High Stakes (Codex Blair Book 6)

by Izzy Shows

  And then I remembered I could ask him.

  “Well, it’s clear it was Vincent and Damien there.”

  He stared at me, his expression now calm. All traces of emotion had disappeared. “I never knew what it was like for them.”

  I jerked. Well, that was quite the surprise. “What are you going to do with this information?”

  “For now, I’m going to attend to the business at hand.”

  “Please, dispel the circle now, Ms. Sheach,” Dudley said. He sounded so different from the way he had in my mind. The raw emotion, the compassion I’d felt from him was completely missing from his voice now.

  I nodded and nudged my foot into the salt line, breaking the circle. “You’re good to go now,” I said.

  He walked out of the circle and back to his throne, gesturing at one of the vampires waiting by the door and then at the body. The vampire quickly covered her remains again and carried her away.

  I wondered what would happen to her. Would she be returned to her family so they could have a proper funeral for her?

  Or would she be just one more missing woman in London? My heart ached at the thought of that.

  I walked back up to my position near the throne, forcing myself to keep my expression calm and stern when I turned back. I gripped my staff in one hand again.

  Not only was I exhausted from the spell I’d just conducted, my heart was weary from what I’d witnessed. I’d seen yet another violent death at the hands of a vampire, and I was supposed to just stand here and look at her killer.

  “I have witnessed the attack that took place in the alley,” Dudley said. His voice carried through the room. “I find you guilty of feeding on and murdering the residents of London. As you know, this sentence is punishable by death.”

  A roar of outrage poured out of the vampires standing in the room. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, whether they were angry at Dudley or at Vincent and Damien. It took all my strength not to let my eyes widen as I witnessed their outrage.

  “Your sentence will--”

  “Your lordship,” I interrupted him.

  He turned to look at me, his jaw clenched. He clearly didn’t like that.

  “I request the privilege of carrying out your sentence for you,” I said, bowing my head to him. I wanted to feel the still-beating heart of that vampire as I yanked it out of his chest.

  Dudley raised his eyebrows, then looked from me to the two vampires and back again. “I see no problem with that.”

  A vicious smile stole across my lips.

  “This is an outrage!” Vincent cried, taking a step back. “This is not the way!”

  “Shut up.” My lips twisted into a snarl as I advanced on him. I carried my staff with me, and could hear Weylyn growling from his position near the throne.

  No doubt he wanted to join me on this one, but this privilege was mine and mine alone.

  I thrust the staff forward. “Bind,” I said. “Kneel.” The two vampires were forced to their knees, their limbs immobilized as they stared up at me with hate-filled eyes.

  “You don’t know her name,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but a statement. “You killed her like she was an animal.”

  “She was--”

  “Silence!” My voice shook with a power I’d never heard in it before, and his mouth immediately shut. I passed my staff into my left hand and crouched in front of him. Without further ado, I thrust my hand into his chest and closed my fingers around his heart.

  Felt it beat.

  Felt euphoria rush through me.

  “You will die like an animal,” I said, and yanked my hand out. I dropped his heart to the floor, stood, and walked to Damien.

  He was twisting wildly, though nothing physical was binding him, and he couldn’t seem to open his mouth to say anything.

  “No defence? Too bad.” Without ceremony, I ripped his heart out as well. Blood covered my right arm up to the elbow, but I rejoiced in the sensation of it.

  The thrum of the kill was inside of me. The satisfaction of vengeance.

  I didn’t know the women’s names, either, but that wasn’t my fault. I’d only been given the knowledge that had come from the final moments of one woman’s life, and she hadn’t mentioned her name. But I’d avenged both of them, regardless.

  I turned and faced the crowd of vampires.

  Silence reigned in the hall as they all stared at me.

  “You do not kill in my town,” I said.

  Not one of them challenged me.

  Fourteen

  I sat in my car, parked at the kerb beside my house, my shaky hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly, I thought my fingers might fall off. Night had fallen a long time ago. It must have happened while I was in the mansion watching all the hearings take place.

  I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Part of it was exhaustion. I’d used a lot of magic during the hearings, keeping up the fire that I played with idly so no one would forget my status. So they’d all stay as afraid of me as they were supposed to be. That had a cost that had been taken over time, but then there was the spell I’d performed to see the woman’s last moments. That was a big spell, one that took a lot out of me no matter how many times I did it.

  I felt empty.

  But part of it was something else entirely. I’d executed someone. I was an executioner now, and I’d asked for the privilege of doing it. I hadn’t hesitated at all, and that was terrifying.

  My whole body still vibrating with the effort it took to keep myself together, I climbed out of the car. I grabbed my staff out of the backseat, and Weylyn hopped out as well.

  Without saying a word to each other, we walked towards the house. But I stopped before I got to the door, dropped the staff, and bolted to the bushes beside the house. I knelt in front of them and vomited the remains of anything that had been in my stomach. I tried to hold my hair back to keep it out of the vomit.

  Tears pricked in my eyes, both from the act of vomiting and from the horror of everything I’d done today. What kind of person was I now?

  I’d narrowly avoided my own execution, and here I was, an executioner. A killer. A mercenary.

  My hands shook as I sat back on my haunches, unable to stand. I let go of my hair and stared at my hands, watching them shake in front of me. My breath came faster and faster, and on some odd level of my awareness, I realized I was hyperventilating.

  It felt like I was a thousand miles away from my body, watching it happen. I was practically vibrating now. My entire body was shaking so fast, and, Gods, I couldn’t breathe!

  Panic set in, and I choked on a sob.

  What am I?

  A strong weight pressed into my side, and all at once I was shocked back into my own body. Weylyn was there beside me, and he was whining in my ear.

  Begging me to come back to myself.

  “Blair!”

  His voice cut into my head, and I thought dimly that he’d been shouting my name for a few minutes now. I couldn’t see, my vision was so blurry with tears.

  “Weylyn.” It was all I could do to think his name, and I leaned against him, letting him catch my full weight. He was big and strong, still in his wolf form, and I knew he could hold me. I sobbed against his coat, shaking my head. I just held on to him, not knowing what else to do with myself.

  My emotions were spiralling all over the place. What was I supposed to do? Who was I supposed to be?

  I’d never killed someone like that before, outside of a fight. It had always been life or death for me. I’d never just stared down someone before I killed them. Every single death I had handed out had been earned.

  And they had earned their deaths, hadn’t they? They’d hurt those poor women. Killed them in cold blood.

  But I’d done the same to them. Killed them without thinking about it.

  You will die like an animal.

  I’d said those words. And then I’d ripped the vampire’s heart out without a moment of hesitation.

  �
��I don’t want to be an executioner.” I could hear the pathetic note in the thoughts I sent to Weylyn, but I was powerless to change my tone.

  “You are not an executioner.”

  “You’re wrong. That’s exactly what I am now. I executed those two vampires after their sentence was handed down. What else would you call that?”

  “Justice.”

  I stiffened against his side. The two were not mutually exclusive: execution and justice. But one made the other a little better. I’d obtained justice for the two women who’d been murdered.

  Their lives hadn’t been meaningless, even if they were over now.

  I’d done something for them in the end, and maybe that made it a little better.

  Gods, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was struggling, trying to find something that would make me feel better, and I knew on some level that it was a waste of time.

  Nothing was going to make me feel better about what I’d done. And, truth be told, there really shouldn’t be anything that could make me feel better. I should simmer in the guilt that came from killing. If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t be myself anymore. I would be some other creature who could kill without a thought and have no conscience about it.

  I didn’t want to be that kind of person. I didn’t want to lose myself to the fight, to the bloodlust.

  I was more than that.

  Part of me dearly wished I could talk to Malphas about all of this. He would have understood the feelings that were pouring through me right now, and he would have had something sensible to say about all of it. He was someone I’d trusted to tell me the truth no matter what, and I wanted that from him right now.

  But that tie had been severed, and for good. There was no going back on that. I’d never get to talk to him again. I had to accept that and move on.

  I was on my own.

  Fifteen

  A sharp ringing sound filled my room, jolting me out of the nightmare that had consumed me.

  Vincent and Damien had come to me in my dreams, their eyes haunting me and asking me why, why, why.

  Why did you kill us? Why were you so merciless? What are you?

  Every night, without fail, the monsters I’d killed always haunted me. No matter how just their deaths had been, they always came to me and asked me why I’d killed them. Sometimes, I tried to explain it to them, as if that would fix things. But they never understood, never listened to reason. They just kept asking me why.

  As if they couldn’t understand words any longer.

  Sometimes they killed me in my dreams.

  Everyone said it wasn’t possible for a person to die in a dream, that if you died in a dream, you would die in reality. But that wasn’t the case for me, at least. I’d died a thousand times in my dreams, over and over again, and there was nothing to be done about it.

  This was the reality I lived with. This was the reason I avoided sleep as much as I did.

  A normal person would turn to sleep to rejuvenate them, but I put up with it only because it wasn’t an option to skip sleep altogether. If I didn’t sleep, I’d die soon enough.

  And I couldn’t die. There was too much to do, too much responsibility for me to turn my back on.

  No matter that sometimes death sounded like a blissful release from the life I was living. I was growing tired of it. Tired of the constant threat of death hanging over my head. Tired of wondering if today was going to be the day when I failed London and the monsters won.

  Would it really be so bad if I let go of everything and they took hold of the city? I wouldn’t be around to see the destruction.

  But, no, I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t give up on the city, no matter how tempting that offer was.

  I had to be better than that. Had to try harder.

  The ringing sound cut through the room again.

  Without opening my eyes, I blindly groped around my nightstand until my hand landed on my phone. I felt it buzzing, and I knew I was right about it being the source of the sound.

  This was the third phone I’d had this week. I burned through them quickly, my magic chewing them up and spitting them out as poor remnants of what they used to be.

  “Hello?” My voice croaked as I spoke into the phone, betraying the fact that I’d been asleep a minute before.

  What was the point of hiding that fact? I squinted at the clock. It read six o’clock. Yeah, way too early for me to be starting my day.

  I wasn’t a morning person, probably because I didn’t get that rejuvenating sleep everyone else was blessed with.

  “Blair?” Emily’s musical voice sang into my ear.

  I perked up at that, sitting up in bed. “Hey! What’s up? Everything OK?”

  And then my sleepy brain started to turn around again, and I remembered that I was very nervous about talking to Emily. I’d kissed her, and then we hadn’t talked about it at all. She’d had to go back to work. She’d just been there to make sure that I’d got home alive and everything was OK.

  We hadn’t talked about the kiss at all since it had happened, and my gut was churning at the thought of having that conversation. Surely by now she’d figured out a way to let me down easily.

  Why had I kissed her? Everything had been going so well. I’d just had to go and upturn the apple cart.

  I hadn’t even thought about it before I’d done it. I’d kissed her on impulse because I was so happy about seeing her after the terror of everything I’d gone through.

  It was possibly the dumbest thing I’d ever done. A woman as beautiful and pure as Emily wouldn’t be interested in me.

  Shit, did she even like girls? I didn’t know!

  She was probably going to tell me she didn’t swing that way. How had I not thought to check that out before now? It had never come up in conversation.

  Then again, sexuality doesn’t tend to just come up in conversation. But I hadn’t asked. Because that would have been awkward.

  More awkward than just kissing her and running into your house like a scared chicken?

  Maybe not.

  “Everything’s fine,” Emily said, pulling me back to the moment. “I just wanted to see if you’d be interested in having lunch with me. We could have a little picnic in the park.”

  I could practically see her smile at the other end of the phone call, and my lips turned up at the corners at the very idea of her smile. I was addicted to her: addicted to her voice, addicted to her kindness, addicted to being around her.

  “I’d love that,” I said before I could think about it too much.

  And then I thought about it. Was she going to let me down in person? I supposed it was an awkward conversation to have over the phone, and she’d probably want to handle it as delicately as possible.

  Somehow, I held back the groan that came to mind at the idea of going through that.

  “Great! I’ll see you at noon, then?”

  “Sure,” I said, trying to keep the new panic out of my voice. “I’ll see you then.”

  I hung up and sat in bed clutching the phone to my chest, my blankets tangled around me. Oh, Gods, what was going to happen?

  There was no use worrying about it now. What was going to happen would happen regardless of how much I worried about it beforehand.

  Don’t borrow tomorrow’s troubles, I reminded myself, even if it was a ‘today’ trouble.

  I put the phone back on my nightstand and debated going back to sleep, then thought better of it and threw off my blankets.

  Don’t even think about it. Worry about it when it’s happening.

  Once out of bed, I pulled on a pair of jeans but left my sleep shirt on. It was a comfy grey T-shirt, and I wasn’t planning on leaving the house anytime soon. I started to leave the room, then pivoted and grabbed the phone off the nightstand again.

  I dialled Diego’s number.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s Blair,” I said.

  “Oh, hey. I wasn’t expecting you for another hour or two. What’s up?�
��

  “I can’t come today. I have a lunch meeting.”

  I heard him growl through the phone and winced.

  “You can’t make a habit of skipping lessons.”

  “I’m not going to! And I promise, I’ll study. Fred and I will read some books, so it won’t be a wasted morning. I’ll see you tomorrow, OK?”

  “All right,” he said.

  I hung up and pocketed the phone, then walked out into the living room. Fred was sitting on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, a book cradled in his lap.

  “What’s up, Fred?” I said as I walked into the kitchen to fix myself a bowl of oatmeal. I had time to eat today, so a granola bar wasn’t my only option. I poured the flakes into a bowl and tossed the kettle on the stove to heat up the water.

  “Spaceships” was the only answer I got out of him.

  Ah, so he was engrossed in yet another sci-fi book. I grinned at the thought of it as I leaned against the kitchen counter, waiting for the kettle to heat up.

  “I hope it’s a good one,” I said.

  He sighed deeply, and I heard him snap his book shut. “Miss Blair is needings to talk?”

  I tapped my bare foot idly against the floor. “Well, I’m just making conversation. Being friendly, you know.”

  “You is not doings that most times,” he said.

  “I’m totally friendly.”

  A telling silence filled the room in lieu of an actual response.

  “OK, maybe I’m quiet most of the time.”

  “Especially in morning times.”

  “I’m nervous,” I said.

  The kettle started to whistle, and I grabbed it off the stove, then poured the boiling water into the bowl of oatmeal. I grabbed a spoon and carried the bowl out into the living room, where I sat beside Fred on the couch.

  I stirred the oatmeal a few times, then set the bowl down on the coffee table to let it cool.

  “What is you nervous about, Miss Blair?”

  “Are you ever going to just call me Blair?” I avoided his question, deciding to focus on something that had irked me for the past two years.

  His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth just a bit before shutting it again. “Whys would I do that?”