by Melissa Marr
I tried to touch that spot, and like the water, my hand vanished as it appeared to go through the wall of stone. I pulled it out and did it again. Same result, only this time, I concentrated and felt cool air coming from the side where I could no longer see my hand.
This part of the wall wasn’t real. It was glamour, the term for a magical mirage. To use this, someone really didn’t want their bloodletting interrupted.
Too bad.
I felt around until I found the rest of the entrance. Then, I squeezed into the hidden cave. Once inside, the glamour disappeared, revealing a narrow passageway. The smell of blood pointed my way, as did the sounds that I realized were chants in an unfamiliar language. Now, I caught snatches of thoughts, too.
…can’t be happening…oh God, no…no, please, stop!
Chanting, pleas, magic, and blood—never a good combination.
I kept going, ducking when a new, flickering light appeared after a sharp bend in the tunnel. I could pick out several voices from the chants, and underneath them, the ominous sounds of grunts, as if someone was trying to scream and couldn’t.
I pulled a knife from its sheath beneath my skirt. Since I found out at sixteen that silver through the heart killed vampires, I’d never left home without one. I’d barely palmed the silver blade when icy water soaked me to the ankles.
The incoming tide had reached the cave. This whole place would be underwater soon. I might be beyond drowning, but whoever was bleeding wasn’t.
Fuck being stealthy. It wasn’t my style, anyway.
“Housekeeping!” I sang out, and flew around the corner.
Nine hooded heads jerked up. The robed figures all appeared to be women, and four of them were vampires. Weak ones, if their auras could be trusted. Must be why I hadn’t felt their energy before now. Strong vampires usually gave off vibes like an electrical current.
“Get out,” a vampire with hair as red as my own snapped.
Torchlight revealed runes and other ancient markings drawn onto the cave walls. The women were standing around a pentagram that had a gagged, panicked boy inside it. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen, and runes had been carved onto his chest, leaving bloody trails running down his body. No surprise, the mental pleas I’d overhead were coming from him.
“Hell no,” I said, pissed for more reasons than their clear intention to murder this kid. “Less than a year after magic’s been declared legal, you bitches are doing a ritual sacrifice of a teenager? First, that’s evil, and second, are you trying to give the vampire council a reason to ban magic again? Innocent witches did not fight so hard for freedom from persecution for you selfish schmucks to fuck it up this way!”
The redhead wasn’t the only one giving me an incredulous look. Guess the last thing they expected was a lecture, but magic wasn’t the only thing that the vampire council had recently declared to be legal. Mixed species people like Katie were now legal, too, and it wasn’t a stretch to assume that if one law got overturned because of assholes like these witches, the other law would get overturned, too.
“We obey no earthly council,” the redheaded vampire hissed. “And you have sealed your fate, intruder. Now, we will have two sacrifices to give our goddess instead of one.”
Oh, she’d picked the wrong girl on the wrong night. Anticipation thrummed through me. Hiding with Katie had retired me from my former ass-kicking lifestyle, and I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until now.
More water rushed around my ankles. It was now up to the bloody boy’s cheek since they had him restrained to the cave floor. He flailed, the stench of his fear almost choking.
Don’t worry, kid. You’re not dying on my watch.
I snapped his restraints with a single, concentrated thought. One perk of being a freaky vampire who fed from other vampires was that I temporarily absorbed any powers the other vampire had. Bones was my favorite food, and since he was telekinetic, I had some of that power, too. I wasn’t nearly as good at it as he was, but small, inanimate objects were easy.
“What?” the redheaded leader said in shock.
I gave her a nasty smile. “Yeah, and that’s not all I’ve got.”
Chapter Four
Silver flashed in their hands as her three vampire minions lunged at me. I flew straight up, causing them to smack into each other instead of me. Then, I flung my silver knife.
It landed in the blonde vampire’s heart. With another concentrated thought, I gave it a hard twist while using my body’s downward momentum to slam the other two vampires against the cave walls. One vampire’s head hit the wall so hard that she instantly went down, but the black-haired one screamed as she raised her knife and aimed for my unprotected back.
With a focused thought, I yanked the knife from her hand and sent it into her chest with another hard twist. Now two of the vampires were dead.
This was too easy. If they hadn’t been about to murder a teenager, I might’ve felt bad about slaughtering them this way.
“Stop!”
I whirled to see that the redheaded witch now had the boy up against her chest while her back was to the cave’s wall. Smart. Now her heart was protected from both sides. She also had an ancient-looking knife pressed against his throat, and her eyes glowed with a vampire’s trademark bright emerald light.
“One more move and he dies,” she swore.
“Hurt him and I’ll rip your head off right now,” I countered.
Her smile showed her newly extended fangs. “No, you won’t. If your powers were that great, I’d already be dead.”
Ooh, a thinker. She was right, too. I hadn’t mastered the ability to use my borrowed telekinesis on people yet, especially people with supernatural energy like vampires. But I didn’t need to be able to control her to stop her.
I focused on her knife, and then yanked with all the mental strength I had. To my shock, the blade didn’t even budge.
If snakes could grin, their smiles would look just like the one the redhead flashed me. “Your impressive abilities are useless against enchanted objects, intruder.”
Inwardly, I cursed, but all I said was, “Really? Guess life’s a bitch until one kills you.”
“You will die,” she said flatly. “Pity. With your abilities, you would have been an asset to our coven.”
Her human acolytes started to chant in the strange language again. From their thoughts, this spell would end with my death. So much for thinking this was too easy. I’d seen how nasty magic could get in the hands of a skilled practitioner, and if the redhead had an enchanted weapon, she wasn’t a poser or an amateur.
That’s why I couldn’t let her minions finish their incantation. The humans might be easy to incapacitate, but if I went for the last two vampires, I risked the boy’s life. How to stop the chants without endangering him?
I glanced above the redhead. Yes. That could work.
I put my hands up in an “I surrender” pose. “Maybe we can come to an agreement—”
The redhead’s scoff cut me off. “After you killed two members of my coven? Our only agreement is your death.”
I readied my power, careful to look only at her. “You don’t want to do that.”
She scoffed again. “Oh, but I do.”
Just a few moments more… “Not if you don’t want a shitload of trouble. I’m Cat Crawfield Russell, and if you don’t know that name, does the term ‘Red Reaper’ ring a bell?”
From her widened gaze, it did. “Wife of Bones, and friend of Vlad Dracul,” she whispered.
I’d earned my nickname after cutting a bloody swath through the undead world when I was still half human, and she was defining me only by my relationships with the men in my life?
“You don’t deserve a vagina,” I muttered, and finished wrapping my power around the thin slice of protruding rock above her. With a mental yank, I tore the rock free.
The narrow slice of ledge slammed into her hard enough to take off her head. I lunged at the same moment, pulling the boy down
so he was out of the rock’s deadly, slicing path. Then, I took advantage of the other witches’ shock to rip my knife through the nearest one’s heart.
My head exploded with pain. I turned, seeing the formerly unconscious vampire through a haze of red as blood dripped into my eyes. At some point during my exchange with her leader, she’d woken up. Now, she held a piece of debris in her hands, its tip stained with scarlet. I was so dazed that it took a second to figure out what it was.
Bitch had brained me with the rock ledge I’d just used to kill her coven leader. Admirable, really.
I ducked under her next swing and managed a sideways kick that knocked her briefly unconscious again. I tried to use my abilities to send a silver knife flying into her heart, but though I concentrated, nothing happened. Guess the decent-sized piece of my skull on the ground meant my telekinesis was temporarily out of order.
The boy stared at me in horror.
“Run!” I said, fumbling around to grab one of the silver knives from the dead vampires.
He did, and after my second try, I had a knife. My head felt a little better, too. God bless vampire healing abilities.
Problem was, I wasn’t the only one healing. The final vampire jumped up, giving me an evil glare. She didn’t lunge at me, though. She stayed back, making me come to her.
I did until my legs suddenly had trouble working. What the hell? She’d whacked my head before, not my legs…
The spell, I realized. Shit. Not amateurs at all.
I changed course and flew at the chanting witches. This area of the cave was so small, it didn’t matter that my power failed halfway through my flight. I still barreled into them, slashing as I went. Blood coated me in a hot spray, and two of the human witches fell. What I’d lacked in coordination, I’d made up for in strength. The other two witches screamed as their friend’s head bobbed up and down in the water next to them.
Then they ran. Or tried to. The seawater hampered their strides since it was now up to our waists.
But one of the running witches was still chanting, and pain blasted through me as the remaining vampire slammed my head against the cave wall. I tried to block her next blow but ended up only swatting at her hands. Damn that spell! I felt like I’d been dropped into a cylinder of quick-dry cement.
The witch’s chant grew until she was screaming. My vampire attacker smirked as my legs suddenly couldn’t hold me up. Water went over my head as I collapsed beneath the waves and the weight of the spell. Through the haze of the sea, I saw the vampire walk away, presumably to fetch a silver knife. If vampire bodies floated, she’d have her pick of knives from the ones sticking out of her dead friends, but vampires lacked air in our lungs, so her dead friends had sunk straight to the cave’s bottom. Just like I had.
I tried to force my body free of the invisible hold over it. Nothing happened, not even a twitch. Fucking hell! Why hadn’t I learned any defensive magic? I’d learned every which way to fight, but only physically. Not mystically.
The vampire hauled me up from the water so I could see her smile as she raised a silver knife. For some reason, I found myself taking in every detail of her appearance. Cornsilk blonde hair, sky-blue eyes, skin as pale as a porcelain doll, and a near flawless complexion, except for a little scar near her eyebrow that she must have gotten when she was human.
Was this what people who were about to die did? Memorize the last face they saw, even if that face belonged to their killer?
Anger surged, so hot and fierce, I half expected the water around me to start boiling. Fuck her, I was not going to die this way! I might not be able to move, and my borrowed telekinetic powers might not work on vampires, but I wasn’t totally helpless. She still needed that knife to kill me.
I focused on it with everything I had. Just as she slammed the blade home, it shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving only her hand to hit my chest. She stared at it in disbelief, and then stared at the roiling water that swallowed up the now-tiny silver shards that used to be the knife.
I kept my mind wrapped around a few of those shards as the vampire screamed and began bashing my head against the cave wall. Guess she’d decided on decapitation by battery since she could no longer stab me to death.
My vision went red, and not in a rage sort of way. In the oh shit, I have massive cranial hemorrhaging way. Acid being poured into my brain likely would’ve hurt less, and I could do nothing to defend myself. I only had one shot to survive, so I used the last of my quickly fading mental power to form those silver shards into a long point.
Then, right as an ominous ringing overshadowed the sickening crash-crunch-repeat sounds of my head being pulverized, I sent the combined shards toward her heart and twisted.
The next instant, everything went dark.
Chapter Five
Ow.
No, really, owwww! If anything hurt more than a mostly-shattered head knitting itself back together, I hadn’t felt it yet. I puked three times inside my mouth before I had enough coherence to try spitting it out, and then I was frustrated and furious when I couldn’t move enough to do that.
Damn that spell! No wonder some vampires had been so afraid of magic that they’d convinced the ruling council to outlaw it for thousands of years. I was normally strong enough to bench press a car, and now I couldn’t so much as spit.
But, spitless or no, and collapsed in an underwater cave or no, I was still alive. Thank you, freaky power-absorbing abilities. I couldn’t have done this without you.
Something hard hit me, interrupting my gratitude. Great, was it the final vampire? I thought I’d twisted that blade and killed her, but maybe I hadn’t. Everything had gone black before I could be sure she was dead.
Another hard thump, and then I felt a leg. A warm one.
Not the vampire then. Our species was room temperature, and in this cold water, we’d feel downright chilly. Whoever this leg belonged to was human.
Was it the boy? I’d told him to run, dammit. Or was it the final chanting witch? I hadn’t heard her during those last moments before I passed out, but that didn’t mean it was because she’d left the cave. More likely, it was because I couldn’t hear anything beyond my skull being beaten in.
If it was her, she could be trying to finish me off. Normally, a human wouldn’t stand a chance against a vampire, but in my condition, she’d have reason to feel confident.
Whoever it was yanked on my arm. I tried to shake off the mental fog that made me feel like cotton had replaced my brain.
Focus, Cat! You probably have to mind-smash one more knife!
She yanked harder, and my head cleared the surface. The first thing I saw was mahogany-colored hair plastered to a familiar face before that face broke into a smile.
“Thank God, I found you!”
I was shocked. What was Denise doing here? The water was so high, she barely had any room to breathe.
“Are you hurt? Why aren’t you moving?” she asked me.
I couldn’t answer, of course. I could only stare at her.
“What’s wrong with you?” Now she sounded scared.
She should be. I found that I could move my eyes, and I glanced at the ceiling, the water level only inches below it, and back at her.
Get it, Denise? You’re the one in danger!
“Yeah, I know,” she muttered, and then relief suffused her features. “If you can manage to show your annoyance despite not being able to move or speak, then you’re still in there. Good. I was afraid you might be dead.”
She’d been married to a vampire for years; didn’t she remember that we shriveled back to our true age when we bit the dust? Some vamps looked like old-school mummies after they died. Then again, I hadn’t been changed into a full vampire that long ago, so I guess Denise had had reason to be unsure.
“Gotta get out of here, but I don’t have your vision, and the torches are all out,” she said, more to herself than me.
She was right. It was almost pitch-black in here, and with the cave’s b
ends and turns now hidden underwater, it would be easy to get lost. And trapped. At least the part of Denise that wasn’t human protected her from all but one form of death, and drowning wasn’t it.
Still, drowning and coming back only to drown again and again would be horrible until low tide came and took the water away. Besides, who’s to say the two witches who’d escaped wouldn’t be back with reinforcements before then?
“Do your eyes still work?” Denise suddenly asked.
What did she mean by…? Oh, right.
I let out the green glow in my gaze. An emerald light instantly illuminated a couple feet of the cave. Denise gave the light a critical look, and then hefted me over her shoulders.
“Ugh, you’re really heavy.”
There goes your Hanukkah present, I thought irreverently.
“This isn’t going to work,” she said after dragging me a few feet. “The water’s hampering me, and you’re dead weight.”
Go, I tried to tell her with my gaze.
She’d done everything she could. I’d have to wait for the spell to wear off.
Denise glanced up again. The ceiling was now brushing the top of her head. Soon, there wouldn’t be enough room for her to breathe at all. She barely had time to get herself out of the cave even if she left me right now.
Go! I thought again, my gaze brightening with urgency.
A look of obstinance crossed her features, and she hauled my face close to hers. “I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’m not leaving you behind. You’d never do that to me—”
A new surge from the tide swept water into her mouth. She spat it out, coughed, and tilted her head all the way back. It was the only angle she could now use to get a breath in.
Just go! I mentally roared. Both of us don’t need to be stuck here, and I’m the only one who doesn’t need to breathe!