Headlights flared from up the street. I grabbed the body nearest me, dragging it to the sidewalk. Beau dashed away, collecting the rest.
We crossed through the wards just before the first car passed us. Thankfully the elves no longer triggered the protective boundary magic as corpses. Then, leaving them decomposing and hidden behind the wards in Pearl’s front yard, we went to find out who had survived — and to figure out what the hell we were going to do next.
Jasmine was leaning against the wall next to an open doorway — Pearl’s bedroom, based on the magic I could feel emanating from it. The vampire opened her eyes, glancing at me. Then she closed them just as quickly.
Her eyes had been blood red.
“Oracle.” Jasmine’s hands were clenched into fists, and she was pressing her head back against the wall. “I put Pearl on her bed, but …”
I nodded, though she likely couldn’t see me. I assumed that she was leaving unspoken how she was wrestling for control around the wounded witch. “You’re hurt yourself.”
Jasmine pressed her hand against her stomach, covering a clean slice through the brown suede of her jacket, but she shook her head in swift denial. “I should have been faster. We’ve been at BC Place most of the night … well, early morning now. Trying to figure out what the elves are up to. And I didn’t want to leave Mory with only Liam for backup. Benjamin has to go to ground before the sun rises. But I waited too long. I should have been here.”
I didn’t respond, mostly because I didn’t have an opinion. So I stepped through the door into Pearl’s bedroom instead. The room was decorated in soft grays and silks. It was large. Which was good, because it currently contained three other witches — all of them seemingly working to keep Pearl alive.
Scarlett was on her feet, but just barely. She stood next to her mother’s bed, chanting softly under her breath, with her hands hovering over Pearl’s chest. She looked up at me as I entered the room, pinning me with her blazing blue gaze.
“Beau?” she asked.
“He’s okay. Scouting the perimeter.”
Scarlett nodded, turning her attention back to her mother.
Pearl didn’t look great. But her skin hadn’t turned the gray I’d seen in my vision, so that was an improvement on what could have been. I also wasn’t entirely certain whether Jasmine would have been standing in the hall if she’d faced the elves without Beau and me.
A younger woman, her brown hair streaked with blue, stood on the opposite side of the bed. Burgundy, Mory’s friend. I’d met her at Jade’s bridal shower. The junior witch was also chanting softly, even as she laid a series of small flat stones on Pearl. They were mostly concentrated around the wound at her ribs, but also in the palms of her hands, at the tops of her thighs, and on her forehead.
“I should have gone out.” Another woman was pacing the length of the curtained windows, wearing a burnt-orange wool dress over leggings. I couldn’t remember her name, though I was pretty sure we’d been introduced at least once, at Jade’s engagement party.
“Someone had to hold off the traffic, and to be here to hold the wards … if Pearl and I fell,” Scarlett said mildly.
“It was ridiculous for both of you to cross the boundary,” the orange-clad witch snapped. “There is no way I can hold the grid on my own if Pearl dies. And the house wards will surely fall.”
“I know.”
A look of dismay flooded across the irate witch’s face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Of course, your mother … she never could have watched you fall.”
“Yes,” Scarlett said quietly. “It has been an evening of revelations.” Then she looked over to me. “And I suspect there are many more to come. You saw Pearl … getting hurt? That’s why you came?”
I nodded. Not bothering to clarify that I might have actually seen Pearl die. Or that I’d tried to text a warning ahead of time.
Scarlett sighed harshly. “Will you take my place, Olive?”
“Of course.” The orange-clad witch hustled to Scarlett’s side. “And you should let Burgundy look at your wound.”
The witch with the blue-streaked hair looked up in response to her name, swallowing harshly. “I’m sorry … I … would have been useless out there.”
“Well, you aren’t useless here,” Scarlett said. “And that matters much more in the regular world. We are simply facing … extraordinary times.”
Burgundy nodded, turning back to a wooden box perched on the side table and sorting through more spells. Healing spells, I presumed.
Scarlett turned to me, her face grim and bloodless. “We value the friendship of the wielder’s oracle. For saving the life of our coven leader, but also in guiding us forward in the coming battle.”
A cavern of doubt and fear opened up by Scarlett’s formality threatened to engulf me. By her having titled me, connecting me to Jade — the wielder of the instruments of assassination.
I had no idea how to answer her.
Beau stepped up behind me, wearing his human visage and clad only in sweatpants. It was exceedingly likely that his T-shirt hadn’t survived his shift into half-form. But for once, all eyes in the room didn’t lock on to him.
No. They were all looking at me, patiently waiting.
Beau laid his hand on my shoulder. “The wielder’s oracle is pleased to offer her friendship to the witches of the Godfrey coven. Your magic was fundamental in keeping our human family safe tonight. Thank you.”
Scarlett nodded curtly, but she kept her gaze on me.
I finally found my voice. “Jade?”
“Compromised, but alive at last sighting,” Scarlett said without emotion. “Jasmine watched the wielder neutralize her companions before she was commanded to go to Pearl by her master, Kett. Liam saw … the fallen being carried into BC Place, which is now coated in elf magic that we’re almost powerless to penetrate. Not even the brownie Blossom can get through to Jade.”
“Which is probably also why you haven’t seen the dowser,” Beau murmured, referencing my lack of visions.
“Almost powerless?” I asked.
“Mory,” Jasmine answered from the hall, though she didn’t step into the room. “Mory and Liam are mapping the damn stadium with her damn dead turtle.”
I reached back and twined the fingers of my left hand through Beau’s. Then I met Scarlett Godfrey’s fierce gaze. “All right, then. Tell me exactly what you need, and we’ll see which way magic thinks we should move.”
“We need Jade.”
I nodded.
“If we cannot vanquish them, then we need to contain the elves.”
Crap. Okay.
“In order to do that, we need the grid to … we need to tie the elves into the witches’ grid so that we can identify and track them. Then we need to raise the boundary.”
I squeezed Beau’s hand. “Whatever it takes,” I whispered.
He pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Whatever it costs.”
A smile spread across Scarlett’s bloodless face, determined and fierce. “Tell me how to get my girl back and save the city, oh oracle.”
And hopefully thwart the future I’d seen for my unborn child in the process. Together it was possible, it had to be possible, to foil the vision I was certain my mother’s ghost had somehow held, then released for me to record and undo.
I nodded. Energy shifted between us at my acceptance of Scarlett’s requests, settling lightly on my shoulders. A magical binding of sorts? Perhaps.
Then a vision hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest, crashing through my limbs and flooding the room with a soft white glow. A series of images flicked through my mind, and I tried to interpret them on the fly before the magic pulled me under.
“Black paint …” I whispered. “The map room …”
Then the vision mist took me, and I saw no more of the present.
3
Jasmine
It was never so clear to me why vampires weren’t natural heroes as it was in the moment I stood pressing myself a
gainst a wall in a house full of wounded, possibly dying witches — instinctively hunting them by heartbeat while trying desperately to ignore my bloodlust.
If I didn’t count the tasty sip I’d forcefully taken from the werewolf, Lara, I hadn’t fully fed in over three days. Most fledglings needed to feed daily — and usually more than once. But I had the ancient blood of the executioner of the Conclave running through my veins, and had been drinking from him exclusively for over seven months. I could walk in the sun, even in the midst of a crowd of humans without fantasizing about the feel of their hearts slowing … and stuttering … as I drained the last drops of blood from their …
I was doing it again.
Tracking the witches’ heartbeats … along with the oracle and the shifter. Though I knew without a doubt that they were more dangerous — possibly unattainable — prey. Because I was wounded.
Wounded and not healing. Not healing as I should have healed, as I assumed I healed.
But then, I hadn’t fed for three days … eleven hours … and —
Energy flooded into the hallway, prickling the side of my face and the exposed skin of my neck and hands.
Magic. The power clung to me. The blood already thrumming through my veins surged at its questing touch.
“Black paint …” Rochelle whispered. “The map room …”
Oracle magic.
Motion exploded from within the bedroom where Pearl Godfrey lay — possibly dying. Her heartbeat was faint but steady. The shifter Beau, displaying epic miles of gorgeous medium-brown, well-muscled skin, charged into the hall, carrying the tiny white-haired oracle in his arms. The power flooding through Rochelle’s eyes was so bright I had to squint against its onslaught.
Beau headed for the stairs to the main floor and disappeared from sight. But no matter how silently the shifter could move, I could still hear his heart. And the amped-up heartbeat of the oracle.
Scarlett stepped into the hall, laying a soul-piercing look on me. Her scent told me she was bleeding. Magical blood.
I crossed my wrists behind my back, digging my clawed fingers into the flesh of my forearms. It was either that or I would pull the strawberry-blond witch into my arms and —
“I’m going to need you to do something for me, Jasmine. You and Beau, if I can convince him to leave Rochelle.”
“Lay it on me, momma.” My attempt at being flippant was strangled in my dry throat.
Scarlett’s eyes narrowed. “First things first. I’ve texted Teresa Garrick. If you wish to wait in the northeast bedroom, it has a sturdy lock, installed by my mother’s former foster child.”
She continued down the hall without waiting for my answer, holding herself stiffly.
Powerful prey.
Wounded.
I squeezed my eyes shut, turning my head away. I could still hear the normally charismatic witch’s heartbeat. “Wait for what?”
“Blood,” Scarlett said, already heading down the stairs. “Teresa is bringing you some of the blood that Benjamin drinks.”
Oh … thank God.
I pushed off the wall, turning toward the open door to the bedroom. I locked my gaze onto the mousy-haired witch bent over the bed on which Pearl lay dying. “Scarlett needs to be healed.”
“We know,” the witch said sharply.
Olive. Her name was Olive. I knew her from before. Before wanting to slake my growing thirst on her blood, before wondering if she tasted of the oranges she grew. A second, younger witch in the room was Burgundy. A friend of Mory’s. Friends were important. Friends weren’t prey.
The warriors had fallen. I had watched them fall to Jade. Their vanquishing had looked … effortless for the dowser. Now there were too few of us, scrambling to make sense of the situation. It would be better to die myself than to kill anyone who relied on my protection.
“No,” I said, hearing the dangerous edge to my voice despite my best intentions. “Scarlett needs to be healed. Now.”
Both witches flinched, terror causing their blood to pump faster.
Burgundy and Olive, I reminded myself. Not prey. Burgundy and Olive. “I’ll be in the northeast bedroom.”
“I’ll go to Scarlett,” Burgundy said, swallowing her fear of me. Her steadiness allowed me to turn away. “I’ll bring … I’ll bring Teresa to you when she arrives.”
“No. I … please don’t. Just the … package.” The last thing I needed was a necromancer seeing me in a weakened state. Fighting my instincts was already too difficult, surrounded by those that my blood, my strength, my need deemed as prey. A necromancer of power was not something I wanted to be confronted with. I wasn’t certain how I would react. “Thank you.”
I made it down the hall and along the short corridor that bisected the house, east to west. Locking myself into a bedroom that appeared to have been recently redecorated in delicate shades of green, I crossed to the window, gazing out into the dark of the early morning. The city of Vancouver was spread out across the bay to the east. And there, just on the other side of False Creek, I should have been able to feel my master, Kettil, the executioner and elder of the Conclave.
Instead, there was just this terrible, aching emptiness. A space Kett had filled, and I hadn’t even known it. As if a part of my remaining soul — the part he could communicate with even in the absence of words, the part he commanded — had actually been his.
I thought … I thought the empty space might mean that Kett was dead. And I didn’t know what I was going to do if Jade had ended his immortal existence. If it turned out that he’d allowed the dowser to get close enough to do so, because some long-dead part of him loved her more than his own life.
I would try to kill her, most likely.
Just as she had murdered the part of me that belonged to Kett. The part — the ‘me’ — that existed because of him. Because he’d taken a chance and brought me back from the oblivion of death. The part, before I’d lost it, that had still dreamed and cared and desperately wanted to survive.
I would die, of course. Squandering the sacrifice of blood and power that Kett had given to remake me. Because Jade had taken out a guardian dragon, her uber-powerful fiance, and an enforcer werewolf possessed of magical cuffs of strength — and had done so without even hesitating. Without stumbling.
So, too, she must have taken Kett, leaving this black, empty pit of despair lodged within me.
I was no match for the dowser, not even on her worst day. I knew that was true, because I was pretty sure I’d just witnessed Jade Godfrey’s worst day ever. So clearly, I would be even less of a match for the dowser on her best day. She would kill me with a flick of her pretty jade knife, then eat a cupcake in celebration. Assuming that the Jade I’d watched trounce all her loved ones still cared about pretty trinkets and tasty treats. I had a feeling she didn’t.
And that was another major problem waiting to explode all over the city. Because what else was the dowser using to hold the darkness at bay? What would she do if she awoke from whatever the elves had done to her and found that she’d slaughtered the people she loved?
I had only Liam’s accounting of the warriors being carried into the heavily warded stadium. And the sorcerer had indicated that only Jade had still been on her feet, with the guardian of North America slung over her shoulders.
Liam had also said that there’d been a moment when the dowser could have exposed him, could have set the elves on him — but she hadn’t.
I pressed my hand against the dark window. My skin was pale, webbed with blue veins. I could see the bones of my wrist and forearm, as if I’d suddenly lost weight.
I dropped my hand, turning away from the darkness.
If Kett was indeed truly dead, I would try to avenge my master. And if it was Jade I’d be facing, then I would die before I landed the first blow.
Vampire instincts were a bitch.
I felt Teresa Garrick the moment she crossed through Pearl’s outer wards. And the closer she got — walking the front path, knocking at th
e front door, stepping inside the house and its extra layer of protection — the more intense the feeling got. I’d never met the necromancer as a vampire. Only once at her home in Seattle, while I’d still been a witch.
Teresa’s family had been renowned vampire hunters — before they were all slaughtered, forcing her into hiding. But I’d caught a glimpse of her magic on the witches’ grid and had sought her out two evenings before — after Jade had inadvertently informed me that she’d moved to the city with her son, Benjamin, after he’d been remade.
Then I had run away when the necromancer sensed my presence.
Teresa’s magic felt nothing like Mory’s. The junior necromancer was a welcoming, bright spot. While Teresa was … oblivion walking. Her son, Benjamin, wore a bone bracelet around his wrist to help hold his vampire nature in check. Something like the way Kett’s ancient blood helped me maintain control. It was a device of ongoing, working, active necromancy, and it seethed death and domination.
Being near the necromancer herself was even more intense.
I wasn’t surprised that Kett’s grandsire, Ve, had slaughtered necromancers, snuffing out generations of bloodlines. Or at least that was the tale recounted in almost all the ancient chronicles I’d read about my great-grandsire. We had yet to meet. Kett was wary of bringing me to London, though he’d never voiced his concerns out loud and I’d never pressed him. Ve — again, according to stories — had acquired an immunity to the power that necromancers wielded over death. And Wisteria had whispered tales of Kett himself standing against Teresa, playing with her in a graveyard in Seattle after she’d almost managed to tear him apart with dozens and dozens of zombies.
The entirety of Pearl’s house stood between Teresa Garrick and me, and I could tell without question that Kett’s immunity had not been passed on to me. Teresa would be able to reach out, take control of whatever remained of my soul, and enslave me.
But no one — no witch or necromancer — would ever own my soul. Not ever again. Which meant that I would slaughter Benjamin’s mother before I let her take me. And then I would die.
Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things That Byte (Dowser 8.5) Page 14