by Sarra Cannon
“It was her decision to follow you, though,” I said. “You can’t blame yourself for that. She could have stayed, but she didn’t. And it wasn’t you who killed her. The only ones to blame for that are the vampires who did it.”
Azure smiled and nodded. “That’s exactly what Rend says,” she told me. “And he’d tell you the same thing if he were here now. It’s not your fault that Katy was cursed. You can’t let the guilt you’re feeling right now cloud your judgment or lead you to do something even more dangerous. Trust me when I say that trying to get revenge or doing what they want you to do is not going to make you feel any better. Especially if you end up putting yourself in more danger in the process.”
I shook my head.
“I should have cut Katy out of my life the minute I started working at Venom. When I found out what kind of world I truly belonged to, I should have told her to go as far away from me as possible.”
“And do you think that would have worked?” Azure asked. “My father told me the same thing, but I didn’t listen to him anymore than Katy would have listened to you. We are each responsible for our own choices, but we’re not responsible for the evil deeds people like the Mother Crow do in this world.”
Azure stood and joined me at Katy’s side.
“I know you blame yourself for what’s happened to your friend, but if you can, use that energy instead to focus on coming up with a way to save her,” she said. “Back when I went after Celeste, I didn’t really think it through. I just charged in there, expecting to be strong enough to save her. But there is nothing predictable or easy about battling evil. Especially when they’re already two steps ahead of you.”
I clenched my jaw and turned away from her. It was like she knew exactly what I’d been thinking of doing, and I didn’t want her telling me it was a foolish idea.
“Rend told me later that those two vampires who killed my sister had known I would come back for her,” Azure said. “They pretended to leave that house and then watched from the shadows as I went in to save her. They set a trap for me, and I walked right in, handing myself to them on a silver platter. Don’t do the same thing, Franki. Be smarter than I was. It doesn’t do any good for you both to die just because you wanted revenge.”
My mouth went dry, and I lowered my head.
Maybe she was right, but what other choice did I have? I couldn’t just let my friend die.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
Azure put her hand on mine, and I looked up sharply. She’d never voluntarily touched me in her life.
But there was a look of understanding on her face. Of sympathy.
It was so unexpected, it took my breath away.
“First, you need to know that you aren’t alone in this,” she said. “I know we may not always get along, but you’re the most important person in Rend’s life. And no matter how hard that can be for me sometimes, I owe him mine. That means you’re important to me, too. I would never be able to forgive myself if I let anything happen to you while he was gone. We can figure this out together, Franki. I promise.”
“You want to help me?” I asked, tears pushing at the corners of my eyes. “How?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “But I promise you, we’re going to figure this out together.”
I clutched her hand, grateful for this gesture that I knew had to have been difficult for her.
All this time, had I completely misjudged her?
“Thank you,” I said finally, making up my mind not to do anything with that stone until we’d talked out every possibility and come up with an answer that made sense.
“You’re welcome,” she said, standing. “Now, let’s go to Rend’s library and see if we can find a spell or potion that might reverse a sleeping curse.”
I followed her downstairs, leaving Connery to guard Katy as she slept and wondering where Rend was, and when he might be coming home to us.
The Dagger Of Truth
Rend
I stared up at Silas, hardly believing the words that had just come out of his mouth.
Kill the Mother Crow?
Didn’t he know the Brotherhood had been searching for her for decades? Of course, he knew. It was a near-impossible task, and somehow, I was supposed to find her within a week and kill her?
The other three Council members on their thrones looked just as surprised as I was. They exchanged worried glances that caused my stomach to turn to knots.
I would have thought they’d be happy to hear Silas’s announcement. For one thing, killing the Mother Crow would release Solomon’s spirit from that stone around Silas’s neck.
What in the world was he thinking? Had his father’s spirit affected him so much over the past several months that he was willing to risk my life to set his father free?
I wanted to charge up the steps to the platform and confront him there in front of everyone, but it was impossible to talk to him now. There were too many around us who couldn’t hear what I needed to say.
Emotions slammed through me, and I didn’t even know what to feel.
Part of the reason we had killed the Devil in the first place was to prevent the very thing Silas was making a path to now. If Solomon went free, he would resume his reign of terror on the human world once again.
And how could we be sure Solomon himself wouldn’t be the fourth vote needed to condemn us all to death for murdering his brother?
My hands balled into fists at my side.
When this night was over, Silas was going to have a lot to answer for, and I hoped he didn’t plan on going back into hiding until this was all over. I needed to know why he had chosen this task for us. Why he wanted us to set his father free when he’d been given the task to destroy him.
Abagore stood and raised his scepter high into the air, calming the room full of vampires.
“The decision has been made, and the task has been announced,” he said, swallowing as he threw a hateful glare at Silas. “The two candidates will now be taken through a secret ceremony that will bind their actions to a weapon of their own choosing. The weapon will be imbued with a spell that will send a message to the Council when their task has been completed. Whichever weapon ultimately causes the death of the Mother Crow, leader of the crow witch coven, will proclaim the vampire holding it as our newest anointed Council member. At that time, we will call together a second meeting of the Brotherhood to induct this vampire onto the Council and put the fate of the ten vampires who stand before us tonight to a final vote.”
“In the meantime,” Gideon said, standing, “the remaining accused will be locked in the dungeons here at the Castle of the Brotherhood, where they will await their fate.”
I glanced at Ryken, who shook his head in anger.
I held a hand out to him, asking him to be still and calm. A week in the dungeons was a hell of a lot better than we expected when we walked into this place just a few hours earlier.
He clenched his teeth, his eyes flashing red, but he made no move to protest when the Hollows came to take them away.
“You better kill that witch,” Ryken said as he passed by. “We’re all counting on you.”
“I will,” I said. “I promise.”
Each of my vampire brothers nodded to me as they were taken out of the room to serve their time in the dungeons. I had gotten them into this mess, and though I had no idea exactly how, I was going to get them out of it, too.
“Rend and Dagon, if you will accompany us to the ritual room, we will perform the ceremony right away,” Raum said as he stood from his place on the third throne.
“The rest of you, my brothers, are excused for the moment,” Abagore said, addressing the vampires gathered in the Grand Hall. “We will reconvene in a week, if not before. Go with darkness.”
“Go with darkness,” the vampires in the room repeated back to him as they each shifted and fled the room, leaving no one but me, Dagon, the four members of the Council, and a dozen Hollows.
“You
may stand,” Abagore said, motioning to us.
Dagon stood and looked at me, a warning in his expression. He was just as determined to take that throne as I was, but I had a lot more on the line than he did. There was no way I was going to let him beat me.
I stood and looked at Silas, hoping he could read my intentions in my gaze. He gave a slight nod of his head but looked away quickly.
“Come, Brothers,” Raum said.
He led us toward the back of the room where a doorway made of pure black stone opened with a creak at our approach. I swallowed, my mouth dry as we walked toward the ritual room.
I had only been in that room once in my life, and it was not an experience I was happy to revisit.
Last time I walked through that door, I had entered as a demon and left as a vampire. An abomination with a thirst for blood that consumed my thoughts day and night for a hundred years. The transformation itself had been excruciatingly painful, as if my very soul had been torn from my body in the process.
I had spent every moment after that trying to find a way to reverse whatever it was they had done to me. Fighting against the monster I had become.
It had taken decades just to get control of my thirst, but as I passed under the shadow of that obsidian doorway, I remembered that night like it was yesterday.
I forced my feet to carry me into the darkened ritual room, but the ache in my soul protested it. Not wanting to be back here. Not again.
The floor of the room was black as night, created from stone mined from the Black Cliffs of home. Carved into the center and filled with pure gold was a double-circle with a pentagram at its center. At the point of each side of the star, a number was carved into the floor. One for each of the Council members.
Red candles floated in the air, their light casting blood-red shadows across the entire room.
The walls were made of rough, dark stone, and every few feet, silver shackles hung from posts. This is where the Brotherhood kept the witches they used in the transformation ceremony. Ten in all just to create a single vampire.
I refused to look at them, afraid I might see the ghosts of the witches I had killed in the name of my lust for greater power.
Thankfully, there were no witches here tonight. No screams to haunt my nightmares. If there had been, I might have turned around and never looked back. I would not take the life of an innocent again, no matter what might be at stake.
“Dagon, kneel at the center of the circle,” Abagore commanded.
Dagon did as he was told, falling onto his knees before the Council.
“Name your weapon,” Raum said, motioning to the back wall.
At first, there were no weapons to be seen, but the wall slowly began to rotate, revealing more than a hundred weapons on spikes set in the stone.
Dagon smiled as his eyes scanned the weaponry. There was everything from the smallest dagger to the largest spear, most of them carved with the pentagram of the Brotherhood.
I expected him to choose a heavy weapon. Something menacing and cumbersome, but instead, he lifted his hand and called forth a medium-sized sword with a dark stone embedded in the hilt.
Abagore raised an eyebrow. “The Sword of Reckoning,” he said. “A powerful choice from the Age of Stone.”
The Age of Stone was a time when warrior demons from our homeland had fought golems known as Stone Guardians. I had heard of the Sword of Reckoning, as it was rumored to have been carried by the great leader of the Northern Army more than a thousand years ago. It was said the stone in the hilt still held the souls of the fallen demons who fought in that war and gave what remained of their power to their leader in hopes that he might defeat the Stone Guardians and restore the Shadow World to peace.
How had the Brotherhood of Darkness gotten hold of such a powerful sword? And how, exactly, had Dagon known what it was on sight?
I scanned the weapons on the wall, thinking back through the lore of my childhood, but there was only one weapon there that I recognized.
A double-bladed axe large enough to take up an entire section all on its own.
Aerden’s axe.
My eyes widened at the sight of it. Jackson’s brother, Aerden, had brought it through with him when he was taken prisoner by the Peachville coven and forced to become the Prima demon there. As far as anyone knew, that axe had been destroyed by the Order.
Now that Aerden was free, I was sure he would want it back. I vowed in that moment to see it returned to him as soon as I was named to the Council.
But an axe that large and heavy would not suit my purposes now. I doubted I could wield it with one hand, and I needed something that would be easy to carry with me when I finally found the Mother Crow somewhere up in the trees where she hid.
Still, seeing my friend’s axe gave me hope, somehow. It was a promise that life sometimes came full circle when you were least expecting it. It told me that despite the horror of my situation, I was exactly where I was meant to be.
I waited patiently as the Council finished binding the Sword of Reckoning to Dagon’s mission.
When the ceremony was complete, he stood and joined me at the back of the room, a gleam of fury in his eyes.
“I will be the one to put an end to the crow,” he muttered. “And then I will make you watch as your friends beg for their lives. It will be a great pleasure to watch you all die.”
I refused to be baited by him, and I kept my mouth shut and my eyes forward.
When Abagore called me to the center of the room, I fell to my knees on top of the golden circle.
“Rend, name your weapon,” Raum said.
I pulled my eyes away from the mighty axe and landed, instead, on a small dagger made of pure demon steel. The red light of the candles overhead flickered across its shining surface. There was nothing particularly special about the dagger, but it somehow called to me.
I lifted my hand, and the dagger lifted from the spike that held it and floated over to me. I closed my fist around it, the power inside vibrating as I held it.
Silas smiled and nodded to me, but the other three members of the Council glared in anger.
“The Dagger of Truth,” Raum said. “What makes you choose such a weapon?”
The Dagger of Truth? My lips parted as I stared down at the silver weapon in my hand.
“Solomon’s dagger?” I asked.
“Don’t pretend you didn’t know what you were doing when you called to that dagger,” Abagore said. He flashed red eyes toward Silas. “You were instructed not to say a word of warning to your friends and fellow traitors before tonight’s meeting, but the selection of such a weapon makes me doubt your trustworthiness.”
“I can promise you, I’ve had no contact with Rend or any of the other vampire brothers who were at the Devil’s castle that night,” Silas said. “In fact, I haven’t seen or spoken to any of them since that night. And since no lie can be told in the presence of my father’s weapon, you know that I am telling the truth.”
“Yes,” Gideon said, stroking his cheek. There were signs of fear in his eyes that I couldn’t quite understand. “Your father was obsessed with the truth. Still, I don’t know how you managed to choose that weapon out of all the strong weapons in our armory. How did you know it belonged to Solomon? He hadn’t carried that dagger for over a century. He placed it here long before you joined the Brotherhood.”
“I didn’t know,” I said truthfully. “I simply felt it was the right choice.”
The dagger would serve my purpose well. It was small enough to keep hidden when I wanted it to be, yet easy enough to lace with certain deadly poisons from my lab.
“You said he could have any weapon of his choosing, and Rend has made his choice,” Silas said. “Finish the ceremony.”
Abagore cleared his throat and stepped toward me.
He held a large, silver stake in his hand. I had watched what he did to Dagon, so I knew what to expect, but that didn’t mean I was excited about it.
I raised my right ar
m to him, baring the flesh of my wrist as he approached.
“Et sculpsit signum in Fratrum tenebrarum.”
I carve the mark of the Brotherhood of Darkness.
His words echoed through the dark room as he used the pointed tip of the stake to carve a perfect circle into my flesh.
I gritted my teeth against the pain, drawing in a ragged breath.
He then wiped the dark blood from my fresh wound and smeared it across the dagger in my other hand.
“You may stand,” he said. “Join your fellow anointed one.”
I carried the dagger back to where Dagon stood and gave him a slight tilt of my head, which he answered with a glare.
“Whoever kills the Mother Crow first with their chosen weapon will be immediately named as a member of our Council,” Abagore said. “Inside the circle carved in your flesh, the symbol that once belonged to the Devil will then be transferred to you. If you both fail to complete your mission by the seventh moon, you will be called back to this castle, where you both be banished to the dungeons for the remainder of your lives.”
My eyes sought Silas’s through the shadows.
Banished to the dungeons forever? He had failed to mention that tiny detail earlier in his explanation, and now he avoided my gaze. For good reason.
This was getting more complicated—and more dangerous—by the moment.
“May you both go in darkness,” Gideon said.
“Go in darkness,” Dagon and I both said in unison as we bowed our heads toward the Council members.
One by one, the red candles above our heads began to flicker out, engulfing the room in shadows.
Before The Night Was Over
Franki
My eyes hurt from staring at books all night. It was long past four in the morning, and Azure and I had been going through the spell books in Rend’s library for hours with almost nothing to show for it.
“Please tell me you’ve found something useful,” I said to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, tossing a book to the floor with a thud. “I got nothing.”