So, I stood there and watched every single drop of perspiration as it made its way down the side of his face. I watched every change in expression or appearance; dark skin turning paler. I watched and waited, but it almost killed me. I felt the effort and pain he expended trying to get us through that damn wall.
I could have blasted it with my Light. A sledgehammer to something that he was trying to finesse. It would have given us away, but then I would not have had to watch Hakan pour his two hearts and two souls into gaining entry for us.
I hated it. But I respected him enough to let him do his thing without interference or judgement.
It almost killed me to do it, though. Caring for someone, loving them, sucked.
The wall split apart, and Hakan almost fell through the gap he’d created.
I did reach out for him then; wrapping my arm around his sweat-soaked body, throwing his heavy limb over my shoulders, then dragging him through the gap into another shadowed room. Thankfully, this one looked like a storage room, and no one in the castle had thought to check if we’d be hiding with the bags of rice and sacks of grains and barrels of hundred proof.
Goran stepped lightly into the space behind us, his shield still up and around our bodies, thrumming a familiar chiming tattoo in the back of my mind.
I settled Hakan down on a crate of goods and took in the space we’d arrived in. We were definitely inside the castle. The walls were brick just like the external castle walls we’d spied from outside. A thick wooden door stood sentinel between us and the rest of the castle.
Between us and a possible match for Luc for entwining.
I turned back and looked at Hakan. Colour was returning, but he still looked weak. And then in the next breath, he turned into an enormous barn owl.
His Mhachkay soul.
The owl blinked at me and then puffed itself up. With a shake of its feathers, it settled into a quiet stance, blinking…well, owlishly.
“Hey,” I said.
The owl blinked back. I stepped closer; carefully, slowly, so as not to startle it. Reaching out, I stroked down over its chest. I couldn’t reach its head without stretching, so I chose the mottled coloured feathers across its rotund breast. The feathers were soft, and the owl let out a little chirrup sound.
And then the damn thing pecked me on the fingers.
Blood welled where its beak had parted flesh and then Hakan was back, smirking at me.
“My Mhachkay soul is appeased,” he said.
“Your Mhachkay arse is going to get handed to you,” I shot back.
He laughed. He looked better. I shook my head.
My eyes drifted to the door. “What now?”
“Now we find Zahra.”
I guessed Zahra was the witch.
I stared at the door as if I could see through it to the other side. I couldn’t sense anything outside of Goran’s shield, which meant anyone on the other side of the door couldn’t sense us either. But we could be stepping out into a trap. Or into the middle of a squadron of parasitic Ljósálfar.
I pulled my Svante. Goran unsheathed his Fey sword. Hakan simply reached forward and opened the door.
If a vampire had been nearby, it would have heard my frantically beating heart. As it was, Hakan did.
Be at ease, hayatim, he said softly in my mind.
I wanted to snap back at him to mind his own business, but I worked on showing no fear and never giving the damn smug bastard an inch. My guard was way the hell up, so at least that was working.
Hakan smiled at me. It reached his eyes and made him simply gorgeous.
I sighed. I couldn’t stay mad at him. He was my match in this and all worlds.
Hakan stepped out into a mosaic-lined hall and then picked a direction in which to walk. I had no idea if he had a destination in mind, or if he was trying to avoid where the Kral might be. He clearly knew his way around the castle, so Goran and I slipped into the shadows at his back and walked silently after him.
We met no Mhachkay, Erbörü, or Fey, but that was probably because we were on the lowest level of the castle. The storage rooms and cleaning closets and such. Probably a dungeon or two, but if there were, we didn’t pass them. Maybe the Mhachkay hadn’t been back in their ancestral home long enough to dust off the shackles yet.
I wondered, absently, who they’d turned out of the castle to move back in here. Whoever it was hadn’t uncovered all of its secrets. Because in short order, Hakan had us slipping out of sight into a dusty, disused servants’ passage, that ran parallel to the main hallway and had its own rickety set of stairs.
I didn’t bother to blast the spiderwebs this time, Hakan dealt with them in a much more mundane manner. I could live with that, I thought; throwing my Light around willy-nilly wasn’t a good idea in here.
“Lower your shield,” Hakan told Goran.
The fairy complied without argument. Perhaps he knew this was the best place to do so and Hakan needed to sniff out this Zahra woman.
Magic thrummed around my Savaşçı. But there was also a lot of it all around us, out in the castle proper. The Mhachkay magic was pure and in my mind’s eye seemed laced with silver, much like Hakan’s eyes right then. The Erbörü magic was of the earth; grass and loam intertwined. Natural. The golden Light of the Ljósálfar, however, was tarnished. A dull sheen when once it would have shone brightly.
They were here. All through the castle. Clustered together in places where the Mhachkay and Erbörü were not. If the alliance was still working, it was fractured. There was no crossover of silver with gold. Nature with aberration. The three types of magic were quite separate. At least the Mhachkay and their familiars had not yet been infected by whatever had corrupted the Ljósálfar.
I looked over my shoulder at Goran. His head was cocked to the side like an inquisitive bird; his eyes shone a vibrant green that seemed troubled. They might have been at war with their cousins, but the Dökkálfa did not like seeing them corrupted.
It wasn’t looking good for Álfheimr. How was Aliath going to keep this infestation from reaching his court? And who had let the Light Fey become infested?
Was it Terrin? Had he started this? Or was it that cousin of Kaleth’s, the fairy who had stolen my power through my Sigillum in that cave in Ljósálfar? The parasite had to have come from somewhere, but right then finding out where was at the bottom of my to-do list.
I had a witch to catch, and a Mhachkay Kral thrall to break, and then the woman was entwining her blood with my brother.
I couldn’t believe it wouldn’t happen. The alternative was too painful, too raw, to consider.
Hakan paused on the third floor of the castle, which I thought was perhaps only the ground floor. We’d entered through the external wall, well below the level of the bridge that had led to the grand front entrance. So the stairs we’d climbed couldn’t have taken us much further than that first level.
We stood silently, listening to the sound of marching boots and weapons clattering. Mhachkay strode past en masse, but Hakan’s witch I was thinking was not amongst them. He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling of the passage we were in.
We go up? I asked him silently.
I cannot sense her anywhere.
Perhaps she hadn’t made it.
She made it, he said resolutely inside my mind. Zahra has never met a fight she could not win, an argument she could not counter, an opponent she could not better.
Except the Kral, I muttered, not liking Hakan’s hero-worship of this girl.
He turned silver and blue eyes to me and then reached up and cupped my cheek.
“Jealousy suits you, Kafinefendi,” he said aloud. “But please do not kill my cousin.”
I stared at him as his lips twitched and then I let a long breath of air out.
Of course, she was his cousin. Couldn’t he have told me that sooner?
He let out a quiet laugh and then started up the stairs again.
“Her room was on the top floor,” he advised. �
��Near mine and my brother’s.”
The royal family would have had the choicest chambers in the castle. The ones it would take the longest for the invading hordes to get to. They would have also had a way to escape them. If the witchy cousin were up there, confined to her room for answering back, then the Kral would have made damn sure she couldn’t escape him.
We’d probably need to backtrack back down these stairs to the basement and crawl back out that tunnel Hakan had built. If Zahra didn’t want to come with us, we’d be dragging a limp body.
This should be good.
Hakan paused on the top floor, his head cocked to the side, his eyes pure silver.
“There is a ward,” he said softly.
I couldn’t sense it.
“I can break it,” Goran advised.
Hakan looked at the fairy and said, “It will be alarmed.”
“Then we’ll have to move quickly afterwards,” the Fey replied.
Hakan stepped aside, and Goran approached the concealed door we’d stopped in front of. He muttered a few words under his breath in Fey and then fairy magic spilt out of him.
It washed over my skin, sending goosebumps in its wake, and then the door crept open on noisy hinges, and a gong clanged somewhere in the bowels of the building.
“That’s our cue,” I said, peering around Hakan.
And then spotted the tip of a Kilij that carefully pierced his neck and the fierce-looking vampire who held it.
Goran was out cold on the ground. I hadn’t even seen him fall. And Hakan stood so still, I thought he’d shut himself down. Vampire still. Preternaturally still. It wasn’t normal.
It made me mad.
The woman looked at me over my Savaşçı’s shoulder and said, “Who the hell are you?” in Turkish.
So, I blasted her square in the chest with my Light.
9
Lights Out
Of course, I did. I may not have killed her, but I’d packed a punch in that Light blast, and she’d ended up a crumpled mess on the cold stone floor.
Hakan shook himself free of the thrall she’d held him in and then took in the scene in a swift glance. He looked back at me, eyebrows arched, and then stepped over Goran’s body and walked to his cousin.
“She lives,” he announced.
“You think so little of me?” I demanded.
“Hayatim,” he purred, “you exceed my every desire.”
I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest.
“How are we gonna get them out of the castle?” We had two dead weights to carry now.
“I do not know how to wake the Fairy, Zahra used her own brand of Mhachkay magic; it is not commonly taught. But my cousin I can revive.”
“No way. Nah-uh. Not happening. Did you see the sword she held to your neck?”
I could still smell the coppery hint of his blood as it dribbled over his Adam’s apple.
“She is Mhachkay. She is a warrior. It was to be expected.”
“Not to my man it’s not.”
Hakan peered up at me through half-lidded eyes. “Perfect,” he said, his vampyre-half purring.
Or maybe that was the owl. Did owls purr?
I shook my head.
“Can you contain her?”
“Yes.” He sounded certain; he looked less.
“What is it?”
“It will require much of my power.”
“Can I help?”
He shook his head. “If she fights me, if the Kral’s thrall has changed at all over the centuries and I am not strong enough to break it, she will resist.”
“I’ve got your back,” I said, hefting a stake and then twirling it.
Hakan took in the silver weapon flashing and then scowled.
“Give me time to try first.”
“Sure. You’ve got, oh…” I cocked my head, let out a little Light and finished with, “three minutes.”
“The alarm,” he guessed.
“The Ljósálfar,” I offered with a nod of my head.
He nodded back in agreement. He would have been able to tell that his brethren weren’t the ones approaching. But whether he could sense the Light Fey like I could, I didn’t know. They were Dark, and the Nosferatin in me had woken up and started pacing.
Hakan turned toward his cousin and lowered his head. And then a knife appeared in his right hand, and he ran it through his left palm before I could stop him. Blood dripped out of his closed fist, landing in wet splats across Zahra’s tanned face. Aside from the gory addition of blood as warpaint, she was pretty, I decided. But in an uncompromising way.
I doubted the woman allowed her natural beauty to define her. She wore traditional Mhachkay warrior garb; well-worn and scuffed up. Had the Mhachkay been interred immediately after a battle? Her Kilij lay discarded at her side; her long, well-defined legs disappeared under a short leather shirt. Her dark tresses had come undone from the braid she’d worn, and her hair spilt out around her like a silky shroud.
Asleep she looked peaceful. Awake she’d been all tightly coiled energy and barely contained threat. Even now I could sense her power; her magic. And it was…not Dark. But not Light either. It was nothing I had ever seen nor felt before.
What was that magic? It wasn’t like Hakan’s or even the Kral’s. It was different, deeper, stronger perhaps, something else, something indefinable but which reminded me of thick forests and wet leaves and so, so much like the earth.
An earth witch maybe? That could be it. But I wasn’t sure.
Hakan started chanting in Turkish again, but this time I felt his power swell. And then I felt hers swell up to meet it, fight it, battle it. A storm raged in silence.
Beneath me, I felt the Mhachkay stir.
The Ljósálfar were getting closer. “One minute,” I said, turning to face the door.
Goran was still out cold beside the passage we’d used to gain entrance. I wasn’t sure if it was the best place for him or not, but with my back to Hakan and the witch, I didn’t have enough brain space left to work it out. I needed to be ready for the oncoming threat.
And in light of that thought, I replaced my stake with my sword.
I couldn’t protect Hakan from his cousin and protect us all from the oncoming fairies as well. I had to make a choice. And family, even demented, crazy-powerful family won the lottery and got a free pass.
Besides, my Entwined could kick arse.
I rolled my head on my shoulders, flicked my wrists a few times to limber up.
And then heard Zahra suck in a full breath of air.
“Cousin,” Hakan said. He sounded rough. I wanted to turn around; I kept my focus on the door and the approaching Ljósálfar guards.
“Hakan,” Zahra said on a breath of expelled air. “What did you do?”
“Freed you,” he said.
“That was not wise, cousin.”
“We need your help, Zahra. Choose a side and choose it well.”
I chanced a quick glance over my shoulder. Hakan held his Kilij to her neck. Not pricking the skin by its tip as she had done him, but laying the sharp edge of the blade against the side of her neck, ready to slice. Ready to decapitate her.
I let a soft breath out and faced the door again. If I were her, I’d be spitting mad.
“You ask much, Prince,” she snarled.
“Choose,” he said.
Silence. I felt her power, it was contained, but something was happening to it. And I was sure Hakan knew too because I scented fresh blood; he’d pressed his blade in, parting flesh.
“Damn you,” she muttered.
Light flashed, and when I spun back to counter it, a white stork stood where Zahra had been. She flapped her wings in disgruntlement at Hakan and then hopped across the room to the fairy. Bending her head down, she pecked at his cheek. Light washed over him, blood trickled out and pooled in the dip beneath his chin. And then Goran sucked in a breath of air and shuddered.
The stork became a woman again.
“The win
dow, Fey,” she said. “Work your magic.”
Goran was clearly discombobulated, but he shook himself and stood on shaking legs. Reaching down to pick up his swords, he almost toppled over. I didn’t like seeing Aliath’s man so obviously weakened. It went against everything I had been taught. I stepped up to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder, letting my Light wash over him and clear his head.
He sucked in two quick breaths and then bowed to me. “Thank you, my lady,” he said. His eyes flashed green when he looked up at Zahra again.
“The window, Fey,” she snapped. “They will have located the old passageways and cut them off. The only way out is through the air.”
Through the air. Did she mean what I thought she meant?
I looked at Hakan. He was looking at the door to the room. The door that stood between us and the oncoming Ljósálfar horde.
There were too many for us to fight; even if I blasted them all with my Light, attempting to give us enough time to climb out the window, some would still survive. They had the numbers. We did not.
I drew on more and more of my Light anyway. It was my best weapon when confronted with a mob. I let it thrum beneath the surface, ready and waiting. I heard the feminine sound of a shocked breath of air being indrawn behind me as Goran began to chant in Fey in the background.
“You have entwined,” Zahra whispered, her voice filled with awe.
“You did not know,” Hakan said, no emotion whatsoever evident in his tone.
“I’ve been kept in here since we awoke,” Zahra spat. “No one talks to me.”
“What did you do, Canım?”
She snorted. I growled. Cousin or not, calling her his ‘dear’ was not acceptable.
“She has fire,” the woman commented, clearly not wanting to answer Hakan’s question.
“I will introduce you, cousin, when we are free from here.”
The window shattered. Goran let out a sigh. Light thrummed behind me, painting the walls all around the room in shadows that danced and swirled.
Blood Enthralled (Blood Enchanted, Book Three): A Vampire Hunter Paranormal Romance Series Page 8