6. Brink of a Pandemic
6
brINK OF A PANDEMIC
DOM
“ S o, what is a phoenix, and how do we find one?” Ollie asks as we sit on the back porch, sipping bourbon and smoking cigars. Well the men are; the women are drinking blood from wine glasses and chatting in the kitchen.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I respond, swirling the bourbon around in my glass, watching it leave behind the most beautiful cathedral arches on the side of the glass.
The lake my parents live on, Lake George, is peaceful right now. The water is still and quiet, and the only sounds are a distant hoot of an owl and the wind rustling the trees.
“Well, if the grimoires say something about them, then there has to be other knowledge somewhere,” my dad says, his blonde bushy eyebrows furrowing.
“Like, is it an actual bird?” Ollie asks, taking a puff of the cigar, the blue smoke whirling around his head in the amber light of the porch. “Or is it a person who has phoenix powers? And if it’s the second one, what the fuck kind of powers do phoenixes have?”
Ollie is one of my favorite people. Having been the first one to succumb to our curse, he’s the best out of all of us. When we became creatures of the night, our humanity was pieced out and intertwined with shards of barbarity and splinters of wickedness. If we’re not careful, more pieces of our mortality slip away and are replaced with increased particles of evil. But Ollie—he’s clung to every bit of his humanity and has cradled it with an empathy that normally isn’t found in vampires. Granted, he kills for me when I can’t. But he is the glue that holds our family together. Darkness has tempered him in some ways and softened him in others.
“In the almost three hundred years I’ve been on Earth, I’ve never even heard of this,” Dad says, his left leg jittering, making the smoke leave intricate designs in the air. “But I would imagine it is a metaphor for a fire wielder.”
“A fire wielder?” I query, quirking my brows up. “Doesn’t Mom do that thing with her arms that lights all the candles in a swoosh?”
“I love when she does that!” Ollie exclaims, lightening the mood a tad.
“That’s minor fire magick,” Dad chides Ollie. “She’s not a fire wielder. She can’t make flames come out of her fingers or hands or anything. She can only make it come alight with things already prepared for fire.”
“Do you know any super old vampires that were around even before Mom’s curse we can ask?” I question Dad.
His gray eyes slide to the lake in thought. “After your mom discovered the curse and what had happened,” my dad replies, tapping on the cigar so the ash falls to the ground, “she sought out others, as we couldn’t be the first vampires to ever grace the Earth.”
“And?” I press.
“We found the secret order of vampires, the Nyktorim Syndicate,” he answers. “They’re very different from us. But this was hundreds of years ago. I’ve no idea if they are even still around.”
“We should ask her,” I state, a glimmer of hope igniting in my chest. “If older vampires are around, they should know how to find a phoenix or if there even is one.”
“Go ask her,” Dad says, stubbing the cigar out in the ashtray. “We need to do something; this shit is getting bad. I saw eighteen cases in the ER before lunch yesterday. ”
“What are you doing for the blowback on that?” I ask, sliding the glass door open and entering, the smells of pot roast and gravy tantalizing my senses.
“Veilweaving them to believe they have the flu,” Dad answers as he trails in behind us. “But the only thing we can do for them once they’re bitten is kill them. We can’t let them wander out in the world as those zombies. The world will fall even faster if we let it get out of control.”
Sliding onto one of the barstools, I ask, “What do the warlocks even want with that many grims?”
“What any arch nemesis is after: Power and immortality,” Dad answers, whisking his arms around my mom’s waist and kissing her neck. “The more a grimspawn eats, the more youthful and powerful the warlock controlling them will be. One warlock could control over a hundred grimspawn. We need to wonder why there are so many warlocks. If they’re making so many, the fae must be gearing up for something huge.”
“And you went to the Neverdusk Dominion to see if you could get any information?” Mom asks, standing by the island holding the stem of her elegant wine glass filled with blood.
“We did. The fae said Tallyn and Trystan haven’t been around in months,” Ollie answers. “They didn’t know what to tell us.”
“There’s got to be somebody who knows something,” Jasantha adds. “They know we’re on the brink of a pandemic, right? I mean, someone has to want to stop this from happening.”
“Maybe that’s what the fae king and queen want,” Hattie says dismally. “Maybe they want total destruction.”
“How long do we have?” Scarlet queries. “Before the world is overrun?”
“That’s nearly impossible to determine accurately,” Dad responds, scratching his beard, the sounds intermingling with the crackling fire in the attached living room. Leaning on the kitchen island, he says, “They’ve multiplied rapidly in the last few months. I would imagine at this rate, if something isn’t done to stop them, in six months the world will look like a much different place. ”
Hattie bites her nails nervously. “Just go into the Neverdusk and raise hell. Start ripping heads and wings off until someone starts talking.”
“Hattie, for fuck’s sake,” Scarlet chides. “That’s just going to start a war with the fae that we don’t want.”
“What the fuck do you suggest then, Scarlet ?”
“Just shut the fuck up and let the adults talk,” Scarlet scoffs, darting her gaze to Hattie.
Hattie lets out a sharp exhale. Ollie’s look quells her outburst.
Even though Hattie loves to play the part of the bratty teen, she still embodies a vicious woman who gets what she wants. Being the youngest one, we are ferociously protective of her, but she often gets the brunt of everyone’s short tempers. Not that she doesn’t bring it on herself most times, but Jasantha and Scarlet are hard on her. That could quite possibly be why she acts out toward our parents most of the time.
“What about the Nyktorim Syndicate you discovered after you learned about our curse?” I ask Mom, getting the attention off Hattie.
“Gods, I don’t know where to find them; it’s been so long,” Mom answers, taking a sip of her blood. “I can research, check the census, and see if I can track them down. The leaders’ names were Blackwood and Ravenscroft. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out what happened to them.”
“You do that, and maybe tomorrow after dark, Ollie and I will go back to Neverdusk. We can’t veilweave fae, but maybe someone will fall for Ollie’s charms and give him information.”
Ollie smiles and pours himself some of the blood my mom had put in a wine bottle. “You’re a good-looking vampire, too, brother. Shouldn’t be too hard for us.”
His smile does not ease the doubt and hesitation that creep up my spine at the thought of returning to the Neverdusk Dominion.