Smart guy. “If it makes you feel any better, we should be safe there. It's one of the rules: by extending an invitation, she's offering hospitality,” I said.
“Why do I have a feeling it's more complicated than that?” he asked.
“Because you're catching on,” I answered. “If she wants to, she'll find a technicality she can exploit.” I brushed my hair out of my eyes. “If you're going, then you and I both need to change.”
He sighed. “I'm going.”
We went inside. I instructed him to dress to impress, as if he were going to a really important job interview. I changed into a pair of Evie's black slacks and a blue top. I put on a necklace and grabbed a couple of the remaining charms from Veronica's.
Evan was wearing a shirt and tie. It would do.
We went outside and he started for his car. I stopped him. “Not this time,” I said. This time we were taking the bike.
* * * * *
I followed the directions Matthew had given me and it led to–
“Huh,” Evan said as we rolled to a stop at a gated entrance. “The castle.”
The place really did look like a castle. It was four floors and even bigger than Stephen's house. It sat at the top of a tall hill, and the whole property was fenced.
“When I was little,” he said, “I thought actual royalty lived here. Never would've guessed it was vampire royalty.”
There was an intercom at the gate, and I pressed the only button. “I'm–”
A deep voice interrupted me. “You are the witch and the Rockwell that Mistress summoned. Enter.” There was a quiet buzz and the gate opened.
I drove up the long, paved driveway and stopped in front of the house. One of the charms I'd bought was a bracelet with a ruby colored gem set into it. I held my arm out toward the bike, sent some magic into the stone, and a beam of light shot out of the locket and enveloped the bike, which vanished.
“The bike's stored inside the bracelet,” I explained to Evan. “Gives us quick access and stops them from tampering with it.”
“It's a bag of holding,” he muttered, and I smiled.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out two identical rings. I gave him one. “Put this on with the stone facing your palm. If I tell you to, turn it so the gem faces up.” I put the other one on.
We walked up a few steps and onto the porch. The front door opened, and a man greeted us. When he spoke, I recognized the deep voice from the intercom. “Mistress is curious to meet you. Please, follow me.”
He led us to an elevator and took us up to the fourth floor. The elevator door opened into a gorgeous suite with an open floor plan. In the living area, there was a fireplace with a ginormous TV mounted above it, furniture arranged around it. Stainless steel appliances adorned the kitchen–confusing given a vampire's diet, but I suppose they still entertain non-vampires–and a bar lined one side of the room. A big picture window looked out over the grounds, blackout curtains ready to be closed when dawn arrived. At one side of the room, a door led to what I assumed would be a bedroom. It was through this door that she entered.
When I say she was beautiful, I'm drastically understating. She was perhaps the most breathtaking individual I'd ever seen. She looked like she'd been in her mid-twenties when she was turned. She was taller than I am, probably about five-six, and had porcelain skin. Her black hair fell to her mid-back. Her eyes were pale-gray, and her lips were strikingly red against her skin. She wore a full-length, royal-blue dress with a slit on the left side that came to her knee. And she had ridiculous cleavage.
I've never been attracted to women, but I still had a slight urge to tear her clothes off.
Evan clearly felt the same, because he had to take a step to the side so a couch was covering the lower half of his body. His eyes were slightly glazed.
Damn vampire pheromones. And she knew how to use them, which wasn't surprising considering she'd probably had a couple of centuries to work on it.
When she spoke, her voice was smooth and soft, and it radiated power. “Welcome, Ms. Barrett. I am Julianna, baroness of this region.”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry. “Thank you, milady. I see you know my name.”
“I make it my business to know those who enter my domain. I was curious to meet the girl who's been making her presence known in my town. Especially since she killed one of my kindred.” There was no malice in her voice, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't have bothered her one bit to tear out my throat.
“I meant no disrespect,” I said. “I'd come upon your children harassing a human, so I rendered assistance.”
She walked–glided, really–toward us, and I felt my knees weaken slightly. “Which is why you're standing here, alive,” she said, still perfectly polite.
I got the feeling she was curious the way a dog might be about a new toy. “Your murder of Clara in self-defense is permissible. And Forrest is being appropriately punished for his role in the situation.”
“Yes,” I said. “Ten days in a coffin, from what I hear. But this presents a problem. I would greatly appreciate an opportunity to speak to him; to try to learn why he was holding a Rockwell hostage in the first place.”
She turned her attention to Evan as though just noticing him. “Ah, yes. The boy.”
I heard him gulp as her gaze met his. He was breathing heavily. He wanted her, because she wanted him to want her. She was wielding sexuality like a weapon against him. At her whim, he would've made love to her right there, and there was nothing he could do about it.
She moved closer to him and brushed her fingers gently over his cheek. He gasped in pleasure, and I saw goosebumps erupt on his neck. Another simple caress would probably result in something extremely embarrassing for him.
“So,” I said, softly. “Milady, your time is very valuable. We would hate to waste too much of it.” My voice didn't betray my concern, but I'd begun slowly gathering magic. I did not want to fight her–I'd be lucky to get us out alive if it came to that, since she probably had at least a dozen more vampires living in the house–but I also wouldn't let her harm Evan.
She turned back to me, and the lust in the air simply vanished. Evan relaxed, and he caught himself on the back of the couch before he fell. He blinked as his senses returned, and then blushed deeply as he realized what had happened.
The vampire guard who'd brought us up watched with amusement.
Julianna said, “I understand your desire to speak to Forrest. Let us go see him and you can decide if you still wish to do so.”
We all got back in the elevator, Evan keeping as much distance between himself and Julianna as was possible. We were taken to the basement, and the elevator opened to a hallway with doors on either side. Julianna led us to a room with a few coffins inside.
The coffins were made of some kind of semi-transparent material. Only one of them was occupied, and Forrest was twitching and writhing inside. I extended my senses and felt dark magic emanating from his coffin.
I didn't visibly recoil in disgust, but I came close. “How long has he been in there?” I asked, a bite in my words.
A corner of Julianna's mouth quirked up, “Less than a day.”
I glared at her. “How long?”
Now she smiled fully. “The spell on the coffin alters time at a rate of about a month for every one of our hours.”
From Forrest's perspective, he'd been locked in that coffin for close to two years. I'd heard of such punishments. It drove the vampire completely insane. A vampire can't go longer than a few days without being overpowered by bloodlust. Imagine going decades, even centuries. They don't die, but what comes out is almost always incurably crazy, and doesn't look even remotely human.
“Why?” I asked. “This goes beyond any reasonable punishment. It's just torture.”
Julianna's smile vanished, and she fixed me with an icy stare. “And my children will know what happens should they cross me.”
And this is why I avoid vampires. Like I said, they
aren't necessarily evil, but the older they get, the worse they become.
Julianna turned to the other vampire. “Anthony,” she said, “the young witch would like to speak to Forrest. What do you think of that?”
“Mnh,” Anthony grunted. “I wouldn't recommend it.”
Julianna smiled again. “But I'm sure she can manage. Haven't you heard? She's been leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. Just this very evening, in fact, she entrapped and banished a demon.”
“Still not a blood-deprived vampire,” Anthony said.
And he was right. Everything else I'd faced had been dangerous, but all of them were still rational (relatively speaking). They had a sense of self-preservation. Forrest, on the other hand, would be completely mad. And suddenly I understood why we'd been invited.
Julianna looked at me. “So, what would you like to do?”
I studied her for a moment. “I would like to ask him some questions, please.”
“Very well,” she said, and backed toward the door, Anthony moving with her. “I wish you luck.”
They stepped out of the room, and I heard the door lock, leaving Evan and me alone inside.
TEN
“Tell me you're not really going to open that,” Evan said incredulously.
I looked at the coffin, at Forrest tossing inside. I couldn't make out any details, but something looked off. “He's the only one with answers,” I said.
I touched the heavy latch that sealed the coffin. “Julianna knew what she was doing,” I said. “I was within my rights to kill Clara, so she can't do anything to me directly. She locked Forrest up knowing I would want answers. If I let him out and he kills me, it's not her fault because she explained the state he would be in.”
“A technicality to exploit,” Evan recalled. I nodded. Then I undid the latch.
The lid burst off of the coffin immediately, soaring across the room and slamming against the wall. Forrest was out of the coffin before we even saw him. “You,” he snarled in a raspy whisper from behind us.
We turned. He was standing with his back to the wall, glaring at us. His clothes were in tatters, barely covering his unmentionable regions. He was sickly thin. His skin was black and lightly covered in fur. His nose and mouth protruded like a muzzle. His eyes were bigger and entirely black. His ears came to a point, and his fingernails had grown into talons. He looked like a human bat, minus the wings.
“I'm going to eat you,” he said, then blurred and vanished again.
“I'm going to drain every drop of blood in your veins,” he said, and we turned toward his voice again. Now he was in a corner of the room, clinging to the ceiling, his head turned at an unnatural angle to look at us.
“That's certainly an option,” I said calmly, and Evan jerked beside me. “Or you can take revenge on the person who did this to you.”
He let out a screech that may have been a laugh. “You did this to me.”
He leapt from the ceiling and burst through the space between Evan and me, knocking us to the side and off-balance. Forrest hit another wall and skittered up it again.
“No, we didn't,” I said. “Whoever hired you did that.”
He cocked his head. “Hired me?”
“Remember,” I said. “Someone hired you and Clara to kidnap the boy.”
“Don't say her name!” he shrieked.
I held up my hands, palms out. “Sorry, sorry. But someone did hire you. They convinced you to do something your mistress wouldn't approve of. Tell me who it was, and I'll help you make them pay.” I lifted my chin, exposing my neck, accented by the silver necklace I'd put on.
Forrest's tongue flicked over his lips. “I'm so thirsty.”
“Just tell me who it was,” I said again.
He dropped from the ceiling and landed in front of me. “Locke,” he said. “Marcus Locke. He lives in town. I work for him sometimes. He came to me with this job, paid ten grand for it.”
Ten thousand dollars for Evan?
Forrest's nose twitched and his head moved toward my neck. He bared ragged, sharp teeth. I unclasped my necklace and took it off, showing my full throat.
“Are you crazy?” Evan whispered through clenched teeth.
Forrest hissed at Evan but never took his eyes off of my throat. So he didn't notice as I whipped the necklace off and it wrapped around his neck and tightened. The chain I'd taken from our earlier attackers bit into his skin easily. He screeched as it cut through flesh and bone, and his head separated from his body. Like Clara, he incinerated before his head could hit the ground.
From somewhere in the house, Julianna screamed in rage, and all of her kindred joined her. We heard it in the basement. We now had a house full of pissed-off vampires.
Yay.
“Now we run,” I said.
I sent a burst of magic at the locked door and it flew off its hinges. To our right was the elevator; to the left, darkness.
Darkness, and the distant approach of red eyes.
I chose the elevator. “Turn your ring,” I said to Evan as I rotated the ring on my own finger. I felt power rush into me. I reached the elevator and punched the door, leaving a dent that wrinkled the door and allowed me to push it open about two feet. I slipped between the gap and grabbed ahold of the elevator cable, pulling myself upward.
“Come on!” I shouted to Evan. “It's a strength charm. You can do this.” Tentatively, he grabbed the cable and pulled himself onto it. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed when he realized how strong he currently was,
We hauled ourselves up effortlessly, and at the first floor I kicked the door out.
I was met by a vampire. A growling, raging vampire with very sharp fangs. I kicked him as well, and he went flying back. Evan and I hurled ourselves out of the elevator shaft.
“Kill them!” Julianna's voice came from above. “Now!”
More vampires were surging down the stairs, so I pulled Evan in the other direction. A clawed hand reached for him, and he batted it away thanks to his temporary super strength.
I elbowed one vampire in the face and heard a satisfying crunch. We ducked through a door and came into an empty kitchen. “Another kitchen?” I panted. “Seriously?”
But at the back was a door to the outside, and we sprang for it, surprised we weren't being pursued. As we burst out the door onto a porch, there was a noise from above, and Julianna landed in front of us.
“You impudent little witch!” she spat. Instead of sexuality, now she was oozing pure hatred. Her eyes were black. “I will make you beg for death.” Aside from the demon, she was officially the scariest thing I'd seen in Chandler.
I gathered as much magic as I could and sent it in a concentrated burst at her. She staggered backward but kept her footing. In her brief moment of disorientation, I aimed the bracelet and the bike reappeared. “On!” I shouted, and I jumped onto the bike and felt Evan get on behind me. I started it and peeled out.
Julianna was suddenly in front of us and I swerved, only to have her in front of us again a few yards later. I continued to avoid her, until I realized she was playing with us, driving us in a specific direction.
Toward a cliff.
Gulp.
“There's a lot of them behind us,” Evan shouted. “I miss the Lizard Lady!”
“Me too!” I yelled back.
Julianna waited ahead, ready to make sure we went off the cliff. “Fine,” I said. “If that's the way you want it...”
I gunned the engine and raced toward the cliff. “Ally! Are you nuts?!” Evan screamed.
Probably, I thought. “Just trust me!”
Julianna realized too late what I was planning, and we sailed over the cliff.
ELEVEN
Free-falling is an incredibly exhilarating experience, I noted as we dropped. We were heading for a section of woods, so I could see the tree canopy but not the ground, but it was at least a hundred-foot drop, and it was going fast.
I pulled magic and called wind. After fire, wind is my strongest elemen
tal magic. I angled it, and it slowed our descent so that, after we crashed through the trees, we hit the ground with a bump and I gunned the engine again.
Driving fast through trees–in case you're curious–is hard in the best of circumstances. It's even harder when there's a bunch of vampires chasing you. Which there were–they had jumped after us and landed easily, and they were doing the crazy-fast vampire thing. I had no doubt they would overtake us quickly.
I only had one trick to pull out of my hat, and it was one of my least favorite things to do. I gathered magic and tore open a hole between realities. It was about fifty feet ahead of us, a jagged blue outline in the air. On either side of it was more woods, but through the hole you could see another plane of existence. I drove through it and sealed it behind me.
I hate going into the Periphery–the name for the numerous realms that border our world. Here is where you find the Land of Faerie, various incarnations of hell (but not Hell itself, which is another layer beyond the Periphery), and other fun places like the Lake of Eyes (which is as creepy as it sounds) and the Forbidden Mountains (don't ask). The Periphery is dangerous, to say the least, and you rarely knew what part of it you would enter from a specific spot on our side.
In this case, we'd come into a forest, but one very different from the woods we'd just left. It was daylight here, and the trees were as big around as redwoods and just as tall. Creatures milled about, but they didn't remotely resemble anything from our world. One had three legs and eyestalks. Another was a bird as big as a bear, with a beak that looked big enough to swallow my head.
And those were the relatively normal ones.
Not many witches can even figure out how to open a door into the Periphery–I was the only one of our group besides Stephen who could–but even fewer can open a wormhole. Surrounding us was a thin tunnel made of blue energy, which seemed to stretch on for miles. When Stephen discovered I could do it, something even he couldn't do, he had insisted I practice over and over, forcing me into one terrifying realm after another.
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