Blood Ties (12 page)

“Italian?” asked the man, squinting in a failed attempt to give his eyes a bedroom look.

“Yes, I’ve been in this country for…well, let’s say a very, very long time. Do you speak Italian?”

“Uh, yeah,” the man said, fiddling to take off his wedding ring behind his back.

“
Ho intenzione di uccidere e mangiare le interiora con salsa
pi
cante,
” said Catherine, testing him.

“Hey, yeah, sounds good to me.”

She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the right one. How many people would agree to let someone kill them and then eat their entrails with hot sauce—as she had just asked him to do?

“I’m Catherine,” she said, holding out her hand for a shake.

“Nick,” the man responded, lying about his name. He kissed Catherine’s hand instead of shaking it, and left behind some of the mayonnaise from his chin. Catherine quickly drew it back as she painfully smiled with clenched teeth.

Catherine invited the potential protégé back to her penthouse. She was pleased with her selection, and with how easy he had been to acquire.

However, Catherine understood that one of the conditions for making a protégé was that the intended had to be in complete compliance with his transformation. In other words he had to decide with his own free will to be subjected to the whims of his future master. From past experience Catherine knew most humans would not agree to such a hideous fate, so a witch had to use a certain amount of subterfuge. This usually entailed romantic gestures if the potential protégé was a woman, and the promise of sex if it was a man.

On the ride to the penthouse, Catherine cock-teased Nick to the point where he was willing to do just about anything to get her on her back. Yes, it was entrapment, but it worked every time.

Upon their arrival Chetan made himself scarce, and Catherine took Nick to the purple room.

“Would you like a drink?” she purred.

Nick looked around, wondering where in the penthouse Catherine kept the bed. “Sure, anything you got.”

Catherine was more than satisfied with that answer. It gave her permission to serve him up a magical mixture of Jack Daniels and Grey Goose spiked with a dash of a potion she had spent years developing. The potion contained a unique blend of micronized herbs and Haitian zombie powder derived from puffer-fish toxin. With the sleep-inducing drink in hand, she swayed over to Nick, who was loosening up his tie and kicking off his shoes.

He took the drink and guzzled it down. He immediately started feeling the effects, and his few inhibitions disappeared. “Damn, you are smokin’ hot. I’m going to fuck the shit out of you tonight.” He patted the couch. “My fucking wife never wants it. Oops… I wasn’t supposed to mention her. My bad.”

Catherine sat down next to Nick. “Oh, you big romantic, you,” she said, allowing him to slobber on her neck—his poor excuse for kissing. She could see why his wife rejected him, with his pitiful, amateur technique. Catherine barely wrapped her arms around him, knowing the more excited he got, the quicker the toxin worked. She looked past him at her watch. The drink typically took no more than five minutes to kick in. It was already minute two.

Nick went for his zipper, and put Catherine’s hand into his pants. “Oh, yeah, you like that, don’t you, baby?” he panted as he pawed at her breast. Catherine could only think how pathetic it was that his hard-on was about three inches long. She looked at her watch again and began counting down in her mind.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
At zero Nick conked out.

Nick woke up naked, with his arms and legs staked to a pentagram on the floor. He struggled to release his wrists from the tight shackles that cut off his circulation. He tried to scream, but he was gagged with a terrycloth rag. He saw an open door at the back of the room. Catherine entered, dressed only in a priestess robe and the same six-inch stilettos she’d had on earlier. She crossed the room holding a large Book of Shadows to her chest.

The walls resonated with the desperate, muted sounds of the backs of Nick’s feet banging the floor. His throaty, muffled screams were barely audible through the gag. Then his eyes widened as Catherine pulled out a sharp, heavy-bladed knife from the pages of the book.

“Do you know why you’re here,
Nick
? And no, it’s not to fuck,” she said as she removed the gag from his mouth.

Nick coughed hard. His larynx was inflamed from his frenzied screaming. He could only release a faint, hoarse wail. He started to weep. “I don’t know. Is this some sort of weird sex game? What do you want?” He watched Catherine put the book on the floor and pull a feather out of it.

She said, “I’m not an authority on what is good or what is bad. I only know what is useful to me. You have very special attributes that can serve me well. Yes, you are a liar and a cheat. But what you have kept hidden from everyone is that you have killed… A young woman in college who didn’t find you so sexually desirable. You took not only her virginity but her life. Poor girl. Her undiscovered remains are still in those woods.”

“How did you know about that?” Nick asked. He was shaking, thinking that all of these theatrics were part of some elaborate plot to set him up for blackmail. “What do you want? Cash? Stocks? Just tell me.”

“Nick, you barely have two nickels to rub together. Besides, look around you. Does it look like I need money? I just want you to agree to do my bidding.” Catherine held the knife in one hand and the feather in the other.

“Whatever, whatever! Omigod!” Nick said through his sobs.

“Great. I have your full cooperation. Now I have to measure your heart against this feather.” Catherine straddled Nick’s thighs and laid the feather on his navel. She raised the knife over her head and said, “This is going to hurt…a lot.”

Nick saw the knife come down and go straight through his ribcage. Catherine cut him from clavicle to sternum. He then felt her powerful hands separating his ribcage and ripping his still-beating heart out of his chest cavity.

Catherine only had four minutes to perform a speedy Weighing of the Heart ritual before Nick would be clinically brain dead, and she needed him to be alive for the ceremony. She took his heart in one hand and the feather in the other. Her hands moved up and down like a justice balance. She determined that his heart was heavier than the feather—that he was a bad boy indeed.

“You and I are going to do great things together,” she said, wiping Nick’s blood off her hands on his stomach.

Nick felt his life exit his body. His last moments consisted of perfect fear and the knowledge that Catherine had done this to him. This knowledge would bind him to her forever.

Catherine opened her Book of Shadows and recited a necromancy spell over Nick, capturing his soul before it left him. His body twitched as it came back to life with horrific agony. The muscles contracted and relaxed in a rapid fashion, and he nearly bit off his tongue. His body was undergoing some sort of metamorphosis. The facial bones rearranged themselves into a hideous caricature of the former Nick. His gnarly fingers grew longer and clawed at the empty space.

Nick’s eyes had turned a dead gray color and were full of abject terror. He looked at Catherine, his gaze pleading with her to help him. But she just stood there taking utter delight in watching a new protégé being born.

Nick was now powerful enough to yank up the stakes that bound him to the floor. However, he could see that Catherine was not intimidated by him in the least. He accepted his fate, then his rational mind shut down its own will and forced him to become a servant to her.

Chapter Fifteen

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.

—Honoré de Balzac

“T
hey’re here!”

Aunt Evelyn’s giddy declaration was way too much for me to handle at that time of morning. My head was completely cocooned in the comforter; the rest of the blanket hung off the side of the bed and made a nice heap on the hardwood floor. I managed to crack open one eye, and it didn’t even matter that rogue threads poked the white of it. When I didn’t hear Aunt Evelyn say anything else, I started drifting back to la-la land.

Then it hit me: who
they
were. The ones Aunt Evelyn had summoned in that spell.

Oh, snap
. I bumbled out of bed, of course getting my foot caught in the comforter. After I recovered from my spill to the floor, I ran over to the window and saw an unfamiliar silver car in the driveway. From my second-floor vantage point, I could make out a woman’s legs in the passenger seat. The driver’s hands, resting on the steering wheel, were obviously male.

Probably some old, haggy witch and a crotchety warlock
.

I guess I really should’ve been ready for their arrival at any moment, but I kind of hadn’t expected that kooky spell of Aunt Evelyn’s to work. Even though after all I’d seen so far, I shouldn’t have doubted it.

I could hear Aunt Evelyn’s Børn clogs clacking like little mouse feet to the front door. Meanwhile I ran over to my suitcase and sat on the floor with my legs tucked under me. My arms started windmilling, throwing clothes out of the suitcase I had never bothered to unpack.

“Grace, come on down. Hurry!” Aunt Evelyn shouted from downstairs with nervous excitement all through her voice.

“Coming,” I responded, not finding anything good to wear. When Julie and I’d had to get the hell out of Dodge, I hadn’t exactly had time to pack an extensive wardrobe. I’d left Dad’s house with a few shirts, shorts that didn’t match any of them, socks without mates, and an armful of cotton granny panties. None of it was appropriate to make even a mediocre first impression.

I decided to bank on Aunt Evelyn’s closet; surely she would have something I could borrow for this nerve-wracking moment. When I surveyed the abyss where unfashionable clothes went to die, the only appropriate response was bewilderment. Aunt Evelyn’s wardrobe choices consisted of checkerboard shirts, a punk-rock leather jacket, a T-shirt with an iron-on decal reading “hot tamale,” and nine pairs of culottes circa 1978. I knew she was a bit of a wacky-doo, but goddamn. This was the kind of shit I had read about in microfiche copies of
Life
magazine. I was obviously going to fare better with my own ratchet clothes.

The doorbell buzzed, and I knew I had to get it in gear. I threw on the first thing that smelled clean, with absolutely no consideration of looking in a mirror. I hopped to the door on one foot, trying to get my shoe on and wondering what they’d be like. Surely they’d have Third Reich temperaments. They’d need personalities like that to take on the dangerous task they’d been given: protecting me.

I walked slowly down the long hallway, hoping the creaking, wooden floorboards wouldn’t give me away to the crowd gathering below. I could hear Aunt Evelyn talking to a young woman with a Received Pronunciation British accent. Wow, what happened to the German accent I was expecting? I hid in a nook, steeling myself. My ego made an appearance and was wondering why I was tripping out over making a good impression on these people. They were there for me, not vice versa. However, my cowardly id quickly reminded me I didn’t want to be a disappointment to them.

From the nook I could kind of see Aunt Evelyn and Julie standing at the door. The British woman, for some reason, had not yet entered the house, and I could hear some hesitation in her voice. I could tell she was being polite but really didn’t want to be there.

“Addison, get on in this house,” Aunt Evelyn chirped, sounding actually happy to see the young woman.

I left the safe confines of my little corner and covertly looked over the railing, to see down below. In walked this really cute girl. She looked like she had just come home from a club or something
.
She did look little whorey. However, despite her ensemble, she had a regal air about her. She tilted her head back ever so slightly, so she could look down her nose at Aunt Evelyn and Julie. Her lips were pursed like she really couldn’t have been—rather shouldn’t have been—bothered.

That didn’t stop Aunt Evelyn from grabbing and hugging her. “Oh, Addison, it is so good to see you. It has been too long.” She put Addison in a bear hug and shook her about.