Patrick’s tear-streaked face flashes through my mind and I drop my hand. Cesare might be awful, but not all vampires are. They aren’t all monsters any more than all humans are. I’m going to do what I can to stop Martinez. There will be no capturing him this time. I’m going to finish it.
I look down at my shaking hands and the Finding magic shifts inside of me. I picture Martinez, just like I did with Corinne when I was practicing this in her room. The magic moves and stretches out into the hotel, but something else moves too. I can feel her shift inside of me. She’s always there.
I force myself to look up and she’s standing in front of me in the hallway like she’s real. No mirror this time, just her.
“Mom,” I say, my voice quaking.
“Olivia,” she says, her face splitting into a smile. “Finally.”
“Are you real?” I ask.
“I need you to find the book,” she says. “I made a mistake, but you can still stop him.”
“Stop who?” I ask. “Reilly?”
She shakes her head. “No, the god that is coming unbound. He wants to destroy all of us.”
“What book? How is that going to stop anything?”
“Find it, Olivia,” she whispers. “Only you can undo this terrible thing I did.”
“Mom,” I whisper, my voice shaking like I’m five years old again and waking up from a nightmare. “I don’t understand.”
“You were born with a burden that I tried to hide from you. I’m so sorry.” Her eyes fill with tears that slip down her cheeks.
“No, don’t cry,” I say, reaching up a trembling hand to wipe them away, but she grabs my hands and I freeze. She is real. I don’t understand how this is possible.
“Find the book. Find the magic,” she says urgently.
“What book?” I ask, clinging to her hands. I don’t want this to end.
“Find the book. Find the magic,” she repeats. “You’ll need all of it.”
She leans forward and wraps me in a hug, whispering the same thing over and over, but I barely hear her. I squeeze her as tightly as I can, my fingers curling into the fabric of her dress as the comforting scent of herbs surrounds me.
“You don’t need me,” she whispers.
“Yes I do,” I sob.
“I’m holding you back.”
I shake my head viciously and squeeze her even more tightly to me. “No.”
She pulls back and cradles my face in her hands.
“My girl,” she says. “You can do anything. Be anything. Do what’s right.”
“I miss you.” And I do. I miss her every day and I’m so angry she can’t be with me anymore.
She smiles, and I realize she’s already fading. My fingers are sinking into her and through her. I close my eyes because I can’t watch her disappear again.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says.
My hands and arms tingle as the magic that was giving her form flows back into me. Some warmth I didn’t realize I was missing curls back up in my chest. The constant pain that has wrapped around my arms and shoulders fades into nothing.
I blink my eyes open. I’m standing alone in the hallway, but I know where he is.
28
People are pouring out of the main hall. There is a sense of restrained panic as they all attempt to walk, but not run. I push through, having to use my elbows to make any progress in the opposite direction of the crowd. Martinez is somewhere in there.
I make it inside and shove my way up toward the bar. I find an empty spot along the railing and close my eyes, focusing on the magic. Images flash through my mind. The mass of people pouring out the exit. Reilly near the stage on the phone. Then a woman in a red dress, her eyes shut. I look up and see Devan staring at me.
He has a bottle of tequila in one hand and an empty glass in the other. My stomach sinks. There’s no way it’s him, but the magic pulling me toward him knows the truth, no matter what disguise he is wearing. There is a thick gold band on his right hand, just like the one Maybelle and Gerard both wore.
He pours a shot of the tequila and drinks it, eyes still on me, then turns and disappears through a door behind the bar. I run after him and jump over the bar, my dress dragging the glass off and shattering it. I push through the door and run in the direction I can feel him headed.
Distant gunfire echoes from somewhere downstairs. I put on a burst of speed and skid around a corner. Martinez, still looking like Devan, is standing at the end of the same hallway the neckers are on, waiting for me.
“You’re always forcing me to go with Plan B,” he says calmly as he tugs the ring off his hand and drops it in his pocket. The handsome facade is gone in a blink.
“Whatever you’re planning, it’s not going to work,” I say, my hands clenched at my sides.
He takes two steps back and grins, his smile twisted gruesomely. He lifts his hand, showing me a small black box with a red switch.
Click.
An explosion rips through the room the neckers are in and the door flies off its hinges. A fireball billows out of the room and I stumble backward, shielding my face from the heat. There is another explosion farther away, and then another that rocks the entire building. My head is spinning and Martinez is getting farther and farther away.
I sprint after him. Moving this fast I don’t even feel the fire as I dash through it. Anger is building in my chest and magic is sparking at my fingertips. There were so many innocent people in that room. Hundreds more may be dead from the other explosions as well.
I round a corner and stop. He’s close, but there are people running everywhere. Two shots hit the wall next to my head and I duck down. He slams into a group of people that are running down a connecting hallway and I lose sight of him again for a moment. When he reappears he has his arm wrapped tightly around the neck of one of the wait staff, his gun pressed firmly against her head. She screams as he drags her backward, her eyes wide and frightened.
“None of you are getting out of here alive,” Martinez hisses.
“Neither are you,” I growl at him. I don’t think I’m fast enough to get to him before he can pull the trigger.
“You should have just walked away from it all in Texas,” he shouts. “If the clan had fallen you would have been free, and I could have shown you how to redeem yourself. We could have done this together!”
“What do I need redemption from? I’m not the one murdering innocent people!” I shout back as I take a few steps toward him. If I can close the distance a little more, I might be able to get the gun.
“I know what you did before Brunson found you. How you sold those drugs,” he says, pressing the gun even harder into the girl’s head. She sobs and her feet slip as he drags her backward down the hall. “I know that vampire almost killed you. They’re monsters. How can you not see that?”
“It was one vampire, and he was insane,” I say through gritted teeth.
“You’re just like her! Always making excuses. It’s like you want to die. Why won’t you let me save you?” He yells, spittle flying from his lips. “My father tried to beat it out of her, but that didn’t help either.”
“Let this girl go, Jason,” I say, trying to calm him now. “This is between us. She doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
He squeezes her more tightly to him. She scrabbles at his arm, gasping for air. I take another step closer and pull on the vampire magic harshly. I need every bit of strength. I can’t save anything for a counterattack, it has to be now or never.
“She let them feed from her! She’s just another jezebel whore lusting after the parasites that will suck all of humanity dry!”
“You’re the monster here!”
A gun goes off twice behind him, much closer than before, and for a split second his eyes leave me. It’s a reflex, the kind of thing you can’t help when you are startled, and it’s all I need. I lunge forward and close the distance. I wrap my left hand around the gun, pushing it back into his face, and yank the girl forward,
freeing her from his grasp. She runs screaming as he kicks me in the stomach.
I wrap both hands around the gun and rip it away as he pulls out the same baton he had in the hangar. I jerk almost out of reach, but he has a foot on my dress and the end of it hits me int he stomach with a bone-aching burst of electricity. All of my muscles seize and he punches me in the face. I fall to one knee and he hits me again, pain from the strike and the taser burning through my arm. I roll onto my back and push electric magic in an arc from my hand to his leg. He jerks away and I lunge forward and tackle him.
My elbow connects with his jaw and I grab the hand with the baton and squeeze. His hand breaks, the end of the baton cracking as well, and he screams in pain. I rip it out of his hand. Rage, hunger, and pain rush through me. I sink my teeth into his neck and drink down a rush of blood. A small, stagnant pool of magic is hidden deep inside of him. I reach for it without thinking and pull it into me. He claws at my back as I rip away his pathetic magic. It’s familiar and earthy, something I’ve stolen once before. The first kind of magic I ever took.
I rear back, my teeth ripping out of his neck, and shove off of him. He lays there, twitching, as blood gurgles from the wound in his neck.
“You sick fuck,” I pant, frantically trying to wipe his blood off of my mouth. “You’re a witch. All this time you’ve been killing your own kind.”
“No,” he hisses, struggling to sit up, but he’s too weak now that I’ve taken most of what little magic he had. “My mother was a hedgewitch just like you but I rejected the magic. I am redeemed.”
“You are pathetic,” I growl at him.
“Take the rest of it,” he says desperately, lifting his hand toward me. “Get it out of me. Get it out. I want to be clean.”
I stare at his outstretched hand, then reach down and clasp it tightly with my own.
“No,” I say.
I let all of the anger and betrayal and hatred burn into the electric magic that is churning inside of me. It flows out of my palm and into him like a lightning bolt. The magic crackles down his arm, searing his skin in fractured streaks. He screams, the sound tearing from his throat. The sound is inhuman and hurts my ears. Jagged cracks open across his torso and his face, light pouring out of them as the magic overwhelms his body until he bursts into flame.
I jerk my hand away and stumble backward as his body crumples forward. The sounds of the chaos around me filter back in. People are still running, trying to escape. Gunfire, which I hope is the SWAT team, is getting closer and closer.
The smell of burning flesh makes me gag. I turn away from Martinez’s corpse, my vision swimming. I need to find Reilly. I need to get out of here.
I lift my hand and shut my eyes, letting the Finding magic take over. It doesn’t scare me anymore, though perhaps it should. The magic spreads out of me like a net, searching for Reilly. He’s not far.
I run toward the hallway I came from, but another explosion knocks me onto my back and deafens me. Plaster cracks and falls from the ceiling. I struggle to my feet and run in the other direction. The building is shaking and smoke is pouring out of the hallway. I’m getting farther from Reilly, but there’s nothing I can do about that if the building is about to collapse.
I find a door that leads into the stairwell and sprint down the stairs. Someone below me trying to get out as well, but the exit is jammed. Reilly’s location shifts. He’s getting closer now instead of farther away. I’m on the second floor when the door to the stairwell bursts open and Reilly runs in. He’s holding the GPS tracker in his hand.
“Hurry up,” he says waving at me.
I take the last flight of stairs two at a time and Reilly grabs my arm, yanking me through the doorway. I follow, letting him drag me as I stumble over my own feet.
“Are you okay?” He asks, looking back at me.
“Martinez is dead,” I gasp out.
He stops in his tracks and turns around, grabbing me by the shoulders.
“You killed him?” He asks, inspecting me for injuries. He freezes when he sees that the welts are gone. “What—”
The building shakes, something crumpling above us with a loud crash. Dust sprinkles down from the cracks in the ceiling.
Reilly reaches down and rips my dress’s split even higher.
“What are you—” I begin, slapping at his hands, but he drags me onto his back and takes off at full speed.
I wrap my legs tightly around his waist and cling to the front of his jacket with my hands. The ceiling crumbles behind us and the floor starts cracking underneath his feet. Everything turns into a blur as he charges forward faster than I thought anyone could move.
The hall is a dead end, but Reilly doesn’t slow down. He sprints straight for the window and we crash through it in a shower of glass and fire as the ceiling collapses behind us. He lands neatly on the grass but doesn’t stop running. This side of the building is about to collapse completely.
Fire trucks and emergency vehicles line the street, but Reilly bypasses all of that, running along the edges of the activity. He turns down a side street that passes by the hotel and stops in front of a limo. The door opens and Reilly sets me down, then pushes me inside, following close behind.
I collapse into the seat and wrap the pieces of my dress around my legs. Cesare is sitting opposite me, suit spotless, hands folded in his lap.
Reilly closes the door and the limo speeds away. I look through the back window and watch as the side of the hotel crumbles, a cloud of dust and smoke billowing up from the remains.
29
The clanhouse is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s not just a mansion, it’s a sprawling estate that covers at least an acre. Balconies jut out of the vine-covered brick along the front of the house. The windows are all obscured except for the two on either side of the front door.
The limo stops in front of the house and the door is opened by a vampire. I’m not sure if he is a butler, bodyguard, or both. Cesare steps out, and Reilly nudges me to follow.
The front door swings outward and we walk inside. Directly in front of us is a wide, sloping staircase that is covered in red, plush carpet. At the end is a tall, stained glass window that is lit from the outside somehow even though it’s the middle of the night. The stairs split and continue up to the second story, wrapping around on either side and lined by an intricate wrought iron railing.
Two large paintings are hung on either side of the staircase. One is of some old city, perhaps somewhere in Italy. The other is the traditional Renaissance type with a woman laid back on a settee, her hair strategically covering all the fun bits while a man kneels beside her. The clan is obviously wealthy, but the decor makes it feel like a museum and not a home.
“Freshen up and meet me in the library in an hour,” Cesare says as he walks ahead of us.
Reilly leads me up the staircase to the left. The floors up here are dark wood. There are rugs every few feet that soften our footsteps. Two women walk past us, both nodding in greeting at Reilly and ignoring me.
We pass down a long hallway, through a large open room with a high ceiling that is painted to look like the sky, then up another short flight of stairs before Reilly stops at a door and pulls out a key. He unlocks what I expect to be a room, but is actually an entrance to a sort of self-contained house.
To the right is a living area. There are two couches and a love seat set around a fireplace. I can see a dining room through an open door, and to the left appears to be a kitchen.
Reilly presses his hand to my lower back. “This way, we don’t have time for a tour.”
“Right,” I say absently, still looking around as he guides me toward his rooms.
We walk through what I assume is his bedroom, though it’s decorated like it could be any other room in the house, and into a small bathroom. The walls are stone and there is a thick rug laid in the center of the room, but it still feels more like a jail cell than a nice bathroom.
There is a claw foot tub set und
er the window, though the shutters are closed blocking any view you might have. The shower looks recently added. It’s set in the corner, but there wasn’t room to make it very large.
“Take a shower. I’ll have clothes laid out on the bed for you,” Reilly says, turning to leave.
“How many people died?” I ask quietly.
He pauses at the doorway. “I don’t know. We may not know for a couple of days, but that’s not important right now. You made a good impression on Cesare, despite everything. You need to get through this meeting with him before you worry about anything else.”
I turn to face him. “What does he want from me?”
“He wants you to do as he says.”
“That’s not an answer,” I say, shaking my head.
“Take a shower,” he repeats, before shutting me in the bathroom.
I strip out of the tattered dress and avoid the mirror. I’m sure I look disgusting. I turn on the water and pick out the pins that are still holding my hair up. I toss them behind me, not caring about making a mess.
Black grime from the smoke and debris trails down my legs and into the drain as I step under the hot water. I scrub viciously at my skin, catching bruises and scrapes I don’t even remember getting. I force myself to slow down and heal them. I’m not as exhausted as I could be now that I’m not being constantly drained by the Finding magic. I don’t want to be in pain while talking to Cesare.
I dunk my head under the water again, and despite the temptation to linger in the shower, the imminent meeting keeps me from relaxing. I wash quickly, not bothering to condition my hair. I forgot to grab a towel so I have to walk across the chilly room to grab one off the shelf by the bathtub.
I dry off and wrap the towel around me before padding into the bedroom. As promised, there are clothes laid out on the bed for me. They’re not something I’d ever pick out though. Reilly even thought of underwear and a bra, which makes me grimace, but I’d rather have it than not.
Blood Magic: Witch’s Bite Series Book Three Page 22