by Cate Corvin
Vicious, churning rage displaced my concern. I needed to get to Blondie. I’d kill the motherfucker who caused this-
“You’re not going anywhere, puppies,” a voice crooned. Carmen Flora stood in the doorway, directing the brambles to grow into a giant, living cage around us. The thorn’s lengthened, sending spikes of pain through my limbs. “Boss’s orders.”
I snarled, my ribcage reverberating. We’d been beyond stupid. With one simple move, Ivy Bloom had executed her plan to separate us from Lu.
A howl ripped out of me, rattling the walls of Cimmerian. If Steele didn’t hear it, we were fucked. We needed back-up.
Shane was still struggling, but more vines just wrapped around him and held fast. Fighting them wasn’t going to help us, and Carmen could grow new vines as fast as we could bite through.
But my icy witchwater could reach the smug bitch.
I shifted back into my human skin, ignoring the blood painting my limbs and pooling beneath me. “What did Bloom promise you that was worth getting fucked up for, Flora?”
Our mother hadn’t raised us to hit girls, but as far as I was concerned, Carmen had painted the target on her chest all by herself. There was no girl who’d be immune to a punch from me or my brother if she got between us and Blondie.
She smirked, sending another handful of vines tangling into us. Shane let out a muffled sound of pain. “I’ll be the one doing the fucking up here, thanks.”
A prickly vine coiled around my cock, squeezing just enough to make me wince. Hell fucking no. I wasn’t going to be castrated by a bunch of hyperactive houseplants.
I reached inside myself, past the slavering wolfskin and into the depths of my soul where an ocean of frosted water raged against me. With that glacial sea always pounding against my bones, I never felt external cold. Ice and snow were nothing to me.
This bitch would feel it, though.
Ice slid through my veins and I clenched my fists, straining against the vines holding me in place. I aimed a whip of frosty water right at Carmen’s face, which she ducked just in time, but she missed the one that caught her across the stomach.
I bit back a feral grin when I heard the satisfying slap of nearly-solid water against flesh. She shrieked, the vines slackening for just a second, but it was enough for Shane to wriggle halfway free, his jaws snapping. I directed another volley of icy darts at Carmen’s face.
She gathered the vines back towards herself, creating a living shield out of them, and someone slipped behind my back. Daphne- ducking vines and using what little clear space there was to head for the door. “Help her, Daphne!”
Carmen’s sneer was ugly, and everywhere I’d landed a blow with my witchwater was dark and frostbitten. She regained her composure quickly and vines snaked around our wrists and ankles.
For a girl with a massive wolf only feet from her, straining to take a bite out of her, she looked remarkably calm. It was entirely possible she didn’t realize how dangerous it was to come between a therianthrope and his mate.
I wasn’t going to help her out by tipping her off.
Ice glazed her cheeks when a rope of witchwater caught the side of her head.
Thorns bit into my back and blood pattered against the floor.
The vine around my cock squeezed a little harder and tugged, and I held back a grimace. Lu’s pain was worse now, thrumming through me like I felt it myself. I needed to get to her. It was getting harder to think clearly with her pain humming through me, saturating every fiber of my body with the blind urge to defend her.
Carmen dodged a spear of witchwater, which slammed into the wall and left a neat hole in the plaster. She rose to her feet to grow more of her fucking plants and send them after us, but stopped dead.
The tip of a rowan dagger touched the vein pulsing in her neck and the blood drained from her face. “Release them now, Miss Flora.”
Demonseed was perched on Steele’s shoulder, his orange eyes wide as he took in the room full of coiling vines. Thin trails of blood were drying on Steele’s forehead.
The idiot girl actually listened to him. The vines loosened and we sagged a foot, just skimming the floor.
Shane struggled free with a vicious howl and his fangs slammed shut.
Carmen stumbled back into the wall, a thin scream tearing from her throat as she collapsed. Most of her leg was so much raw, ragged meat, taken off at the thigh. Her blood shone on Shane’s teeth.
The vines instantly dropped like dead snakes, piling over the floor in limp masses.
“Something smells… delicious.” Beck strolled into the foyer, his pupils widening as he inhaled and zeroed in on Carmen.
Shane opened his mouth and Carmen’s severed leg hit the floor with a wet smack.
I ripped the vine off my cock and threw it aside. “Come on. She’s got Lu.”
Steele didn’t ask me to elaborate. Beck leaned over Carmen, lips close to her neck, and she stared up into his eyes as he whispered to her, maybe Compelling her out of pain before he fed.
I honestly didn’t care one way or another if being drained to death hurt her.
Lu’s anger and shock had faded, but her fear was still present, an omnipresent hum deep in my bones that made me feel like I was going to jitter right out of my skin.
Shane loped ahead, leaving thick streaks of blood and saliva on the floor as he followed her trail. We stepped out into the night air.
The rose garden was gone. The white gravel paths were scattered amid huge furrows and thick smoke hung over the grounds in a haze. It smelled like woodfire full of roses, and a massive pile of hedges, arranged in a vaguely anthropomorphic shape, was still crackling with internal embers.
Shane started growling, a low, grating noise that my own throat wanted to mimic. The wolfskin was just beneath the surface, blending man and beast into one.
Daphne stumbled out of the darkness of the woods, hacking into her sleeve, her red hair streaked black with soot. “We took down the golem and Gilt took them both. Who the fuck is Grandfather? What’s going on?”
Shane became a human again, surveying the remains of the green-golem. “Was she hurt?”
My hand ached with a phantom pain, which Daphne confirmed. “Yeah. Bloom fucked her up something fierce before she raised the golem, but she walked out fine. She’s not dying or anything...”
I knew my twin as well as I knew myself. The smooth, blank look on his face boded well for no one.
My gentle, even-keeled brother had just ripped a girl’s leg off without a second thought. He was spiraling.
“Shane. Keep it together.”
He looked back at me, but for once there was nothing serene in his eyes. He was willing to rip through anyone and anything to get to Lu.
The wolf part of me wanted to join him in the killing spree, wade through blood until we had her back. The human part knew we had to keep our heads on straight to find her.
“She sent her familiar after me.” Steele touched Demonseed’s nose. I realized tiny claws were responsible for the blood on his face. “And if I know her at all, she doesn’t want us to follow.”
“We’re going to follow her.” Shane’s voice was devoid of inflection. “I don’t give a fuck if she wants us to or not.”
“Obviously.” I cut through the growing tension between Shane and Steele. “How long ago did they take her, Daphne?”
She was jittering in place a little, fear and nerves getting the better of her. “Five minutes? Ten? I don’t know.” Her blue eyes were wide from the adrenaline rush.
“Here’s what you’re going to do.” I took her hands, forcing her to look at me. Her gaze was a little unfocused. “Go find the Cinders and get out of here. Keep your distance from the mansion, okay?”
She nodded, her eyes cutting back to the pile of smoking brambles. “What’s going on, Roman?”
I released her hands. “We’ll explain later. Just get out of here before things get… crazy.”
Crazy was a very loose word for it. Ev
eryone felt it in the air around us, like an electric current that bound us all together and wouldn’t let go, filling our bones and minds.
Tonight was the final night. Tomorrow, either Cimmerian would have a new covenmistress, or we’d all be dead.
Steele led us past the conservatory, his eyes focused on the ground. Shane slipped back into his wolfskin, his nose twitching as he drank in scents, and I followed suit.
The landscape was suddenly vivid with smells: the floral tang of Ivy Bloom’s perfume, overlaid with fear, Lu’s scent tinted with blood, pain, and bitter anger, and Gilt’s odd, dusty traces.
Steele somehow managed to follow this path without the benefit of a wolf’s nose. Who knew what tracking charms Wardens used?
Their trail led into the East Entrance, all the way to the black door Blondie used to use to visit Locke.
One of the professors was stationed in front of it: Professor Gray. She wore a blouse patterned with raspberries, belying her hard expression and her arms crossed over her chest. “No one’s allowed to pass, Dom. Headmistress’s orders.”
He didn’t skip a beat.
“By order of the Tribunal, you’re under arrest for aiding and abetting kidnapping, murder, and necromancy, acts condemned under Articles Three, Five, and Nineteen of the Covenstead Sovereignty Pacts.”
Gray’s mouth dropped open. “What-?”
Steele gripped her arm and spun her around, slapping a heavy pair of cuffs around her wrists over her protests. Magic-binding cuffs- Gray would be as helpless as a human with them on.
“How dare you?” she raged, but Steele just shoved her aside carelessly.
I shifted back as he went to work unravelling the locking-charms on the black door. “She can still run, can’t she?”
He shook his head. Gray had slumped against the wall, her eyes rolling back in her head. “No. She’ll be unconscious until they come off.”
“Is she actually under arrest?”
Steele let out a sound that could be called a snort in a more casual kind of guy. “Not unless we make it back alive.”
He didn’t sound sure at all. Neither was I.
All I knew was that Bambi’s terror was growing, thrumming deep inside me. She was below us. I shifted back into my wolfskin and breathed in deeply, sorting through the cacophony of smells. Her presence was all over the stairwell.
Steele plucked the kitten from his shoulder and set him on Gray’s limp body. “The underside is no place for you,” he said, not ungently.
Demonseed stared at me with betrayal as Steele shut the door behind us.
We surrounded him as we descended, and he snapped his fingers, conjuring several witchlights to life that floated around us and lit the way.
Locke’s abandoned chains laid in the dust where he’d left them. A faint sound came out of the tunnel that led to Moira’s Forest and I froze.
“Locke,” Steele murmured.
A figure came stumbling out of the darkness, clutching a branch. No, not a branch- a sword. Locke was streaked with dirt and blood, his dark eyes glittering as his pupils contracted from the sudden light.
“Where is my sunlight?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
Steele looked him over from head to toe while my brother and I took deep breaths. Locke didn’t have the sharp, sickly smell of an insane vampire anymore.
“Below.” Steele didn’t pull any punches with his words, even though pain crossed Locke’s face. “They took her.”
Locke’s lips drew back over his teeth. “This is my fault. I should have been there-”
“Maybe you should’ve.” Shane had become a human again, glaring at Locke. “But this is your last chance to get it together and help her, vamp. Albrecht wants her- do you want him to kill another person you love?”
The vampire shuddered, his expression hardening. “No.” A hiss escaped his lips.
“Then accept that you can’t let yourself go to madness. It’s not in your cards, Locke. She needs you more than the other vamps do, and you’re one of us.”
With that, my twin pulled his wolfskin back on and padded back out of the hall, following Lu’s scent.
“You can hold yourself together,” Steele said. His voice was quiet, but it bounced down the corridor anyways. My ears were so sensitive I picked up every scuff of feet and paws on the stone like a crash. “We’ve all made mistakes, Locke. She needs all of us now, no matter what we’ve done.”
Locke took a breath and tasted the air again, but he seemed steadier, more human now. “I’m with you. I hear them, but they can’t reach me.”
I wanted to let out a sigh of relief myself. It would break Lu’s heart for us to have to put him down.
Deep down, I knew if he’d stood in our way, or posed any threat to her, that’s exactly what we would’ve done.
We followed Shane, who’d stopped in front of a black door that reeked of blood and decay. Steele stepped to the front, gripping one of his rowan daggers with white knuckles.
“From this point on, don’t let your guard down, even for a second,” he said grimly. “There will be curses or spirit-guardians keyed to every door. Many of the levels below us were used as laboratories or body disposal. There could very well be revenants still living in the warrens, as well.”
He flipped the dagger in his hand so he could knock on the door without damaging the blade and rapped out a flat melody that blasted through the hall like a sonic boom to my ears.
Steele pulled back with a wince, his fingers tightening around the rowan handle. His knuckles were pink, like they’d been burned by the curse protecting the door.
But it worked. The door creaked open and Shane plunged through, his head slung low and eyes wide.
Steele was next, with me on his heels. The door opened onto a room lined with metal tables, a pile of desiccated plastic buckets piled in the corner. They still reeked of old blood. I padded through the dust, following the spoor trail to the next door.
“There’s a guardian on this one,” Locke said, just as a spindly shape rose out of the dust at my feet.
I snapped at a thin arm, tearing away a hand with too-long fingers, but a bright line of pain scored across my ribs. Shane ripped at the thing’s head, dragging it back down into the dust.
It went down squealing, a sound like nails on a chalkboard, and the hot, wet smell of my own wound filled the air, almost obscuring Lu’s scent.
“Stay back from the doors,” Steele grated out. He sprinkled salt over the dust-spirit’s remains and drove a coffin nail through it, ensuring it couldn’t rise again. “You’re at a disadvantage in that form.”
Shane’s lips drew back over his teeth and he growled. Steele met his violent gaze with stoic surety.
“Locke and I will go first,” he said, refusing to back down from Shane. “He’s already undead- he’ll sense his own kind. I’ll clear the spirit-guardians you won’t be able to feel.”
Shane’s fur rippled and he was suddenly crouched in his human form. “Think you’re gonna play the hero now?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
It was not the time for this shit.
“You sold her out. You let them take her when we could’ve just picked her up and run. Hell, you were engaged to another woman, you fucker.”
Steele’s face tightened. “If I hadn’t let them take her, she might not have survived this long. Her status as their heir is the only thing that will keep her alive for the foreseeable future, and that bitch would’ve done her level best to murder Lucrezia if I hadn’t bowed to her whims. And do you really believe she would’ve left willingly? You should know her better than that.”
“Who cares if she was willing? She would’ve gotten over it eventually. If you three hadn’t backed her on this horseshit plan, she could be safely outside Cimmerian now with Holly, not Albrecht’s prisoner!”
“I’ve already forced her to make choices she didn’t want to make, she made her wishes clear on what she wanted out of this-”
I let my wolfskin slip away. “Shut the fuck up, both of you.”
Both my brother and Steele glared back at me with hard eyes, but they did both shut it, thank fuck.
“I’m in agreement with Roman,” Locke said. He’d pulled himself together quickly, knowing Lu needed him. “We’re wasting valuable time arguing over things that never came to pass. Many of us have made poor decisions, but we will not let that deter us from our mission now. Make your peace, and from this moment forth we go forward with one shared goal in mind.”
Shane’s lips were pressed in a flat line, and his eyes had gone pale as ice. “She might’ve forgiven you for your lies but I haven’t. If you have to die to get her out of here alive, you’d better fucking do it.” He shifted back into his therianthrope form, every fur on his body standing on end.
“And therein lies the purpose of allowing me to take the doors first,” Steele replied smoothly, refusing to match Shane’s vitriol. “She needs you both as whole and unharmed as possible when we reach the Vita Machina.”
He turned on his heel and strode to the next door, running the tip of a dagger over the iron frame. His golden skin was paler when he was done unraveling the curse on it, and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
Every curse he broke would wear him down sooner, and there were at least thirty doors. Maybe some had more than one curse.
Trepidation was a brick in my gut.
Steele pushed the door open, and we followed him down the stairs in a cloud of tension and anger.
***
In human movies, the heroes always plunge in and save the day with a bang. There’s no waiting, no dragging feet, no long moments wondering if you’ve fucked up and taken too long while exhaustion and pain overwhelm you.
Those moments were the worst. All I could think about was how long it was taking us to descend, if Lu was dying right that moment, if she was in pain. The only thing that kept me together was the constant faint hum in my bones of her terror, letting me know she was still alive.
Six hours had passed, and we’d descended only thirteen floors. It wasn’t even halfway.