by Anne Malcom
I’d have to rip off a limb soon, if only to get someone to pay attention to me.
“Malena, she pushed the boundaries of the powers given to her by nature and was given leniency because of her power, as the council was mindful of the fact that she could become the greatest asset to the coven.” She paused. “But then they couldn’t put off punishment when she created the abominations. The humans of the village that she turned into the vampires that had walked the earth since before even The Four, yet they had none of the human characteristics of those Strigoi encountered by the coven in the past. This creature had strength not given by gods or nature but from a deal with the king of the underworld, greedy for more rotten souls.”
Another pause.
“There was a trial. But the love Malena’s sisters had for her, and the prospect of her being hung from the neck, was too much for them to bear, so they admitted to Malena’s crimes as their own. The council were only too happy for such admissions, for the sisters were weaker and they were still loath to lose Malena’s power. Hence their quick execution.”
I rose my brows. “Ruthless.”
Sophie nodded once. “The council has not changed, for their pursuit of power and the witches who wield it stains the blood of these books, even if one can’t see it,” she murmured.
I knew she was thinking of a time closer than a few thousand years. The time being now and the council trying to put the tattooed and sarcastic witch in their trophy cage. Or weapons bunker.
They’d have an interesting time if they tried that, considering this vampire needed a drinking buddy and wouldn’t let her friend get taken away lightly.
My gaze met the wolf’s intense stare.
Neither would he.
But I focused on Sophie again, that otherworldly twinkle to her eyes and the slight hum to the air, originating from the witch herself.
I didn’t think she needed a werewolf or an exceptionally strong and beautiful vampire to save her.
I think she could do that job quite well herself.
And the one of destroying her.
Yeah, she could do that too.
Or whatever was inside her could.
But apparently history wasn’t done with the present.
“Her sisters were dead and Malena was released. And the council naively thought that such a punishment would remind Malena of rules and consequences. Put her in her place, so to speak.”
I shook my head. “They need a crazy advisor on the council. You know, someone who’s the token insane one to be able to tell them exactly how that wouldn’t work. Because when dealing with the most powerful, you’re almost always dealing with the craziest, and you need someone to fight crazy with crazy.” I gave Rick a look. “You need one of those. Might help when dealing with certain beautifully insane vampires.” I grinned.
Thorne’s arms flexed around me.
Sophie smiled. “Indeed, they did need that, for the wrath brought forward by Malena leveled the village. And she used the power stolen from dead witches to warp the laws of nature and bring forth her sisters from the grave. Their souls, darkened with death and the blackness that was needed to arise from the grave, brought forth the darkness that had always lived somewhere inside them. Malena was forever marked and warped with the ugly stench of such magic.
“The story goes that they wreaked havoc over most of Eastern Europe before an army of the strongest supernaturals on the planet formed an allegiance to bind them.”
I looked at her. “Not just witches?”
She shook her head. “That’s apparently it.” She glanced down to the page. “And the Herodias sisters were banished to the cave, which was neither in the space of living nor dead, since their crimes to both life and death meant they would never embrace the reaper for the stillness of death, nor ever taste the beautiful chaos of life. Forever bound, or shall the earth be tainted and ruined should the chains of their prison be broken.”
I chewed my lip. “Well, hello, ruined world. Someone let the dogs out. It’s not a party until some uninvited guests come to fuck shit up.”
Sophie grinned. “Yeah, worldwide destruction could be described at that.”
“Or a great party,” I countered.
Rick nodded to the book. “So this text, it explains not only the witches but also the curse? And I’m assuming how to defeat them?” he asked, obviously getting impatient.
Sophie glanced at him. “Most of the writings in here are given as much credence as the words in the Bible. They can’t be read as prophecy and are open to interpretation. But this passage”—she pointed at the page—“talks almost specifically about this curse and the ramifications of it.”
Thorne had been little more than a statue since she’d uttered the earlier verse. As had Rick.
Even Scott and Duncan.
Drat, I was the last to catch on. Again.
“So you’re telling me that Thorne’s is the only blood I can drink?” I asked. “Until we kill the witches?”
There was a long pause I didn’t like the sound of. At all.
“Right?” I probed. “Then I can go back to my usual diet of psychopaths and rapists?”
Even saying it, thinking of the taste of the blood earlier, the wrongness of it all, my stomach roiled in protest and an unintended shiver rippled through me before I could stop it.
Of course, Thorne noticed and his worried gaze immediately darted to me. “I’m fine,” I snapped. “Someone just walked over my grave. Or wrote a date on it.”
My response merely added to the cocktail of his fury.
“Sophie,” I demanded. “Please help to make sure that Thorne does not pop a wisdom tooth with all that jaw clenching,” I requested. “And tell him this will be over as soon as ‘Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead.’”
Sophie looked at me. I didn’t like the look. It was the one she gave me right before she told me that I didn’t suit the shoes I’d been salivating over for months. Said they made my calves look weird.
I still hadn’t forgiven her for not giving me the magical version of a plastic surgery ‘calf job.’
It existed. I knew it did.
I glanced down at my calves for a moment before locking eyes with her once more.
“Death magic was practiced on you, and you combatted it with death blood that turned into life blood. It cannot be undone,” she said, her voice shifting with a strange fluid quality. Something moved in the air, like a breeze, yet there were no windows open. Sophie’s eyes started to glaze over but not fully. “It is because the two have returned that the blood shall not be sullied with anything but the design of the gods should the world hope to flourish in the new age of peace.”
“Nope,” I said immediately, not liking the direction this was going and abruptly bursting from Thorne’s arms. The loss of his heat was regrettable, but I needed to get the hell out of Dodge.
Fast.
I knew the sound of her voice and the taste to the air, and I did not need to be anywhere near this fucking train wreck.
Thorne was too quick, taking hold of my elbow before I made my escape.
“What the fuck are you doing, Isla?” he demanded.
I eyed Sophie, the disappearing Sophie. The blank-faced stranger with her features remained, watching me with sightless eyes that birthed a deep disquiet inside of me.
“Nostradamus over here is about to spout some sort of future premonition much like she’s done before. Freaked me the fuck out the first time, and now I’ve got a tricky feeling it’s about me and I’d like to be as surprised about my future as I am with what comes out of my mouth. So I’m going to leave before she ruins it all without so much as a spoiler alert. I’ll still not forget what she did to me with Lost,” I informed him. “And I don’t need to know this is all a concoction of an insane mind while I’m shaking back and forth in some mental institution in Sunnydale. I saw the Buffy episode.”
His hand on my arm stayed firm, firm enough that I knew I’d have to hurt him to break the grasp
.
He knew it too, his eyes twinkling as they searched mine. “We need to know, Isla,” he said quietly.
I tried to blink away the stare and everything that came with it, including the waves of his emotions. “Not the future,” I argued. “No good has ever come from such prophecies. Watch a fucking movie, dude. Any movie. Chosen one, end of the world, death. CliffsNotes version, but that’s usually the gist of it. So I don’t need to read the book or watch the creepy play in front of me. I’ve seen all the movies.”
“Our future. And I’d like a blueprint so I can avoid any more incidents where I hold your lifeless body in my arms,” he hissed.
I glared at him and was about to do something I’d most likely regret—what else was new?—in order to get out of the room when the voice started speaking.
The voice that was flat and old and young and everything and nothing at the same time. That was certainly not Sophie.
“She will be deathless, this chosen one.”
I gave Thorne a pointed look, mouthing “Told you so” at him, but his gaze went from me to Sophie as she continued.
As much as I didn’t want to, and I really didn’t want to, it was somewhat of a siren song, that voice. Music dragging the ear and the attention so I couldn’t move, even if I wanted to.
Sophie stood in the middle of the room, sightless and seeing everything at the same time, her eyes taking on that glassy quality of someone who was dead and saw all the secrets of life.
“The one like the one who came first before her. First before her, but was the one who submitted to the mortality she was plagued with. Her head of fire in the sky for all to see, the emerald of her eyes in the oceans which glint from the sunlight that banished her mate to the darkness until it was no longer the place where monsters lurked. For the light was their home more than shadows.
“In the shadows and in the light, they come back. Come back with the chosen one. Deathless until the blood of her mate is drained or ash if the heart of stops beating. Then her death shall come swift and fast and on the heels of this, the end of the world.”
I stared at the empty-eyed Seer Sophie who was creepily like a wax version of my friend. That was bad enough I’d seen the movie. It sucked.
I was still thinking about the Paris Hilton death scene when I should’ve been more focused on her words. For they were said by wax Sophie in that strange empty and ancient voice that sent shivers up my spine.
Not that I’d tell anyone that.
I was a fucking vampire, for Lucifer’s sake.
I didn’t get shivers.
So I kept my face in its natural state—resting bitch face. And beautiful. Obviously.
“Chosen one? Me?” I repeated, feeling very uncomfortable with the sheer number of eyes on me that had settled there after everyone had stopped gaping at Sophie. Don’t get me wrong, I loved having all the eyes on me, but only for the right reasons, like my beauty, my style, or I was killing something in a really epic way. Or pissing off a large group of my vampire brethren.
Not like this.
“Your connection to the creepo witch of the future must be hinky,” I declared, giving the now blinking, not-wax Sophie a gentle tap on the side of the head like they did with those TVs that were on the fritz.
She glared at me in pain.
Well, I thought it had been soft.
“I’m no chosen one,” I continued. “Beautiful one? Yes. Intelligent, witty ,and hilarious at the same time? Also yes. An icon of the vampire world? I’ll take it, if that’s what my fans would like to call me.” I paused. “But not chosen, and not with my death causing the world to end. Too much pressure. I don’t even like voting on American Idol. The power goes to my head.”
“Yeah, because your head is so small otherwise,” Sophie muttered, still rubbing her head.
Wolf man in the corner was shaking from his exertion to stay there. He had been poised for the change since the air turned thick like the dampness before a storm, and then it had gotten worse when I’d given Sophie the little love tap.
I gave him a sympathetic smile. “Nobody put Wolfy in the corner before?” I asked sweetly.
I got an annoyed growl at that, plus a glare from Sophie.
Curious. As was the way her gaze darted to his and she didn’t glare or back me up with a fiery insult.
Yes, very curious.
But we had bigger fish to fry, apparently.
“You remember that? The whole ‘chosen one’ shit you just spouted? That sounded like the script of a bad movie?” I asked Sophie, realizing that she wasn’t as blank-faced and confused as she had been the day at the bar.
She blinked at me. “Yeah, I do, but it wasn’t me.” Her words were slow and slurred, as if she had to wade through a swamp in her mind to say them. To fight someone else for the control of her motor functions.
It was creepy as all hell.
“No shit, it wasn’t you. Since when do you talk like Shakespeare went all vague and believed in vampires? The question remains that, if it wasn’t you, then who the fuck was it?”
“I think there are a lot of questions that have arisen with this prophecy. That’s the least pertinent,” Rick cut in smoothly.
I glared at him, finding it rather comforting to move my attention away from the friend who was only half there and becoming someone who spoke in prophecies instead of profanities. “I disagree. The fact that she didn’t black out like a sorority girl in Cabo is worrying. I mean, we need to talk about that and all the powers that are like the sparkling elephant in the room. That’s what we need to focus on, not the gobbledygook she just spouted,” I informed the room, desperate to get out of a situation where I was chosen for anything but the most depraved in high school. Or prom queen. I felt like I wore a crown daily, but that would’ve been a nice title to add to the résumé.
Thorne’s hand was still on my arm, most likely because he sensed my need for escape.
“Isla,” he warned.
“Thorne,” I mimicked his tone.
Another glare from him and a warning flex on my arm. He looked to Sophie. “You know what the fuck what you just spouted is about? Specifics in real people talk?” I raised my brow at him. “I don’t think the man who speaks in grunts, growls and ‘babes’ gets to define ‘real people talk.’”
Duncan barked out a laugh, but the rest of the little group ignored me.
Sophie looked too serious for my liking. Although she just had someone using her vocal cords like puppet strings, so she did have the merit to look more than a little freaked. “I don’t know,” she said, rubbing her bare and bloodstained arms as if to ward off the chill or the foreboding of the future that was getting a little more complicated than ‘kill witch,’ ‘fight war,’ ‘be awesome.’
A lot more complicated, in fact.
“These powers are getting a little beyond my knowledge of magic itself.”
I snorted. “Understatement of the century. I’m telling you, we need to focus more on Sophie’s puppet master problem than the whole “chosen one” thing. It’s the plot of every lame movie. I’m thinking it’s a distraction from the real conflict.”
“Puppet master?” Sophie repeated.
I nodded, making the motion of controlling an invisible puppet with my own bloodstained arms. “You know, whatever it is inside your brain that’s making your eyes go weird and ramping up your PMS by about a thousand percent.”
She blinked. “I’ve got it under control,” she clipped.
“I really disagree there,” I said. “Considering you just had an out-of-body experience and uttered things like ‘mate.’” I shuddered. “You would never use that in a serious context unless you were making fun of, oh, I don’t know….” I looked at the brooding man. “A wolf. Actually, I feel like there’s a sparkling elephant in the room, and a big old wolf who needs a haircut and an explanation. Are you doing some sort of doggy daycare for extra cash, Soph? If the PI business is really that bad, you could always sell your spells for mo
ney. It’s better than having to pick dog hair off your newly upholstered armchair. Or prostitution. That’s the oldest profession in the world, and there’s nothing wrong with getting laid and getting paid for it.”
I grinned at the wolf, who showed teeth but said nothing. I wondered if he was a mute.
Thorne had eyes on him too, as did the rest of the males, but they didn’t seem as overly concerned as I did.
Sophie’s eyes flickered to the wolf, and the brief contact of their gazes was something even I felt.
“He’s here because I owe someone a favor.”
“What, you lost a bet?” I asked.
She glared at me. “He’s not important right now.”
I glared back. “I disagree. The wolfman who is two seconds away from humping your leg or urinating around your desk is important at this juncture. We’re kind of at a sensitive moment in this whole situation, and we can’t be risking that the dog will yap his snout about town.”
The room of males was strangely silent, each set of eyes whipping between us like spectators at a tennis game.
“He can be trusted,” she said tightly.
I crossed my arms. “I’m going to need more than that.”
“You’re not getting more. Not when we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Namely finding out this chosen one crap,” Sophie said.
“Ugh. End of the world, yes, yadda yadda yadda,” I sighed. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Let’s just kill the witches and go from there.”
“We’re going to have to do some research on this,” Thorne cut in.
Sophie nodded.
I gaped at them. “You’re talking about reading books instead of fighting? What have I walked into, Oprah’s book club?”
“She just talked about the end of the fuckin’ world and you being the catalyst for that, Isla,” Thorne growled. “I think that warrants a bit of pause.”
“Last week she talked about how she thought we should stop cursing every woman in Ugg boots we encountered. We need a grain of salt, a slice of lemon, and a shot of tequila to go with everything she says. Especially with this whole possession thing she’s got going on,” I told him.
“She’s right,” a voice cut in.