121. Draycot Estate

121. Draycot Estate
Teddy and I stood in front of a destroyed building. The place was not what I expected it to be, I thought it would be in ruins and sure there was part of the stone structure that had chunks missing but the stone was black, and intact. It looked as if it had been burnt, I couldn’t tell. Teddy took my hand and led me to the entrance, the door was missing, and we walked in.  

I had expected to see rubble, but this was clearly a structure still. I was sure that if I used a ritual, I may be able to actually reverse the damage to the structure. Teddy stopped walking and turned to me. “Beatrix, you can’t do that.” I gave him a look saying, “I can do whatever the fuck I want to” He just shook his head slowly; I pulled my hand from his and went to search the property.  

“Wait you don’t know where you are going” He called after me, but I ignored him and kept walking. Him reminding me he had been here and been around my father though I hadn’t. He took my hand again. “It wasn’t like that, and you know it, Malachar had me learn from him.” Like, that made it any better.  

“Come on this way to his Elias office.” Teddy said pulling me. I took note of the random missing walls but again the structure seemed to be repairable, Teddy didn’t comment this time when my mind went there. “Here” he gestured to the opening in the wall, and I walked in. “You said he practiced blood magic too, yeah?” Teddy nodded. Great I thought he would have hidden something then.  

I brought my hand to my mouth and bit it open, drawing my blood. I let the blood fall to the ground and then said some things. I watched as the stream of my blood shifted and then began to slowly move through the air. I watched until I saw it fly into the fireplace and then it went through the wall. My face scrunched up and I approached. I reached out and felt the back of the fireplace, nothing moved.  

A blood ward maybe, I thought. “What is a blood ward?” Teddy asked he was in my head. I then took another large bite out of myself drawing more blood and pushed my now bloody arm into the wall. The whole building felt like it was shaking, but the wall opened reveling a large open space. It was dark in there and my vampiric eyes had to adjust to see. I grabbed matches and oil lamp igniting it and lighting the space.  

The room was in perfect condition. I turned to Teddy my hands on my hips. “You should have brought me sooner.” I told him and he shrugged “You only asked recently.” I scoffed and walked in further. Teddy was right, of course I should have come sooner, but also if I had, I didn’t know if I would have found it not knowing the basics of blood magic. Elias Draycot clearly used blood magic to hide his true workspace. He had several black bookshelves all with his own journals on them.  

I knew I would have to read them all to figure out what I needed to. It would be a pain in the ass, but maybe I not only would learn what I needed but about my birth parents, and even maybe another way to do blood magic. Currently I only had Malachar as a teacher and he loved the darker approach on things.  

I knew it was possible not to use humans to do the magic, I had used animals here and there, but he always preferred human sacrifice, saying it would be more potent. I wondered, if there was another way, I doubted it though. Blood from souls was the key to the magic and animals, as well as vampires where not near as potent as the blood from humans. Malachar gave no explanation for this, I wondered if that information could be found in the journals that were shelved in here.  

“You don’t need to tell me, all of them have to come home with us?” Teddy asked and I nodded. I kept examining the large room. He had stuff similar to the workroom Malachar had made. Ways for hanging people up so they drained down. He had vials and various other tools. I noticed the floor itself was tiled down to single point under where someone would be strung up.  

Other than the journals, I found nothing that would tell me anything. It was just a work room; the information would be written in one of the many journals. “Lets get them out of here, you can’t enter here without me, well I don’t think so at least.” I told Teddy and he agreed. It took several trips and I had to bite into my arm several times with the entrance closing before we had all the journals out.  

“I know you will hate this, but I don’t trust anyone with these besides you, we need to jump them back to Astor Hall Teddy.” He nodded but it was clear on his face he was not looking forward to the many trips. It ended up taking several hours to get them all jumped to my study at the hall, we had to stop halfway through to drink the constant jumping back and forth was draining and we were both going on no sleep.  

When everything was in my office the two of us went straight to our room, deciding to handle getting the Dhamir and taking her to Paris another time. Neither of us wanted to eat dinner, both too tired to fill up before sleep. “We will drink a shit ton in the morning” Teddy said. I agreed, we were both worn out and didn’t even bother to strip for bed or get any anything comfy. Our bodies wanted to rest. Teddy’s heavy wing draped over my body and his arm below it pulled me close to him. I felt a soft kiss on my lips, and then I was pulled under the darkness and into a peaceful sleep.