by Nora Ash
Thankfully, it was still empty when I lifted the lid to check. However, just the lid was heavy as fuck, and I mentally cursed my lack of ever stepping foot in a gym.
Biting my lip, I stared at my hands and wondered just how much I could use my magic for…
It took a bit of trial and error, but with the help of my magic, I managed to lift the full casket. It floated in the air next to me as I stared at it, trying to determine if it’d be stable enough to transport a sleeping vampire outside in the daylight. I gave it an experimental shove. It moved slightly to the side, but didn’t so much as wobble.
Well, looked like it’d be my best bet.
* * *
Getting Warin down from the silver chains and into the casket took a bit more effort, but I managed. I drew in a deep breath as I looked at his pale face.
“This is it, my love,” I whispered, before I pressed a gentle kiss to his lips and dragged the lid on, ensuring it clicked shut. And then I pushed my magic out of my body once more to raise the coffin.
It was surprisingly harder to lift it now that Warin was inside—almost as if my power struggled with the extra weight. Only then did it dawn on me that my powers might not come from an unlimited source—and I didn’t know how much more I to draw on before they ran out.
“Shit!” I grunted as I forced the casket up. But there wasn’t any other option—so my magic had to last. I didn’t care if it vanished for good as soon as we were safe, but it was going to last until then. No matter what.
The basement was quiet as I led the way out of the room we’d been trapped in, and I prayed whatever guards were awake wouldn’t be too worried about the two prisoners tied up in a cage escaping. If luck was on our side, they wouldn’t realize anything was wrong until we’d made it out.
No sooner had I thought the word “out” than the door to the stairs opened and a big, burly man stepped in. His eyes widened at the sight of me, one foot on the bottom step and coffin hovering behind me.
I didn’t stop to think—I just reached out for him with my magic and ripped.
The man let out a strangled yelp as he tumbled down the stairs, blood spraying from the gash in his side still oozing with green energy.
His own green power rose around him, but I slung a bolt of energy directly at his head before he could release it. His cranium cracked like a melon, blood and brain matter leaking out across the steps.
It took everything I had not to hurl at the gruesome sight.
Now’s not the time to be a shrinking violet, Liv!
“Pete, you all right, man?”
I froze at the gruff voice sounding form somewhere upstairs, followed by steps nearing the still half-open door.
As quickly and quietly as I could, I sprinted up the steps, leaving Warin’s coffin behind. I made it to the top just as another man came through the door. This time, I was prepared. I reached out with my power, let it wrap around his neck… and pulled. He only managed to make a gargling gasp before his head ripped off his shoulders and clonked down the stairs three steps at a time. I stepped to the side just in time to dodge his huge body slamming down the steps after his head, landing on top of Pete’s corpse.
I didn’t pause to contemplate what I’d done—there wasn’t time to mourn, wasn’t time to freak out. All that mattered was getting Warin out before it was too late.
I reached out with my magic to the coffin, and groaned at the strain it was to lift it this time. My powers were definitely depleting fast now. I gritted my teeth and sort of yanked, and the coffin came, one step at a time, bumping against the stairs. I dug deeper and forced it up a few extra inches so as to not call any more guards with the noise. By the time I was up the stairs, I was dripping with sweat and my hands were shaking.
Fuck.
“Just a little longer,” I whispered, more to myself than the gently flowing energy inside me. “Come on, just a bit more.”
I closed the door to the stairs and snuck into the main floor of the funeral home, coffin in tow, searching for a way out. It didn’t take me long to find the door leading to the garage, and I sent a grateful thought to my goddess at the sight of the hearse parked inside.
Getting Warin’s casket into the back was hard. It hurt to use my magic now—an odd, internal ache that ran the length of my veins, but I managed. Only when I jumped into the driver’s seat, there were no keys.
“Of course. Of-fucking-course,” I hissed as I wiped the sweat from my brow while frantically looking around for the keys. But why would escaping a psycho Ancient vampire and his skinwalker minions be fucking easy?
“Fuck!” I rested my head in my hands as I leaned on the steering wheel, trying desperately to come up with a solution.
It was simple, when it came down to it. There was only one solution. I had no idea if it would work, if this was how it was supposed to work, but it had to… because it was my only option when it came to saving Warin. I breathed in deeply as I stared at my shaking hands, and tried to visualize a key of green magic twisting in the ignition.
Pain lanced up my arms, and I cried out as magic burned through my veins—but the engine switched on.
I could hardly stand when I stumbled out of the hearse to hit the garage door button, but the image of Warin’s still face as I closed the casket over him pulled me through. He needed me. And so I had to be strong.
The driveway from the mortician’s to the road looked clear. I staggered back into the hearse and forced my trembling arms and legs to obey as I set the car into reverse and backed out.
“We’re going to make it, my love,” I whispered at the quiet coffin in the back. “It’ll be all rig—“
“Hey!”
My heart slammed into my throat at the sound of an angry voice. In the rearview mirror I saw a woman jump out on the driveway, a hand lifted as she stared at the hearse. Red energy crackled in her palm, and I knew I didn’t have the strength left to kill her before she unleashed her magic.
“Stop!” she snarled, lip curling back.
“Never,” I whispered between gritted teeth. And then I stomped on the accelerator as hard as I could.
The hearse screeched against the pavement as it roared backward. The woman jumped out of the way, her red energy missing the car. but taking off a wing mirror. But I knew that if she lived, she would take up pursuit… and I wouldn’t get away a second time. So instead of barreling down the driveway and onto the road, I turned the steering-wheel and, at full speed, backed over the woman still on the ground.
There was a sickly crunch and a rough bump that made me hit my head on the steering wheel and Warin’s coffin slide in the back, but when I looked up again, the woman was lying still on the path. From the angle of her neck, I knew she was dead.
I pulled us out onto the deserted road as fast as humanly possible and sped off without another look back. I knew they’d follow us, that it wouldn’t take long before someone saw the open garage and the dead woman on the path, and our only shot was if I got us as far away as possible before that happened.
Zeth’s hideout was in an isolated part of Indiana—not that those are few and far between, mind—and I hadn’t been in a position to pay attention to where we were going when he brought us here. I glanced at the time on the hearse’s dashboard and grimaced. Only noon, and the gas was pretty low. I wasn’t going to be able to just keep driving until the sun set and Warin could fly us off somewhere safe. I needed a plan.
It was only fifteen minutes later, when I passed what looked like a small, deserted path, that a plan started to take form. I turned down it, and after a few turns, came across a shack half-buried in junk—parts of rusted agricultural machines, oil cans, and moldy bales of hay.
I got out the hearse and ran to the shed. It took me a couple of minutes to open the creaky old door and peer inside. It was filled with the same sort of junk as was leaning against its outsides, but… there was enough room for a coffin.
My veins burned as I dragged Warin from the hearse with my
magic. It took everything I had to keep the casket even and hovering above the ground as I got it inside the shed and safely shoved into a corner. I didn’t have enough energy to try and conceal it, but I prayed that this would be enough.
“Be safe, my love,” I whispered as I touched a shaking hand to the lid. “Stay hidden.”
Sunlight streamed in through cracks in the shed, glinting off the polished wood of his coffin, reflecting green in the specks of dust floating in the air. I wanted to curl up next to it so bad, wanted to just fall asleep and wake up when he could rise and take over. But I couldn’t. It was up to me, and to me alone, to keep him safe. Which meant I had to leave him behind.
I dragged myself out of the shed and back into the hearse, wishing that for once, I could protect my lover without abandoning him. But the skinwalkers would be looking for a hearse, and there was no way to hide a vehicle this size in the shed. The best I could do was to keep driving, hopefully luring them far away from where Warin slept.
My plan was to drive until I hit a town, abandon the hearse, and somehow find another means of transportation out of there, to throw the skinwalkers off my trail for long enough that Warin could find me again.
Only, as I drove away from the shed and back out onto the road, it was so hard to keep my eyes open, and my vision kept blurring at the edges. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to focus on the road and my trembling hands to keep steady on the wheel.
I don’t know how long I drove for. Maybe half an hour. ne minute I was trying to ignore the sweat dripping from my forehead, because I knew if I took my hand off the wheel to wipe it away, I’d never straighten up the hearse again.
The next, everything went black, and then I was staring into the dashboard.
I blinked, trying to figure out why my shoulder and waist hurt so much, and why I had the oddest sensation of vertigo. It took me a little while to realize that the car was flipped on its side, and only the seatbelt kept me strapped in. I’d crashed the hearse, and I didn’t remember doing it.
“Shit,” I groaned, fumbling for the seatbelt’s release button. I found it, and fell to the floor—which was now the passenger-side window—in a graceless heap. Everything hurt, and my vision doubled as I gasped for air. But I had to keep moving. If they found the car with me still in it, they’d know I’d left him somewhere. And they’d find him.
A caw sounded from outside, and a shudder of terror went through me. I fought to get up, to get out, but my hands slipped on the seats as I tried to climb up them, and the world spun. Groaning, I slipped back down, cutting myself on broken glass. The pain lanced through my already aching body, and I hunched over and threw up. I didn’t have anything but bile in my stomach, and it hurt my throat.
A threatening snarl from right outside the hearse made me heave for breath, panic pulling on my brain to try to manage one last ditch effort to get out, but before I could, something big slammed into the side of the car, pushing it several several feet along the pavement with a screech of metal. I lurched to the side, falling over in my own sick and more broken glass. My vision darkened at the edges just as the car rocked again.
I fell into unconsciousness knowing I’d failed us both.
* * *
“…know he might just kill her, anyway. Do you really want to risk that?”
“Dammit, Carl, Pete was my mentor! My brother! And he was yours too. We don’t have enough time to find another witch, and she’s right there! He’ll be gone, forever, if we don’t use her! Is that what you want?”
I blinked to try and clear the spots dancing before my eyes. Everything was still dark, but it slowly dawned on me that it was more due to low lighting in wherever I’d been taken than it was my inability to see. There was a flicker of light just at the edge of my vision, almost as if someone had started a campfire, but from the hardness against my back and the lack of wind, I knew we were inside somewhere.
Everything hurt—my veins, my throat, my arms and hands. And I felt weak as a newborn kitten. When I tried to lift my arms, I could barely move my fingers, and it quickly became apparent that my hands had been tied behind my back.
“Of course not!” The first voice I’d heard upon waking spoke again, and I tried to locate the sound. As far as I could tell, they were over by the flickering fire. “But if we do it, and he kills her, do you really live the rest of your miserable existence with a chunk of your soul gone?”
“He might let her live. We lost so many last night, he’ll want to protect those of us who’re left,” the second guy said. He sounded desperate.
The first guy scoffed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t count on it. We let her escape with the vamp, let her put a fucking protection spell over wherever the fuck she’s hidden him. Once Zeth rises, heads are gonna roll. I doubt he’ll give two flying fucks about our dwindling numbers.”
“It’s his own goddamn fault! He said she was weak! If we’d have known and he’d given us a fucking heads up, we’d have strengthened the cell with magic. Fuck, the bitch killed three of us! And he made it sound as if she were just some fucking tarot reader!”
“She’s completely drained, though. Must’ve used a lot of her life essence to keep the vamp safe. Crazy cunt. She must be new to it, so maybe he didn’t know.” The first guy sighed. “Look, even if we tried, she’d likely not survive long enough for Pete’s soul to catch. I think she’s tapped out in the bad way.”
Pete’s soul? With horror, it finally dawned on me what they were talking about. Raven had told me once what skinwalkers did with witches they caught. They raped them to reincarnate fallen brothers. And the first guy I’d killed on the stairs… his name was Pete.
So that’s why they hadn’t killed me. They were debating whether or not to knock me up with their friend’s soul.
“I swear, if you try to rape me, I will end you.” It came out as a hoarse whisper, but it caught their attention.
Heavy footsteps came nearer, until two shadowy figures loomed over my in the dark corner they’d tossed me in.
“She’s awake,” the first voice said. I couldn’t see who it belonged to, and I didn’t much care either.
“Barely.” The other guy nudged me with a foot, and I groaned in pain. “If you really want to try, you better fucking hurry. The sun’s down—and once Zeth finds us, he’s not likely to let you get another shot in.”
The first guy grunted something I didn’t catch before he walked away. He came back moments later and knelt down. I tried to roll away from him, but my body was too heavy to respond. And then water dripped on my lips. I drank greedily, and he held my head up so I didn’t choke. It was gone before my thirst had been sated, but it was better than nothing.
“Thank… you,” I croaked.
“You sure you want to do this?” the first voice, Carl, said. “If she lasts through the mating but doesn’t make it through the night—either because her essence is too low or Zeth throws a fit and drains her…”
“I know,” the second guy said. It sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth. “But I can’t let him disappear.”
And then hands touched my hips, pulling my ruined jeans over my hips and down my legs.
“No…” I moaned, trying to kick at him, but my legs might as well have been dead rolls of flesh. I couldn’t move them, and I couldn’t stop the skinwalker from spreading my thighs and pressing a hand to my exposed sex.
“Fuck, bitch is dry as a dessert. Do we have any grease or something? If I rip into her, she’s gonna bleed.”
I closed my eyes as the first guy walked away, presumably to look for what my would-be rapist requested. If I was going to die tonight, I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want to meet the end with my final memory of being violated so gruesomely. And so, perhaps thanks to the mouthful of water giving me just enough to do so, I reached inside myself with the very last strength I could muster, and found the spindly residue of my power. I grabbed onto it and pushed.
“Sonuvabitch!” The guy between my le
gs fell backward as green fire flickered around his hand for the briefest moment. “You stupid cunt! What have you done?!”
I didn’t answer him. I just smiled softly into the darkness as cold crept in around me. I knew I was dying—there was no maybe about it now. That last push of power had sealed my fate. But at least I’d die on my own terms.
And Warin was safe. My magic had protected him, even when I’d thought I couldn’t save him. That was enough. Maybe I’d reincarnate. I could find him again. One day.
A deafening bang echoed through the room. Snarls and roars followed, but I didn’t care. Sighing, I closed my eyes and let go.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” It was a furious growl. I vaguely sensed someone hoisting me up off the ground, and tried to open my eyes to see who was disturbing my peace.
Aleric, eyes wild and panicked, stared down at me. He bit into his wrist and pressed it to my lips. “You can’t die. Not again. He won’t live through it. Drink!”
I gasped, trying to obey more on instinct than any conscious thought. But my lips wouldn’t respond, and I couldn’t swallow.
“Dammit, Liv!” Aleric, realizing his blood wasn’t working, pulled his wrist away and grasped me by the jaw. “You’re his soulmate! You can’t give up! Shit!”
And then his teeth sunk into my neck, piercing deep. I gasped again, not prepared for the sharp pain as he drank deep.
“Aleric!” It was a roar—of pain and fury. And it pulled on me, despite the darkness flickering at the edges of my conscience. Suddenly there was no more peace in my death.
Warin.
He needed me. I couldn’t die. He needed… me.
Aleric lifted his head from my throat. “Please, there’s no time,” he said, voice urgent. “If she isn’t Embraced now, it’ll be too late. You can’t let her die. She’s… she’s your soulmate. You met her before. In London—eight hundred years ago. She died. Zeth and I… I didn’t know. I didn’t know! And you hurt… when she was gone, you were… I couldn’t lose you, Warin! I couldn’t… I had Zeth’s witch curse our bloodline. You forgot her. But it’s her—I know it’s her.”