“Impatient bitch,” Alexei snarled, and the earth rumbled. A stone shot out before the vengeful woman. “If someone is going to kill her, it will be me. Not you.”
Mina cowered. She didn’t want to go further in to the murk and what lurked back there, and she couldn’t go forward. She also didn’t want to die. This would throw a wrench in her plans.
“How about neither of you kill me,” Mina cried, wondering if she shouldn’t have waited in the cell. But she knew even as she thought it that she’d still have sought out Xander.
“Stupid boy.” Elspeth turned her rage on Alexei as she called up the shadows. The area began to thicken, but it wasn’t as powerful as Cazacul who could command it. “Do you think you’re of any worth? I don’t have time for you.”
The shadows began to move, tendrils curling around as if searching. Mina’s breath caught. Her father was the only one who could do this. He must be near. He needed to get here.
“You will have time for me.” Alexei stood and called up his elements; water and earth rolled over Elspeth, and her eyes widened. “You thought I was still bled out, didn’t you? Oh, you truly are going to get a kick out of this.”
Wind whipped through the tunnel, ripping at Mina’s hair. Elspeth shouted an order. As a Shadow Nymph, she had some magic, but her influence over her sycophants and blood was the greatest power. Going face-to-face with a fully powered Tri-elemental was suicide for her. Mina knew this, but she wasn’t in the position to interfere. She’d expended what power she had to help Xander, and she certainly wasn’t going to help Elspeth. Was she? Why had Alexei backed down to her and not Elspeth?
The gale force wind stopped as sudden as it began.
“No, Alexei. Leave her be.” Mina put a hand on his arm and jerked it back. Touching him with the gris-gris around his neck made her skin crawl. Yuck.
He laughed, scornful, cold, the laugh of someone who didn’t care.
“She was going to tear you apart. Not that I’d stop her. But I need to convince you of my power and drive.” He turned back to the struggling Dark. “You’re going to be an example and a reward. Notice how your pets don’t come to the rescue?” Alexei told Elspeth.
She jerked against the stone curling around her, imprisoning her arms and legs in a macabre sarcophagus as water flowed over her skin, keeping her from concentrating enough to flee into the shadows. It was as if her creatures had forgotten her.
Mina reached around Alexei to help, murmuring a Mage spell, when the bone eaters stepped into the light. She hated herself, but Mina drew back as if a snake lunged toward her.
“Like I promised,” Alexei crooned as he pointed to Mina’s step-mother. “Her flesh, blood, and bone for your loyalty.”
Behind Mina, other things moved. Elspeth screamed loud and shrill, a sound Mina’d never heard from her, as the spiders swarmed over her. For a space of two heartbeats, Mina couldn’t react, not wanting to believe what was happening. Nausea roiled in her stomach as she fought her own cry to echo this woman’s. Now she knew why Alexei had been nervous with her—he hadn’t negotiated a price for her death, because what would she bring to the table? Nothing in the Dark world, but Elspeth for all her influence made many enemies even among her grovelers.
With her step-mother out of the way, given as sacrifice, her followers were now his. Mina had no minions. What the Tri-elemental didn’t comprehend was disloyalty like this opened up to the lower clans the opportunity for advancement. One of his now-underlings was going to take him out the same way.
“Don’t you understand?” Mina pulled at Alexei, unconcerned now with the gris-gris swinging around his neck. The discomfort of touching him was worth enduring rather than watching a living thing being fed on.
His eyes never left Elspeth as he licked his lips. The bone eaters were next.
The wild sounds from her step-mother’s throat were raw and ragged, ripping down Mina’s nerve endings. Her own eyes burned with the desire to sob; no matter how cruel, she had been the only mother Mina knew. Elspeth tried to order her servants back, but her movements were feeble. How many had she condemned to this death? Was this justice?
“If you kill her, you have to provide them meat. You have to give your blood. You’ll end up sacrificed like she is,” she cried, trying to get him to understand. To stop this horror.
He sneered, his lip curling in derision. “You think I haven’t planned for this? I only want you alive because of your knowledge,” Alexei hissed, repeating his earlier innuendo, but making it far more horrifically clear. “You get one chance. Consider this a warning. Work with me or end up like her.”
“You—” Mina’s reply was cut off when the darkness intensified, becoming thick, heavy. The pathetic light disappeared, and the obsidian depths of what shadows truly were became absolute.
She used to think only Elementals could create so much cold, but no, the black of this night was as bitter as any Siberian range in the dead of winter.
The light returned as if a flash bomb were thrown, the meager light a blinding glare after the total nothingness. The monsters cringed, holding bits of bloodied flesh in their hands.
Cazacul roared; the sound made the stone reverberate, echoing in her bones. Mina curled up, covering her ears, protecting them, herself. To hell with Alexei; he was on his own.
Too late for Elspeth. Someone else she failed.
“You,” Cazacul growled, and the shadows imprisoned Alexei, black tendrils encircling his neck, limbs, keeping him still. The Dark leader towered over the younger man. Power and rage rolled off of him, choking Mina with its sharp taste and feeding the darkness.
Behind him, the creatures that swarmed Elspeth tried to withdraw into the shadows, but it was an impenetrable wall. They released their prey, the bone eaters extracting their beaks from the bone, spiders skittering into the folds of their tattered robes as if it would save them. There were other things there, the four-legged creepers with clawed paws and skin like reptiles, their mouths dripping saliva over their dark-stained fangs. None were foolish enough to continue dismembering their prey before the Dark leader.
“I made a mistake letting you live. You should’ve paid the blood price months ago. You repay my leniency by murdering my wife?” His voice should’ve bellowed, but it was level, calm, dangerous as a sharp-edged blade. One slip, and it would slice everything.
Wife? Mina wasn’t sure the title applied here. The woman had been trying to kill her and take over Cazacul’s kingdom. Severing loyalty was equivalent to a divorce decree in the Dark world. Betrayal, breaking an oath demanded a price. It was inevitable; one of them, either her father or Elspeth, was going to have to die before this was over. Alexei killing her step-mother was considered interference and not tolerated in their world—even if it was a necessary killing. But, with anything, even that was negotiable.
“I did you a favor,” Alexei cried out.
Mina curled tighter around herself. He didn’t realize how close he was to the same fate as Elspeth. Maybe her father wouldn’t notice her.
The confidence had leaked out of Alexei, leaving behind it a false bravado, sticky and smelly like the rotten film of milk left in a glass too long. Cazacul’s nostrils flared as he scented it, and his mouth curled downward in disgust.
“When have I asked you for this favor? You think I don’t know what happens in my own home? That I didn’t notice the games you played with the lower caverns. The negotiations? I wanted you occupied.”
“We all know you’re incapable of killing her,” Alexei shouted.
Mina took many chances, and sometimes it got her into trouble. There were some things she did not press, and her father in this state was not one she’d push. She couldn’t stop the brief flare of pity for the young man. When her eyes strayed to the body on the floor, the momentary empathy disintegrated. There was a reason he became a hostage to the Darks, and it wasn’t due to his compassion or smarts.
“You challenge me? Foolish, impudent boy.” Cazacul leaned in, g
rabbing Alexei’s face in his hand, squeezing. “Now you’ll learn what it means to be my prisoner.”
“But…my cousin—” Alexei’s breath wheezed out in a high gasp as he fought to speak through the tight grip Cazacul had on his face.
“—will be notified. The only reason I haven’t torn you apart is because of the damn treaty. But believe me, soon you’ll wish you had been.” Cazacul released Alexei’s face, and the shadows swallowed him up, smothering his cry. He faced the creatures cowering against the wall of shadows. “You traitorous lot…” Cazacul swept his hand indicating the creatures who’d been moments before feasting on Elspeth. “…will be sacrificed in the blood room.”
With a gesture, the dark tendrils engulfed the monsters who squirmed and shrieked. Behind Mina, what had been hiding in the blackness was gone. Justice when served was quick and brutal.
Cazacul knelt down and, with careful movements she’d never seen him use with Elspeth, picked her up. One arm was missing; her eyes and half the flesh were gone from her face.
This woman who’d terrorized Mina throughout her life, whom she’d thought of as her parent, had been so easily destroyed. She blinked again; the pressure grew behind her eyes as she wondered if her death would be visited upon her like this, in a dark cavern with no one to mourn her.
She stayed pressed against the stone floor, barely registering the dampness from the water and whatever else soaking her pants. Her father turned then, cradling what was left of his wife. His face was a mask of something raw—pain. The sharp, bitter taste filled Mina’s tongue, but it was the guilt, the odd flatness of it making her realize how much he’d cared in his own way. It wasn’t love, but it was something.
“Did you get your answers?” The rage was gone, his emotions hidden. She’d forgotten her father could do this, making it hard to read him. She opened her mouth to answer and realized the thick lump in her throat and the stinging behind her eyes wouldn’t allow her to utter a word.
She shook her head. What was the point of lying?
“I’ll answer one. You are my daughter and always have been.” He didn’t look down at the brutalized corpse in his arms, keeping his obsidian eyes on her, unblinking. “Now choose, Wilhelmina. Come with me, or stay with the Mage and endure his fate.”
“I can’t.” Her voice was a breath of a whisper, a noise so faint it could’ve been brushed off as a sweep of cloth against skin.
He heard. Cazacul stood, the stillness resonating in the silence. No water dripped. No strange creature moved. He waited as if she’d change her mind.
She couldn’t.
“You made your choice.” He sounded so tired, but she couldn’t say for certain. The shadows thickened and blurred, and he was gone.
Sitting in the anemic light, alone, Mina realized the blurring was the tears that began to fall down her cheeks.
Tonight she lost both her parents.
Two days.
Stieg cleaned off his hands, measuring the soap and scrubbing his hands again and again. He turned on the water as high as it could go and as hot as possible. Behind him, the broken-hearted sobbing of a child was the evidence of his handiwork.
When had his triumph turned to self-loathing?
He’d have to turn around and face what he’d done, but he needed to wash his hands one more time. The counters were cleared, and the choking aroma of bleach was heavy in the room. He told himself this was why he felt light-headed.
The heat of the water turned his skin red, the pain sharp, deep, but he continued to wash his hands.
They began to bleed.
He turned off the water and dried his hands on a nearby cloth laid next to the sink for this purpose. The crying had changed to hiccupping moans. He put antibacterial lotion on his hands, thick over the raw parts. He put non-latex gloves over them.
Stieg forced himself not to look at the boys, but his peripheral was highly developed. How could he miss the one boy holding the dried out husk of his twin brother? Why had he allowed this? He knew it wouldn’t get any easier. There was no putting back into the boy what was taken. No.
The other inhabitants in the next room were silent. Not a rattle of a door, a whimper, or snarl. It was as if they understood what he’d done.
Stieg didn’t check the restraints that still held the boy. Spelled, the Dark boy wouldn’t be able to get out of them. With a profound sense of relief, he walked through the door into his office. But the peace he normally found there was missing. On the corner of his desk, he spied the tattered leather-bound copy of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. His favorite book, he’d lost count the number of times he’d read it.
It made bile in his throat rise when he looked at it. This story of revenge and honor was for men not so darkly stained. He walked over and picked it up. He regretted the gloves over his hands, wishing for a moment he could touch it. Instead he inhaled the aroma of dusty paper, aged leather. In his head, he could see the imprisoned Edmond Dantes, but in the place of a fictional face, the image of Xander was the one he saw.
Would his son exact retribution on them all?
His hands tightened on the book for a moment. He turned and dropped it into the waste-paper basket next to his pristine desk. It hit with a loud thump. The last bit of his self-respect and his soul fell with it.
With the book out of his sight, Stieg buried every regret, bit of remorse, and sorrow into the deepest well of his own lie—for the greater good.
With measured steps, he moved to stand before the far wall where the communication screen hung blank. After his experiments, he needed the added boost of technology to reach out to Leonid.
Uttering a few words of spell, it pulled the last vestiges of his energy. Tonight he’d have to siphon. Again, he pushed any disturbing thoughts down into the abyss of his own making and waited. The screen shimmered and jerked and swung abruptly into focus at the image of the Mage leader. Behind him, a long bare leg could be seen, man or woman he couldn’t tell. He’d reached Leonid while he was in bed.
When was the last time he slept? Days.
“What?” the rough voice snapped out.
“Chairman.” Stieg greeted him with a nod. “The experiment was a success. I have our solution.”
Chapter Nineteen
THE OFFICE WAS FILLED with golden light, even though the tint on the floor-to-ceiling window prevented it from being overbearing. The glass wall faced the north, getting the maximum effect of the sun, keeping it warm in the winter. Modern technology, with the assistance of Elemental power, kept it tolerable in summer.
Nicki contemplated dropping an ice cube down her cleavage. The windows were open slightly to let in a breeze, but still, it was very warm. Neither Mikhail nor Laurie appeared bothered by it, but then again, Laurie always loved the hot weather even when they roomed together in college.
They were gathered in Mikhail’s office. Rachel sat before a scrying bowl, her blond hair shielding her face. The container she stared intently into was not the crappy glass one she used at Nicki’s house. No, this one was made of exquisitely carved green marble. Lev had placed himself in the chair opposite Rachel, leaning forward to peer into the bowl with her. If he’d had a pen and paper, he’d be taking copious notes. As it was, his intent, unblinking gaze watched her every move, even though Rachel ignored him. Good for her.
Looking into the glass she held, Nicki cursed. No longer iced tea, it was now some clear gelatin. She sniffed it. It had an oily smell, like Vaseline. What the hell? She didn’t bother to tell anyone, placing it on the side table beside her with a small clink. Perhaps no one would notice.
“Why am I here again?” She addressed her question to Laurie and regretted her complaining upon observing the dark circles under her friend’s eyes. The deep blue cotton shirt she wore accentuated the color. Her red-haired friend smiled at her, but it was forced, making the white scars on her lip, nose, cheek, and eyebrows stand out. Here she acting like a damn five-year-old while two of her friends, Mina and Lauri
e, were suffering.
“For moral support.” Laurie’s mouth twisted in a grimace as she stretched in her seat. “I can’t stay much longer; I have to go to the Boundary room soon.”
Mikhail leaned against his desk, watching Rachel, his brows lowered, lips turned down. Nicki didn’t miss the glances he shot at Laurie every few minutes. He was worried, and Nicki couldn’t blame him. To his credit, he didn’t say anything, knowing it would make Laurie more stubborn. He let Rachel work, not interrupting.
There were other people in the room, but they stayed in the background, quietly conducting business, their voices a low murmur. Even in the midst of upheaval, life went on. It was as if they were in their own little bubble. A magical one.
“I can’t work when you both are staring at me,” Rachel complained, looking up at Mikhail and turning to glare at Lev. “I feel like I’m in a zoo.”
“This is your job.” Mikhail’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Whether we stare or not, you need to succeed.”
“My mother is better at this,” Rachel insisted.
“She has another job to do,” Mikhail replied, dismissing her comment. “Now, finish yours.”
“Misha,” Laurie chided, but he ignored her.
“All I’m getting is another headache,” Rachel muttered.
Nicki agreed. Watching this scene was giving her one, too.
“I have a tincture for that,” Lev said, his voice rolling over them all. A prisoner or guest was anyone’s guess. His guards lounged behind him, playing cards. They didn’t seem worried he’d be a problem.
“I don’t need any more of those,” Rachel said in a dry voice. “Not after the last one.” She rubbed her eyes and stretched.
Nicki had been nervous; her friend had slept for twenty-four hours before waking and was understandably wary about ingesting anything else from the Dark.
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