Chapter Twenty-One: Witch Oath?

"Are you okay? It looks like something ripped your dress," Salvador asked.

They'd just arrived at Maxie's place after their drive out of the pine swamps. She and Lisa exited his car, Vera's forest-green gown fluttering in the nighttime breeze.

Lisa looked down her gown to the little rip Mistress Xia's blade had made while skewering right through her body. She ran a finger along her taut abdomen, along the black-stained patch of sapphire-blue fabric, and frowned. "Oh! I hadn't even noticed that... must have gotten it snagged on a thorn or something. It was so dark back there! You're so sweet for noticing, though, Salvador!" She crouched down to window level and gave him a peck on the cheek.

Salvador cleared his throat. "If you need a ride to, you know, any other photoshoots or anything... uh, I can give you my personal number if you like?"

Vera rolled her eyes, but Lisa giggled. She tapped his number into her phone and texted him: Use this knowledge wisely. Then she and Vera strolled up to Maxie's doorway.

"I can't believe you did that!" Vera whispered. "Why would you give him your number?"

"Jealous?" Lisa smirked.

"It's not that... it's just..."

Lisa shrugged. "Look, wouldn't it be nice to always have a ride in a nice car whenever you need one?"

Vera had to admit that it would be nice, but that she wasn't cool with Lisa taking advantage of Salvador. As far as she could tell, vampires made a habit of using people and, while many would consider what vampires offered in return valuable, nipping somebody and injecting venom didn't exactly take a lot of effort. If she wanted to, Vera could exude a million dollars in venom from her fangs every day. In return for an occasional venom-laced nip, she could have a whole coterie of familiars at her beck.

Well, it wouldn't be much of a coterie – she and Lisa, as fledgling vampires, were permitted two 'official' familiars, plus one each year up to fifty, plus another each year (if needed) if they lost any. Generally, attrition consisted of familiars who requested leave of their master's service – if well-trusted, they would get it... and, if not? Vampires had other ways of dealing with them. It said as much in the little pamphlet that Erasmus Moody had given Vera and Lisa at the coven initiation. Actually, it was a pamphlet for Island Cove Timeshares with the understanding that 'timeshare owners' were vampires and 'guests' were their familiars:

As a new timeshare owner, you are permitted two guests at a time on your new property. Thereafter, for each year of your ownership, you may add another guest to the list. Having guests registered by the Association will prevent them from being bothered by other owners, who might otherwise invite them to be guests or remove them from the Island Cove premises. Registration is fast and easy through paperwork submitted to the Island Cove management, and guests will be given a stamp to indicate their status. Since you may only replace one guest a year (on top of the new guest you add), be mindful of who you invite to your property! At Island Cove, we welcome a broad and diverse owner and guest clientele, but prefer guests who will actively and positively contribute to our community.

Vera was flipping through the pamphlet when Maxie opened the door and invited them inside.

"That didn't take long," she said. "It went well?"

She reached for the Triune necklace around Vera's neck, but Vera intercepted her wrist with a lightning-fast flick of her vicelike grip. She released Maxie before she could even react.

"Vampire reflexes." She moved her hair to the side and unclasped the necklace, handing it to Maxie. "Next time, just ask, ok?"

"Point taken," Maxie said. "Hmm. Not bad."

She held the Triune necklace to the light, inspecting its little jade jewels. Only now they weren't jade – the color had drained from them, reducing them to little smooth stones resembling polished alabaster. Only the tip of one was green. She gestured for them to sit at the table and started brewing some tea.

"The Triune absorbed a lot of dark oath-making," she said. "Generally speaking, for powerful oaths like a blood oath or a sacrifice, it's one oath, one stone. Sweet little nothings you can absorb all day long without doing much. So Gloria's necklace here will absorb four oaths – the central stone is bigger and can manage two, which means we've absorbed about three and a half. Can you tell me what happened?"

They did so, recounting everything from their ride into the pine swamps with Salvador to their arrival back at Maxie's. Vera even told Maxie about the incipient vampire orgy that they fled because she thought Maxie would get a kick out of it (which she did). And Maxie had question, too – especially regarding what they'd done for the oaths and sacrifices. Vera described how she'd killed the poor professorial man before she could sacrifice him to Abbadon, to Maxie's obvious disapproval.

"You killed another person, Vera? I'm starting to think your kind..."

"My kind?" Vera said. "Maxie, what should I have done? Do you think that if I refused to kill their sacrifice to Abbadon that Sophia Clandest was going to shrug her shoulders and say, 'welp, I guess we have to let this one go'? Those poor people were dead as soon as they were captured by the coven's stooges. The best I could do was make sure he died painlessly before his life could be sacrificed to this Abbadon..."

"Wait," Lisa said between sips of tea. "Is that what you tapped on your fang for? I bit that lady with my red venom... I didn't even think about killing her before I offered her soul. I thought you had some kind of plan..."

"I did," Vera said. "And that wasn't it. I'm not sure what injecting a dying person with red venom does, but I'm pretty sure a dead person can't turn. So I guess you sacrificed her to Abbadon."

"Not all of it went to the beast." Maxie tapped on the Triune stones. "This'll take a few months to recharge fully... but you've probably only got half a blood sacrifice between the two of you. Half to one or the other, or a quarter to both of you, I can't say. But either one of you is bound to the demon half-way or both of you are bound just a bit, for whatever that entails and whatever that's worth. But, look..." she poured them all some more tea. "You two have got to stop killing people."

Vera shrugged. "Sorry, Maxie. It comes with the territory. You want us to do battle with the vampire baddies? They're involved in some serious shit, and some red-blooded mortals might die. You're just going to have to trust that we're good people..."

"Are you? People, I mean... because I could never be so callous about killing people."

"Eva could be," Lisa observed. "She tried to kill me in your foyer. Are witches wicked bitches?"

"That's not fair."

"It's not," Lisa agreed. "I might look like an ice queen, but I'm just a twenty-one year-old college student who didn't want her brain to turn to mush and wound up turning into a blonde bitch vampire. I'd appreciate some fucking latitude."

Vera reached across and squeezed her hand. "We'd appreciate some fucking latitude."

Maxie clacked at her beads for a moment, which meant she was in deep thought. Then she paced over to her bookshelf and returned with a big, battered book, its pages yellowed and its dark leather cover well-worn. In badly-faded print on the front, it read: Olde Yew Bible.

"You've got no oaths left to escape," Maxie said, her dark eyes reflecting the kitchen's fluorescent light. "You've used all your leeway up. So I'll have you make an oath to me right now. Make this oath: I swear I will do no harm, that I will not turn my knowledge to malice, but to pursue the greater good, and to protect myself when I must. I swear and confirm that all life is sacred, and that I will preserve it when I can, help it thrive where it harms me not, and never destroy it in anger or wickedness."

Vera placed her hand on Maxie's bible and, coached by Maxie, recited the oath – and afterward, Lisa did likewise. It felt like a real oath, too, and Vera couldn't find anything objectionable about it. Earlier in the night, when she was saying her words of fealty to Abbadon, Vera had the impression that she was squirming out from under a great boulder of burden, that she would be shackled to a demonic anchor and dragged into the dark depths if she said the words and those words took root. But Maxie's oath felt the opposite – good and true and liberating. She found herself memorizing it as Lisa repeated the words, and she repeated the oath under her breath as her girlfriend made it.

"That oath... what is it?" she asked.

Maxie shrugged. "That's the oath we give to initiate witches, and I figure It's a pretty good one. Though, I suppose, that means I'll have to teach you the basics of the craft now, seeing as how I was fool enough to have you take our sacred fucking oath."

+++++

After tea, it was close to three in the morning. Vera didn't want to take the late night bus or bother Salvador for another ride, Vera asked if they could spend the night. And, to her mild surprise, Maxie acquiesced, reasoning that if they'd said the Olde Yew oath, they were as safe as vampires were likely to get. Being on vampire time, they didn’t fall asleep until shortly after dawn. Instead, they changed into Ellen's pajamas and milled around the living area, chatting quietly, posting to social media (Vera was well behind in her online obligations), and flipping through the Olde Yew Bible, which wasn't written in English, but had plenty of interesting illustrations, from herbalism to geometric symbols that looked a lot like Abaddon's seal.

"I wonder what language this is in?" Lisa asked. She traced her finger along a picture of twined serpents, their long tails braided together.

Vera could only speculate, as it was written in some kind of code – the letters weren't Latin, Arabic, or anything else that she recognized. She wondered if Maxie would teach them how to read it. And, as the two of them sat, curled up on the big couch in the living room with dogs on either side of them, Gloria came in through the back door, carefully placing a pair of mud-caked boots by the welcome mat. She padded over to them, grunting as she settled into her chair. She simply observed them as they flipped through the witch bible.

"I'm surprised Maxie let you stay," she said eventually.

"She had us say an oath over the Bible first," Lisa said. She yawned with a little intake of breath, stretching like a cat might, and flipped a page before curling back against Vera.

"I thought she might," Gloria said, and then continued to watch them. Further comment was not forthcoming.

Vera checked her phone. "Jesus, it's four in the morning. What are you even doing up?"

Gloria unzipped her fanny pack and showed them. Collecting herbs, flowers, and animal extracts, it turned out – some things, even plants, didn't come out until the middle of the night, and so she ventured out at least once a month (with extra trips if certain rare items were in season) to gather whatever couldn't be gathered during the day. She carefully laid them out across the coffee table, shooing the Dharma and Minerva away when it looked like they might try to eat the stuff – some of the plants were pretty toxic to people and dogs. Gloria parcellated the items out into bundles and then padded into the kitchen to arrange them in her countertop desiccator.

"Our kind and yours don't exactly have the friendliest history," Gloria said. "I've never heard of a vampire taking our oath but, so far as I know, there's no rule against it. The Earth loves her children, even those that feast upon one another."

"To be honest, I know next to nothing about 'my kind'," Vera said. "Or yours, for that matter. So I'm unburdened by preconceptions of how much we ought to dislike one another. Care to enlighten us?"

Gloria eased back into her chair. "We've been opposed for centuries – we who seek greater harmony and you... the vampires, I mean, and not you specifically, dear... who would upset nature's order. And, for the most part, we work at cross purposes without fighting, the night-walkers and the day-walkers scarcely aware of one another's presence. More of a nuisance to one another than anything, I suppose. The world is a big place, and little local shifts in balance don't mean doodly squat. But the vamps – the local vampires, at least – are up to some big planning that has greater consequences than they're probably aware."

"Maxie said something about summoning their demon into our world."

Gloria shrugged. "That's speculation. It might be they don't want to destroy the world any more than we do. We're not really sure what happens when a demon comes into our world because it hasn't happened for thousands of years. And the last time it happened, civilization collapsed, destroying most of the records and even the languages that would have been used to catalog it, and we have only vague and apocalyptic tales of what happened. It nearly wiped out mankind, and may well have ushered the vampire curse into our world."

"That sounds bad," Lisa said.

"It is bad," Gloria agreed. "So if there's any chance that the vampires are making headway, we've got to stop them."

"Why not go to the authorities?" Vera asked. "I'd think they'd be plenty motivated to put a stop to a demon cult that threatens to end our civilization."

"Because we have no idea how far their influence goes... obviously, reasonably far. And if they've infiltrated government and law enforcement with their familiars, which seems plausible, then going to the authorities will only alert them that we're on the case. We'll go to whomever we trust... or whomever we hope we can trust." She shared a meaningful look with the two of them. "But we've mostly got to do this one on our own and hope it'll be enough. I fear that outside help won't be forthcoming."

"Well I'll help however I can," Vera said, realizing only afterwards how she'd placed her hand upon the Olde Yew Bible, as if she was offering yet another pledge.

Gloria nodded, her cotton-white hair loose and tumbling. She looked very tired, though it might have been by virtue of the very late/early hour. "Good. That's good." She stood with a grunt and reached across the coffee table, placing a small, dirt-smudged hand upon Vera's chest. "For now, just keep your humanity in your heart. Don't forget that – don't forget what it feels like to love, to laugh, to be alive."

"Live, laugh, love," Vera smirked.

"We are alive," Lisa insisted. "We already do all that stuff. We just, you know, drink blood."

"Well good. Keep doing that." Gloria yawned. "All of it. If you girls don't mind, I'm going to get a few hours of shuteye before Maxie forces me to brunch."

OvidLemma

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