Crimson Debt: Book 1 in the Born to Darkness series (30 page)

The witch’s house appeared to be one of the
remodeled ones. A quaint, one story bungalow, it was painted a soft
cheery yellow with neat white trim. There were rows of pink flowers
flanking the walkway leading up to the old wooden wrap-around
porch.

Hmm…I checked my address again but there was
no mistake—this was Gwendolyn LaRoux's place of residence. But the
outside of the house certainly didn’t jibe with the angry Goth girl
I remembered leaving Corbin’s office.

Taking a firm grip on the stake that was
still wrapped in my jacket, I marched up the front walkway and
knocked on the pristine white front door. There was no answer—not
surprising considering it was after midnight. Well, too bad if she
was in bed, I wasn’t waiting another minute to talk to her. I
rapped on the door again.

“Gwen, honey?” came an old lady’s voice from
inside. “Who is that at this hour?”

“I don’t know, Grams. You stay in bed—I’ll
check it out.” That sounded like Gwendolyn.

The front porch light popped on, immediately
attracting a swarm of moths. The door opened about an inch and a
suspicious jade green eye peered out at me from under a tousled mop
of black hair.

“Who are you and what do you want?” she
demanded.

“You know who I am,” I snapped. “You saw me
when you were leaving Corbin’s office.”

The eye flicked around nervously. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” I said stubbornly. “Look, I’m
an Auditor. If you want to make it official, I can bring you
downtown for questioning.”

“You can’t do that—I’m not a vamp.”

The front door started to shut but I stopped
it by shoving the end of the stake through the crack and into her
face.

“Hey!” She jumped backward and the door flew
open. “Get that thing away from me! What the hell do you think
you’re doing?”

Her reaction told me my hunch about the stake
was right. Now I just had to get more information.

“You know what this is, don’t you?” I
demanded, taking a step into her house. “You know what it can do.
You’re the one who gave it to Corbin—I saw him tucking it into his
pocket just as you were leaving.”

“Gwen, honey?” The old lady’s voice sounded
from the back of the house again. “Who is that? Should I call the
police?”

“No, Grams, it’s fine,” she called back.
“It’s just, uh, someone wanting their cards read.”

“At this time of night? You tell them to come
back tomorrow.”

“It’s an emergency reading. She needs to know
if her fiancé is cheating on her. It’s only going to take a
minute.”

“A minute you could be sleeping, you mean,”
the old lady grumbled.

“You go back to bed, Grams. I’ll talk to her
out on the front porch so we don’t bother you.” Gwendolyn nodded
for me to go out the door and then she came after me and closed it
behind her. “Over here,” she said gruffly and led the way to an
ancient old swing hung in one corner of the porch.

I followed her, noting that I had obviously
gotten her out of bed. She was wearing a long nightshirt with
Tweety Bird printed on it and purple and black striped socks.
Tweety was saying,
“I taught I taw a puddy tat!”
Again, not
very witchlike—but who was I to say how witches had to dress for
bed? Besides, right now I was more concerned with vampires.

“Tell me about the stake,” I said as soon as
we sat down on the creaky old swing. “What is it doing to Corbin?
What’s wrong with him?”

She frowned and crossed her arms over her
chest. “There
is
such a thing as client/witch
confidentiality. And Alec Corbin is strong enough to tear me apart
if he finds out I told you something he doesn’t want you to
know.”

“He won’t touch you,” I promised. “I, on the
other hand…” I poked the stake at her again and she flinched.
“You’re going to tell me everything,” I said. “And start at the
beginning.”

She sighed. “Fine. It’ll be too late for him
to do anything to me soon anyway.”

That sent a cold chill down my spine but I
simply nodded at her. “Go on.”

“He came to me about a week ago—the night
before you saw me, actually. He said he wanted something to kill a
vampire. A really old and powerful one.”

“And what did you tell him?” I asked,
thinking that Corbin must have gone directly to see her after our
second encounter where he had “healed” me.

She shrugged. “I told him it was impossible,
of course. Vamps that old are really hard to kill.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered. “But he used
this stake to kill one—I saw it with my own eyes. How did he do
it?”

She looked uncomfortable. “I spelled it for
him. The only way to kill a vamp that old is with a major
sacrifice. So, well…”

“So what?” I insisted, frowning at her. “What
did you do?”

Gwendolyn looked at me angrily. “It’s dark
magic, all right? I shouldn’t have done it—Grams would die if she
knew. But I needed what he was offering too much to turn him
down.”

“Which was?”

She sighed. “A vial of his blood. Do you know
how powerful four hundred year old vampire blood is? The spells you
can work with it, the revenge you can take—”

“Okay, I’m not interested in hearing how you
used Corbin’s blood to get back at the nasty cheerleaders from high
school who were mean to you,” I snapped. “Just tell me about the
sacrifice part of it—that doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not,” she snapped back. “It’s ugly all
the way around. I told him it would be fatal but he said he didn’t
care. That it had to be done to protect the one he loved.”

“Fatal?” I almost put a hand to my heart and
then remembered I was holding the hateful stake. “What are you
talking about,
fatal?”

“The sacrifice is
a life for a life,”
Gwendolyn explained slowly, as though she was speaking to a two
year old. “The only way he could kill the other vamp was by giving
up his own life to do it.”

“Oh God…” I remembered how Corbin had stabbed
Roderick with the stake and then stabbed himself with it as well.
“So he what…he gave the stake Roderick’s blood and then his
own?”

Gwendolyn nodded. “That’s how it works. Once
the stake has tasted the blood of the victim and the blood of the
killer, it takes the victim at once and the killer more
slowly.”

“So Corbin’s
dying?”
I couldn’t
believe it—didn’t
want
to believe it. It couldn’t be true—it
just couldn’t.

But the witch was nodding her head. “Yeah, he
is. In fact, I’m sort of surprised he’s lasted this long.”

“
What?”
I wanted to strangle her. “You
mean he’s going to die
now?”

“Well, probably not tonight.” She looked at
the stake which was lying in my lap, still partially wrapped in my
jacket. “I’d say from the color of the blood on the runes he has at
least one more night.” She looked up at me. “So at least you have
time to say goodbye.”

“You listen to me…” I grabbed her by the
front of her Tweety Bird night shirt and yanked her close, shoving
my face into hers. “I’m
not
saying goodbye to Corbin. I’m
not saying goodbye because you are going to
fix this.”

She pulled away from my grip, a pissed off
look on her delicate features.

“Keep your voice down! I
can’t
fix
it—it’s dark magic. A binding spell.”

“Well,
un
bind it,” I demanded. “Look,
you said it had to do with sacrifice, right? What would happen if
I…” I took a deep breath and looked down at the stake in my lap.
“If I shoved it into my chest too?”

“What do you
think
would happen if you
shoved a stake in your heart? You’d die,” she said flatly. “The
stake has already done its magic—there’s no reversing it that
way.”

“Well how
can
you reverse it?” I
shouted. “Damn it,
there must be a way!”

“What in the world is going on out here?”
Suddenly a white haired old lady wrapped in a faded blue bathrobe
came out the front door. She had creamy brown skin a shade darker
than Gwendolyn's and looked to be in her seventies but her eyes
were sharp. “Gwendolyn Marie LaRoux,” she said, hobbling toward us.
“I asked you a question,
what is going on?”

“Nothing, Grams.” Gwendolyn suddenly looked
guilty and much younger than her actual age of twenty-five.

“I can see that’s not the truth, Gwendolyn.”
The old lady’s sharp eyes suddenly fell on the stake still lying on
my lap. “Oh, no,” she breathed, shaking her head. “Who is
responsible for this? Gwendolyn, what did you do?”

“I did what I had to do.” Gwendolyn crossed
her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. “He’s a really old
vampire and I needed what he offered, Grams. If we’re ever going to
get vengeance—”

Her grandmother sighed heavily. “Child, how
many times do I have to tell you to let it go? The world turns on
and the Goddess takes her due. He’ll get what’s coming to him.”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I don’t know why
she did it and I don’t care but it seems your granddaughter has
given a man I care for the means to kill himself.” I nodded down at
the stake. “Now, she’s claiming there’s no way to reverse the spell
but if you’re a witch too—”

“I am.” The old lady nodded in a stately way.
“I am the leader of our coven.” She glared at Gwendolyn. “Which
happens to be devoted to
white
magic.”

Gwendolyn shot me a dirty look. “I’m sorry,
Grams, but white magic wasn’t going to get this job done.”

Her grandmother shook her head. “You’ve given
the darkness a hold in your heart, child—you've put your foot over
the threshold of the Shadow Lands. Don’t you remember the rule of
seven? You’ll have this come back on you seven times as bad as what
you’ve done sometime in the future.”

“She’s going to get it back
right now
if somebody doesn’t tell me how to save Corbin,” I snarled. “I mean
it, lady, I want answers and I want them
yesterday.”

“Let me see it.” The old lady held out her
hand for the stake and I gave it to her, wincing when I saw it
touch her bare flesh. She held it carefully, as though it was a
snake she wasn’t quite sure was dead, and examined it.

“A soul eater,” she said at last and gave her
granddaughter another piercing look. “You made him a soul eater to
use. Gwendolyn, how could you?”

Gwendolyn shrugged, looking guilty. “It was
what he wanted.”

“A soul eater—that’s what it’s called? How
exactly does it work?” I asked anxiously.

“It killed his enemy and now it’s slowly
eating away at his life force—his soul,” the old lady said. “When
it finishes sucking away the last little bit, he’ll die.”

Hearing the old lady confirm Corbin’s fate
was almost more than I could take. I had been hoping against hope
that she was a more powerful and experienced witch than Gwendolyn,
that she would tell me everything was going to be all right. But
now…

“I don’t want him to die. He
can’t
die.” I felt hot, helpless tears rising to my eyes and rubbed them
away angrily. “He can’t because…because I love him.”

As I said the words I knew them to be true.
All the things I had told myself, all the reasons I had given about
why Corbin and I couldn’t be together were a load of bullshit. Now
that I knew he was dying—really dying—I realized that I loved him.
That I wanted to be with him, even if it meant giving up my job and
my family.

But now it was probably too late.

“Please,” I said to the old lady. “Please,
you have to help me. Help me to help him. Reverse this—do
something.”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done,
child.” Her voice was gentle and her eyes were sad.

“But there
has
to be,” I whispered.
“He…he did this for me.” I looked at Gwendolyn. “Didn’t you say he
told you he needed to do it to keep his loved one safe?”

Reluctantly, she nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well that’s
me.”
I pointed to myself.
“He did it for me—to protect me from that asshole Roderick. He
probably thought there was no other way so he…he killed himself.
All because of me. And I told him…told him I didn’t love him. That
I couldn’t be with him…”

Suddenly I was on the verge of a major
breakdown. I kept seeing that fleeting look of sadness on Corbin’s
face. How he’d said it was nice that I would miss him when he was
gone. He had been giving me so many clues—how could I miss them
all? And then, after he had sacrificed his long life for me, I
turned him down. Rejected him. Told him I could never love him.

“He probably knew he only had about a week to
live.” I was openly sobbing now. “He’s letting himself die for me
and I treated him like
shit.”

The old lady reached into the pocket of her
robe and handed me a folded Kleenex. “There, there, child. So you
say he made this sacrifice for love? Not for vengeance or hatred or
any other dark purpose?”

I shook my head. “He did it for me. I’m sure
of it. God, I’m such an
idiot.
I thought he was going on a
trip or moving but he’s not—he’s
dying.
It was right in
front of my face the whole time and I didn’t see it.
”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Gwendolyn
muttered. “Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to
see.”

“Don’t talk to me.” I shot her a glare. “I
may be an idiot but you’re the one who gave him the way to do this.
You helped him kill himself—hell, I hope you
do
get what’s
coming to you seven times over.”

Her creamy cafe au lait skin went pale. “Are
you cursing me?”

“If I could, I would,” I snapped.
“Unfortunately I’m not a witch. I’m just a plain old stupid human
and the vampire I love is about to die because I can’t do anything
about it.” I looked at the old lady. “Can I?”