Into the Fire

by Jeaniene Frost

  A catch. Of course there was a catch. “It can do that?”

  Leotie’s smile was grim with the kind of firsthand knowledge that I didn’t want to have. “Oh yes. Magic this powerful can be as terrible as it is great.”

  “Okay, so we wait,” I said, glancing up at Vlad. “Right?” When he said nothing, I said, “Right?” more emphatically.

  “Right,” he replied in a light tone. Then he flashed a smile at Leotie that caused all my muscles to tense. Why was he giving her his charming, death-will-soon-follow smile? “But you will still show Leila how to transfer the magic now.”

  Leotie’s aura flared, sending ripples of power over the room. The accompanying scent of her anger was almost redundant by comparison. “You try to command me, Impaler?”

  “No he doesn’t,” I said quickly, giving Vlad a don’t-you-dare glare. “But after Gretchen’s through her hunger craze, we might need to do the transfer right away. If you happen to be unavailable for instructions, we’d be in trouble.”

  Leotie smiled although her power continued to fill the air. “I despise most modern American colloquialisms, but ‘Don’t bullshit a bullshitter’ is appropriate for this moment.”

  “So is ‘Don’t test me,’” Vlad replied, his aura bursting forth to bathe the room with dangerous levels of heat.

  “Can you two stop?” I snapped, abandoning my attempt to smooth things over. “Vlad, I better not see so much as a spark out of you. Leotie is family, so the agreement you and I made long ago about you never harming any of my family applies to her, too.” Then I rounded on Leotie. “Yes, you’re eight hundred years old, and in additional to your obvious power, I’m also sure you still have some magical tricks up your sleeve. But you shook Vlad’s hand when you met him, so that gave him the ability to toast you before you can say abracadabra. And now that we’ve confirmed everyone here is a scary badass but we agree that no one’s going to hurt anyone, can we move on already?”

  Leotie’s smile changed into that weird form of annoyed pride as she looked at me. Then she looked at Vlad, who muttered something in Romanian I hoped she didn’t understand. Still, his aura folded back in like a dragon tucking away its gigantic wings, and Leotie’s aura dissipated until I no longer felt like I had tiny, spiked medieval flail balls rolling over my skin.

  “Good, we’re all being reasonable,” I said, blowing out a sigh. Honestly, old vampires were the supernatural equivalent of human flashers sometimes. They just couldn’t stop themselves from showing other people what they had and how capable they were of using it.

  “Now, Leotie,” I continued, “please show me how to transfer my magic legacy onto Gretchen, even though I won’t do it until it’s safe,” I said, emphasizing those last few words.

  As if she hadn’t been in a dangerous standoff moments before, Leotie lifted her shoulder in something too careless to be a shrug. “You seal your mouth over hers and breathe the power into her while simultaneously willing it out of yourself.”

  “That’s it?” I said, my surprise echoed in the dubious expressions on both Vlad’s and Maximus’s face.

  Another casual shoulder tilt. “The mechanics aren’t complicated. Only the matrilineal family requirement is.”

  That was for damn sure. If it wasn’t, I could be transferring this legacy and its hitchhiking deadly hex to the first evil person I found. Then again, maybe we wouldn’t be able to kill that person afterward. The magic would protect him or her, making us guilty of giving a monster superpowers. Guess that waiting for Gretchen to get over her blood craze was the best possible play for a variety of reasons.

  “Okay, well, now we know how to do it,” I said. It still sounded too easy, but then again, what had I expected it to entail? Sacrificing a unicorn? “So now I’m going to do what I came down here to do, which is get Gretchen cleaned up.”

  Leotie walked off without another word. Vlad’s gaze followed her, but he said nothing. If he still had doubts that she’d told us the truth about the spell transfer, he was obviously willing to wait until later to confront her. Good. I wasn’t ready to referee another pissing contest between them.

  I picked Gretchen up, trying not to notice how my stomach clenched at the heavy scent of blood emanating from her. I glanced at one of the unused blood bags on the floor, then gave myself a mental slap. I couldn’t take that. Gretchen needed all of them, and I could go out later to find my own meal. I was getting pretty good at feeding from the wrist without nicking the wrong artery, in fact. I’d graduate to the neck soon—

  Twin points suddenly speared my bottom lip, and I sucked the accompanying drops of blood away while hoping that no one else noticed. What kind of a vampire stabbed herself in the lip with her own fangs? Some days, I was still such a noob at this.

  “Bring her back here when you’re done. I’ll use one of the other bathrooms to get myself cleaned up,” Maximus said, thankfully not seeming to catch what I’d done. Neither had Vlad. He was still staring at the open doorway even though Leotie was now up the stairs and out of sight.

  “She’s hiding something,” he said, his voice so low that it wouldn’t carry beyond this room.

  “Probably,” I agreed, keeping my voice equally soft. At eight hundred years plus, Leotie had to have lots of secrets she hadn’t revealed yet. “But I don’t think it’s the transfer details, and I also don’t believe she wants to do us any harm.”

  The look Vlad gave me was jaded to the extreme. “Sometimes we harm the ones we love whether we want to or not.”

  I couldn’t argue that point, so with a slight shake of my head to indicate that we’d discuss this later, I went back upstairs with Vlad and Maximus following me. When we arrived at the main level of the house, I saw that Leotie had already disappeared into her bedroom. That was just as well since Vlad’s radar was clearly set to discover-and-destroy mode. Ian and Marty were now out of their rooms, and they hadn’t been earlier.

  They both sat on opposite couches in the family room, and they both looked tired. With it being barely an hour past dawn, I had been sure that they’d be asleep. Maybe our arguing below had woken them up. With how tense things had gotten, they might have thought they needed to stay awake in case they had to go downstairs to jump in and break things up. Or join in.

  “Don’t get up. I’m just taking Gretchen to my room to clean her up,” I said to Marty, waving him off when he rose to help.

  Ian stood up and gave a full-bodied, lazy stretch. “Not that I was eavesdropping, but now that you have your witch relative to assist you with any future magical muckety-mucks and you have a way out of your dastardly spell, it seems to me that I’ve fulfilled my oath and can take my leave. It’s been grand fun—and by that, I mean more boring than an extended version of midnight Mass—but it had to end sometime—”

  “You’re not done yet,” Vlad cut him off. “We’re going after a group of necromancers tonight and we need your skills.”

  Ian’s mouth curled downward. “Of course you do. Why would I want to survive the task Mencheres forced me into?”

  Vlad gave a dismissive grunt. “Save your complaints for him. These necromancers are supposed to be magical Acolytes of Imhotep’s, and Mencheres was a contemporary of his, so he might know more about them than he realizes. That why I texted him earlier and told him to call me.”

  I hoped Mencheres knew about Imhotep and his cult. I only recognized his name because Imhotep was the villain in the nineties remake of the movie The Mummy, yet I doubted that would help.

  “Grand,” Ian said in a tone that implied he felt the opposite. “Does anyone else feel the sudden need for a shag?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  He waved dismissively. “’Course you don’t. You and Tepesh already had yours. Thought the two of you would bang the bed right through the floor, and here I had to listen to that while forced into an unnatural state of celibacy.”

  Now I was openmouthed at his audacity, not to mention his questionable priorities if he really thought he w
as going to die tonight. Ian didn’t pay any attention to that. His gaze lit up as Leotie came back into the family room.

  “Ah, Leotie, my beauteous poppet, I take back everything I said about you being an uppity crone. Take me to your bed, I promise endless delights. I’ll even limit myself to tongues only. Always happy to accommodate a preference.”

  “No,” Leotie said, her tone turning withering. “And if you make me say no again, your blood will be on the floor.”

  Ian’s mouth curled into a pout. “Wish you were talking about foreplay, but clearly you’re not. Very well, I can take an honest refusal, so I shan’t bother you again.” Then his tone brightened. “But I will offer one last chance for any takers among the rest of you?”

  When all he received back was glares, Ian sighed as if wounded. “Bunch of sexual hoarders, the lot of you. Have you no pity for the last request of a dying man? Blimey, if I do live through tonight, I won’t be responsible for what I do to the next thing in my path that doesn’t require consent. Take that chair over there. Mmmm, looks soft, doesn’t it? Sturdy, too. Why, if that were a La-Z-Boy, I might be pounding the stuffing out of it right now—”

  “Here, look at this,” Leotie said in annoyance, holding a small object up. A mirror, I realized. Why would she—?

  My surroundings vanished and I was suddenly bombarded by thousands of visions of my own reflection. It felt as if I’d somehow been transported inside the world’s biggest magic mirrors funhouse. At once, I set Gretchen down and tried to find the way out, but with every move I made, our reflections only increased, until I could see nothing except endless versions of myself with Gretchen lying prone at my feet.

  Chapter 31

  I couldn’t find a way around the mirrors, so I began to beat on them with all my strength. Yet somehow, I was unable to break a single one. I tried lashing them with my whip next, with the same dismal results. Desperate, I began to will the electricity in me into higher and higher levels, until I was worried about becoming a danger to Gretchen, yet my whip still had absolutely no effect on the mirrors. A horrible realization filled me. None of my abilities could free me from this trap.

  “Don’t be frightened, Leila.”

  Leotie’s voice echoed all around me, although I couldn’t see her. All I could see was endless versions of myself in the mirrored walls of our prison. Then I screamed when Gretchen suddenly disappeared from those reflections.

  “Don’t be frightened,” Leotie repeated. “The spell will dissipate after I’ve had time to get Gretchen safely away.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I spat, cursing myself for ever trusting her.

  “I have a sense about people. It’s never wrong, and it’s telling me that your husband is hiding something.”

  My snort was bitter. “Vlad said the same thing about you.”

  “You might not believe me now, but I’m doing this to help,” Leotie replied, those odd echoes fading a bit. “When Vlad said that he would wait to transfer the spell to Gretchen, I could tell he was lying. You confirmed that you would do anything for him, so I cannot trust you, either. That is why I’m taking Gretchen away until she is over her bloodlust.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. I would never forgive her for tricking and trapping us this way, but I also understood why she did it down to my very soul.

  “Vlad will come after you,” I finally said. He wouldn’t have any conflict of emotions over what Leotie had done. She had to have Vlad trapped, too, or he would have already burned her to death for doing this to me. When he eventually got out, he’d want vengeance for this betrayal.

  Leotie’s light laughter trickled through the infinity mirrors. “I would lose my respect for him if he didn’t. But I was old long before he was born, Leila, and I’ve had centuries to relearn all the magic that was stripped from me. Your husband won’t find me unless I want him to.”

  Her voice was so much closer during that last part, I expected her to appear in the countless reflections from the mirrors. She didn’t, yet somehow, her next words sounded as if they were whispered right into my ear.

  “I left you the secret of this spell beneath my mattress. Take it with you tonight. It’s so ancient; the necromancers might not know it, and if you catch them in it, they’ll be as helpless as you are now. I also overheard that the man you’re seeking is in a cave. Black quartz absorbs magic, so that is the only kind of cave that necromancers would put a fellow sorcerer in. Farewell, Leila. I hope to see you again one day.”

  “Leotie, wait!” I shouted.

  She didn’t reply. I kept calling out to her, but only heard endless echoes of my own voice in response. Then, despite my previous failed attempts, I resumed my efforts to break the mirrors. Maybe Leotie had only been saying that we were all helpless so I wouldn’t get out earlier than she wanted me to.

  What felt like several hours later, I sat down in defeat. I also closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to keep seeing countless versions of my own reflection. If I’d still been human, I would have had a puking migraine from all the repeating, blinding flashes of light from my whip as I kept lashing the mirrors in a futile attempt to break them. It hadn’t worked. I hadn’t even scratched their surface. Leotie hadn’t been lying about the effectiveness of this trap, that was for damn sure.

  I was worked up from my efforts, but also so tired I thought I might pass out. It probably would be a good idea if I did try to sleep. That was at least something beneficial I could do while trapped in this unbreakable spell. But questions, fears, heightened electrical currents, and hunger wouldn’t allow me to relax, let alone to sleep. Yes, Leotie had said that the spell would dissipate once she and Gretchen were safely away, but she hadn’t said how long that would take.

  What if the spell wouldn’t deactivate for days? Worse, what if there was a magical malfunction and it didn’t deactivate at all? Would that leave me, Vlad, Marty, and Maximus trapped in our mirrored prisons, until Gretchen was finally past her blood craze and Leotie returned her to us in a week or two?

  I tried to push back my rising panic at the thought. Not only would I go insane with hunger by then, but if Mircea’s captors gave Vlad a new demand, he wouldn’t be able to carry it out even if it were something as simple as burning down a house. Then they’d kill me in retaliation, and none of us could do a thing to stop them. Even if they didn’t send new demands, we weren’t safe here. This was Cat and Bones’s house, not one of Vlad’s. At any time, someone else could come by. I wasn’t worried if it would be Cat or Bones, but what if one of their other friends showed up? Maybe someone with a grudge against Vlad? He certainly had no shortage of enemies—

  A loud crashing sound snapped my head up in time to see the mirrors shattering, countless pieces of glass disappearing as soon as they hit the floor. In the next moment, I was staring at Vlad, Ian, Maximus, and Marty. We were all still in the family room, standing exactly where we had before, and we all had similar degrees of shock in our expressions.

  Then Vlad reached me in two long strides, his fingers digging in almost painfully as he gripped me by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, blinking because seeing things in single form suddenly seemed strange.

  “That filthy little witch,” Ian breathed, looking around warily as if expecting mirrors to pop up and cage him in again. “Foxed us good and proper, didn’t she?”

  Maximus began storming around the house. I didn’t know why until he yelled, “Gretchen’s gone!” in a frantic tone.

  Yeah, I already knew that. Then I met Vlad’s gaze. One look into his simmering copper depths, and I knew that Leotie had told him why she’d done this, too. His emotions were locked down, but his smoky cinnamon scent sharpened with barely controlled rage, and if his hands got any hotter, my clothes would catch fire.

  “Leotie said not to bother linking to either of them because she’d block your attempts,” Vlad said, confirming my suspicions that she’d talked to him, too. “You still need to try. Need
less to say, I don’t trust her word on anything now.”

  Marty came over, and I felt the tremble he didn’t show as he gave me a comforting pat and then slipped his hand into mine.

  “Don’t mean to be rude because Leotie’s your family,” he said in a laconic tone. “But if I see that witch again, I am kicking every inch of her spell-casting ass—”

  He stopped speaking when something slammed down hard enough to make the whole house tremble. Whatever it was, it had landed right outside the cabin. Vlad let go of me, his hands bursting into flames. I tried to snap out a whip, then cursed when nothing happened. I had spent myself on those damn unbreakable mirrors and now who knew what danger had shown up outside!

  “Knife!” I hissed. Marty still had those two long silver daggers on him. He tossed one to me and I grabbed it out of the air when the flames on Vlad’s hands abruptly extinguished.

  “It’s all right,” he said tersely.

  At the same moment, the front door tore itself from the hinges as if yanked by huge, invisible hands. Then it was flung away and Mencheres swept into the room. His aura broke out with the intensity of multiple tidal waves, causing me to stagger back. I’d never felt anything that strong before. Mencheres must have always been masking his aura before, but he wasn’t now, and those currents continued to grow until I expected to either fall over completely or start spontaneously combusting. Good God, he felt like the power line I’d touched back when I was thirteen!

  Mencheres’s dark, piercing gaze swept the room before touching each of us with quick, assessing glances. Then he visibly relaxed and that incalculable power whooshed back into him as if sucked by an invisible vortex. At last, his gaze settled onto Vlad and he arched a single, inquiring brow.