Heart of Malice (Alice Worth Book 1)

by Lisa Edmonds

  He looked like he wanted to refuse her order, but thought better of it. “Are you done?” he demanded.

  I coughed up some vomit out of my burning lungs and spat it in his face.

  He jerked back, but not in time, and my glob of spit hit him on the forehead. Eppright’s face turned bright red as he pulled back his bandaged fist to punch me. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of cowering.

  “Stop!” the woman snapped. Furious, Eppright obeyed, dropping his fist to his side. She stepped around him and I got my first look at her.

  She looked like she was in her mid-to-late fifties, but in good shape for her age. She wore slacks and a light blue shirt, her ash-blonde hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She looked vaguely familiar, though I’d have sworn I’d never seen her before. Then I realized she looked a lot like Betty.

  “So you’re Betty’s other daughter.” My voice was hoarse from throwing up.

  Eppright used a drop cloth to clean up my vomit. I winked at him and he clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

  The woman looked surprised. “Well, aren’t you smart.” She didn’t sound sarcastic. “I’m Amelia Wharton. Formerly Amelia Eppright.”

  I glanced at Peter. “Brother?”

  “Yes.”

  I made a face. “My condolences.”

  Eppright flushed again.

  “Now, don’t be rude,” Amelia said. “I can understand why you’re upset, but there’s no reason we can’t all be civil.”

  My eyebrows went up. I was beginning to think Amelia might not be all there. There was something off about her tone—a kind of detachment, like she was discussing the weather report, not standing over someone she’d had kidnapped and tied up.

  Kidnapped. That triggered a memory. My brain still felt entirely too sluggish. “Where’s Natalie?” I asked.

  Amelia glanced at her watch. “They should be bringing her here in a few minutes.”

  “Is she all right?”

  Amelia shrugged. “She’s alive.”

  “That is not the right answer,” I retorted. “She’s done nothing wrong. She’s your niece.”

  She looked at me with flat, expressionless eyes that reminded me of my grandfather’s empty gaze. Amelia, like my grandfather, did not care about human life. She was a psychopath, just like him. Whatever she was planning, I wasn’t going to be able to appeal to any kind of a conscience to get us out of this.

  “I must say, I am impressed by your spellwork,” she said. “Natalie’s magic is better bound now than it was when Betty was alive. Judging by the burn mark on the floor in her bedroom, it must have gotten loose at some point.”

  “Yes.” No sense revealing any details. “Why do you call your mother by her first name? Why didn’t Natalie know you existed?”

  I saw a flash of emotion in Amelia’s eyes: pure hate. Then it vanished, as if it had never been there. “Betty sent me away when I was six years old and Peter was two. My magic developed very early, and she found it impossible to bind completely. Rather than raise me, she sent me to a…facility in Oregon. I lived there until I was twelve, and then I was sent to live in a group home in South Dakota.”

  “I don’t understand. Betty was a strong mage.”

  “I was stronger. Even at six years old, she couldn’t control me. She was concerned I would use my magic in public and expose her. She was hiding our magic from her husband, so she sent me away.”

  It was equally possible Betty had recognized her daughter’s psychopathy, I thought, looking at Amelia’s flat stare. This didn’t seem like the time to pry into that, though. “If you hated your mother so much, why did you come back?”

  Amelia smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Five years ago, my harnad in Portland heard a rumor that Betty had come into possession of Adelbert’s Kasten. It seemed impossible, but I had to find out. No one has seen it in more than a century.”

  “So you showed up on her doorstep, or what?”

  “Yes. The prodigal daughter, returned.” Her tone was dry.

  “And she trusted you?”

  “Not at all, but I could see she felt some guilt over abandoning me, so I used that. I showed her that I was a strong blood mage, and that I could make her harnad stronger.”

  “She brought you into her harnad?” I was having a hard time believing Betty would trust her daughter enough to let her join her alliance of blood mages. I’d known her five minutes and I didn’t trust her one little bit.

  “After some persuasion from John West,” Amelia said. “I showed John how powerful I was, and he wanted me to join. Plus, after I figured out I was his daughter and I made Betty tell him, all he wanted was to know me. The poor man never had any other children, apparently.”

  The pieces were falling into place. Amelia was the daughter of Betty and the powerful fire mage John West. Peter was actually her half brother, the son of Betty’s first husband. No wonder their magic felt similar, but Amelia’s was so strong and the other siblings’ magic so weak.

  “So you came back for the Kasten?” I scoffed. “It’s a myth.”

  “It’s not a myth,” she countered. “It’s very real, as a lot of people are about to find out. I’ve been waiting a long time for this day. I wish Betty could be here too, but the bitch died before I had everything in place.”

  “What exactly are you planning here? And what’s Tweedledumb’s role in all of this?” I glanced at her half brother.

  He looked like he would love nothing more than to strangle me with his bare hands. The feeling was mutual. My head was killing me.

  Amelia patted Eppright’s arm. “Peter is key to everything. Without him, none of this would be possible.”

  Eppright preened.

  I would have rolled my eyes, but they hurt too much. “Then what the hell am I doing here?” I asked the obvious question.

  “At first, I was simply curious as to how much you’d found out by snooping around Betty’s house and visiting my brother and sisters. Until Natalie asked William today if Betty had had any other children, I wasn’t worried.” I assumed William was the lawyer. “But when he called to warn me, I realized my complacency had nearly cost me everything. William helped me get Natalie at her home. I had Peter and Ray Browning intercept you at your house and bring you here. Unfortunately, we had to get rid of William. He became too much of a liability.”

  I was sickened by her casual admission of murder. “How did you manage to get Betty to give you passage through her library wards?”

  Amelia looked surprised. “Well, well. I clearly underestimated you from the beginning. That explains why you were visiting my brother and sisters, and why you had Natalie ask if Betty had any other children—you were looking for whoever besides Betty could pass through the wards.”

  “So you somehow tricked Betty into allowing you into her library. Then after Betty was dead, you waited until Natalie was out, and came in and took the Kasten and Betty’s spell books?”

  Before Amelia could reply, I heard voices. Out of the darkness, a small group approached us. I saw Deborah, Kathy, and a large man I didn’t recognize. He was carrying something over his shoulder wrapped in a blanket. I saw a flash of red hair inside the blanket and felt ice in my veins. Natalie.

  Deborah avoided looking at me, but Kathy gave me a big, ugly smile. “Well, hello, Audrey,” she said in a singsong voice. “So nice to see you again. Still looking to buy a house?”

  “Oh, you know,” I said casually, “it’s really a buyer’s market right now. I’m not rushing into anything.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Where’s your friend?” She turned to Amelia. “She wasn’t alone when she came to see me.”

  “The werewolf?” Amelia said.

  I stiffened. How the hell did they know who Sean was?

  “He won’t be able to find her. The obfuscation spell she’s wearing and the blood ward will block any magical or metaphysical links.”

  I glanced down. Sure enough, there was a dark stain on
the floor in a large circle around the table I was on. The circle was about fifteen feet wide and contained both of the large tables and the smaller, cloth-covered table. I hadn’t been able to sense the ward because of the spell cuff. Between that and the spell I was wearing on my wrist, there was no way for Malcolm or Sean to find me, even if Sean hadn’t been in Charles’s custody.

  Charles.

  For a moment, I felt a flare of hope, but it quickly died. Without drinking my blood, he wouldn’t be able to sense my location. There was no rescue coming. I’d have to get out this by myself. Fair enough; I was used to being on my own.

  “Put her on the other table,” Amelia instructed the man carrying Natalie.

  He grunted and dropped the rolled-up bundle with a thud that made me wince.

  “Ray,” Amelia scolded.

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound like he meant it.

  So this was Ray, Elise’s husband, the asshole who’d bashed in the back of my head. “Why isn’t your wife here?” I asked him.

  Ray scowled at me. “She doesn’t believe in using magic,” he said shortly. He unrolled the blanket, revealing Natalie’s unconscious body. She looked extremely pale, and there was a bloodstain on her shirt near her shoulder blade.

  “What did you do to her?” I demanded.

  “Shut up.” Ray started tying Natalie to the table with rope. On her left wrist was a leather bracelet like mine.

  I looked at Amelia for an answer.

  She gestured at Natalie. “I had to use magic to knock her out, as well as an obfuscation spell to prevent you from locating her. Her magic and your binding have been reacting badly to my spells. It can’t be helped. I don’t have time to make new ones.”

  “Then let me do it,” I said. “It’s killing her.”

  Amelia gave me another one of those cold smiles. “Do you think I’m stupid? You won’t be using your magic here today. Tie her arm down again,” she said to Ray.

  I had really, really been hoping they would forget about my untied left arm. As Ray moved toward me, I fought him off for a few seconds. Then Eppright backhanded me across the face, my head hit the table, and I blacked out.

  Chapter 26

  I wasn’t out for long—a few minutes at most. When I came to, Ray was tying my arm down again. When he saw me looking at him, he gave my wrist a vicious twist and something popped. I shrieked and gagged.

  “Ray.” Amelia’s voice was sharp. He stepped back from the table and sneered at me. I lay still and focused on not throwing up again.

  When the nausea subsided, I still wanted to know what the hell was going on. “Okay, I get why I’m here and why Amelia is here.” My words sounded slurred. My vision was blurry and I tried to focus. “But what are the rest of you doing?”

  “We’re Amelia’s harnad,” Deborah said primly. “We’re here to allow her to draw energy from us for the box.”

  I blinked at Amelia in confusion. “They’re your harnad?”

  She gave me a calculating smile. “Of course. They’re my family.”

  “But you can’t be in a harnad,” I told Kathy. “You aren’t a blood mage.”

  “Of course I am,” Kathy said as if I was slow. “Amelia and I are sisters.”

  “That’s not how it works. You and Deborah have only very weak air magic. Peter is a low-level fire and air mage. Harnads only include very strong blood mages, which none of you are.”

  “Alice, Alice.” Amelia shook her head. “Lies will not help you here. We are a family of blood mages. Betty never wanted us to use our magic. She wanted all the power for herself, but now we will become the most powerful cabal in the country with the Kasten. No one will ever cross us again.” She gestured at her half siblings. “Please, step inside the circle so we can begin.”

  Kathy and Deborah joined Ray and Eppright inside the blood ward. Amelia traced a rune in the air and the ward flared.

  “I’m telling you, you’re not her harnad,” I insisted, looking at the three half siblings and Elise’s dumb thug of a husband. “I don’t know what she’s up to, or what she’s told you, but you are not blood mages—only she is.”

  “Shut up,” Eppright snarled. “Or I’ll shove that gag down your throat and let you choke on it this time.”

  I shut up. I wasn’t going to be able to convince them of anything. They didn’t know enough about magic to know it wasn’t possible for them to be blood mages or in a harnad. She’d duped them completely.

  What the hell was Amelia up to? She’d probably promised to share power with them, but somehow I doubted that would actually happen. I didn’t believe a word of this “family” crap she was spewing. That woman didn’t care one iota about her half sisters and half brother. If anything, she probably despised them since Betty had abandoned her and raised them.

  I narrowed my eyes at Amelia and then at the cloth-draped table where, I presumed, the Kasten awaited. What was it the book had said? That the Kasten had to be filled with the blood or body parts of mages representing all four elements?

  I looked at Amelia in horror. She smiled at me. “Religo!”

  Despite the dampening of the spell cuff, I felt a wave of magic prickle over my skin. My cuff protected me from Amelia’s binding spell, but Kathy, Deborah, Ray, and Peter were not so lucky. All four were frozen in place where they stood. Awareness and fear shone in their eyes, but they were immobilized.

  Amelia patted me on the hand. “Relax, dear. You’re just a bystander for now.”

  She went to the covered table and pulled back the cloth. On it sat an old wooden chest about the size of a shoebox, a small ritual knife, two spell books that were probably Betty’s, and a long black robe. Rune carvings covered the box. Amelia put the robe on and picked up the knife, cutting the pad of her thumb. She smeared her blood across the lid of the box and recited an incantation. It sounded like German.

  “You’re going to kill them all,” I said.

  “Yes.” Amelia’s voice was emotionless. “Greedy fools. Kathy’s husband spends money faster than she can make it, and Deborah and her husband have nothing saved for their retirement. Peter owes his bookie a hundred grand. Ray and Elise are so far in debt, with their house and their cars and private school tuition, he was all too eager to join us. It might be the only time he would have been better off listening to my idiot half sister. All any of them want is power and money.”

  “And you don’t?” I said skeptically.

  “Of course I do, but what I want the most is revenge. I can’t get to Betty, but I can do this.” She used the knife to gesture at the four terrified people standing frozen around us. “I can wipe out her family, everyone she loved after she turned her back on me. Then I’ll burn the city down. There won’t be a single person or cabal who can stand against me. If I fill the Kasten with the lifeblood of an entire family, it will be the most unstoppable object of power the magical world has ever known.”

  I didn’t know how much I believed that, but if the legends were true, I couldn’t let her unleash the Kasten on the city. I doubted I had much chance of reasoning with her, but I had to try. It was either that or lie here and watch her kill five people. I might not like Natalie’s extended family very much, but they were still human beings. I’d seen enough suffering and death in my lifetime.

  “What makes you think the Kasten will be as powerful as you think? Everything I read said it’s a myth.”

  Amelia caressed the box. “Our harnad in Portland had a letter written by a mage in 1843. He described a story told to him by his father, who had witnessed a mage wield the power of the Kasten filled with the blood of a father, mother, and three children. It laid waste to more than ten square miles. Imagine what one filled with the lifeblood of an entire extended family would do. Four siblings, their spouses, their children, and grandchildren. And Betty’s brother and sister, and her precious granddaughter.” She sneered at Natalie.

  I went cold at the way she casually described killing children. “So, old legends? That’s all you’ve
got?” I challenged her. “What if it doesn’t work? You’d have killed all these people for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Amelia countered, picking up the box and the knife and moving toward Peter Eppright. “Even if the Kasten isn’t even powerful enough to start a campfire, wherever Betty is, she gets to watch her entire family die. It’s enough for me.” She stopped in front of Eppright. His eyes were full of panic. “Kneel,” she commanded.

  All four of them crashed to their knees on the concrete floor, compelled to obey by her spell.

  I struggled against my cuff and ropes to no avail.

  Amelia murmured an invocation, traced runes on the lid of the Kasten, and opened the box. I felt a whisper of power that I recognized immediately from Betty’s library; this was what had been hidden in the bookcase, behind the blood ward. The inside was stained black.

  I began pulling on the rope that bound my left wrist. It hurt, but I hoped Ray might have been careless in his haste to tie me up. I twisted and pulled, trying not to attract Amelia’s attention. I couldn’t feel any give at all, but I kept trying.

  With one quick movement, Amelia cut Peter Eppright’s throat.

  Blood spurted out across the floor. His eyes were wide and horrified, but he remained immobile. Amelia stood to the side for a moment, watching the blood arc through the air without so much as a blink, and then she raised the Kasten to catch it.

  Warm blood ran down my fingers from where the rope on my left wrist had cut through the skin. Maybe the blood would make it easier to slip out.

  I didn’t dare look at my hand and tip Amelia off to what I was doing, so instead I watched Peter Eppright bleed out and die. It seemed to take forever, but in reality it probably took less than a minute. I felt the moment he died; it was like a frisson of energy across my skin. The Kasten now contained the lifeblood of one member of Betty’s family. There were four more in the circle, awaiting their turn.

  Amelia stepped away from Eppright’s body, which, grotesquely, was still upright on its knees despite being dead. I stared at her, hoping she wouldn’t notice the blood dripping from my left hand. Her face was serene.