“Yes. I didn’t mean to. He was just being so sweet, and so insistent that he liked me before the ritual, and I don’t know what happened.”
“Did you kiss him, or did he kiss you?”
“I honestly don’t know. Maybe a bit of both. He definitely hesitated, giving me a chance to push him away, but I just couldn’t.”
“Was it a good kiss? I need all the details,” Emma added, flopping on the queen bed next to me.
I grimaced as the bouncing sent a new wave of pain through my back. Emma winced, realizing her mistake. Before I could catch my breath and tell her any details, we heard a car pull into the parking spot outside our hotel door.
“That’s them,” she said, sounding thoroughly disgruntled. “To be continued.”
Emma gently climbed off the bed and opened the door just as Nik and Josh reached it. Josh dropped a bag on the dresser and jogged to my side. He held a blood bag to my lips and I drank greedily. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nik hand a bag to Emma. Evidently they had plundered a hospital or a Red Cross truck.
Before the blood could take effect, Nik pulled out his phone. A second later he was yelling into the sleek device.
“Drake, you bastard! Did you know what he was? You should have told us what we were going into!”
I wasn’t feeling well enough to parse out what Drake said on the other end of the line, but he sounded sleepy. Slowly, the voice changed until it sounded condescending.
“Ashley nearly died because you didn’t give us all the information. You knew the dagger was held by a necromancer!” snapped Nik.
Drake responded with concern but not enough to appease Nik.
“Next time, you give us the full scoop or I’ll throw your precious broach into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You understand?”
Another response from Drake, though I wasn’t even grasping the emotion. Sleep was pulling me toward unconsciousness.
“Yes, of course I still have it. I’m not an idiot. Now get your seems straight or else! What?”
Drake made a quiet response.
“Where is it?”
Reply.
“Syria? Dammit, Drake. Can’t you find these a little closer to home…? No, I know you don’t have control over it… Fine. Who has it?... You don’t know!...We’ll go to Syria when the sun sets. You better have more intel when we get there!”
I was too close to sleep to grasp what his last statement meant.
It was nearing nightfall when I woke again, feeling worlds better. Emma was curling her hair, looking into the mirror on the bureau. Thomas sat at the foot of my bed, watching Emma. I turned my head and saw Josh still asleep on the second queen bed. By the power of deduction, I realized it was Nik running the shower.
“Good morning, Thomas,” I said pleasantly.
He turned where he sat and smiled at me.
“Emma,” Thomas asked as he shifted so that he could stare at her some more. “Why are we traveling all over the world to find these items?”
I realized the dagger sat on the bureau and that Thomas was staring at it just as much as he was gazing on Emma.
“That’s kind of a long story. Ashley?”
I wanted to throw my pillow at Emma. I had no desire to relive my few short months as a vampire by telling my story yet again, but I had a feeling she had asked me on purpose. She wanted me to talk it out, just as I had made her talk about Nik.
Obediently, I told Thomas how I had been turned and abandoned, how Richard’s seethe had hunted me and finally caught me, and how I had been sacrificed to raise Sedgrave. Thomas listened to my story, his eyes never leaving Emma or the dagger. All I could see was the back of his head, so I couldn’t register his as I spoke. I went on to clarify that a few wizards thought if they had all the items used in the ritual, they could unhook the battery—which was me—from Sedgrave.
He nodded slowly as I explained that those who had raised Sedgrave had lost control over him.
“What sort of things could he do if left free?” asked Thomas.
“Who knows? Nik could explain it better.”
As if on cue, Nik appeared from the bathroom, rubbing his black hair with a towel. “Last time Sedgrave was alive, he had nearly complete control over the European continent through Henry the Fifth. We don’t want him to have control over America.”
Thomas was silent as we got ready for the next leg of our travels. As I walked around the room to gather up my bathroom supplies, I noticed a focused, pensive expression on his face, as though he were struggling to decide which college to go to, or whether or not to sell his dead mother’s home of fifty years. By silent, mutual consent, we left him to his thoughts.
I showered and let Emma French braid my hair, while flatly refusing her makeup. She pouted.
“Emma, my back still hurts. The minute we are on the plane, I’m going to sleep. No makeup required.”
Emma continued to pout, but didn’t attack me with the mascara. Less than an hour after I woke up, we trundled out of the hotel and into the car, heading back to the airport. I was growing tired of seeing little more than the airport as we hop-scotched our way across the world, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. Maybe when this was all over I would be able to visit these cities properly.
I stopped that line of thought before it could take root. I didn’t want to make plans for the future, because I didn’t know if I would have a future. I forced my eyes to stay on Nik’s back, rather than drift over to Josh who was walking beside me toward our terminal. Like my hopes of seeing the world, Josh was a future I couldn’t afford to think about.
Despite everyone’s positive attitude, a lingering feeling of doubt persisted to nag at the back of my mind. The wizards were guessing, but everyone seemed content to forget that little detail.
“This is gonna work,” Josh said from my side, almost as though he had read my mind.
I chose to play dumb rather than admit that he knew me so well. “What’re you talking about?”
“The wizard’s plan. We’re gonna set you free. I prom…”
“Stop,” I said, cutting him off. “No more promises. Because you can’t promise. We don’t know, and that’s the truth. There’s no point living in a lie,” I added as I continued walking, barely aware that I had stopped to look at him.
Again, I trained my eyes on Nik’s back. I couldn’t handle the hurt on Josh’s face. Before either of us could say anything more, we arrived at the terminal, finding the plane nearly ready for us to board.
“So where are we going?” I asked, unable to remember if we had discussed it already.
“Syria,” said Nik, without looking over at me.
“WHAT?” I snapped causing heads all around us to turn and stare.
I took a step closer to Nik, noticing that the others were huddling up too.
“What do you mean we’re going to Syria?”
“Drake says the staff is in Latakia, Syria, possibly in its National Museum.”
“Why would the staff of a warlock, who up until now has had no connection with the Middle East, end up in a Syrian museum?” I demanded, still upset about going anywhere near where all the shooting was happening.
“Look, I don’t plan these things. I just go where Drake tells me.”
“So you just blindly go into SYRIA?” I barked, trying to my best to keep my voice low, but generally failing. “You’re being a complete dumb ass!”
“Ashley,” said Emma, her voice hinting at a reproach.
I ignored her. “Nik, I don’t care what you say, we can’t go to Syria. You really can’t be that blind! I know three hundred and fifty years gives you a lot of time to think you’re invulnerable, but you’re not. You make the same dumb mistakes as the rest of us, only this dumb mistake is taking the cake.”
“Ashley!” hissed Emma.
“No, it’s okay,” said Nik, an out-of-place smile playing on his lips; the damn enchantment striking again.
“No, it’s not okay,” said Josh,
taking us all by surprise. “Ashley, I get that you’re frightened, but taking it out on Nik is not only dumb, but rude. He’s just doing the best he can. Now shut up, sit down, and do as you’re told, or we’ll send you back to Mikhail and finish the mission on our own.”
I stared at Josh, no doubt with my chin resting comfortably on the ground. He had actually yelled at me. Even before the ritual he had never yelled at me, at least not that I could remember. I swallowed a lump forming in my throat before obeying him, taking a seat in our empty terminal. I noticed that other passengers were still watching us, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Emma sat next to me and from her expression I knew her thoughts were near my own: Was Josh really affected by my Sedgrave link or was he just the victim of bad timing? I tried to think back, and slowly a few memories came to me.
Josh hadn’t announced his interest in me until after he had caught Nik and I making out. Had he felt forced into it, afraid he might lose me?
This event put a whole new spin on my life.
Chapter Ten
Okay, I confess that I had a certain expectation about going to Syria. After seeing the news, it’s hard not to assume that the whole country is made up of suicide bombers and armored vehicles. Latakia, Syria is as far from this as New York is from Yellowstone National Park. The port city was made up mostly of stucco high-rise apartment buildings. The streets were lined with palm trees and the neighborhoods dotted with parks. I even spotted a university as we drove through the city from the train station. The cab driver dropped us off at an address a few blocks away from the city’s museum. If we had to break in, we didn’t want someone to be able to pin it on us.
Since the argument in the airport, we had been surprisingly quiet. Thankfully, the flight into Syria didn’t require us to cross any oceans, and therefore was comparatively short to our flight into London. Still, it was awkward and I found myself happy to be on the ground once again.
On the streets of Latakia, we made our way to the museum, happy to see that no one walked along the seafront street at three in the morning. We were just standing on the far side of the street, staring up at the large museum and wondering how we were going to break in undetected, when we heard a crash from the sea behind us. We turned to see a scaly, multi-headed beast emerging from the ocean, its enormous front claws dragging its body onto the beach.
At first glance, I would have doubted it could survive on land, but it seemed to be doing fine as it clawed its way toward us until only it’s wide, flat tail remained in the surf. Like so many creatures we had seen, this one looked as though Mother Nature had gotten drunk and confused a few creatures. The animal had seven or eight heads; they kept moving, keeping me from getting an accurate head count. The beast’s body was wide and soft, with two front claws that moved like a crocodile’s front legs. From what I could tell through the ocean spray, the animal didn’t appear to have any back legs. Instead, it had one long, flat tail, in the shape of a beaver’s tail, only with thousands of spikes. A forest of spikes descended its back, melding into the smaller spikes on its tail.
“Why don’t we carry weapons?” I demanded at the top of my voice, working to yell over the sea-monster’s multiple roars.
Each of us began glancing around the deserted beach for something to fight with. There weren’t a lot of options. The beach was littered with metal reclining beach chairs, each paired with a fern-covered umbrella. At the far end of the public beach sat a small dock lined with pleasure boats.
“Whaaat aaaare yooou doooing herrrre,” growled the beast, each word coming from a different head, nearly at the same time.
“We come for Sedgrave’s Staff,” announced Nikolai.
I turned to stare at him. Did he really think honesty was the best policy in this situation?
“Theeee staaaaff iiiiis ooooours!” announced the heads. “Yoooou caaan’t haaaaave iiiiit.”
“No surprise there,” mumbled Josh.
Before any of us could say more, Thomas dashed forward, grabbing up an umbrella. He broke the pole off the ferns and launched it at the beast, the many heads dodging the projectile. At first I thought he had failed, but the heavy pole flew between the many heads, arching as it did, and lodged itself in the animal’s back. All seven heads roared in agony, giving us the second needed to unfreeze our limbs and follow Thomas’ example.
Each of us grabbed our own umbrella and copied Thomas. Mine went wide, landing in the rough surf of the ocean. Emma’s pole ricocheted off one of the thrashing necks. Josh tried to copy Thomas, but his projectile glanced off one of the spikes running down the beast’s back and splashed into an oncoming wave. Nik’s lodged itself firmly into the animal’s chests, right where one of the necks met wide shoulders.
“Follow me,” yelled Josh as he grabbed up an umbrella and used it as a shield, quickly snapping half the pole off and using it like a lance.
Nik ran to the next nearest umbrella, did the same, and joined Josh, with Thomas just a step behind him. Together they formed a three-man phalanx. They took cautious steps toward the beast, their spears thrusting up at the heads as the animal tried to attack them.
Emma and I began tearing pieces off the chairs and launching them at the many heads. I’m not sure if our choice to stay behind was due to fear or logic. I liked to think that there was a certain logic in keeping us back. Most armies had ranged weapons as well as melee. I know this type of stuff more from playing Dungeons and Dragons rather than from any military experience.
We rained metal projectiles down on the animals head, one or two of them even doing damage. For the most part, though, our efforts only distracted the many heads. Our distractions afforded the men a chance to skewer the beast a few times before one of the heads lunged downward and grabbing Josh’s umbrella. Josh held on for dear life until he dangled twenty feet in the air. The beast jerked its head around, like a dog with a stuffed animal, until Josh lost his grip and soared over the ocean, landing with a distant splash.
I had a sudden fear Josh couldn’t swim. I wanted to run to him, but Emma grabbed my arm.
“He’s okay,” she told me firmly.
I swallowed the fear that threatened to clog my throat and went back to chucking things at the beast. In annoyance, I grabbed up one of the chairs and threw the whole thing. It crashed down on the heads, one of which somehow managing to get itself tangled in the chair’s legs and cross supports. The head thrashed about, trying to free itself from the obstacle. Two of the other heads came to its aid, tearing at the chair with such ferocity that their long teeth tore into the trapped head until they did more damage than anything Emma and I had managed.
This distraction gave Nik and Thomas a chance to stab at its underbelly a few times before the heads turned back to attack their shields.
“Keep throwing things,” I yelled at Emma, who had far better aim than me.
I snatched up the last piece of a chair—a leg—and ran into the ocean.
The water was warmer than I had expected, being from the Pacific Northwest. It splashed into my face and I sputtered as I lumbered into the rough surf, a number of yards away from the animal. Once I was out far enough, I dove into the waves and swam to the animal’s side.
As it turns out, vampires can hold their breath for a very long time. Not once did I have to come up for air, even though I was having to fight the ocean’s current. After an eternity, or two, I reached the animal’s side and began stabbing its belly as best as I could. The surf continued to buffet me around, destroying my aim, but I figured any blood drawn was better than nothing. As I continued to stab at it, I began to hear a strange rumble through the swishing noise of the water around my head.
The noise increased in volume until all of the sudden the sea monster tipped over, landing directly on me. I had no idea what had caused such an enormous beast to literally fall over, but I wasn’t thrilled with the results. I wiggled and squirmed, still holding my breath. Being dead, I didn’t need to breathe, but it was still un
nerving to be trapped under the weight of a seven-headed sea monster. Besides, it was really freaking heavy!
I used my chair leg to stab and cut at the beast’s flesh, slowly creating a crater in its gut. How the damn thing was still alive, I had no idea, but I kept cutting into its belly. Before I knew it, I and the ocean water began filling the whole I was creating.
Whether I wanted to or not, I began burrowing my way through the animal. It wasn’t until I had freed my legs and curled up inside the beast that it stopped thrashing about. At least it was dead! But how in the world was I supposed to get free?
It was completely dark inside the animal’s gut and really slimy. I groped around with my free hand. Beneath me was the sand of the ocean floor. As I felt around I came across something that didn’t feel right.
It’s just a bone, I told myself, trying not to think too hard about what I was doing or where I was.
But the more I felt the long, hard object the more I doubted. It was perfectly straight, and ran for about six feet through the animal’s innards. While I wasn’t read up on sea-monster anatomy, I was pretty sure no creature had a six-foot-long piece of solid bone.
I used my chair leg to cut it free of monster goo and ran my fingers over it in my cramped space, touching what felt like carvings. Could it really be the staff?
Before I could figure it out, the beast gave a mighty heave, shifting so that I was suddenly laying on my back in my tiny hole, the staff and chair leg clutched to my chest.
A dim light flooded into the hole I had created, followed by a fresh gush of saltwater. I could feel more than see the current pulling the animals blood out of the body and into the ocean. Hoping the dead beast didn’t collapse back into its former position, I dropped out of my hiding place and gratefully kicked my way out from under the shadow of the creature until I felt it safe to surface.
My head emerged from the ocean and I took a mighty gulp of air. Though the water and blood rushing down my face mostly obscured my vision, I could see that the others were dropping the monster back into its position. On the other side of the body I could see the wreckage of one of the small pleasure boats. Josh must have rammed the creature with it, causing it to fall on me.
The Series that Just Plain Sucks: The Complete Trilogy Page 57