Chapter Eighteen: Sabbath Eve

"I don't see why you think Master Moody is so bad," Lisa said. "I mean... he seemed perfectly nice to me."

"He is perfectly nice," Vera agreed. "As long as you're doing exactly what he wants. And if you don't? He's an evil fucking prick. He made me kill someone, and then he blackmailed me over it... I've shown you the video."

Lisa shrugged. "But the guy deserved it, right? Like it or not, killing is part of who we are now, Vera."

"It's not. No more than having to kill a cow if you drink its milk. Who we are doesn't have to be who they want us to be."

Lisa sighed, melodic and annoyed at the same time. She shook her golden hair, and it shimmered in the light. "I guess you're right," she said.

"Did you say it fits all right, miss?" the clothier asked from outside the room.

Lisa opened the door and gestured her inside. "No, it's still too tight in the bust... the waist and bottom are just right." She stood there in her underwear, silky black lace absolutely striking against her pale skin, without any hint of modesty. Nor did she have much to be modest about – her body was taut and smooth, breasts and butt both pert and perfect... and Vera missed the old Lisa. She wondered how much of her was still in there... and, for that matter, how much of her own self had been utterly transformed.

"Very good, miss. I'll get it adjusted. Would you say another inch?"

"I'd say two," Vera said – after all, she and Lisa were now breast twins.

The woman took the satiny blue dress with a forced smile and scurried off to get it mended while they tried on other things. Lisa sighed and pulled her hair back to try on a shirt. They'd been at Vidi's for... Vera checked her phone... almost two hours at that point. It was approaching daybreak – not that that was overly problematic for the two of them. They had sunscreen. But it was convenient that Vidi was open in the middle of the night by appointment – that, no doubt, had something to do with the fact that all of the employees were familiars. All four of the women in the shop had the green-blue wrist tattoos of familiars. And all four of them seemed to know they were dealing with vampires of some stripe.

"I can't believe I'm a size zero, and I still can't get anything to fit."

"Because nobody as slim as you has boobs like that," Vera said.

"Except you."

"Except me," Vera agreed, and she had the measurements to back it.

She and Lisa had exactly the same measurements, down to the half-inch, and had the tailor's carefully printed notation to back it up: torso 32.5" (37" over), waist 22.5", hips 34.5", inseam 30"… that last measurement was the only one with any difference between the two of them, with Lisa's 31" giving her an extra inch of inseam along her 5'8" frame. Despite that, they weighed exactly the same and could share pretty much anything, if they could agree on what to wear. Vera took Lisa in, watching her and her improbably perfect dimensions posing in the mirror. She was a bit more willowy than Vera, built like a model and with the perfect mixture of promised eroticism and savage beauty in her face to back it up. Vera's limbs were a bit more toned, but her face came across as adorably cute. She'd be getting carded forever.

"You don't even have a card," Lisa pointed out.

"True." Vera would need to get all of her identification swapped.

She tried on a sweater and Lisa fussed over it before deciding it didn't really suit either of them and adding it to the discard pile – the two piles were about equally large at this point. The clothier sidled in a moment later, rapping on the still-open door before presenting the royal-blue dress back to Lisa.

"It should fit now, miss," she said.

"Thanks," Lisa said. She looked the woman up and down – slim, pretty, and professionally-dressed, her familiar tattoo displayed prominently upon a slender golden-tan wrist. "Say, do you know where we can get a bite to eat around here?"

The woman didn't blink. "You can feed here, miss, but there's a charge."

Lisa didn't ask how much. "Put it on the card – both of us, please."

"Very good, miss."

They left not long after dawn, using Erasmus's card to get them a Dryvr-Lux ride back to Vera's apartment, all of their boxes of clothing barely fitting in the back of the SUV. The driver was eager to help them carry their things in and, even though they certainly didn't need help from a human, Lisa didn't have the heart to tell him no and Vera didn't have the heart to tell Lisa no. So he struggled up three flights of stairs with almost half of their bags and boxes while Vera and Lisa pretended to struggle with their slightly smaller burdens.

"Can I, um... I never do this, but can I get your number?" the guy stammered out.

"We're an item," Vera said, and she leaned over to kiss Lisa's cheek. "Sorry."

"You have our address," Lisa said coyly before shutting the door.

Afterward, they put their things away, sorting their purchases (almost $17,000, including the blood, around $14,000 without) into 'Lisa', 'Vera', and 'Communal' piles. Realistically, and given Lisa's attitude toward clothing, it was all communal, and the piles were simply her way of stating which ones she was especially eager to be seen in and which ones she was especially eager to see Vera in. Vera held up a tiny thong, lacy and white and more ornamentation than clothing.

"I'm not wearing this," she stated.

"Not even if I wear this?" The dress she suggested was in no way street-legal.

"Mmmmaybe," Vera allowed. "Oh... and why the hell did you lead that Dryvr guy on?"

Lisa shrugged. "Guys have fragile egos. I had to let him down gently."

"Or else what? We don't have to worry about them stalking or assaulting us. The first three guys who tried didn't fare so well."

"You're right," Lisa said happily. She tapped on a fang. "Old habit, I guess. There's a lot we're going to have to get used to."

"Yeah, no kidding."

+++++

Sometime during the morning, as Vera and Lisa slept, Hector texted. Vera didn't hear her phone buzz, of course – she only slept about three hours now, but her sleep was utter blank blackness. There were no dreams, and there was no tossing and turning. It was simply an inexplicable gash in time, from when her senses faded out until they blinked back on around eleven in the morning and she squinted against the sunlight peeping through the tiny seam in her blackout shutters. It was only three hours, but if anybody wanted to do harm to her during that time, they need only find where she slept and do their worst. Vera decided that she needed to find safer sanctuary than a fourth floor Weeks apartment known to Erasmus Moody and the rest of the vampires. And Maxie, too, for that matter. Maxie was good people, but she didn't much care for some aspects of who Vera was.

H: <Maxie's been worried about u,-  Hector had texted at 9:15 am.
H: <She wants to know if ur ok-
H: <She says she had to make u leave, but we're still friends-

V: <Still undead and kicking,-  Vera texted back.
V: <Looking for a safer place to stay anyway... wouldn't have stayed at Maxie's long.
V: <I'm getting enrolled (?) into their coven tonight…-

H: <She needs u to stop by,-  Hector messaged a minute later.
H: <Says it's important.-
H: <Very important-

So that afternoon, they made their way up the old Cleves Highway with all of Ellen's borrowed wardrobe in a duffel bag and their new outfits on display. For Vera, that was just trendy jeans, comfy shoes, dark, dark sunglasses, and a cute patterned top with flared sleeves and just a little midriff showing. And Lisa, of course, boarded the bus looking like she'd just debarked from a private jet straight from Milan, with her flowing dark-floral summer dress with its slit going almost to her hip, a little jeweled sash, as well as her strappy patent sandals and their three-inch heel. It had taken a lot of sunscreen to get everything covered. For good measure, she carried a parasol – not a bad idea in any circumstance.

"Are you, like, going to a photoshoot?" a girl on the bus asked Lisa.

"We're influencers," Lisa stated – and that seemed to explain things satisfactorily.

They hiked the rest of the way under the noonday sun, with Vera crowding under Lisa's parasol to protect her from the rays. She wasn't blood-sated anymore, so the sunlight burned enough to change her exposed skin colors after a few minutes, but not enough to really hurt. When she brought her arm back into the shade, its color lightened to her slightly-too-pale color within a minute. Really, the sun was more of an inconvenience than a dire weakness, at least in the modern era of decent and plentiful sunscreen.

"You're sure it's fine if I come?" Lisa asked.

"It'll have to be," Vera said.

Perhaps Lisa's arrival was fine with Maxie, but it wasn't fine with everyone. The two of them walked through the neighborhood, past the little farmer's market and the beat up VW buses and right up to the door. Maxie's invite wasn't quite explicit enough so, even though the door was almost certainly unlocked, Vera knocked and waited to be let in. Hector arrived a moment later, opening the door and then going slack-jawed when he saw Lisa.

"Can we come in?" Vera asked.

"Um... yeah?" he said, his eyes wandering up the fluttering slit of Lisa's dress.

Um... yeah was a good enough invite. Vera walked into the living area, followed by Lisa, and before Maxie could look up from her book to welcome them, they were attacked.

Vera felt the force of the attack like a great gauzy hand dropping on top of her from high above. It wasn't quite enough to flatten her to the floor the way it was Lisa, but it staggered Vera right back into Hector, knocking both of them over. It took her a moment to realize that it was some sort of magical attack, that she was being assaulted by witchcraft. Vera struggled to her feet and made her way over to Lisa, trudging across the tacky linoleum of the entryway floor like it was a foot of sucking mud. Then she spotted somebody in the corner of her vision...

It was Eva, dressed in black and wielding something sharp. Unaffected by her own curse, she rolled and leapt across the kitchen, landing atop the struggling Lisa and raising her weapon – a twelve-inch silver blade – to plunge into her. Vera leapt forward with all her might, piercing through the invisible veil of magic and knocking Eva off of Lisa. The witchcraft wavered, and Lisa was back on her feet, hissing with her fangs drawn out. Eva rolled into a crouch and threw her knife.

Vera caught the knife mid-air before she could even register what was happening, sharp pain lancing across her fingers, black blood dribbling to the lemon-yellow linoleum. Then, as Lisa leapt forward, Vera caught her by the wrist and pulled her back.

"Stop it! What the fuck, Eva?" she shouted.

"It's a trap, Maxie," Eva said through clenched teeth.

"Lisa's my girlfriend," Vera said, struggling to hold the vampire back. "And if you weren't trying to kill her, maybe she wouldn't be trying to rip your throat out."

"Because she's a killer – like you," Eva said. She did some sort of magical waving with her fingers and reached for another knife.

"I'm a killer in the same way you are, Eva," Vera said. "And if you do another goddamn thing with that knife, I won't be sorry about what comes next."

Maxie watched the whole thing unfold with uncharacteristic detachment. She didn't step in to save or stop anybody... instead, she sat on her comfy, tacky 1980s couch and watched, her attention focused especially keenly on Vera. And Vera noticed this, but was far too busy keeping her girlfriend and Eva from killing one another. And she noticed that she'd spilled more than a few drops of black blood from where she'd caught Eva's thrown knife. She drew her bloody hand into a fist.

"Drop it now," she said, and she said it with enough conviction that Eva did drop the knife out of sheer impulse.

"Well... I hope we've got that out of our systems," Maxie said at last.

"It... it didn't work," Eva said. She shook her head in bewilderment.

Maxie strode in from the living area, inspecting the floor and putting a reassuring hand on Eva's shoulder. "It didn't? Vera's friend was pinned to the floor, and you reduced Vera to merely human speed – I've seen her blur across a room faster than you can blink. And look how much blood your knife shed... dozens of droplets."

"But... I couldn't stop them."

"Good thing, too, seeing as how I invited Vera over. Eva, I love you like a daughter, but if you think I'd let you stay in my home after killing a guest, perhaps you don't know me as well as you think."

The bleeding from Vera's hand had stopped, but the wound from Eva's weapon had made her bleed a lot more than a regular weapon would have done (which is to say, any at all). She inspected the knife, sharp and silver, a streak of black along the blade. She recalled from Ghastly Spires a passage about silver weapons dealing extra damage:

Weapon weakness: Vampires suffer from 1 point of damage per d6 of regular weapon damage, but suffer normal damage from silver weapons. However, any bleeding damage stops as soon as the weapon is removed. Healing from the attack cannot occur so long as the weapon is in place.

"We're weak to silver weapons," she said, and then turned, squaring her shoulders against Eva. "But why the hell did  you know that, and why the hell were you trying to kill us?"

Eva looked her in the eye, unapologetic. "If a pair of tigers creep into your home unannounced, do you wait and see if they're somebody's tame pets or do you shoot first and ask questions later? Because I sure as shit don't ask tigers no questions."

Vera handed her the knife. "Good advice. I'll keep that in mind next time I unexpectedly find two witches in my place."

"Stop it. Both of you," Maxie said. She strutted over to the dining room table and sat with a swirl of jungle-print fabric. "This is serious business. Sit."

Vera sat across from Eva, whose brooding face betrayed equal parts annoyance and shame, her dark eyes boring into Vera for a few seconds before flitting to Lisa and then down to the swirling oak of the table. Lisa sat, too, right next to Vera with her hand on Vera's wrist.

"You don't have to be friends, but we're going to have to work together if we're going to expunge the vampires from Palmetto City," Maxie said. "I want you to shake hands and apologize."

"I'm not a child," Eva stated.

"Humor me."

Eva stood and reached across the table. Vera stood just enough to reach and meet her grip, probably squeezing a bit harder than strictly necessary. "Sorry, Eva," she said. "For being a vampire, I guess."

"Sorry, Vera," Eva said. "For not wanting vampires in my home."

Maxie sighed. "And who's the woman with you? Is this Lisa."

"I'm Vera's girlfriend," Lisa confirmed, casting an angry glance to Eva. "And I'm sorry I didn't... fuck it, can we just not kill one another? Why do we even have to kill 'the vampires'?" She said the last bit with finger quotes. "Once you're done, are you going to turn around and stab Vera and me in the back?"

"There are all sorts of things that regular folks would call 'supernatural', and most of those things they'd dismiss outright," Maxie said. She padded over to her living area bookshelf and pulled out a well-used, battered tome, its beaten canvass cover reading in big black print: Vesper's Spirit Guide. "For all I know, half of this shit's made up... but some of it isn't. And I don't give a shit about creepy ghost children milling around the graveyard, lonely things that thump or moan about the attic, nor of trendy Millennial girls who help themselves to a few pints of AB-positive three nights a week. Supernatural doesn't mean evil. Hell, Vesper has an entry for Weird Sisters, and damn if she doesn't get more right than the misses. No, I don't give a shit about ghosts or vampires or werewolves..."

"Are werewolves real?" Lisa asked.

Maxie shrugged. "According to Vesper, yes. Though they aren't like what you'd expect." She didn't elaborate. Instead, she flipped the spirit guide to a bookmark and spun it so the other three women could see it. "This is what I care about..." She tapped on the page.

"Daemonic Cults & The Accursed?" Vera read. "You think the coven are demon worshipers?"

Maxie nodded. "The goal of the daemonic cult is to practice in the open, to perform a great blood sacrifice, and to bring their unholy benefactor incarnate into the world... Vesper thinks that's where the legend of the Antichrist came from, and it's hard to argue that she's wrong. And, regardless of what is or isn't the case, I don't want anybody, vampire or no, summoning a demon here in Palmetto City. Can we all agree that that would be bad?"

"That sounds pretty bad," Lisa said.

"Very bad," Vera said.

Maxie nodded. "Good. Now, it should be clear to all three of you that Eva's bit of witchcraft isn't sufficient for her to kill decently powerful vampires, not even in the safety of her coven's domain, let alone in the domain of the enemy. For all her skill, vampires are simply too powerful. And, it should be equally clear, her witchcraft would be a great equalizer for two young and well-meaning vampires to take on some older and much-meaner vampires. That's why we have to work together, ladies, and why you have to get over this childish bullshit. Do any of you object?"

None of them did, and when Maxie made them shake and apologize again, it was with a bit more sincerity than before. Then she explained why she was so insistent upon their meeting at her place that afternoon:

"The Wicked Sabbath is what will initiate you into the vampire coven – not entirely unlike a witch's coven, but under the thrall of some ancient evil rather than the primal spirits that bind the earth. That is, a witch acts upon the Earth and in harmony with Her spirits, whereas the daemonic seek to corrupt the Earth and turn its energies to their own perverse ends.  And initiation requires two components: an oath and a sacrifice. The Triune – that necklace Gloria gave you – is a powerful artifact that can redirect evil powers to where they can do no harm... say the oath, and its binding power is absorbed by the necklace, rendered inert. But you cannot make a sacrifice to their dark lord. That much cannot be absorbed, for it is forged in the material as much as the spiritual. Do you understand?"

"Say whatever shit they want us to say but don't sacrifice anything," Vera reiterated.

Maxie nodded. "Exactly right. And, unless the vampire coven is very, very close to resurrecting their dark lord, then they won't be able to tell one way or the other if the oath has been taken. It's like giving communion in church – you don't know if the Christ has accepted your offering, and neither does the priest, however much connection he may think he's got."

"Wait... so is God real?" Lisa asked.

"According to Vesper?" Maxie gestured vaguely. "Hard to say. She catalogs and verifies the miracles of at least several saints, but whatever spiritual power resides behind those, she doesn't speculate. Now... who wants a nice herbal tea?"

After tea, Maxie and Eva helped them get changed into their sabbath attire, a strappy dark blue gown for Lisa with three-inch stilettos and a tasteful selection of jewelry, and a similar gown, forest-green and a bit more modest, for Vera. She wasn't really comfortable with skirts and dresses yet, but Lisa assured her that a pantsuit was not appropriate to a vampire ceremony, and the two other women agreed. Hector just wandered about the background, watching them change in and out of different variations and fuss over particulars of jewelry and make up. Eva offered a lot of suggestions, most of which were really good, and Maxie offered even more, most of which were no good at all. At least everybody seemed to have forgot the animosity that had marred the beginning of their visit.

After Eva announced their costumery complete, Vera still wasn't convinced. "The fabric is, like, super swishy. Anybody could look right up the dress and see me practically naked underneath."

Lisa tugged on the fabric. "It's fine. It's perfectly opaque and comes down past your ankles – if anybody looks up your dress, they're a total perv."

"Pervy vampires. Those are the ones I'm worried about..."

"You both look beautiful, and there's nothing wrong with the dress, Vera. It's... eight fifteen... I can give you ladies a ride if you like. Where's this wicked sabbath happening?"

Vera checked the address, though she'd already looked It up a dozen times. "Rural route 37... uh... it's in the middle of the pine swamps."

Eva thumped her palm against the table. "Hell, no, Maxie, you don't go into the pine swamps after dark on the night of a vampire sabbath. Even you aren't that dumb."

Maxie frowned and rattled at her beads. "I'm inclined to agree. I'm not that dumb. Well, girls, I'll be happy to spring for a rideshare. Let me know when you're ready"

OvidLemma

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