Stakes and Stones

by Bilinda Sheehan

  Gesturing to the large black duffel bag on the bed, I said, “Drop them in there. No guarantee they’ll let us in there with it, but I’m still going to try.”

  Sofia shrugged and tucked two stakes up inside the tight cuffs of her leather jacket before she dropped the rest of them into the bag.

  “I think our ride is here,” she said softly, her voice betraying none of her emotions.

  “I didn’t know we were going to get an escort.” I moved to the window as I spoke, peering out at the black SUV, the windows of which were tinted, making it impossible to tell who was inside it.

  “So what’s the play here,” she asked, taking me by surprise. I’d thought now she was here, that she would take charge. She was after all Division chief and my direct superior.

  “Don’t you want to give the orders?”

  Sofia shrugged. “I could, but you know this Carmine best. I’m willing, under the circumstances, to defer to your expertise on the matter.”

  “I haven’t seen her since—” I cut myself off. I didn’t need to mention that now, it would only bring back memories I would rather keep buried, and I needed to concentrate on the matters at hand. I sighed. “Honestly, the only plan I have is kill Carmine and save Grey.”

  Sofia stared at me for a moment, her dark eyes studying me the way a bird of prey might study a field mouse before swooping down to eat it.

  “That’s all you’ve got?”

  I shrugged. “We’ve got no reconnaissance, no back up, and frankly we don’t even know what bloody Elder God she hopes to summon.” I ticked the items off on my fingers as I spoke. “We’ll be lucky if we last five minutes, so I’m not sure I see a point in planning beyond that point in time.”

  The corner of Sofia’s lips curled upwards in a sort of crooked smile. “I never was much for a fight I knew I could win,” she said. “It’s always more fun when you don’t know if you’ll walk out of there with everything intact. Gives you more of an edge because everything is so much sharper. More in focus.”

  “Yeah…” I trailed off. If I’d thought Sofia was an odd duck before, I knew she was one now. Who got excited about entering a fight you didn’t know you could win, where the only way out was by winning or in a body bag?

  A horn sounded from the street.

  “We should go,” Sofia said, actually managing to sound a little eager.

  “Have you contacted the hospital since…”

  She paused near the door. “He hasn’t woken up if that’s what you’re wondering, but Dr. Daniels said he’s holding his own for now.”

  “So he’s stopped deteriorating, then?”

  “I didn’t say that and neither did he.” She turned to face me. “Is there something you’re not telling me about all of this?”

  Alex’s secret was his own to share. It wasn’t down to me to tell Sofia about it. And anyway, it wasn’t as if her knowing he was an immortal, the son of a God, would do anything to change the situation he was in. It wasn’t going to cure him, and if he did survive, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be too pleased with knowing I’d blabbed his secret to our boss the first chance I got.

  “Nothing that will change things.” I zipped up the duffel bag and swung it onto my shoulder, the weapons inside clinking and clanking together as the slid about.

  “So there’s something?”

  “I can’t tell you anything, Sofia,” I said.

  “I could make you talk.”

  “I’m sure you could try,” I said, throwing her words from earlier back in her face. “But it wouldn’t change anything, and right now we’re better off fighting as a united front than one divided.”

  I could practically see the cogs turning over in her mind as she stared at me for what felt like a lifetime. When she tugged open the bedroom door, I found myself letting go of the breath I’d been holding. For one split second it had felt like she might actually choose to beat the truth from me and after what I’d seen her do a short while ago with her hands becoming talons, I suddenly didn’t want to find myself on the wrong side of her.

  “Let’s go, then,” she said. “The lock isn’t going to open by itself.”

  Her words had a strange ring of providence to them, but I shrugged it off and followed her out the door.

  It wasn’t until we were sitting in the back of the SUV and climbing the hill toward the abbey that it suddenly clicked in my head. Adrian’s warning to stay away rushed back to me with sudden painful clarity.

  “You cannot go after, Grey. If you go after him, she will have you, Jenna, and that’s a risk you can’t take.”

  I’d thought he was being selfish, trying to protect me from facing Carmine. I’d thought he was worried I’d end up dead, but that wasn’t it at all and I was just too pig-headed to see it.

  Grey was the lock, which made me the key. Together we would open the rift for the Elder God to come through. I wasn’t sure how it would happen but I knew it was true. The cold certainty sat in my stomach, weighing on me as the car came to a halt and the door swung open from the outside.

  I stepped out, onto the gravel that had been placed in the field, creating a make-shift driveway in front of the abbey. Silvery moonlight filtered down through the ruined windows and walls of what once must have been a magnificent structure. Even now, without a roof or many of the inner walls it was still imposing and utterly enchanting in the dark.

  I stared up at it as Sofia stepped out next to me.

  “I think this is a mistake,” I said softly.

  “What?” She turned toward me.

  “So lovely you could join us,” Emily’s voice sent ice coursing through my veins and I knew then it was too late to turn tail and run. For better or worse, I was going to the vampire’s ball and Carmine would finally have everything she’d wanted in the one place.

  Chapter 38

  Turning to face her, my gaze raked down over the see-through black lace affair Emily wore. Her skin shimmered under the moonlight with a pearlescent glow. The only thing keeping her modesty intact was the slightly heavier patches of lace covering her nipples and the juncture of her thighs.

  “Carmine wasn’t sure if you would come,” she said, eyeing the dress I wore. Her gaze fell on the duffel bag of weapons in my hand and she quirked a perfectly shaped brow in my direction. “Looks like you came prepared to wage war on us.” There was an edge to her voice, the kind you might hear from an adult humouring the whims of a particularly wayward child.

  I shrugged, the scales of my dress sparkling in the corner of my eye. “What can I say, I like to have a good time.”

  Her smile was sharp and icy, heavy with the threat it promised.

  “Mistress says you can keep your toys,” she paused and cocked her head to the side as though listening to music only she could hear. “For now at least. She’s confident that when the time comes, you’ll have no need for such trifles.”

  There was a formality to her speech patterns that I recognised as belonging to Carmine. Perhaps it wasn’t music she was listening to but the sound of her master’s, or in this case, mistress’ voice.

  Emily’s smile warmed, giving her a much more youthful look. What had happened to her to make her throw her lot in with someone like Carmine? What had she been promised in exchange for her fealty?

  No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t imagine what it would take to twist someone so young to something so dark.

  “Please, follow me,” she said, “the others are anxious to meet you.” She gestured for us to follow her. I shot Sofia a quick glance but she shrugged and made a shooing motion with her hands.

  I fell into step behind Emily, allowing her to choose the path we took up to the abbey. Music drifted over the breeze toward us, a heavy beat that begged to be obeyed.

  “What would happen if it rained?” I asked, glancing up the cloudless sky. “Or snowed for that matter.” My mind instantly conjuring the memory of Jack Frost’s snow and ice blizzards from the night before.

  “It wou
ldn’t matter,” she said matter of factly. “The weather is of no consequence to the main guests. The cold really isn’t something they need to worry about.”

  I knew instantly she was talking about the vampires but I still couldn’t imagine the ball being a raging success if everything was buried in ten feet of snow.

  “Anyway,” she continued, unperturbed by my silence, “with a little magic, we can keep the main area warm and free of the elements.”

  She stepped from the gravel pathway onto what looked like a large black flagstone and turned to smile at me. “You’ll soon understand.”

  I crossed the barrier, or at least that was how it felt to me, magic pushing against my skin like hundreds of invisible hands. On the other side, the air was balmy, making me think of a night in the height of summer. The gentle sound of waves lapping against the face of the cliff below us mingled with the music and the murmuring of voices.

  “Impressed yet?” There was unbridled joy in Emily’s face and she spread her arms wide, twirling away from me so that the mermaid tail of her dress swept across the black and white chessboard marble floor.

  I blinked, suddenly unable to trust my eyes. The floor spread away from us, broken pillars re-formed and sprang up into the air, the walls that just moments before had been ruined were now whole, the stone unmarked by the destruction that time had visited upon them.

  Stained glass spread through the windows, forming in a pattern that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a spider’s web. Sconces lining the walls burned with a warm golden light, allowing the shadows to hug the walls and nooks, whilst the centre of the room which now had all the appearances of a ballroom was bright and crowded with the press of hundreds of bodies.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered and Emily’s smile only widened.

  “I’m so glad you like it,” she said. “If you come this way, Carmine will see you now.”

  Sofia’s fingers dug into my elbow, holding me back from following Emily through the crowd.

  “Just how much power does she have?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea, but this has to be taking some serious juice to pull off.”

  Pressing my hand against the nearest stone wall, I was surprised to find that it was solid beneath my fingers. “I don’t think this is a glamour.”

  “Are you coming?” Emily called back to us, her tone more than a little impatient.

  We started to follow and I couldn’t help but feel a little ridiculous carrying a black duffel bag full of weapons. If they could create something as elaborate as all of this, what good would my paltry arsenal be?

  As Emily moved into the crowd, they parted before her like a sea made entirely of human flesh. And they were all human, there was no doubt in my mind about it. I couldn’t be certain but there had to be up to five hundred in the middle of the room alone, and judging by the sheer size of the abbey, there could be so many more I wasn’t seeing.

  My heart leaped into my throat. With this many humans packed in like lambs for the slaughter, how many vampires were waiting to feed?

  Sofia shared a worried glance with me. Clearly she’d had the same thought.

  The crowd parted, revealing a dais on which a throne sat. It looked somewhat out of place, almost gaudy, made of gold with red velvet cushions fashioned into a seat. It was empty.

  My eyes moved past the throne to the rich purple velvet curtains that obscured the wall.

  Carmine slipped out from behind the curtain and for a moment I almost didn’t recognise her. She wore a diaphanous white dress with red blooms gathered up at her neck. It fell to the floor so that each time she took a step one dainty foot appeared. The dress itself left little to the imagination about what lay underneath, her body fully exposed to all who cared to look at it.

  As she crossed the stage toward us, what I’d thought were red blooms suddenly came into focus.

  The fabric stuck to the still bloody wounds dotted around her full breasts and thighs. Ruby blood trickled down her body from one particularly violent bite, the individual indentations of each tooth that had torn at her visible. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the droplet of blood that travelled over her skin, leaving a pinkish trail in its wake across her abdomen.

  “Jenna,” she said, her voice honey sweet and just as sickly. I ripped my gaze away from the bloody bites dotting her flesh and looked into her face.

  She had only one cornflower blue eye now, the other was a milky white. A purple scar trailed from the ruined eye down the side of her face all the way to her mouth, drawing down the corners of her lips so that on that side she had a permanent melancholic look. With a smile that only affected one side of her face, she appeared as the living embodiment of the Thalia and Melpomene masks said to represent the muse of comedy and tragedy, respectively, in the Greek theatre.

  The jagged scars extended down beneath the ruffle at her throat, a gathering of fabric that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an Elizabethan queen.

  “I thought you’d be happier to see me,” she said, “happy to know I hadn’t perished all those years ago when our former lover discarded me in favour of you.”

  I knew she was talking about Kypherous, and it took all of my strength not to mount the dais and wipe the smile off her face with my fist.

  “Clearly, he didn’t try hard enough to be rid of you.” I shrugged as nonchalantly as my anger would allow. “You did, after all, survive.”

  Carmine’s expression darkened, the rage that flooded her one still perfect eye turned it almost indigo under the golden candlelight that flickered overhead.

  “I gave him everything,” she spat the words at me, “and still he—” She cut off, smoothing her hands down over the front of her dress in an attempt to regain her composure.

  Once calm, she returned her attention to me. “Not that it matters now, it’s all water under the bridge. And anyway, it brought me here, to this moment…” She spread her arms wide in an all-encompassing gesture of gratitude, the smile on her face beatific as she looked out at the crowd.

  “And here is where I belong.” She glanced down at me once more. “I always knew I was destined for greatness, to bring about a new era in this world controlled by the humans.” The sneer in her voice sent a jolt of disquiet through my body. “Look at them out there,” she paused dramatically, waiting for me to look out at the humans enjoying themselves.

  “We don’t have to do this, Carmine,” I said, “you don’t have to do this. I know Kypherous hurt you but—”

  She stamped her dainty foot against the floor. Two high spots of colour flared to life on her cheeks as she glared down at me.

  “You know nothing. You are nothing. You’re here only because I allow it.”

  I sucked in a deep breath. Being this close to her anger was like finding yourself in front of an open oven door and I was bathed in the heat of her rage.

  “You know what it’s like to suffer. You don’t need to inflict that on anyone else, Carmine, we can end this peaceably and—”

  “And what?” Her laughter took me by surprise, the change in her demeanour was so sudden that I found myself struggling to keep up with her emotional state.

  “Do you think me a fool, Jenna?” Her voice went low, so charged was it with the energy of her power that I could feel it whisper through my mind, echoing around in my head until I wanted to scream for her to stop. “Do you think after everything I’ve done to bring you here that I’ll fall for that ruse. ‘We can be friends. You don’t have to hurt anyone, Carmine, we can fix this. I can help you.’” She laughed again, throwing her head back, her entire body overcome with the mirth and I knew there was no hope.

  There would be no turning her away from her plans. There would be no… what had Alex called it? Oh right, a Hail Mary. I stared up into Carmine’s face, the face of insanity, and saw myself. What Kypherous had done to her was unspeakable. He’d broken her so completely that what remained was spoiled, rotten from the inside out. It could so easily have been me.
And I knew on some level I owed Carmine my life. If Kypherous’ full attention had been on me during the formative years of my life… If his appetite hadn’t been sated elsewhere, on some other’s flesh, on Carmine’s flesh… I pushed the thought away, it was too dark to even think it. Right now, I needed to keep my attention on the matter unfolding before me.

  There was one thing I was very certain about, I would have to destroy her. As soon as the thought popped into my brain, I realised what Kypherous had done. When he’d said he’d destroyed her, I’d taken him at face value. Foolishly I’d believed he had murdered her, it had certainly sounded painful enough, and looking up into her face I knew physically it was, but those weren’t the scars that Carmine hadn’t yet healed. His discarding of her was what had destroyed her. He’d chosen me as his queen and it had broken what little of Carmine’s mind had remained. She hadn’t told me any of this but I knew it as surely as if she’d stood before me and spoken the words aloud.

  He had ruined her, physically marring her beauty as well as emotionally, destroying her sanity when he’d taken his love away. Or at least, in Carmine’s head, what passed for love.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, ignoring the sharp look from Sofia.

  “For what?” Carmine’s voice was dangerously quiet.

  “For everything he did to you,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to end him before he hurt you… Before he turned you into this.”

  For a moment there was silence as emotions warred within Carmine. I could see them all as they flitted across her face, brief flashes but enough to get an insight into her mind.

  “You pity me,” she spoke softly. “You stand here because I will it and you actually pity me…”

  “You’re to be pitied, Carmine—”

  Her agonised scream caused my words to stick in the back of my throat. From the corner of my eye, I saw Emily’s panic-stricken expression as Carmine began to claw at her own face and neck.

  I took a step back, almost bumping into Sofia who was standing so close to me, I could feel the heat of her skin through my dress.