“With the right effort someone as talented as I can shift into things you couldn’t even begin to imagine, and under the light of the nether we can all do so. But not everyone has the heart. I offered Rufus an option, an evolutionary path, you might call it, but he chose to go the other way.”
The fragment of netherlight had given Penny the ability to divine the future, and it had even given Ivy the confidence to face what she considered horrifying. She supposed the ability to shift one’s body into a giant creature wasn’t all that much of a stretch. “You wanted him to use the netherlight, but he wanted to try Mae’s potion instead?”
“He refused to cooperate with my plan and was going to propose devolving to his whole pack. I had higher hopes for that nephew of his, so hungry, so intent.” She smiled, the water drenching her hair and running in rivers over her face. “But when finally given the opportunity, he turned it down as well. It would have only taken the orb, but the sentimental fool refused to go after that little witch for it. And to think I wasted all that energy intoxicating her that night just for him to weasel out. It is a bit funny in hindsight since it seems your friend never even had it in the first place.”
Of course, Safiya would never have gotten that drunk on her own. “What,”—she swallowed, her mouth dry—“what are you going to do now?”
“I’ve been going about this all wrong, I think. Proposing options, theorizing with creatures who are still too small-minded to see their own potential. They need to be shown what they can do. They need to embrace their power. And you,”—she ran a hand over her soaking face, her eyes flashing that venomous green once again—“Well, you can help me with that, can’t you?”
Victoria hurled herself across the counter, her body contorting and the serpent taking up the space instead. Ivy screamed, jumping away as the snake crashed through the cabinets and cupboards, wood flying across the room in jagged pieces. Ivy fell to her knees, clamoring toward the hall as the creature’s jaw snapped at her, but she pulled away a second fast enough. Back up on her feet, she ran toward the foyer.
The cockatrice was there again, and Ivy jumped over him, slamming into the banister and spinning around. As the serpent came down the hall, it let out an angry hiss, and reared back. Ivy thought it would strike, but instead it came to a complete halt.
Of course, the damn chicken! Ivy grabbed the cockatrice again and held it aloft by its scaly belly, its wings thrashing. “Don’t like him, do you?” she yelled, backing toward the front door. “Come on, bud.” She shook the cockatrice, and the bird clucked, a ball of fire erupting from his beak and breaking just before the serpent making it rear back with an angry hiss.
“Yeah, hiss, hiss, bitch!” Ivy fumbled behind her blindly for the door until it finally swung open, and she turned and fled.
Ivy ran right into the side of the car as she sped into the street, the bright lights and horn doing little to stop her panicked forward momentum. The cockatrice flapped out of her hands to land less than gracefully, talons scratching the hood just as Ivy splayed across it.
Safiya opened the driver’s door, shouting her name, but Ivy’s garbled instructions to get back in were clear enough. She slid herself off the other end of the car and went for the passenger’s side, seeing the serpent barrel through Rufus’s entryway, splintering the door off its hinges as glass rained down onto the porch.
Ivy threw herself into the car amid Safiya’s screams. “It’s Victoria!”
“That?” Safiya was pointing, agog.
“Yes, go!” Just as Safiya threw the car into drive, Ivy cried out again, “Stop!” She jumped out, grabbed the cockatrice from the hood, and clamored back in. “Now go!”
Ivy and Safiya exchanged confused shouting until Ivy had somehow communicated that yes, she had heard the voice mail right; Victoria Jiang was the killer they’d been after and consequently could also shift into a giant snake.
“We have to get to the lake.” Ivy held the cockatrice tightly in her lap, and the thing seemed stunned into obedience, only its head jerking around at every sound.
“The lake. Outside.” Safiya was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. “You know it’s a full moon, right?”
“I’m very aware.” Ivy picked a leaf out of her hair. “But I think this is all Victoria’s plan. She said something about the lycans embracing their power.”
Safiya took a sharp left toward the condos. “They’re out hunting. They’re feral! What does she think she’s going to do?”
“No idea, but it’s got something to do with the lake and Penny and the orb.”
“The wall!” Safiya exploded as she pulled off the road, her car sailing up over the sidewalk and slamming down into the lawn. “Oh, my gods, I never followed up with her on the repair! I was so distracted by everything else, I totally forgot. I even made myself three different notes about it!”
“I don’t think now is the time to beat yourself up.” Ivy threw open her door and climbed out onto the grass, her muscles aching, vision blurry.
Safiya popped out as well, shouting over the hood, “But if the wall by the lake didn’t get repaired, the lycans can climb over it.”
Ivy looked out at the water, the tall wall behind it a dark line cutting off the ground from the sky. It was a shadow on a far-off horizon with a speck of light at its center. “And they’d get out into Ogden Bluffs?”
Safiya’s dark eyes were wide behind her glasses as the two took one last look at one another before fleeing across the lawn. Ivy could hardly keep up with Safiya, taking big gulps of air, the cockatrice still tucked under her arm. The lake was huge, and rounding it took everything Ivy had left. She fell onto her knees, her vision fuzzy as they finally came upon the glow on the high wall that protected Avalon Estates. Or rather, protected every place else.
Both Hunter and Pauline were there, but neither moved. Ivy could not catch her breath, dizzy and steadying herself on her knees, the cockatrice tugging itself out of her grasp. She could hear Safiya huffing at her side as she walked up to the others, but her voice never came.
Ivy finally pushed herself up with a big breath, the cockatrice stalking away. The glow she’d seen from across the pond was much brighter here, and she shielded her eyes, looking out at Hunter and Pauline and now Safiya as they stood stiffly, staring up at the wall.
Above them, Celia, Marci, and Allyson were perched on the wall’s edge, the source of the light, their skin shimmering in the darkness. Ivy didn’t hear the song until she looked at them, and then it banged against the inside of her head so loud she was almost knocked over, but it passed through her and was shut out immediately. She blinked, rubbing her head, catching her breath, and trying to make sense of the scene.
The others weren’t moving, trapped there staring up at the sirens who were sat on either side of the crack that ran up through the wall where it had been damaged weeks ago. It started at the ground running at least twenty feet above them to the top, bricks fallen away. Something had slammed into it, something like a giant serpent’s tail, and no effort had gone into fixing it like Victoria had promised, and way out here no one had come to check.
Penny was there too, sleeping soundly and nestled in an alcove of the broken wall. She was safe, for now, but also looking suspiciously like bait. Ivy glanced back over her shoulder at the forest at the top of the hill on the west bank of the lake, the moon hanging high above it, full. In the shadows there, a dozen sets of eyes gleamed back.
Chapter 42
Victoria’s serpentine form splashed into the lake at the far end, and Ivy spun around to watch her cut through the water. Impossibly fast, she crested just at the shore, dousing Ivy and the others in freezing droplets, but the rest remained still as statues, staring up at the singing sirens on the wall. The snake loomed large and horrifying over Ivy, menacing and dripping.
“They’re coming,” Victoria’s voice hissed into her mind. “My girls’ song is meant specifically for charmed folk. The lycans are instinctively staying awa
y for now, but that can be reversed with a simple key change. All of your little friends will make quite the easy meal when the pack is called over. That is, unless you give me the orb.”
Ivy’s eyes flicked over their stiff forms, drenched and not even shivering. They were trapped under the sirens’ song, and there was no door to the choir room this time to shut the sound out.
She tensed and held her bag close. “Let them go,” she shouted. “Or I’ll use it myself!”
Serpentine eyes narrowed at her, the snake’s face dipping dangerously close. “You are human. What could you possibly do with it?”
Victoria could have just gobbled her up right there, but she knew the woman had another plan for her, and so she risked it. “I don’t know,” she said then squinted back. “And isn’t that terrifying?”
Victoria raised her head again, eyeing her a long moment, then spoke in a language Ivy could not understand. Marci, Celia, and Allyson stood from their places on the wall, their song continuing in a breathy, far-off tone in the back of Ivy’s mind. Pauline’s form moved first, and she scooped up Penny but was devoid of any emotion. Safiya and Hunter turned with her, and the three began to walk off as the sirens led them from the top of the wall. Away from the lake and the forest, the group traipsed into the darkness.
Ivy watched as their figures disappeared, stepping backward into the space they left behind. As the glow from the sirens dissipated over a ridge, she managed to make it back almost against the wall herself until Victoria’s hiss cut her short.
Alone, she turned her eyes back up to the snake and swallowed. With her serpentine jaw open, Victoria looked as if she were smiling. “Well?”
“Right.” Ivy opened her bag and peered inside. It was dark. She dug to its bottom, but turned up nothing, just as expected.
Ivy flipped her purse upside down. Keys, a wallet, tampons all tumbled out in a sad, little pile on the grass, but there was no ancient, hovering ball of all-powerful magic. There wasn’t even the light source she had shown Victoria before when she pretended to have the netherlight fragment to begin with—her phone was still laying broken on Rufus’s kitchen floor. She half-smiled up at the snake. “Oops. Totally forgot to pack it.”
Victoria’s eyes flashed as she struck out at Ivy. “You tricky, little bitch!”
Ivy threw her arms over her face, cowering, but instead of fangs sinking into her, a thick appendage wrapped around her body, compressing all the air from her lungs.
Flailing, Ivy was lifted as she blew out her last breath, the appendage tightening and dragging her by the middle. The snake’s tail was wrapped even more tightly around her waist as Victoria’s bulky body cut through the grass and toward the wood. Ivy slapped at the tail and tried to pry it away, but it didn’t relent in the slightest.
The darkness whizzed by until she came to a sudden halt where the tail raised her high into the air. It unraveled in one smooth movement so that she was freely hanging for a split second before slamming down onto the cold, hard earth.
Ivy sucked in air with a horrific, choking sound, willing breath back into her lungs, staring up at the night sky just at the edge of the wood. The stars and moon were so clear and brilliant, beautiful even as she lay splayed out on her back, her limbs begging to just stay that way, but then a shadow passed over her, and the stars were replaced by the glint of wild animal eyes. Many eyes.
Even in her pain and exhaustion, Ivy scrambled away from the lycans that were edging out of the forest. Less aggressive than they’d been, the creatures were just as menacing, standing seven feet tall at least, their shoulders and backs raised high over wolven snouts, long, sinewy arms and clawed hands and feet growing tufts of spotty fur. They were careful though, and she knew it was because Victoria was still there behind her in her serpentine form, massive in comparison to even them. It was likely they’d never seen her before, and even werewolves are cautious with giant snakes.
“An interloper,” Victoria’s voice hissed in her mind, and as the lycans’ ears pricked up, she knew they could hear it too. “This human deigned to infiltrate us and kill us off, one by one. She started with your pack leader the very day she tricked her way into our sanctuary, and she has been on a rampage since.”
“No!” Ivy choked out, throwing out a hand from her spot on the ground even as one of the werewolves snarled and snapped at her. “She’s lying!” She was still breathless from the squeeze, unable to go on.
Victoria’s form backed away from Ivy, and the lycans took more confident steps toward her. Saliva hung from their open jaws, and they fell to all fours, biting at the air, the rest of the pack emerging from the trees so that more eyes than she could count looked back at her from the blackness. A massive, grey wolf was closest, and he closed the distance between so that he loomed over Ivy, his snout inches from her, hot breath falling over her face.
Victoria’s voice called out once more, “She killed Rufus, she killed Evan, and she will kill you if you don’t destroy her first. You can never trust a human.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
The wolf hovering over Ivy snapped his head away from her. Ivy turned and peered over the hand-like paw positioned just beside her face to see Calla’s feminine form standing arms crossed and looking on the scene as if it were some sort of joke.
Ivy had never been happier to see a vampire in the middle of the night even as a thick drop of lycan saliva fell onto her forehead. The lycan growled, low and long, and Ivy could feel the sound in the pit of her gut. Less concerned with her, it turned away and focused on Calla.
The vampire’s smile widened, and she rubbed her hands together. “Well, someone’s being quite the bad doggy, isn’t he?”
Behind her there were other forms in the dark, humanesque, but with eyes shimmering in a way no human’s would. Among them, the moody boy who had been sent to help do chores was turning his baseball cap around, and beside him Greg removed his sunglasses to reveal golden, shining irises, his mustache twitching. There were more vampires in Avalon Estates than Ivy thought, but there were perhaps only half as many of them as there were lycans.
Her eyes shifted back to the wolves, the group now with fangs bared and hackles raised, were focused on Calla and her kin. Victoria was still there but slithering further back. She would flee from the scene and leave them to tear one another to bits with Ivy in the middle. The others were still under the sirens’ spell out there somewhere in the dark—what would she do when she found them?
“Calla, wait!” Ivy shouted, and the lycan above her snapped over its shoulder, making her breath catch. She steeled herself, looking away from the beast and pointing at the snake. “This is Victoria’s doing!”
The vampire eyed the serpent. “Vicky? You’re looking positively terrible.”
The serpent hissed, rounding away from them and sliding down the hill back toward the lake.
“Go after her, stop her!” Ivy shouted. “She killed Rufus!”
Calla’s eyes flashed a hateful yellow, and she bared her fangs at the snake, but in the same moment the lycan rounded on Ivy again and snapped at her face, and Ivy shrieked.
Calla growled deep in her throat then snarled. “Then who’s going to stop them?”
The lycan was only inches from her face. Ivy tried to scramble back, but it slammed a claw-like hand into the dirt beside her head, and she froze. Ivy was back on the menu.
Something wet and hot rained down onto her face, steaming in the chilly night air. But she didn’t have a moment to consider it as her body was wrenched backward in the dirt, the lycan pouncing where she had just been, claws bared.
“Take this,” Calla purred into her ear, and Ivy felt herself be handed off to someone else. Calla gave her a wicked smile and a wave, her hand dripping with a dark crimson as she left her, moving with so much speed she was barely a blur in the night. The lycan’s snout was bloodied as it snapped again, and Calla was suddenly between Ivy and the beast.
“Ms. Sylvan, if that is your re
al name.” Greg’s grip on her was tight as they backed away from the increasingly dangerous scene. “Come along with me.”
“No, wait!” Ivy could scarcely believe she was begging not to be removed from the presence of so many creatures that would most definitely kill and eat her. “You don’t have to fight! Please!”
The other vampires had spread out in a line, their bodies gaunt and thin in the moonlight, but their shadows stretched long across the lawn where the lycans rose up onto hind feet and stalked toward them. It would be a blood bath, and Victoria was nowhere to be found.
“Damn it!” Ivy struggled against Greg’s grip, but he was as strong as the snake had been without absolutely suffocating her. One of the wolves lunged, and the rest sprang into action, vampires and lycans falling against each other en masse. “Greg, we have to stop them.” She gestured wildly even as he turned her away.
“What do you think they’re do…” Greg’s voice trailed off, and his arm went slack around Ivy’s waist. Across the lawn from the far-off sidewalk, a figure was sprinting toward them, small at first, but as it got closer even Ivy couldn’t find any words.
At top speed, the figure finally reached them, doubling over and gulping at the air, lifting his head just enough to look up at her.
“What are you—”
Oakley held out the netherlight fragment as he dragged in long, heavy breaths.
Ivy went to grab it but stopped, her eyes snapping over to Greg. The vampire was trance-like, staring down at the white, glowing ball hovering just over Oakley’s palm.
Her brother coughed out, “They said…trouble…and you needed…”
The orb pulsed, steady despite how Oakley panted.
“How did you…who told…you went through my stuff?”
“Yeah.” He huffed, pushing himself to stand straight. “Sorry. Whoa.” His eyes widened as he glanced over her shoulder. Ivy didn’t have to look back, the sounds of the vampires and lycans enough for her to know what was going on. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Oakley said, and Ivy screwed up her face. “But I guess you found out anyway.”
The Association Page 28