Edge of Darkness

If the ancestors had ever felt any sense of empathy for her great-grandmother it was likely long gone. Chiara had turned her back on everything the family had ever been in the name of revenge. Slaughter without excuse, power used to compel others against their will, to spill innocent blood and shackle her own blood amongst others to get what she needed. Mab imagined the same stain clung to her own skin, burned deeper than the blood that clung to the surface now. Inescapable, and God she’d tried to get away from it, unlikely to be washed away even if she could get her great-grandmother what she had wanted for decades. There was no mea culpa big enough for what she had done under orders, nothing to excuse drawing Joseph into the tangled web of her family’s past and letting him die there in her desperation to get away.

Bring him back. The plea ground out between her teeth and then dangled over her own head. If she would do whatever it took to kill Enzo St. John. Only then would she have the chance to undo everything that had been done. Not her parents, her mother had already been too shattered by what had been done to her, sanity obviously drifting away from her to even try and get her out of there. Her father only a whisp of the man he’d once been after her death. Joseph. Innocent enough to believe that they could still get out, foolish enough to love her and to make her believe that it would be enough. Whatever it took, whoever it took she would get him back. A vampire lain at her great-grandmother’s feet like a gift from a cat to its owner, the promised prize handed over in return.

The girl hadn’t been on her radar the same way Tobi had been but here on the ground where power was already almost choking Mab could feel what she could do, taste it almost like candy on her tongue. A blooming sweetness that could so easily be turned sour, moulded with the crunch of teeth moulded by pain and desperation.

Her steps languid, Mab had drifted to intercept her, casting out her own net to wrap that power up and hold it close. The Augustine Society might have been able to stop her own blood from getting close but they couldn’t block them all and even if they could … lord the girl could probably knock them flat with a shriek alone. A banshee’s echo practically ringing in the air as Mab winced, lifting one hand in exaggeration to wiggle in her ear as her mouth fell open. ”You couldsay I’m selectively deaf when it comes to learning lessons.” Rendered that way by her great-grandmother. Her word was sacrosanct, everything else to be cast aside. ”I’m sorry though, I would’ve thought you’d have heard me coming. Although … you seemed a little preoccupied.” That trace of a smirk playing over her lips, hazel eyes dropping pointedly to that bag. Someone had come here to play.

Mab let out a low sound, lifting her hands in surrender like that could ward off the girl’s suspicion. Perhaps not so easy to draw into her web, although it didn’t mean she was going to walk away without trying. The power she’d felt slither over her skin as the girl had gotten closer was proof enough that she wasn’t just a foolish teenager out to play games in one of the town’s spookiest spots. Mab slipped her hands into the pockets of her jacket, shrugging her shoulders as she buried them deep. ”There are worse things in the world that what’s meant to be creeping around here. You’re brave.” A thin complimentary thread working its way through her husky voice. ”It’s definitely no threat, I promise. What were you doing out here?” Other than ignoring those heavily worded suggestions. Mab took a half step to the side, tilting her head to get another angle on the girl, on the bag still dangling from one of her wrists.

Tagged: CASSIE LUANNA * Word Count: 681

Wasn’t that familiar.

Mab flashed her teeth at the girl’s laughed words. Something bright in that smile that echoed in her own as she lifted a hand and pretended to wiggle a finger in her ear. If only playing deaf would’ve served her as well with her great-grandmother. Trying it would’ve resulted in that screeching voice, twig like fingers snatching at her clothing to shake sense into her before she was cast aside, wrapped up in the ragged remains of the old woman’s power.

It took a core of steel to carry on smiling through it. The act kept up at school, that sweet smile disguising everything until one had seen right through it. Now it would carry them to her like the Pied Piper. She was sure she could crook her finger at almost witch or warlock in town and have them follow her. Promises of so much more dripped in honeyed tones. Like Claudius pouring the poison into his brother’s ear while he slept.

Suspicion seemed to flash in the girl’s face. Her fingers tightening around her bag as she looked at them. Mab looked up, letting her grin spread slow as the girl suddenly went silent on her. Oh, not so funny anymore, was it? Young she might’ve been but wary too, a combination that had been ground out of her by her great-grandmother, until that betrayal had come and she’d realised the old woman was still far saner than she let on.

Hands raised, Mab played dumb, although it didn’t go any further than the surface, something sharp and sly in the flinty depths of her eyes. Her head tilted as the girl’s silence stretched out. Unpainted lips pouting faintly as she wiggled her fingers, like that would make the gesture any more honest. ”Uh huh,” she rasped lightly. ”You’d have to be. Takes real balls to be here.” A conspiratorial look, almost a wink as she stepped aside. ”Alone? I don’t know if that’s sad or brave now.” She did know it was bullshit.

It looked her game of exchanging it was over too. Scarlet ringed confidence ticked into a smirk, something worldly in it that had her reassessing the girl just a little bit. She knew the look, had used it herself when she had to, only letting it fall away in private to reveal the fragile form beneath. Mab stared down at the bag, letting the moment draw out just a few seconds longer. ”Sounds like Fight Club,” she quipped. ”Just curious. What did you bring for hanging out? Snacks, a blanket perhaps? Oooh, are those candles? Very romantic.” Her voice cooling a degree with every word.

Mab tugged her hand from her pocket, looked down at a palm only freckled with near invisible specks of vampire blood now. She tucked her thumb in to pick at them. ”Oh, you know. Just talking a walk. You never know what you’ll find out here when you do. Stunning scenery, friendly folks who wanna welcome you to their little town … witches.” She said the last word conspiratorially. ”Ones I’m guessing are looking for a little communion out here. Who is it? A grandmother, an aunt? Have you got questions honey?” Hers had never been answered. Given how far Chiara had stepped off of the path it was no wonder the ancestors seemed to have abandoned them.

Eyes growing heavy lidded, Mab stretched out her hand to the girl, not to strip the bag away from her – although she could’ve done that with a single word – an offer of greeting. Ingratiate yourself, never let them see through to what you want. One of her grandmother’s rules drummed into her on a daily basis until she believed she was ready to head into a school without revealing too much again. ”Mab,” she said sweetly. ”Queen of the faeries.” It had been fitting when her father had started to call her that, Mirabella was the girl whose mother had been slaughter, Mab was the one who would avenge that loss, and her father’s, and ultimately Joseph’s.

Tagged: CASSIE LUANNA * Word Count: 679

Was there a coven out there that didn’t try isolate their offspring? The witch trials had been centuries ago, it should’ve been time to loosen the reins – not that it would’ve helped with her great-grandmother, that isolation had nothing to do with a coven and everything to do with her madness. Others were like the Amish, holding onto traditions centuries out of date, although even they had rumspringa. Mab wanted to sigh. Isolating them did nothing but leaving them ripe for the picking from something that they weren’t prepared for. If they weren’t plucked and slaughtered, then they ended up cut free, floating away from what they knew and entirely unprepared … for people like her.

Her great-grandmother had made sure that she was one of those things that plucked them from the vine. Good little vampire boys and girls, dreaming of sugar plums and blood bags for breakfast, cut off with the stake through the chest. Never a single step closer to Enzo St. John for any of the blood that ended up on her hands. Just that burning isolation wrapped in Chiara Meraviglia’s insanity, cloying, choking, until she wished she could tear free of it but the one person who could get her there had been snuffed out in that foul cloud.

Mab almost had to forced the smile back, through teeth that gritted just a little too hard to keep the smirk in place. The girl didn’t seem to notice, her head bob carrying her through blithely until reality snapped back. Easy to distract, pliable, just as she needed. ”That’s the one,” she promised lightly. Her brows waggled at the girl, head tilting again as she hummed at that bag. Was a little communion with people older and far more paranoid than she was all she’d really come out here for? There was plenty of room for twisting up the ancestors if you had the balls to do it. And were prepared for the backlash.

The shiver ran up the back of Mab’s neck, muscles shuddering beneath thin skin as she worked her thumb over the remnants of the last vampire she’d tried to question. Her fist seized tight around it. The ancestors already had their hate on for her family and all that she’d done in the weeks she’d spent here had added to it, her own crimes smearing more black on the family ledger. Her great-grandmother wasn’t the only one darkening any future they had.

Child, oh, child. Mab laughed, the sound rolling out as she inclined her head towards the girl at that. Blind perhaps but not prepared to show it. There was some edge there that reminded her of how she’d been at her age. Belief still shining silver at the edge of those dark clouds. ”That’s not creepy,” she told her, honesty sharp at the edges of her words. She didn’t know creepy yet. She was stepping back though, putting distance between them while that surface courage still held. Mab didn’t step after her, not yet. ”My grandma wouldn’t give two shits what I asked,” Mab assured her. ”And my questions are all pretty much answered.” All that she needed to know about the girl fluttered in the air around those bleached waves and that emo wrapped body.

Ooop.

Mab’s green eyes twitched to the bag the girl hid, then narrowed at the retreating little witch. Wary, like she was actually going to bother to snatch what she had with her. What had she missed in that little hobo’s bundle of hers? Come on, honey, nothing to really worry about here. The smile this time had a softer edge. ”It’s folklore, and I’m guessing you’ve heard even less about that than you have old movies. Mab is Queen of the Faeries, at least in Shakespeare’s world.” And a thousand others dreamed of in other author’s minds since. Mab shook the girl’s hand, not holding on to her when she could’ve done. Gently, gently now.

Slipping her hands back into her pockets, Mab eyed the girl with equal measures amusement and appreciation – she wasn’t falling wholly foer her lines at least. ”You, Cassie. Although I doubt the ancestors would advise you to take me up on the offer I’m going to make, or encourage you to go against me.” She shook her head, sighing gently. ”I won’t fight you, honey. I want to employ you in a way. I’ve got a situation I need help with and the people who’d created it have made sure I can’t handle it myself. You don’t trust me, obviously, but what about the vampires? Any love lost there with the things that slaughter our kind?” Her brows hitched, an ounce of empathy that was hard fought for there. It wasn’t a universal truth the way any of these things would have you believe but there had been no love lost between the species since the beginning of time and her great-grandmother would have done better to remember that instead of welcoming one of those things into her home and entrusting her family to him.

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Mab chuckled at the girl’s derision. If she were truly old perhaps she would have plucked those eyes from the girl’s skull to get her to listen. Her great-grandmother wouldn’t have hesitated. The old woman might have been pushing a hundred and thirty at least, preserved either by the spells she had cast time and time again in those ranting bursts or by the need for vengeance alone, but Chiara hadn’t lost an ounce of temper or power. It could lash out from her like a whip, cutting down the rude and sarcastic. At times she had been knocked across the room with it, barely an ounce of apology in the twisting of her lips as she’d knuckled blood away from her nose or mouth. ”Everybody feels old when you’re fresh out of grade school,” Mab drawled sweetly. Her lips twitched higher, the smile remaining.

Mentally she had to have decades on the girl. All those years under her great-grandmother’s thumb, killing and killing and killing, packing on the decades. Physically, in reality, there was probably a decade between the two of them at most. If the girl hadn’t taken that mental weight on, or had it pressed on her at any point then she was lucky.

Fingers curling lightly in her pockets, Mab eyed Cassie, wondering if those years were going to rack up now. Little crimes against the ancestors piling up one atop another until they stopped answering your calls and you got yourself the sort of reputation that would turn other covens against you. Nobody wanted the taint to rub off on them. It was how covens had survived for centuries, closing ranks when things went wrong, and how Chiara had lost her mind. This girl could lead to her freedom and she wouldn’t apologise for using her for that.

Brows hitching as Cassie immediately leapt on her question about vampires, Mab snorted. Not a hated then, a fan, a protector. Chiara would have cut her down for that too. Mab merely curled her fingers tighter, glad the girl couldn’t sniff out the vampire blood on her hands like some hound. ”I didn’t say all of them had done,” she said lightly. ”There are specific ones, people who hate us as much as some of us have hated them.” She wanted to sigh at the girl’s naivety but Mab pulled her hands from her pockets, spreading them in the air in surrender instead. ”I have I need to break free of a situation. He took someone from my family and we’re trying to find out how.” Simple and gilded with lies. Enzo St. John wasn’t going to live long enough to do much talking once Chiara had her hands on him.

Mab hummed, tilting her head from one side to the other, gesturing to the bag. She hadn’t come here specifically for the girl, not the way she’d gone to the coffee shop to find Tobi but this had been a happy little coincidence. ”We’ll call it a happy coincidence, Cassie. I didn’t follow you out here, don’t go worrying your pretty little head aboutstalking.” It would have been easier to drag the girl to the rotting corpse of the vampire she’d killed but given her fanaticism for vampire rights, that would just put her off entirely.

Worming her tongue into the pocket of her cheek, Mab met the girl’s narrowed eyes with a bland smile. The real story would have been too long, peppered with admission she would tear free for nobody. ”This isn’t my town. I know there’s power here and without a coven of my own it’s something I need to try and bargain with. You’re no little girl Cassie. Are you strong enough and willing enough to help me find the man who allowed my uncle to die?” There was a thin spread of amusement in her snort, teeth flashing in that half smile again. ”I guess I don’t. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to try and sweet talk anybody into helping me out. I’ve bargained with others. Power, a grimoire, money if you really want it. What do you want for helping Cassie?” Everybody had their price, her great-grandmother had taught her that. You just had to find it and be willing to pay it yourself.

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At the girl’s age she’d been almost cocky. Her great-grandmother had known it too, keeping her out of school until she was sure she had enough sense not to go showing things she shouldn’t, testing out her strength and abilities on her classmates in a way that would draw the sort of attention that usually ended up with somebody dead. The Black Hand were quieter, subtler these days, they couldn’t walk out into the city and rely on brute strength but then Mab had believed she could. A teenaged arrogance it hadn’t taken long to crush out of her.

If the shoe was on the other foot she would’ve met her own questions with a grin broad enough to flash every tooth in her mouth. Cassie was scoffing but that chip on her shoulder seemed to be shrinking by the moment. Under all that confidence and those sneers she was still a kid and the flattery had buttered her up.

Mab regarded her with just a trace of smug with her own expression. She widened her eyes just a little as she nodded like she was agreeing with Cassie’s description of herself. Strong enough and already heading down that slippery slope she needed both Tobi and the girl to tumble down. ”I wouldn’t be half as interested if you leapt in with two feet,” she admitted, letting out a small sound. Mab’s lips pinched, her eyes dropping from Cassie’s, hardening faintly before she lifted her head and shrugged. The details had never rolled out and that was part of the problem. Enzo hadn’t come home to explain himself, he’d run and her uncle had been buried in some unknown corner of Europe. Maybe if there’d been a grave to visit her great-grandmother would’ve found some sort of peace with it.

Tugging her hands free of her pocket, Mab rubbed the back of it over the cold tip of her nose like it’d warm her up from that one small point of friction. If Cassie had given in already she’d have been on the way back to her motel room, dragging the last pieces of the plan together in her head so they could get this done and she could finally fight her way free of the shackles that had been holding her since birth. ”That’s what we’re looking to find out. We don’t know. They never got my uncle back and the vampire disappeared before we could ask. It’s not the only crime he’s ever committed, trust me. My great-grandmother tried to give him a chance after she found him slaughtering people – a home, a family, some place he could learn to control himself and he repaid that with another death. Does that sound like he’s a saint to you?” He wasn’t, few of their kind were, but she couldn’t totally condemn him the way she did her great-grandmother. Given the choice between killing a vampire who’d already screwed up and losing Joseph for good she’d make the same choice every time.

Enzo St. John would die.

The girl was on board, Mab heard it in her words despite Cassie’s professing that she was still sitting on the fence about it. Mab met her with her poker face in place. The hand she’d pulled free hovered, her thumb going up first. ”One night initially. If it takes longer to get the answers we need maybe a couple more days. We can negotiate for each.” That all depended on how long it would take the evil old bitch to get down here. Tilting her head slowly, Mab nodded like it was a decision that took a moment. The family had grimoires a plenty, most probably already crumbling to dust in the house. ”We can get you a little something.” Oh God, child.

Mab almost tipped her head back to holler up to the heavens. She pulled herself together instead, pasting on a little extra sweetness. ”I want to talk, that’s all. He was family once upon a time after all. I have another to help already. A warlock.” The Gemini coven would probably come gunning for her if they realised Tobi had stuck a foot over the line already. He’d been easy to lead, Cassie was the opposite. ”My great-grandmother’s hardly been … the same … since she lost her son. It broke her and well, we all know how easy the ancestors are to sour. They would prefer she just rusts away and takes her line with her. That’s the problem here, Cassie, my line are being blocked on all fronts. Whoever’s holding him at the college knows who we are and they’re keeping us out. Without you I’ve got no chance of getting in there and writing this wrong. Will you do it?” She kept the bite out of her voice but she was ready to shake the girl. It was one damn night, not a whole lifetime or being held hostage over something that had happened decades before you were born.

Tagged: CASSIE LUANNA * Word Count: 833