From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (8 Book Collection) Read online

  “…and do not return!” the vampire said with way more authority than you would have expected from a girl that looked like she had slipped and fallen on a piercing gun face first.

  I shrugged and headed for the door. Adrianna seemed to want to test the water a bit more and stayed rooted in place for a moment; and then I saw her wince. Hmm. Maybe that ju-ju thing had seen about enough of The Queen of the Zombies for the time being.

  I was almost to my car when I heard my name being called. She was back to a mix of regular voice and that oom-papa-mow-mow guy from the Oak Ridge Boys’ song…Elvira I think was the title. I considered just ignoring her. Something told me I should get in my car and go home. After all, hadn’t she threatened Lisa? It was starting to get fuzzy. Damn! This was what she had done last time. She had some sort of ability that allowed her to erase my memory. Actually, it didn’t get erased. It was more like the keys to your car. You know you set them somewhere, you just can’t, for the life of you, remember where.

  “Ava,” the voice said in a really demanding tone.

  “What?” I spun around and tried to focus. Everything was getting kind of hazy. Hey…when did sharkmouth go away?

  “I told you that our truce was over.” She folded her arms under her breasts, pushing them up farther than her push-up bra already… I looked closer. The fairness fairy was a bitch! She wasn’t wearing a bra! How can breasts defy gravity like that? I was hating her more every single minute. I mean seriously, she’s like several hundred years old. Mine stopped looking that good about ten years ago.

  “So, I will be taking your young friend with me.” That snapped me out of my little trance.

  “Like hell you will!” Thankfully, my fingers and toes were still sporting serious nailage.

  Adrianna took a step my direction and staggered. I heard her say something, and I am pretty sure it was a string of naughty words, but it wasn’t in English, so I could only guess.

  “It seems that this little ju-ju has some lingering effects,” she finally said through clenched teeth.

  “And so you want to take my friend Lisa out of what…spite?” I said as I moved in between my car and The Queen of the Zombies. There was just no way that I would be letting her take Lisa.

  “I can’t get my zombies to stay together.” Adrianna actually pouted! I mean, this was something to think about. Here was this so-called Queen of the Zombies, and she’d already done the whole ‘Let’s bash America’ thing that so many people enjoy these days. Now she was actually pouting like Paris Hylton after being told that she would have to buy her new wardrobe at K-Mart. Don’t get me wrong. I can pout with the best of them, but it was nice to see that this might simply be something inherent in our gender.

  “You want to run that by me again?” I asked. Now I knew that she was under no compulsion to answer, and if she did, she could very well be lying through her teeth. Still, something about this seemed important.

  “My zombies,” Adrianna repeated, “they only last about an hour, and then they start to just come apart. Arms fall off, and pretty soon they are nothing but a pile of cold goo.”

  That sounded really gross. But it also sounded like information that I needed to know. And if I could just remember it once this little meeting was over, I’d probably be able to talk to Morgan and discover a way to stop Adrianna from whatever diabolical scheme was floating around in her brain.

  “Okay,” I shook my head to clear the inner monolog, “but what does that have to do with Lisa?”

  “Most magic of any serious power is demon related, duh!”

  Oh no she didn’t! She did not just ‘duh’ me.

  “To activate the magic…?” She left that question hanging in the air and gave me this raised eyebrow thing that Mr. Spock would have been envious of…if he were real…and standing here.

  “You really don’t know anything, do you?” Adrianna asked…again.

  “What am I supposed to know?” I exploded. I’d had enough of all of this. I was sick of Morgan and her snide little comments. I was sick of Belinda. (No need to go any further, I was just sick of her.) I was sick of all this supernatural crap that I didn’t know, but for some reason, everybody that I met from the ghosts to other vampires, and now this damn Queen of the Zombies, they all expected that I had some basic knowledge. Well enough was enough.

  “I need a virgin for this to work…the blood of a virgin is the only payment that any demon strong enough to help me will accept.”

  She said that like it was nothing. ‘Honey, while you’re at the store, could you pick up eggs, milk, bread…and, oh yeah, some virgin’s blood.’ Then it hit me and I started laughing. Adrianna’s pout changed to a look of annoyance. I am pretty sure that she is simply not used to be dealt with in this manner.

  “What is so amusing?” she asked.

  “Unless there is something about Lisa that I don’t know, you are out of luck there. That birth canal has already seen one passenger through it that I’m aware of…and while I’m pretty sure that was the only one, it still negates that whole ‘virgin’ thing you think you have here.”

  “But she is just a child, she can’t be any more than sixteen!” Adrianna had the decency to sound shocked.

  “I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding under, sister,” and that was true, I had no clue what those Templars or Augustines had done or used to keep Adrianna locked away, “but you might have some trouble tracking down a virgin in these parts unless you are gonna snatch an infant or grade schooler.”

  “Unless she has experienced her twenty-third—” Adrianna began, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “A virgin who has had over twenty periods? Yeah, they’re out there, but you can’t just assume because she is young that she hasn’t experimented.” I paused, and then decided I just had to know. “And when you say virgin…are you talking about no sex in the textbook sense, or are you talking Clinton-defined sex. Like if she just did some oral…or there has been this whole jump in girl’s going the anal sex route. Not an alternative that I would be down with…but I have heard—”

  “You must be joking!” Adrianna snapped.

  “About which part? The thing about a girl who has been menstruating for over two years that is still a virgin being harder to find than a Republican working in a soup kitchen when it isn’t an election year, or about the rise in oral and anal sex in—”

  “Enough!” Adrianna stomped her foot.

  I’d had about enough of her attitude. I was tired and depressed. I hadn’t had sex with a partner in way too long and all this talk about the promiscuity of the younger generation coupled with just being tired of all the crap, and I was ready to leave.

  “Listen, you can play your little games, or whatever it is that you are doing. I am going home. And I might just forget that I ever met you. And I might also tell Lisa not to remind me. But the bottom line is that I am sick of all of you. You think you’re all so smart. Well you don’t know much about people, none of you. You have been separated from it for so long that you have just let that little nugget of knowledge wither in your brain and die that tells you the human race might be screwed up in a lot of ways, but when its collective back is up against the wall, it fights back and comes together in a way that you will never be able to defend against.”

  I didn’t care what she had to say after that. I got in the car, slammed the door, turned the key, and peeled out in a way that only a Corvette can.

  7

  Is There Something I Should Know

  “So you just left?” Morgan almost sounded angry. Well good! It was about time somebody else got their panties in a bunch for a change.

  “Did you miss the part about her doing the whole memory wipe thing?” I said with as much calm as I could muster. I was performing an experiment. So far, every time that I’d met up with Morgan, I’d ended up flying off the handle at some point. I was doing my best to channel my inner-Spock.

  “I heard you the first three times, yes.” Morgan glanced a
t Lisa. “And if you insist on putting your human in danger despite all my warnings, then perhaps we need to discuss having Belinda send one of her Kiss over.”

  “What?” Lisa and I said in unison.

  “I specifically recall telling you that it might be best if you left the human home for this particular job,” Morgan reminded.

  “Yes, well she didn’t feel like staying home,” I replied after taking a moment to recover my composure after that last little remark.

  “This is not something that I say lightly, Ava.” Morgan actually sat on my couch and crossed her legs all proper. She had never once sat on my living room furniture at the apartment. In fact she used to make it a point to touch as little as possible. For her to actually sit down was serious stuff. “I understand your attachment to this…human. I had a human companion once. It did not end well.”

  I was stunned. First, at the simple fact that Morgan had once kept company with a human…that was big news. And for her to say what she had was the equivalent of pouring out her heart. This was something probably much bigger than even I was giving credit.

  “So you are saying that I should let Lisa become a vampire?” That is one of those sentences that you never really imagine yourself putting to words.

  “Either that, or Belinda can do something very similar to what The Queen of the Zombies (wow…I heard the capital letters in Morgan’s voice, this gal must be pretty major stuff) has done to you…more than once.” Morgan glanced at the teenage girl like she was making some sort of an appraisal. “She can erase her mind.”

  I considered some of what had happened in the past several months. On more than one occasion, Lisa’s life had been in serious jeopardy.

  “When you say erase—” I started, but Morgan cut me off.

  “Unfortunately she cannot do something as seemingly selective as this Adrianna creature, but we can put some of our people in place to assist her with getting her life in order.”

  “Excuse me!” Lisa jumped out of her chair like it had been hit with a jolt of electricity. “I am sitting right here. Perhaps before you two start deciding my fate, somebody may want to ask me what the hell I think about all of this being turned into a vampire crap or having my brain deleted.”

  “Lisa—” I raised my hands, holding them out in front of me. Why do we do that? I mean, do we seriously believe that if we simply hold our hands up, the person we are trying to calm down will just say, ‘Oh, okay’ and relax?

  “No, Ava!” she snapped. “I will have a say in this. If there is something you want to tell me about a certain mission and what the dangers may be, then fine. But I can make my own decisions. I’m not stupid.”

  “I never said you were,” I countered. “But you have to realize that some of the stuff that has happened is far more dangerous for you than for me. I would feel terrible if something happened to you.”

  “And I can decide for myself if it is a danger that I am willing to take. After all, I came with you after you ate my boyfriend, didn’t I?”

  She had a good point. However, I would perhaps remind her later that I hadn’t eaten her boyfriend. He was a grown man…a pedophile when you got right down to it since he was almost forty and she was still just sixteen…fifteen at the time he knocked her up. But this wasn’t about her choice in men; I could save that speech for later.

  “Actually,” Morgan’s voice cut through the room almost like it was magic. I even felt the temperature drop just a little, “you have very little idea what you are doing.”

  Lisa began to protest, but Morgan shot her a look that reminded me of that scene in Carrie when people were trying to escape the gym during her little pig blood-induced tantrum. Her head whips around and there is this look in her eyes that lets you know that she is experiencing some serious emotion.

  “You have run off with Ava on more than one occasion now when you should have remained at home. This is just the most recent example. When Belinda came to me and told me what we might be dealing with, I actually rushed over to Ava’s. Unfortunately, I was too late. When I discovered that you had gone with her, I honestly never expected to see you again. Not alive at least.”

  “Wait,” now it was my turn to be pissed, “you knew something and didn’t think that maybe a phone call or text or whatever mental mumbo jumbo you can do might be a good idea to say ‘Hey, Ava…Morgan here. Before you go off to Estacada, I have some information about your task that might, I don’t know, save your life!’?”

  “Let’s not change the subject just yet, Miss Birch.” Morgan turned her attention to me.

  Note to self: don’t get snotty with Morgan. She gets pissed in a hurry and it is very unsettling.

  “When we met, I had no idea that Italian nightmare had managed to slip her bonds. She was supposedly put away so securely that the resurfacing of Atlantis would be more likely to occur.”

  “Huh?” Did she just say something about Atlantis? Wasn’t that some sort of resort in the Caribbean? Wait! Was she talking about the real Atlantis? This whole supernatural thing was coming with a steep learning curve.

  “Look who’s talking about changing the subject,” Lisa huffed.

  I think both Morgan and I almost broke our necks when our heads snapped around to her. I had no idea where she was going, but the look of defiance in her face had me curious. Plus, now Morgan wasn’t giving me the evil eye anymore.

  “Every single time we meet and things start to get out of hand, you throw out some new monster or whatever to distract Ava. You know she will chase after it like something shiny…”

  Hey! Whose side is she on? Am I that easy to distract? Wait…they’re still talking. Damn! I am that easy to distract.

  “…don’t know what the rules are because you only give them to us when it suits you.”

  Morgan wasn’t actually showing what a normal person would consider an open display of shock, but the fact that her mouth was open just a bit and her eyebrows had raised a fraction, well that was quite a display. She must have realized that I was staring, because her lips pressed back together and her face smoothed back to that perfect and flawless look. Seriously, if you saw her on the streets, you would swear that she’d been given a quadruple dose of Botox. Her face just always seemed frozen in that same disinterested expression.

  “Fair enough,” Morgan said after a moment of silence.

  “What!” Lisa and I are not nearly as good at hiding our emotions.

  “I guess I must reconcile myself to the fact that I have a ghoul in my district. And I suppose I will make allowances for you, Lisa.”

  Now I was really flabbergasted. To my knowledge, that was the first time that Morgan referred to Lisa by her name, and not simply as ‘The Human.’

  “However, this comes with a whole different set of rules.”

  Uh-oh. I don’t think I was going to like this.

  “You see, I have tolerated your companion because I honestly believed that she would either tire of what life with a ghoul would be like…”

  Once again with the ‘Hey, I’m standing right here!’ look. Morgan either didn’t notice or—more likely—didn’t care.

  “…that, or she would end up dead. Seriously, your standard human never really fares well when becoming involved with the supernatural.”

  “Then why didn’t you say something?” Lisa snapped.

  “Excuse me, child, but I believe I have said things on many different occasions. And this most recent case is an example. I specifically warned Ava about involving you.”

  “I told her, but she said she—” I started to defend myself, but Lisa waved me off.

  “How did your pet human die?” Lisa really put a nasty emphasis on that one word. I think she was tired of the games, too. I was beginning to wonder if maybe the wrong person had become the ghoul.

  Morgan did not show any hint of emotion at that question. No surprise. But she did start talking. Big surprise.

  “I was barely twenty when the Augustines came to my village…”<
br />
  Holy crap! She is fixing to tell us some seriously personal stuff. I really have to focus.

  “…when they spoke to mother, I was terrified. All my life I’d had this ability to…sense things. Lately, there had been a real surge in the growth of the new religion called Christianity since that very unpleasant incident in Jerusalem.

  “People were hunting down anybody that they considered to be a witch. The entire supernatural community took quite a hit during that time. In fact, it was around then that most supernaturals began to go in to hiding.

  “Every once in a while, one of them would show up and create a stir. There was actually talk early on of all the supernaturals coming together and simply eliminating the entire human race. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.”

  “Wait, you were around during the time of Jesus?” I’m sorry, but am I the only one who heard that little statement and didn’t have some questions.

  “That’s really not important right now, Ava,” Morgan scolded. “Lisa has asked a question, and I will grant her an answer this one time. So, if you don’t mind…”

  “Sorry,” I whispered. Still, aren’t you just a bit curious? I know that I am.

  “So where was I?” Morgan shot me a dirty look.

  “The Augustines had come to your mother and you were afraid because folks were hunting down witches,” Lisa prompted.

  “Wait a minute!” I snapped.

  I had a sneaking suspicion that we were being played. If these so-called Augustines were searching for her and the crucifixion had just happened, her time line was way off. Probably didn’t know that I went to Catholic School when I was in seventh and eighth grade, did ya? Well I did. And in the eighth grade we all went through Confirmation. It is one of a jillion ceremonies that they have in the Catholic Church. But the big part of that for me was choosing my patron saint. I picked Saint Augustine. Now my reasons may have had more to do with the fact that my great-grandmother lived in St. Augustine, Florida, but that is beside the point. Still, other than discovering that he is the patron saint of, among other things printers and brewers and sore eyes (I know, weird, huh?), I also know that he was born around the year 350 AD.