Fratelli: The Awakening (The Vampire Cartel #1)

27. The Conversation

Chapter 27

The Conversation

B aton Rouge, Louisiana

April 14, 2018

(8 Days Before Death)

“I’m sorry, but I’m not staying here for the freak show. I don’t know what Dolly has pulled you into now, Char. Count me out.” Sonya grabbed her purse, shoved the gun inside, and stood to head for the door.

“If you walk out of here now, you probably won’t survive the week. And I can guarantee you, once they find you, you will wish for that death,” Nzinga said.

Sonya frowned. “Are you threatening me?”

Nzinga looked to Charmaine. “Did you tell your friend what we discussed?”

“No. Of course not; she wouldn’t have come if I had told her about the crazy stuff, you showed me. I just asked her to call Dolly, like you suggested, and tell her not to get on the plane.”

“I stand on what I said. Not my problem,” said Sonya.

“She’s, our friend. And she’s in trouble!” Charmaine reasoned.

“I nearly went to jail for her. And so did you. She claims she doesn’t even remember the night Tyrone disappeared. She tells people he left her. We saw what Dolly is capable of!” Sonya confessed. “I will not get sucked into the craziness again!”

“She doesn’t know the truth. Just like you don’t. She doesn’t know a lot of things,” said Nzinga.

“Oh, be quiet! What do you know about it?” Sonya frowned.

“Dolly. Your friend. She didn’t know what happened that night because she wasn’t there.” Nzinga replied. “To her, that boyfriend walked out and never came back.”

“Bullshit. I saw—” Sonya began.

“You don’t know what you saw,” Nzinga corrected her. “In a time of duress, Dolly doesn’t experience her life past what Darlene allows her to see, experience, or even remember. And that is for her sanity.” Nzinga approached with the weapon, prompting Sonya to sit next to her friend. Charmaine now cradled her cat in her arms.

The visitor retracted the blade at the top of the staff and placed it upright on the coffee table. Immediately, a beam of sapphire blue, iridescent light shone upward; at its center, a three-dimensional globe of the earth formed with tiny twinkling stars of a solar system that swirled around the sphere as it turned in orbit.

Nzinga stood before the AI-generated visual and explained, “We are called the First People. We emerged afterlife began on this rock, when Pangea bridge the way through the old world, and the great migration out of Africa began.” She paused, a hint of mystery in her voice as she continued, “Our teachers still do not know the exact date of our origin. I can tell you we existed before the Pharaohs, even before the dinosaurs. There have been many civilizations throughout time,”

She added after a solemn pause, “We existed, and so did they.”

As Nzinga spoke, the globe transformed dramatically, breaking away into a trillion tiny spectacles of light before coalescing into the form of a dragon. It had red, fiery eyes, grey scaly skin, and long talons soaked in what looked like blood. “Do you know there is no archaeological proof of dragons? Nothing found in prehistoric digs has ever proven that such a beast existed in ancient times. However, explorations and digs across countless cultures have unearthed references to dragons in lost civilizations, cave carvings, and on tablets.”

Before Sonya’s eyes, the image shifted to show various depictions of dragons from different cultures—Asian, Egyptian, Mayan, Norse—each representation dissolving into the next. Nzinga continued, “The term Draca is derived from Latin and Old English, referring to a blood serpent from the old world, a time when beasts ruled over man. Many religions focus on concepts of heaven and hell, good and evil. The Draca represents what waits in between. The undead.”

Nzinga’s voice grew solemn. “When the first people worshipped a union between dark and light, a cult or sect was formed to gain dominion. Its sole purpose was the eradication of the First People, to reduce humankind into cattle and servitude. To have dominion of the light God’s and rule the eternity in darkness. Those who joined and worshipped the Draca were gifted with a blood curse, and that turned them into master rulers and immortals. But my people, a tribe of warrior women and men, had our defense. We fought back. At one point hunted and destroyed them to near extinction. That was until we encountered the one who calls himself in this time period Don Vittorio Di Salvo. He has had many names before this one. He found a way to do something we never anticipated—to incorporate powers that lifted him out of the darkness, gave him the ability to father sons, and destroy many of my people.”

“I don’t know if I can listen to any more of this. It’s not making any sense Charmaine?” Sonya said. “How does Dolly fit into this dragon stuff?”

“Vampires are real,” Nzinga replied.

Sonya frowned.

“That’s the simplest form of this. The truth. Vampires are real, and so are witches, werewolves, and fairies. All of it is real. Everything that lives in the shadows of humankind’s imagination is rooted in reality. These beasts are not what you see on television. They are far more complicated and much more ingrained in your world. Dolly is with a Master Vampire, a prodigy of four, and she’s in danger.”

Sonya laughed. Charmaine and Nzinga let her laughter fill the silence until her laughter faded into anger. “You believe this shit?”

“Me and my sisters are descendants of the First People. There is so much more you must understand, but telling you isn’t enough. Know this, we exist to balance nature, to give womankind a fighting chance for the salvation of their daughters and sons, their souls. To transition from this world to the next in the ways the universe was designed. And we have lost many battles after the greatest one, but we are here for the final one. If we succeed this time, we may be set to destroy the Draca forever—if we can convince Dolly and Darlene to unite, we will save this world.”

The AI-generated dragon dissolved into the head and face of Dolly. It spun in the light beam slowly so that each of them in the room could see her clearly.

“This bitch is crazy,” mumbled Sonya.

“Maybe I am,” Nzinga said. “Maybe the world is. I know you have many questions about your friend and her choices. I’m here not to teach you a history you are not connected to. I’m here to help. Dolly is the daughter of one of our great sisters. A great- great-great-granddaughter of Julia Brown, from Manchac. On each region, under each sun, exists a matriarch like Julia Brown. I was born under the aboriginal moon. Many generations ago. Julia Brown's parents were taken from Angola before she was a babe in her mother’s womb, then enslaved in Haiti. When she was a child, she was brought into New Orleans as a slave. She came across the hoodoo practice as a young adult. Its religion forged in slavery as a rebellion was potent with teachings from the old world. And far more powerful than we understood. Julia Brown turned away from the old teachings and worshipped a deity. You heard of him—Papa Legba. With her inherited light, she rebelled against the order and made a dark pact to lure Vittorio Di Salvo into a bargain that gave birth to the four that rule the underworld today.”

“Isn’t Julia Brown a legend? Some poor old woman that people in the swamps said conjured up a hurricane?” Sonya asked.

“She is a legend,” Nzinga said. “She had a noble cause. But she endured a lot in slavery and watched so many of your people in the Americas suffer. She hated the fact that the ancestors would not interfere. Hated how her Chosen never used her own power to free and save her parents, her lover, her children from bondage. She believed the First People were traitors to our cause because we refused to use any of our powers to liberate the melanated tribes, the originals. We could not. Our sole focus was the eradication of the beasts that live in the dark. Man has to account for his own evildoings without our interference. So, she waged a different battle here in Louisiana. And it is the apocalypse if we don’t stop it.”

“Okay, say what you’re saying is true. Dolly is a flake. She can’t see without those glasses of hers. She can’t remember things. She can barely keep up with her own life. How is she the answer to all of this?” Sonya asked.

Nzinga waved her hand, and the lights in the beam formed the image of another woman. “Her name is Wanda Brown, Dolly’s mother, and the last of Lucio Di Salvo’s victims that we know of. A descendant of Julia Brown, she escaped when she discovered Lucio’s true nature. Before Lucio could find her again, we intervened, spiriting her off to Australia where we taught her the ancient ways of the First People. We believed Wanda could be the key to understanding Julia Brown’s curse and its purpose. She would help us unveil the true ambitions of Vittorio’s four sons.”

“However, Wanda’s life took an unexpected turn when she fell in love with an indigenous man working with our organization, leading to her pregnancy. We had overlooked the potential embedded in our lineage—the power within our melanin, which Julia Brown had once harnessed. This power could shield us from the darkness, counteracting the blood vengeance the Draca had unleashed upon the world. As Wanda’s identity and her daughter’s significance became clear, we realized she was not just a survivor, but potentially our greatest weapon. After decades of Julia’s descendants being sacrificed in search of a cure for Vittorio’s curse, it was Wanda who opened our eyes.”

“And?” Sonya asked.

“Give her a chance!” pleaded Charmaine.

“Don’t yell at me,” Sonya snapped.

“I know it’s confusing, and I promise to clarify everything. We engaged in our own rituals, which, in a way, made us no better than Julia Brown when she cursed those four baby boys. However, our actions had a different purpose: we split one soul into two, creating twins within a single being—metaphysical and physical. This might seem to you like a split personality, two halves of a single entity, both unaware of their true purpose. Dolly’s other half might have an instinctual knowledge about vampires and what is needed to protect themselves from them, but she has not been taught to harness her powers effectively. When Wanda discovered what we had done to her unborn child, she was devastated. She realized we intended to send her daughters into the heart of the Fratelli as a weapon to be detonated, so she and her lover took drastic actions. They fled. In a heartbreaking sacrifice, he gave his life so they could escape us when we found them, allowing Wanda to disappear. We never expected that she would bring the child to America, so dangerously close to Lucio’s den. We now understand her reasoning: she trusted Lucio’s love for her more than our mission to save the world, hoping that his affection would protect her daughters. But she died after childbirth, and the baby was lost to us.”

“How did you find Dolly?” Sonya asked.

“We only learned of who this Dolly person was when she entered foster care, and her blood tests were entered into a national database. Our sect accesses all databases in our search for descendants of Julia Brown. We have been watching her and Darlene for years now. Waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Sonya asked.

“For him to find her,” Charmaine finished. “They used her as bait for him to find her. And then they came here and told me this story about how we must help her wake up, so they could finish their war against these creatures. We must help Dolly understand and accept that she has another half. We can’t force her, because this vampire would attack us all. He can read minds too and do all kinds of stuff. He already knows about us; he is already watching us. He’d know we’d know who he was, and secrecy is something they protect. So, we had to make her open her eyes to the truth on her own. Walk away on her own. Then the first people can take her.”

Sonya laughed. “You believe this? Really, Charmaine?” asked Sonya.

“Your friend had the same reaction. That changed when I opened her third eye, showing her the real truth freed her from doubt,” said Nzinga.

“I bet it did,” Sonya mumbled.

“I can do the same for you. The problem is, once you see, there’s no returning to make-believe. The truth of Julia Brown’s curse is rooted in hoodoo, which is all about belief and choice. If Dolly chooses not to understand who she is, nothing we do or say can change that. And Darlene—she’s as unpredictable as a summer hurricane. She’ll destroy anything in her path to protect her identity and her desires. We believe Lucio knows who Darlene is, and his survival suggests that Darlene prefers the darkness within her to triumph over the light that Dolly carries. If you choose to dismiss what I’ve told you, you’re free to do so. But understand this: nothing can protect you. Lucio is already weaving his way into her life and eliminating those who are near her or who have harmed her. He could easily sweep in and eliminate you, destroying anyone who might draw her away from him.”

“Let her do it. Let her show you, Sonya. I can’t be in this alone, not after all I’ve seen. Please. Please. Dolly is really in trouble, and so are we. Hell, the entire world is, if we don’t convince her to accept who she is and be who she is. Please,” Charmaine said.

Sonya shifted her gaze between her friend and the enigmatic woman standing before them. Doubt weighed heavily on her, nearly crushing her under this extra burden. She needed proof of everything she had just heard because, despite the strangeness that occasionally surfaced in her five years of friendship with Dolly, this revelation was by far the most bizarre. Incidents like the whole Tyrone situation still haunted her nightmares, but what was being suggested now stretched the boundaries of her belief even further.

“Fine. Open my third eye. Prove it!”said Sonya.

Charmaine gave her friend a weak smile and lowered her gaze. Her cat leaped down to the floor and ran back up the stairs. “Do I have to stay for this? I don’t want to go through it again.”

“Oh, hell no. You aren’t leaving me alone with her. You want me to go on a head trip you’re coming with me,” said Sonya.

Nzinga gave what looked like a sympathetic smile. “Take my hand, ladies, and stand.”

The three of them stood. They faced the spinning virtual image of Wanda who then transformed into Dolly and watched her face dissolve into the truth.