by E. M. Knight
My adversary turns around and holds out his hands. His wrists are bound by silver handcuffs.
“Take these off, and I promise not to harm you.”
I snort. “As if I’d ever take you at your word.”
He smiles sadly. “Just as I thought.”
For a moment, I have the premonition that he’s going to attack… but then he turns away, and the tension eases.
“Why did you come?” he asks me.
“I need to ask about the Order,” I say.
He laughs. “Sylvia has fully converted to your side. Why don’t you ask her?”
“Because she doesn’t know as much as you do,” I tell him. “And because I’m not as convinced of her allegiance as you are.”
He turns his head one way to glance at me. “So somehow you trust me more?”
“I know you hate me,” I tell him in a low and dangerous voice. “So I know to be wary of whatever you say. Because of that, you’re predictable.”
“That’s incredible logic,” he mutters under his breath. “And you wonder why Raul was the one given Eleira?”
I scowl. “Nothing to do with that,” I say haughtily. “Don’t bring my brother into this.”
“Everyone’s connected.”
“I’m breaking the links.”
“So confident!” he exclaims. “What gives you such assurance? Just because you’re in a place surrounded by vampires claiming to be loyal to you does not mean they won’t turn the moment they sense weakness. Did you see how quickly they forsook Chandler?”
“Their rituals, their practices, don’t concern me,” I say. “They named me leader. Who am I to protest? And, by the way,” I flash my teeth, “I do not intend to show them any weakness.”
“You’re not threatening me, are you?” he asks. He steps closer. “We both know I’m at your mercy. I’m just waiting for you to grow tired of having me around and end my life.”
“I told you before it won’t come to that,” I say. “Not unless you provoke me.”
“You think I won’t do it?” he says, eyes shining.
“I think you value your own skin too much to be purposefully antagonistic. After all, there is… Beatrice.”
He falters when I say her name. He covers it up quickly, but by then, I know he’s caught.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
I stroll to the mirror and take in my own reflection. I bring a hand to my jaw and consider its perfect structure.
“You lie as easily as a fish breathes underwater,” I tell him.
He chuckles. “Do you fault me for it? For a very long time it’s served me well.”
“You’ll tell me what you can about the Order,” I say. “If I deem it enough, I’ll help you find Beatrice.”
He snorts. “You consider that an offer?”
“I don’t have to offer you anything. You’re my prisoner. You’ll do as I say.” I come to him and lay a hand on his shoulder. “But what I’m dreaming of is so much greater than our petty differences.”
He looks deep into my eyes… and turns away.
“We stand at absolute opposite ends of the spectrum,” he mutters. “I thought we would be enemies forever.”
“Even enemies can unite for the right purpose.”
His eyebrows go up. “Could it be that you’re more clever than I gave you credit for?”
I shrug. “I’m used to people underestimating me. One benefit of a pretty face.”
“If you could be any more vapid,” he sneers. Then he eyes me up and down. “Fine. Tell me. What is it about the Order that you want to know?”
I feel a surge of triumph. “Male witches,” I tell him. I want to know about men wielding magic.”
He looks at me… and starts to laugh.
When I don’t join in, he stops. “You’re serious?”
I give a grim smile. “Does this look like the face of a jokester to you?”
“What would I know?”
“Answer my question.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you all there is to know about male witches.” He emphasizes the term. “It can be summarized in a single sentence. Namely, they don’t exist.”
My turn to laugh.
If only he knew what was staring right at him.
“You think I’m joking?” he asks.
“I think you take me for a fool, despite your rhetoric. I think you’re lying. As expected, of course. Try harder next time, please, if you want me to take you seriously.”
Smithson scowls. “Magic is a perversion of the mind. Be thankful so few can access it. Man is dangerous enough without it at his disposal.”
“So you think it’s not possible?” I ask. “For a man to control the Elemental Forces.”
“We have no record of it,” he begins.
But then his eyes flicker away. It’s a tell; he isn’t speaking the truth.
I come closer. “The Order has been around for centuries,” I whisper. “Surely you know something.”
“I am not the organization.”
“But you have been leader all this time,” I say. “I doubt anything happens inside without your approval.”
“Whatever information you’re looking for, you won’t get from me,” he says.
“Very well,” I mutter. “This was my offer of truce. If you won’t take it...”
I turn away and walk to the door. But as my hand comes onto the surface to push it open, Smithson says, “Wait.”
I stop, but I do not turn back. “You remember something?”
“No.” I glance at him out the corner of my eye and see his dejected stance. “I personally know nothing. It is not a subject I ever considered myself. But there are others, people who have worked for me for a very long time. One man, in particular, who may have—may have—stumbled upon something.”
I turn around. “Who is he? What’s his name?”
“Unfortunately, he’s been dead for over ten years,” Smithson tells me. “His son, however… well, his son is one of the most powerful Crusaders.”
Crusaders, I think. Those humans dedicated to ridding the Earth of vampires.
“You think he would know more?”
“He might. But going after him is a death wish for any vampire. These are people equipped to deal with our kind.”
I snort a laugh. “How can a human really threaten a vampire? It’s a fantasy.”
He shakes his head. “You would not say that if you saw the tools they have at their disposal.”
“Is that supposed to frighten me?”
“No. It’s supposed to make you cautious.”
“I make a habit of throwing caution to the wind. Look how much harm that’s done.” I smile. “Almost none.”
“If you want to find him, you will have to persuade Sylvia. She’s the only one of us who has a chance of infiltrating the Crusader base.”
“You don’t know where they’re located?”
“I do. But their facility is heavily guarded. It would take an assault of thousands to break through.”
“Somehow, I find that very hard to believe.”
“You do so at your own peril. Why do you think the Order has had only scarce contact with the Crusaders?”
I keep my expression blank. “You tell me.”
“Because they can detect vampires, you fool,” he almost spits. “If our organization collaborated, sooner or later, I would have been outed.”
“Tell me,” I say. “How powerful is the Order?”
“We have chapters and exert our influence all over the world,” he proclaims, puffing out his chest.
“A sizable network,” I say.
“Yes,” he agrees. “The very best.”
“If it’s so good, why haven’t you yet been rescued?”
He goes still. Then he scowls. “You impudent little brat,” he says. “If you think...”
I shut him up by holding out my hands. “Just saying. You think very highly of your organization. Yet, when you need it most
, it seems to have failed you.”
“You don’t understand the sorts of people you’re talking about,” he tells me. “If I give the word, they will destroy you and your pathetic little coven. The nine new members you picked up?” He scoffs. “They mean nothing to us.”
“Then why haven’t they done it? Why haven’t they rescued you?”
“Because I haven’t given the order, idiot.”
“So what, you want to be contained by us? You want to be my prisoner, until I deem you sufficiently useless and end your life? You know,” I add, “Victoria suggested I do it now, anyway.”
“You’re too greedy for what you can get from me to kill me like that,” he says. “Despite your bluster, I am valuable to you. We both know that.”
“And I am valuable to you. Is that what you’re implying?” I ask. “Is that why you’re still here, even though you long ago recovered your wits?”
“Yes. And Sylvia,” he admits. “Now that she has been transformed. You are the ones searching for Cierra. A small group, like us, has the best chance of finding the sorceress.”
“And Beatrice, too, of course.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t demean yourself. You were married once. Somehow, you hope to win her back.”
Anger flashes in his eyes. It’s quickly subdued.
He shakes his head. “Beatrice is lost to me,” he says. “Cierra is the prize.” That anger comes again. “She spat in my face when I offered her the world. She destroyed that which was most precious to me: Witchbane. She made a mockery of the security of the Order’s most advanced facility. No, James.” He looks right into my eyes. “The purpose inside me has nothing to do with Beatrice. It is all about Cierra. I must see her brought to justice.”
“Better this than your despondent self,” I mutter under my breath. “You really want to bring Cierra to justice? Yes, yes… I can see that you do.”
“Nobody who crosses me is easily forgiven,” he says. “She has to answer for all the lives she took when she escaped.”
“If I decide to loosen your leash, so to speak,” I say slowly, “we can unite in this cause. Yes?”
“Why would you want Cierra destroyed?”
“Not destroyed,” I say. “Captured. Made prisoner. You held her in the Order in some vain hope that she would help you through compulsion. But that was foolish. She can’t be reasoned with to side with you. She must be coerced.”
“If you think it’s going to be easy…”
“I never said it would be easy. But I think it might be possible. Her hideout nearby was completely scavenged. She won’t be coming back for it. But the portal, on the other hand?” I motion past the door. “I have a feeling she will need to return.”
“You want to lay a trap.”
“It’s too early for that,” I say. “I don’t want to sit back and wait. I am a man of action, after all.”
“Action frequently taken in haste,” he tells me.
“You need to watch your tongue. I won’t kill you. But I have no problem cutting it out, making you mute.” I grin. “Even vampires cannot regenerate a lost appendage.”
He lifts up his wrists, showing me the silver chain linking them. “The first step toward cooperation would be removing these.”
I almost sneer. “It’s not that easy, Smithson. You need to prove that you can be trusted. You have to earn that proof.”
His hands fall. “So what, you’re going to taunt me, is that it?”
“Not at all,” I say. “We can agree we’ll go after Cierra. But first, you need to get me into the hideout of the Crusaders. I need to know what the son you mentioned has to say.”
He scoffs. “Impossible. They will know you’re coming from miles away. They’ll obliterate you.”
I give a keen smile. “You’re forgetting one thing, Smithson. I’m cloaked. Even you cannot feel me.”
He stops short. His eyebrows go up. “Hell,” he mutters, “you’re right.”
“I’ll have Victoria and Liana be your escort,” I say, turning to the door for the final time. “The two of them will be tasked with making sure you behave. You know the girls are quite partial to me. They will keep you very much in line.”
I knock on the door, say, “It’s me,” and the vampire standing guard opens it.
“It’s nearly day,” I tell Smithson. “When night falls next, we will journey from this place. First, to find the Crusaders. Afterwards, Cierra.”
Chapter Thirteen
Eleira
The Demon Realm
Just as the three witches promised, as soon as I’m far enough down the hall, a portal swirls to life before me.
I have no idea what to expect. I know I won’t be able to protect myself during the trip back.
So I simply block out all doubts and leap in.
As soon as I’m through I’m shocked by an unbelievable pain. It scorches me, consuming every last bit of my being. I feel like I’m being shattered in a million tiny fragments.
I scream.
I scream in agony but hear no sound. I’m shuttling through an undefinable space at extraordinary speed.
And then, suddenly, all those fragments of me change course, lock together, as I barrel into my own body back in Morgan’s dungeon.
I only get the briefest flicker of a second in that time-warp bubble. Then it cracks, the barrier collapses, and I’m there with the Queen in real time once more.
The spell she was using against me rips into place. I’m caught mid-scream, in exactly the same position I was in when time slowed.
But now, in a tiny pocket in the back of my mind, I feel a source of new power.
I clutch onto it and lash out, using it to sever the spell Morgan had cast.
The weaves rip and slam back into her. She staggers from a mixture of shock and absolute surprise.
And now I know I have the advantage.
I draw on that new power and use it exactly as I’d use the Elemental Forces. It slices through the magical barrier Morgan erected around my mind.
Suddenly, Earth’s Elemental Forces are revealed to me.
I latch onto them like a drowning woman to a floating log. Fire, Air, Water combine to make an enormous weave, the largest I can manage, and I aim it at the Queen to trap her whole.
“Impossible!” she screeches.
I’m still weakened by the beating my body took. But no longer am I a victim. I can fend for myself, I can fight, and finally, the Queen and I are on equal footing.
I direct a portion of Fire to cut through my restraints. The silver around my wrists and ankles gives. I drop to the ground.
Morgan backs away in absolute horror, magic denied to her as it had been to me.
That pocket of additional energy pulses like a living thing. It fills me with astounding strength. The weaves I use to siphon Morgan’s abilities are infused with the new energy that’s there.
From the corner of my eye I see my skin glowing. I look down and note the runes, pulsing with light.
Morgan’s back hits the opposite wall. The half of the Narwhark she was going to feed me lies abandoned on the ground.
She’s cornered, and all of my anger, all of my hatred, flares.
“You dare to abuse me?” I scream. I’m quivering with rage. My claws are out, my fangs are bared, and unfathomable currents of power churn around me, through me, boiling with my hate. “You dare make me your puppet, your surrogate, your play thing, your pawn?”
I lash out with the magic and strike her across the face. Her skin breaks, and blood splatters on the wall.
I advance on her. “Now you know how it feels,” I yell. “Being defenseless. Being paralyzed. Being afraid.”
Each of my words is emphasized by one lash after another.
“You thought you would get away with it,” I continue. “You thought you would sever my soul. You thought you would use your foul blood magic to take my place, to steal the prophecy from me!”
Again
and again and again I pound her with the spell. She collapses, with no strength left to hold herself up, and cowers on the floor.
I switch the weaves to rain down impressive whips on her back. In moments, her dress is in tatters. Blood pours from the wounds.
The smell of that blood repulses me. It’s corrosive, it’s venomous, it’s hideous, it’s wrong.
“You wanted to steal my life from me,” I accuse. “You were going to condemn me to a hell I didn’t deserve. Not once have I shown anger toward you. But this is what you get. This is who you’ve unleashed!”
I feed all that I have into the weaves ruining her body and beat her down with them, until she lies, a limp thing on the ground.
Still, it’s not enough. I don’t just want to kill her. I want her to suffer. I want her to feel as much pain as she’s inflicted on me, and I want to hear her scream as she does it.
I flip the weave over and use it to chuck Morgan against the wall. She hits it hard and collapses in a pathetic heap in a pool of blood.
I run up to her. I grab her frail and stick-thin hair. I force her head up, force her to look at me.
There is very little life left in her eyes.
“You made me do this,” I whisper. “I was on your side. I wanted to learn from you. I wanted to be good, not evil, and to serve the vampires of your coven as they deserve.”
My other hand juts out and closes on her throat. My exposed claws draw blood. “But you were vain, or you were jealous, or you were weak. You masqueraded your weakness, your insecurities, under a veil of control. And yet, now you’ve exposed yourself.” My fingers press tighter against her windpipe. “But now you are finished. I will be The Haven’s rightful Queen, while you will be nothing but a forgotten memory.”
I’m about to sink my claws all the way into her chest and rip her heart out, thus ending her life, when an unexpected something crashes into me.
I go flying against the floor. I hiss and turn and try to break out of the grip of my attacker.
It’s Raul.
“Eleira, no!” he screams. “Stop!”
Seeing his face takes me completely by surprise. I let up the fight. I allow him to hold onto me, pinning me to the ground.
In a flash, I get a sudden awareness of other vampires in the room. They’ve streamed through the door. Phillip is attending his Mother. The guards block the exit.