BotC - Ch.49 - Like Magic (T) (Patreon)

I really had no idea what to make of this young old vampire girl. 

She had the impulsiveness and immaturity of a young teen mixed with the confidence and experience of a vampire elder. I'd known teens in the past who acted like they knew everything and thought they had the whole world figured out, but unlike them this kid might actually have all the answers. And I knew she had to be tough or she wouldn't have lived as long as she did.

Sam and I followed her about twenty meters down the street from the cemetery, then she led us to a house on the south side of the road. It was a large bungalow, nestled on a good-sized lot. Set back well off the street, the place was surrounded by trees, tucked away in between the graveyard and the park. 

The three of us walked up the long driveway to what looked like a cosy, well-maintained suburban home. 

The exterior was brick, there was a two-car garage attached on the left, a staircase up to the front door with a small covered front porch. The lawn was neatly cut, there were a few little flower beds along the front of the house. It all looked like some perfect little family home.

I could imagine some happy suburban housewife tending the gardens and keeping the place clean and neat, while her husband mowed the lawn every Saturday afternoon.

Penny turned the knob on the front door, it wasn't even locked, and led us inside. 

The interior was the complete opposite from outside, it seemed chaotic and disorganized. Every wall was covered in an eclectic collection of posters and pictures and artwork stuck up seemingly at random. All the furniture was mismatched and everything just seemed very haphazard.

To the right of the front door was a large kitchen, but where you'd expect to find a kitchen table sat a big desk and a large gaming computer with three monitors. And next to the kitchen, the dining room was dominated by a massive aquarium, with various colourful fish swimming around in it. 

The living-room contained an enormous home theatre set-up with huge speakers and a few game consoles. A coffee table in front of a big cushy sofa was covered in a mess of assorted video games. There were some loose discs and little cartridges, and a bunch of game cases scattered about. There was a fireplace on one wall, and another wall had sliding glass doors that opened onto a wood deck overlooking a large backyard. There was even a swimming pool out there.

As I looked around the house, I realized this was probably what happened when you gave a sixteen year old kid their own home and maybe a bunch of money, but no adult supervision or guidance. One thing that stood out to me was despite the chaos and disorder, the place was actually fairly clean. It was disorganized and maybe even messy, but it wasn't dirty.

Penny flopped down onto a huge bean-bag chair in front of the TV, but she was facing towards the sofa. She gestured, "Make yourselves comfortable. I'd offer you a drink or snack but I don't imagine you drink or eat anything other than blood."

I raised an eyebrow as Sam and I sat down, and asked "Do you? Eat or drink I mean?"

"Sometimes," she shrugged. "I've got some pop and juice and stuff in the fridge. Some booze too but meh. And there's some chips and stuff. I mostly only bring that out when my human friends are over, and it'd be weird if I never had any when I gave it to them."

Sam frowned, "So you've got living human friends? Don't they notice that you're not aging? How do you explain having your own house?"

Penny shrugged again, "Every decade or so I register myself at one of the local high-schools and attend for a few years. I usually end up with a couple friends. Then we all graduate and I lay low for a while, let them think I've moved away or something. Or they move away. They usually don't notice I'm not aging, or I make up some bullshit excuse for it. As for the house, my current story is my parents are divorced, dad lives in Vancouver and mom's teaching English in Japan. Mom sends money every month and pays the bills online, while I stay here and attend school."

Before either of us could question any of that she said "Anyways I don't wanna talk about that anymore. You mentioned Slúag Marb, why do you wanna know about those fuckers?"

"Because we think that's what's happened to the local vampire family," I replied. "We're pretty sure the four elders and the matriarch were all possessed by Slúag Marb."

"Fuck!" Penny didn't look pleased to hear that. "It makes sense though. How'd you figure it out? How'd you two even learn about those things?"

My girlfriend replied, "Along with that ancient blood, Isabelle left me an old book full of vampire lore and knowledge? The Family doesn't teach any of that stuff. They don't teach how to turn, they don't teach how to hunt, how to use auras, any of that. But it was all in this big old book."

She continued, "Tara figured out that maybe we were being kept controlled sort of like farmers keep livestock? And I read about the Slúag Marb in the old book, that they preyed on vamps the way we prey on humans."

Penny asked Sam to describe the old book, and when she did the girl made a face. 

"Ugh. I knew the guy who wrote that. He was such a blowhard, totally full of himself. And he was a sexist prick too. He wouldn't take advice or constructive criticism, or at least he wouldn't take it from a girl. And he wouldn't listen when I pointed out all the shit he got wrong or the stuff he overlooked. Total misogynist asshole."

She added with a sly smile, "Still, you should have seen the look on his face when I ripped his throat out."

Sam and I exchanged a look, then I asked, "So uh, what can you tell us about the Slúag Marb? I guess you know more about them than what's in that book?"

The kid scowled, "Yeah, so where to start? In their natural state they're incorporeal, like ghosts or spirits. They can't be killed like that, but they still have weaknesses. They can't pass through or touch silver, so theoretically if you could get one into a silver bottle you could imprison them in it indefinitely. In their ghostly state they feed on vamps, they drain us of the magic that keeps us alive. There's a way to protect yourself though, some magic runes you have to mark on your flesh."

"You've already figured out their other trick. They can move into a vamp and drain them from the inside-out then take possession of the husk before it rots. In that state they basically become a vamp themselves? Like they can be killed by all the same shit that kills us? That's the only way to kill them in fact. And while they're possessing a vamp they can survive on blood instead of other vamps. They're like, I don't know, vamp bodysnatchers or something. They do that because there's a lot more humans in the world than vampires right? If they exclusively fed on vamps they'd probably run out of food."

There was another pause, and Penny looked sort of thoughtful. "Taking over a clan's leadership would be a pretty sweet deal for them. They could basically live in luxury, ordering other vamps around, and have all the blood they wanted. Not to mention a handy supply of fresh vamps for when they wanted or needed to hop into a new body. The big problem is they don't get any of the vamp's memories when they move in? So they won't do a good job impersonating the vamp they've possessed. There'd be obvious changes in how they acted and stuff."

Samantha sighed, "Ok, that explains a lot, it fills in some of the missing pieces. And I'm glad to know that the thing with the runes is legit. Me and Tara got them tattooed on us a few years ago."

"Where?" the girl asked. "Let me see."

Sam turned around and pulled at the back of her jacket collar, tugging it down just enough to expose part of the tattoo back there.

"Ok you got the marks but they're not magic," Penny stated. "They're not empowered, they're not going to work like that. You got them from the book right? That's the sort of shit I tried telling that dickwad about. Like he got it half right, but without an enchantment it's useless. Like drawing a picture of a shield and calling it protection."

My girlfriend sighed, "Crap. So can you tell us how to empower them?"

Penny grinned, "I can do better than that. I can do it for you right now if you want."

Sam looked at me and I nodded, "Yes please."

The girl got to her feet, "C'mon. That stuff's in the basement."

Sam and I followed her from the living-room and around a corner to a short hallway. There were a few doorways leading to bedrooms and a bathroom, but the door Penny led us through took us down a flight of stairs to a large unfinished basement. To the left was a furnace, water heater, and electrical panel. To the right were the laundry facilities. And in front of us was a large open area that looked positively occult.

A huge circle was drawn out on the floor with white paint, and in it was an equally-large pentagram. There were metal candle holders at the cardinal points, each had a mound of wax drippings on the floor surrounding its base suggesting dozens of years of use. There was some sort of makeshift altar at the north end of the circle, and several bookcases and two storage cupboards were against the wall to our right.

Sam and I both sort of stopped and stared wide-eyed, while Penny walked over to the cupboards and opened one up.

"This looks like some kind of witchcraft stuff," my girlfriend commented.

Penny nodded, "Yep."

I glanced at Sam then asked our host, "So you're a witch, as well as an elder vampire?"

The girl shrugged, "I guess. Lucilla taught me some of this stuff, and I spent a few decades apprenticing with a 'wise woman' in Ireland at the start of the eighteen-hundreds."

Sam and I exchanged another look, and my girlfriend asked "So is this like real magic? Is magic actually a real thing?"

Penny looked back at her and giggled, "You've been a magically-animated corpse for like thirty-seven years now. How can you possibly be skeptical about magic?"

"I don't know," Samantha replied with a blush. "I guess because I haven't really seen magic?"

The young blonde smirked, "Well you're going to see some now."

I asked, "So what does 'empowering' mean? And I guess I'm also curious how important this is?"

Penny shrugged, "You don't want to go up against those things unprotected. If they leave their current hosts you're defenceless. You can't hurt them or kill them or even touch them. I'm not sure if you can even see them. They just whoosh inside you and presto, you're gone. Nothing you or anyone else can do about it, just instant game over."

Sam frowned, "We've already faced them once. Tara killed three of them."

"Seriously?" the kid stared at us both.

I nodded, "I shot them, with silver-loaded bullets."

The girl frowned, "Huh. I'd say you got lucky. Maybe they didn't realize you were using silver till it was too late."

She might have had a point, Molly and James probably never knew what hit them. Isabelle would have, but she'd have thought I was nothing more than a baby and probably expected me to cower before her when she came at me. For that matter she might have been trying to hit me with one of her auras.

At any rate, the last two Slúag elders knew about the silver and probably wouldn't make the same mistakes, so I asked "How does this work, the empowering magic? What do we do?"

Penny replied, "I need to access the runes, so both of you strip to the waist. Or I guess keep your bras on if you're modest. I've got some anointing ointment here. I'll be using that to mark over your tats, then I'll say an incantation and presto, empowered runes."

I felt kind of weird about stripping in front of this girl we'd only just met. Sam went first, she slipped off her jacket then pulled off her t-shirt. She kept her bra on though. 

Penny had Sam stand in the middle of the pentagram, then stood behind her and got to work. I stayed back a few paces behind both of them and watched. The young blonde held a small squat glass jar in her left hand, and used her right forefinger to scoop out some dark oily stuff. Then she traced overtop of the runes tattooed on Sam's back, carefully following the markings as her fingertip left a faint sheen over the tattoo ink.

When that was done, Penny started whispering something while she held her right hand up at Sam's neck. Her forefinger and little finger were lightly touching the runes. I couldn't quite make out what she was saying, but the snippets I heard sounded like Latin.

Then to my surprise, I saw a faint flicker of blue light dance across the marks on my girlfriend's back. It reminded me of the nearly-invisible flame you got from burning certain chemicals, but it was over in an instant.

"And that's that," Penny announced. Then she turned around and looked at me as she announced, "Your turn."