Min's Vampire (21 page)

“
What do you want, Elaina?”
Luca asked, and then gasped as she pushed her finger into one of
the gashes on his chest.

“
I don’t want anything.” Her
eyes flashed with heat as she pulled her fingers free of his flesh.
That malicious insanity that had heralded Luca into this long, dark
journey into the afterlife…his afterlife. She licked his blood from
her fingers. She bared her teeth, her words heated with anger as
she circled him. “If I’d wanted you, I would just take you. If I
wanted you to gut your pretty little witch, you would rip her into
as many pieces as I asked you to. And if I wished you to walk into
the sun itself—” She moved in and pushed herself against him, her
hands on his shoulders as she lunged toward him, until he could
feel her cold breath on his cheek. Her white teeth opened as she
moved in closer, as if she was going to take a bite out of him, and
then she smiled and let her teeth snap closed with a clink worthy
of a bear-trap. She backed away, giggling in a demented stream that
bordered on musical. “Then you would be nothing but a mound of
ash.”

She whirled about, as if
dancing to music only she could hear, and then came to rest sitting
delicately on the railing of Min’s porch. “All I wish to do is pass
along a bit of knowledge to my only child. You know, give him
some
motherly advice
.”

The tension seemed to melt from
Elaina’s body and the volatile energy that was close to erupting
from her just seemed to die, as if it had never been there to begin
with. But Luca knew it was there, and would always be. It just
showed itself when it wanted to.

“
As I was telling you, no
matter how long it has been, my power over you remains the same. No
matter how powerful you may become, my control over you will
continue, unchanged.” She stood again and slinked silkily over to
him, her big black eyes glittering like a night sky filled with
stars. “The lesson, my beautiful boy, is that everything has its
limits, no matter how powerful it has become. You just have to
figure out the boundaries.”

“
What are you talking
about?”

“
Like your Min. She found
the boundary the wolves could not cross or overcome. And tonight
I’ve shown you your own boundary. Though I cannot force you to love
me”—a flash of real pain flickered across her features—“I can force
you to kill all that you do love.” She leaned against him and
rested her cheek against his chest, right over his
heart.

In a weary, sad whisper she asked,
“What other situation, one in this very house, would you wish to
find the boundary to?”

She’s crazy…what the
hell…

Luca gasped, realization dawning on him
as he looked down upon his creator. She smiled beatifically up at
him, perfect understanding sizzling between them.

“
Thank you,” Luca said
breathlessly.

Elaina stepped back, her expression
dimming as he gazed at her. Whatever she saw in him, she wasn’t
sure she liked. “Just remember, no matter how powerful a thing is,
they always have the same limitations, the same boundaries as any
other of their kind.”

“
The same weaknesses,” he
said.

She bit her lip, moved to him and
kissed him, moving her body against his. His body reacted to her,
hardening. Was it fear or was it lust? He couldn’t tell. For the
first time in their long history, he was grateful to his maker. The
kiss deepened. She moved away. Looking at his hardness, she
smiled.

“
Such splendid attributes.”
She looked him in the eye. “Enjoy your freedom, my beautiful boy.
I’ll come for you when I hunger for you again.” And with a graceful
turn she vanished into the night.

Standing there on the porch Luca could
only hear his own breathing, slowly feeling the paralysis Elaina’s
power over him caused, melt away in mere seconds. His mind was
racing, things connecting, Elaina’s words touching on what he knew
already about Min’s mother. He turned and rushed into the house,
and up the stairs. He had work to do, and not much time to do
it.

Chapter 21

Languishing in a rare
dreamless sleep, Min finally awoke to the light of the full moon
cascading through her bedroom window. She stretched and rolled
over, finding herself alone, but not much caring. He was somewhere
near,
her Luca
. It
wasn’t that she felt him, it was more an assumption.

She took a few deep breaths and finally
forced herself to crawl out of her nice, warm, comfortable bed,
slipping into her silk bathrobe and padding barefoot to the door.
As she walked she felt how sore she was. She’d been through quite a
bit in the last week, and she’d be lucky if she wasn’t covered from
head to toe with nasty black and purple bruises.

She almost turned to crawl back into
bed, but she knew she still had things that needed to be done—no
rest for the wicked…or at least not for her. She needed coffee, and
lots of it. She puttered into the dimly lit hall. Maybe Luca would
be waiting for her, in the kitchen, with coffee.

The moment she entered the hallway she
knew something was wrong. She turned slowly, looking around her,
her shoulders and spine straightening in alarm, until she found
what was different. The door to her mother’s room was standing wide
open.

Min’s heart lurched in her
chest and she gasped in air.
No, no, no,
no, no…

She rushed into the room and
flicked on the overhead light. Her mother was gone. Everything was
as it always was, but her mother wasn’t there. Min whirled around
and ran downstairs, calling Luca’s name, over and over. Someone had
to have moved her mother…
Luca
had to have moved her. Katarina couldn’t move,
couldn’t breathe, she was in suspended animation, a magical coma,
and her soul was missing too.

When she clambered down the stairs the
first thing she saw was that the front door was open.

“
No,” she whispered,
stopping, frozen in her tracks. The weight of what she had done was
crushing.
I let a monster into my house,
into my bed. And now he has my mother.
Her
comatose, defenseless mother.
No, no, no.
It has to be a bad dream.
She’d wake up
screaming in just a moment. But she didn’t wake up. She stood there
in her robe, the cold night wind roaring in through the open door,
making her shiver.

She thought for a moment she
would be sick. Then she thought she’d burst into tears. Her mother
was dead by now. A vampire wouldn’t pass up a free, sleeping meal.
A niggling little voice inside her said,
But why didn’t he just kill her in her own bed?
Min shook that thought off. She shook off all the
thoughts that were threatening to overwhelm her. Even the guilt for
bringing that monster into her house, into her mother’s very
room.

Instead she found a purpose, and clung
to it with everything she had. She raced upstairs, pulling on some
clothes, gathering a few vampire-unfriendly objects. She tucked a
cross and a silver dagger in her belt. Picking up a perfume bottle
she checked her powers. She’d used a lot of mystical energy in the
past few days, and she needed the certainty that her magick was
still there and ready to back her up. They were stiff and hard to
call up at first, as she floated the perfume bottle, and then
shakily, the chest of drawers the bottle had been sitting on. But
they were there, ready.

She grabbed a scribing crystal and a
map and headed into her mother’s room. She’d use the crystal to
locate her mother’s current location, and then use an enchantment
she knew to form a glowing light on the page that would move with
her mother.

At first nothing happened. Min was
actually on her third recitation on the scribing spell when she
realized her mistake. She’d been reaching out to find her mother.
Maybe the wording and meaning was far too wide a request. After
all, these things looked for specific things, and to look for her
mother was to look for her spirit and soul, as well as her body.
And there was nothing left to her mother right now other than her
body. She’d already tried scribing for her mother’s soul and spirit
to no avail. They hadn’t been in this world or the spirit
world.

She was just about to clear her mind,
to let the spell melt, and to start scribing for just her mother’s
body, when the crystal moved, pulling her hand down hard as it fell
on the map. Only three blocks over from where she knelt
now.

She wasted no time thinking over the
impossibility of her spell actually having worked. It had worked,
and now she needed to act. She didn’t bother with the little moving
light spell, her mother was too close. She just jumped to her feet,
and ran down the stairs, forgoing her coat, or anything else, as
she ran out of the house, leaving the door still wide open, and
running down the street toward where the spell had indicated her
mother lie. Only one thought interrupted her as she sprinted down
the street, and the next. She was going to burn that vampire to a
cinder. Love or not… and she almost stopped in her tracks, but
shook off the thought and kept on running. Love or not, he was
going to die for ever laying a hand on her mother. When she came to
the place where the crystal had shown, she stopped momentarily to
shake her head. It was a large, nondescript brick building; the
sign above it read Charlemagne Meat Packing Plant.

Sudden images of what he could be doing
to her mother flashed in her mind, hitting her as hard as a fist in
the chest. But she all that out of her mind as she raced into the
building, pulling out the cross and the silver dagger she’d put in
her belt. It wasn’t a stake, but silver would kill him…as long as
she used it to hack him into enough pieces.

Then she rounded a corner and had to
duck past thick pieces of plastic. Once through, she was surrounded
by hundreds, maybe thousands of naked, raw sides of beef. Her
stomach turned, and she had to breathe deep and hard just to keep
herself from throwing up. She moved through the crowding sides of
beef. And with every stride, her anger rose. Before she knew it her
hands started to burn. When she came to the end of the meat she saw
Luca standing beside a huge steel door, leaning nonchalantly
against a generically painted white wall. Min dropped the dagger to
the ground, both her hands bursting into flame. She launched a ball
of it at his feet and watched as he jumped and danced out of the
flames, trying to keep himself from combusting.

She surged forward and brought up a
gale of fire, holding it in a huge sizzling ball only inches from
his face.

“
Where is she? Where have
taken my mother?” her voice crackled with power.

Luca’s face wasn’t frightened, and he
wasn’t smiling in evil ecstasy either. The look on his face was
devoted and …and…true.

“
She’s in the cooler,” he
said.

Min’s eyes widened and she moved to the
door.

“
Wait,” Luca called out,
“she hasn’t been in there long enough.”

Min shot a torrent of flames
at Luca that he barely had time to duck. She had never done
anything with such force; the magicks simply blew like a gale
through her hands. It left her hands burnt, but left her feeling so
much better.
Would’ve felt even better if
I’d hit the bastard.

“
Long enough for what?” Min
said, breathlessly. “For her to die of hypothermia?” She reached
out, her hands sizzling as she grasped hold of and then yanked open
the heavy steel door of the cooler. It was old, and heavier than
you’d see anywhere nowadays, lots of iron. Its hinges creaked and
whined as it swung open.

Frozen mist wafted thick and obscuring
from the cooler, and Min couldn’t see inside for a moment. The
overhead light flickered and sputtered, and then finally died out.
The only light came from the room she was standing in, and it
barely illuminated anything but the fog rolling around inside the
room. And then something moved.

In the middle of the room something
stirred, and Min couldn’t…wouldn’t believe her eyes as she watched
her mother sit up in the middle of the mist. Katarina breathed
deeply and struggled for a moment to bring her legs over the edge
of the boxes she lay on, and then stand up, wobbling on her feet
and holding onto a steel shelf for balance. Before Min’s eyes
Katarina’s ghostly white hair turned back to its usual salt and
pepper, and her ice blue eyes reverted to the beautiful obsidian
they once were. She looked to Min and smiled.

Min stumbled, her knees going out on
her. But something caught her, keeping her from falling to the
cold, ice-caked floor. Luca looked into her eyes as she shook her
head in utter disbelief, and then she looked back to her mother,
standing there so strong and alive once more. She stood back up on
her own, pulling gently away from Luca, then rushed to her mother,
pulling her to her in a savage embrace.

Her mother hugged her back, chuckling,
and then telling her, “I’m an old woman…you’re going to break
something on me.”

Min released her, and Katarina looked
around her at the cooler. “Smart work, my little Devol. Using one
of the fae’s only weaknesses to break the curse.”

Min shook her head, “What?”