The Witch's Thirst. Deborah LeBlanc

       Chapter 1

      Evette—Evee—François watched as black and pus-yellow liquid flowed from Bailey’s arm when Daven clawed through it. Both were Nosferatu and hell-bent on destroying each other. Aside from Bailey and Daven, six more Nosferatu had paired off, each viciously attacking the other. Her head captain, Pierre, supposedly in charge of the two-hundred-plus Nosferatu they forced to remain in the catacombs and allowed out only for feedings, did his best to stop the fighting. He’d stretched his bulk of a body to its full eight feet, had morphed into his natural state—bald head with a large, throbbing vein that started at his forehead and then extended over the crown of his scalp like tree branches. His fangs, the longest and most lethal of all the teeth possessed by the Nosferatu within the catacombs, were bared. His hands had balled into fists. And when he shouted, the walls seemed to vibrate with the fierceness of his voice.

      “Enough! As leader of this clan, I say enough! Return to your assigned spaces at once!”

      Instead of listening to Pierre, more Nosferatu began to fight. They hissed and shrieked, and Evee let out a heavy sigh. She noticed that the Nosferatu who weren’t fighting were either hiding behind a crypt or had rolled onto a grave shelf, seemingly content to watch, but not wanting to engage in any brawl.

      “We’ve got to get them under control before they kill one another,” Lucien Hyland said emphatically. He took hold of the two steel bars from a floor-to-ceiling gate that separated the outside world from the catacombs of St. John’s Cathedral. He shook them, then pulled the thick chain and padlock that secured the gates. Neither gate nor padlock budged.

      “Cousin, get your hands away from the bars—” Before Ronan Hyland could finish his warning, two Nosferatu slammed into the gate. Both reached for Lucien.

      Lucien sprang backward, away from the gate, then looked from his cousin to Evee, who was leaning against a stone column, arms crossed over her chest.

      “Why aren’t you doing something?” Lucien asked Evee, his emerald green eyes ablaze with anger. “You’re acting rather nonchalant over this ordeal. Why? Can’t you see they’re going to kill each other? Can’t you see all the...blood?”

      “No one’s going to die—unless you stick your hands back there again,” Evee said. “They’re fighting, yes, but it’s not to kill one another. It’s out of boredom. They’re not used to being cooped up at night.”

      Ronan, who Evee had learned was the more serious of the cousins who’d been assigned to her, shook his head. “I don’t understand. The Nosferatu aren’t senseless beings. Don’t they know that keeping them here is for their own protection?”

      Evee tossed him an exhausted look. “Imagine a room full of children and a huge storm is blowing outside. The children know the storm is dangerous, but that doesn’t stop them from getting antsy and squabbling with one another when they’re forced to stay indoors.”

      Ronan cocked his head as if considering her words.

      Lucien let out a huff of frustration.

      Evee closed her eyes for a few seconds. She’d felt exhaustion before, but never to this degree. She wished she had the power to turn back time. Two weeks of time at least.

      Two weeks ago, things had flowed normally in her life. Well, as normal as life went when you were the middle sister from a set of triplets, and the triplets happened to be witches. The fact that she and her sisters, Vivienne and Abigail, were responsible for the Originals, those being the Nosferatu, the Loup Garous and the Chenilles, twisted the definition of normal all the more. By human standards, of course.

      Along with the Originals, throughout the centuries, sprouted their offshoots, like vampires, werewolves, and zombies, etc., each created from either crossbreeding, malicious intent by some sorcerer with a wicked streak, or possibly an off-the-radar, wayward coven. Fortunately, others were in charge of the netherworld offshoots.

      Evee and her sisters only tended to the Originals. She and her sisters were known as a Triad, which were triplet witches born from a triplet witch. The first set had been born in the 1500s, somewhere in France. According to legend, the first Originals and the chaos that went with them occurred when the first set of triplets got pissed off at the men they were supposed to marry. Evidently, the night before the triplets were to wed, they found their betrothed fooling around with other women.

      Women scorned, men be warned, Evee thought. She supposed that creed existed even back in the 1500s because the anger of the first Triad played a huge part in creating the Originals. This caused the Elders from their sect, known as the Circle of Sisters, to punish the first Triad and the punishment carried to each generation of Triads that followed.

      Evee thought cursing whole generations of Triads for something someone had done long ago was bullshit. She and her sisters had nothing to do with what had happened in the past by the first Triad. To her, it was simple. If a puppy peed on its owner’s carpet, the owner might bop the pup on the snout with a newspaper to teach him “no.” However, that didn’t give that owner the right to go popping every pup born thereafter because the first one tinkled on a carpet.

      Regardless, the creation of the Originals by her ancestors way back when must have been equated with peeing an ocean on a Persian rug, because Triads were still paying for the deed to this day. And there wasn’t a damn thing she or her sisters could do about it.

      So they’d simply lived with it. The Originals were assigned—Vivienne, or Viv as everyone called her, and the oldest of the three by ten minutes, took care of the Loup Garous; she, or Evee as she preferred being called, handled the Nosferatu; and Abigail, whom everyone called Gilly, managed the Chenilles. Once their routines had been established, life hadn’t been so bad. Complex at times. But not terrible.

      Until now.

      For the last couple of weeks, they’d been stuck in a nightmare that wouldn’t go away, that no one seemed capable of waking them up from.

      It wasn’t like they hadn’t run into issues with their broods before. Odd incidents were the norm when dealing with those from the netherworld. But for some reason, when the cousins—Lucien, Ronan, Gavril and Nikoli Hyland—arrived, all hell seemed to break loose.

      They’d appeared at the Triad’s front door, four extraordinarily handsome men, claiming to be cousins—although only two were with her right now—and swearing to protect the sisters and the Originals with their lives. They called themselves Benders and claimed their purpose was to save the Originals from monstrous creatures that hid in dimensional folds. They called the creatures Cartesians and said these were bent on annihilating the entire netherworld, especially the Originals and the Triad. With each netherworld creature’s death, a Cartesian absorbed the powers of the creature it destroyed, then brought the essence of the kill to its leader, allowing the leader to grow stronger, which empowered him to create more Cartesians.

      According to the Benders, the Cartesian leader meant to be the sole power of the netherworld, and once he had completed the task of absorbing the powers of every netherworld creature, humans were the next target. In essence, the Cartesians—specifically their leader—meant to control the very universe.

      When Evee first heard the Benders’ claims, she thought all four of them were a few cards short of a full deck. But in the days that followed their arrival, she’d seen much more than she needed