by Kristie Cook
“That’s our girl. Drink up. Then only a couple more to go,” Mr. Roca cooed, and at first, the sound was soothing, encouraging, but then something flipped inside me.
I jerked back. No!
“Drink!” Mrs. Roca spat as she shoved the girl in my face again. I shook my head violently, refusing. Her eyes glowed green, and she growled at me. Then she went in for the kill herself.
“No, darling,” Mr. Roca said as he pulled the blonde out of his wife’s embrace as though she were a ragdoll. Mrs. Roca hissed at him, and I thought she was about to pounce. He held up a hand and shook a finger at her. “This one’s Michaela’s. Remember the plan. You can have yours later. After we take care of this for the kids.”
Mrs. Roca growled lowly, but backed off.
“Now come on, Michaela, drink up,” he said to me, once again holding the girl in front of me. I pressed my lips together and turned my head. “Well, I’ll just leave her right here. You won’t be able to resist for long.”
He let go of the girl, and she collapsed to the floor. Her eyes fluttered closed as she fell into a deep sleep. Her wound still seeped, and flames licked up my throat at the smell. He eyed me for a long moment.
“Let’s have a talk, why don’t we?” he said, and he made a gesture in front of me. The strange muffled feeling disappeared. The whimper I couldn’t control because of the burn finally could be heard.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice was choked, raspy, as everything within me yearned for the girl at my feet. For her blood. “What did I do to you?”
He laughed, but no humor filled the creepy sound. “You mean, what did you to do us. All of us. My whole damn family, if I don’t put a stop to it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done anything!”
He growled in my face. “You fucking exist!”
I flinched as though he’d slapped me.
“You went and turned yourself when you weren’t supposed to, not giving a fuck what you were doing to the rest of us. Not just your family, but mine, too.” His facial features began to morph back into the beast. “You did this!”
“I . . . I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He glared at me with green eyes. “You’re making us go strigoi. That curse on you, on your family—it’s ruining us, too. But I won’t let it. Mrs. Roca and I will deal with it, but I won’t let you get our kids killed by the Court. I’ll make sure it’s you instead.”
“Now drink,” Mrs. Roca ordered, gesturing at the woman at my feet.
“I will not.”
She laughed. “And you pretend not to understand. You know exactly what will happen.”
“Why the hell do you want me to kill her? What did she do?”
Mrs. Roca shrugged. “She existed. She was convenient, left in one of our cabins while her boyfriend went out skiing. We have him, too. He’ll be your next kill.”
“What? No!”
“Oh, yes, dear. You will. You will start to go strigoi, the Court will kill you, and this damned curse will be over with. Before it takes our children.”
“What the fuck is strigoi?” I yelled.
They both fell silent and stared at me. Mrs. Roca tilted her head. “You really don’t know?”
I didn’t answer, thinking it was pretty damn obvious.
“It’s what happens to moroi when they kill one too many humans,” Mr. Roca said with a thrill in his voice. “It’s what’s happening to me, to Mrs. Roca. You saw what I turn into. But that’s barely the beginning. Moroi are mortals. Fully turned strigoi are immortal. Stronger, faster, more abilities, indestructible, unstoppable.”
“Each kill makes you even thirstier,” Mrs. Roca added, and I could hear the thirst in her own voice. “Leaves you burning for the next one until you can’t fight it any longer. But each kill stains your soul, until it turns so black, you simply don’t care anymore. You become a monster, and not even the Coven can end you.”
“Why the hell would you want me to be like that?” The thought of becoming what they described scared the shit out of me, but it made no sense.
“We don’t,” Mr. Roca said, and now I was even more lost. “We just want you on your way to becoming strigoi, where it’s too late to turn back. Far enough that the Court has no choice but to put you down before you get out of control.”
“Like you are?” I spat.
“I’m not quite there, but will be soon enough,” he said with a sickening smile. “Someone fast enough with a blade might still be able to take my head. But I’m not worried about that anymore. The missus and I will be long gone before the Court knows about us. They’ll be too focused on you. And once they end you, the curse breaks, and our family won’t have to know what this is like.”
“What curse?” I asked.
“That’s enough questions. Now drink!”
“If you’re going to make me do this, you owe me a full explanation. What curse?”
“Tell her,” Mrs. Roca said. “It might motivate her, if she cares about her brother and sister at all.”
My gaze flew to Aurelia and Gabe hanging by their wrists, watching us. Both of their bodies trembled. I looked back at the Rocas. “Tell. Me.”
Mr. Roca rubbed his chin. “The curse against your family after their first offspring went strigoi.”
I blinked as I remembered the journal that I’d read just today. I must have dropped it when Mr. Roca’s bat-form kidnapped me.
“Nobody knows why, but your older brothers and cousin weren’t quite right. Never were. As soon as they were matured, they gave in to the bloodlust. They went on a murderous rampage throughout the countryside back in our Old Country. They killed dozens in only a few nights, trying to quicken the process of becoming strigoi. They wanted to be monsters, and they knew if they didn’t force the transformation fast enough, they’d only need to be decapitated to be stopped. But if they were fully changed, they thought nothing could stop them. Witches and sorcerers had to be hailed to contain them before they killed any more. It took much magic, but they were eventually eliminated. Your uncle was killed in the mayhem.”
I stared open-mouthed as my brain processed all of this. Once it did, I looked over at Aurelia and Gabe. She shook her head. She hadn’t known either. Gabe only stared, his eyes glassed over with fear. They shouldn’t be hearing this.
“Your parents and your aunt had to pay. Losing their children, and your uncle, wasn’t enough. So the magic wielders cursed them.”
“Cursed all of us,” Mrs. Roca corrected.
Her husband nodded. “Our punishment was minimal. We didn’t have children yet, so we’d had no part in the murders. But since the Rocas served the Petrans, the mages said our ties were too close. They cursed all of us to not be able to bear children for seven generations of the families who’d been massacred. And then, if your parents or your aunt had any more children, their moroi genes could not be triggered, or the whole family bloodline would die. They wanted to ensure the intense bloodlust didn’t repeat itself.”
I squinted at him. “But if the gene’s not triggered, they would die anyway.”
“The matured eventually would, but not as fast. The curse took them quickly.” He nodded toward Aurelia and Gabe. “And the curse takes the entire family.”
My breath caught. I shook my head. “No. I don’t believe you. This has nothing to do with you going strigoi. You’re just trying to distract me.”
He chuckled. “It really doesn’t have anything to do with it, does it? It shouldn’t. We didn’t do anything wrong. But then, shortly after you turned, my brother changed. We had to put him down before the Court found out. Then his wife. And now us. I don’t believe in coincidences, Michaela, but when I found out about you, the pieces came together. Your father did this somehow, but I will end it. By ending you. Now kill. The. Fucking. Woman!”
The blonde flew up off the floor in a blur, and he shoved her in my face again.
“Fuck you!” I spit out.
&nbs
p; “She needs motivation,” Mrs. Roca said, and in a heartbeat, she stood behind Aurelia, her fangs at my sister’s throat.
“No!” I screamed. The metal cuffs tightened on my wrists and ankles, and the chains cranked on their own, pulling me tighter. I fell still. Recalling what Xandru had said, I realized why the Rocas were such good metalworkers. And something else clicked in my mind. My heart squeezed painfully, then shattered into pieces, but I couldn’t dwell on that now. I needed to protect my siblings, and I knew what I had to do. “Okay!” I yelled. “Just leave them alone. I’ll drink.”
“Good answer,” Mr. Roca said. “After all, you’ll be saving their lives, too. The curse will be lifted from them, as well.”
I nodded, sagging with defeat. “I get it. My parents . . . Mammie …” I shook my head as tears spilled. “They died too soon because of me.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Roca soothed. “But you can stop it all. You have the power to protect our children and your siblings.”
The fear in their faces gave me the motivation the Rocas had hoped for. But not for what they’d expected. As I leaned in toward the girl’s bloody throat, I redirected my bloodlust, focusing everything within me on the metal bands wrapped around my wrists and ankles. And it worked. As much as I hated what it meant, I was right. My jaw clenched against the burn, not in my throat now, but on the skin of my extremities as the metal began to melt. The moment I was free, I sprang for Aurelia and Gabe, while retargeting my energy to the knives on the work bench. They flew through the air, one toward Mr. Roca and the other toward his wife.
“What you failed to consider,” I seethed, “is that your son turned me. And he gave me your power to manipulate metal.”
Before they could react, I swished my finger, and the knives sliced across their throats.
I spun and freed Aurelia and Gabe with a simple touch to the metal, releasing the clasps. Wish I’d thought of that when I’d done my own. We ignored the thumps of falling bodies behind us and rushed for the stairs.
To find a whole family of Rocas lined up on them.
Chapter 12
Several large bodies and a couple of smaller ones pushed past us as I tried to get Aurelia and Gabe to safety.
“Aw, fuck,” a low voice came from behind us.
“Shit,” said a girl’s voice. “Tase and Xandru were right.”
“Go,” I urged my sister and brother toward the stairs, needing them gone before shit went bad again. “Get out of here.”
“But—” Aurelia looked over her shoulder at me.
“Just go,” I hissed, but before I could stop her she turned and threw her arms around me. I gave her a quick return hug, then rushed her and Gabe up the stairs.
They weren’t out of sight five seconds when more figures came to the top of the stairs.
“Michaela,” Addie gasped as she flew down the steps.
“Are you okay?” Xandru asked me at the same time, his hands on my shoulders, turning me toward him. He raised a hand to my face, but I pulled away.
“Don’t touch me,” I seethed. “You have no right.”
His eyes darkened with confusion.
“Kales, are you okay?” Now Addie turned me around.
I fell into her arms. “I . . . I don’t know.”
She squeezed me harder. “Well, you will be.”
I chuckled humorlessly. “I don’t think you’ve seen that mess over there. I don’t think I’ll be okay.”
She tried to soothe me, but more people came down the stairs. As large as the full basement was, it suddenly felt like an overcrowded tomb.
“What happened down here?” asked a woman dressed in a business suit, her silvery white hair pulled into a fancy twist. A few lines etched her face around her brown eyes as their gaze traveled over the backs of the Rocas gathered around their parents. Then they landed on me. “Michaela?”
As soon as she addressed me, her face clicked in my memory. This was Adelaide’s grandmother, Saundra Beaumont, one of the Luna Coven’s high council members. One of the most powerful witches in town. The one who both served, and from what I remembered my dad saying, led the Court of the Sun and the Moon. Basically, the person who would decide my fate—if the Rocas didn’t first.
“Mr. and Mrs. Roca . . .” Several pairs of eyes suddenly focused in on me. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “They abducted Aurelia and Gabe, and then me.”
“Hey, there’s a human girl over here,” one of the Roca brothers—not Xandru, he still stood there staring at me—said from the place where I’d been shackled. He looked up and tugged on the chains until what was left of the melted cuffs fell in his hands. “What the hell?”
“I think there’s a guy somewhere, too,” I said. “Another human.”
Saundra Beaumont nodded her head to the others behind her, and two began moving about, searching the house. “Why do they have humans here? The girl looks like she’s been nearly drained.”
“She’s alive,” another Roca brother said, nearly growled.
“Michaela?” Saundra looked at me again with a white brow raised.
“They wanted me to go strigoi.”
Once again, everybody froze and directed their full attention to me. I gave a quick rundown of what had happened, except the part about the curse. I mentioned it and that they believed if I went strigoi it’d be broken, but I said no more about it.
“I don’t know if there really was a curse,” I said. “Maybe they were just trying to finish the job of framing me for those murders.”
Saundra studied me for a moment, probably wondering if she should stay on point or interrogate me about what I knew about the murders.
“It had to have been them,” I continued. “I just learned about this strigoi thing, but if they were lying about that, they were definitely something different. They would have killed Aurelia and Gabe if they had to. Definitely would have killed that girl and her boyfriend.”
“They were definitely going strigoi.” One of the Roca brothers strode over to us. Tase, the oldest. He and Xandru exchanged a meaningful look. Addie squirmed next to me. “Their eyes are bright green even in death.”
“Tase and I confronted them a couple of weeks ago,” Xandru added, “but they denied knowing anything about the first murder. Then there was the second one…” He looked over at me. “We hadn’t been able to find either of our parents, though. Until now.”
At least now I knew why he’d disappeared right after professing his undying love for me. Undying taking on a whole new kind of meaning.
“The curse is truth,” Saundra said. “Mihail Petran had come to us years ago, begging for a way to break it. We tried, but we could not find its weak point. There’s always a loophole in magic, but this one’s is tiny. After you turned, though, something interesting happened with the Rocas. Something that would only happen under a specific circumstance.”
“They began going strigoi,” I said. “Starting with Mr. Roca’s brother.”
Saundra nodded. “Yes, and according to Mihail and Irina, that would only happen if someone forced you or your siblings to turn. If someone triggered your gene without your consent, the curse would also jump to that bloodline, but with even more dire consequences.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” I said as my gaze locked with Xandru’s. “Why, Xandru? Why would you do this?”
“I didn’t,” he said.
I blew out a breath. “You’re going to stand there and flat-out lie to me after all this? Unbelievable!”
“Michaela, please believe me.”
“How can I? You admitted to coming to Atlanta. You admitted to wanting more than anything for me to remember you. So you turned me? Against my will? And now look what’s happened! The repercussions of such selfishness!”
He shook his head while still holding my gaze. “That’s not what happened, Kales. I couldn’t ever—”
“You killed my parents, Xandru! You killed Mammie! Maybe not directly, but you made it happen. And now your
parents!”
His whole expression filled with pain. “Michaela—”
I held up my hand and cut him off. “I don’t want to hear more lies. Do you know how I knew? Look at those metal cuffs. I did that. It’s not the first time I’ve controlled metal. Where do you think that ability came from, considering it’s a Roca trait?
All of the Roca siblings reacted at once, filling the room with a loud din.
“Enough,” Saundra said with a firmness that hinted at her power, silencing everyone. “We haven’t found a way to break the curse, but we do have a way to contain it. To ensure this strigoi business doesn’t continue.”
I stood up straighter in front of her and lifted my chin. “I’ll do it.”
She peered at me with Addie on one side of her and her other people gathered behind her. “You don’t know what’s required.”
“I assume you take care of the source of the problem. Me. I’ll do it, but not for the Rocas. For Aurelia and Gabe. Whatever it takes to give them some kind of normal life.”
She nodded. “You’re partially right. It will sever the curse from them. But you’re not the true source, are you?”
I swallowed as she looked beyond me at Xandru and the rest of the Rocas.
“We can contain the curse to the one who turned Michaela against her will. The blood thirst will take hold, whether immediately or in weeks or months, we do not know, but it will come, and it will come on strong. Everyone here is aware of what happens when a moroi goes strigoi. It’s not tolerated in Havenwood Falls, and we will not allow it to escape our town either. We will end the life before it’s transformed into a monster.”
The Rocas all burst out in protest, yelling at each other, at me, at Saundra. But then they suddenly fell still and silent as the witches moved around the room and into formation, encircling the family, chanting as they lifted their arms above their heads. My hair began to stand on end as the volume increased and energy sparked in the air. They continued circling, the energy built higher, and the urgency of their words increased. Then they stopped their movement, and each of them pushed their hands toward one of the Roca siblings, then pulled. A green light followed their movements, as though flowing out of the Rocas’ bodies. Then they gathered the light above all their heads, swirling in a streak until it tightened and formed into a ball. As the ball began to shrink, my lungs seized.