Authors: Justen Hunter
“Shit.” I whistled in appreciation. “That’s really old.”
“Quite. And he is very powerful.”
“I’d imagine. So why is he so interested in me?”
She gave me a look over to me, evaluating for just a moment. “It’s very cute, you
know. This naive thing.” She laughed, a chuckle that, I had to admit was pretty sexy.
It was almost a purr coming from her. Even when she laughed, it was low and quiet.
“I’m missing a joke, aren’t I?”
“Indeed. Magic is something beyond even a vampire’s powers. The Fae have their glamours,
and can work some Arcane powers, but they don’t have the affinity that a witch does.
You’re a resource, Eric. People want that.”
“I don’t want to be a resource.”
“Then you will have to find out how to fend for yourself.”
“You guys must love Darwin.” I rolled my eyes.
“It fits. We’re creatures of nature, Eric.”
“Yea, you are.” I said, trying to remind myself more than answer.
We sat in silence for the most part while she drove. I gave her a street corner, mostly
because at the moment, I didn't want a vampire knowing where I lived. I closed my
eyes for a bit, not really paying attention. I couldn’t sleep, but I felt mentally
exhausted. It was broken some time later, when the car pulled to a stop. My eyes fluttered
open, and I saw we were at my place.
“Fall asleep on me, witch?” Teresa asked.
“Uh, no.” I said. I thought on that. Why wasn’t I a warlock, or a wizard? Wasn’t witch
a feminine word? Just one more thing to ask Amy. “Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re welcome, Eric.” She nodded. “I know this is sort of abrupt, but I was wondering
if you might want to have drinks some time.”
“Uh, drinks?” To show just how clueless I am about women, I first thought she had
implied she wanted to suck my blood. I felt like slapping her right across the face
or slugging her. It took me a few moments to realize what it actually meant. Yea,
sure, I had been hit on before, working at the bar, but drunk co-eds weren’t really
my style.
“Yea, drinks.” She nodded. “One of us picks the other up, or if we want to be very
progressive, we meet somewhere. We get a few drinks, talk. Think you’d like that?”
The first thought was to ask “Who, me?” But I shoved that down. “Yea, I do.” I answered
her. “Uh, how about we swap digits, and you give me a call, or I’ll give you a call?”
“Either way works.” She smiled, but didn’t show her fangs. We swapped phone numbers,
and I felt a little plume of self-confidence. I’d gotten some information on Sam Coolidge,
not gotten myself killed, and I’d gotten a hot vampiress' phone number. The last one,
I did not think I would tell Amy, but overall this was a good night. Of all the things
she’d blow up about, me going out with a vampire? Maybe one of them. It was a sound
guess, considering how vehemently she’d told me to stay away from the Last Drop.
“All right, Eric.” She blew me a kiss. “Good night.”
“Good night.” I was sure that, somehow, she saw my cheeks flush. I got out of the
car, feeling my heart pound. So, yea, I agreed to have drinks with a vampire, a night
after I got bit by one? Yea, I’m totally sane.
I headed into my building. I was tired, even if it was just midnight. And I was going
to have to go running with Matt tomorrow. That was going to be an info dump to make
his head spin, for sure.
I headed up to my floor and headed to my door. I opened the door and-
Wait, my door was unlocked. My brain took a second to process that. Someone was in
my place. Amy said she’d have gone to her place, wherever that was. Matt, the only
other person with a key, was out partying tonight. He would have called if he was
using my apartment for something.
My hand flashed to my back pocket, and brought out the knife. I flicked out the blade.
It was weighted well, I guessed. I’m not exactly a combat specialist, but it seemed
like pretty good stuff. I held it in my left hand, and used my right to push open
the door. It creaked as I did so, darn old apartment.
I flipped on the light switch, I saw someone there, frozen. He was near my dresser,
some of the drawers pulled out.
“Who the hell are you?” I hissed. “Freeze.” I thrust the knife forward, gesturing
towards the couch.
But he didn’t. The intruder, a large dark-haired man, rushed towards me. That told
me something already. I know I wouldn’t have charged a guy holding a knife. So he
was either pretty crazy, or maybe a bit brave. Or maybe just that much better than
me.
He swung a punch at me, and I dodged to the side, leaving me back in the hallway.
I made a wide swing with the knife, trying to slash at the intruder. The big man dodged,
but he seemed to do it with much more grace. He batted my knife hand down with a chop,
and swung out with a huge fist.
I took it in the shoulder, and pain lanced through me. I scolded myself, but really,
this guy probably had a lot more experience than I did.
I found myself on my ass, with my knife on the floor. The man stepped over me. And
as he walked away, he called over his shoulder. “Stay out of this shit, kid.”
And as he waked into the stairway, and I moved to sit up, I recognized that I had
heard that voice before. He’d been one of the guys we had seen at Raymond Francis’s
office earlier.
“Shit, shit. He must have followed you home. Stupid Eric!” I cursed myself, and I
got myself to my feet. I flicked on the lights in my apartment, and surveyed the damage.
My apartment had been pretty thoroughly tossed, at first look. My futon’s mattress
was on the floor, next to the coffee table. Several of my drawers had been pulled
out of the dresser, and their contents now were lying on the floor.
The last one, however, was the important one. I opened up the drawer, and there in
the bottom, underneath my socks, was the brush that Diana had given me. “Hell yea.”
I pumped my fist. I closed the drawer, and then went back out into the hall to grab
my knife. Once that was inside, I locked the door, and started to clean up.
I may not be a messy guy, but it was calming. Even in the craziness of what had just
happened, that I could restore it to some sort of order. That was cathartic in its
own.
By the time my place resembled something like my apartment, I crawled to bed and kicked
off my boots. I was asleep by the time my head hit the pillow.
I woke up to the smell of cooking bacon. That was unusual in itself. I don’t remember
waking up to bacon in years. That was something I remembered from days when I was
much younger, my grandma cooking bacon and eggs on a Sunday morning, with not a care
in the world. It was really a good memory.
Then I heard a thumping sound, and then a strangled “Eric, help!” I shot up off the
bed, rolling to my feet. The knife was in my hand, though I didn’t flip the blade
out.
The scene in front of me reminded me just how screwed up my life had gotten. Matt
had apparently been cooking breakfast. That in itself was weird. He didn’t cook breakfast,
much less bacon. The man usually ate something closer to cereal and fruits in the
morning.
But Matt was holding Amy against the wall, a steak knife in hand at her throat.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
I yelled. “What the hell is going on?”
Matt growled out first. “Listen, I was just cooking breakfast for you, after that
whole vampire thing, thought you’d need it, and…and this blond chick just popped in
out of nowhere.”
“Matt,” I blinked, trying to shake the cobwebs of sleep from my head. “Matt, you are
going to let Amy go. She’s welcome here.”
Matt hesitated a moment. “Wait, what? Eric, what’s going on?”
“Matt, let her go.”
He took the knife away from her throat, and backed off. “You’ve got explaining to
do.”
“Yea, and so does she.” I answered. “You say she just appeared, Matt?”
Matt nodded as he set the knife on the counter. “I went to the fridge to find your
eggs, and when I closed the door, this blond gal is standing right in the middle of
your kitchen.”
“Okay,” I ran a hand through my hair. “I guess we’ve both got to explain some stuff…You
don’t have to cook the eggs or anything. Listen, Matt, take a seat at the table. Amy,
you too.”
We all sat down at the table. It was the largest crowd I think I’d ever had in my
apartment. Amy seemed tiny next to Matt, who was built from large Scandinavian stock.
Amy’s petite frame seemed much more comfortable in my second-hand chairs.
“So, start talking.” Matt said. “One of you.”
“Okay.” I said. “Uh, why the bacon?”
Matt shrugged. “Well, I thought you might need it. You know, it’s been a crazy few
days, you know? You saw a dead body, got bit by a vampire…You want some? It’s all
done now.”
“Uh, yea, sure.” As Matt got up, and came back with a plate of bacon, I grabbed one
and started to chew on it as I went to grab some bread and pop it into the toaster.
“First off, Matt, there’s something you need to know about me.”
“That you have crazy blonds breaking into your house?” Matt asked.
“I’ll get to her in a second. Matt, you know there are four big races of Arcanes out
there, right?”
“Yea, vampires, weres, Fae, and the Red Angels, right?”
“There’s a fifth. A fifth, apparently, that they’ve all been keeping under wraps.
They’re witches.”
“Witches?” Matt arched an eyebrow. “You mean, like Harry Potter shit? It's real?”
“Eric, this is not what I would call wise.” Amy warned me. Her eyes narrowed at me
as I finished off my bacon.
I shook my head. If I told a werefox to get her to trust me, I could let my closest
friend in on my little secret. “Matt is one of the few people I trust, Amy. He gets
to hear the truth.” I looked back to Matt. “Matt, I’m a witch.”
“Witch?” He looked to her, then me. “You mean, magic, and all that shit.”
“Yea. Magic, and all that shit.” I echoed. “There apparently aren’t a lot of us left.
This was my mother’s legacy to me, I guess. She was a witch, and this all was passed
on to me.”
“So, wait,” Matt held up a finger. “Minor clarification. You’re a witch? Isn't a witch
a woman?”
“Yea, that was something I wanted to ask you about.” I said to Amy. “What’s up with
that? Shouldn’t I be a warlock, or a wizard, or something?”
She sighed. “Witch, in the arcane community, has no gender connotation. That is an
entirely human invention. It is just that, witches have had such a sparse population,
that it has been rendered to fanciful writers to determine that little piece of vocabulary.”
“All right, okay. So, yea, a witch.” I said. “But, yea, I can do magic, apparently.
And I,” I paused to think about how to say this next for a moment. “Matt, I have this
gift. I don’t really know how to use it yet, but I want to help people.”
Matt laughed. “Now I know you’re not jerking my chain. Only you would find out you
have superpowers and decide to go the Spider-Man route.”
“Ha ha.” I rolled my eyes as I grabbed my toast when it popped out. “Well, we’ll see
how this goes. I only found out about this two nights ago. I might turn out to be
a really bad superhero.”
“So he says.” Amy rolled her eyes.
Matt turned his gaze to her. “Which brings us to Blondie…Amy, was it?”
“That’s what she calls herself. Amy is my guardian, I guess. She doesn’t like the
angel description, so I guess she’s just a guardian.”
“So, you’re a witch, and you have a cute blond guardian chick?” Matt just opened up
laughing. “Dude, your life has become a Joss Whedon show.”
I rolled my eyes, and Amy asked. “Who is-“
“That is really not important right now.” I interrupted. I looked down, and saw that,
next to Amy’s chair, there was a canvas grocery bag. I hadn’t noticed that before,
but I assumed I had just been too distracted by the lunacy of Matt holding a knife
to her throat. I gestured to it. “What’s in the bag?”
“Legacy, Eric.” She hefted it up onto the table, and then reached into it. She withdrew
a pair of small notebooks. They were each about the size of my hand, tied together
by leather straps. “These are the recordings of your mother’s line. Unfortunately,
only these two volumes have survived.”
“Who do these belong to?” I asked her.
“The older one is a compilation of both your mother and grandmother, though this one.”
She held up a Moleskine notebook that had seen better days. “This one is your mother's.”
I paused, a long moment, before speaking. “My mother’s.” I whispered.
“Dude,” Matt put a hand on my arm. “This is big.” Matt had been one of the few I had
confided in when I had stopped looking for any sign of my mother’s history. He knew
what this was. I didn’t just have some random things from my mother. I had books from
my mother.
“Yes, indeed.” Amy gave me an inquisitive look. “Eric, are you-“
I shook my head. “No. I’m not crying. And if you say I am, I’ll kick you out.”