Sighing, I closed my eyes and sank back into my chair. Ryker was putting me in an impossible situation. If he was right, then people could starve. Would my coven really do that to innocent mages? I wanted to believe they wouldn’t, but I’d seen enough over the years to truly ask the question.
“Tell me what it is you want us to do, and then we’ll decide.”
“Zoe,” Dorian said with a sharp look.
“It doesn’t hurt to hear him out,” I said. “Listening to the plan doesn’t mean we actually have to do anything.”
Dorian didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either, so Ryker plowed ahead with his plan.
“Blood mages were the ones who put up the wall. There’s no way to reverse the spell unless someone were to draw a particular anti-rune along the perimeter.” Ryker glanced at the other rebels around him. “Unfortunately, it’s not one that any of the mages here know.”
Jack, the blood mage, leaned forward. “They keep all of their grimoires stored in the Scotland castle base. The spell we need will be in there. If we were able to get our hands on it, we could free the mages from the siege and get them somewhere safe. Somewhere with water and food.”
“Here, I’m guessing,” I said, gesturing at the cabin.
“That’s the plan,” Ryker said. “We may live in a remote place, and it may be cold where the sun rarely shines, which will suck for them. But it’s better than living trapped behind bars or made to cast a spell to create demonic vampires.”
“As much as I hate to admit it, that sounds reasonable,” Dorian said, his stony face betraying no emotion. “However, I’m not sure what you expect us to do. We have no access to their castle.”
“I don’t expect you to do anything.” Ryker turned toward me. “It’s Zoe we need.”
“What?” he asked in a growl. “Why Zoe? I’m the Enforcer here. I should go.”
I lifted my chin. “I’m an Enforcer, too.”
“In training.” Dorian shook his head. “I know you’ve gone on a lot of dangerous missions, Zoe, but I don’t want you sneaking into Blood Coven headquarters to steal their magic, especially not alone.”
“Fine, you can go with her,” Ryker said. “A team of two might work better than one.”
“Me, too,” Laura added.
Anastasia sighed. “Fine, I guess I’m joining this insanity as well, though they’ll probably kill me on sight knowing those assholes.”
“No,” Ryker said, his voice going hard and his face going cold. “You two will stay here. If Zoe does this for us, then and only then will we let you go.”
Despite the flickering fire, the friendly faces, and the warm blankets, I was suddenly reminded that we weren’t here by choice. We were prisoners being forced by a group of rebels to do their bidding, and my friends would be kept prisoner for only goddess knew how long if I didn’t go along with their plan.
“How can we be certain that this spell does what you say it will?” I asked. “How can we know that you won’t use it to harm my coven?”
“You won’t. Unless you know Latin.”
Chapter 10
“Here we are.” Ryker cracked open the door, and a howling gust of snow billowed into the small building he’d used to travel us to Scotland. “The majestic headquarters of the Blood Coven. Too bad they don’t use all that money and power for something good because they really do have a shit ton of it, don’t they?”
I gazed up at the towering building before us. When Ryker had called it a castle, he hadn’t been joking. It was as if I’d stepped into a time machine taking me back to the past where lords and ladies carried themselves down dirt roads in horse-drawn carriages. Stone gargoyles squatted on the ledge of every window, a dark grey sky the perfect backdrop to the gothic architecture.
“So, how are we going to get inside?” I whispered, blowing hot air on my fingers. Ryker gave us a salute and disappeared back into the building. After a moment, it shimmered out of sight, travelling back to the rebel base, wherever the hell that was.
“Well, there will be wards and alarms. They’re actually probably already aware that we’re here. The best approach is to walk toward the front steps and act as if we aren’t trying to hide anything,” Ben said. “We just need an explanation for why we’re here. How does this sound? I’m a council member who needs somewhere to stay for the night after a random mission that called me to the United Kingdom. You two are my Enforcer bodyguards, which means you should just keep quiet and let me do all the talking.”
Unease flittered through me. “What if they want to talk to the Magister before letting us inside?”
Ben frowned and stared up at the looming door. “Well, then we’re screwed. I’ll just have to come up with a convincing lie so they don’t feel the need to ask too many questions.”
As we approached the front steps, the air before us shimmered like a thousand flickering red lights. Ben had been right. Someone from inside the building had seen us approaching and had lowered the wards to let us reach the steps. They must have recognized Ben. As one of the Bone Coven council members, his name and face should be well known here. Not that this boosted my confidence about this mission. Despite the cumulative power between us, we’d be way outnumbered once we walked through that door.
When we reached the top step, Ben slid his hand around a gargoyle knocker. It looked ancient and weathered, as if it had been there for hundreds of years. Hell, maybe it had been. This castle was probably older than the entire country of America, after all. Ben knocked, and the deep and ancient sound echoed in the quiet night. Only seconds later, the heavy door swung open with a long resounding creak.
At the sight before me, my heart jolted in my chest. In the open doorway stood a man with flowing red hair that reached below his shoulders, and wide and curving lips that spread across two rows of sharp teeth. He wore a dark robe, and a thick metal chain hung heavily around his pale neck. For a second, my blood roared in my ears, and I couldn’t help but think the impossible had happened. Vampires had breached the castle, and they’d destroyed every last one of the Blood Coven mages. Now, this place was their domain.
“Magister Thorne,” Ben said as he lowered into a half-bow. Frowning, I glanced at Dorian. This was the Magister of the Blood Coven? But he looked so… “My name is Ben. I’m a council member of the Bone Coven.”
“Hello, Ben. I remember you from our meetings last month. No need to bow.” The Magister swept his gaze across my body with a look that sent a storm of ice into my bones. “However, I don’t seem to know your two companions here.”
“My bodyguards for my most recent mission,” Ben said. “They were assigned to me just in case anything happened.”
The Magister raised his eyebrows. “And has something happened? That is why you are here?”
“I got a lead on the location of Professor Ivan Wagner, the mage who has been attempting to bind demons to himself. We received an anonymous tip that he was in Scotland. So, we flew over right away,” Ben continued as if the question were nothing more than a pleasant exchange with an old friend. “Unfortunately, it was a trap. Some Nosferatu were waiting for us, and we barely got out alive. It’s a long journey back home, and it’s late. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind putting us up for a night.”
Silence rose up around us as the Magister stared hard at Ben’s face. His gaze was so intent that even I wanted to break under the force of it. It was if he was reading the council member, making sure that the truth was what he’d said. Luckily, whatever he found in Ben’s expression seemed to satisfy him because he ushered us in with a wave of his hand.
“This is quite out of the ordinary, Ben,” Magister Thorne said as he slid the door shut behind us, sealing us into the darkness of the castle. On each side of the door, torches were hooked to the walls with intricately-detailed iron fastenings. The flames flickered with red and gold magic, casting eerie glows on the stone walls. “Usually, Magister Salvatore calls in advance. I can’t remember the last time he sent some bone ma
ges into our territory without first letting us know. However, because of our special arrangement, I’ll agree to let you wait out the night here. Especially when you’ve had an encounter with those horrible creatures.”
Magister Thorne’s sharp gaze turned my way. “You’re young for an Enforcer. Tell me, was this the first time you fought a Nosferatu?”
I hesitated, not entirely sure what to say. Ben had suggested I keep my mouth shut, and I agreed with him for once. If the Magister figured out who I was, the game would be over before we’d even had a chance to begin.
“Yes, sir,” I said with a nod, leaving it at that.
But he wasn’t satisfied with my short answer. “That would explain why you weren’t able to dispatch it, but two of you should have been enough.” He gave a nod toward Dorian. “Has your training not been good enough? Do you not feel equipped to handle these kinds of demons? Do we need to send some extra Enforcers to Boston to provide you with some stronger skills?”
“Sir,” Ben said, clearing his throat. “If it weren’t for them, I’d be dead.”
The Magister angled closer, his narrowed eyes flicking between me and Dorian. “Female Enforcers are so rare, at least among your coven.”
“If I may interject sir,” Dorian said as he stepped forward, drawing attention away from me and more onto him, “our Enforcer numbers have been low, so the Magister opened up the force to different types of mages. And while female Enforcers have been rare, we’ve certainly had them in the past.”
“Lily Bennett was one. As far as I know, there haven’t been any others, at least not in recent years,” Magister Thorne said with a slight smile. “I was Magister back then. She had a prized spot on your force, and I remember her well. Brave, talented, strong, but incredibly stubborn. Some might say she could be careless at times. Stupid.”
Irritation flared through me. How dare he speak about my mother that way? She’d sacrificed her life fighting against the demons, something he obviously knew nothing about. He was still standing here, hiding away in his castle and forcing entire mage colonies behind a siege wall. If that wasn’t the very definition of stupid, I didn’t know what was.
My hands curled into fists as I opened my mouth, but Ben shifted in front of me before I said too much. “That’s correct. And it’s a change we’re glad to be making. It means we can finally grow our team, which is especially needed right now. Don’t you agree?”
The Magister made a soft noise that I couldn’t interpret before ushering us to follow him down the empty stone hallway. “It’s late so our chef isn’t awake to make you some food. If you’d like something, I can wake him, but I assure you he can be fairly irritable when his sleep is interrupted.”
“No, thank you,” Ben said. “That won’t be necessary.”
“He’s human, you see,” the Magister continued. “So, he prefers to sleep at night.”
“As do we,” Ben said with a tight smile. “Which is why we wanted to crash here. Our flight will leave in the morning.”
The Magister slowed to a stop outside a row of identical wooden doors. Each was intricately carved with an artistic and terrifying display of gargoyles. In each one, the creatures were either attacking or chasing humans who had terrified looks on their faces. Mouths open wide. Eyes popping out of the socket. Gnashes on their necks and on their arms. Whoever had carved these doors was a pretty weird-ass person.
“Ah, you are admiring the handiwork on the doors,” the Magister said when he caught the direction of my gaze. “Every one of our doors in Castle Blood has these features. It’s something we’re quite fond of. Legend tells us that they were hand-carved by the very first Blood Coven Magister. Way back in the 1200s.”
Of course they were. I should have known. Everything about this coven had a creep factor that went far above the standard. And yet, they called shadow mages the dangerous ones. If this was what the Blood Coven was like, I shuddered to think of the kind of doors that were found within the gates of the Shadow Coven headquarters.
“You two will sleep in this room,” the Magister said as he pushed open the door. Inside, I could see the outline of a king-sized bed, a claw-foot bathtub, and an antique wardrobe that may or may not have been guarded by stone gargoyles.
With a glance in my direction, Dorian lifted his eyebrows. “The two of us?”
“Two Enforcers can share sleeping quarters, yes?” the Magister stared back with a reflection of Dorian’s skeptical expression. “Your council member will be staying in the room across the hallway here, just after I speak to him in my study about a few alliance issues.”
Alliance issues? I frowned, watching the careful way that the Magister moved, as if every single word he spoke was calculated to get the biggest reaction out of us. I’d realized now that was what he’d been doing when he spoke of my mother. He was trying to get a reaction out of me, see if I’d cop to being Zoe Bennett. Because he definitely suspected that was who I was, even if he wasn’t certain. Yet.
Would Ben cave when questioned privately? It wasn’t as if he had anything to worry about if he did. He was innocent in all of this, forced along just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And since he’d already pissed off Magister Salvatore once, he might not be so inclined to do it again. Ben had agreed to get us inside the Blood Coven castle, but had he agreed to get us out again?
Unease flittered through me as Dorian and I stepped inside the room and watched Ben disappear down the hallway with the Magister. Quickly, I closed the door and turned to my partner, my mouth half-open with all the questions I had raging through my mind. Did the Magister know who I was? Did he realize we’d made up the reason we were here? Did he have any idea whatsoever that we had ulterior motives? And if so, what would he do to us next?
But all those words fell right out of my head at the look in Dorian’s eyes. It wasn’t one of concern or alarm. Hell, if anything, it was the total opposite of that. He gazed at me with his glittering dark eyes, sizing me up like I was the first bite of food he’d seen in a very long time.
Shivers coursed through me as I swallowed hard. “Hi.”
“Hello,” he said with a deep growl. He stepped in close, snaking his arm around my waist and jerking me to his chest. “At first, I wasn’t so sure about this plan, but it’s landed me in a room alone with you. There’s only one bed, and we have all night long.”
My heart went wild, banging against my chest so fast I could barely breathe. “I thought we needed to find that rune. Ben told the Magister our flight leaves in the morning.”
His lips quirked into an amused smile. “So he did.”
Dorian leaned down and pressed his forehead to mine, his hands spread across my back, his fingers digging into my skin. He dropped his mouth to mine, hungrily tasting my lips with his own. I sighed against him, letting myself get lost in his kiss. My entire body came alive from his touch, and our bond surged with the intensity of the emotions passing between us.
Lust overwhelmed me, but Dorian pulled away far too fast. He was breathless, and his eyes had turned a bright red that betrayed an emotion he held tight within him. Dorian craved me, in a way I couldn’t fully understand. I’d seen it from him before, every time we’d come this close. It was the vampire nature within him, rising up to claim me as his.
Dorian wanted to taste my blood again.
“We have to stop,” he said as he twisted away from me. “Kissing you makes me hungry in ways I shouldn’t be.”
“That’s okay.” My hand snaked out to touch his shoulder. With a deep breath, I stepped closer and pressed my body against his back. “You can be hungry with me. You know that. Taste me, if you want. Drink me. I’m yours, Dorian. And I know you can feel that through our bond.”
“I shouldn’t.” His voice went tight as he whirled to face me. “I know we’ve shared blood a few times now, and because of that, you probably think it’s safe. But it isn’t, Zoe. I could end up hurting you. The taste of you is so good that I might accidentally let go and
take too much. Go for too long. Let my strength get the better of me. What if I lost myself and snapped your neck?”
I flinched at that last part, but I didn’t let that stop me from proving to him exactly how I felt. “You wouldn’t do that, Dorian. Vampire nature or not. You’d never hurt me.”
“Not on purpose,” he said, shaking his head. “And if Magister Thorne were to walk in and catch us in the act, we’d both end up dead. He’s been known to execute willing humans. He thinks blood bags are just as terrible as the vampires who drink from them.”
“What?” I took a quick step back, shock pouring through me. “He’s murdered humans? Just for letting a vampire drink? But they’re innocent. Blood bags don’t do anything wrong.”
“In his mind, they do,” Dorian said. “To him, they’re helping keep the vampires alive. They’re helping make them stronger. When he has executed them, he’s claimed they help vampires murder.”
I couldn’t believe it. Every new thing I discovered about the Blood Coven made me realize just how little I’d known about the supernatural world. And how stupid I’d been to believe that I’d been fighting on the better side. Everywhere I looked, people were doing something terrible, whether they were vampires, werewolves, or mages. Hell, the fae were even getting into it at this point, too.
“I know what you’re thinking, Zoe,” Dorian said. “Our coven was never involved in that. The Bone Coven has never executed a human in the history of their existence.”
“But they’ve chosen the blood mages as our allies,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “To the point where Magister Salvatore has sacrificed the integrity of our own coven. Who’s to say he won’t end up agreeing to human executions as well?”
“That’s a step too far, even for him,” Dorian said, shaking his head.
“I hope you’re right,” I said with a hollow sigh. “Because he’s neck deep in it now, and once this is all over, no telling what the Blood Coven will ask him to do. Hell, that could be why Ben got whisked away into the Magister’s office…unless of course, he’s asking him about us.”
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