Lucia was not a Black witch, but she was not an ordinary witch, either. She was something in between. A pet to one of the Obscurati masters in Rome back in the ancient days. She was older than Paul by a couple hundred years, even though she looked like a child when she joined our small group and took the trip across the ocean with us.
A pet to be experimented on. Much magic was done to her in the name of progress back in the Old World. She was not a witch but she was not a vampire, either. She was a mongrel? Or, if one is poetic and sees the glass as half full, a hybrid. The first and last of her kind.
A mistake, actually.
But I prefer to call her a fortunate turn of events.
And she served her purpose with us. We used her blood, after all, to make Syrsee. Well, we did that experiment hundreds of times before Syrsee came along. All of them failures until that glorious day when she was born and her grandmother killed her mother, took her power, and gave it to the little girl.
That was the part we were missing in the other attempts to make the perfect symbiotic feeder for our perfect new line of American Vampires.
You need evil to make new evil. And what that grandmother did—sacrificed her own daughter, more than once, just so she could do it all over again with her granddaughter—that is one of the ultimate evils. Of course, all black magic acts done against children are evil. But what the Black witches do to their offspring is a whole other level of evil.
Little Baby moans in my arms, but she is calm now. My gaze has overpowered her instincts to be afraid.
It is time.
I stand up, holding Little Baby in my arms, and walk forward into the blackness. I can see a good way down the tunnel with my night vision, but even I have limits. And this is why it’s called the Darkness, isn’t it?
Because at the limit of my vision is a hole. Blank and empty, but full at the same time. This hole leads everywhere and nowhere all at once. I have gone in there on more than one occasion. It is a container for all that was and all that will be.
It is the Darkness.
I take my time as I approach, waiting for signs of recognition. It won’t kill me. Can’t kill me—at least I don’t think. It’s not that kind of entity. The Darkness sucks things up. It takes. That’s all it wants, just to take. But it’s not looking for souls, or thoughts, or bodies. That’s not what it eats. It feeds on blood, just like us.
But we are part of it. It doesn’t wantourblood. Paul and I. It will take our blood, then give it back. That’s how we make new vampires, after all. And new Black witches, in a roundabout way.
No, what the Darkness really wants is a nice sample of what it lacks. A mixture of the outside world.
And this is where Little Baby comes in. A little baby sample of what the Darkness lacks. Something… other. That was bitten, and torn to shreds, and fouled up with the saliva of the other halfbreeds as they fed.
Little Baby’s blood is a gift to the Darkness. She is a toy. Something to keep it occupied. A puzzle to put back together. Busy hands are happy hands, isn’t that what they say?
In giving the Darkness a little baby taste of the outside world, I give it something unique. Something it has not seen before. Something intriguing.
And in return, it gives me power.
I came up with this idea hundreds of years ago. Of course, I told Paul about it. We could’ve used a sullied, shredded halfbreed at any time in the past two hundred years to distract the Darkness, but only just the once.
Every time you ask the Darkness for a favor, you must give it something unique. It never works twice. So we saved this opportunity for just the right time.
Right now, as it is.
The Darkness hovers before me, an opaque circular disc that undulates like ink flowing through water, one moment oily and wet, the next like powder or smoke. It is everything, but it is nothing like anything anyone has ever seen before. It is an ending, not a beginning.
The end of everything, actually.
It hovers and waits. It needs an invitation, you see.Itis what needs permission to enter, not the vampire. And while Little Baby cannot give this permission—she is not the one in control here—as her representative, I can.
So I do.
