by E. M. Knight
I don’t try to fight as we crash into the ground. He holds me down by the chest, his face twisted into murderous rage.
“How long have you been there?” he demands. “How much did you hear?”
I keep my features flat. “A long time, my Prince. I apologize for the invasion of privacy. But I heard it all.”
Such dark anger swirls in Raul’s eyes that I’m not sure I even recognize him. For a moment, I think I may have made an ill-fated play.
I spot the little specks of miasma floating across his eyes, and this time I’m certain: corruption is taking him.
This may be a much more dangerous predicament to put myself in than I first thought. A very real bubble of fear comes up inside me.
“You heard it all,” Raul hisses. He pushes his weight into me, pinning me harder to the dirt floor. The tips of his fangs come out.
“Yes, but I don’t mean to betray you,” I quickly say. “I’ve come to help.”
“Help,” Raul sneers. “What sort of ‘help’ do you think we need?”
“You didn’t sense my presence even though I was only a dozen feet away,” I force out, my voice betraying none of the roiling uncertainty I feel inside. “Let me up, Raul, and I will explain.”
The Prince looks over his shoulder at Rebecca. I can’t see her but I imagine she gives him a nod. A second later, he eases himself off.
“Talk,” he demands.
With as much dignity as I can muster, I stand up. I dust off my shoulders, feigning an indifference to the dangers of the situation.
“You say you want to leave The Haven. I will not stop you. Nor will I go running to the Queen. I agree with Rebecca’s assessment: your development has been betrayed. You need to branch out on your own.”
Raul eyes me with great suspicion. I talk faster.
“I want to see The Haven strong,” I continue. “For that it needs leaders at their full potential. Yours is stunted. A Prince must be absolutely autonomous in his decisions. He should never be in thrall of the Queen.”
“Funny,” Raul says. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard you express such sentiment.”
“I suspected you and Rebecca were up to something from the moment of our last conversation. Now I know what.”
“Get on with it, Felix,” he snaps.
I clear my throat. “I am not an enemy but a friend. I will help you get past the wards without being detected.”
“How?” Raul asks.
“With help of this,” I reach into my pocket and pull out a small torrial.
“What is it?” he asks.
“See for yourself,” I say, tossing it to him. “Catch!”
The moment he snatches it out of the air, his presence vanishes. It simply ceases to exist.
“Heh.” Raul understands immediately what it is, because now my presence shines bright to them both. He looks it over in his palm. “This is how you spied on us?”
Rebecca strides over and takes the torrial from Raul. Her eyes go wide.
“This has male magic being channeled into it,” she says.
“Not actively,” I correct. “A few strands of Air are enough to spark it to life and keep the effects going for an hour.”
“So, you have a torrial that cloaks you,” Raul says. “Only one?”
“You don’t need more than one. Allow me to demonstrate.” I walk over to Rebecca and hold out my hand. She takes it…
As soon as she does, the torrial envelops us both. Raul grunts in appreciation.
“Of course, its power is sapped quicker that way,” Felix says. “In fact, I suggest wrapping it up for now and only using it when you’re about to cross over. It must touch vampire flesh to work.”
“You’re giving it to us, just like that?” Raul asks, while Rebecca tucks it away in a fold of fabric.
“I told you I am in favor of your plan. You need to realize just how much potential you have, Raul,” I gesture outward. “The only place you can do that is out in the real world.”
“And what do you get from this deal?” he asks me. “Nothing in life is free.”
“Only the satisfaction that when you return, you will have proper power,” I say.
“Bullshit,” Raul accuses. “I don’t buy that for a moment.” He stalks up to me. “You wish to take my place at the Queen’s side, don’t you?”
I laugh in his face. “Now you overestimate yourself. I don’t think there’s a vacancy.”
Raul scowls.
“Raul, the only thing you bring to the table right now, through your relationship with the Queen, is excess tension. Both of you need a clean break. Time apart will allow you to become unencumbered by her, and in turn, she will no longer have to think about the question of your ill-fated romance.”
The middle Soren brother crosses his arms. “So, you’re doing this purely out of altruism.”
I spread both arms and adopt the most innocent expression I can muster. “I want what’s best for The Haven. Coincidentally, it is also what’s best for you.”
Rebecca turns to Raul. “We should take him up on the offer,” she says. “The torrial will do the trick. If the shielding were created by female magic, I would worry that the wards might pick it up. But since it is the male half that gives it powers, and provides the cloak, I believe we can pass through the wards undetected.”
I look at Raul expectantly. Everything depends on his next words.
He stares at Rebecca.
Flickers of the miasma continue to dance across the whites of his eyes.
Finally, he nods. “Fine. Yes, we’ll do it. But Felix—” he turns to me. “—If you betray us, if you go to the Queen, or anybody, and raise the alarm… then I vow, the next time we meet, I will destroy you.”
I crack a smile and extend my hand. “We have a deal.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
James
The Crusaders’ Facility
I bang on the door of Paul’s room.
“Paul! Mourning time is over. We have a witch to destroy.”
I hear movement on the other side. A few moments later, a haggard-looking vampire opens the door.
His eyes are bloodshot, and his hair is disheveled.
“Christ, man,” I say. “Weren’t you asleep? That’s why I gave you the time.”
“I slumbered as much as I could,” he answers gruffly. “Nightmares haunted my sleep.”
I stop cold. “Nightmares?” I ask. “Vampires don’t have nightmares.”
“Well, I did,” he barks. He seems especially… touchy.
Well, not much of a wonder, considering what I did to his daughter.
“The only instance I know of a vampire seeing things in their sleep happened to me,” I say. “That was under Cierra’s thrall.”
A shiver runs down my back. Could she have come early?
I console myself by checking to make sure I still have that tight ball of magic in my mind. It is there, ready to be unleashed at a moment’s notice.
At least I’m not defenseless.
“Sylvia’s dead,” I inform him coldly. “I destroyed her for treason.”
Paul simply nods.
“Beast tried to kill himself. I don’t know what he was thinking. Now he’s under watch 24/7. I had to save him by giving him my blood. I have not infused him with the serum yet. I have not decided if I should.”
“You’ve been busy,” Paul mutters.
“I heard from Smithson, finally, just about an hour ago. They had a hiccup with the obsidian retrieval. Because we’re running short on time, Smithson called in The Order to transport the rest here. Delivery will be made today. Then we can use your runes and set up the trap for the sorceress.”
Paul’s eyes start to gain some life. “You want me to go prepare the machinery.” He nods. “Did Smithson tell you who from The Order was coming?”
“No. Does it matter? I didn’t think to ask.”
“It matters so we know who to send to meet them. Is it the vampire generals or
the human soldiers? I think, to be safe, it should be the humans.”
“I agree,” I say. “I’ll leave that for you to arrange.”
Paul nods. “Certainly.”
I turn away—then stop.
“Paul,” I say over my shoulder. “I am sorry about your daughter.”
He grunts. “It’s done. Let’s not speak of her. There are greater things that concern us now.”
“I agree,” I say. “Victoria is still monitoring the old vampire. She hasn’t stepped away from her post once.”
“Do you think her strong enough to handle him?” Paul asks, a bit too casually.
I snap back to look at him. “You have reason to doubt that?”
He shrugs. “It could be a powerful vampire we have there. In my short time as one of you, I’ve come to appreciate just how hard it must have been for him to endure what The Crusaders did. When he awakens—he will be angry.”
“He’s bound in silver,” I say.
“I’d feel better if you took extra precautions. We are in the one place in the world where the technology to contain a creature of the night exists. Use it.”
“Is that an order?” I ask, my voice becoming dangerous.
“It’s a word of caution, James. You saw the horrid conditions that vampire lived in. I was not born when he was taken, and when it came my turn to govern, I did not care enough to inquire about his past. That was a miscalculation. Then again—I never thought he would be revived.”
“I’ll post a few generals to stay with Victoria,” I say.
“If he’s stronger than they are, which he will be since they are all fledglings, it won’t be of help,” Paul says. “He’ll exert his influence over them.”
“Then I’ll go put the damn cuffs on him myself,” I grunt, “the ones that take away the vampire Gifts.”
“Careful with that, too, James,” Paul says. “You take away his Gifts now, and his body could fail. It is the vampire essence keeping him alive.”
I make a sound of frustration deep in my throat. “What would you have me do?”
Paul’s eyes suddenly shine with a newfound zeal. “Burn him,” he says. “He is no use to us. He is a relic of the past, and we are the future. Burn him, and be done with it!”
So that’s what he was angling at.
“No.” I say. “I will not waste a vampire like that. Not after he’s survived for so long.”
“Then you deserve whatever happens next, with him,” Paul hisses.
He catches himself, realizes his aggressive tone, and blinks.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That was… improper. I forgot myself.”
“What’s gotten into you? We are on the verge of establishing the greatest, most powerful vampire coven in the world! Combine that might with the influence, the might of The Crusaders, and the networks of The Order… you are at the helm of it, man, second only to me!”
“That’s not quite true,” he says. “There is Smithson, Victoria—”
“You are in the inner circle,” I cut him off. “What more do you need?”
“Nothing.” He scrubs a hand through his white hair. “I’ll be honest, James. The dreams I had unnerved me.”
“What did you see?”
“Stupid things. It’s irrelevant.”
“Not if it’s troubled you this much, it’s not,” I say. “I have to know, anyway. I told you, vampires do not typically dream. Whatever you saw must hold some sort of meaning.”
He exhales a breath. “I saw… a lake of fire,” he says. “It was like the Abrahamic hell. It opened from a void in the ground. It swallowed everything. Swimming in it were… strange beasts.”
“Demons?” I ask.
“What?”
“Demons,” I repeat. “Creatures out from the other realm.”
“What other realm?”
I blink. “You don’t know?”
“Tell me.”
I’m taken aback but quickly regale him all I learned of demons from Mother. I even tell him about the Narwhark, and how it destroyed the fledglings I made.
“… more powerful than vampires, you say?” Paul asks.
I nod. “Yes. But nowhere near as intelligent. They are mere beasts, whereas we have the faculty of reason.”
“I felt fear when I saw the creatures in the lake, James,” he admits. “It was stronger than human fear. It was an instinctual fear that came from the vampire within me.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Keep me informed of future dreams. This could be a one-off thing, totally meaningless. You are still little more than a fledgling. Perhaps it is a remnant of your humanity that let you see these things. There does not have to be any more meaning attached. For all the years I’ve been a vampire, I have not had much exposure to fledglings. Perhaps this is all part of the transformation process and no more.”
“Yes,” Paul says thoughtfully. “Perhaps.”
“And if it’s not, we will discover the real meaning—after we deal with Cierra.”
He nods. “All right.”
Once more, I start turning away.
Paul stops me with his words. “You know, we possess more impressive materials than those cuffs.”
My curiosity is piqued. “Show me.”
***
I follow Paul to a distant part of the compound. We enter an armory. The shelves inside are lined with all sorts of weapons.
I am reminded of that scene in The Matrix where Neo is first brought to the white training grounds and rows upon rows of guns shoot to envelop him and Morpheus.
“These,” Paul gestures around us, “are all the weapons we’ve developed to deal specifically with vampires. Here—” he takes a heavy automatic off the shelf, “—take a look.”
I pick the weapon up and look it over. I know little about guns, but this one’s heft is impressive.
“Silver-lined bullets,” Paul says. “All of these have been modified to use such ammunition. You fill a vampire full of those, and just see how much their healing powers do.”
I get an instant feeling of revulsion and hand the weapon back.
“Not to your liking?” Paul asks.
“I don’t mean to kill our prisoner,” I say.
“Fine,” Paul agrees. “Just thought you should see what we here are capable of.”
“What else?” I ask. “Something more directly applicable to our situation, perhaps.”
“This way,” Paul says, and leads me around a maze of shelves to emerge on the other side.
There, all sorts of different gadgets await.
“This,” Paul says, picking up something that looks a bit like a grenade, “emits a high pitch frequency that confuses, disorients, and otherwise stops vampires in their tracks. You point it outward—” he demonstrates, “—and push this button. As long as you hold it, the sound continues. Take your thumb off, the sound stops—but it takes vampires some time to recover.”
I furrow my brows. “Sound waves affecting vampires? I’m skeptical.”
“If you want a demonstration…” Paul says.
“I’m not letting you test that on me,” I say.
He shrugs. “It’s not lethal. Just unpleasant. You can try on me—I’m just not sure how much faith you’ll have in what it can do given my current strength.”
I eye him for a moment, then give a curt nod. “Fine, let’s see it. Do it to me.”
“Stand over there,” Paul directs.
I take my spot a few meters away from him.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
He holds the device at arm’s length aiming it at me, and depresses the trigger.
A high-pitched squeal hits me. I blink. It has no effect, at first…
But then, all of a sudden, the room starts to spin. I flywheel my arms, trying to keep balance. I cannot. The floor seems to heave and dip, and I fall to the ground.
The ringing amplifies in my head. I grasp my ears, struggling to fight against it. “Turn it off,” I scream. �
��Turn it off!”
Paul lets go of the button. The frequency stops. All is quiet, but it takes a few moments for the ringing in my ears to stop. I put one hand on the ground to support myself and take a series of deep, haggard breaths.
I look up at Paul. I see two of him. I concentrate, and after another minute or so, the two merge into one.
Gingerly, I try to stand. I wobble a little bit as I do. When I’m upright, I take a few more breaths, trying to clear my mind.
The effects of that short exposure to the noise take a long time to wear off. Paul is trying—failing--to hide a smile.
“Not what you expected, is it?”
“No,” I shake my head.
Even that was a stupid move. It makes the room spin again.
“Give it another minute, and you’ll be fine,” Paul tells me.
“You’d better be right.”
“I am.”
More time passes, and finally the effects of exposure wear off.
“I’d suggest giving one of these to Victoria, so she can control the vampire should he recover and prove… uncooperative.”
“He’s in silver bonds, he can’t break out,” I repeat for the dozenth time.
Nevertheless, I take the device from Paul. “But a contingency plan is never a bad idea.”
I look around us. “Anything else you want to show me?”
“Nothing now,” he says. “We have hundreds of different weapons, all designed specifically for Creatures of the Night. You can peruse them later, on your own time.”
“I’ll do that,” I say, then gesture for him to lead us out.
When we’re walking back to the heart of the compound, Paul asks, “What sort of problem did Smithson run into with the obsidian?”
“It wasn’t clear,” I grunt. “I think he’s hiding something.”
“Well, as long as we get the raw material we need, we should be fine,” he says. “I’ll go put the order in for our soldiers to handle the delivery. Then I’ll go prepare the computers for the carving of the runes. By your leave, James.”
I gesture at him to go. He cuts away and strides down a side hall.
I look at the small grenade-looking device in my hand and wonder just how the hell they were able to come up with it.