“That is a bit surprising,” he continued after I gave the required nod indicating that the warning had been received. “Women tend to commit crimes of passion. Stalking is methodical and premeditated. That’s very . . . unusual.”
“So is the tattoo that has pushed her over the edge.” I checked one last time to make sure that my wand was properly secured in the holder on my left wrist and easily accessible through my shirt sleeve. Taking a deep breath, I pulled in a little bit of magical energy to put a charge in the charms and spells woven into the garments. A low level hum surrounded me for a second, but unlike the wave that hit earlier, this was comforting because the resonance matched the energy that came from my own soul.
“Let’s do this,” I said, expelling a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding.
Gideon said nothing, his expression remaining grim. He put a hand on my shoulder and the world turned dark. There was a slight shifting sensation as we traveled the miles separating Low Town from Charlotte, North Carolina. It lasted only a couple of seconds before we were standing in bright sunlight on the edge of a park. Screams and panicked cries echoed through the still winter air. At first I expected to be faced with the killer creating ugly magical waves, but then my eyes focused on the people rushing away from the park, looks of fear and hatred clouding their faces as they scrambled to put more distance between them and us.
“Do you get used to it?” I asked softly, unable to tear my eyes from the frightened people. Moments ago, they had been walking their dogs and children through the park on a sunny, mild winter Monday.
And then the Towers appeared, reminding them that they were vulnerable to a higher, darker power that could strike them dead in a heartbeat.
“I stopped worrying about them because I had bigger problems. Just like you do.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. He was right. I did have enough problems on my plate. I didn’t need to worry about what other people thought, particularly when I’d never see them again. “Any new clues as to who is doing this or why?”
“No, not yet, but I’m still digging.”
“I . . . I have a theory,” I said, hesitating to put to words the thought that had been slowly forming in my brain. “I think this person could be human. It’s just the purpose of the magic that might be confusing us.”
Gideon stopped and turned so that he was facing me. “What are you talking about?”
“I think the person is trying to set Lilith free.”
“Lilith who?”
“Lilith who?” I gasped. Had he lost his mind? “The Lilith. Queen of the Underworld, mother of all monsters, and keeper of those souls paying a debt to magic.”
A soft snort escaped Gideon and he turned his attention back to the once-peaceful street in North Carolina. “Lilith doesn’t exist. She’s a myth.”
“She’s real. I’ve met her.”
“You’ve been tricked then,” Gideon snapped. “You would have had to die to meet her!”
I just stared at my companion and part-time mentor, watching his face pale as the idea took form in his head. It had been tricky, but I beat death once already, narrowly escaping Lilith’s clutches. At our first meeting, she’d argued for me to free her.
Gideon cleared his throat, getting his thoughts reined in. He pointed one long finger at me, holding it so that it nearly touched the tip of my nose. “We have much to discuss. But not now.”
“Agreed.” It would be best if Gideon knew something about the things I’d done and seen recently.
“But you think she’s behind this?”
I nodded. “She’s been haunting me for the past several months, trying to get me to free her, but she’s never been specific about how I do that.” Pushing back my cloak, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my trousers against the frigid air as it nipped at my fingers, making them stiff and sore. The air was significantly colder than Florida, though not quite as cold as Low Town. “I really don’t think I’d be her only way out of the Underworld. She’s probably working over as many people as possible. Someone is bound to give in to the temptation eventually.”
“She’s as powerful as the stories?”
“It’s certainly the impression she gives. I haven’t tried to fight her and I definitely don’t fucking want to. Do you think it could be her?”
“I don’t know, but the use of death magic would fit.” Gideon turned away from the now empty park and started down the residential street at a brisk pace with me hurrying to catch up with him. “This new wrinkle has left me wishing that we are actually facing a dragon.”
“Why the hell would you ever say that?”
A wan smile lifted the corners of Gideon’s mouth as he slowed his pace. “We’ve beaten dragons before. We can do it again. Last I read, Lilith was more akin to a . . . a . . . demi-god, and I don’t know how to win against something like that.”
It wasn’t something either of us wanted to contemplate. Lilith was far better off staying in the Underworld, where she belonged. If some bastard was keen on setting her free, we were better off stopping him before we had to face Lilith.
“Where are we going?” I demanded, turning my attention back to the current problem at hand.
“There. That’s our first issue to tackle.”
Gideon pointed to a large white Victorian house farther down the block we were on. All the windows reflecting back the bright late-morning sun were covered with heavy shades, while some on the first floor were even covered with metal blinds used by several of the races that were vulnerable to sunlight. Evergreen wreaths with big red bows hung on the tall black metal fence surrounding the front yard. It looked like your average house in a high-rent neighborhood. Except for the thin wisps of black smoke rising from several different points in the front yard and coming down to the sidewalk.
Squinting, I nearly stumbled as I tried to clearly make out the strange scene. “Are . . . are those vampires? What the hell’s going on? Group suicide?”
Each creature’s steps were slow and jerky, as if their joints didn’t properly bend with each movement. They were more like puppets on strings, or worse, zombies from too many late-night horror movies out in search of delectable brains. Despite the excruciating pain they had to be in, not one of them made a sound as their pale white skin blackened in the rays of the sun and then flaked off in papery ash to gently float away.
Recovering from my initial horror, I started to jog toward them, my mind boggled by the idea of several vampires stepping out of their home and into the bright sunlight. They were slowly burning to death. There was no clear plan in my head; just the idea that I had to get them back inside where they were safe from the sun.
When I was still a couple houses away, Gideon grabbed my shoulder, pulling me to a sharp halt. “Wait! This feels all wrong.”
“We can’t just stand back and watch a bunch of vampires fry in the sun,” I snarled, trying to jerk out of his grasp so I could try to help them before it was too late.
Yet before I could get any closer, a Good Samaritan decided to brave the Towers warlocks and try to usher the sleep-walking vampires back into the safety of their home. In a violent blur, the vampire closest to the human lunged at him, tearing his throat out with fangs and claws. It all happened so fast — a devastating combination of blood and black smoke like a demented magic trick on a Vegas stage.
“What the hell?” I shouted, stumbling backward in horror. Recovering from the explosion of violence, I jump into the struggling, instinctively moving to pry the vampire off his victim, but Gideon’s hand tightened on my shoulder, holding me in place. Twisting around, I knocked the warlock’s hand away. “We have to help them.”
“He’s already dead,” he replied, his eyes never straying from the bloody scene before us.
When I turned back, I found that the vampire had dropped the now lifeless body to the gr
ound, leaving it to coat the empty street with blood. This didn’t make any sense. The vampire hadn’t even attempted to feed from the poor soul. He just killed him as quickly as possible, like pulling the plug on the TV.
Obviously, the vampires hadn’t been driven out of the house to feed. If this was suicide, I can’t understand why the creature had taken the time to so brutally kill the bystander. With no one in front of him, the vampire now stood in the middle of the sidewalk, swaying slightly as the sun slowly cooked him. Ash flaked off, rising up into the breeze to dance around him in a macabre ballet.
“We have to do something,” I repeated, though I hadn’t any suggestions on what exactly that was going to be.
“What? They’re already dead.”
“Just because they’re vampires doesn’t mean—”
“No, damn it!” Gideon cut me off. He stepped forward and pointed at the chest of the vampire that had attacked the man just seconds ago. “His heart has been ripped out. He’s already dead. There’s nothing to save.”
My eyes dropped from the face of the poor creature with his flaking flesh to his chest. There was a hole in his Batman T-shirt right over where his heart had been. Dark, thick blood stained the fabric, and when the cold winter breeze ruffled his crusty shirt, you could see the hole extended down into his chest. Hesitantly stepping closer, I looked over all the vampires who dotted the front yard of their home. Each one had a bloodstained chest. Someone had killed an entire nest of vampires during the daylight hours and then . . . reanimated their bodies.
A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the winter wind. “How?”
“The magic that we felt,” Gideon murmured. He shook his head in disgust as he pushed up the sleeves of his jacket and shirt. “We need to put them down before someone else gets hurt.”
Clenching my teeth, I balled my hands into helpless fists at my side. I wanted to do something to help them, but it was already too late for that. Once a vampire’s heart was staked or removed, life flees the body and there’s no getting that back. This stiff, shuffling movement made you want to believe that there was still some life left in these poor creatures, something that could be saved, but it was an illusion.
Magic tingled in the air as Gideon drew energy to himself and began to cast a spell. In unison, the vampires stopped their shuffling and their heads snapped in Gideon’s direction as one.
Fear careened through my system, sending my heart pumping. “I think you might want to stop what you’re doing,” I said, taking a slow step backward.
The warlock focused on the vampires, his eyebrows nearly lifting to his hairline. “Huh.” The surprised sound was a massive understatement when it came to this new development. A small flame flickered to life in the palm of his hand. “I guess that answers the why,” he muttered to himself.
The smoldering creatures watching Gideon with a frightening intensity were an impressive facsimile of the zombies I’d watched in so many late-night horror marathons. Unfortunately, where the zombies in the movies were shambling, mindless eating machines, these vampire zombies were fucking fast.
The second the flame sprang to life in Gideon’s hand, they darted across the yard and through the street to get to us. Shifting from sloths to cheetahs in a flash, the zombies suddenly resembled the vampires they had once been. My pulse doubled at the sight of the merciless creatures charging toward us. Summoning up the same fire spell as my companion, I instantly became a target as well, but at least I was armed.
The first wave burst into bright orange and yellow flames as if they had been doused in gasoline, but the fire failed to slow them down. In fact, we had only succeeded in making the situation worse. Instead of being attacked by mindless zombies, we were now about to be attacked by mindless zombies on fire.
“Any more great ideas?” I shouted as dodged the first one to reach me. The heat from the flames scorched my face and threatened to scald my lungs as I sucked in a breath. Ducking under his arms, I sent a blast of pure energy into his chest. The blow knocked him over and sent him skidding toward the house on his back.
“Catch!”
I dragged my eyes from the zombies for a second to see Gideon throw me a large, black-bladed machete. Gripping the handle, I smiled a little to myself, feeling as if I was regaining control. Gideon had to teach me that little trick before our next outing. There was no way the warlock had a pair of machetes strapped to his body.
Dodging the arms of one zombie as she made a grab for me, I rolled a short distance away. Coming back up on my feet, I swept back with my blade, slicing through her legs with sickening ease. The fiery creature crashed to the ground, seeming momentarily disoriented by the fact that she was no longer standing. Swinging back in one fluid motion, I removed her head as well as the head of another as it charged me.
But both of them kept coming — breaking all the rules of movie zombies. Being headless was supposed to stop a zombie.
Of course, what I wasn’t considering was that these zombies had been reanimated with a magic that I didn’t yet understand and were given a specific purpose. I was willing to bet that they had been charged with the task of attacking any magic user who drew close. They were going to keep coming so long as their limbs still worked. Sadly, it was going to take a while for the fire to eat through their limbs so that muscles and tendons no longer responded to magical manipulation.
As the former vampires kept coming, I dipped and dodged, keeping out of arms’ reach while hacking off bits. Gideon went for a more magic-based approach, setting them on fire as soon as they stepped outside their home and then using a binding spell to pin them to the pavement or the iron fence where they sizzled, burned, and flaked to ash in the sun and fire.
When there was nothing in danger of actually killing me, I stopped and drew in a shaky breath of relief. Looking around, there were pieces of vampire scattered everywhere in the street and sidewalk. The air was thick with black smoke and the horrid stench of cooking flesh. Nearly two dozen vampires had attacked us — likely what had been the entire nest. What a fucking waste!
But it wasn’t just the tragic loss of life that twisted my gut. It was the idea that someone had gotten into their protected home and methodically killed each one. While vampires were weaker during the day, they could still move around, they could fight back against an attacker. I couldn’t think of anyone, short of a warlock or a witch, being able to do such a thing. If this attack came from someone within the Towers, then we had a bigger problem on our hands. Someone had gone rogue.
The winter wind chilled the sweat that coated my face. Each heavy breath was like swallowing shards of glass. I wiped the back of my hand across my brow, smearing more ash into my pale skin so that I now looked more like a banker who worked part-time as a chimney sweep.
I opened my mouth to ask Gideon about the vampires, but he wasn’t looking at the house or even the corpses littering the empty street before us. His attention was behind us. A small group of people had gathered several feet away and were angrily shouting. They called us murderers and butchers.
Rage and hatred twisted their features. Shoulder to shoulder stood humans, shifters, ogres, sirens, and dwarves, shouting at us. At any other time, this motley group barely tolerated each other, but they easily united when faced with members of the Ivory Towers. We saved their lives. If any one of them had approached the bespelled vampire corpses, they would have been torn apart like that one poor soul minutes earlier.
But they didn’t care. Or rather, they likely thought that we were the cause of the attack in the first place and the vampires were merely defending themselves. When they looked at Gideon and me, they saw only centuries of oppression, violence, and death.
If only they knew what it was like inside of the Ivory Towers. If only they knew what we were protecting them from. The two separate thoughts whispered through my head, but I quickly shoved them aside.
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“Let’s go, Gideon. We need to finish this investigation,” I growled, turning back toward the house the vampires had exited. Guilt and frustration warred in my chest. There was no convincing them that I wasn’t one of the bad guys.
I didn’t get more than two steps when pain exploded in the back of my head, knocking me to my hands and knees in the middle of the street. Gravel bit into my filthy palms while a second shockwave of pain surged through my knees. Blinking hard to clear away the stars from my eyes, I lifted one trembling hand to find a massive gash across the back of my skull while blood poured across my scalp.
“What the fuck?” I groaned, trying to pull together a coherent thought through the pain that was making a playground of my body. “What happened?”
“A rock,” Gideon answered in an icy voice. I slowly turned my head at his tone and I saw the large stone he was pointing to a couple feet away. I was pulled from my stunned contemplation of the act by the sharp swell of magical energy sweeping through the air. Gideon was summoning up great amounts of energy for a spell.
The air had grown frighteningly still in that frozen moment so that the silence was nearly suffocating. Pushing unsteadily to my feet again, I turned back to find that the crowd was still standing several yards away, but no one spoke. They looked as if they weren’t even breathing as they waited to see what would happen. A rabbit trapped by a fox. They waited wide-eyed for their messy end to be delivered by the warlocks they dared to attack.
And Gideon was more than willing to hand out Tower justice. The wind rose, rattling the limbs of the nearby trees, and the sky turned dark with thick black clouds rushing in to blot out the once clear blue sky. The warlock spread his hands wide and blue sparks arced between his fingertips. His black cloak snapped angrily in the wind.
“Gideon,” I started in the firmest voice I could muster over the howl of the wind. “Let it go.”
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