by Lucy Lyons
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Vampire’s Spell
Stars of The Night:
Book 5
Lucy Lyons
© 2017
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 1
I raced through the trees with my heart pounding in my ears and the sound of a creature bigger than any wildlife in the area crashing through the brush behind me. I gathered my energy and kicked harder, running faster than I’d ever thought possible when I was a student of the Venatores. Then again, the auspicious society of hunters had become ravenous. They were rebuilding their ranks without me, and I’d need every ounce of the extra speed and strength I got from my wolf, rat, and vampire connections if I ever hoped to survive my next battle with them.
There was a surge of power from behind me and I forced every last ounce of strength I had into my muscles. A moment later, the world spun as the cinnamon wolf that had been chasing me tackled me and I tumbled through the undergrowth. I managed to right myself and dug my fingers into the earth to tap into the energy of the trees around me, just as Henny had taught me, but my power brushed against something easier for me to manipulate.
As Ashlynn watched me through golden wolf eyes, I pushed my fingers deeper under the soft, fertile topsoil and reached out with my magic, sensing everything from decaying leaves just under the surface, to earth worms inching their way through the dirt.
Just under the loamy surface of the west coast forest floor I brushed up against death, and the tiny skeleton degrading under the dirt answered to my first power and sprang to life. In less than a second, the wolf had ceased her menacing growling and sat on her haunches, watching me with frank curiosity as my necromancy rifled through the nearby ground, raising every small woodland creature that still had body parts to animate.
The skeleton under my fingers pushed up through the dirt and as it rose, it began to reform. Bones knitted together and the tendinous remains of flesh clung to the misaligned joints, drawing them together until I had a recognizable bunny zombie staring up at me with sightless sockets where his eyes should’ve been, waiting for a command.
I raised a squirrel, two more rabbits, and a partially eaten black-tailed deer trotted into my field of vision before I realized that the wolf was gone and in her place, was an angry redhead taller than most beach volleyball players.
“What?” I asked when I grew tired of the sensation of her laser point stare at the back of my head.
“The whole point of being out here is to use your training from Henny, Caroline.” I glanced up at her and then away from her nudity. I tried to hide my discomfort while simultaneously ignoring the fact that the proof of her natural red hair color was at eye level while I squatted with my fingers in the dirt.
“It was natural to me, Ashlynn. I wasn’t trying to disobey Henny.”
“I’ve heard that vampire bites can be addictive. Is that what this weird new dead -raising is, part of a vampire addiction?” Her question startled me enough that I glanced up at her automatically before I could stop myself. I looked back at the undead forest fauna that waited for me to give them a purpose. The closest I’d ever come to anything resembling a zombie were some hollowed out vampires whose souls were being used as some sort of preternatural battery for a vampire old enough, and vain enough, to believe she was a goddess.
“No, Ashlynn. It’s not an addiction. I shuddered at the sightless eye sockets that still managed to gaze at me in adoration. “I lived my entire life thinking I was a freak, without knowing why. When Dominique found me at the Venatores school and gave me access to my power, it was like I’d been freed from prison.”
I forced myself to look at her, even though I didn’t think I’d ever be comfortable with the wolf pack’s casual attitude toward nudity. I wasn’t Venatores anymore, but I was still Catholic. She stood with her arms crossed under her small breasts and scowled at me, and I tried to focus on any body part that wouldn’t make me blush.
“Look. You’re tall and muscular and a badass kickboxer, from before you were a wolf, right?” She nodded and I managed to smile at her. “So, when you’re in danger, is your initial impulse to shift, or to kick some ass with your human fighter’s skills?”
I’d been on the receiving end of enough of her attacks when I’d first started training with the wolves that I already knew the answer to the question, and had a couple of healed broken bones to show for it. Still, I waited for her to answer, and she threw up her hands in frustration and sighed melodramatically.
“Fine,” she sputtered. “Then what were you trying to do when you accidentally raised an undead petting zoo?”
I turned back to the animals, bits of tendon and flesh clinging to their bones, animated only by my power, and I echoed her sigh with one of my own, out of self-pity and embarrassment. I had never raised
the dead before. But the power that I’d discovered when I channeled vampire souls in the Arizona desert had never really left me. I wondered what Nick would have to say about me having power over the dead, instead of just sensing vampire powers.
“I was going to make the roots grow, in the hope that they’d trip you up, or I’d manage to tangle you up.” I sat down on the ground and crossed my legs. “The dead call to me. I just didn’t know this,” I motioned at my creations with my chin, “was possible.”
“And that, in a nutshell, is why you’re here, Caroline,” said a female voice behind me. I ducked my head and wished myself invisible as Henny continued. “We’re trying to train your nature-related magical abilities. Not the ones the Venatores practically beat into you as they tried to create the ultimate vampire-controlling witch.”
“First, I don’t believe Dominique was trying to turn me into a Venatores weapon in the cloak and dagger fashion you’ve suggested, since the primary goal was to turn us all in to weapons, with our knowledge and permission,” I argued. “Second, how the hell do I put these little guys back?”
Henny laughed and joined me on the cushion of fallen leaves and moss. She held out her hand to the nearest bunny and I waited for something to happen. Evidently the lack of response was troubling to her, and my stomach clenched.
“Tell them to go back to sleep, Caroline,” she instructed. She didn’t voice whatever was bothering her, and I was afraid to know that I was as much a freak as I’d always feared, so I hesitated and she repeated herself.
“Go to sleep?” I asked, “just like that?” She nodded and I cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Go ahead, Caroline. They’re waiting for instructions, so tell them what to do.” Ashlynn waited, watching us, and I could feel other wolves outside my field of vision, waiting to see what we would do. Henrietta belonged to them. Even though she wasn’t a werewolf herself, she was their witch, and they protected her like one of the pack. Fortunately, the zombie-animals didn’t react to my fear, or the dozen or so wolves who could potentially turn violent.
I imagined each of the animals lying down and being swallowed up by the earth that I’d taken them from and cleared my throat a couple of times before stretching my hand out to the animals.
“Return to sleep.” Nothing happened and I tried again. “Return to the sleep from which I called you.” I pushed at them with my power and with no fireworks or fanfare, the animals laid down in the order they’d risen, and the ground silently moved around them until they sank out of sight. “Whew, that was almost as weird as raising them,” I chuckled nervously.
“Now do you still feel them there?” Henny watched me with a careful expression on her face. I’d come to recognize it as her version of the practiced ‘blank face’. It was an expression that gave away nothing, but warned that there was a lot more going on under the surface.
With another sigh, I rubbed my hands down my thighs to wipe any sweat off my palms. My finger sank easily into the soft dirt just like before, and I let tendrils of magic push their way through the earth until I was at the edge of my original circle of power. I found each of the animal remains exactly where I’d left them, but now, they vibrated with power, and I knew I could raise them again without expending power, just by calling them.
“They’re there, and they’re mine,” I confirmed. I watched apprehension flit across her face.
“Okay. We have a small problem, Caroline,” Henny said in a voice that indicated there was nothing small about it. I groaned and closed my eyes, waiting for her to rebuke me, or demand that I never raise anything again. “You can’t tell anyone about this. If you have the strength, I’d avoid telling even Nicholas, but for a different reason than anyone else,” she continued, and I peeked at her out of the corner of my eye.
“I’m not in trouble?” I asked, and Henny shook her head. Ashlynn also seemed surprised, and she stepped forward as though to argue the point with her clan witch.
“This particular power is very rare, Caroline. I don’t know if it was something you were born with, or something that your natural magical abilities had to evolve to because of Venatores training or your experience with vampires. I suspect the former,” she added as she stood up and brushed the dirt off her clothes.
“Why can’t I tell anyone?” I pressed, and Henny held out a hand to help me to my feet.
“Because necromancy is the one power that every other creature, from shifters to vampires to hunters, agrees should be destroyed.”
“Well, either the Venatores wants to destroy necromancers, or create them. You can’t have it both ways,” I countered. “And I’m definitely telling Nick about this. He might freak out, but I suspect he’ll find a use for it in less than a minute.” I turned toward the camp ground and Clay stepped out of the trees. To my great relief, he was in human form and fully dressed.
“Come on, Caroline,” he started in on me without preamble, “don’t be obtuse. The Venatores have been divided ever since you came into your power and started going off with the vampires, instead of killing them. They wanted to make you their asset, and instead, you became their single greatest liability.” He reminded me.
More members of the pack came out of the trees, most of them in their animal form due to the impending full moon. It was a harsh reminder of the price Clayton had paid for the failed experiment that was me. When I hadn’t turned out the way they planned, extremist hunters had changed course and decided to create a shifter to do their bidding instead.
Where I had fallen for the master vampire they had targeted to be killed, they hoped to create a better, stronger, faster hunter with the reflexes of a werewolf, but not the shifting. Clay had been their first unsuccessful attempt. He’d nearly died due to the unrest and division within the Venatores Lamiae, and I still hadn’t forgiven myself for my part in what he had become.
“The division was always there, Clay. I didn’t create it.”
“No, but you were a symptom of it, and I’m glad you’re away from that place, now that they’re tearing themselves apart.”
The people who had once been behind a plot to murder me were now in charge of the Venatores, and I had gone from being banished, to having a price on my head. The change in my status to enemy of the church was only one reason I was training for battle surrounded by almost an entire pack of werewolves.
The other reason was sitting in an office fifty miles away, hidden underground from the sun’s rays and balancing the books for the nightclub he’d inherited from the last Master of Seattle. Inherited, in his particular case, meant acquired after one of his vampires and I broke into the place and killed the former master and her servant, my foster brother.
From that point forward, Nicholas ran the vampire territories territory from Washington to Tijuana, and it kept him busier than I appreciated. Whenever I complained about him canceling another date night, he was quick to remind me that I was the one who had brought the wererats and werewolves into our clan. In short, life as a vampire servant and the girlfriend of the Master of the West Coast.
I looked around at the wolves, who stared at me much like the zombie animals had. However, it wasn’t my power they answered to, but my authority as an alpha female over the pack. Fortunately, since I wasn’t a wolf, it was largely an honorific title and I wasn’t forced to lead them 24/7. In my case, it meant that I’d bested their leader and shown I had more power than any wolf.
My ties had grown stronger lately, though, and it was a cause for concern with the elders of the pack and for their leader, Ashlynn. She was the true Alpha, but what if I called her? We hadn’t broached it yet, both of us afraid of what it would mean to the pack if I could summon her wolf as I could the less powerful shifters, forcing them to change or stay in animal form.
“Okay, we can sit here all day, or we can head back to the campground and get back to work,” I said aloud, and the wolves melted back into the trees without rustling a single branch. “Clay, I know the Venatores society has been sick
and limping along for decades. Don’t you want a peaceful outcome to their internal struggle?”
“Not if it means death to my people,” he retorted, his face coloring as he fumed. “If they get peace by letting the bad guys win, then we’re all screwed, including you and your fiancé.” He knew we weren’t engaged, and enjoyed needling me, and as usual I rose to the occasion.
“At least Nicholas is trying to do something to keep the peace. Hiding isn’t going to do the wolves any service when it all comes to a head.”
“But we aren’t killing anyone, either.” I gasped at the inferred accusation. I had killed a fellow Venatores once, for his treason, and still had the nightmares of that night. “No. You haven’t. Is it nice having someone to do all the dirty work for you, so you can survive and pretend that the blood on the ground doesn’t belong to you too? If only I had friends willing to do the hard things, so that I didn’t have to, and could be as morally superior as other former vampire hunters.
I didn’t have to name him, Clayton knew there were only two other excommunicated Venatores besides Dominique and I who had been permitted to live. Henny, because killing her would’ve caused a civil war in a time when the Venatores was still trying to avoid it, and Clayton, because I’d spirited him away when he was turned into a shape shifter, and he’d been in hiding ever since.
What I didn’t say, was that I was exhausted from the taffy-pulling machine that was my life, constantly having to keep the wolves and the rats, and the vampires, and most importantly, Nicholas happy. I wanted to be like any other preternaturally bonded girl and her boyfriend; staying out all night under the stars, helping my boyfriend pick his prey, and enjoying the enhanced physical benefits of being linked to an immortal creature.