Always the Vampire

I crossed my eyes at her then rubbed my temple. “Great. Now I’m getting a headache.”


“You have used and absorbed a great deal of psychic energy tonight,” Cosmil said with a pat on my shoulder. “Intense magical energy as well. Lia will teach you to shield better.”

Peachy.

“Yes, it is. Now, let us commence a short session with the amulet.”

He crossed to the kitchen island, moved aside a massive tome, and plucked the amulet from the counter.

“Catch.”

He underhanded the disk, and since the guys strolled inside just then, my vampire reflexes faltered. I fumbled the damn amulet.

Fortunately, it landed on the sofa.

I glared at Cosmil. “What is with you and Triton throwing this at me like a baseball? What if it goes off?”

“Francesca, the medallion is not a loaded gun with a hair trigger. It is a highly unusual rutilated quartz with titanium oxide inclusions showing both gold and silver.”

“Then it’s too valuable to be tossing around, now isn’t it?”

I snatched the hexagon-shaped disk off the cushion, ready to make another point, but lost it in a gentle waft of energy.

The size and thickness of a jelly-jar lid, the amulet immediately sent pulses into my right palm, and I curled my fingers around the copper framing the crystal as my heartbeat fell into the rhythm of the disk. Beats of time later, the copper frame rimming the amulet grew warm. A caress on each contact point of my hand.

I sensed recognition. Homecoming.

A rightness that unfurled in my heart.

I opened my hand, letting the medallion rest in my palm, and sucked in a shocked breath. The ancient-looking symbols etched into the amulet’s rim were now stamped into my skin, a reverse imprint that flowed along the inside length of my fingers, along the sides and heel of my hand. I recognized part of a musical note and the Greek letter mu. Nothing else. More, the impressions appeared to glow from within my olive skin rather than riding on the surface.

Well, crap. What now?

Cosmil cleared his throat. “The true value of the amulet is not in the beholder, Francesca. It is in the holder. You.”

I met his gaze. “Does the weirdness ever stop around you, Cosmil?”

He returned his patient, wise smile. “Tell me what you experienced.”

I did, glancing at Saber and Triton where they sat in armchairs opposite my stance by the sofa. When I finished, Cosmil nodded.

“The contact has further opened your fourth chakra,” Cosmil said when I finished. “You are bonded with the medallion.”

“Like super-duper glue?”

“More like contact cement,” Triton chimed in. He sat with an ankle propped on his knee, unconsciously jiggling his foot. “The same thing happened to me with the Atlantean amulet.”

Saber gave him a sharp glance. “Atlantean?”

“It’s the mate to Cesca’s Lemuria medallion. The one the Hawaiian shaman gave me. I found the Atlantean amulet during my dive trip to Bimini in June.”

“Lemuria, or Mu, was the sister civilization to Atlantis,” Cosmil explained. “It was before my time, but it is said that because Mu perished first, the Atlantean’s lost their divine feminine balance and thus self-destructed.”

“I know the mythology,” Saber said to Cosmil, then addressed Triton. “What I don’t believe is that you just happened to stumble across a second disk.”

“I didn’t stumble. I swam across it. I was led to the amulet by a mermaid.”

“For pity’s sake, Triton,” I snarled, “I don’t care if Disney characters sang you under the sea to the medallion. Your hands don’t have a single one of these inkless tattoos on them. Why not?”

“Because I’m not holding my piece.”

I inclined my head toward Cosmil in silent question.

“Place the medallion on the table, Francesca.”

I did, and the imprints faded.

“Now hold the amulet again,” Triton said.

This time I scooped the disk into my left hand. The marks glowed on my right hand but looked more like faded scars than fresh ones. I rolled the amulet from palm to palm, absorbing its angles and textures. The symbols waxed with the amulet in my right hand, waned with it in the left.

Okay, I could live with this. Now to ask the question of the hour. The one I didn’t really want to ask.

“What are the magick words that make this work?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Triton murmured a string of words when he slapped it on the vampire’s chest, Cosmil. Like an activation code or something.”

“I see.”

“Good. So how do I turn this on?”

Triton snorted. “You could talk dirty to it.”

I didn’t think I’d heard right, but Triton’s smarmy smirk tripped my temper. Without conscious thought, I closed my hand over the etched copper and smooth crystal.

“You are so dead,” I snapped.

A pop, a flash of heat, and blinding beams of light suddenly shot from every facet of the hexagon.

Triton flew backward out of his chair in an arc and thudded into Cosmil’s front door.





EIGHT