by E. M. Knight
Did they test it on the vampire they were keeping prisoner?
I reach Victoria. She’s on high alert. As soon as she sees me, she darts over.
“He’s showing unusual brain activity,” she says.
I frown. “Show me.”
She runs back to her monitors and points at the screen. “Right now, there’s nothing,” she says. “Regular delta waves, indicative of deep sleep. But a few minutes ago…” she scrolls through the history. “It went chaotic.”
I look at the patterns on the screen and whistle. The now-calm brainwaves were shooting all over the place before.
“What does it mean?” I ask.
“That he’s awakening.” Victoria swallows. “His presence is still so weak, but his mind seems to be on the fast-track to recovery. We shouldn’t be seeing activity like this until he’s waking up. But he is not recovered anywhere near enough to reach that point.”
“Interesting,” I murmur. I look at the shape on the raised bed. “Has he stirred otherwise?”
Victoria shakes her head. “Not a move.”
“I’m going to take a closer look at him. “Here—take this.”
I hand Victoria the device Paul gave me.
“What is it?”
“It disables a vampire without killing him. If anything happens, point it at him, and press the button.”
“And then what?” she asks skeptically.
“And then you’ll see real magic.” I give a coy smirk.
She mutters something under her breath about spectacular arrogance.
I come up to the vampire’s bed. He is lying perfectly still, eyes closed, face up.
I focus on his presence. It’s slightly stronger than it was last I was here. But not much.
Certainly not enough to warrant the brain activity Victoria showed me.
I double check the silver around his wrists and ankles. It’s well in place. Heeding Paul’s warning, however, I decide one more link binding his feet together would be prudent.
I hold a hand out in the direction of the closest where the supplies are held. One silver chain flies through the air, into my fist.
I blink, surprised. Was that… magic? Or a stronger manifestation of the Mind Gift?
Whatever it was, I did it without thinking. My frown deepens when I realize I’m holding the silver chain without feeling any sort of discomfort.
I look down and see the thin, protective layer of Air wrapped around my hand.
I am using magic—unconsciously!
With a start, I cut off the flow of the Elements. The silver drops to touch my skin, and I let out a hiss of pain at the burning sensation that evokes.
Quickly, I wrap the chain tight around the vampire’s legs, then turn back to Victoria.
She is staring at me as if seeing me for the first time.
“What?” I bark, not liking the feeling of being on display.
“You did that so effortlessly,” she murmurs.
I give her a little smirk. “Don’t be too impressed. I burned my hand.” I show her one part where the brand from the silver remains.
“It’ll heal fast,” she says.
I shrug. “Not the point.” I walk closer to her. “I forgot to tell you. I killed Sylvia.”
I expect her to be shocked, or angry, or maybe even upset, given what she told me last time.
She only sighs. “I suspected you would.”
“Smithson won’t be happy.”
“I’m sure he’ll understand. Circumstances have changed.”
“Yes, they have,” I agree. “Speaking of, I finally heard from him. The obsidian will be here in a matter of hours. I’ve already set Paul to begin preparing the engraving machines.”
Victoria hesitates.
“Yes?” I ask. “What is it? You have something to say, speak up!”
“I’m just not sure it will be so easy to fool Cierra,” she mutters. “If she has a way of finding you, when the time comes, the next full moon, as you promised her, it means she can track you. It means she knows that you are here, now. That means that even if we go back to that cave in British Columbia on the day of the phase shift, she’ll know where you’ve been in the interim. She won’t just walk into the trap like a blind mute.”
My expression becomes more and more unimpressed as she continues to speak.
“Of course, she knows where I am,” I counter. “But she doesn’t know what I’m doing. She’s not omniscient, Victoria.”
“But what if she is?” Victoria whispers. “What if she put a curse on you?”
“What?”
“I’ve just been thinking about Smithson. How the whole time we thought he was fine, he was having his powers sapped by Cierra. Remember? It was only after we discovered it, and I extracted the taint from him, that he became himself again.”
“And this has to do with me, how?” I ask.
“What if Cierra knew you had the potential for magic? What if she sensed it in you, and sent you away on this mission to discover it for yourself, only so that she could exploit it after it was developed?”
“That sounds far-fetched.”
“Does it?” Victoria asks. “I’ve been reading.” She gestures at one of the computer screens. “The Crusaders have a huge digitized archive of ancient books. Paul first showed it to me while you were recovering.”
“And?” I ask.
“Some of them hold esoteric knowledge. Most of it is utter B.S., but there are some that prove legitimate. They line up with my knowledge of the occult.”
“Okay. So, what do they say?”
“One of them speaks about curses. Hexes. Malicious derivatives of regular spells that, once set, remain for an indeterminable amount of time. They don’t even need a continuous flow of magic to be active: they are self-sustaining.”
“What do they do?”
“Small things. Some might give you a continuous spate of bad luck. Others might trigger bad memories at precise moments, just to mess with you. They seem like juvenile things overall. But there was one that caught my attention: it has the ability to tell the caster where her target is at all times. That’s the sort of thing Cierra must have set on you.”
“But you haven’t sensed anything? Not like with Smithson?”
“No. But…”
“It doesn’t matter,” I cut her off. “Even if you could sense it, assuming it’s there, Cierra would notice it gone and realize I am trying to hide. Let it be. We want her to assume all is right when she comes to us.”
“That’s not the most important thing, James.”
“What is?”
“The text also spoke of a similar curse. One that can be used to listen in on every sound that enters your ears and every syllable that leaves your lips.” She swallows. “I fear, if Cierra did curse you, it would have been with that.”
I snap to attention. “Are you serious?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Damn,” I mutter. “And you have no way of detecting it?”
“I don’t sense it. That doesn’t mean it’s not present.”
“So, this whole time, Cierra could have been listening to every word I’ve said? To every conversation I’ve had?”
Victoria nods.
“That’s… a problem.”
“There is one saving grace.” She hesitates. “The witch who casts a curse like that has to be actively listening to hear it. To do so, she has to block out all her own sensory perceptions of the world and focus only on yours. The curse offers a link, a live stream if you will, but it is real-time, and listening requires her full attention.”
“So, she is either in her body, living her life… or zoned into mine?” I ask.
Victoria nods. “She would have to enter a sort of trance state to pick up what the curse is transmitting.”
I roll my head from side to side. “Then I guess it all depends on how much attention Cierra decides to pay me.” I give my shoulder a tight squeeze. “Not a good feeling to know you ar
e being spied upon. All the more reason to—” I choke off what I was going to first say and change it, “—to do what we promised her to do.”
“Yes,” Victoria agrees.
“Keep looking, then,” I say. “You have a new assignment. See if you can discover some way of cutting off the transmission—or even discovering if the curse does exist in the first place. I can’t believe that a curse would be impossible for another witch to detect. Maybe it’s difficult, but for all I’ve seen and experienced with magic, I have the feeling that nothing is exactly impossible in that realm.”
“I’ll do as much as I can,” Victoria agrees. “In the meantime, perhaps it’s best if you were kept in the dark about Paul’s progress? The less you know, the less can be used against us.”
“I don’t like that one bit,” I grumble. “I am not going to change the way I conduct myself for fear of some human.”
“She is the Black Sorceress,” Victoria whispers. “Not some woman.”
“And I’m an all-powerful vampire in charge of soon-to-be the greatest coven to have ever existed in this world!” I fire back. “Who also, coincidentally, has the ability to do magic. An ability that, in your own words, is greater than Cierra’s.”
“Just listen to yourself!” she hisses. “Have you forgotten entirely how simple it was for me to disarm you? Yes, you have brute strength. No, that is not enough!”
“What would you have me do?” I ask. “You want me to give up? It’s not in my nature to give up, Victoria. Cierra can come to me right now for all I care. This is my turf. Here, I have the advantage.”
“Whenever magic is concerned,” she says. “Cierra has the advantage.”
“Bah!” I exclaim. This is impossible. “What do you mean by all this, Victoria? What the hell are you trying to do?”
“I’m trying to get you to be more careful!” she cries out. “I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”
I give her a look. “You won’t.”
“No,” she says. “You don’t understand. I… I think I’m in love with you.”
She crosses her arms and quickly turns away.
“What?”
“Don’t make me say it again.” She steps farther away, tries to lift her chin so she’s not quite so vulnerable.
I come around to her. She keeps her cheek away from me. I reach out to touch her arm, but she jerks back.
“Just go,” she says. Her voice breaks. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Go, leave me alone. Forget this ever happened!”
Slowly, I reach across and take her by the opposite shoulder. I gently turn her toward me. She avoids eye contact, staring first at the ground, then at my chest.
With one hand, I take her chin and tilt it up. I see her eyes are a little wet. She sniffs and wipes away the tears angrily.
I look deep into her eyes. “You know I can’t say it back to you.”
“I know,” she replies. “That’s why it’s so stupid. Just—forget it, James. Pretend I didn’t say a thing.”
“But you did.”
“Yes, I did, and so what?” Now there’s a bit of fire in her, burning away the melancholy. “I got emotional. You were being so… so…”
“Stubborn?” I ask.
“Idiotic!” she exclaims. “I warn you of something important, and you laugh it off and call me a fool for worrying.”
“I did not call you that.”
She jerks her head away. “It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”
“So, you… what you said is true?”
“What does it matter? I’m just some stupid girl getting carried away by the moment.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“Gee, thanks.” She glances my way to give a scathing look.
“You remember the first time we met?”
“Of course I do. I was your father’s concubine.”
“Not that. When Logan was about to crush me, you stepped in and intervened. You saved me. I owe you my life.”
She looks at me and raises her eyebrows, making her eyes look particularly big.
“You saved it,” I reiterate, “and I will not throw that gift away. I know you’re worried. I would be, too—but I cannot. Confidence is the most important thing when facing the unknown.”
“You certainly have it in spades,” she mutters.
“I will not let Cierra win,” I tell her. “Are you kidding? She can know everything we’re planning, like you said, and it wouldn’t make one iota of difference. It will be strength versus strength, cunning versus cunning. So, we can’t spring the trap on her—so what? We still have the obsidian, do we not? We still have the vampiric edge. We have the whole of The Crusaders at our disposal. We have The Order. And, most of all, we have my magic.”
I make a ring of fire burst to life around us. I don’t know how I do it, exactly, but the flames are all blue and lacking any heat.
“Put your hands out,” I tell her. “Touch them.”
The blue illumination makes her face particularly beautiful.
She puts her hand out. The second her flesh meets flame, she gasps.
“It’s warming me up,” she says. “From the inside. If I break contact—” she pulls her hand away, “—there’s nothing. But when my hand is inside…”
“It feels safe, doesn’t it?” I ask.
“Yes,” she agrees. “Safe.”
I let the fire vanish. “I did that without thought. It’s like my body was made for magic, Victoria. You saw the ways I’ve manipulated the Forces before. The weaves just come to me. It’s all unconscious.”
“And you believe the same thing will happen when you face off against Cierra,” she mutters. “You will just know what to do?”
“I’m sure of it.”
She presses her lips together and looks over my face for a long time.
Finally, she answers, “Okay, I believe you.”
“Yes?” I confirm. “I will not waste what I have. That, I promise you.”
“Some promise,” she mutters. Then, she sighs, “Though I suppose I should be grateful for you not embarrassing me further.”
“Nothing to be ashamed about,” I quip. But then I make my voice serious. “I understand you care about me. I care about you, too, Victoria. But love—”
“Don’t say it,” she cuts in. “Don’t. Just… forget it, for now. I know you can’t reciprocate. It’s not who you are.”
“Good,” I tell her. “I’m glad we got that all settled.”
“Yeah,” she murmurs.
“Hey.” I take her chin again and tilt her head up.
Then I kiss her.
The kiss is slow, soft, exploratory and free. But within a few seconds, the passion explodes. I begin to claw at her clothes, and she at mine.
“Wait.” Breathlessly, she breaks off. “We can’t. Not here.”
I have a hard time taming the urges inside me. Eventually, I agree.
“You’re right. No time.”
“Go see to the obsidian shipment,” she says, pushing me away by the chest. “I’ll stay here and monitor our vampire—”
The words die on her tongue. I turn the way she’s looking, toward the bed, and discover the cause of her loss of words:
The bed is empty.
“What the hell?” I curse and rush over. The silver bonds are all there, attached to the frame as I’d left them. The extra silver chain I’d wrapped around his legs lies on the sheets, completely whole.
I flare my vampire senses out to scan the room. I find nobody. Nobody, nothing, no living essence anywhere in our vicinity.
My eyes dart to the door. It’s closed. There’s no way he could have gotten through without us noticing.
“He’s in this room,” I say, turning around and letting my claws extend. “I can’t feel him, but he’s in here, somewhere, somehow cloaked.” I swear again. I should have known! The burst of brainwave activity was a dead giveaway. He was hiding himself, biding his time…
But how the hell d
id he get out of the bonds without so much as breaking them? They are still all entirely whole.
Victoria’s claws are out, too. She is in the hunter’s stance. Her eyes scan every single surface of the room, trying to find the space where he might be hiding.
We look at each other. The tension in the air rises.
It feels like we’ve walked into a bear trap that’s about to be sprung on us.
Suddenly, a portal opens behind Victoria. I have no sense of the weaves used to make it, but it emits a vile red light that’s tinged with black corruption.
Two hands reach out and wrap around Victoria’s shoulder. Before she or I can react, she’s pulled in, through the opaque, swirling black and red veil.
Just as quickly as it had opened, the portal starts to close. I’m too far away to reach it. I throw a stream of Air at it, trying to keep it open.
My weaves are sliced as if by a laser. The portal keeps shrinking, just on the verge of winking out of existence.
Desperately, I fling magic at it to keep it open. I do not know what mix of Elements I use, all I know is that I have to direct power at it long enough for me to get inside.
But when my stream of magic touches the portal, the weaves rebound into me and knock me back. A horrible, nauseous, sick feeling takes me.
The portal stops shrinking. Some portion of my spell, whatever it was, I can’t tell, it was instinctual, clings to the opening and holds it in place.
I know it won’t last long. I push through the sickness, fighting aside the horrible nausea, and bound for the portal. Halfway to it, my second spell snaps. The portal shimmers once, then starts to zoom shut at double the velocity from before.
I place my feet, bend my knees, and in one jump, leap for the opening like a diver into a pool.
My outstretched hands make contact first. As soon as they do, a suction takes over and pulls me in. I’m catapulted through the opening to be spit out on the other side.
But not fast enough.
I let out a soul-searing scream as the portal closes on my foot, cutting it in two. I land on the other side, disoriented, pain searing through me, and hit the ground hard. I tumble over and over like a rag doll until the momentum runs out and I stop.
I lay there, on the ground, panting hard. I lift my head and vaguely look at my feet.