Testimony of Children (Alice Gray Book 2)

59

"His mind is not strong enough to hold the corrupted power, only a true vampire is resilient enough for that."

James Device, head vampire of London, looked at Jonathan with pity in his impossibly young aquamarine eyes.

"You took your time," I wheezed, the taste of my own coppery blood in my mouth. Something was definitely very wrong somewhere inside me. I struggled on, unwilling even now to show weakness to the predators in the room. "Couldn't get here a few minutes earlier to help me deal with your old associate?"

"Now, now, Alice dear. It doesn't look like you needed much help taking out the trash," James said, before spitting on the crumpled body of his maker's wife. He prodded her corpse a few times with his foot before finally accepting that she really was dead.

Turning, he motioned for someone to enter. A vampire that I didn't know sped in and lifted Jonathan into her arms. She was gone before I'd really registered her presence.

"What will you do with him?" I rasped, the pain of talking making my chest feel like it would implode with each breath.

"Don't worry. Rachel is a doctor. She has an institution that helps vampires who find it difficult to adjust. Even vampires need therapy sometimes," James said, his tone far too light for all the death and misery hanging in the air.

His slight arm rose as his smooth, delicate hand hesitated in front of me before he pushed me back so that I was, yet again, prone on the altar. Alarm tried to prickle its way through the haze of pain, but it failed to agitate me to action. My energy was spent, and all I could do was hope that of all the monsters that I had faced in this room, James meant me the least harm.

Picking the dagger up, he inspected it before nicking his finger and then shoving it into my mouth. The rich, oily flavour of his old, old vampire blood coated my tongue. James withdrew his hand and gave me a disarming smile.

"What the hell..." I started to splutter my fury, but the words drifted off as my senses gave into the most amazing haze of solace. The blessed blanket of pain-relief wrapped around me, and my eyes fluttered closed as I basked in its comfort.

"You may be a powerful witch, but you can't survive a punctured lung, Alice love. Not without a little help."

I took a deep breath, and sure enough, the pain had reduced to a mild throb. Sitting up, only a little stiffness remained of the searing pain of a few moments ago.

"Hmph, there better not be any side effects," I muttered, which drew only a wink in response from James.

My stomach dropped as I realised I might have to pay for the favour of James's blood, and I'd probably not be able to afford the price.

"What happened? Did she bite him?" James asked, having already moved on from our little exchange. His face twisted in hatred at the thought.

"No. It was their blood magic ritual," I explained. "That's what changed Jonathan. He called the magic to himself from the circle. But it wasn't our own anymore. Well not entirely. The particles, they'd absorbed the Baroness's blood."

James looked even more confused at my explanation, but I saw his moment of understanding.

No, rather, I felt it in his magic.

It was so easy to forget how the two of us were connected: witch and vampire, separated by hundreds of years. But we shared blood, in more ways than one, and we also shared magic.
Specifically, the ability to read others through their magic. My father had lacked that gift, and it was that which caused his downfall.

James nodded, as he recognised my own eureka moment.

"Witch and Vampire," he said. "She was trying to replicate the accident of my second life. I was bitten, and then I was forced to drink Knyvet's blood. I was to be his plaything you see. Not hers. They would have destroyed me after having their fun, if I had not been different."

"Different?"

"I'd been hung. They expected me to be vacant and pliable due to the brain damage. But my witch life-force reacted with the vampire blood. It made me insane. It also made me very, very powerful. They were frightened of me, but wouldn't destroy me despite my wretched state. They thought they might use me. Find a way to harness the power for themselves. It looks like the Baroness had finally discovered a method to do just that. But she didn't count on you Alice. Device and Gray magic together is different."

"I get it," I said as the information filtered through my newly energised brain, "she thought that she could call the blood-magic back to herself. That she could infuse her vampire blood with Device witch blood. But Jonathan got it instead."

"Exactly, and now he must find a way to exist with the corruption, just like I did," James said, eyes clouded with memories from hundreds of years ago.

"How did you recover?"

"It was our Tommy that brought me out of the haze of lunacy."

"How?"

"With love. And violence."

Poor James, but he made his awful beginnings work for him in the end. Can Alice do the same?