I stripped out of my black wool trench and draped it over the barstool, noticing the slightly singed back and shoulders. I needed a new coat. Dustin disappeared into the kitchen while I navigated the bustling tables to the door to Logan’s office and gave two sharp knocks.
“Come in,” he said gruffly.
I hurried through the door, closing it behind me.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. He looked up from his lunch, an expression of disgust on his face that had nothing to do with the potpie he was eating.
“I need to talk to you about Tabetha.”
“After how you treated us at our dinner party, I should throw you out of here on your ass. Lucky for you, Tabetha has asked me to keep our relationship discreet, for obvious reasons.” He waved his hand in the air like he was directing an invisible wand. “Kicking you out would invite a lot of questions. I don’t suppose you would consider leaving on your own?”
“Not until I say what I came to say.”
He widened his eyes at me. “I’m all ears.”
“You are in grave danger,” I said. “Tabetha threatened to kill you.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“When you left the room to get dessert, Tabetha demanded my cemetery. If I don’t turn it over to her by the spring equinox, she threatened to kill you. She’s using you, Logan.”
For a moment, Logan simply stared at the wall, mouth slightly open, jaw sliding back and forth as if he were adjusting the joint. When he spoke, there was menace in his words. “Tabetha told me you would do this.”
“What?”
He swiveled his chair to face me again. “You’re jealous. You are finally realizing what a good thing you had, and now you want me back. You made your choice. Now you have to live with it.”
My mouth dropped open. “I am perfectly happy with my choice, Logan.” I stormed his desk and leaned across so that our noses almost touched. “What I’m not happy with is having your blood on my hands.”
Hard eyes locked onto mine. “Then give Tabetha what she wants,” he said through his teeth.
I straightened. Who was I looking at? Was Logan so smitten with Tabetha that he was willing to gamble his life for her cause? If he was asking me to give Tabetha what she wanted, he must understand on some level that the threat was real. But there was not one shred of doubt in his eyes.
“You love her,” I said under my breath.
“Absolutely.”
“She’s using you, Logan,” I repeated.
“I think you should leave now.” He stood and pointed toward the door. “Go.”
With a heavy weight in my heart, I did … as soon as I got my Valentine burger to go. You absolutely do not abandon a hot and ready Valentine burger.
* * * * *
The next day, I met Rick at the Thames Theater to perform the spell to find Julius. We’d done this magic before, when we’d gone searching for Marcus after he escaped the hellmouth. The salve was a little different this time. The goop at the bottom of the cauldron at the center of the ring of skulls still smelled of eucalyptus, but Rick had used more golden seal to counteract the additional time between Julius’s last sighting and our search. I didn’t understand how the spell worked exactly, but I hoped it was as effective as it had been when we’d used it before.
“Thank goodness they cleaned the room,” I said. The area at the foot of the bed where we were performing the spell had been a puddle of blood the last time we were here.
“I am sure it was done as soon as Silas cataloged the evidence. All the spilled blood would have driven the vamps here mad.” He removed the giant wrought iron swizzle stick he was using to stir and placed it on the floor next to the cauldron. “The salve is ready.”
“Here goes nothing,” I said. I scooped a glob onto my finger and smeared it on my eyelids. “Let me know when the minute is up.” If the spell worked as planned, when I opened my eyes I would see a red dot in the direction Julius was taken. Rick and I would follow the dot to his destination.
“Open,” Rick said.
Gradually, I worked against the heavy, sticky mess to lift my lids. I blinked and blinked again. “This is wrong,” I said. I turned my head, right and left.
“Do you see the red dot?”
“Oh, I see it. Only, there isn’t just one. There are thousands, all over the room, in every direction.”
“What does it mean?”
“I have no idea.” I stood and tried to focus my magic, willing the most ancient part of myself to interpret what I was seeing. “Maybe he’s de—”
Rick’s hand slapped over my mouth. In typical caretaker fashion, he’d crossed the room in a split second. “Don’t say it,” he whispered in my ear. His eyes flicked up toward the ceiling. “Once the coven knows, we will have no opportunity to influence who is chosen as his successor.”
I nodded. He dropped his hand. “But do you think I’m right?”
“It’s possible. I have no explanation.”
I grabbed a towel from our equipment bag and wiped the salve from my eyes. “Let’s try again, this time for vampire suspect number one.”
“Bathory,” he said, agreeing with my course of action.
Scooping another glob of salve, I spread it over my eyelids and concentrated on the vamp who’d tried to kill me. When I opened them again, I shook my head in frustration as I looked around the room. “Nothing. No red at all.”
“She wasn’t here.”
“She was behind this, Rick. We both know she was.”
He nodded. “I agree, mi cielo, but perhaps she compelled another to do her dirty work for her. The injuries to the victim were more consistent with ogre activity.”
Again, I wiped the salve from my eyes. “This spell only finds vampires. If we don’t know what or who took Julius, and I can’t track Julius, how do we find him?”
Rick grimaced. “We will have to think of something else.”
“In the meantime, we need to learn who plans to challenge Julius’s position, and try to win that person’s allegiance.”
“Or groom our own candidate.” Rick looked at me and lowered his chin.
“I know what you’re thinking, and he’ll never agree to it,” I whispered. Oh, how I hoped he wouldn’t agree to it. My stomach sank. He was thinking of Gary. Gary, who I’d dated in a past life—his past life. Gary, who I tried my hardest to forget on a day-to-day basis, not because I still had feelings for him—I didn’t—but because of how our relationship ended. For me, it was an ego-shattering, financial train wreck.
Rick pressed the issue. “No one else hates Bathory and loves you more. He’d be the perfect coven leader.”
“He doesn’t love me.”
Rick raised an eyebrow. “As vampires go, his feelings for you are close enough to serve our purposes.”
I couldn’t argue with him there. “If the challenge is physical, Gary doesn’t have a chance of winning. Vampire or not, he’s forever stuck in a poet’s body.”
He dropped his chin and looked at me through his lashes, a sexy smirk turning the corners of his lips. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Always underestimating your abilities. When will you see yourself for the powerful witch I know you to be?”
“Excuse me?” I was slightly offended at his perception that I lacked confidence.
“You are magic, mi cielo. A sorceress of the dead. I believe with the right spell, you could greatly improve his odds.”
* * * * *
“No. Definitely not,” Gary said.
I’d cornered him in his room and carefully revealed our suspicion that Julius might be permanently detained.
“You don’t know what you are asking me to do,” he whined.
“If you are worried about the challenge itself. I can make you a potion that will render you practically invincible for a time. I can make it so you can’t lose.”
He ran his long tapered fingers over the spine of a book on a shelf in his room. “Do you want to know what the challenge entails?�
�
“Yes.”
From the bookshelf, he selected a purple book with a gargoyle image on the spine and symbols where the title belonged. Vampire language, I supposed. “Is that the secret vampire manual?”
“Something like that.” He opened the volume to a page near the back. “At midnight, during the full moon, the Druherand, the coven leader’s second, will announce the abdication of the leader and ask for a challenger for the throne. If no challenger steps forward, the second-in-command inherits the throne.” He looked up at me from the book. “That’s the normal procedure, only this time, Julius’s second is the demon Padnon. A demon cannot rule a vampire coven. So in this case, his request will not be to challenge him directly.”
“Okay. So anyone can toss their hat into the ring?”
“Yes. There is no limit on the number of challengers, but if there is only one challenger, that vampire will inherit Julius’s role because Padnon can’t.”
“Seems like more than one vampire would want the honor of leading this coven.”
Gary groaned and plopped down on his bed. “There’s this guy,” he whispered. I leaned in so I could hear. “A vampire called Kace, one of Bathory’s. Rumor has it the guy was a serial killer Bathory saved from the chair. He’s a badass, Grateful, and he has not been happy feeding on animal blood and willing humans. This guy likes to be a predator, you get me?”
I straightened and nodded. “You think he will be a challenger?”
“He’s already talking about it. No one is going to want to fight Kace, especially since the ring itself is so deadly.”
“What’s deadly about the ring?”
He opened the book again. “The challengers shall be confined to ‘the ring.’ The place where the challenge shall take place shall be no more than twenty-five feet in diameter with posts to the north, south, east, and west. The north post shall be covered with silver spikes soaked in holy water, the south, a chained werewolf, the bite of which is deadly. The east post shall be the site of a Vladimir’s guillotine—that’s a machine designed to cut off your head if you get too close—and the west post will be a coffin.”
“A coffin?”
“The competitors are bound to the ring by magic. They cannot leave unless a winner is proclaimed. The challenge continues until there is one survivor or the sun comes up. Only one coffin means only one vampire can survive the sunrise in the ring. It’s a fail-safe.”
“Nice.”
“Two go in but only one comes out,” Gary said. He slammed the book shut and got up to return it to the shelf. “Or at least that’s how it usually plays out. You can see why I’m not interested in being a challenger, with or without your help.” He ran his fingers through his chestnut brown hair. “I’m a lover, not a fighter, Grateful. It’s not going to happen.”
“Answer me this.” I clasped my hands behind my back and rocked back on my heels. “What happens if Bathory returns and becomes a challenger? What if she wins and is your coven leader?”
“She can’t.” Gary shook his head.
“Why? Julius can’t stop her anymore, and we think she’s behind his disappearance. All she needs is a coven large enough to protect her and she’s back in the game.”
“If she comes out of hiding, you will sentence her to the hellmouth.”
I shook my head. “Even if you share the location of the challenge with us, would we be able to get close enough? Or would her supporters protect her?”
Gary frowned.
“Whether it’s Kace who takes over or Bathory, do you think the new king is going to allow Julius’s vamps to live? After your attack on their coven during the solstice, do you honestly believe you are safe once Bathory’s supporters are in charge?”
His green eyes narrowed, and his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s the middle of the day. I need sleep, and you need to go.”
I was in serious danger of pushing too hard. I gave him a curt nod and turned for the door. As I left, I said, “Let me know when you come to your senses.”
CHAPTER 15
A Good Night’s Rest
I flopped into bed in the wee hours of the morning, my limbs bouncing on the mattress from the intensity of the collision. What a night. Two demon possessions, a vampire rapist, and a twelve-year-old girl attempting to open a portal to hell with a book she picked up at a yard sale. Malice mitigated. The baddies were snuggled in their hellmouth beds, and the book was burned in a cauldron of spirit-infestation-sanitizing herbs.
“The house is going to smell like Thanksgiving dinner for weeks,” Poe said, sniffing at the burnt sage in the air.
“Better than the alternative. You’d think a kid these days would have seen enough horror movies not to reenact a scribbled ritual in a garage sale novel about necromancy of all things.”
“Is the girl going to be okay?” Poe asked. He’d waited outside during the entire confrontation.
“Yeah, Rick hoodwinked her brain.” I yawned. “She’ll stay away from the occult from now on.”
“Where is the caretaker, anyway? Don’t you too usually, er …”
“Engage in post-patrol coupling? Not tonight. I gotta get some sleep.” It wasn’t just the night’s work. I’d practiced levitation every day this week and was semi-successful in drawing my cemetery’s power a time or two. But between our training sessions, managing our ward all night, and my nursing job, I was licked.
The problem was we couldn’t take our foot off the accelerator. Tabetha could strike at any moment, and the vampire challenge for Julius’s position was just around the corner. As a newbie witch, I was still waking up to my power. I needed to ready myself. I needed to evolve.
“G’night, then,” Poe said, nesting in a discarded shirt on my dresser.
“Goodnight, Poe.”
Despite the night’s excitement, I drifted into a deep sleep almost instantly, my body’s desperate need for rejuvenation trumping the ceaseless race of thoughts through my mind. The “should haves” and “could haves” were swept away by the “must have” of physical exhaustion. The luxury of guilt and anger was not one I could afford.
The dream started well into my rest, near the coming of dawn. How I knew this, I can’t say; I had no way to measure except for circadian intuition. I experienced the dream lucidly, aware I was dreaming but vividly entrenched as if I were awake. My mental world turned green. Plush grass tickled the sides of my bare feet, and the sun glinted through a rich tapestry of forest canopy. A bird called overhead and the colorful curved beak of a toucan soared past me.
“A banana would totes rock right now,” I said. “Or a bowl of fruity rings.” I followed the flight of the toucan. The bird landed on a bunch of bananas hanging from a tree. “Ask for a banana. Get a banana. I love this dream.”
I stepped forward, plucking the fruit from beneath the bird’s talons and opening it under its watchful eye. The fruit tasted sweet and perfectly ripe. As I swallowed, a stone wall appeared behind the tree. The wall didn’t erupt from the ground or shimmer into existence. One moment it wasn’t there and the next it was.
The wall was made of stone and mortar with an open metal door just a few feet from me. Two torches on either side of the doorway blazed to life. I stepped back to get a better view.
A dark and dangerous woman stepped over the threshold. Something was seriously wrong with my vision. For a moment, it appeared she had three heads—one streaked with gray, one with ebony waves, and one plaited down her back. I blinked rapidly against the triple vision, and the faces blended into one.
The power of her presence was overwhelming. It filled the garden with a soupy humidity that weighed on my skin like a cloak. I recognized her. I’d met her once before, when I’d conjured my familiar. This was Hecate, my mother. Well, my first mother; the mother who’d made me a witch. My physical presence came about via human mothers, but the feminine power coursing toward me now was the source of my wild and eternal soul within.
“Mother?” It was the only word my lips
would produce.
Her toga shifted unnaturally as she approached, defying gravity, while her black silky hair contrasted her full ruby lips. The intensity in her eyes made me look away. A snake dripped down from the tree beside her, and she offered it her arm to wrap around with a warm smile, as if the thing was a long-lost pet.
“Do not be afraid. I have not come to hurt you,” she said to me. Her voice echoed as if three women were speaking at once. Only the echo wasn’t of the same voice. I heard the thready, deep tones of an old woman, the heady confidence that matched the middle-aged woman before me, and the high-pitched clarity of a young innocent. “We must speak, daughter.”
“Okay,” I said tentatively. It wasn’t every day that a goddess asked to have a chat. I could guess this was about Tabetha, but I wasn’t presumptuous enough to speculate on her opinion on the matter. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“Your sister Tabetha displeases me,” she began. Her black eyes blazed, and her lips moved in an exaggerated fashion reminiscent of silent movies. I resisted the urge to cover my ears against the intensity of her voice.
“Funny, I feel the same way.”
Hecate’s dark eyes drilled into me, and a sensation of being squeezed by a massive hand left me breathless. She did not say a word, but I got the sense this was meant to be a one-sided conversation. I buttoned my lip.
“Tabetha is attempting to obtain the five elements. I cannot impart to you strongly enough how vital it is we thwart her efforts. She has asked you to renounce your throne. I will not allow you to do so. You are the Monk’s Hill Witch, the ruler of your realm. If you allow Tabetha to have the air, the elemental source of your power, she will become too mighty, a monster. Already, absorbing Polina’s territory has left her mind unstable and withered her soul.”
A monkey cried, leaping between two trees in Hecate’s garden, and the weight of an expected response settled upon my shoulders. I could feel her staring at me, like a hot ray of sun on my face. Apparently, she wanted an answer.
Queen of The Hill (Knight Games) Page 10