by Ann Gimpel
“Show some respect. No one addresses me like that.”
“It appears I just did.” Ketha tossed her shoulders back, bringing her to a height with the Vampire, and a snarl rose from her throat. “You need us. Unfortunately, we need you as well, but what I had in mind was equal partners at a conference table, not being knocked over the head and dragged here.”
A vein throbbed in Raphael’s temple. Small cracking sounds rose from the rat as he crushed it in one hand, splattering blood and entrails across the white marble floor.
“Viktor.” Raphael wasn’t looking his way, but the summons was clear.
“Sire?” Viktor’s gut twisted with apprehension. What would come next? Would he be assigned some grisly assassination? Worse, would he be ordered to feed from the creature staring down the room with her unnerving gaze?
If that happened, and he ended up guzzling her blood, he’d never be able to live with himself. It had been hard enough feeding on what was left after other Vamps had drained humans. Whoever he’d once been would be irretrievably lost if Raphael forced him to kill the Shifter or drink her blood.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Not a Vamp. Not human. Not anything at all but trapped in a place I once considered home—when I wasn’t at sea.
“Get up here!” Raphael thundered.
Viktor trotted smartly to his side.
Whatever this was, he wanted it over with. Then he’d take the iron blade and do what he should’ve done long ago. Damn the consequences. His life wasn’t worth shit. Why prolong it? And maybe, just maybe, he’d manage to do away with Raphael. At least then he could live out however many months he had left free from his sire’s oppressive yoke.
Raphael drew a set of old-fashioned handcuffs from one of his many pockets. Moving faster than a human eye could follow, the Vamp snapped cuffs on Ketha right behind the wrist manacles. “Take her to the caves,” he said and all but pushed her into Viktor’s arms.
Viktor latched a hand firmly around Ketha’s elbow. Her intoxicating scent filled his nose, but he ignored it. “What then?” he asked Raphael.
His sire sent an incredulous look his way. “Lock her up and return. I’ll decide her fate once she’s told us what she knows about escaping Ushuaia.”
“I already explained how that would happen.” Ketha’s tone was pointed. “At a conference table as an equal. So long as you hold me captive, my wolf and I will die before we help you do anything.”
Raphael slanted his gaze her way. “It appears we’re at a stalemate. Perhaps some cell time will alter your perspective.”
“Don’t count on it.”
Relief weakened Viktor’s knees, but he did his damnedest to hide the excitement sluicing through him. He didn’t have to kill Ketha. Didn’t have to do a thing beyond delivering her to the prison caves. He’d leave her in the cell he’d occupied because it was farthest from the ravages of the poisoned ocean and more comfortable than the others.
An insidious thought intruded. Before he could stop himself, a treasonous path stretched dead ahead. He’d know where she was, which meant he could free her. In truth, he never had to lock her up at all. Too late, he felt the subtle edges of her magic probe his mind. He engaged wards, but a smile turned her face into something profanely beautiful.
“Lead out.” She hip-butted him. “This room stinks of Vampires, and it’s giving me a headache.”
Raphael snarled and lunged for her. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled against each other. “Keep a civil tongue in your head, or I’ll rethink my generosity. Never forget who runs things in Ushuaia. This is blood’s dominion. My dominion.”
Ketha stood her ground. “Funny, but I thought I and my Shifters were in charge. Besides, if you were going to kill me, I’d already be dead.”
Viktor tamped down growing admiration for the woman. As soon as Raphael let go, he hustled her out of the room.
“Remain quiet.” He kept his tone stern and herded her toward the stairwell. “Vampires have excellent hearing.”
Chapter Two: We’re Out of Here
A few hours earlier
Ketha St. Ange crouched around a cooling hearth in the center of a group of twelve Shifters. The discussion had run much longer than she’d anticipated, so she added a shot of magic to keep the bricks warm. They’d run through most of the burnable fuel long ago, and this was the only way to stay comfortable absent a constant outflow of magic.
None of them had shifted in months. The shift mechanism blew through buckets of magic, and none of them had any to spare for anything nonessential. The concept—nonessential—mocked her. Talent sat in this room, ability that had close to zero application in their current circumstances. The women had worked in fields from anthropology to nuclear physics to medicine to chemical engineering to her own vocation of microbiology. If the University of Wyoming even still existed, it had long since severed her tenured faculty position.
That happened when you didn’t show up for work.
“We still don’t have a solid plan,” Aura complained, narrowing her green eyes. Eyes reminiscent of the mountain lion she turned into.
“How could we when it requires cooperation from the Vampires?” Ketha looked askance at the other Shifter, whose blonde hair was piled atop her head. Like the rest of them, she was wrapped in warm black woolen robes.
“Are you certain of that? About having to work with the Vamps, I mean?” Rowana asked. Silver hair fell to her waist, and her dark eyes looked tired. Her other form was an eagle, and she’d overflown the city to help Ketha find a way out until scant food and questionable water curtailed her power along with everyone else’s.
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
“It feels like a total screw job,” Rowana went on, “that you finally have a lead on how to defeat the magical shroud surrounding Ushuaia, and we need Vampire energy to kindle the spell.”
Ketha rocked back on her heels. “It is a screw job, but there’s not much we can do about it. Shifter power mingled with Vampire energy is what got us into this mess—”
“You can’t know that,” Aura interrupted. “Not for certain.”
Ketha thinned her lips into a harsh line. “Yes, I do know it for certain. Weren’t you listening?”
Breath steamed from the other Shifter, visible in the chilly air. “Oh I heard you right enough, when you said you’d scryed the past but you might not have gotten it right.”
Ketha lunged to her feet and stomped in front of where Aura sat, effectively cutting her off from the hearth’s meager warmth. “Of course I got it right. I’m a seer, or have you forgotten?”
“Then why’d it take you ten years to figure this out?” Aura shot back and stood, facing off against Ketha.
“Stop it, you two.” Karin, an older wolf Shifter with snow-white hair, made her way across the room and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “We have enough problems without fighting one another.” Her once-plump face sagged into a web of fine lines, but her copper eyes radiated kindness. She was their doctor and hated conflict.
“It’s a fair question”—Ketha kept her tone neutral—“except I explained how shocked I was when I was able to break through this time. Every other attempt, something blocked me, and I’ve tried hundreds of times. My guess is that whatever was powering the wards around the information ran its course. Some spells are time-linked. Like as not, this was one of them.”
Aura looked at her feet. “It wasn’t that I didn’t hear you. I have a hard time believing it’s not some kind of a trap.”
“Set by whom?” Ketha asked.
“The Vampires. Who else? To lure us into some deadly snare where they turn us into dinner.” Aura raised troubled eyes. “We can’t afford to make any mistakes. Not even one. If we don’t get something right soon, we’ll all starve to death. Humans aren’t growing enough, even with our magic assisting them, and we’re becoming weaker each month.”
“Which is exactly why we have to come up with a foolproof plan to ge
t the Vamps to cooperate.” Ketha licked at dry lips. “They can’t be doing much better than we are. They need blood, and there’s not much left besides rodents and that pack of jaguars north of town.”
“There’s us, and the humans who’ve figured out how to stymie them with our help,” Aura said dourly.
“None of that.” Karin shook a motherly finger her way. “Negative energy will come back to bite us in the ass.”
Rowana got up slowly, as if her joints pained her. She usually shooed Karin away when the other Shifter offered healing potions, telling her to save her magic for someone who had real problems. “Let me be certain I’ve got this right.” She kept her voice low.
“If you’re going to recap what I said,” Ketha broke in, “use telepathy. I don’t sense anyone about, but it pays to be cautious.”
“That was exactly what I was about to do,” Rowana replied. “I want to make damn good and sure I understood you because it’s a pretty fantastic tale.”
“Telepathy,” Ketha urged again.
The other Shifter nodded, and magic flickered around her. Guilt pricked Ketha. All magic cost something, and none of them had any to spare.
“According to your vision,” Rowana began, “a small group of Shifters and Vampires met somewhere in northeastern Russia, right before the Cataclysm, to figure out how to blend their different types of magic—”
“That’s where I got stuck,” Aura cut in. “Since when do Vamps want to change anything about their pathetic selves? We already consume blood in shifted form, so what the hell would we have gotten out of this trade?”
Ketha turned her hands palms up. “Don’t have the answers for that. All I know is what I saw in my glass. I agree it wasn’t a complete picture. Maybe my next go will flesh things out better.”
“Anyway,” Rowana went on, “one of us had sex with one of them, and it broke the world.”
“It’s more complicated,” Ketha said. “From what I gleaned, the Cataclysm resulted from a combination of the spell we hatched up to give Vamps the ability to shift and the forbidden mating. If it hadn’t been for the sex, the spell would probably have run its course.”
“And there’d have been no Cataclysm?” Rowana raised one eyebrow into a question mark.
“Precisely,” Ketha replied.
“Why would Vamps even want to be more like us?” Aura spoke up. “I thought they loved lording it over everyone and sucking them dry.”
“Can’t answer that, either.” Ketha switched back to talking to conserve magic. “There are other enclaves like ours scattered throughout the world, though. I have no idea how many, but I’ve caught pulses of life outside Ushuaia. For the first couple years, we could communicate with them, but then the barrier grew stronger.”
“Doesn’t make sense to me,” Aura muttered. “The deal with the Vamps. Not that I’ve spent much time around them, but it flies in the face of everything I thought I knew.”
Ketha exhaled wearily. “I have no idea why they wanted to change themselves—or what we would have gotten out of the deal. I don’t have to explain how magic works to you. It usually takes several passes at something complicated before the whole picture emerges.”
She took another breath, collecting her thoughts. “I don’t want to work with them, either. They make my skin crawl. About the only good thing we have going here in Ushuaia is total separation from those bastards, but”—she employed mind speech once again—“we have to mirror the original sin to make things right. And then we’ll be free from here. I hope.”
“Including sex?” Rowana drew her lips back in distaste.
“I didn’t see that part. All I saw was the need to comingle our power with Vamp energy so the spell that started ten years ago can run to its conclusion.”
“It can’t be that simple.” Rowana’s nostrils flared.
“Like as not, it won’t be,” Ketha agreed. “But at least it gives us a place to start. Before my last vision, we didn’t even have that.”
“I miss our men,” Aura said. “Just a stroke of bad luck we ended up here without them.”
“We’ve been over that ground.” Karin shook hair back over her shoulders. “And more than once.”
Ketha scrubbed the heels of her hands down her face, hoping for patience and energy. Indeed, they had covered that ground. Their small group had traveled to Ushuaia to intercept an eclipse that would focus huge amounts of psychic energy at a point in the Beagle Channel right outside Ushuaia Harbor. The plan had been to harvest the power and carry the bounty back to their Shifter packs in Wyoming.
Nothing wrong with their strategy, except the Cataclysm struck before the eclipse was due, stranding them at the southern tip of South America with an equally unlucky bunch of humans and Vampires.
The expected eclipse never happened, probably because of the Cataclysm.
Ketha squeezed Aura’s shoulder. “I miss our menfolk too. And the rest of our pack. Maybe, if we’re successful, we’ll be reunited with them someday.”
“Seems like too much to hope for,” Rowana countered. “The men were never as sharp without us there. It’s possible the Cataclysm killed them.”
Ketha straightened her spine. “Stop right there. Christ! It’s only been ten years. We have no idea about any of that. They’re in Wyoming for chrissakes. A place where there’s lots of food, dozens of other Shifter females. Maybe the Cataclysm requires saltwater to feed itself. Maybe nothing’s changed back home.” She stopped long enough to take a ragged breath. “Hope is all we have. When we let it slip away, we’re finished.”
She shook herself from head to foot to dispel the disquieting image of everyone she’d known and loved, dead. “I’m going to take a walk. I’m exhausted. Maybe there’s some shred of Earth energy left for me to tap into. My poor wolf hasn’t asked to run in months.”
“Be careful,” Karin admonished.
“I will. I’ll ward myself. Maybe one of you could scrounge something up for supper?”
“We will,” Karin assured her. “I’ll stop by the human farm dome nearest us and collect payment for our protection and our magic.”
“Good plan. We haven’t been there in a while, and fresh greens would be welcome.” Ketha turned to leave.
She plodded to the stairs leading to the outside world and made her way to a well-hidden doorway, letting herself out into a frigid day. They hadn’t always lived in this basement, but it was far easier to heat their underground space than it would’ve been to keep a normal house warm. She wrapped power around herself, both to hide her presence and to keep from shivering. None of them had adequate clothing, and the temperatures just kept dropping.
When they’d flown into Ushuaia, no one planned to remain longer than a week. They’d brought a collection of robes for the ceremony to capture the eclipse’s psychic energy. Good thing, since the robes were woven with magic, and their fabric was self-repairing. All their other clothing had long since moldered into rags. Good for bedding material, but not much else. At least they all had stout winter boots.
A shiver tracked down her body as she made her way along what had once been the outskirts of the city. Mostly because the Vamps took over the center of Ushuaia, Shifters had planted themselves in a small area north of town, not too far from the swirling, roiling mess that held them captive.
As if her thoughts about the barrier summoned chaos, lightning bolts—dirty yellow tinged with red-gold fire—surged from the skies, striking scant feet from her path. Ketha made a face and moved over, skirting energy that made her hair stand on end. Back when they were stronger, she and the other Shifters had tried every spell in their collective knowledge to defeat the magical obstruction that imprisoned them.
Nothing worked.
The shielding seemed to feed on the energy they sent to defeat it, so they’d stopped squandering power years ago. Even though they weren’t providing raw material, the storms raging around their slender slice of land had grown progressively more powerful.
Ketha turned south, burying her hands deep in her robe’s pockets and thinking about Vampires. If ever a creature was entrenched in who they were, it was Vampires. Aura had brought that up, and the same inconsistency had troubled Ketha during her trance when she’d “seen” the past unfold like a Grade B movie. Maybe the small group of Shifters and Vamps in northeastern Russia had acted independently and didn’t represent anyone beyond themselves.
The more she thought about it, the surer she was it had to be true. For one thing, she hadn’t heard zip squat about some plan to add Shifter ability to Vampirism. News like that would’ve traveled like wildfire. Also, their chosen meeting site, huddled in a cave in a remote Siberian location, suggested they wanted to maintain absolute secrecy. Something about the northern latitudes made it easier to hide magical activity, and insofar as she knew, there weren’t any Shifters native to Siberia.
A wry laugh bubbled past Ketha’s lips. They were smarter than to lock themselves into Nature’s icebox. Unless they had no choice in the matter.
As if to mock her, a large icicle cracked off a nearby dead tree. Ketha pivoted to avoid being hit as it augured into the ground. She kicked the slab of ice, but it didn’t move much. Good thing it hadn’t landed on her head.
Dragging herself back to the problem at hand, she pondered what it would take to bring Vampires to the table. Would the possibility of escape be a potent enough incentive?
Why would they believe us?
When the answer came, its simplicity shocked her.
Because we’ve avoided them like the plague until now. We’d never seek them out if it weren’t a matter of life and death.
“Yeah, but just because I see the world like that is no reason they do,” she muttered.
She walked past the perimeter of one of the human enclaves. Half a dozen lay scattered around Ushuaia, mostly in spots where they could take advantage of runoff from acid rain and the tainted water running down from the Tiera Del Fuego. Grow lights suspended over hydroponic beds ran off a combination of magic and wind power. Ketha shook her head, fighting off hopelessness. Eventually, the poisons in the air and water would kill them—if starvation didn’t do it first.