by Eva Brandt
“Good call. Except, you see, as much as I appreciate your compliment, there’s one hole in that reasoning. I haven’t had Alarian in a while, and I’m sure you’ll make a fine dish for even the most refined palate.”
Fourteen
Selfish
Darius
“I fear that Lucienne might already be displaying signs of the Accursed Syndrome.”
Those were the words that had frozen my heart in my chest the day before, when Malachai had called me to report what he had learned from his friend. I had panicked so badly that if not for Bjorn’s intervention, I would’ve surely collapsed under the strain of the Vow and my own emotions.
“Your Highness, I’m sure this is only an anomaly caused by her newly awakened legacy,” he had said. “There is no reason to panic just yet. Guardian Whelan and Guardian Braun are just jumping at shadows.”
Bjorn had been right, of course. Had the curse already started to settle in, Cardinal Vaughn would’ve certainly noticed and mentioned it. That knowledge had given me the strength to endure and focus on trying to figure out the answers to all of my questions.
I had still made some discreet arrangements with Eileen Vaughn and planned to get Guardian Whelan to bring Lucienne in for a check-up. Unfortunately, before I could go through with my idea, another batch of news had come in. Plagues had been spotted by Malachai Braun. Every enforcer and guardian in New York City was summoned to assist.
I had gone as well, and as I stood in front of the man who wanted to rob me of my soulmate, I realized with a heavy heart that the situation was far worse than I’d thought.
This wasn’t just any plague. If I had known he was the mastermind behind the attack at the club and all the kidnappings, I’d have been far more cautious. But I had not, and now, here I was, having to face what was perhaps one of the worst nightmares of most Accursed.
Mathias Vandale was almost legendary in all paranormal communities and a huge part of the reason why other beings were so wary of Accursed in general. We might have had our problems, but no race was perfect, and every species—supernatural or otherwise—had its fair share of rotten apples. For that reason, some people admitted that we were doing our best to handle the bad hand we had been dealt. Even so, it was difficult to keep any kind of goodwill from the international community when we had something very specific in common with the man who’d caused the Black Plague just because he was hungry.
He was also very difficult to pin down, and until today, I hadn’t even known how he looked like. No one who met him ever survived long enough to tell the tale. If we had any information about him at all, it was just because he went out of his way to occasionally leave us tips. I wondered if the USB stick from the Banished had been exactly that, another trick and a game staged by the insane plague.
In any case, we were here now, and playtime was over. “I haven’t had Alarian in a while, and I’m sure you’ll make a fine dish for even the most refined palate,” he said. “It appears that today is my lucky day. I’ll have werewolf, vampire, twice-blessed and Alarian as my meals. At this rate, I’ll start putting on weight.”
I suppressed a flinch. Considering that he had targeted Lucienne in specific, it seemed likely that Declan Whelan was dead. No wonder Lucienne was so devastated.
Well, I would not go down as easily as a werewolf. “I’m afraid the buffet is closed today, Mr. Vandale. I’m told Alarian food can give plagues indigestion.”
All the banter grated on me, but unfortunately, it was necessary. I needed to remove Vandale as soon as possible and get Lucienne some medical attention. If I couldn’t defeat him outright, I had to at least push him back or lure him away, in order to give my people an opening to retrieve her and take her to safety.
My magic flared at my fingertips, tendrils of flame blazing over my body. For the most part, I was bluffing, since I couldn’t unleash the full extent of my more destructive powers, not with Lucienne in the line of fire. However, Vandale was nothing if not greedy and sadistic, and he could be goaded into an attack with enough poking and prodding. “I invite you to try to come at me if you think I’m such an easy target. That is, unless you prefer preying on the defenseless—which, considering what I’ve heard, might very well be true. “
As insults went, it wasn’t the best quip I could have come up with. Vandale probably took it at least in part as a compliment, since he reveled in preying on the weak. Still, my purpose was achieved, since he was no longer paying attention to Lucienne at all.
A cloud of dark magic settled around us, crackling with electricity and malicious intent. His power attempted to reach into me, to extract my life force like he must have done to every other person he had killed. It didn’t work. Alarians weren’t aligned to just one element like every other type of Accursed. Our affinity was far less limited, and that gave me protection.
It certainly didn’t hurt that I was the most powerful Alarian of my generation. Vandale couldn’t just crack me open and take what he wanted.
Of course, that just made me more intriguing to him, and he let out a bark of delighted laughter. “Oh, I’m going to take my time with you, princeling. And then, when I’m done, I’ll take every single person you’ve pretended to love as my dessert.”
I didn’t bother replying again. My words had already accomplished their goal, and he shot toward me, leaving Lucienne behind, next to Malachai’s prone form. I congratulated myself for a job well done and focused on the fight, trusting Bjorn to be able to retrieve Lucienne.
I had no other choice. Unfortunately, Vandale was wrong in his assessment about me only “pretending” to care. I could already feel the strain of the Vow pulsing at the back of my mind once again. If I wasn’t careful, Vandale might just have his Alarian meal after all.
But even Vandale had his weaknesses, and I just happened to be in the perfect position to exploit them. As his magic slashed over my skin, I aimed a superficial fire enchantment at him, all the while concentrating on the sole approach I knew would work with a plague.
Vandale batted my blast away with ease and arched a disbelieving brow. “Come now, princeling. Don’t let me down. I know you’ve got more fight in you than that.”
The skies darkened, and the static electricity in the atmosphere grew thicker, making the air almost impossible to breathe. I heard Lucienne let out a low cry, and a pulse of agony burst through my temples in response to her fear, grief, and pain. The pressure affected my subordinates as well. They might not have suffered from the side-effects of a broken Alarian Vow, and they might not have been as physically vulnerable as Lucienne, but they could not completely resist the amount of plague magic converging upon us.
I had only one option. High King, please help me get through this. Please, let this work.
Staring past Vandale’s shoulder, at Lucienne, I reached into my core and pushed. When my magic connected to Vandale’s suffocating power, I almost keeled over and blacked out on the spot. Instead, I gritted my teeth, grabbed onto it and started to absorb it, drawing it into myself and letting it dissipate harmlessly, using my own body as a conduit.
Lightning flashed through every single part of me, but I endured the pain. Physical agony was nothing. In fact, up to a point, it helped me. I had been trained for this. Having to focus on the physical aspect separated me from my emotions, which in turn lessened the burden the Vow placed on me.
Oh, the irony.
For a few seconds, Vandale just stared at me in shock. His surprise earned me a small respite, but it didn’t last, as he recovered quickly. “You do realize that absorbing my ambient magic won’t help you escape me, right?”
“Oh, of course,” I replied. “It doesn’t have to.”
Trying to use more than one element at the same time was akin to suicide, even for someone like me. If an Accursed lost control over his or her elemental abilities, he or she could easily die, overwhelmed by their own power. But I was out of time and out of options, and this was the best idea that occurred to me, con
sidering my current state.
I took a deep breath and clenched my fists, willing the fire intrinsic to my nature to respond to my command. The moment I began to focus on the second enchantment, the pain amplified, but I embraced it and accepted it as a natural consequence of my decision.
In the blink of an eye, Vandale was engulfed in a bright sphere of flame. By the time he realized what I had in mind, I had already succeeded to trap him, and my fire magic was consuming the air around him, cutting him off from the main source of his power.
I knew better than to believe that my actions made him less of a threat, as there was a good chance he could still reach the air beyond my magic, at least until I could completely knock him out. Hoping to keep this from happening, I exerted more pressure, tightening the hold of the sphere around Vandale.
He didn’t try to fight back using any of his elemental skills and didn’t defend himself from my attempts to suffocate him. Even as his skin started blistering and peeling, he laughed at me and said, “That’s a nice trick, Alarian. But I’ve felt too much pain to be impressed by your feeble attempts to capture me. Perhaps... Perhaps I should give you a taste of it, yes?”
Our gazes met, and in the blue depths of his eyes, I saw utter hell, chaos, and destruction. The last thing that occurred to me was that plagues shouldn’t have been mind mages, and then, my world exploded into a rush of agony and despair.
* * *
Lucienne
Epic battles looked very different when witnessed in person than they did on a movie screen.
A picture, no matter how vivid, could not capture the scent of blood, the taste of tears and hopelessness, and the deafening cries that raked over a person’s soul. They could not convey the full extent of the devastation true evil could unleash upon the world.
Reality was quite different. It was not the first time I’d crossed paths with scavengers, but a part of me was still in shock over what Vandale had told me. Even so, I didn’t let it paralyze me. When I finally understood what Prince Darius was doing, I took advantage of my chance to try to see if I could help Malachai.
Just like I’d had the day of the attack at the club, I bent over the body of the injured guardian, this time a vampire, not a werewolf. My hands shook as I remembered Declan. Was he really dead, or had the man—Vandale—been taunting me? I didn’t know. I was so scared. Everything kept piling up, and I felt so helpless to stop it, to keep things from escalating further.
Somewhere to my right, an enforcer stabbed one of Vandale’s men in the gut. The man fell, pulled the knife out of his wound and got back on his feet. The enforcer ended up nearly having his head cut off with his own weapon.
I didn’t have their resilience or skill, but I refused to fall apart when there was still something I could do. Focus, Lucienne. Focus. You can help him. Just don’t give up.
I positioned my hands over Malachai’s chest, but the moment I attempted to perform CPR, I encountered the first hiccup in my plan. Trying to exert pressure on his chest was not unlike shoving one’s body against a brick wall. I remembered how heavy Accursed bodies had always seemed when they slumped down on top of me, and I realized their muscles and bone structures were probably far denser than those of a regular human. I wasn’t strong enough to perform first aid on Malachai.
On the other hand, now that I had the time to look more carefully, I realized that Malachai still had a pulse. It was slow, almost imperceptible, but it was there. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation might work better.
“It would,” the voice whispered in my mind. “A plague’s life steal ability deprives someone of oxygen, but it takes time for the body to shut down after that. Vampires are naturally resilient to it, because they don’t need to breathe as much as others. It’s just the sunlight that is making things tougher for Guardian Braun. You can help him, but you have to be careful.”
Reassured, I pressed my lips to Malachai’s, a memory of what Darius had told me the day before flashing through my mind. “It’s not so easy to break a curse,” he had said when we’d spoken about my bond with Declan. Life wasn’t a fairytale and it seemed very unlikely that I’d be able to awaken Malachai with a kiss, like he was Sleeping Beauty and me, a gender-swapped version of Prince Charming.
And yet, the moment our lips made contact I felt something click between us as if we were two puzzle pieces that had just been slotted together. A strange power stirred in my chest, and an odd chill invaded my blood, similar to what I’d experienced at the club, but at the same time, very different.
Death. This was what death felt like. Did it taste like this too, for a plague? On Malachai’s lips, it was nice, comforting. I could accept dying like this, when it was for a higher purpose.
I had brought so much hardship to so many people I cared about. This whole curse business alone had torn apart the lives of several good men, and none of it would have happened if not for me. And then, there was the attack of the scavengers. Would they have come after Pierce and Declan if I hadn’t shot their leader? Probably not. Vandale seemed to have it out for me in specific, which of course meant that all the blood that was spilled here today would be on my hands.
“Lucienne!” my mysterious disembodied friend snapped. “That’s enough. You’ve done enough.”
The harsh words cleared the fog that had settled over my thoughts and I tore my mouth away from Malachai’s. What in the world had I been thinking? Even if this was my fault, I couldn’t lose hope, not yet. I couldn’t surrender to Vandale and his ilk.
As if to confirm my thoughts, Malachai took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Wow. I hadn’t known I had it in me. Maybe there was something to this fairytale romance thing after all, even if I knew him less than I knew Declan.
“Lucienne?” he croaked out. “What?”
I shot him a shaky smile, tentatively satisfied that at least something had gone right. “Welcome back.”
He blinked at me, still looking confused and a little dazed. “What happened?”
Even if I’d been able to explain what I’d done, I wouldn’t have had the time for it. While I’d been busy resuscitating Malachai, the battle had escalated even further. Our position was so exposed it was a minor miracle someone hadn’t stumbled into us and gotten us killed, either purposefully or through friendly fire.
And so, instead of answering Malachai, I took a quick look around, trying to figure out if there was a way we could make our escape. My eyes fell on Prince Darius, who stood a few feet away, facing off against Vandale. Whatever Darius had done while I had been helping Malachai hadn’t impressed the plague. “Come now, princeling. Don’t let me down. I know you’ve got more fight in you than that.”
Despite his propensity for bombastic speeches, Vandale chose to punctuate this particular taunt with something far more dangerous than arrogant words. Electricity started crackling around us, so thick I began to have trouble breathing. It soon became obvious that I would not be able to go through with my non-existent plan of escape. The tension in the air made it almost impossible for me to think. Running away was an impossibility.
As it turned out, I had underestimated Prince Darius. He took a deep breath, met my gaze, and attacked.
It wasn’t something visible with the naked eye. He didn’t move a muscle and remained in the exact same position, still facing Vandale, but seemingly not doing anything to stop him. However, in the world of the Accursed, not everything was about the physical. All of a sudden, his presence started to grow, whereas the pressure Vandale was exerting on us decreased. At first, I couldn’t understand what was happening, but when I brushed my hands over the tarmac, I could feel the energy seeping away from me, toward the Alarian royal bending it to his will.
Electricity danced over Darius’s skin, and somehow, I knew it hurt. He showed no sign of being affected by it. Instead, he turned the magic onto its original caster and wrapped Vandale in a sphere of flame so bright it made my eyes water.
“This could work,” Malachai whispered by my sid
e. “If he’s trapped in the fire, Vandale won’t be able to access the air.”
Malachai’s phrasing confused me since I doubted Prince Darius would bother with such an elaborate enchantment just to make someone suffocate. Either way, it was not that important. We could still salvage something out of the disaster we’d found ourselves in. There was no real proof that Pierce and Declan were actually dead, and until I saw their bodies with my own eyes, I refused to accept it. After Prince Darius won this confrontation, we could interrogate Vandale and figure out what he had done to my friend and my werewolf soulmate.
I should have known better than to believe anything in my life would go any other way except poorly.
Vandale wasn’t intimidated by Darius’s approach. I didn’t know what was creepier, the scent of burnt flesh now permeating the air or the fact that Vandale himself seemed unaware he was slowly being cooked alive. “That’s a nice trick, Alarian. But I’ve felt too much pain to be impressed by your feeble attempts to capture me. Perhaps... Perhaps I should give you a taste of it, yes?”
There was no warning, no surge of magic, no dramatic swell of music. No sooner had Vandale finished the phrase than Darius collapsed, screaming like he was being torn apart from the inside.
The sphere of fire exploded, wild magic flailing in all directions in response to the obvious pain Darius was experiencing. We were much too close to take cover, and nothing in my arsenal of newly discovered abilities could help us.
Before the eruption could turn both Malachai and me into a meal that would’ve probably been inedible even for a cannibal, another Accursed stepped in front of us, shielding us from the blast. The fire harmlessly curled around him and dissipated, leaving all of us unscathed.
The new arrival’s intervention bought us just enough time to recover and get up. “Inquisitor Lindberg?” Malachai asked. “What in the world is going on?”