Branded (7 page)

Sly rolled down his window. “What’s going on, brother?”

I shook my head. “No idea.”

I had to admit, I was as much relieved as I was unnerved by the situation. It meant I wouldn’t have to deal with explanations to authorities. But it also spoke to a larger problem. Whoever had orchestrated my attack and abduction had wanted to make sure it stayed quiet. And they had the resources to not only scour away the burnt remains of a quartet of vampires, but haul off a car that had been on its roof and not exactly drivable.

Surely the neighbors had seen something.

Sure enough, as if thinking it made it so, Mrs. Snoopis came out of her front door and marched her way toward me.

She wore a flannel nightgown that looked like it would be way too hot for this July heat. Her wide face was a pasty white and she had eyes that bulged so much they looked like they might drop out of their sockets if she shook her head too quickly.

Her scowl looked like an ax wound across her face.

Her slippers scuffed against the concrete as she crossed the driveway in front of Sly’s Caddy and over to me. She waved a finger in my face. “I knew it,” she said.

I leaned back to avoid getting her stubby finger stuck up my nose.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Sly said, rolled up his window, and backed out of the driveway.

Thanks for the support, buddy.

Mrs. Snoopis didn’t pay his departure any mind. Her ire was locked on me.

“I knew it,” she repeated.

I sighed. “Knew what, Mrs.…” I almost said
Snoopis
. I cleared my throat and course corrected. “Mrs. Sokalski.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t play coy with me.”

If only I could. But I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. She’d had many theories about my family throughout our years as neighbors. I could only imagine which she had decided on for tonight.

“Ma’am, I have had a rough night, and all—”

“I bet you have,” she said. Her voice made nails on a chalkboard sound like Mozart. She tilted her head to get a look at my neck. “What is that?”

I put a hand over the vampire bite. Touching it made it burn. It felt crusty and scabbed.

“I hurt myself,” I said.

“Drugs.”

I couldn’t hold back from looking at her like she had sprouted deer antlers.

“Don’t you eyeball me that way,” she said. “Drugs. Plain and simple. You should be ashamed.”

I assumed she meant that I was
on
drugs. Or maybe dealing them. Hell, for all I knew she thought I was a ranking member of the Mexican cartel. Frankly, I didn’t give a gods damned what she thought. I wanted my bed.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said. “If you have a problem, take it up with the police.”

She wagged her finger at me again. “Don’t think I won’t.”

I rolled my eyes, turned away, and headed for my house. My shoes sunk into the churned sod from my car’s landing spot.

“You’re just like them, you know.”

I froze. Turned slowly. “You don’t want to go there,” I said.

She drew back, one hand going to the buttoned collar of her nightgown and drawing it closer to her throat. “Well, it’s true. Whatever strange things they were involved with—”

My turn to point a finger. I aimed it right at her face, and if I’d had a little more strength and a lot less self-control I might have sent a hex right up her puggish little nose. “Don’t you ever talk about my parents. You don’t know a damn thing about who they are or what they’ve been through.”

Her face pinched, but she must have seen something in my posture or expression, because I could see the fear fill her eyes, and it gave me a sick pleasure to find it. I felt a scary grin pull at my cheeks.

“Yeah,” I said. “You better keep your distance. You don’t want any part of this.” I waved my pointed finger in a circle in the air. “You got it?”

She huffed, but she didn’t have anything else to say. I stared her down until she finally waddled back to her house and disappeared inside. She slammed the door shut, but I would have bet she was peeking through the curtains of her bay window.

“To hell with her,” I said and went inside.

Chapter Ten

I wanted nothing more than to go straight to bed, not even take off my clothes or clean off the wound on my neck. Plop down on top of the covers and drift off into oblivion.

But I knew that was a bad idea. Sly’s potion might keep my magical energy up enough to fight the infection from spreading, but I did not feel comfortable allowing myself to lose consciousness without a little more backup. Last thing I wanted was to wake up undead. So I went into the basement.

It had been a couple years since I’d gone down those steps. Yet I recognized every creak and give to the wooden risers. I recognized the musty smell and the faint oaken scent from the various wooden chests set along the floors between the metal shelving units carrying an infinite assortment of magical curios my parents had collected over their decades as scholars. They would often go on “digs” in far off locations, all corners of the globe, unearthing ancient artifacts. Magic had taken many forms throughout history, but it had always remained the same at its core.

There was a lot more stuff downstairs than I remembered. So many shelves. So many chests. Three long wooden tables covered with bottles and artifacts and broken things. Dust and debris between everything. Old books with leather bindings coming apart. Newer paperbacks with broken spines. Titles like
Witchcraft for the Modern Age
and
Curses from the Mid-Eighteenth Century
. My parents had turned our basement into a madman’s museum.

I had little doubt, though, that if my mother were her old self, she could find anything she was looking for. No problem. Same with Dad, if he’d still been around.

I glanced around at the dust strewn chaos and sighed.

What could I hope to find down here? Not that I questioned whether something of use existed among the mess. I was certain there were several things that could help me. Where to find them…where to even
start
, on the other hand, was beyond me.

I almost turned around. There was a reason I hadn’t come down here in so long. Not only because I had no clue what to do with all this stuff. I knew if I started digging through it, the memories of my parents’ lives would assault me from all directions. Considering my weakened state at the moment, I was bound to break down into a blubbering mess if I thought of them too much.

Still, the idea of waking up in the morning as a vampire was even more unpalatable than risking my manliness and a crying fit.

I took a deep breath and moved in.

I started with a table in the far west corner from the staircase. This corner had belonged mostly to my dad, and he had an affinity for magical knick knacks. If there was some kind of dormant power source in any of the items down here, I’d probably find it among his things.

A small wooden chest sat on the edge of the bench. Stacks of books stood around the chest like ramparts defending it against the mass of statuettes and talisman scattered across the rest of the table’s surface. I tried opening the chest. Found it locked.

Rather than fuss with it, I sifted through the other items. All sorts of pendants and small sculptures. Goblets of varying size and design. A flew dusty glass bottles with a dark coating at their bottoms, the remnants of whatever concoction had once filled them. Nothing sang out to me though. A muffled quiver of magical energy lay like a mist over the entire collection, but no single thing had a large enough signature for my needs.

I turned back to the chest. If he kept it locked, it made sense that something valuable lay within.

I scanned the table and actually found a few keys, but they were either too large or too small for the keyhole in the chest.

I turned around in the space, peering onto shelves, even glancing along the floor. I didn’t see any sign of a key or a good hiding spot for a key. It was entirely possible he had kept the key on his person. I didn’t recall receiving anything of the like when his body was returned. That didn’t mean it hadn’t been lost or even taken. I didn’t think it likely, though.

I looked around some more, and when I was about to give up, I noticed a particular book on a nearby shelf. It stood out from the others, not by how it looked, but by its title. It was the only book of the collection that didn’t reference some magical history or collection of spells.

A Tale of Two Cities.

It had a brown leather binding with the title in faded gold lettering. An easy thing to miss if you just scanned the bookshelf. And unless you were looking for something particular or unusual, even seeing the title wouldn’t raise any flags. At least not for anybody who didn’t know my dad.

But I knew him well. I happened to know that he hated Charles Dickens. My mom might have given Dickens a try. But, honestly, I had seldom seen either of them reading anything besides books related to the arcane. They simply didn’t have time for pleasure reading.

I had to stand on my tip toes to reach the book. It was on a tall bookcase that nearly reached the ceiling. The book case was old pressboard and had started to crumble on a bottom corner from apparent water damage. I took the book down. I could tell by the heft alone that something was wrong. It didn’t weigh near as much as it looked like it should.

Sure enough, the book was hollowed out. And in the hollowed space? A bunch of dust and a single key that looked just the right size for the chest.

I took out the key, set the book aside, and tried the key in the chest’s lock.

Perfect fit. It turned easily and emitted a single, solid
click
.

“Bingo.”

I didn’t know exactly what I’d find inside, but I knew I hit the jackpot the moment I cracked open the chest’s lid. I could feel the magical energy pour out. Warmth and a tingling sensation flowed through me as I opened the chest the rest of the way. The hinges only gave a short squeak. Otherwise it opened smoothly, as if the hinges had been recently oiled. Somehow the dust of the years had not corrupted them.

While nothing inside glowed bright and shiny right in my face, I trembled at the pent up power emanating from within the velvet-lined box.

Only a few items sat within. One was a huge stack of hundred dollar bills. They looked crisp, freshly printed. I eyeballed and made an estimate on the amount. Ten thousand. Maybe twenty.

Dad had been holding out. Or keeping it aside for an emergency.

I also found a stack of passports rubber banded together. I removed the rubber band and flipped through the passports. Six in total, three with pictures of my father, three with my mother, none of them under their real names. There were drivers’ licenses matching the false IDs on the passports. It was like something out of a spy movie.

But the oddity of this find didn’t surprise me as much as the last item in the chest. I immediately recognized the silver case with the black enamel decoration. The gilt floral pattern.

It was my father’s Longines pocket watch.

He had kept it on him at all times. I remember him constantly drawing it out, flipping it open, and checking the time. I also remembered the small conjurations he used to make with it to entertain me. He would put on these ghostly puppet shows by creating illusions in the air, like three dimensional holograms. He would narrate the stories, the watch always clutched in his free hand, the chain occasionally clinking as he gestured grandiosely and made his holographic puppets dance.

A lump formed in my throat. My vision blurred. When I wiped at my eyes with the back of my wrist, my wrist came away wet.

I reached in for the watch.

Before I touched it, I could
feel
it. I recognized the magic coursing from it the same way I could recall a particular scent. The energy was purely Dad’s.

I took up the watch and immediately felt an invigorating wave roll through me. The wound on my neck tingled. My weary muscles gained sudden strength. Even the sorrow coiling in my chest from the memories of my father seemed to clear like a fog in the sunlight.

There was some serious power in this thing. I had never held it before. Dad would never let me. Now I understood why. When I was younger I wouldn’t have known how to handle such power. The raw flow of it could have scrambled the fledgling control I had over my own natural power. One touch of this and I could have shorted out every electronic in the house, or shattered all the windows, or set the carpet on fire.

I was older now. I had plenty of control. Still, a wave of vertigo made me unsteady. I had to lean against the table to keep my balance.

I gripped the watch more tightly and felt the energy thrum up my arm. The chain dangled and swung like a pendulum.

Wow. I could feel myself healing inside. My vampire bite had begun to pop and sizzle as if someone had dumped a bottle of peroxide on it. Instead of stinging, though, it felt marvelous, a little ticklish yet somewhat like a mini massage as well.

Damn, if anything could fight back the vampire infection, this was it.

I wondered why Sly hadn’t mentioned it. He knew my father and his capabilities as much as I did. Maybe more so. Then another question occurred to me.

What was this watch doing in this chest, locked up in the basement?

My father never went anywhere without the watch. He should have had it on him when he was killed. At the time I had been so distraught, I hadn’t missed it.

So why hadn’t he taken it? Would it have made a difference in his fate to have had such a powerful talisman? Would he have survived? And, back to the original question…what had prompted him to leave it behind, locked up in this old chest?

Had he known what was going to happen to him? Or at least suspected? What had they gone into that he would purposefully leave this powerful item behind? Had he intended to leave it for me to find?

I swallowed and wiped more tears from my eyes. I didn’t have answers to these questions. And nowhere to look for clues. So I had to add them to the million other unanswered questions piled up around the mysterious event that took my parents from me.