Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) (27 page)

Gordon kicked it, forcing it inward.

White Feather was supposed to force it open with wind magic, but Gordon apparently couldn’t follow the plan. After the kick, he mashed me as he spun to the side.

Nothing moved. I felt White Feather’s magic sail past into the room.

“No change,” he confirmed.

Patrick’s voice was a strained gasp from within. “You’re...better off...not entering.”

White Feather ducked in behind Gordon, who went in low and fast, rolling. Mat hit the inside light switch. I lobbed a fire packet. It contained silver. I could call it back. I could set it off.

It wasn’t obvious at first glance that Patrick’s glamour was entirely gone because I almost always saw glimpses of the beast. Instead of a cool and handsome Spaniard, a hunched gargoyle waited in one corner, his long clawed fingers intertwined in front of his belly, holding the pieces of what was left of a shredded nurse’s smock.

Even without the tattered uniform, I’d have recognized him because I’d seen most of his face before. It wasn’t feral so much as rock hard. His eyes hadn’t changed. The cool orbs fit the gargoyle more than the human form; gray stone, unblinking. Fangs were as natural on such a face as the long, clawed feet and the folded leathery wings at his back. His body was little more than scaled muscles that rippled as he tightened them, holding himself in check.

Mat’s soft gasp was the first clue that his glamour was missing. White Feather’s silver ring heated, a reaction I felt through the gold on my own finger. “It’s just Patrick,” I said, my voice only cracking slightly.

I tossed the bag of blood to him. His vamp glamour skills might be weak, but he snagged it midair without visible effort. His hand twitched as he unclamped the bag and took a swallow. He managed not to guzzle.

I should have admired his restraint, but it was still human blood no matter how the score was tallied. “Moonlight madness.” Okay. He was not human and would never be again. Time to get over it and respect what was left.

Gordon’s gun never wavered off Patrick. White Feather and I split our attention, sparing plenty for the half naked humans on the right and left. Patrick was still a threat, at least until he had enough blood to control himself, but I’d bet my last spell that it wasn’t Patrick who had caused the two humans in the room to be lying senseless.

“They’re both breathing,” White Feather said.

The skinny teenager on our right leaked blood, little beads dripping down his ribs, almost drying before a second drop had a chance to fully form. The loss was slow; a parody of a stalactite forming.

The droplets meant that tattoos had been brought to animation. Joe had moved his studio from Tam’s salon to Patrick’s lair. And why not? After Mat and I visited, he knew we were putting the pieces of the puzzle together. It was only a matter of time before we figured out he was involved.

My eyes frantically searched and found the first tattoo creature perched on the hanging fluorescent light fixture. The blue-red hag had a face that sagged on one side and was a distorted blob on the other. Someone had been in a hurry when drawing this tat.

Blue wings showed behind her back. Obscenely misshapen boobs almost hid the fact that she had no lower body. She was cut off at the waist, nothing but a stump. “Where’s the other one?” I croaked in a bare whisper.

Patrick spaced his answer around swallows. “Joe forced the other construct to leave with him. This one protects the bodies and makes sure I do nothing but feast.” He swept his arm in the direction of a large bucket. The contents weren’t clear from here. “He left me Zandy’s blood. That or I fight his construct for the blood of these two.”

Gordon kept the gun leveled at Patrick, but he nodded to the body on our left. “Why haven’t you eaten either of them?”

Patrick finished the last of the blood. He did not lick his lips, but at least he now had lips shimmering back into existence over the harsher face. “They are more interested in my blood than I am in theirs.”

“Would the hag swinging from the light attack you if you tried to drink from either of the two on the floor?” I asked.

Patrick nodded. “Without a doubt.”

“The tats and constructs were made with Zandy’s blood?” Blood Patrick couldn’t afford to drink no matter how starved he might be.

“Joe’s blood, my blood and Zandy’s.”

My eyes traveled from the two victims to Patrick. I processed his comment about the victims being more interested in his blood than the other way around. Patrick watched us, waiting.

Finally he said, “You must kill them both. By nightfall they will both be vamps. Joe decided that humans weren’t powerful enough to keep constructs fueled. He is right, of course. He intends to continue feeding these two vampires to power his constructs.”

“You turned them?” I asked.

“Technically my blood was used to turn them.”

“Bloodsucker,” Gordon cursed.

I shook my head, seeing the truth. The rumor that a vamp drank the blood of a victim to turn him into a new vamp was backwards. “They drink Patrick’s blood to turn. Not the other way around.”

Patrick’s head swiveled my way. “Witch, you think too much. But even you are running out of time to arrive at an elegant solution to this problem.”

“I’m right, though.”

Patrick’s predator eyes didn’t blink. “The legend that we bite a victim three times is misleading. They feed from us before they die. We provide the second and third blood meal usually through a carotid artery. The dead at that stage aren’t terribly interested in eating.”

“And because of the bite marks, everyone assumes you fed off them until they died, but at that point you’re donating.”

“Bloodsucking mosquitoes,” was Gordon’s assessment. He edged one step towards the naked man closest to him. The beast on the light fixture dove and would have made good on the attack had White Feather not caught the wings with a stiff breeze.

The hag didn’t need a lower body to fly. With its wings open, the double sets of claws on the wings were more obvious. There was a grasping set at the top of the wing and another at the bottom where a hand might normally be.

Gordon fired instinctively, but the bullet, silver notwithstanding, went straight through the construct. It left a hole dead center of one low-hanging breast, but that didn’t even count as a maiming injury with a construct.

“Step back,” White Feather said, holding steady.

Gordon did so quickly, staring at the bullet hole. The construct hissed, turned into the wind and swiped at Patrick on its way back up to the light.

“Gordon...or Mat.” My voice was barely a whisper around the panic squeezing my throat. “We’d be safer if you went upstairs and procured another pint or two.” If we engaged the construct, and I could see no way around it, I didn’t want Patrick hungry at our backs. His glamour had returned such that both faces were visible, but he’d been down here for at least two days. Make that three. Night had to be only a few minutes away.

“Will these two vamp at nightfall?” I demanded. We already had Patrick hungry, we didn’t need two other vamps coming awake.

Patrick said, “You need to kill them before nightfall. They will turn, but—”

We waited in vain for him to continue. He merely stared, his gargoyle face wavering in and out of focus. “But what?” My patience hadn’t entered the room with me; there was no hope of finding it now.

“The information you seek is deadly.”

I snarled, “The information I already have is deadly.”

“It is forbidden.”

“Fine. One problem at a time. Mat?”

She nodded. “I can get fluids. Of any type. I’ll be back.”

“Gordon, there’s another vamp running free out there. With a construct. You’d better stick with Mat.” White Feather didn’t have to ask twice.

They were barely into the hallway when Patrick said, “You must kill them both. I am not...what time is it?”

“Can’t you tell?” If he was having troubles of that sort, it smacked a little too much of Joe’s problems. Maybe he had fed on Zandy’s blood. Or Joe’s. Maybe he was already rogue or about to turn into some kind of sloppy, idiot vampire like Joe.

“Normally, yes. It seems close.”

“Less than a half hour. Maybe five minutes. Maybe less.” I didn’t have my watch.

Patrick straightened and hissed. “You must kill them now!”

When he moved, the construct recognized it as a viable threat. The hag dove. White Feather swirled it sideways, giving Patrick room to maneuver.

He didn’t waste it. Like a man possessed and with the speed somewhere between human and vamp, he lunged for the body on the right. I wasn’t about to stop him.

The construct wheeled around and closed her wings. She tumbled to the ground, landing safely under White Feather’s blast.

“A stake! Silver, wood, anything!” Patrick growled.

Gordon had the stakes. Gordon had gone to obtain more blood.

Not that Patrick waited. He grasped the teen’s head and twisted it violently. The snap nearly froze me with horror, but the construct was far from out of the picture. She rolled towards Patrick as if she’d had a lifetime of training without legs.

I detached the small silver spikes from my backpack, the mini stakes meant to skewer and burn a shifter. They were very, very small, only six inches in length, maybe eight counting the silver arrowhead, but technically, they were stakes.

I tossed one to Patrick.

The legless construct screamed, her maw full of deadly teeth intending to shred.

White Feather hit the hag with a blast that rolled the thing over like a bowling ball until her flat face got in the way and halted the momentum.

Patrick snatched the stake out of midair. “What in all of hell is this?
This is the best stake you could design?
”

His outrage would have been comical except for the fact that the other vampire sat up and let out a bloodcurdling shriek.

Patrick stabbed the puny stake into the teen, driving it well past the end of the small wooden ash. Gordon burst through the door, his gun out.

“We need your stakes!” I yelled.

Gordon ignored me. He shot the new vampire, cutting off the beastly screaming. I could have called back the silver slugs and thus shot it twice, but Gordon emptied his entire clip, pummeling the chest and head into bloody splinters. Then, he staked it.

By the time I turned back around, White Feather had beheaded what was left of the younger vampire, and the hag construct had melted into a puddle of ink and blood.

Chapter 36

I collapsed where I stood. “Did it bite you?” Vamps had superior hearing or Patrick would never have comprehended the puff of air that was my question.

His answer was bellowed loud enough for patients upstairs to hear. “In twenty years of life and two hundred after, I’ve never known anyone who can draft intelligent spells the way you do. And this,
this
is the best stake you could envision? What kind of fairy vampire did you intend to kill with that thing? Can there even be an explanation?”

I blinked. “It did the trick, didn’t it?”

Patrick was so angry both of his fangs were in evidence. “You were planning on standing that close to a vampire to use it?” He held his hand out. “A real stake, if you please.” His request was for Gordon, his disgust for me.

Gordon took his time about it, not trusting Patrick.

“Give him the stake, already,” I snapped. “And then some blood if you found any.”

Mat stood in the doorway holding two bags. She tossed one to Patrick. He caught it in one hand and the stake in the other. He finished off the headless vampire before guzzling the bag. Given the complete lack of civilization around us, at this point, polite sipping would be egregious pretense.

“Will Joe return here when the construct with him dissolves?” I asked.

“It’s too damn late. I was too weak. I didn’t know it was so close to nightfall.” Patrick limped to the door, pausing and visibly restraining himself to allow Mat time to step aside. She offered the other bag of O-positive, which he accepted.

“Where are you going?” Gordon demanded.

“Out.”

“What do you mean it’s too late?” I called after him.

“He vamped.” His response was nothing more than a low growl.

Gordon stepped in front of Mat and raised his gun. Unless he had put another clip in it, the bullets were spent.

“Dammit all to hell!” Patrick howled. He fell to his knees. He wasn’t panting; he didn’t need to breathe, but he clutched his head as if it hurt. His skin rippled, the gargoyle winning out. “We needed more time. Even a minute would have sufficed!”

My heart hammered in my chest. I hoped he had consumed enough blood that he wouldn’t lose control because my nerves were a beacon for a predator. White Feather’s wind swirled around me, hard to distinguish from the man who was just as suddenly by my side.

“Pa...trick, we’re going to walk around you and leave,” I stuttered.

He shook his head, leaning it back against the wall. “Too damned late.” He still held the blood Mat had given him. Would it be enough?

Mat and Gordon scuttled past first. Gordon must have put another clip in because he kept his gun out and aimed. When they were safely past Patrick, Gordon nudged Mat towards the stairs. She put up zero argument.

Gordon covered us while we edged around Patrick.

The vamp sat motionless the entire time, his hand clutching the blood, but not drinking it. He was weak and ugly.

Running might make things worse, so we faced the vampire and walked backwards.

White Feather checked outside, a wise move, one that wasn’t instinctive for me yet. I felt for Mat’s silver and found it waiting outside the door.

We stepped through the door, and the first thing I did was ground. I needed Mother Earth and her deepest strength and direct comfort. It wasn’t the same as linking in the desert where her scent drifted in the air and fed my soul. It wasn’t even close to being in the mountains where the earth was fresh and in a constant state of renewal. All of that was a distant echo here; packed dirt that had a history of human footsteps from eons ago through the present.