“So, you guys are like, what? His personal monks…or something?” Carrie asked as she waited for Radu to come out to the van. The vampire had tried to walk out the doors of the monastery, but it didn’t look like an easy process. He had been grunting and choking and it had almost made Carrie feel bad for him. “Are we just going to accept that he is not strong enough for this right now and take me back to the motel?”

“Have you seen how strong he is?” Mustache asked the question like he didn’t know full well that Carrie had been at the vampire’s mercy only an hour ago.

“Vampires are stronger in their strongholds,” Carrie explained, feeling like a vampire expert. “They call it a seat of power. The strength that he has is not something that they can just carry with them.”

“Oh,” Mustache sighed. “That makes sense.” He was watching Radu struggle to push open the doors of the monastery. The young monk got out of the van and went to talk to the vampire. Before the brown and white robe was even halfway across the lawn Radu waved the monk away. Carrie couldn’t tell what the vampire was saying, but she knew that she was heading to the motel.

Carrie was excited about the opportunity to confront Helga without Radu present. There were things that he said that had been bouncing around in her brain just generating more and more questions, and Carrie knew there would only be more new questions until she found some answers.

“You are not going to leave town,” Mustache commanded.

“Sasha!” The woman from the front desk ran up to the side of the van. “Did you find her?”

“Yes he did,” Carrie shouted from the back seat. She used her wand to blast the woman back about twenty feet. “You guys try to help her and I will get you next.”

“We’ll be back to get you soon,” the prepubescent monk said as he let Carrie out and then put the van into drive. Carrie was already walking toward the motel manager as the van squealed off into the darkness.

“I was trying to help,” Katrina said as she scrambled back up to her feet. There was a bit of a mist in the air, and Katrina was covered in black mud from the parking lot as she got back up. It wasn’t fear in her eyes. Carrie could see that the girl believed she was doing the right thing. She backed away from the angry sorceress, but she wasn’t trying to hide, or excuse her actions. Carrie respected the motel manager.

“Do you know what they did to me?” Carrie snarled. “Would you like it if someone drugged and kidnapped you to feed you to a vampire?”

“I didn’t like it at first, but Radu was a gentleman and I sort of felt like he was my friend,” Katrina laughed a little as she finished saying the last part. “I guess that’s sort of sad.” Carrie was frozen in her tracks. She hadn’t expected to hear that Katrina had gone through the same thing. She’d just responded differently. “I’m sorry for my part in your abduction.”

“You get that that isn’t a normal thing to say, right?” Carrie growled. “You don’t abduct people! It isn’t right!”

Katrina shook her head. “We must do what we have to for our master. I would do it again in a heartbeat if it meant his freedom and safety.”

“So you met Radu?” Helga had walked up behind Carrie. The young witch spun on her mentor. She had a snarl on her face, but she was greeted with a warm smile. “How did it go?” Carrie could feel her rage bubbling, and she could hear Katrina behind her. The girl was running back to her office. “That well, huh?”

“You let them drug me and then pretended not to know me,” Carrie growled the words. “Did you know I was going to survive? Did you even care? You sacrificed me…” Carrie knew that the only reason any of that had to happen was that Radu would’ve killed Helga if she went to him directly. Once again Helga’s past was putting Carrie’s life at risk.

“Radu isn’t a monster,” Helga said the words and then her eyes rolled back as she realized what she had just said. The ancient being laughed hysterically. “Get it! He is a monster, but he is nicer than most humans.”

“Then why have you been torturing him all these years?” Carrie asked as she tried to regain control of her emotions. “You and Solomon have been hunting him for hundreds of years.”

“Yes, I suppose we have,” Helga sighed as she walked back toward the motel room. “Come sit down and we can talk about this.”

“Hey, how did it go?” Raven asked as she rolled over on the bed on the far side of the room. Carrie went right for the hard pleather chair that had been set out by the TV. “Did you find this vampire?” Carrie was a little distracted as she came into the room. She didn’t know there were so many shades of brown. The dark brown lamp shade even made the light seem brown.

The wood panelling that covered the walls reminded Carrie of her grandmother’s basement. It was old, even for roadside motel standards. There were holes in the panelling around the bed, and behind the TV. The odd placement of the paintings in the room suggested that there were even more holes in the room.

“Yeah, I found him,” Carrie said as she let her head drop into her hands. Sitting down had allowed her to feel how tired her body was. She tried to lift her head back up, but it felt like all of the blood had drained out of it. She let her head drop down again.

“Where is he?” Ali asked as she got out of bed and looked out the door. “You did bring him, right?” Raven and Ali seemed a little impatient for people who had spent the night in bed, not being kidnapped. Carrie was starting to feel a little resentful of their attitude.

“He’s been in hibernation,” Carrie explained. “He needs more magical blood or he won’t be strong enough to travel. He couldn’t even get out the door of the monastery.” She looked to Helga with a challenging glare. Carrie had dirt to spill, and she wanted to know if Helga was going to let the young witch share what she had learned.

“He will need a few more feedings before he is ready to travel,” Helga said with a smile plastered on her face. She knew exactly what Carrie’s look meant. Luckily for Helga the others were too tired to really pick up on subtext. They only heard the words that were being said.

“Okay, well, let’s go give him the magical blood he needs,” Raven said as she got up and slipped her jeans back on. Ali was also trying to get ready. “Can you take us?” The sun was still down, they would have an hour or so to get the old vampire some blood and let him get to ground.

“Is there a white van near the parking lot?” Carrie asked. The girls spotted the monks and Raven and Ali ran out to give their blood to Radu. They actually seemed excited about the prospect. It’s much easier when it’s your choice, Carrie thought to herself as she watched her friends head off with the monks.

“You need to get some sleep,” Helga tried to smile. “I know that you have a lot of questions, but you’re tired.” Helga actually tried to walk out of the room, but there was no way Carrie was going to let that happen.

“Not that tired,” Carrie growled as she forced herself back to her feet and used the wall to prop herself up. She reached out just in time to grab Helga’s arm. Helga looked at her in shock. “You need to tell me why Radu hates you so much, and why you would feel responsible for Solomon. I have a lot of unanswered questions and I want them answered tonight.” She had heard Radu use the word responsible, and it left a mark on her brain that wasn’t going to go away until Helga provided some answers.

“It is a very long story—“

“And I need to hear it,” Carrie snapped, interrupting her. “I can’t keep getting blindsided by your past. You are always putting us at risk. The people you supposedly care about more than anyone in the world. We’re your coven, Raven is your granddaughter, and you keep trying to get us killed.” Helga was looking at the floor; she didn’t respond right away. “Tell me what happened!” Carrie insisted

“I was born a normal human,” Helga sighed as she sat down on the bed and prepared herself for the story she was about to tell. Carrie could see the pain this memory was causing. “I can still remember when he landed. Unul Vechy fell from the heavens, and he left a trail of golden, shimmering dust in his wake. He looked like a comet as he came down to Earth.

“As the trail of dust landed, I was swallowed up in the shimmering particles. All of the magic that is alive in the world today stems from his arrival on the planet’s surface. We asked for deliverance, but we didn’t understand the cost that it came at.”

“So you were the first witch?” Carrie asked, raising her eyebrows. That was the last thing she expected to hear.

“I wasn’t the only one who was touched by the dust that day,” Helga said, shaking her head. Her eyes were fixed on the carpet and her voice was filled with sorrow. “Many of them died, but that day several witches and werewolves were created—“

“Solomon was created by Unul’s landing too?” Carrie interrupted. Helga stopped speaking for the comment, but then she talked as if she hadn’t heard it.

“I walked the earth for hundreds of years all on my own. I was isolated. I had tried to start a coven back then, but it was too new. None of the witches trusted the others, and we were all fighting for power. Greta and I worked together for a while, but she had no interest in being a part of a group. She was sort of a hermit.

“When I met Solomon, it was all over. I saw him tending the sheep in his father’s fields and we decided to run away together. He had already been promised to another girl, and I was an outsider in his village. They wouldn’t allow me to stay. I couldn’t leave, I had to be with him.”

“I’m getting that,” Carrie sighed, “but he was a human?”

“He was a human and he was aging,” Helga choked on the words and tears started to roll down her cheeks.

“You’re his maker?”

“Balaur is his maker, but I helped. I loved him, and I didn’t want to watch him die.” Helga sighed. Carrie could see that saying the words out loud had hit Helga hard. She was shaking as the sobbing took over her body. “He was a good man once.”

“So how did you do it?” Carrie knew that Helga had created Matthias, but that was with saliva from Solomon. “Did you get saliva from Unul Vechy?”

“We had heard about the power of Balaur, and people told stories about the power found from the venom of the dragon. His mouth had become a cave and the fangs were still leaking venom hundreds of years later. It was all rumors and hearsay. No one knew what exactly it did. The venom made you younger, stronger, and faster, but no one talked about the consequences.

“So we spent a few years searching, but eventually we found the cave. We weren’t sure how to use the venom. I didn’t want Solomon to die, so I conducted a séance and I asked the dragon how to use the venom to make Solomon immortal.”

“And that sounded like a good idea?” Carrie was beside herself. “You didn’t think at all about what might happen if you got advice from a huge, destructive dragon?”

“I was in love—“

“And that means you get to forget about common sense, or the consequences for the rest of humanity?” Carrie tried but couldn’t keep her voice from rising with the level of her emotions. She was just too tired for it all. Carrie had never been a romantic, and she had very little patience for girls who needed that sort of stuff. Helga was on a whole different level, she had literally given the world away.

“Balaur told me to impale Solomon’s heart on the fang. I was supposed to levitate his body and drive it as hard as I could on the fossilized fang. The dragon told me that as long as the fang hit Solomon’s heart, the shepherd would be immortal.”

“I would never have thought that he was a shepherd,” Carrie sighed. “He just doesn’t look it.” Carrie had never really met a shepherd, but she assumed that they didn’t run around drinking blood, hell-bent on world domination.

“You can’t tell the others what I told you here,” Helga said as she wiped her eyes and walked to the bathroom to wash her face. “They won’t understand.”

“I don’t understand!” Carrie exclaimed following her to the bathroom to stand in the doorway. “In case you were thinking to yourself that I am taking your side in all of this, you have another think coming.” She walked across the room and flopped into the queen bed closest to the door. Carrie just couldn’t get any further than that. She was done, and she wasn’t moving until she got some sleep. “If you’re looking for someone to say that this is okay, you need to keep looking.” Carrie’s eyes closed and a moment later, she was asleep.

“What happened between you guys?” The question hit Carrie wrong; she was still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, and she felt very groggy. Carrie had been asleep for twelve hours. Raven was practically sitting on top of her.

“He fed off me, and then he said he was going to make me ask for it next time…I don’t know, what are you asking me?” Carrie spat the words out faster than normal. She was trying to understand what Raven was getting at. She felt like she was saying too much and too little at the same time.

Carrie opened her eyes enough to see the sun setting in the west. The orange and pink streaks were filling the sky. It was gorgeous, but her heart sank. The beautiful sunset meant that the vampires were coming out again. By the sound of things, she was headed right back to the monastery. At least this time it was under her own power.