Okay, the alarm’s hacked and unarmed. Go for it.”
As soon as Cerissa swung the door wide, Karen rushed into the stark hallway with tears streaming down her cheeks. Cerissa grabbed her. “Hold on. You can’t run upstairs into sunlight until I figure out what’s going on.”
Karen leaned against the wall, clutching her stomach. “I hurt. Everywhere.”
She didn’t have the pallor of a vampire. Instead, her skin was the same waxy yellow it’d been when she was dying in hospice.
“Open,” Cerissa ordered her, holding a small flashlight near Karen’s mouth. She ran a finger over the roof behind her incisors—smooth and concave. The retracted fangs and puffy serum gland were gone. “Was it like this before you fell asleep?”
“No. Something scared me awake.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
“I was dreaming, a nightmare. Rolf was going to leave me because I’m not mortal. I wanted to go back to the way we were. I wanted to be mortal again for him. And then I woke up.” Karen hunched over, clutching her stomach. “Did my wish come true? If it did, why am I in pain?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to flash us to the Enclave so I can do some blood tests and a full body scan. Okay?”
Ari tapped Cerissa’s shoulder, appearing without warning. “Not until Agathe gets here. I called her.”
She jumped, spinning around. Disbelief and anger clashed in her chest. “You what?”
“Yeah, had to. Ciss, this is big. Wake up and smell the coffee. You did it. This is proof the Lux can reproduce by turning mortals vampire.”
“You think Karen’s Lux now?”
Before Ari could answer, Agathe appeared in the hallway. Cerissa blocked her, pushing Karen behind her against the concrete wall.
The Lux leader had assumed her mortal form for the visit. “Ari, you said the woman was a vampire. She’s mortal.”
Ari coughed into his hand, choking on his own laughter. “She is now. Last night she was vampire. I saw for myself.”
Agathe faced Cerissa, eyes widening with recognition. “My child, what have you done?”
“You wanted to know whether we could breed with vampires. I took your suggestion in a slightly different direction.”
“You made her vampire?”
“And she can morph back to mortal, apparently.”
“Does she have wings?”
“Too early to know. I only just learned she can morph to mortal.” A flash of memory triggered a cascade of ideas for Cerissa. “The night she woke, her eyes glowed green. I checked the medical reports compiled about vampires, and nothing in their database shed any light on the symptom. Maybe her eye color is a sign she is Lux now.”
Agathe motioned for Cerissa to move. “Stand aside so I may check for myself.”
Karen hunched over, her arms like bands across her stomach. “Please, someone, do something. I don’t feel well.”
Protectiveness welled up in Cerissa. She didn’t want Agathe anywhere near her child.
“Let me see you, my dear.” Agathe sidestepped between them and thumbed Karen’s lower eyelid to give a better view. “I suspect you have morphed into your mortal body as it was before Cerissa interfered.” Agathe took a wrist in each hand, unwrapping them from around Karen’s stomach. “I want you to change to your Lux form.”
Karen opened her eyes wide with panic. “I—I don’t know how. And I hurt.”
“Agathe, allow me to take her to the Enclave,” Cerissa said. “Before we try anything else, I have to find out what’s wrong with her. My guess—she doesn’t have the strength to morph again.”
“You may be right. I’ll go first and clear out your lab assistants. We can’t let others know what you’ve done, not yet.” Agathe tapped the face of her watch. “It’s almost evening there. I’m sure they won’t mind quitting early. Follow me in five minutes.”
And she vanished.
Karen bent over at the waist. “God, I hurt.”
Cerissa held her. “I know. Hang in there.”
“Hey, kiddos, if you don’t need me, I’m taking off.”
Ari . After her initial anger over his toeing the party line and notifying Agathe, Cerissa had forgotten he stood there. “Could you lock and re-arm the door before you go?”
She peeked inside the crypt. Two separate cots, one against each opposite wall, with a large space separating them. Rolf lay stiff as a board on one cot, seemingly undisturbed by their presence and conversation. The other cot had two stuffed animals propped against the pillow. Sufficient unoccupied area existed between them to allow Cerissa to flash blindly into the room when she returned Karen to the crypt.
She hoped the separation didn’t signal emotional distance for Karen and Rolf. Though from Karen’s dream and their argument last night over the stuffed animals, maybe it did. She tilted her chin at Ari. “Go ahead. Set the alarm. I’ll be able to flash her back inside now that I’ve seen the layout.”
On the dot, Cerissa transported Karen to her Lux lab, the room empty of other scientists, and helped her into a patient bed. She then gave her something for the pain, and started the scan, which was like a CT scan but without radiation and could be performed from the bed.
Her phone rang. Jayden. She put it on speaker. “I’m kind of busy.”
“Karen’s ankle monitor notified me she’s left Rolf’s. It has to be you. I’m tracking her location now, but the GPS is squirrely.” There was a pause, and she could almost feel his shock over the phone. “Why is Karen in South America? In the Peruvian mountains?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why did everything happen at once? She rubbed at her temples, feeling a headache forming behind her eyes. Think. The location of the Enclave was super-secret, and now Jayden knew. “You can’t tell anyone. Not even Tig.”
“You violated the terms of Karen’s release. I can’t keep it a secret.”
“I had no choice. Karen woke up.”
“She what?” Jayden’s voice rose with disbelief. “In the middle of the day?”
“She’s mortal right now. I think she might be like me.”
A metallic rattle ensued over the line, the scrape of a chair’s feet on tiles, and the phone clattered onto a hard surface.
“Jayden! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, give me a minute.” His voice was muffled and followed by more sounds of scrambling movement. “I tried to sit down and fumbled the chair. Hit the floor instead.”
“Sorry about that.” There was no easy way to break the news. “She’s morphed to mortal. She’s in pain from the cancer, and I need to deal with that first, so I took her here.”
“Dammit. If only we knew sooner.”
“Why?”
“We could have brought Liza and Vishon when Karen was in her mortal form.”
Oh my Goddess. Jayden was right. Her head swam, and she leaned against the lab counter, then glanced over at Karen, who dozed, thanks to the painkiller. “Yeah, the timing sucks.”
“I have to tell Tig. I can’t hide it. Will you have Karen back by tonight?”
“I don’t know.” She stepped over to view the readout of the scanner’s result. “What exactly could Tig divulge to the council? They won’t believe the GPS—”
“Good point. This is obviously a problem with the device—no one could go four thousand miles in under a minute. I’ll do my best to convince her to just report it as a malfunction to the manufacturer.”
Cerissa brushed her hair away from her face and began braiding it to keep it contained as she worked. “Jayden, you’re a saint.”
“Nah, just a friend. Call me when you know something—especially when you return with her. We’ll have to swap for a new ankle monitor to maintain the pretense.”
“Done and done.” She sighed. “Now I have to read Karen’s medical scan to see what’s going on with her.”