nancy werlock's diary s01 - episodes 9 Read Free

and all was forgiven.
    It’s nice to know the Brennons like me.
    As I walk in the door, Houston is on the sofa playing a video game. “I thought you were going to look into the emails?” I ask.
    “I am,” he says. I look at the TV and see his character engaged in light saber combat.
    “Your idea of research is playing a video game?”
    “Someone sent a message. And it looks silly to you, but whoever sent the message thinks it should mean something to me. Maybe that is the point. They sent the message in a way that only I would be able to figure out. So that’s what I am doing.”
    “Okay, well, let me know if…you win. Or whatever.”
    Just as I am settling in to go to sleep, Houston knocks on my bedroom door. Before I can even open my mouth to complain, he blurts out, “It’s not Nihilus. It’s Traya!”
    “Okay,” I yawn. “If you say so.”
    “No, no, no. Listen. Darth Nihilus was a wound in the Force. A…a…Force vampire. The only way for him to overcome his hunger was to drain the Force from others. Kinda like the Haeromancers learned how to do.”
    “Houston, if you are about to tell me we’re looking for Sith—”
    “I’m not kidding this time, Nancy. Let me finish. Whoever sent the link was sending a message. We need to look deeper at this. We’ve been looking for Necromancers who found the forbidden magic hidden at the Nexus and just started to use it. But we shouldn’t be looking for the students. We should be looking for the teacher .”
    “It’s almost midnight. I am not awake enough to follow you.”
    “Nihilus had a teacher, Darth Traya. She had been a Jedi who was banished from the order for stuff you don’t care about right now. She taught him how to control his hunger and how to feed. Long story short, because I know you don’t care, Traya was betrayed by Nihilus and believed dead. But she had just gone into hiding, bidding her time. She was the Lord of Betrayal, betrayed by both the Jedi and the Sith. And she went into hiding to come back later for revenge.”
    “What a minute. Are you thinking that Chana Magus is still alive after all of these centuries? That’s impossible. Someone would have sensed her.”
    “Who? The same people who thought my mother had ascended and didn’t know where to look for her?”
    Sometime around 1760, Haemomancer Chana Magus discovered the first official case of a psychic vampire, a vampire that fed off of psychic energy instead of blood. She kidnapped and tortured the vampire to perfect her research on how to siphon the life energies of other creatures for sustenance. At first, the results were amazing. Haemonancers were able to “consume” the excess life energy produced by all living things to sustain themselves. But as all miracle cures go, things went south quickly. Over time, it took more and more energy to get the same result. Eventually, the Haermonancers resorting to killing people outright. This resulted in the Fifth authorizing a purging of the entire school.
    “If Chana Magus survived the purging and went into hiding, why now?”
    “You’re the Rank Two Demonologist. If you were an angry Magus who has spent centuries plotting your revenge, what would bring you out now?”
    “The Veil. It’s been thinning ever since the 13th Baktun ended.”
    “If she’s been hiding in, say, the astral plane all of this time—”
    “—Because even if they did destroy her physical body, she would have been strong enough to survive.”
    “Particularly if she was maybe feeding off of weaker spirits in the process.”
    “And now the Veil is thin enough for her to come through completely.” I go grab my phone and start dialing Steve.
    “Wait a minute! Don’t call Steve yet!”
    “Why not?”
    “We still don’t know who sent the link, or why they sent it to us.”
    “Archmage House found Esteemed residue on my computer. It had to be one of the Nine or one of their advocates.”
    “The Nine wouldn’t have a reason to use cloak and