Jack Kursed (4 page)

The dark, deadly thoughts
returned. Somewhere in his mind he knew his neighbors were simple
people, and thought they did a good deed by hanging and burning a
witch.

But they needed to suffer for what
they did.

"If you want to live, run," he
shouted, marching toward them.

CHAPTER 2

Year: 1917

Monterrey, South Carolina.
A small, rural town, about a three-day ride from Columbia.
Monterrey was trying its best to resist the changes of the early
twentieth century. Only the wealthier people in town had
automobiles, and the dirt roads ruined many tires. Life was very
simple. It was a great place for Victoria and John to
live.

Victoria hadn't made many
friends over the centuries. Her rare human friends all suffered
from the same thing. Aging. She was trapped in the body of a
thirty-year-old, and that made mortal friendships hard to
maintain.

She had other friends over time. A
werewolf here, vampire there. But supernatural beings tended to
stay away from one another, out of fear of attracting unwanted
attention.

It was a small miracle John and she
became as close as they were.

Long ago he stopped thinking of his
condition as an enchantment from an infatuated witch. John viewed
it as a curse, a suffering. It had changed him over the past
century, despite Victoria's best efforts to the
contrary.

John cared for no one,
especially mortals. Victoria was honored to be the one person he
called a friend, and enjoyed the time they spent
together.

Even if he did go a little crazy
sometimes.

She paced on top of the
ice house. The sun had only been down an hour. There was plenty of
time, but she felt rushed. The target went by the name of Annie
Fritz. Victoria paid good money to have her every move recorded for
the past week. By day Annie blended in very well with the mortal
world. Gave candy to the kids after school at her store, batted her
eyes at the handsome men as she stroked her cat's furr, laughed
with customers as the kids chased the ice trucks.

But Annie was another evil
supernatural creature that needed to be put down.

Victoria stared into her
binoculars one more time. Annie continued to wander the cemetery
with a shovel, staring at a notepad she carried with her. A
policeman walking a beat stopped to question her, but Annie must
have had a golden tongue. Whatever she said brought a smile to his
face, and he left her in peace. She withdrew deeper into the
cemetery after that.

Annie started to dig.

"Where are you, John?" Victoria
whispered.

She thought about
confronting Annie and handling the problem herself when she heard a
horse trotting. Its gait was buried in the sounds of conversation
on the road and the few cars on the road.

Looking down the road, she
saw John approaching. He tied his horse outside the ice house and
Victoria lost sight of him as he went inside. A few minutes later
he was opening the roof hatch and giving her a subdued
smile.

John was never very good
at mixing with mortals. He was wealthy, and could buy whatever he
wanted, but refused to dress appropriately for the age. Most human
men wore hats in public, a tradition John ignored. The transition
from horses to automobiles was underway, but John refused to buy a
car.

Victoria hadn't seen him
in a few weeks. She and John didn't grow older, and they wore their
age differently than mortals. The way they moved, the expressions
they kept. John smiled and laughed often, but there was always a
darkness behind his eyes, an anger at being alive longer than
nature intended.

It didn't help that John
hadn't slept since his curse. He'd been alive since that night with
Angela without a second of sleep.

"You're late."

"I'm sorry. My horse got spooked by
the noises these damn autobmobiles make."

Victoria laughed. "With all the money
you have, I'm surprised you haven't bought one already."

"I hate technology."

Victoria kissed the cheek
of the man she thought of as family. John gave her shoulder a
squeeze.

"I've missed you," she
said.

"Same here. We need to spend more time
together. Go to a few movies."

"The last time we went to a movie, you
attacked the couple in front of us."

"I didn't
attack
them. And it was
only the man. He didn't know how to treat his lady, so I taught
him."

"I paid his hospital bill."

"Anyway," he said. "What are we
hunting tonight? Your message was vague, as always. An orphaned
vampire? A goblin?"

"Look," she said, handing
him the binoculars. "At the back of the cemetery. You can barely
see her now, but she's there."

John was quiet a moment as he peered
through the binoculars.

"Right handed. No more
than one-hundred twenty pounds. She's carrying something under that
coat of hers. Maybe a bag, on her left shoulder. She doesn't move
with the grace of a vampire, or a werewolf for that
matter."

Victoria shook her head. "It amazes me
how you do that."

"When you've been awake as
long as I have, you'll do anything to keep your brain from getting
bored. Who is she, and why is she digging up a grave?"

"Her name is Annie. Why she's digging
a grave, I don't know. But it might have something to do with her
being a witch."

John lowered the
binoculars and looked at Victoria. His expression warmed her heart,
one of hope. It was something John didn't show much of.

"A witch? In our town? Are you
sure?"

"She has a cauldron in the basement of
her shop, and she's been working on something."

John handed back the
binoculars and paced. Victoria peered through them again to see
Annie still digging up a grave.

The last time they
encountered a witch was nearly forty years ago, near the border to
Canada. She wasn't a full-blooded witch, but had some knowledge. It
was that witch who revealed the cure to John's condition could only
be concocted by a full-blood, a witch whose parents were
witches.

Like Angela.

"Do you think...maybe she's a
full-blood?"

"I honestly don't know.
She's definitely making something strong. You wouldn't believe the
things she's been throwing in that cauldron."

"This could really be it. The end of
my curse."

Victoria simply smiled at her friend.
He reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Victoria, if this is my
last night alive, my will is locked in the chest at the foot of my
bed. And my lawyer has a copy. Most everything I've left to
you."

Her smile faded. "Last night? You
always thought removing the curse would just make you
mortal."

"Yes, and I'm over a
hundred years old. I might just die."

The vampire said nothing, holding in
all her emotions.

"Ah, sleep. Beautiful sleep," John
said, a tear running down his cheek. "Maybe I'll finally be able to
rest."

"You mean you might die."

"Same thing."

Victoria looked through
the binoculars. Annie had finished digging up a grave and stood
over the open casket. She pulled a sack from under her coat and
fished out several glass vials. Laughing and dancing, she poured
one vial into the open casket, and then another.

"Stay grounded, John. We still need to
stop what she's doing. Then you can talk to her all you
want-"

Victoria's voice trailed
off as words eluded her. She had seen the terrible things a witch
could do. From what her older acquaintances told her, a witch was
responsible for the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the
fourteenth century. Simply watching them chant and work over their
cauldrons chilled Victoria.

She had never seen what Annie was
doing two blocks away.

"What?" John asked. "What
do you see?"

She passed the binoculars and remained
silent why John studied the scene. Her hands shook as emotions
poured through her.

The supernatural world was
a very dangerous place. But that world was governed by rules.
Vampires could not be exposed to the sun. Silver was the weakness
of a werewolf. Ghosts had their own plane of existence, and could
not cross over into the living world.

With every witch Victoria encountered,
it seemed they didn't have rules.

"Is she-"

"Yes," Victoria
interrupted. "She's raising the dead."

"Wow. That's damn
impressive."

Victoria ripped the
binoculars away from John and peered once more. The corpse crawled
out of its grave and rose to its feet, like a toddler standing for
the first time. Annie held her hand out to it while reading from a
book.

"Impressive?" she asked angrily.
"First immortality. Now this. Witches can't be allowed to
live."

"
This
one will be, until after my
curse is lifted. Then you can kill her as many times as you want."
John laughed shortly and clasped his hands together. "Victoria,
she's a full-blood. I can feel it."

Victoria nearly set the
binoculars down until she noticed Annie walking away from the
stumbling corpse. Annie stopped and poured different mixtures on
other graves. Before moving on, she drew a circle with what looked
like salt on the ground. She placed her hand on the ground, and the
soil inside the salt circle vanished. Victoria couldn't believe her
eyes as more coffins were exposed to the night.

The coffins opened.

"Oh no," Victoria
said.

"What's the matter?"

She passed the binoculars as she
checked her gear. Two knives, a few bags of blood, and most
importantly, herself. John laughed and continued to look at Annie
as Victoria strapped a knife to her calf.

"Aww. Poor little police
officer."

"What? What's going on?"

Victoria snatched the
binoculars. Her breath caught in her chest as she watched the
shambling corpses leave the cemetery in force. Two of them tackled
the policeman she'd seen before walking his beat. They tore into
him like hungry werewolves. The few people on the road scattered as
panic broke out. Annie's army of reanimated dead grabbed a woman on
the corner and a homeless man near an alley.

Victoria's decision to wait for John
cost lives.

John only laughed.

"This is funny to you?" Victoria
asked.

"Well, a little. One
little old witch...destroying a town. It’s amusing."

"I forgot how much you like destroying
towns," she said, strapping the second knife to her
back.

John looked down at her,
his laugh cutting off. He nearly snarled at the one subject that
caused tension between the two of them.

"I saw you dig your fangs into a few
people that night, too. You know they deserved it."

"Well, these people don't."

She leaned over the roof
and stared down below. People were emptying their houses at the
commotion. Men fired at the ghouls, but that didn't stop them. A
few men and women tried to pile into the old church. The corpses
were right behind them, and Victoria's sensitive ears could hear
the massacre.

Victoria hadn't believed a
witch could cause so much death so quickly. She should have killed
Annie any other time during the week. But she'd waited. She waited
for Annie to leave her store, and for John to arrive. This was
supposed to be a gift for him, possibly having his curse
lifted.

She was a fool.

Looking up, she saw Annie sliding into
a Ford Model T Sedan, one road over. A woman tried to get in with
her, but two ghouls grabbed her and pinned her to the
ground.

"I'll go after the witch.
You help as many people as you can."

"That won't work."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't care about these
people."

"John-"

"They could all die
in the next five minutes, and I wouldn't care. I don't hunt with
you because I like people. I do it because you need my help, and
you're my friend. But Victoria, I
need
this witch."

She grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Then let me get her for you. These ghouls can't hurt you, but they
can hurt me. We should stick with our strengths."

Victoria was anxious as
John hesitated. This wasn't the time for delay. People were
dying.

"Please. Please, don't kill
her."

She nodded, and climbed
onto the edge of the roof, John right behind her. They jumped
together. The alley behind the ice house rushed up at them.
Victoria landed nimbly on her feet. John didn't have her agility,
and didn't feel like breaking his legs, only to watch them heal. He
twisted in mid-air, hit the ground back first, and jumped to his
feet. She winced at the sound of his skull smacking the
pavement.