insane. That’s impossibly ambitious. It’s like, killing God.”
“No,” Joel replied, his tone sharp. “She is not God. She only wants to be.”
I shook my head, astonished. Then I remembered. “Wait, he told me his mom left just a few years ago. You’re saying this war happened back in the 1800s.”
“I wasn’t kidding when I said our kind has been trying to resist Samira’s rule for a very long time. It isn’t only those of us living here on earth, but those living in Amaranth, too. The war happened back in the late 1800s, shortly after Arianna wrote that passage. But Gavin always says it’s been five or six years. To him, it feels like it was just yesterday. He’s carried the burden with him, to avenge them, for over a hundred years now.”
He grabbed a smoke from my pack and lit one up for himself. “Gavin’s lived in his grandfather’s house in Louisiana for years, he just traveled to Europe now and then to get away. His father chose to go to Amaranth. His mother couldn’t take living in the house without him, so she up and left. She went to join him. They helped bring peace to the city before Samira killed them. She got rid of them, and then made the people think it was an accident, that they’d eventually be forgotten. She fooled them all.” He shook his head, angry now. “Their deaths are the reason Gavin became one of us.”
“Why kill them? Those poor people…” my hand automatically made its way back to my locket, clasped it tightly as I stared off into space.
“She uses people to get what she wants, and then destroys them. It’s all rooted in the hoodoo and Voodoo side of things, the fact that Samira and Gérard are hybrids: part witch, part vampire.” He chuckled. “Freaks the supernatural, you might say. The people stored away in Amaranth give them unlimited, permanent energy, keep them in rule. So she’ll do whatever it takes for the people to see her in a trusted light. Showing false compassion for the loss of their leaders resonated with them. They respected her more for it. It made them feel she cared about them.”
“That’s why Gavin changed? To avenge his parents?”
“That’s another story for another day.” He exhaled, his tone definite.
I snapped the locket shut and gazed forward at a picture on the refrigerator of him, Gabe and Gavin, in what appeared to be some sort of pub.
“When we were human.” He nodded to it. “Not too long before he lost his parents, actually.”
“Samira already has so much power,” I continued, disgusted, trying to understand. “What is she after, then?”
“She’s bound under Gérard’s spell, has to keep shuffling people in to the city to feed his power. But she’s had to wipe out the entire city once already. It’ll get harder and harder for her to continue down that road.”
He rested his cigarette in the ashtray and stole a piece of my orange, cut it up in little random pieces, a kid playing with food. “Still, she’ll continue to take advantage and cause the people to suffer as long as she reigns. She hates that they get to have their curses lifted.”
I blinked, my focus still frozen on the old picture in front of me. I took another drag, enamored by the sight of Gavin as a human with his warm brown eyes. “You said he was still human when his parents died in Amaranth. How did he find out about them?”
“He would go visit them.”
“In Amaranth?” I turned to him, curious now.
“Yeah, every month when the portal opened.”
“I thought humans couldn’t enter.”
“They can, but they don’t. Gavin was an exception. It was a part of a deal his parents had with Samira. Their service for visitation rights, and no harm done to Gavin.”
I turned back to glare at the picture once more, homesickness washing over me. I needed to get back to Louisiana, and fast. Stretching, I turned to glance at the clock on the wall and gave an exaggerated yawn. “Sorry to cut you short, but I’m beat. Would you mind if I passed on the sightseeing tomorrow after all? I think I’m ready to go home now, and I really should smooth things over with my boss if I want to keep my job.”
“Okay, sure,” he replied, taken aback by my sudden change of subject. He stopped toying with the orange and looked over at me, confused. “Well, uh, let me just get some