Chilling Cadence

Ten

“AND HOW EXACTLY does one go about tracking down a Necromancer?” Jaxon wondered, his eyes bright with curiosity as he waited for an answer.

They had gone to the woods where the teenagers had been attacked. According to some eyewitness testimony, the teenagers had been drinking in the woods a little before they had decided they would head to the church to screw around. They had been attacked the moment they had decided to mess around at the church.

Grimm was walking a little ahead, his nose tilted upward, his tail swishing this way and that eagerly. He hadn’t had a good fight since Hansel and Gretel and Cadence could feel his eagerness for one through their bond. Reverend Whitlock was walking close by Grimm but she could tell her was listening to her and Jaxon’s conversation now even though he had been pretty aloof before now.

“It’s hard to explain,” she said, holding up a tree branch and ducking under it. “The simplest explanation is to follow the trail of death.”

Jaxon’s face was full of so much confusion, Cadence almost laughed. It was truly a wonder that she didn’t.

“Most Witches are unaware of this but Necromancers have an aura of death that’s constantly surrounding them. Death and dead things follow them out of habit. Their gifts are given to them by the god Hades. They’re rare and tricky but if you know what you’re doing, they’re pretty easy to catch.”

“Necromancers are rare but you seem to know a lot about them.”

Cadence frowned. The question wasn’t advertently personal but she couldn’t help the discomfort she felt. She didn’t want to be asked too many questions. Especially not with Reverend Whitlock and the Air of the Angel that surrounded him. If this continued on, she would start revealing secrets no one knew besides Grimm and her Grandmother.

“The Nightingale family has produced most of the Necromancers that exist among Witches. My ancestress, Alisyn, made a pact with Hades a long time ago. The stories say she was his favorite disciple. To this day, no Necromancer has ever been as powerful as she was.” Cadence pursed her lips, glaring over at Reverend Whitlock's back. Even if he wasn’t making her spill her secrets on purpose, she still didn’t like doing it.

Jaxon was silent for a moment, taking in that new information. “No wonder all the Witches are treating you like a celebrity,” he finally said.

Cadence cut a glance in his direction. He grinned when their eyes met and she averted her gaze. She really didn’t trust him at all. Any man with a smile like that was completely untrustworthy.

“So, are you a Necromancer, too?”

Discomfort rose in her chest and she looked straight ahead, concentrating on not falling in Reverend Whitlock’s flow as she answered, “My mother was.”

“And you?”

Was he dense? Did he not know how to read the goddam room?

“I don’t use magic.”

“Why not?”

That was the same question other Witches often asked. All Witches knew of the power the women in the Nightingale family had. Her father had been a Blackwood and the Blackwood family was one of the only families equal to the Nightingales in terms of raw power. So when a child had at last been born between the Nightingales and the Blackwoods, everyone had guessed at the power Cadence would have before she had been born.

She knew that she had an immense amount of power. What that power was and what she would do with it, she wasn’t sure. She only knew it was there. She was a being that was brimming with potential. Before she had learned to bring her power into herself to hide from enemies and other Witches alike, Witches’ eyes would widen at the sight of the power surrounding her. It was like a contained explosion, they would say, so powerful they could feel the heat of it.

Whenever they learned that she didn’t use her magic, that she was afraid of herself, they couldn’t seem to fathom it any more than Cadence could fathom why they were so eager for her to use it even when they knew the repercussions. There was a price to using such powerful magic; a price that her Grandmother had paid, that her parents had paid. The hollowing of the heart, the evaporation of everything that made people who they were.

Cadence didn’t say any of that, though. She only said, “There’s a price for everything,” and fixed her eyes forward pointedly, hoping he would get the hint this time.

He did.

It was midday when they reached the spot where the teenagers had hung out. Nothing had been touched since the incident. There was yellow police tape around the area courtesy of the police in Blue Ridge, she assumed, and inside the blocked off area Cadence saw broken beer bottles, empty potato chip bags, and candy wrappers.

Cadence looked back at Reverend Whitlock and Jaxon after she had successfully stepped under the police tape.

“Shouldn’t someone be here guarding this place?” she asked.

“That’s courtesy of Lorelei,” Jaxon answered, grinning. “Vampires can do all kinds of tricks, you know.”

Cadence frowned. She had almost forgotten. Vampires had special talents outside of overwhelming beauty, speed, strength, and nearly unparalleled senses. They could control the minds of others among other things. Witches didn’t know much about Vampires and vice versa, so Cadence had thought the stories about Vampires were far-fetched. She had thought the idea of mind control was impossible. There wasn’t even magic that could do that.

She wasn’t happy to be wrong.

She turned her attention back to the matter at hand. A nearby tree was dripping with a thick black liquid. Cadence placed her hand on it and when she moved it, it came away sticky. The texture was like tree sap but the scent…

Cadence flinched, her nose wrinkling. She looked around at the way the grass was only dead in the area where the teenagers had been attacked. There was the lingering scent of rose and something else. Something more sickeningly sweet.

“What do we do now?” Jaxon wanted to know. When Cadence looked over at him, he was watching her with anticipation.

“You’ll sit and wait. I’ll conduct search magic. If there really is a Necromancer, I should be able to find them with this. I’d get comfortable if I were you. Depending on the strength of the Necromancer and how good they are at hiding, this will take a long time.”

THE SUN DIPPED behind the horizon and the woods had become dipped in shadows. Cadence’s skin prickled a little. She was not fond of being in the woods in the dark in a town where Vampires lived, but it was more than likely that Lorelei was on her way. Despite how much that disturbed her, she preferred Lorelei’s company to the company of some other Vampire. They would not be quite as hospitable, she knew.

Instead of thinking of those things, she focused instead on the spell she was casting. It had become clear halfway through the spell that the Necromancer was more formidable than Cadence was. At least with the small amount of magic Cadence was using; magic that was barely worth noticing. So, instead of searching for the Necromancer, she decided instead to search for its Athame.

Necromancers carried Athames carved with the bone of an animal—or a person in more nefarious cases—on their person at all times. Carrying the bones of the dead to symbolize they stand with the dead, was how Grandmother would always put it. A Necromancer’s Athame is their most prized possession.

Cadence called upon Hermes, he who could find things that had been lost. The Athame hadn’t been hers to lose, but she used the tiniest amount of Necromancer power she had to call out to the dark energy that surrounded the Athame.

She sucked in a breath as the pendulum she had brought with her began to vibrate. It wasn’t pointing in a particular direction but it confirmed what Cadence had come here for.

“You were right, Grimm. It really was a Necromancer.”

Grimm—who had been sitting on a nearby tree stump watching her intently—nodded once, his tail swishing this way and that in agitation.

“This certainly…complicates things,” he said, sighing.

“Is a Necromancer being behind this such a big deal?” Jaxon asked.

Cadence had almost forgotten he and Reverend Whitlock were there, she had been so focused on her spellwork.

“I would say so, Jax.”

Lorelei emerged from the shadows, her face so pale it seemed to glow against the dark. That weak stranger Cadence had seen this morning seemed like a fever dream now. Her skin was back to its poreless, smooth state, her lips were the color of blood and her face was full of life. The air of the Vampire—that air of confidence that bordered on arrogance—had returned.

Cadence was kind of relieved to see it. If Lorelei was weak, she was also in trouble. The Vampire was supposed to protect her, after all.

Lorelei fixed her gaze on Cadence, studying her. “A Necromancer, though. Are you sure?”

Cadence nodded once. “From what I gather, the Cyhyraeth was summoned here. Whenever Necromancers use magic, nature responds in a negative way since raising the dead and controlling them is completely against nature. This entire area is proof that the Necromancer summoned the creature here. The dead grass, the black liquid oozing from the tree, and the scent that’s still lingering.”

“And what, pray tell, does a Necromancer plan to do with a Cyhyraeth?”

Cadence turned over Lorelei’s question even though she already knew the answer. More than thinking about it, she was stalling.

“Well, the main reason a Necromancer would raise a Cyhyraeth is to gain more power through it. Typically, summons don’t add to the power to the summoner, but Cyhyraeth’s are different. If the Necromancer can properly control it, each time it devours a new soul, the summoner will gain power. The practice is barbaric and cruel. Most Necromancers don’t do such things anymore…”

“So, that poor boy is in critical condition so that the Necromancer could gain power,” Reverend Whitlock murmured, his face creased in sorrow. As he was, he looked like a painting of an old saint, forgiving and merciful but disapproving of all that was evil. “That’s what true evil is. Sacrificing the lives of others for power.”

Jaxon said nothing which was unusual for someone as talkative as he had been the entirety of the day. His gaze was turned toward the night sky and his mind, at that moment, seemed far away.

Lorelei opened her mouth to say something else but suddenly her head turned in the direction of the trail. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth was twisted in a tight line. She oozed displeasure.

Cadence’s heart dropped at the man who stepped into view. He was just as pale as Lorelei and just as unnaturally beautiful. His eyes were a green fire in his bleached bone face.

“Lorelei, I didn’t expect to find you here.”

“Why are you here, Darius?” Lorelei’s tone was more unfriendly that Cadence had ever heard it before.

His eyes widened innocently. “A man can’t go for a little walk every now and then. I just fed, you know. If I don’t exercise, I’ll gain weight.” He grinned, his eyes sliding past Lorelei to rest on Cadence.

If Cadence hadn’t been so used to Lorelei’s presence, she might have flinched on that gaze. But Lorelei was a lot more terrifying than this man. This man certainly possessed that aura all Vampires had, that aura of danger than invoked immediate fear in all those who looked at him. But Cadence was surprised to find he was not nearly as terrifying as Lorelei was. She had assumed all Vampires must have that incredibly overwhelming aura that would cause her anxiety every time she looked at them or cause her fight or flight response to activate whenever they so much as glanced in her direction. But when this man looked at her, although she didn’t like it, she didn’t feel as afraid as she did with Lorelei.

Cadence’s eyes slid over to Lorelei, surprised at this newfound information. So, some Vampires were more frightening than others. That was something she had never read about in any of the hundreds of books about Vampires she’d combed through, and Grandmother had never mentioned it either. She made a mental note to ask Lorelei all about this later. Her curiosity was piqued now.

Her eyes returned to the Vampire who was still staring at her. Although he wasn’t as terrifying as Lorelei, Cadence could still feel the dangerous air rolling off of him in waves. His smile had not moved a bit and it seemed unnaturally wide. Cadence forced herself not to recoil.

“A Witch,” he murmured. “And one being kept at Lorelei Darkhe’s side. You must be the Nightingale girl.”

Annoyance flickered through Cadence. “Woman,” she corrected. “I’m twenty-six years old. I stopped being a girl a long time ago.”

His already wide smile seemed to widen further. Cadence didn’t think it was possible.

“Of course, of course. Forgive me, Miss. Nightingale.” He studied her some more. His face was relaxed, but his eyes on her were intense, brimming with some kind of emotion. It was not love or lust, but the gaze a Vampire gave to one they wanted to devour. She had never seen such a gaze herself, but her Grandmother had always told her about it.

Vampires could no longer lust. The moment they rose from the ground, corpses that had been reanimated, any s****l desire they had once had disappeared. For Vampires, the lust for blood was what replaced the lust of the flesh. They would gain the trust of humans, gain their love and admiration, and the moment when the human took them into their hearts and their beds, the Vampire would sink their teeth into that unsuspecting human’s flesh. For, although they could not lust—and some said they couldn’t even love—they still desired to be lusted for and loved.

When humans loved and lusted for them, Vampires could not help but be intoxicated by such emotions. As intoxicated by love and lust as they were by fear. And when a Vampire was intoxicated, they fed on the one who had caught their attention.

That desire in his eyes—a desire most humans might mistake for s****l attraction—was blood lust.

“Did you know that you look like her? What was her name?” He looked up as if he were racking his brain, trying his hardest to remember. It was an act. Vampires forgot nothing. “Ah, yes, that was it.” He snapped his fingers. “Alisyn Nightingale. It’s odd. It’s not so much that you look like her physically, but you have the same air about you.” He c****d his head to one side. “You have that same suffocating aura about you, although it’s more suppressed.”

“Is that why you came?” Lorelei interrupted him. “Because you sensed a Nightingale? Don’t you know? This girl is under my Protection and the Accords we’ve set up with the Witches prevent us from killing them indiscriminately or taking them as unwilling blood slaves.”

Darius’ smile never wavered. He had been smiling all this time. It was so unnatural to see that a chill did rise up from her spine. She thought she was alone until she saw Jaxon from the corner of her eye. He cringed away as Darius’ teeth gleamed in the moonlight.

“I told you, I only came here because I was on a walk. How was I supposed to know I would run into a Nightingale?” He looked all of them over once before he stepped back. “You seem busy, so I’ll take my leave.”

Before Cadence had a chance to feel relieved that he was finally leaving, he turned back and said, “I wonder if you’ll end up like Alisyn. She had such a happy ending, didn’t she?” Before he turned and ran with a speed that Cadence couldn’t follow.

Cadence walked back to her car in absolute silence. Lorelei had asked Jaxon and Reverend Whitlock to wait for someone named Pierre to arrive with Sheriff Clearwater and his two deputies; apparently, they wanted to look at the crime scene a little more.

Cadence found she was grateful it was Lorelei tagging along with her and not Jaxon. He would have tried to talk to her, she knew. The same way he had been talking all day and she wasn’t at all in the mood to humor him. If someone had to tag along with her after her encounter with Darius, she preferred for it to be Lorelei. No one could be silent like a Vampire could. Even when Cadence listened with all her might, she couldn’t hear Lorelei’s footsteps—no crunching of dead autumn leaves under her feet or a single snap of a twig. If she couldn’t sense Vampires, she would have forgotten Lorelei was there.

She stopped when her car came into view, pressing Grimm to her chest to calm her down. He let her, not complaining like he sometimes did whenever she had held him for what he perceived as far too long. She stood at the end of the trail, looking blankly at her car that was parked a few feet away.

“Do you know what happened to Alisyn?” The words, when they came from her lips, felt weird. Wrong, somehow. They made her lips feel leaden and her heart break into a sprint. Because Cadence knew how Alisyn’s story ended. It was the same end the prophecies had said she was destined to meet.

Silence and then, “After she left Glasskeep, I do not know much of what happened to her. When I heard of her again, it was doing the Witch Hunts. She died there. That is all I know.”

Cadence swallowed. “You cared about her to some degree, didn’t you? As much as a Vampire can care, anyway?”

“I suppose. I wouldn’t say I cared about her the way you’re probably supposing I did nor did she care for me. I merely found her interesting for a Witch and she found Vampires fascinating.” There was a slight pause. “In the weeks we spent here together, we used one another as science experiments. She told me of your kind and I told her of mine. She was like me in the regard that she didn’t care for the war between our races.”

Cadence turned to look at Lorelei. She could tell Lorelei had been watching her for some time. The moon was high overhead, and in its silvery glow, Lorelei truly looked like she was in this world but not of it. Her skin seemed like it had gathered the moonlight into it and was projecting it outwards.

She had spent a good amount of time with Lorelei already and she felt like she shouldn’t be surprised every single time she discovered something unnatural about her. Yet, as she stared at the Vampire’s skin in the moonlight and studied the way it glowed, she couldn’t help but feel equal parts fascinated and frightened.

“Aren’t you curious about what really happened?”

Lorelei looked at Cadence for what was, in actuality, a short while but felt like an eternity.

“Do you want to tell me?”

Cadence let out a shuddering sigh. For some reason, she found herself wanting to say it out loud. Maybe it was because she knew that Lorelei wouldn’t care one way or the other. Maybe being around Reverend Whitlock had affected her so severely, she was willing to spill her secrets even when he wasn’t around. Either way, she felt the need to get this off of her chest.

“She was taken by the Demon King as a Bride. That’s where all of her demon-summoning power came from. That’s why she could rule over demons with such ease. He chose her as his Wife and she produced his heirs. That’s why the Witch Hunters couldn’t let her go. That’s why they all gathered together to kill her.”

Cadence, who had been watching Lorelei’s face the entire time, was relieved to see that it didn’t change. Her expression remained smooth and almost cold in its unfeelingness. It calmed her a little.

“Were you that affected by the story that Darius told you?” she wondered, raising an eyebrow. “Whether it’s real or true, it’s not like the story was yours.”

Even though Cadence tried with all her might to keep her face blank, there must have been the slightest shift in her expression because Lorelei’s face changed for the first time: understanding.

“Ah,” she said. “I see. No wonder you’re being hunted.”

Cadence’s heart felt frozen and her tongue felt heavy as she asked, “How long have you known?”

“Since the first night we talked. There aren’t many reasons for a Witch to feel threatened. Either the Old One herself was on your trail or Witch Hunters were after you? While I was pondering on my suspicions, I reached out to a contact in New York and they mentioned Hansel and Gretel are looking for you. Most likely, they plan on cornering you on Samhain when your power cannot be hidden.”

A sigh passed through her lips. Vampires are cunning and shrewd, she knew as much but she wasn’t aware how shrewd they could be. She had thought she had hidden it well.

“You didn’t,” Lorelei murmured. “Hide it well, I mean.” When Cadence looked at her in horror, the Vampire only grinned, moonlight glinting off her teeth ominously. “Your thoughts are always written all over your face.” She sighed and tilted her head back, looking at the moon overhead. “Even though you look the same, you really are different people.” She seemed to be talking more to herself than to Cadence.

“Did you really not…love her?”

“No, I told you. I don’t care about what happened to her for the reason you think I do. Vampires do not fall in love so easily.”

Cadence’s eyes popped nearly popped out of their sockets. “You mean…Vampires can actually fall in love?” Her voice, louder than she had intended, echoed across the empty space between them. She slapped her hand over her mouth.

Lorelei grinned, amused. “It’s rare, as I’ve said, but it does happen. For the most part, we are dead in every sense of the word. At most, the only human emotions that remain are self-preservation, amusement, and every now and then, fascination. As I told you, Alisyn was fascinating but I did not love her.”

“But you seem…sullen about it.”

Cadence held Grimm tighter to her chest, her mind returning to Alisyn’s last days. After all the books she had read on Alisyn, she felt as though she could see it. A lone Witch—the only Witch to ever have captured the attention of demons, angels, and gods alike—going against twenty of the best Witch Hunters the Hunters Association had to offer. Did she know that she was going to die in those moments? Did she want to? Had she grown tired of a life of emptiness, the way Cadence felt she would have had she been in Alisyn’s shoes?

“Is that how I seem?” Lorelei moved forward and Cadence couldn’t help but watch the way she moved once more. Vampires really were fascinating. How could she still manage to be graceful and her limbs remain so sinuous as double-jointed as they were? How could her limbs move so languidly and yet still summon a speed that could kill before anyone even knew what was happening? “It’s not so much that I am…mourning for her, but more like I mourn for her potential. If she had lived, if she had not been entangled with that Demon King, what would she have become. That, I feel, is the most tragic part of her death. Of death in general. The passing of potential.”

Cadence felt no need to argue about how wrong she thought that was. To a Vampire, lives were more than just potential. When she thought of her Grandmother and her parents who had all been lost to her forever, their potential was the last thing that came to mind. She missed them as they had been before their magic had corrupted them and emptied them of all that they were. She missed her mother’s singing in the morning and her father’s abundant clumsiness. She missed her Grandmother speaking to her of Vampires and Werewolves, of gods and fairies as they worked in her garden.

An old familiar ache yawned in her chest. It might have crushed her if she had not been so used to it by now. She had been alone for five years now and though the pain had not ebbed in the slightest, she was used to, at least.

“You say that Vampires don’t love easily, but what about your sister?” Cadence asked quickly. She wanted to get her mind off of that quickly opening wound. If she let it fester, she would revert back to the way she had been when her Grandmother had first died. She didn’t want to be that pitiful, trembling mess ever again.

“Of course I love my sister.” Her answer was immediate, without the slightest hint of hesitation. “In this world, Eleanor is the only thing I do love.” Before Cadence could move on to the obvious topic of parents, Lorelei spoke up. “We should leave. It’s six-thirty. All of the locals will start piling into the Sizzling Griddle soon. I’d like to tell them about your discovery.”

Cadence nodded, tucking her question away for another time, a time when Lorelei felt more comfortable speaking on it. Everyone had things they didn’t want to talk about. Even if Lorelei had guessed a little of what Cadence feared, she did not know the full reason why Cadence was so afraid of herself. She did not understand that she feared herself because the prophecies said her end would not be exactly like Alisyn’s had been. She was destined to be the Bride of the new Demon King of course, but she was not fated to die.

Dying would have been a mercy compared to what was supposed to come of her.