The Vampire's Spell:

by Lucy Lyons

  I stood and held out a hand to him, pulling him to his feet when he took it. The others had held back, watching the scene from the edge of the trees. I surveyed the cliff face in front of us and the trees behind. The power of the sacred mountain filled the clearing, and the energy signature flowed right into the stone and disappeared. I pointed across the large patch of bare ground to the rock and nodded.

  “Then that’s the way we go,” I told him. “That’s where the Quetzalcoatl went.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Just as I’d found when I was tracking Jasiri, when we reached the rock face, there was a split, and the corridor wedged between the smooth vertical planes became a staircase that wound up to the top of the cliffs. Looking down on the clearing from above, the bodies looked like glass sculptures. Somehow it was eerier to see them that way than it had been to mourn over them as people, maybe because from the top of the cliff, it was easier to see the imprints of the hundreds of bodies that had lain there before, settling the earth beneath them as they might have been pressed into the dirt by the weight of the bodies stacked on top of them.

  Whatever Vash’s intentions or thoughts, if he had any, the Quetzalcoatl was a creature of habit. I tried to separate the two in my mind as I did my own inner beast. Vash was the repentant one, Quetzalcoatl the vengeful part. If we could appeal to Vash, as Father O’Connell had, perhaps we could create a Fae/sorcery/alchemical cocktail to hold him together until we figured out how to release him from the hold his father had on him.

  Jasiri led the way, but I continued to follow the scent as we climbed still further. I was tempted to shift again, but knew if I left Simi and Somayo behind, I’d hear about it later. Following my train of thought the way she always seemed to, Ashlynn called for a halt and turned to Simi, who was bring up our rear.

  “I think you guys need to get back to camp. Find out if Maria saw her son. We might be making this climb for nothing, and if we lose one of you to an ancient booby trap just to find out that Vash was at camp the whole time . . . well, Caroline will kill us, skin us, and hang our pelts outside the club as a warning to others not to fail her.”

  “We can’t just leave you out here all alone, armed only with your claws. Quetzalcoatl is fast, viper-fast. You’d be killed without our guns to protect you.” Simi shook her Beretta at Ashlynn for emphasis.

  “And we can heal wounds that would kill you,” Ashlynn reminded her. I shot Somayo a look, but he was already pushing ahead of us, surveying the landscape with binoculars.

  “Ashlynn’s right,” he finally said, turning back toward us. “We have to get word back to camp, and unless our resident telepath has increased his range, that means someone’s physically running back.” He glanced at me and I shook my head.

  “Not without another, more experienced witch to focus for me,” I confessed.

  “Simi, you go back with Ashlynn, if the alpha allows it,” Simi directed. You will provide weapon support, and the two of you will bring the Humvee to the southeast corner of the Roraima plateau, where we’ll meet you.”

  Simi fumed, and Ashlynn turned pink with rage, her hair standing from the energy she released as her wolf rose to the surface.

  “Clayton,” she growled threateningly. I took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “He’s right, Ash. You two are fast, and as women, you aren’t the Quetzalcoatl’s first choice for targets. You’re the most likely to make it to camp and bring us the reinforcements we need, and Ash, you’re the only person in the world I’m close enough to so we can speak across that distance.” I watched my words soften her until she bit off her angry retort and nodded.

  “Clay’s right. One of us has to go, and the other has to stay. He’s the likeliest target, being male and white, even he doesn’t fit the exact image that enrages the Quetzalcoatl. Who can guess what an insane Fae thinks.”

  “Right, it’s settled then, unless you have a better idea, Simi?” Somayo asked his partner. She shrugged and shook her head then turned on one heel and stormed off, Ashlynn trailing behind her.

  Somayo rubbed his hands across his face then handed me the binoculars and pointed north by northeast. I looked out over the plateau toward the glinting light I saw to the east and dialed the binoculars in on what appeared to be the top of the temple Jasiri had spoken of. There was no sign of Vash, but between us and the top of the temple was a ruin that covered nearly the entire southern end of the mountain top.

  “Jasiri, you lead. But beware and don’t take unnecessary risks. The Quetzalcoatl knows your family. If he sees you, I don’t know that we’ll be able to stop him,” Somayo warned our guide. “Anything else, Clay?”

  “No. The same warning goes for you, though, Soma. We don’t have Dominique or Caroline with us to pull a magical ‘hail Mary’ out and save us. We’ve got to be smart about it.”

  Jasiri motioned for us to follow him, and as we ran along the edge of the plateau, I felt like we’d crossed over into a different world. The birds above us were alien, closer to their ancient ancestors than the ones below who had evolved for their environment. It was warmer than it should’ve been so high, courtesy of either magic or volcanic activity, and the closer to the city we got, the heavier the cloud cover became, surrounding us in a mist that made it difficult to move forward across the uneven ground.

  “We’ve got to get higher, over the wall,” Jasiri hissed and leaped out of sight into the heavy fog. A moment later, a vine as thick as two fingers dropped down, snaking past my face and making me jump back. I let out a startled yell and smacked Somayo on the arm when he chuckled.

  “And the award for the stupidity that got us all killed goes to,” I muttered under my breath as I handed the vine off to Somayo to climb. I crouched then leaped straight up, catching the edge of a wall I couldn’t see and clung with both hands, scrambling to the ledge and gaping at the city on the other side.

  It was a scene out of a science fiction novel, from the crumbling stone buildings covered in flowering vines to the aqueducts and stone staircases that led from one tier to the next, much like the tiered seats in the gladiator pit under the mountain. There were overgrown gardens and a large cleared cobbled area that I assumed had once been a marketplace.

  I slid down a collapsed section of the wall with my heart in my chest and climbed over the crumbling stones of fallen structures, heading toward the wide, open staircase that led up to the temple.

  “Careful, Clayton. It only looks safe and clear. My father warned me never to come to the city because of the traps and only gave me a rudimentary idea of how to bypass them.”

  Somayo groaned. “So, we simply have to trip them and survive when we find them.” He made it a statement, not a question, and Jasiri shrugged and patted him on the shoulder.

  We climbed slowly and quietly, stopping at intervals to examine the claw marks and broken traps that marked the advance of the Quetzalcoatl. The stairs narrowed for several hundred feet, pressed between two buildings that had begun to fall and leaned against each other, forming a terrifying ceiling above us. It dropped debris and pebbles on us with every step we took, and none of us dared to speak for fear of causing the entire structure to collapse.

  I picked my way through broken pottery and fragments of the society that had once filled the stone streets, from thick armbands of gold to bones and tattered remnants of cloth and furs. Somayo stopped to examine some drawings on the side of a building, and I reached out for Ashlynn, worried when she didn’t respond.

  “We need to keep moving,” I said, tossing aside the metal cup I’d been holding. “I can’t reach Ash, which means either there’s magic shielding that’s stopping me or she’s not conscious. Neither is a good thing.”

  “I don’t know about magic or psychic powers, but when I tried to take readings of the city from just inside the wall, I came up against serious electromagnetic interference that stopped my equipment from working,” Jasiri recalled.

  “Let’s just get to the top if we can and head out to the r
endezvous with the girls. I don’t want them out there with no shelter on the other side of the wall.”

  We kept climbing, over the root system that seemed to be holding the upper level of the city together. I didn’t know enough about the local flora to know what kind of tree was at the other end of the roots that were as big around as my waist, but they reminded me of the Sequoia forests back home, where the entire forest of trees shared a common root system.

  I placed my hand on one a thick, green vine and pulled it away from the wall it was attached to. It pulled away with crunch of brittle stone and a cloud of dust that made me cough and shook half the remaining wall down with it.

  “Shit, Clay, what the hell?” Somayo snapped after he yanked me back from the falling rock. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Sorry, I was just thinking about a way to use the city itself to trap Vash. The Fae all have their own kinds of magic, but the pull of nature is so strong here that we could seal the entire ruins if we got enough . . . I dunno, magical juice,” I defended myself lamely.

  “That’s great, Clay. If you think we can get through to Maria and Onyxis, they can grab whatever herbs they need for a spell.”

  I reached out for Ashlynn again then lashed out in frustration when I still couldn’t feel her. I kicked the stone step and cursed aloud, worried that we’d chosen wrong, that somehow the Quetzalcoatl had taken them by surprise and I hadn’t felt her pain or fear because I was stuck on the goddamned mountain of no magic.

  Somayo stepped up out of the shadows and jumped over a missing section of stairs to a ledge above. He held out his hand for Jasiri, and the jaguar clasped it, hanging in midair for a moment before being hauled up toward the ledge. I watched him grasp the edge and pull himself up, then a shadow appeared and Vash flew past me straight toward Jasiri.

  “Soma, pull him up!” I bellowed, and Jasiri’s legs disappeared from the ledge just as Vash hit the stone, groping to find purchase on the smooth surface, shrieking his rage in a high-pitched, avian howl. He spun around, clinging to the ledge, and our eyes met.

  “Oh, shit,” I muttered, as his lip curled up over long, curved fangs. I understood what the king had done to his son. I’d seen wolves forced to stay shifted for so long that part of them never came back, and I was looking at the same thing in his yellow, reptilian eyes.

  Briefly, I saw Somayo peek around the corner, and I waved him back, keeping the Fae’s eyes on me. I’d never seen Portia so far changed, and I wondered why I hadn’t seen scales on her when he unfurled a set of leathery wings, and I knew what made Portia and her twin different. Portia was a bird shifter. Vash . . . Vash was a dragon, or more accurately dragon-kin. It sounded like something out of a science fiction novel, but as usual, that was just our luck, finding the impossible wherever the Fae intersected the human world.

  He pumped those wings, and one of them stretched out as far as I was tall, while the other half-opened and hung down, damaged by either the jaguars or a rough landing. He scrabbled around and lunged across the divide at me, driving me back down the stone stairs.

  I leaped over the giant twisted roots, scrambling to find purchase on the steps we’d made slick with crushed vines and moss. My wolf strained for release, and I skidded under a broken stone wall and pushed my way through the partially collapsed building, shifting as I went. Fur flowed over my body, and I hissed at the quick, sharp pain of my claws pushing through the ends of my fingers, leaving my shredded clothes behind as I found an opening and climbed out to face the creature.

  Vash had disappeared when I found my way back to the stairs, and I climbed it with my back against a wall, searching the thin slice of sky I could see between the sagging buildings as I made my way back to the others. When I was near the place where the buildings had toppled completely and the sky opened, I pressed myself harder against the carved stone blocks and cast my gaze all around, trying to find not only Vash but Somayo and Jasiri as well.

  I could smell my companions on the other side of the break in the steps but couldn’t smell or hear the Quetzalcoatl anywhere, which meant he was probably close and watching me. I leaped for the opening Somayo had used, half-expecting to feel Vash’s claws dig into my stomach before I hit the other side. The opening in the wall was just wide enough to get my half-wolf form through, and I slid across the slanted floor to the stairwell beyond. Outside, I heard talons on stone and knew Vash would be right behind me.

  “Somayo! Jasiri! Vash is coming . . .run!” I growled through my fangs as I threw myself through the doorway and stumbled down the steps until I got my feet under me. When I reached the bottom, I sniffed the air, which had stood still and stagnant for so long, it hung in the air like it had weight to it. The men’s scent came from even deeper in the stone, so I followed it down more stairs to a culvert, long since dried up, but as far as I could tell from the light farther ahead, the tunnel was whole and hadn’t suffered any collapses.

  I jogged toward the bouncing circle of light far ahead, picking up the pace when I heard a roar behind me that shook the tunnel. Each step was a gamble without being able to see where I placed my feet, but I trusted the wolf to keep me from falling and bounded toward my companions to protect them from the insane guardian of the city.

  Rounding a corner, I skidded to a stop and slammed into the wall to miss crashing into Jasiri, who was waiting at the mouth of a fork in the tunnel.

  “Oh, good, you caught up,” he panted. “Somayo took the light ahead to see if the tunnel stays open and traversable.”

  “Well, I’m not the only one catching up, so we need to follow him. Now.” Jasiri hesitated, but I pushed him in the direction he’d indicated Somayo went and forced him to keep moving into the darkness. “I thought you said Somayo was down here, Jasiri. Where’s his light?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I just know he was looking ahead, and I was staying back in case it didn’t work.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. Why would he split you guys up on purpose? He knows what you are. You see in the dark better than I do. He should’ve wanted you with him.” I glared at him, his skin a lighter shade of dark in the tunnel, his cat eyes shining at me from that black on gloom background. “What have you done?”

  “Nothing. I did nothing. Why are you acting this way? Wolf, I am a protector. I wouldn’t hide from danger if I could fight it.”

  “What if you can’t, Jasiri? What if the danger is too strong? Did you leave the Quetzalcoatl a sacrifice so you could get away?” My hackles rose, and I growled low and softly as I advanced on him, anticipating the blood I would draw now that there wasn’t an innocent human to worry about. “If he’s dead, so are you.”

  “Well, I’m not dead, so calm yourself and come help me with these rocks. There’s a cave in ahead, but I shone the light through it and saw an opening that led up on the other side.”

  Jasiri punched me in the arm, hard, then turned and trotted down the hall after Somayo. I took a breath and followed them, glancing back as I heard more growls and animal sounds from behind us.

  “You punched me, man,” I said to Jasiri when I caught up to them again and started pulling rocks from the pile that blocked the path.

  “You threatened my life,” he retorted and tossed a rock at me, barely missing my foot when it landed.

  “Point taken. Hand me some more. We have company coming. Maybe we can recreate the obstacle and slow him down too.”

  Somayo tossed rocks to Jasiri, who tossed them to me, and I piled them up in the middle of the tunnel. When the stones were too big for Somayo to lift, Jasiri took his place and tossed the larger boulders to me, and I piled them up as well. When our path was clear and a large pile behind us, Jasiri led the way, and I brought up the rear, protecting the one human in our company the best we could. We burst free from the tunnel into the town square and finally ran full out toward the city wall ahead of us. I let Jasiri pull ahead and pushed Somayo in front of me so he would get to the wall first then turned and planted for the fight
that was racing headlong toward us.

  Vash catapulted from the tunnel and straight at me, his body lengthening until it was a long, sinuous torso that coiled like a snake and then shot forward, catching me around the middle and driving me to the ground. I slashed at his face with my claws, desperately avoiding his fangs and claws. I managed to bite through one scaly arm and hung on for dear life as he shook me, bellowing his rage and tearing at my back with his other hand.

  He tore me from his arm and threw me against the wall, his venom pumping through my blood like fire until I thought I would explode. The second my head hit the stone. I heard gunshots and opened my mouth to warn Somayo off, to tell them to run and save themselves if they could, but no words would come, and my vision blurred and then went black as my body fought the poison in my system. The sun beat down on me, intensifying the pain and the heat in my already boiling blood as more gunfire and screams resounded in my ears. Then nothing, just a terrifying silence.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I felt arms under me, dragging me into the cool shade of a kapu tree growing strong amidst the rubble. I struggled to open my eyelids, but they were glued shut, my limbs shaking like I was having a seizure.

  “Clay, Clay, baby, pull yourself together,” I heard Ashlynn’s voice. “Soma’s hurt, we need you to help get him down the mountain. C’mon, tough guy, didn’t you make yourself immune to this stuff?”