Undone By Blood (The Vampire Flynn Book 5)

by Peter Dawes

I chanced a quick look at the other vampires before attending to the way he spread the handkerchief out on the ground. ‘I think we are already in too deep,’ I said. ‘I could easily get rid of the others, but Patrick and Monica would have us contained within moments. If you have any thoughts, I am willing to listen.’

  ‘No, sadly not yet. As much as I hate conceding your point.’

  ‘Get her free of me and I can help,’ Julian chimed, the sudden sound of his voice causing me alarm. Counting myself fortunate that Patrick was distracted, I shot a glance at my downed compatriot, seeing him stuck in position with his eyes fixed ahead of him. As much as I wanted to ask how he had heard my conversation with Flynn, the nudge my alter personality gave me brought my attention back to Patrick and Monica. ‘Well? Listen to the man,’ the action seemed to communicate.

  I took a deep breath to calm myself, telling both Julian and Flynn I would wait for an opportune moment. In the meantime, I watched as Patrick arranged the last of the gem shards and opened his book until he reached what I assumed to be the incantation he desired. As he held his hands over the pieces, he spoke the words on the page, becoming wholly focused on them and allotting me the opportunity to train my attention on Monica. Yes, seeing her like this broke my heart, but I recalled the words offered to me on the plane ride to Paris. My heart would have to break a little first for me to see the journey through.

  I waited to ensure that Patrick was wholly immersed before focusing on my estranged wife. Brushing across her surface-level concentration, I searched for any fissures in her focus, having to ignore any lingering discomfort, any emotional underpinnings, to slip into her thoughts. The shock of what I found the deeper I delved threatened to push me back out again, delivering another blow to my resolve I had to weather and let pass to maintain a foothold. While I did not surrender any ground, the ripple caught her attention. Monica glanced at me and smirked.

  ‘Want to play, darling?’ she asked.

  Slowly taking a deep breath, I countered against her attempt to peel back the layers of my mind as well. Flynn seemed to help buttress the walls guarding us, making her task more difficult. As she focused more intently on me, however, her hold on Julian began to wane. I saw the injured seer move in my periphery and granted him one last moment of my attention, risking a telepathic message that could be intercepted. ‘I will keep her busy,’ I said. ‘Focus on him.’

  I spared him no further mind to ensure he had received the order. Just as the swirl of dark magic encompassing Patrick became more potent, the amount of energy I directed toward Monica became palpable. Shocks of pain passed from me toward her and when she gasped, I tried to gather all the anger in my heart, inflicting it upon Monica in some effort to force her down. She strained to retaliate and failed. I heard Julian rise to his feet and threw one last burst of agony at my wife, grimacing at the way it impacted and made her stumble backward. Julian lifted the already-armed crossbow and gritted his teeth past whatever pain the action caused, aiming his bolt for Patrick as the other man finished his spell.

  Julian fired it directly at Patrick’s chest.

  And Patrick lifted a hand just in time to stop the bolt.

  It hovered midair only centimeters from his palm. Opening his eyes, he peered at Julian – not the bolt – and shook his head before batting away the metal object. It fell to the ground while Patrick plucked something from the ground and in that moment, I realized I had lost any sense of what he had been doing with the gem shards. Nothing remained on the handkerchief.

  I attempted to throw a burst of telekinetic force at him. He intercepted it, and even though Julian did likewise, he not only absorbed the blows, he threw them back at us, grinning when Julian and I both crumpled like ragdolls. “Two seers together,” he said. “Seems you can’t behave long enough for a man to finish a simple spell.” While I managed to right myself almost immediately, Julian remained prone, grunting first before trying to sit. Patrick paced toward him and motioned blindly at the man who had given the gem shards to him. I lifted a hand, intending to stop him.

  My effort failed when Monica entered the fray again.

  She started to chant, muttering the cadence of what sounded like a spell with such vehemence, it started its work on me almost immediately. My arm fell to my side and tendrils of dark magic began to work around me, distracting me with the effort of attempting to dispel them. Partially distracted by watching Patrick – expecting that I would have to act against him immediately once being freed – I resisted the onslaught of the spell enough to stop it from spreading. It still held me in its throes, however, when Patrick struck against Julian.

  The vampire pulled a talisman from his bag, the size of a large, gold coin with engravings carved on it. I saw an opaque, red stone in the middle before Patrick eclipsed it with his right hand, thanking his assistant for his help and continuing to walk toward Julian. I called out toward them, but the effect the spell had on me made what I tried to say indistinguishable. Still, it was enough to garner Patrick’s attention. He looked at me and grinned.

  Slowly, he held up the item in his left hand, displaying a reconstituted gem. Seeing it created a spark of recognition, evoking the memory of Valeria and the amulet she had used to hold the energy she stole from me. My eyes widened and Patrick laughed. “You know this now,” he said. “The only thing that could sate my hatred of Mommy Dearest.” He shut his hand around it and peered at Julian, who had been frozen in a kneeling position. One of the other vampires – a tall, short-haired female – strode up behind the master seer, her hands extended and the words of a different spell flowing from her lips. It explained why Julian had not gotten any further than his knees.

  I wanted to scream; to knock my friend from whatever trance he had been placed inside. As I beheld Evie, still on the ground, and watched Julian clench his jaw – mute against Patrick – I thought of our imminent failure and saw it playing out before my eyes. Patrick lifted the coin-like talisman and pressed it against Julian’s forehead. Both dark sorcerers – my wife and the vampire standing behind Julian – continued channeling magic, and as Patrick shut his eyes, he joined them in chanting. Julian cried out in pain, and as the gem in Patrick’s other hand illuminated, this told me well enough what was happening.

  The master seer was being drained before my eyes.

  As much as I fought, none of it worked. My friend fell to the ground, yet another casualty, his pulse still thrumming, but body left unconscious once his energy had passed into the gem. The man who had called himself Napoleon, who likened himself to Moriarty, trained his focus on me next, causing my blood to run cold. Perhaps Robin had been wrong, I mused when Patrick started to walk toward me. Maybe I was Sherlock Holmes.

  If so, I had met my match and now, I faced my own Reichenbach.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I had expected him to do to me what he had done to Julian, but once he reached me, Patrick paused. His eyes danced with mischief, and though I could recall the composed, if eccentric, man I had first met, I saw something different in the way he regarded me, as if he had become drunk from power. The unease which had brought us to the gardens in the Petit Palais had ratcheted to incomprehensible levels and as little as I wanted to admit it, its genesis did not merely stand in front of me. I felt it all around.

  It emanated especially from the woman who currently held me captive.

  My eyes darted quickly to Monica, seeing her still channeling the spell which had locked me into place. What little resistance I could offer had kept me upright, and while I sensed I could fight against it, doing so left me vulnerable and inattentive to everything else happening around me, with several other dark magicians waiting in the wings. Robin had been stripped of most of his free will, from the looks of things. Evie had wisely kept Katerina out of this mess, an action I now thanked her for as she would be just as damned as the rest of us. Some vague notion that the Order could reach us in time threatened me with the most demoralizing form of false hope. More likely than not,
all would be said and done before they could trace where we had gone after leaving London.

  Silently, I prepared to face reality. I had failed. And the best I could hope for was a chance to take someone with me when I fell.

  Patrick still did not press the talisman to my forehead. Instead, he continued to size me up until he slipped the coin in his pocket and lifted the gem to admire it. “I don’t think Raulin Mallowburne imagined the kind of damage something like this could do when he created it,” he said. Holding it up again, he ensured I saw it and continued only when I looked at it. “You nearly rendered it useless. Drove a blade through it and shattered it which tells me more about you than your sword. I had to map out everything into a path for you to walk. Dismantle you to bring you here. I’d hoped Mommy Dearest could accomplish that when she joined the plan, but her...” He pointed back at Monica. “You’d bleed out for me right now if it meant I could snap my fingers and make her whole again.”

  When I grunted, to speak, Patrick glanced at Monica. “Loosen his tongue, lass,” he said. “It seems like he wants to give me the ol’ hero what-for.”

  Monica smirked and shifted her chanting, removing one portion of it. As I cleared my throat – more to make sure I could produce any sound – I looked from her to Patrick. “I wanted to ask if you intended to bleed me out again,” I said. “That seems to be where this is all headed.”

  “Because of this?” Patrick held up the gem again. Shaking his head, he slid this into his other pocket. “No, no. You must admit that was a distasteful part of those scrolls. I read that in the bits Michael provided me with –” He paused to nod toward Robin. “– and I knew immediately which portion of the spell I was amending first. After all, how can you replenish your energy if you’re only half-conscious?”

  “What am I replenishing it for if you intend to drain me?”

  “You’ve at least figured out that I need your power. Clever boy. Must have been your friend here from the Order who told you what function the artifact we stole serves. It’s only supposed to do what I did to this lovely gent, but when you combine the two, you get to keep what you siphon. Keep you shipshape so your impressive and unique energy banks can keep feeding it.” Patrick sobered. “Helpful when you’re trying to fuel a portal.”

  I furrowed my brow, but he turned his back on me, motioning everyone forward. The vampires surrounding us strode ahead and as the female dragged Julian to the side, Robin walked up to me, a silent apology in his eyes as he took me by the arm and led me into the center of the gardens.

  ‘What has he done to you?’ I thought toward Robin, perking an eyebrow at him as my feet seemed to move of their own volition.

  Robin sighed. His gaze remained fixed ahead of us. ‘I refused to help him,’ he said. ‘So, he forced my servitude. I tried, Peter. I did.’

  ‘No, I know you did.’

  ‘Please tell Flynn I am sorry.’

  His request made me think of the entry I read in his journal. While a pang of guilt crested over me, I struggled to relay the message and found myself unable. Once we had reached the middle of the garden, Patrick approached me again, shooting a look of caution at his former lover first before focusing on me. Passing his spellbook to Robin, he demanded he remain standing nearby and focused next on me. “A portal?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Portal, Peter. Think of the definition of the term,” Patrick said. As he knelt, he held out his hand again, forcing Robin to dig through his bag. “A doorway. What you did ten years ago opened a gate for me and mine to step through, but it was a very specific sort of door.”

  “For dark magicians who had been killed by a seer.”

  “Vampires who had been killed by a seer. Raulin didn’t think of his ilk as dark magicians. Remember, the villain of one story is the hero of another.” When Robin passed him a large vial of what looked to be blood, Patrick took it in hand and opened it. Slowly, he dribbled it around me, forming a circle. “Have you ever owed someone a debt? Not something like a few quid, but an overwhelming, burdensome debt? That was what I brought back from the other side. For over twenty years, I was tortured in the afterlife and then, one bright and shining moment, I was offered passage to the realm of the living.

  “That sort of thing doesn’t come without a price, though,” he continued, securing the now-emptied vial shut and passing it back to Robin. Patrick looked up at me, as if he expected I had any pity to offer. “They pushed a dozen of us through when you destroyed Raulin’s scrolls and it was up to one of us to pay a debt. And one by one, I ensured the competition went away. Now, it’s just you and me, lad.” A smile graced his lips again. “And it’s about time to show my masters what a good boy I’ve been.”

  He pivoted, asking, “Are we ready back there?” before turning around fully. I had been only faintly aware of activity behind him, but as it came into view I realized what had been happening. Patrick had not merely been explaining his plans. He had been distracting me.

  The crowd backed away from two large rocks which had been arranged only feet apart, engraved with markings I did not recognize. In the middle of it, a box had been placed with its lid open, a sitting in the middle of it which looked large enough for the gemstone, additional engravings and jewels adorning it. Patrick sighed thoughtfully as he admired it, reaching into his pocket and walking forward with the jewel. “Lovecraft would’ve sold his soul for this,” he said. “Wouldn’t he have, Michael?”

  Before Robin could respond, I bucked forward. Fighting against the spell restraining me, I focused on the work being laid out in front of me and realized my troubles had suddenly become unimportant. Patrick turned when I stilled enough to focus, not bothering to look at my wife, but tracing the path of the spell keeping me shackled to her. I could break it, I told myself. I had done so in the past.

  As if issuing a rebuttal to that thought, Patrick began to chant.

  The ties Monica fixed around me began to wane, but as they did, something pinned me down, compelling me to kneel beyond my own volition. I furrowed my brow, settling down on the ground, and even after Patrick stopped casting – and Monica’s own voice stilled – I could not move. Patrick smirked at what must have been the look of abject confusion on my face.

  “Blood magic,” he said, nodding at the circle inside which I stood. “You can’t think I expected your lass to keep it up all night.”

  I soon became tertiary. Patrick focused on planning, having Robin stand guard over me while he and Monica conversed with the others who had magical aptitude. Clenching my eyes shut, I tried to find the source of the spell and could not find my way through it, even as I gathered energy and funneled it toward my powers. After several failed attempts, I peered up at my brother. ‘Help me,’ I thought toward him. ‘What does he have controlling you?’

  Robin tensed, though if Patrick noticed, he failed to give any indication. ‘The man who held the gem shards has the trinket he’s using to control me,’ he said. As I searched around for the male vampire, I found him settling his satchel onto the ground near where they had dragged Evie. ‘His name is Denton.’

  ‘And I gather Denton could not be persuaded to assist us.’

  ‘No, he’s fanatical. Much like the rest of them.’

  I frowned at the sight of my unconscious friend. ‘Evie,’ I telepathed, projecting this thought toward where she lay. ‘Please wake up. Or else things are going to get profoundly worse.’ It was a shot in the dark, thrown toward her without much hope of hearing a response. As I searched through her mind, though, for any sign she might have heard me, her response took me by surprise.

  ‘You know, I feel you digging around in there,’ she said, and although her body remained still, her mind sprang to life. I felt the walls of resistance keeping me out from her innermost thoughts, while her surface-level ones remained open to me. ‘I thought it best if they assumed me out of the picture.’

  ‘Julian is. And I am soon to be if we do not hurry.’

  ‘Have they arrive
d yet?’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Our rescuers, if we’ve any luck.’

  As much as I wanted to ask, Patrick began to turn around and face us. I directed my next thought toward Robin. ‘What trinket is it that controls you?’

  ‘It has my blood in it,’ he said.

  ‘Evie,’ I thought toward her as Patrick paced closer. ‘Look in that satchel near you for a blood trinket. We can at least gain Robin’s help if it is destroyed.’ If I had wished to say anything further, that desire met with an untimely end. Monica lingered near the gemstone while Patrick fished in his pocket for the artifact which had drained Julian of his energy. Holding it up, he smiled at me, crouching so that we could make eye contact.

  ‘Evie, what do you have up your sleeve?’ I asked, looking Patrick in the eyes. If I had a pulse, it would have sped at the way he looked at me.

  “It helps if you don’t fight it,” Patrick said, motioning for my forehead. I worked to control my anxiety, but the closer he came to me, the more fear held me in its throes, one voice in my head demanding I fight, while another chimed, ‘I’m sorry, Peter. I would have told you, but you’ve been so bent on this that I thought you would stop me.’ Whatever Evie said afterward faded into the background, overshadowed when he pressed the coin-shaped object against my skin and whispered the words to an incantation.

  If I had any inclination to resist, that became a moot point.

  Nothing I had experienced before rivaled the amount of exhaustion which impacted. It cascaded over me, and while I heard myself gasp – perhaps even scream – I could not tell if I produced the sound with my lips or my mind. The sensation of being dismantled became progressively more apparent, a spell weaving around me that had taken complete control of self away. It both siphoned and lulled and the longer it carried on, the less will I had to fight it.

  ‘She couldn’t have done what I think she did, could she?’ I heard a voice ask, though it sounded dreamy and disconnected. It took a moment before I realized it belonged to Flynn.