Disclaimer: I do not own Little Vampire or The Craft (the universe of my OC) and all depictions done are out of love for their respective franchises. Damn & Damn.
Author Note: Sorry if last chapter seemed to be a bit of a filler, I promise that all details will be relevant to the plot, you just have to give them time ;D! Love you darlings out there, and please review if you can spare the time =)!
LANGUAGE WARNING: Quite a few F-bombs get dropped in this chapter, just a warning.
- O -
Feeling the benefits of a solid sleep cycle, Nancy stretched her cramped muscles and shook her sleeping limbs with a smile. The crypt didn't seem so dusty and the blue from her candles wasn't giving her a headache. Alright optimism. Let's do this.
She hunched herself forward from the ground and crouched in front her gypsy's orb. "In thy hands of mine fire and i will intertwine on this day i cast this spell i shall bend fire and mend it with thy say," she spoke lazily from practice. With uncommonly precise movements she leaned forward to touch the very tips of her fingers to the impossibly smooth surface of the crystal. She felt her mind lunge and panic slightly before granting the crystal access to open up her own personal universe to the greater seeing orb that she beheld. There was no other choice at this point, she had an immortal changing all powerful stone to find. ASAP. That or big old windows peak was going to throw her back out to her fate worse than death scenario. Nancy felt her mind begin to grow jaded from the constant bash of images her brain was being bombarded with, but she trucked on. There was determination flowing through her veins. She was going to find out at least one useful tidbit about this stone or her name wasn't Nancy Melbourne Ulrich.
A vein protruded from her forehead at the intense concentration she was undergoing. Her eyes squinted tightly shut at the slight pulling sensation she began to feel.
It was working.
The image of a crimson glittering jewel fell into her mind and kept slipping in through the corners of her consciousness. Elated, she almost broke her concentration. 'Time to reel that sucker in!' She continued to feel the flashes of the image behind her eyelids until finally the stone flickered in as it solidified into one solid picture.
Dread filled her stomach. "No," she practically begged. "No, no, no, no, no!" she wanted to beat her hands into everything and anything. The stone's image behind her eyelids quivered as it began to attenuate. A hoard of sticky feather legged cockroaches materialized in its place.
They flooded her mind and hissed into her ears. It felt as if they were inside her head and they were attempting to crawl out through all the orifices of her skull. Her throat constricted in a shriek, and she felt her body flail around madly. Just as she began clawing at her own hair in desperation the hissing roaches vanished. Her skin tingled and her face blazed in terror. Warm tears streamed down her round cheeks in messy rows. The gypsy seeing orb rolled from her grasp and glided over to collide into one of the protruding rocky reliefs of the wall.
That had to have been the WORST orb interference she had EVER experienced. She panted as sobs escaped from her suffocating raw throat. "Holy...Fuck!" she was exhausted. So much for a bright and productive day. She had heard of such horrid visions and jinx's cast out from a seeing orb, but she had never imagined she would be subject to one. Her body was throbbing in adrenaline and icy fear, she needed to get out of the dark dankness of the catacombs, if only for a moment.
- O -
Her head popped happily up to the surface. Greedily gasping in the fresh air, she clawed at the grass until the rest of her body emerged from the narrow crevice. She felt as if every nerve inside of her was buzzing. Paranoid, her eyes scanned the earth for bugs before she cautiously sat herself in front of a nearby tree. Twitchy and anxious, she rubbed her own arms up and down to try and calm herself.
The sun was descending in the sky.
Nancy's jittering mind began to ponder just how many days its been since her life had become dominated by the creatures of the night. Her half lidded eyes gazed into the blazing red crest in the sky. It didn't matter, she decided. This graveyard lifestyle suited her just fine.
- O -
"Jack?" a petite young woman called out.
The man in question perked his head up from the hunched position he had assumed on the ground. His head craned curiously in the woman's direction.
She gave him a look.
He took in a quick intake of breath, and hastily stood to approach her.
"Look," she spoke, pointing down to the side of a fallen tree in their path.
The man spared a calculating eye to dissect the woodland debris for the clue that his partner had so obviously located. His face fell open in surprise.
A Tympane mushroom. Of course the mutts couldn't find her. With that mushroom's pheromones polluting the air it's a wonder that they even tracked her into the woods at all. His eyes narrowed.
"This is serious," he gave the woman a look.
She nodded in confirmation.
He removed the cellphone from his pocket.
- O -
After the sun had shot its last dying rays, Nancy decided to return back to the underground. Her energy spent, she had half a mind just to go back to sleep, but that would solve nothing. Thinking about turning back up to Frederick completely empty handed again gave her that little extra push she needed to keep herself conscious. She really couldn't afford to disappoint that man. He held her life in a delicate balance.
The thought of leaving paralyzed her.
It was funny just how important it had become to her to stay with these bloodsuckers. She was comfortable. She felt settled in. There was a place she could gather food, a place to sleep, and the reassurance that they wouldn't bite her (That played a bigger part in her feeling of comfort than she'd care to admit). Another large bonus, that she could reap the benefits of, was that if she could come up with some helpful results for this family and their stone, she'd bet that they'd be more than willing to fight for her, if it came down to it.
A bit selfish, but meh. She was counting on it. You scratch my back, I scratch yours sort of deal. She needed these Vampires to scratch her back. Desperately.
Shaking her head of her wayward thoughts she gave another look to the concave blue glowing depression she had been occupying. Nancy reached up to fiddle with her cross shaped earrings. She was contemplating her options. If she couldn't use her gypsy orb, just what was she going to do?
It occurred to her as her eyes trailed down across the glyph she had created just the other day when her Vampire boy nemesis tried to provoke her. She would create a summons pentagram. That way she would be dealing with a more stable ancient magic. It would require a great deal more concentration, but she believed she could successfully perform it with maybe only minimal bloopers this time. She hoped at least. Another jinx like the one she experienced earlier and she could lose her mind altogether.
But she was willing to take the risk.
With a shaking hand she unlaced her boots one by one and carefully placed them to the side. Next she unfurled her socks into wads and stuffed them down into her shoe soles, her pale toes wiggled at her in their sudden freedom. The sandy dirt of the floor seeped in between her digits and coated the bottoms of her feet in dark grime. "Alright," she prepped herself. "This Well of Fire brings desires, the smoke will take my Magick higher. Grant to me that which I seek, That Will and Wish at last shall meet. Willed with Passion, Wished with Care, Send my spell now through the Air. Now I name the need so dire, Now I feed it to the fire. By the power of three times three, As I will it, so shall it be."
Nancy's face splitting grin appeared. She loved this spell.
Her feet began to levitate a good five centimeters off the ground. With utmost patience she worked her body forward so that she could touch the ground with only the tip of her finger while the rest of her body lay suspended. The back of her neck broke out into the sweats. It took a lot of her power to perform this high level spell, even more so after her little hex encounter just that very afternoon. She tried to exude the utmost confidence, but faltered slightly when she felt her body's magic reach the very, proverbial, end of its rope. With a slight dip down to the floor she found herself now supported entirely by the natural magic of the tavern. A few centimeters lower to the ground than she anticipated, she found that she now had to use the strength of her arms so that her elbows and knees didn't drag onto the floor.
With a dramatic puff, she blew her unruly black curls from her face. 'Alright, minor setback,' she tried reassuring herself so that she didn't dismay. Reaching forward with a trembling finger she began to draw the intricate undisturbed designs that this mother of all pentagrams needed.
After a good long hour of work she began to notice her candles flickering in warning. She needed to take a break. If she didn't, she would very soon be, quite literally, colliding into all of her efforts. With the last of the magic the cave would allow her to muster she glided herself a good foot away from her work before she permitted her body to meet the ground. With an abrupt 'oompf' she found the front of herself sticky and wet from the residue of the magic-less cave floor. Lacking the strength to move her sore limbs, she conceded to keep herself there. That is, until she heard his damn voice again.
"You seem to have chosen a most peculiar place to nap," he spoke jeeringly, an amused twinkle sparkling off in his eye.
"What can I say, I love puddles," Nancy rolled her eyes with a snort.
Gregory's eye twitched at the offending sound.
She placed all of her willpower into flipping her body over just so she could see the boys expression. If she was going to start her games, she'd be damned if she couldn't relish in her victories. With an unintentional groan she hoisted her lethargic body upward into a sitting position. She was not going to show weakness. She was done with that shit. Her eyebrows wiggled suggestively at the confused look he was sending her.
The boy reacted as if he had been struck. What was this girl's strange behavior?
Oh yes. This was going to be fun. That was a much better reaction than she could have ever anticipated. 'The element of surprise is mine,' her mind purred. Pushing her limits that much farther she began to propel her body into a stand. Her bones creaked in protest but she shushed them into submission. This was more important.
The Vampire boy's sallow bewildered face took in her struggling form. What on this earth had she been up to? She could barely stand up. Before he could inquire, she had regained her balance and was waltzing straight towards him. He had no choice but to back up from, what was becoming, her forced proximity.
"You're not so scary after all," she said, flicking one of his liberty spikes. With that helpful little tip from Rudolf about his family's lack of a Homosapien blood diet she was feeling confident and vengeful. That's for making me feel like a strawberry Kool Aid pack you jerk!
"Did you want to bet on that?" he scowled deeply. Doing his best to avoid her fingers assault on his spiked head.
"You wouldn't hurt me!" she laughed her gasping laugh, exhaustion making her into quite the cocky little bitch. "Your family needs me," she smiled coyly, boldly reaching up to play with a lapel on his trench coat.
Gregory boiled.
Time for the big guns. The ones that hit you right in the pride. "...Puffed up pussy cat!" Nancy snickered loudly before filling her cheeks up with air and bugging her eyes out.
That was it. Gregory snapped. His hand bolted out to grab hold of her offending cheeks.
She was almost frightened shit-less. Almost. The air rushed out of her mouth in a loud 'pftttt!'
Nancy blinked in surprise, and then immediately exploded with her wheezing laughter.
Gregory's hand withdrew. His face twitched.
As Nancy cackled, she felt the tension and stress of her troubles all drifting away, dissipating into the atmosphere. Damn did she need a good laugh. With absolute surprise she even thought she caught the sight of a small blink of Gregory's mouth. A smile? She widely opened her eyes to observe him.
Noticing her scrutiny he huffed before crossing his arms at her, revealing a dead pan stare.
No. She thought with a shake of her head, a broad smile still stretched across her face. I definitely imagined it. That sour apple only smirks. Her hand ran through her short messy hair.
Gregory followed the movement with his eyes. "I'll leave you to your insanity then," he spoke suddenly.
Nancy turned her head back to him. She grinned crazily, "I'd like that."
Gregory shook his head and coughed.
Nancy figured that was the closet thing to a genuine laugh she was going to get out of him. She softened her crazy smile into something more sincere.
He acknowledged her with a nod before retreating back into the shadows of the cave.
Nancy felt refreshed. What a surprise. That had been truly fun. Now that abject terror had been removed from the equation she wasn't so sure she minded the brooding boy's presence. 'I mean, don't get me wrong, the boy has a tree trunk up his ass.' But he could be a source of some amusement. Turning on her heel she began whistling a small tune to herself. She had forgotten about her body's dilemma. Her foot twisted harshly before she careened gracelessly to the moist floor. "Fuck!" she snarled, tilling uselessly at the ground with her fingers. Her anger, however, dispersed far quicker than she could comprehend and laughter filled her throat instead.
"Man...I'm pathetic."
But boy was she suddenly in a good mood.
- O -
With a crack of her knuckles she positioned her hands back into a prayer pose. Time to finish this. New found fresh energy flowed through her veins as she once more made herself levitate above the ground. Her fingers made quick work of the second half of the perfect semi-circle she still needed to complete and she found that she was finished much earlier than she initially anticipated. 'Man, I should annoy that grungey boy more often,' she thought with a satisfied grin. This power, maybe this was how he had felt when he was trying to scare her?
Huh. Oh well. It was much more fun for her this way.
With a small dip of her magic she positioned her naked feet firmly onto the center of the large circle. "Now," she sighed in anticipation. The air stiffened around her and she felt her body quickly become statuesque. "I call on day and night, To start an element fight. Cause the burning ash to come, Start a fire, not a lot but some. Elemental war, bring me on, do not involve people, or you will resolve, bring the element to me, nearest you can go. Let the fire start, as the energy drops, then goes." Her candles blew and shook as if a harsh wind was playing with their flames.
Nancy periodically took in large gulps of oxygen to keep her body from asphyxiating.
The magic crackled and whispered around her. In a swift swell of sorcery, all of the candles were extinguished and the solid figure of an ancient image danced behind her eyelids.
The spell had been successful.
But her results were less than favorable. These Vampires were searching for the Stone of Attamon. The fucking stone of Attamon. Really? They couldn't have told her that. That chunk of rock was notorious. She was searching for the equivalent of the Philosophers Stone. She wouldn't be surprised if the two stupid pebbles were completely synonymous. One and the same, divided by history.
Damn, was this a dangerous agreement. She really should have gotten her facts straight before she all but volunteered herself to stay here. But she very well couldn't back down now. She wouldn't allow herself to.
"Nancy dear," she heard the beckoning of Freda's echoing voice.
"Uh, yes?" she returned, butchering her usual proper politeness. She had been caught off her guard. With a shuffle of her bare foot she swept the evidence of her pentagram from the murky floor, and with a quick mutter and swish of her hand the blue of her candles blazed back into existence.
Freda's curly pom-pom head appeared suddenly from the darkness.
Startled, Nancy had to stop herself from recoiling.
"I felt the draw of a great force, just a few minutes past," Freda looked to Nancy curiously. "Have you made some progress?"
Nancy wanted to scream at that question, but held herself calm. "Yes, actually."
Freda nodded in approval. Then she gave her a grand waving hand gesture.
It took Nancy's mind a full second to process what that meant. She stuttered up a response, "W-Well, I've just called upon a great summoning."
Freda inhaled an impressed breath.
Encouraged Nancy continued, "It's given me well..."
The older woman's face flashed with concern.
Nancy had to ask. She had to be sure. "You're looking for the Stone of Attamon," Nancy shot Freda a look. "Aren't you?"
Freda's face lit up in a tight lipped delighted smile. "Why yes, It is the Stone of Attamon we seek."
Fuck. Nancy returned her smile with a large grimace. "Lovely, I'll be concentrating my efforts on researching the comet then."
Freda looked extremely pleased. "That would be grand."
Somehow placated by their clipped conversion, Nancy watched as the grandiose woman gave her a quick nod and flounced away from her, disappearing into the shadows of the tunnel.
Nancy's mind went into overdrive. That stone was horribly cursed. It's no wonder she got jinxed by her gypsy orb. Her Witch blood was wailing in warning. She had to be careful.
Once again she found herself borrowing the natural magic of her grotto. Her candles immediately flickered off from the small absorption of magic she was calling upon. She would have to use the very last of the natural magic that the cave could produce for this day. She sat cross legged in the darkness. These last two spells had to count.
"The immortal fire will always shine. Fire of the sun I shall make you mine. Protection is now my desire. Make the flames now more brighter. Burn away my misery and fear. All evil shall vanish and disappear. Light and warmth shall protect me. One, two, three, so mote it be." An explosion of red warm light burst from the ground below her. Her body wavered and her sitting form nearly fell forward in exhaustion.
Inhaling deeply, she began her second round.
''Father Sun, protect my back. Keep me safe from all attack, Be it visible or unseen, I ask you now to intervene. With all your magic and your power, Protect me now from where you tower. Secure me with your rays of gold. Wrap me in your arms and hold Me tightly until danger's spent, And I am free of ill intent. Father Sun, now hear my plea. As I will, so mote it be.'' This time, a fierce yellow hue engulfed the walls around her. The cave glowed for a moment, appearing to pulse, before returning to its regular greyish tone.
Spent, Nancy felt herself collapse face first onto the floor. She cringed in slight pain. Then looked at the ground in sympathy, "We really have to stop meeting like this."