Into the Fire

by Jeaniene Frost

  “The necromancer tried to cast the same spell on me, blue-handed grip and all, but it didn’t take for the same reason that the Remnant attack didn’t do anything to me months ago. Regular magic and necromancy-infused magic might stick to me, but for some reason, the natural energy of my voltage makes me immune to the dark energies of grave magic. That means all I have to do is fill Vlad with enough of my voltage to make him immune to it, and break the spell!”

  Mencheres’s expression went from compassionately grim to cautiously hopeful, then back to compassionately grim.

  “Even if your theory is correct, you might not survive to do this. The fire grows in intensity with every new memory cycle. Moreover, I have a barricade around Vlad to protect him against the necromancers trapped inside the building, but I will not be able to do the same for you, and they will surely try to kill you if you enter.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I muttered. “I’ve got a plan for that, too, but we can’t waste any more time by me explaining it. Just trust me, Mencheres, and let me in there so I can break this spell before it gets Vlad killed.”

  “Leila.” Marty caught up to me and grabbed my hand. “Don’t go in there, please.” His gaze started to shine with pink tears. “I already lost one daughter. I can’t bear to lose you, too.”

  Maximus said nothing, yet he looked equally pessimistic about my survival chances, and Ian’s expression said that he was downgrading his opinion of me from stupid to outright deranged.

  “I’m not going to die,” I said, and hoped that was true. “But this is the only solution that doesn’t end with Vlad’s guaranteed death. Yes, it’s dangerous, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try, so”—I flashed a lopsided grin at Ian—“Chihuahua-versus-werewolf odds or no, I’m doing this.”

  “You know it’s madness,” he said in response.

  “And Vlad wouldn’t want you to sacrifice your life for his,” Maximus added, finally breaking his silence.

  I was done debating with them. Every second spent out here downgraded my chances to worse than what they already were.

  “Enough. This is my decision, and I’ve made it. Mencheres, either open a door for me or I’ll cut out an opening myself.”

  He met my gaze. For a tense moment, I braced to hit him with all the voltage I had if he tried to restrain me. Then he said, “Let me know when you have dealt with the necromancers and I will drop the barricade around Vlad,” and an opening appeared in the side of the warehouse as if the metal had become curtains that someone drew back. Despite the instant blast of heat, I ran through it without a backward glance.

  “That’s love for you,” I heard Ian say. “Glad I’m too corrupt to fall victim to that form of intelligence lobotomy.”

  “I hope you fall head over heels for someone who insists on monogamy!” I called out right before Mencheres closed the metal slit behind me. Then a roar of fire claimed all my attention as a huge swath of flames poured out of the door across the room and headed right toward me.

  Chapter 38

  I hit the floor, keeping low enough that the fire passed over me instead of hitting me. Even though the flames didn’t directly touch me, their heat was so intense that my skin started to blister. After a few minutes, I had to fight an instinctual urge to crawl back to the same wall I’d entered through and bang on it until Mencheres let me out.

  Yet I didn’t. The large fire swath dissipated after another minute, which meant that Vlad’s memory must now be on the “staring silently” side of the endless loop. That gave me a few minutes before he would start burning things again. I got up and headed farther inside the long, empty room that led to the door marking the club’s official entrance.

  The two bouncers who’d previously guarded it were long gone, but a few charred bodies remained near the entrance. These couldn’t be the necromancers; they had been pounding on the walls a mere few minutes ago, so they were still alive. They must be some poor patrons who’d either gotten trampled in the stampede to escape, or caught by one of those fire-hose sprays of flames that, moments ago, had been jetting out from the open door. The fire would only get worse, as Mencheres had said, but I took consolation in the fact that there were sections of this room that were still untouched by flames.

  Maybe it wasn’t just the constant resets as Vlad’s memory rewound to the beginning of that awful moment and interrupted his power from reaching its full potential. Maybe, just maybe, a thread of Vlad’s consciousness remained, and he was fighting back against the spell.

  I fervently hoped so. Otherwise, Mencheres was right and soon, there wouldn’t be a single inch of this place that wasn’t covered in flames. Then the whole warehouse would be a melted-down pile of rubble by morning, and things would only get worse from there.

  But Vlad hadn’t fully unleashed his powers yet, so there was still a chance that I could interrupt the spell before that happened. Before I could reach him and attempt to short-circuit the spell’s hold by giving him an overload of electricity, I had to get past two trapped, desperate necromancers first.

  I pulled a small, square object out of my bra and ran my fingers over it, careful not to look at it. No feel of cracks, good. The only reason it hadn’t broken was because of the Kevlar vest that Vlad had insisted I wear beneath my top. He’d done so out of concern over silver knives or silver bullets. Instead, the vest had ended up protecting Leotie’s mirror.

  Now, I only hoped I hadn’t screwed up the spell Leotie had left for me, because this was my best chance to get past the necromancers without their killing me (worst case scenario) or my wasting a lot of time (second worst.)

  “I know a way out,” I called to them as loudly as I could. With luck, they’d assume that I was an innocent survivor trying to help instead of their enemy baiting them into a trap. “If anyone else is still alive in here, follow me!”

  Nothing but the creaking noises of overheated, overstressed metal for a few moments, then I heard another rushing noise. At first, I thought I’d misjudged the amount of time between Vlad’s fiery eruptions. Then I heard crashing noises and that rushing sound increased. It was headed right this way, yet there was no intense blast of heat preceding it.

  This wasn’t more fire from Vlad. It was the necromancers blasting their way out of whatever debris had been in their path to fly toward the sound of my voice.

  I couldn’t wait to act until I saw them. By then, it might be too late. I held up the mirror that Leotie had used to trap all of us earlier and once again called out in a loud voice. “I know a way out. Come with me if you want to live!”

  Two large forms suddenly tore through the narrow door, flying so fast that it took a few moments to register that they were completely naked except for the soot covering them. Their speed made me gasp, as did their murderous expressions when they saw me and clearly pegged me to be foe, not friend.

  Maybe they recognized me for who I was, now that my appearance was no longer disguised by glamour. Maybe it was enough that I was a vampire and they figured I was with the group of vamps that had done all this damage tonight. Either way, they bared their fangs and arced toward me as if they intended to tear me apart with the impact of their bodies. I couldn’t snap out my whip to defend myself. If I did, then they’d look at that instead of what I needed them to look at. Yet the mirror was hard to see with all the smoke and its small size. Come on, look at it, I silently urged them.

  They didn’t. Instead, in the moments right before they were about to hit, they snarled something in a guttural-sounding language that was probably the start of a spell. I braced, trying to power up my hand without releasing any incriminating sparks, and waved the mirror so it would catch any tiny flashes of light that were still left.

  Look at it, dammit, look! I silently screamed.

  A few feet from hitting me, they suddenly dropped out of the air as if they’d been shot down by missiles. Their bodies thudded onto the floor, and I jumped back just in time to avoid one of them hitting me as he sl
id from his velocity. When they came to a stop, they were completely limp yet still stretched out in that arcing, torpedoing form they’d used when they’d been about to slam themselves into me.

  I snapped out my whip at last. They didn’t move and their eyes stared sightlessly ahead in the eerie way that Vlad’s had when the spell first took hold of him. I wasn’t sure if this was an act, so I lashed the nearest one of them in the leg. My electric cord cut all the way through and severed his limb at the knee, yet he didn’t so much as twitch.

  If you catch them in it, they’ll be as helpless as you are now, Leotie had promised me when I was trapped in the mirror spell. Good Lord, she hadn’t been kidding. The two of them looked more than helpless; it’s as if they were catatonic. Was that what had happened to me? Had I only thought that I was banging on the mirrors and hitting them with my whip when all the while, I was as immobile as these two?

  Had to be. Otherwise, I might have accidentally slashed the people near me while thinking that I was lashing the mirrors. Come to think about it, Vlad would also have probably burned the whole house down because his first reaction to being trapped would no doubt have been to try and melt the mirrors. We all must have been as immobile and unaware as these two. The power of the mirror trap was truly stunning, yet I didn’t have time to stand here and keep admiring it. I also didn’t have time to abide by “fair” rules of fighting.

  It takes a special coldness to kill when your life isn’t in danger and you’re not driven by anger or revenge, Vlad had said. Turns out, I had that same coldness, because I snapped my whip and one of the necromancer’s heads severed from his shoulders while his body began to wither from the effects of true death. The other I kept alive. We’d need to interrogate Mircea’s location out of him later, if we were still alive later.

  “The necromancers have been dealt with,” I called out loudly to Mencheres. “Now, drop whatever barricade you’ve got around Vlad so that I can get to him!”

  Chapter 39

  Another warning blast of heat caused me to drop to the floor. This time, the flames that followed were so intense that despite my staying low, pain and a horrible stink let me know that I’d just lost my hair. I covered my head with my arms and felt the scorch of flames. The fire tore a path down my back, turned the metal clasps on my shoes into brands, and caused me to press against the floor as if trying to tunnel into it.

  It was only a couple minutes, but agony made it feel like hours before the fire stopped. As soon as it did, I tried to get up and immediately cried out as the charred flesh all along the back of me split from the sudden movement. The pain was almost as awful as being burned, and I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming as I waited for my body to heal.

  What the fuck? an enraged voice suddenly howled in my mind.

  Mircea. I hadn’t linked to him, but the boomerang response from my burns must have alarmed him into contacting me. I gritted my teeth again, trying to ignore him as I raced into the room beyond. I only had a few minutes before the next fire blasts. Barely enough time to find Vlad, let alone to break the spell on him.

  Why are we on fire? Mircea continued to demand as I stumbled into the room, tripping over a body that I hadn’t seen due to the thick smoke. I ran into several more that the choking haze concealed as I rapidly made my way deeper into the room. The smoke was almost blinding, yet I thought I had glimpsed a flash of green between those heavy, noxious-smelling layers. Could that be the glow from Vlad’s eyes?

  Answer me! Mircea roared loud enough to make my brain ache.

  We’re on fire because of you! I snarled back, still doing that run-stumble-run-again thing as I made my way to what I hoped was Vlad and not some random remaining lights. We killed the necromancers you sent us after, but not before one of them slapped a memory spell on Vlad that’s NOT agreeing with him.

  A memory spell? You meant the curse of endless regret? Mircea asked, sounding surprised.

  Winner, winner, chicken dinner, I replied sarcastically.

  I was now close enough to be positive that I’d found Vlad. I couldn’t see much of him except for his gaze, yet it cut through the smoke like tiny green lasers. When a shift in the air briefly cleared the smoke surrounding him, I saw there were piles of large, burnt objects in a circle around him, as if every piece of heavy equipment, furniture, nonstructural beams, and pieces of sheet metal had huddled close in a mute plea for him to make the fire stop.

  I have a barricade around Vlad to protect him against the necromancers, Mencheres said. Looked like he’d telekinetically stripped this club bare to form it. It also explained the necromancers’ odd nakedness. Unable to get out, they must have turned their attention toward trying to kill the cursed object to stop the spell and its fiery consequences. They had to have attacked that barricade over and over to get all their clothes burned off in those fire-blast loops. Without Mencheres’s power holding these objects together as a makeshift fortress around Vlad, they would have succeeded in killing him, too.

  Ah, cursed with an endless repeat of horrible memories, Mircea went on with vicious satisfaction. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

  A vicious satisfaction of my own coursed through me as a telltale blast of heat began to fill up the air. Before you continue to gloat, you might want to brace. We’re probably about to get fried again.

  So saying, I dove to the floor, grabbing every large object I could get my hands on and piling them on top of me. From the stench, some were bodies, yet some were pieces of furniture and parts from Mencheres’s former barrier. Either way, they were all protection against the flames that now lit up the smoke with terrifying shades of orange right before another blast of fire roared out with the sound of an oncoming freight train.

  My tactics covered most of my body, yet my feet were left exposed. Mircea’s scream echoed in my mind as those became engulfed by the flames that rushed over the room. I screamed, too, and fought against curling into the fetal position because I didn’t want it to shift more of my protective barrier off me.

  Get out of there, get out, get out, get out, get out! Mircea howled, the words a frantic, mindless repeat.

  I wanted to. Oh, so badly! Aside from the pain that shamed every previous torture I’d experienced, every survival instinct I had was howling as loud as Mircea now was, urging me to run for the nearest exit as soon as the flames stopped. Yet I wouldn’t. My need to reach Vlad was greater than even the awful pain and my fear of knowing that it would only get worse.

  That need drove me to shove the now-charred bodies and debris off me as soon as the fire stopped. I hadn’t waited until after I healed, so every movement I made felt like it was splitting my feet open to the bone. But I didn’t stop. I had to save him. That’s why I ran toward Vlad instead of toward the greater safety of the other room, and ignored Mircea’s continued curses and screams as he felt all the same pain that I did.

  Vlad had just straightened from his mime of putting the DVD into the player. He must have breathed in some of those glowing orbs since I last saw him because his glamour had vanished. The flames on his hands were now out, too, but that would only last a few minutes. I seized my chance, grabbing him by the shoulders and shooting electricity into him while I tried to make him see me instead of that awful memory on endless replay.

  “Vlad, listen to me, none of this is real!” I said, shaking him as I continued to send more electricity into him.

  Nothing. His ramrod-straight posture didn’t change and his emerald gaze seemed to stare straight through me. I increased the voltage, grateful that he was fireproof and the currents couldn’t harm him the way they did the necromancer that I had blasted apart earlier.

  What are you doing? You need to get away from him, not get closer to him! Mircea screeched across my mind.

  Shut up! I thought back at him. To Vlad, I said, “I’m right here; you need to stop this. Look at me, Vlad! I’m right here!”

  He can’t see you, imbecile! Mircea shouted. Now leave, before
he fries us both to ashes!

  “I’m not leaving,” I shouted back, out loud this time. Then I increased the voltage that I was sending into Vlad. “Come on! You don’t want to burn me to death.”

  Yes he does, look around you! Mircea’s voice was too loud to ignore despite how much I tried. He obviously wants to burn EVERYthing, and you’re part of everything, Leila!

  Shut up so I can concentrate! I thought back savagely. This will work. My currents make me immune to grave magic, so they can make him immune, too, if I can get enough into him.

  You’re immune to grave magic? Mircea sounded shocked, but a sudden blast of heat from Vlad had me dropping my hands, spinning around, and looking for the nearest pile of debris.

  I covered myself just in time. The new barrage of flames crashed over me with even more ferocity than before. They melted the less fire-resistant part of my makeshift barrier until it was no more than a dripping hunk of metal on top of quickly charring wood. I screamed with unspeakable anguish as several parts of my body were exposed to the brutal flames. Then I scooted forward to bury myself beneath another section of my barricade even though it was dangerous to move.

  When the fire finally stopped, I forced myself to shove away what was left of my barricade. Every movement was the worst form of agony and pieces of my skin remained fused to parts of the molten remains, meaning I had to tear them off to get free.

  Don’t do that again, Leila. This time, Mircea wasn’t yelling and he didn’t sound angry. Instead, he sounded afraid. We’ll die if you do. You must know that.

  He was probably right. I still couldn’t see much with the smoke, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the pieces of the barricade Mencheres had formed around Vlad were being burned to the ground as Vlad’s fire grew in size and intensity. I’d have to hide beneath piles of stuff in the other room to survive the next onslaught of flames. After that, I’d have to move farther away, until eventually, I wouldn’t have enough time between the cycles of fiery bursts to reach Vlad at all.