by M C Ashley
I turned to Zea and held my hand out in front of her, and then immediately turned it toward Cole, closed my eyes, and shouted, “Mico excan!”
Zea reacted instantly. “Drought Field!” she yelled, closing her eyes.
A small fire erupted in the air around us, singing my body, and evaporating the water on both of our bodies. I smelled burnt hair and my skin cried out in agony, but I knew Zea’s crazy plan had been the best choice in that moment. Seizing the opportunity, I raced to our equipment and grabbed them. Zea followed behind me, her mind filled with anger. Reaching up to me, we high-tailed it to the closest sewer tunnel.
Shots fired out behind us, and I felt Zea get hit, the psychic backlash hurting me enough to distract my awareness of my surroundings. I heard a whizzing noise and turned back. I watched as a dagger landed in my abdomen. I didn’t remove it. I was too afraid that I’d hurt myself more by taking it out, because that meant there was nothing blocking the blood from coming out of the now open wound.
I pressed on, reaching the tunnel, Zea by my side. She was limping heavily, so I wrapped her arm over mine and used my weight to help her run in sync with me. We ran across a side passage. I pressed her against the side of the wall and fired a darkness invocation at the wall, obliterating it and causing the concrete to create a wall of rubble.
Grabbing Zea again, we raced away, our shared pain putting an enormous toil on our minds. I felt her fading, but her anger remained, and I didn’t understand why. I kept moving until I realized that she had fallen into unconsciousness. Making sure no one was behind us, I placed her down gently on the floor, wiping the grime from her face. I looked her over for wounds.
There weren’t any on her face. I checked her arms, noticing no bloodstains on her robes. I checked her torso and saw three bullet wounds in her lower left abdomen, above her clavicle, and one underneath her left breast. A closer examination of her leg revealed one more wound. She’d also lost too much blood. My dagger wound was one thing, but these gunshots had gone straight through, leaving eight holes I had to seal. I cringed, knowing what I’d have to do. I couldn’t do this without seeing everything. Medicinal invocation required the invoker to see everything they were doing, so that they could correctly knit tissue and skin together. If the invoker didn’t they could cause premature apoptosis or permanently damage the affected area.
“Oh, God,” I said.
Focusing, I started removing her clothing. Placing my hands on her lower chest, I turned Zea to the side and focused on the eight wounds on her body.
“Sanitatem pulsus!” I yelled, pouring as much energy as my weakened body could offer to remove the wounds.
Healing other people is never easy, especially if you’re not naturally attuned to the process. I was used to overcharging my abilities, but this was a delicate process, one that could easily kill her if I failed. I focused my energy, crafting images in my mind of Zea’s white blood cells and platelets getting made in record amounts, all racing toward the wounds so that they could seal them up. I recalled everything my mother had taught me about the process, using her words to guide me along the path to healing Zea. I knew if I focused on myself, I’d kill her. I couldn’t afford that. No one else was going to die. I’d save her if it meant killing myself. I poured more of my energy into the invocation, my body growing weaker. I noticed Zea’s wounds disappearing, newly-manufactured skin overtaking them. I felt a rush of nausea as I continued to focus on healing her. My body was reacting violently due to losing so much energy.
I felt a stirring in Zea’s mind. She was coming back. I’d saved her.
Now how could I save myself?
I shakily placed her undershirt over her body. Then I fell backwards. My head crashed into the grimy brick floor, knocking me out.
Chapter 17
I was standing on a basketball court. My friends and family were in the stands, cheering me on as I ran down the court, ready to grab the basketball, having evaded my defender long enough to gain a large gap between us. I was sure to score. All I had to do was secure the pass.
My teammate threw the ball at me, sending it flying over the hands of the other team’s players. I reached out, ready to grasp it. The ball hit my fingers, bounced up, and popped me in the chin. I was knocked to the ground, and I heard the ball helplessly fall away from me. The buzzer went off and the room grew deathly quiet.
I blinked and saw Nathan-Prime standing next to me. I was sitting on the bench. He wore a white buttoned up shirt with a black and white tie that said he was the “World’s Best Coach” and khaki dress pants.
“Looks like you dropped the ball, kid,” he said, simply.
I gazed down at the ball, which I now held in my hands and grimaced.
“Wait,” I said. “This isn’t real.”
“Oh it’s very real, you just can’t quantify it yet.”
I looked up at him, confused.
“Do you know where you went wrong, son?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“You got caught in the act. You should be more careful.”
“It’s not like I had a choice in the matter,” I said, memories of the riverside incident returning. “She was going to die.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“You know the answer; you’re just suppressing it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Nathan sighed. “Baka.”
“What?”
“It’s Japanese. Means ‘idiot’.”
“I know that. Akemi called me that all the time. What does it mean?”
He sighed again. “Why am I always cursed to deal with myself?”
I shook my head. Was I having two conversations here?
“No matter where I go, I inevitably end up having to teach an ignorant, stupid, puerile moron who needs to get his cranium recalibrated. I swear it’s always someone who was exactly like I was when I was young.”
“This isn’t about you.”
“No, it’s not—it’s about you. It’s about what the man you’re supposed to be will end up as. It’s about whether you live for another twenty years or twenty minutes.”
“I can take care of myself! What about Zea? I saved her!”
“What is she compared to over six-hundred?”
I froze. He wasn’t seriously saying this, was he? He was the one who was so adamant that I should work to help people. Why was he changing his mind now?
“Every life is precious!” I shouted.
“Including yours,” he said. “You can’t save anyone if you recklessly endanger yourself.”
“Then what do you want me to do, learn how to not leave home and find some way to help other people from a couch?”
“Hardly, I’d just like to deal with someone who cares about self-preservation. Wanting to help others in need is not a sin. Being foolish and not even attempting to think things through, so that no matter what you do, they inevitably end up hurt is.”
“I don’t follow.”
“No, you don’t. And until you do, I could have nothing more to say to you.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Don’t make it one, Blake. Be smarter than that. I want to help you. I just have to do it this way. If I attempt to breach the agreements I made, then I lose the ability to guide you on your path. Do not test my devotion to my word.”
I sized him up. He had inflected on the last word in his sentence, but it wasn’t the normal way. Almost as if he didn’t have to give his Word. His face was grimmer, any sense of playfulness lost.
“I still don’t understand fully, but I really appreciate what you’ve been doing with me, Nathan,” I said. “I would’ve been lost without your help. I want to understand what you’re trying to tell me, but I can’t do that by not helping others. It’s my job.”
His face grew neutral. “So be it,” he said. “Then you need to wake up. You are unconscious. The only reason you can be this lucid is because o
f me. You need to do the rest yourself.”
“Like I’d ever let a silly thing like unconsciousness stop me from doing my job.”
“Good, because when you wake up, you’re going to realize you have a lot of work left to do.”
Chapter 18
When I woke up, I realized that iron chains suspended my arms behind me. Tensing up, I tried to pull my arms forward, but the chains kept them in place. I saw Zea looking back at me from her own bonds.
I let out a sigh of relief to see her alive, but it was replaced by a quick onset of confusion and frustration at being unable to move. The chains held up my body, but didn’t allow me to stand upright, instead holding me outward, my feet locked in clamps.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Zea glared at me. I flinched. That was not the response I was hoping for. Some gratitude would’ve been nice. At least someone had put clothes on for her, which made me realize neither one of us were wearing what I’d last seen us in. Instead we wore a simple white tunic that barely covered anything.
Wait. Who’d done that? Where were we?
The door opened a moment later, revealing a stunning woman with midnight black hair and sensuous green eyes that seemed to pulsate a feeling of comfort. She wore a low-cut blouse mostly hidden by her black leather jacket. On her left hand’s middle finger she had a silver ring, one that looked as if it had been singed in a remarkable blaze. She was inhumanly beautiful; every part of myself told me to pursue her and give her whatever she desired. I felt my muscles twitching, wishing that they could move my hands and feet out of the bonds to reach her, to appease her every whim.
I shook my head and looked down, trying to focus on anything but her. She had to be a lust vampire. I filled my head with images of my family, needing to drown her out of my mind. It wouldn’t be easy; I’d done it before, but I knew I couldn’t resist her for long. I looked up to see her smirking and instantly any thought of fighting her left my mind.
“Oh, can’t resist, can we?” she asked.
I looked at Zea, who was looking away from her, a worried expression on her face. I grimaced and gathered the will necessary to look this woman in the face without succumbing to her pheromone-based abilities.
She moved toward me and touched my clothes, gently sliding a finger up the tunic, but never touched my skin. She smiled, looking me in the eyes, and I felt myself moving forward, but a jolt of resistance entered my mind and I pulled away.
“But there seems to be some rebellion in you,” she said. “I like that.”
“Get to know me a little better, and you may just change that tune,” I said. “You wouldn’t be the first lust vamp I’ve killed.”
She laughed mirthfully. “Oh, my father would just love you. If only he could’ve come here on such short notice. I’m sure knowing a Sentinel and Psionic were out here would’ve driven him into a frenzy.”
“Sounds like a swell guy, but what about you?”
“Interested?” she asked, playfully batting her eyelashes.
“I like to know the name of the monsters I have to kill.”
She laughed. “Zoë Slinden. I like to know the names of those I have to control.”
I looked her dead in the eye and said, “Blake.”
“Your true name.”
“No.”
Zoë took an involuntary step backward. It was at that time that I noticed she hadn’t been the only one to enter the room. Enforcer Cole stood beside the door with two young men wearing servant’s garments, a dissatisfied expression on his face. Jealousy, perhaps? Guess I was being treated better than he ever had by his boss. Not that I wanted the attention. But next to him, trying not to look at me was Cinderella Young, garbed in an elegant white robe. I looked at her for a moment, but she refused to acknowledge me. Defeated, I looked back at Zoë, who held a hidden fury behind her eyes.
“What did you say?” she managed to finally ask.
“No, if I recall correctly,” I said.
“No one tells me no.”
She gently caressed a medallion held around her neck that I hadn’t seen before. I watched her fingers rub it lightly.
I gazed at her medallion and felt dark threads of power resonating from it. Across it were six letters all arranged in a circle. I couldn’t arrange the letters correctly in my wounded state, but I remember now that the letters spelled out Beleth. Throughout the center of the medallion were sets of vermiculate lines arranged in varying ways—with some making hearts and others forming pseudo-crosses.
“What’s that symbol?” I asked.
Zoë stared at the medallion and I saw a brief flash of red in her eyes, making me realize how many people were inside of her mind.
Possession, I thought. Something is possessing a vampire. What is going on here?
“It is a gift from a friend,” she said. “My father, to be precise. One of the many rewards for my faithful service to him. I control it; it does not control me.”
I paused. That was far too specific a denial to a question I hadn’t asked yet.
“Of course,” I said.
“But you’re distracting me from what I want,” Zoë said. “Why are you here? Why come out of hiding for so long to try and disrupt our work?”
“Don’t tell her anything, Blake!” Zea yelled, her body fidgeting.
Zoë turned to her and moved her right hand forward, replacing her fingers with ebony talons that could’ve sliced through Zea’s skin before I blinked.
“Wait your turn, dear,” Zoë said, placing a talon on Zea’s neck, slightly opening her skin, allowing a small trail of blood to leave the wound.
Zea grimaced and looked down at the floor. I frowned, wishing there was some way I could encourage her.
Zoë turned back, changed her talons back to fingers, and walked slowly toward me. I forced myself not to get drawn in by her wiles. She looked me in the eye again and laughed playfully.
“You still haven’t answered my questions, dear,” she said, her voice falsely trying to soothe my anxiety.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been around here,” I said. “I’m a member of the Gray Forum.”
She cackled with a sugary sweetness that forced my blood pressure to go into overdrive. “The Gray Forum will have been dead for a hundred years tonight. Anyone left behind was either captured or killed. Cinderella here was a straggler, right, dear?”
Cinderella twitched, looking at her master, but still not at me. She gave a fake smile and returned to gaze at the floor.
“Not much for talking, that one,” Zoë said. “You just have to coax it out of her, piece by piece. We’ve been together for a while.”
I fought the urge to lash out at this. I couldn’t let her know that I knew who Cinderella was.
“You’re angry,” Zoë said. “That’s to be expected, but I don’t feed on anger. I want something more from you.”
“Well first you’ll have to meet my parents and I know they won’t be too keen on me dating the enemy,” I said. “They’re old-fashioned like that. It’s part of their charm.”
“Oh, you are funny. It’s not often I meet prey with humor. Oftentimes they’re too afraid to give me any satisfaction. I am going to enjoy this, but first I must know more about you.”
“Well my favorite color’s red, I cried reading Bridge to Terabithia, and I enjoy not getting my soul sucked on by a vampire.”
“I meant your reason for being here now.”
“Well a long time ago God decided to create the universe by—”
“You know what I mean.”
“To stop the Feast of course.”
Zea frowned. Zoë gazed at me intently.
“Now we can’t have that, can we?” she asked. “Cole? Were they with anyone else?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, saluting her. “They were alone.”
“Oh. I was looking forward to breaking more.” She paused. “Cole, leave now and make sure the security has tightened around the Feast. No one must disrupt th
e ceremony. My father will be furious should anything happen.”
Cole nodded and left the room, taking time to smirk at me before he did.
“Your father sounds kinda strict,” I said.
“Oh you have no idea,” Zoë said. “He checks up on everything that I do, making sure I don’t ruin the Slinden name. It’s quite tiresome. Cole there reports back to him, but he’s too useful to kill now.” She eyed me and grinned, scanning my body. “Although I am accepting applications.”
“I think that would violate Sentinel union codes,” I said. “But why would your father treat you so poorly?” Then I had a thought. “My father was always strict himself. I could only get his approval by doing exactly what pleased him.”
Which was pretty much anything I did, but she didn’t need to know that.
“I am the youngest member of the family,” she said, eyeing the medallion. “We have always been able to make others, but only a select few are turned by him. I was the last.”
I nodded. We knew there was a hidden patriarch behind the Sanguine Collective, but we’d never figured out his name, besides possibly Slinden. It seemed to be used by all the highest-ranking vampires. Even though they had been around for a long time, from before the founding of the Gray Forum, no one knew who this vampire was or how to kill him if they ever encountered him.
“When were you turned?” I asked.
“Right after the Forum fell,” Zoë said. “I was but a simple mundane, scared at how the world was suddenly home to creatures that I’d once thought impossible, but he sensed something in me and offered me the chance to become one of his own. I have served him faithfully since.”
“Sounds like he owes you a lot. Maybe he should cut you some slack. Whoever he is.”
Zoë eyed me intently and let out a small laugh. “You won’t learn his name from me, Blake. It’s so cute that you think you can get away from me. I must say, nicely done, though. I only figured out your manipulations when you tried to get me to say his name. You will be a pleasing source of power. I can feel it all around me now. It’s just so…” she shivered in excitement “…strong. I can barely hold myself back.”