by K. A. Tucker
I did get a reaction from Viggo and Mortimer, though. “What?” they screeched in unison, Mortimer’s voice two octaves above his normally deep, ominous level.
I adjusted my stance as I explained, expecting one of them to fly at me. “The pendant can’t come off Evangeline yet and I need the pendant to release Veronique.”
“And when can it come off?” Mortimer whispered, hovering over me, his glare icy enough to freeze a normal person stiff.
“When I figure out how to get it off Evangeline without killing her,” I answered, matching his coolness.
“You’re choosing that girl over your own flesh and blood?” Each word left Viggo’s mouth with slow, sharp precision.
The accusation pierced my heart as surely as if he had stabbed me. “No, that’s not true,” I began, but I faltered, the guilt of my betrayal a weight on my shoulders. I loved my sister. I ached to see her. But Evangeline . . . She may as well be my own flesh and blood, for what she had come to mean to me. I had watched her grow from a tiny, soft baby into a beautiful, gentle woman. I would carve a path of destruction through anyone who wished her harm. I would protect her until my very last second of existence.
“How long have you known?” Mortimer hissed.
Always. The moment the Fates answered my Causal Enchantment, I knew each and every step that needed to take place. But I didn’t answer Mortimer. Instead I locked eyes with Viggo, relishing the moment as recognition passed across those callous, two-thousand-year-old eyes. Recognition that he had been played a fool. I didn’t need to answer. I just smiled.
Viggo’s eyes narrowed to slits. His lips pursed into a tight smile that evolved into a grimace as he stared intently at me. I knew he was visually tearing out my throat, weighing the value of the desire, deciding if it was worth keeping me here. And he could easily dispose of me if he wanted to; without my magic, I was no match for the ancient demon’s strength. In the end, he only sighed. “Well played, witch.” His lips parted into a wicked smile. “Now it’s my turn.”
He flew toward Caden with superhuman speed. A gasp caught in my throat, his intentions immediately clear to me.
Caden met him face-on, as if expecting the threat. Of equal height, they stood chest to chest, regarding each other as predators would before a battle. “What will happen, do you think, when Evangeline finds out her precious Caden is dead?” Viggo purred, shifting his weight, preparing to pounce.
No, you mustn’t harm him. He is Evangeline’s life. It will kill her. I haphazardly pushed Mortimer out of my way as I edged forward, terrified that my sudden movement would serve as a catalyst.
Caden’s head tilted back, his Adam’s apple protruding sharply as he broke out in boisterous laughter.
It stayed Viggo’s hands. He cocked his head to the left and said curiously, “Is that amusing? Your death, after all of this, is amusing?”
Mortimer suddenly appeared next to Viggo—as an ally, or as someone with a vested interest, I wasn’t sure. Either way, the two of them against Caden would be disastrous. I needed to stop this from happening. My heels scraped over the cobblestones as I shifted closer, the thirty feet between us feeling like a thousand.
“Yeah, actually, it is,” Caden answered levelly, those beautiful, piercing jade eyes sizing up both Viggo and Mortimer, undaunted. They were physically the same size, though Caden appeared ten years younger in human years. “We used the human to get here and now you’re threatening me because of it? I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t do.”
My feet froze. His words . . . the human. So impersonal. So cold. So . . . treacherous. Wariness crept into me.
“It worked! And now we’re here!” Amelie suddenly squeaked, cutting into their exchange with an excited lilt in her voice. She skipped forward and placed her hand on Mortimer’s chest, not intimidated by his ominous, towering presence. “You must be Mortimer, right? So tall and handsome! I’m Amelie. I think we could be good friends, don’t you?” She flashed a brilliantly adorable smile—so adorable that it completely disarmed Mortimer. He faltered, blinking several times, and eventually allowed a subdued grin.
The smile didn’t work on Viggo. “So you’re saying you don’t care for Evangeline?” he asked lightly, though I knew his mood was anything but light.
“I’m saying we did what we needed to do to get here,” Caden answered, shrugging. Something in his tone . . . he sounded . . . bored? Detached? It sparked a wave of rage within me.
Viggo’s left eyebrow arched. “I don’t know if I believe you.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe,” Caden answered with a sneer, his chest puffing out aggressively, “except for one thing. Believe this: if any of you so much as look at us the wrong way—” those mesmerizing, blue-green eyes shifted to me “—any of you . . . you will die.”
Viggo’s responding chuckle would have sent a chill through any sane person’s soul. “I’m not so sure you should be throwing threats around, given your youthfulness and lack of human blood.”
Another smug grin stretched across Caden’s face. “Youthfulness?”
“Why, yes! Seven hundred, is it? Give or take? A baby, next to some of us.”
“You assume what we told the human was true.” All four of them chuckled now, the young, blonde Bishop in the back throwing his arm lazily over Fiona’s shoulders. “How much of what you know about me do you think is real?” Caden continued.
This can’t be happening. I was so sure of his feelings. How could anyone not fall in love with her? Panic twisted my stomach. My worst nightmare was coming true. Could they really have lied to Evangeline about everything? Yes! Of course! Why wouldn’t they? Or . . . they could be lying to Viggo, distancing themselves from his target. Either was possible. But now they were toying with my trust.
Ruse or not, Caden’s ploy was working. Viggo’s lips compressed as he realized he could very well be picking a battle with a vampire twice his age, with three more flanking him.
Anxiety tore at my insides. I needed to know the truth. Had he lied to Evangeline? Used her to get here? If they had . . .
I’d tear them all to pieces.
I stepped forward, keeping my target in sight as my mental eye scoured my insides for a spark. I only needed one little helix to read Caden’s soul. Just one tiny little bud, even . . . .
Mage stepped in front of me, blocking my path. “Move,” I growled.
“You cannot blame them for deceiving Evangeline to get what they wanted. After all, you did the same,” Mage reminded me.
“What I did was nothing like that!” Go away! You’re distracting me! I sidestepped around her. Just one spark—one—and I’d burn them to the ground. There! I found one floating beneath my left lung. I plucked at it, pulling it up and forward, releasing it from my fingertip. The tiny, glowing purple bud, visible only to me, sailed toward Caden.
A sharp spasm shot through my back as something dug into my collarbone. I lost my grasp on the helix. Flinching, I watched it drift up and away, now worthless. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” Mage’s voice hummed in my ear. I turned to see her hand on me, and one eyebrow raised. How did she know what I was doing? Vampires couldn’t see magic . . . “You mustn’t blame Evangeline. Many were tricked. Even other powerful vampires.” She gestured with her chin toward Rachel, lying under a charred tree.
That’s right! I had forgotten. Was the whole Rachel-Caden thing a charade as well? Desperate for answers, I spun on my heels, breaking free of Mage’s grasp, and flew to the raven-haired demon. Bending down, I tore the Merth bindings from her wrists and legs, wincing at the sting.
She was on her feet in a second, her hate-filled yellow eyes locked on Mage. I watched a secret look pass between them.
“No harm intended, Rachel,” Mage offered mildly.
“No. Just trying to leave me in that hell hole,” Rachel responded coolly, her pinched nose and pouty red lips rendering her face beautiful yet unpleasant.
“Well, you’re here and you’re
free. Bygones, right?” Mage matched her coolness, unruffled by whatever had transpired between them.
“Right.” Rachel displayed a toothy grin. She turned to Caden, fury flashing over her face, her hands flexing as if about to rake his eyes out.
“So was all that an act, too?” I asked Caden, leaning in to scrutinize his every twitch, his every shift, for some clue.
“No. That was an added bonus,” Caden answered, adding with thick sarcasm, “thanks so much for letting her loose.”
Rachel’s eyes narrowed further. The hatred was genuine, I decided. But all this just couldn’t be . . . Was it all an act? It would certainly be smart of Caden, distancing himself from ties to Evangeline, making himself less of a target for Viggo and Rachel. Again I reached inside for a bud, desperate to read Caden, to end this question once and for all. Regrettably, I couldn’t find even one.
“I don’t believe you,” Viggo finally stated, crossing his arms over his chest.
Caden only shrugged, an infuriating gesture, based on the fleeting twist of Viggo’s mouth. If they kept this up, act or no act, Viggo wouldn’t restrain himself. I had long-since dissolved his patience.
“Well, while you’re not believing, where are the humans? I’m parched,” Bishop piped up with an obnoxious grin.
“You’ll have to ask Sofie if she can find you—” Viggo began, but voices from inside the building interrupted him.
“Are all the servants on vacation?” a female exclaimed angrily.
Right on cue.
Heads whipped around as Camila Forero stormed through the red doors into the atrium, followed closely by her husband, Carmelo—Viggo and Mortimer’s Colombian “beard” family, and the only two humans left in the building. Their children had left with Evangeline for no other reason than that the sweet, optimistic girl had begged me to save them. These two, I’d intentionally left behind.
Camila stopped dead. Her dark brown eyes grew wide as they flitted over the smoldering corpses and landed on the crowd of strangers regarding her with intense interest.
One . . . two . . . . there. Forty sets of nostrils flared. The scent of human blood coursing through delicate human veins had reached the Ratheus vampires. It was all they needed. Eyes began morphing into the hideous red globes of ravenous vampires, the only time one of our kind could be considered grotesque.
Camila’s jaw dropped. Her terror flooded my mind like a potent memory. Another vampirism. I knew the others would sense it as well. It would only feed their lust. Camila’s feet began sliding backward as she edged stiffly toward the building. Her four inch snakeskin heels scraped against the concrete steps. She stumbled into her husband before pushing past him to run, Carmelo on her heels. I sighed. Bad move, running.
“The garage!” I heard Camila whisper to her husband as surely as if she stood next to me.
So they thought they could hide? Despite myself, I chuckled. Silly humans. There’s no hiding . . .
The swarm took off, Caden and Amelie in the lead, tearing into the building after the humans, in a race to see who would taste human blood first. Sympathy for Evangeline swallowed my anger, the likelihood that her friends had deceived her growing with each minute.
“Wonderful!” Viggo muttered sarcastically, throwing his hands up in the air. “Who’s going to clean up the blood?”
I rolled my eyes. “You think there’s going to be a drop of blood left?”
Camila’s shrill scream silenced any retort.
“How long before they discover they’re trapped?” Mortimer asked, the legs of a bistro chair scratching against the cobblestones as he dragged it away from a charred body. He repositioned it on the other side of Veronique’s statue. “And how angry do you think this Mage will be?”
“Yes, she may prove thorny,” Viggo mused absently as he inspected the leaves of a wild rose bush—an ancient and rare variety that Veronique loved, now a crisp mess.
I wondered the same thing. I began tinkering with the Merth the second Evangeline left for Ratheus for the last time, testing out different magical weaves and chants, combining basic witch binding spells with my own concoctions, adding my own unique signature to make the spell unbreakable by anyone but me. It had taken days to figure out and thousands of helix threads but, in the end, no vampire was getting within twenty feet of an exterior wall without facing paralyzing pain. Given we now had forty vampires within these walls instead of four, I couldn’t be more thankful that the spell was in place. It was the only thing I was thankful for.
We didn’t have long to wonder how Mage would react. “What have you done to this building?” her crisp voice called out. I turned to see the delicate vampiress gliding toward me, her movements smooth and controlled. She dabbed a blood-stained cloth against her mouth. More dark red stains covered her shirt—a gray button-down meant for Fiona. A mutant accompanied her on her right, the only surviving mutant. To her left, at a distance but clearly intent on hearing the conversation, Rachel slinked.
A flood of Ratheus vampires trailed the three of them through the doors into the atrium, their angry crimson eyes settling on me. I counted twenty-eight now. The rest were no doubt lying on the cold tile within the Merth’s border, waiting for someone to drag them to safety. But twenty-eight could still prove difficult to control, that fact driven home as I caught whispers of “witch” and “torture.” I glanced from Mage back to them, and to Viggo and Mortimer. I’m surrounded by angry, desperate vampires. This couldn’t end well. “What do you mean?” I asked, my voice intentionally airy.
Mage paused for a moment to regard me, a knowing smirk touching her lips, her eyes narrowing slightly. She turned to a tall, willowy blonde standing near the security door beside the iron garage gate. “Tanith? Please demonstrate.” The blonde vampire hesitated. “Go and open that door,” Mage pressed gently, her voice a soothing song.
Tanith stalked toward the metal door. She reached out slowly, her face pinched, her long fingers approaching the metal handle as if anticipating pain. Like a cobra, her hand shot forward the last few inches to graze the handle and pull back.
Her eyes lit up in pleasant surprise; what she had expected hadn’t happened. She glanced over at Mage as her hand clamped over the door handle. She gave it a yank. It did little more than creak. I had expected as much, given it was triple-reinforced with titanium deadbolts and a system of iron rods tunneling ten feet into the brick surrounding it. Even Viggo with all his strength couldn’t open that door without exerting significant strength.
With a sigh, Mage floated over to the door. She reached out to grasp the handle with her dainty hand as Tanith had before her. She pulled. A hair-raising metal screech echoed through the atrium as Mage ripped the security door out of its frame as if it were nothing more than a sheet of paper, sending concrete and brick flying in every direction. I had never seen a display of strength like that before. It was all I could do to keep my mouth from hanging open. In my peripheral vision, I spied Viggo’s jaw drop for a split second before he schooled his expression and clamped his mouth shut. Mage was no longer his competition. She had just proven herself to be vastly superior.
Now, with a gaping hole in the wall, the Ratheus vampires—Caden and friends falling in at the rear—bolted. They poured through the opening into the tunnel, heading toward the exterior door, the final barrier between them and the streets of Manhattan . . . and the blood they’d been craving for seven hundred years.
I wasn’t worried about them escaping. Instead I stood frozen, watching as Mage tossed the heap of metal aside and calmly approached me. I have no magic and I’m facing off against the vampire queen that I’ve single-handedly trapped in this building. I wondered how long I would survive. The mutant lingered beside her, his eyes shifting furtively to the gaping hole, no doubt wondering if he could pass.
Shrieks of pain echoed from the tunnel.
Mage crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s what I’m referring to.”
“Oh, that.” I was going for aloof but
it came out sounding like a petulant child. “Well . . . ” I paused, evaluating my options. What should I tell her? They already knew I was a sorceress. Should I play dumb? Could I pretend I was as much a victim of some witch’s trap as she was, that I couldn’t get out either? Or could I blame Evangeline’s spell, say that this was a consequence? Various webs began spinning at warp speed in my mind. It was all I did lately—lie. Lie to Viggo and Mortimer to protect Evangeline; lie to Evangeline to protect her. Heck, I even lied to myself to ease my guilt over the choices I’d made.
I regarded Mage’s shrewd, hawkish eyes and some instinct cautioned me against lying this time. The truth it is. A rarity. “We can’t have blood-crazed vampires tearing through the streets of our city, especially ones who’ve already had a hand in the extinction of one world’s humans. So, I’ve laced the building with Merth. None of you will get out until I release the spell.” Go ahead and kill me, Mage. You’ll never taste warm human blood again.
Mage leveled a hard stare at me, the corners of her almond eyes crinkling as she thought. “You’re telling me the truth.” It was a statement. “I appreciate that. I know it doesn’t come naturally for our kind. Thank you.” She turned her back on me to walk toward the tunnel. “Everyone, listen!” Mage shouted. She waved them all out of the tunnel to form a circle around her in the atrium. Only fourteen returned, throwing daggered glares in my direction. The rest were caught within the Merth. “I’m sorry, but every one of us will need to stay here for now . . . Jonah, stop!” Her hand flew out toward the mutant Jonah as he slowly edged toward the tunnel exit. He glanced over his shoulder at Mage, his face twisting into something more repulsive, if that were possible. But his feet still moved forward. He could get past the Merth. He could be free.
He can’t escape. With desperation on my side, a flame suddenly erupted at my fingertip. Oh, thank God. My magic is back. “Stop,” I commanded, my hand rising, my finger pointed, ready to burn the mutant to the ground.