Graveyards, Visions, and Other Things That Byte (Dowser 8.5)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  Why were all the avenues opening before me pointing to death? Had Wisteria truly foiled fate when she’d convinced Kett to remake me? Maybe I was being dogged by destiny.

  I felt Teresa’s magic abate as she turned around at the front door, crossing swiftly back through the wards and out onto the street.

  Unclenching my fists, I became aware that I had retreated through the bedroom and was currently huddled in the deep bathtub of its en suite.

  Damn it. I hated it when I moved before I’d even made the decision to do so.

  A knock sounded at the door, then footsteps quickly retreated down the hall. Burgundy.

  I took a breath I didn’t actually need.

  I was terrifying everyone, including myself.

  After climbing out of the tub, I crossed out of the bathroom, through the bedroom, and to the door. I paused, making sure there wasn’t anyone with a heartbeat anywhere near me. Then I unlocked the door and retrieved the box that the young witch had dropped off.

  I closed and locked the door, opening the top flaps of the box. Six IV bags of blood were carefully tucked into cardboard sleeves meant to hold wine bottles.

  I pressed myself back against the door, nearly weeping at the sight.

  I tore the plastic of the first bag too much, spilling blood across my chin. It dripped down my neck as I hastily retreated to the bathroom, pleased to discover that the towels were dark charcoal. No self-respecting vampire wasted blood, not even a drop.

  The blood was cold. Even colder than Kett’s. And it tasted … flat … thin. Weak. Devoid of Kett’s potent, sweet-and-spicy magic, I realized. Other than the sip from Lara — rich, almost blisteringly hot, bittersweet — I had never drank from anyone other than my master. Kett had sneered at my repeated requests to learn to fend for myself. To hunt and sip. My master had decided that nothing could match the strength he gave me every time I curled up in his lap and latched onto his wrist.

  And, as always, he was right. Hell, it had taken me weeks to be able to even prick his skin without assistance. No other blood to be found in Vancouver was more powerful than my master’s — at least no blood that wouldn’t kill me at first sip. Kett just hadn’t implemented a contingency plan for that moment when he’d decided to kneel before Jade’s sword, surrendering himself. Possibly surrendering both of us.

  I had drained three bags and was working on a fourth before I started to feel steadier. Slowly suckling from that fourth dose, I checked the stab wound in my lower rib cage in the bathroom mirror. It had healed, scarring over. But beneath it, I still felt like part of me was missing. As if the healed skin was only hiding the still-festering wound beneath.

  I eyed the last two bags of blood, slightly embarrassed at how much I’d consumed. Which was ridiculous. I had no idea what a normal consumption level was — I usually drank from Kett until I grew sleepy. And second, no one cared. No one was going to be checking up on me. The witches were just interested in keeping me from slaughtering anyone.

  A heartbeat moved steadily down the hall toward me — strong and slow, steady, rock solid, powerful. Beau.

  He paused outside the door.

  I tucked the box and the last of the blood in the empty cupboard underneath the sink.

  Beau knocked.

  I crossed into the bedroom, unlocking the door and stepping farther back than I needed to open it. Giving the shapeshifter space. I kept my gaze on his left cheekbone. Beau was a tiger, not a wolf with its pack instincts. But he would still instinctively want to exert his dominance over me — the predator in a house full of prey that he protected.

  I wasn’t stupid, though. I had seen Rochelle behead an elf with her tattoos. I had no idea what kind of magic that was, or how an oracle came to wield it, but she definitely wasn’t prey. Moreover, she and Beau were mated — truly mated. And the oracle was pregnant.

  With that all in mind, I was actually surprised that Beau hadn’t already torn Rochelle from the house, dragging her as far from Vancouver and the elves as he could.

  “Jasmine.” Beau cast his gaze around the tidy room behind me.

  “Beau.”

  “Scarlett would like to see us. In the map room.”

  I waited. Beau wasn’t an errand boy. He had come for me himself for another reason.

  Silence stretched between us until I finally met his gaze.

  He regarded me steadily. “Kandy says you bit Lara.”

  Damn it! “Did she text everyone?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I was under the telepathic elf’s influence.”

  “So she said.”

  “Well, then.”

  “You will not be biting me.”

  I clenched my teeth, chewing on a number of retorts — most of which had to do with him being in no position of authority or strength to be giving me orders. “I won’t be biting anyone.”

  He nodded. But he still loomed in the doorway, blocking out all the light from the hallway with his broad shoulders. “When Rochelle decided she wanted to move here, to settle in Vancouver, I spent some time researching all the Adepts who lived here.”

  “An ever-growing list.”

  “True, yes. And now including you and Kett. Vampires. And the executioner has a reputation for collecting magic. People, not artifacts.”

  “By cultivating relationships. Not by draining them of blood.”

  “It wasn’t Kett who concerned me. He places a lot of value on what Rochelle sees.”

  “Everyone should.”

  “Yes.” His agreement was blunt, pointed.

  “I’m not going to try to slaughter your mate, shifter.”

  Beau leaned toward me, easily six inches taller than me. He inhaled deeply. “I know how to kill you, Jasmine. Vampires aren’t immortal.”

  I clenched my fingers, then unfurled them — instead of slamming my hand against his chest. Instead of proving that even if he knew the methods that would lead to my eventual death, he would find them difficult to pull off.

  “Vampires are immortal, actually.” I leaned farther into his space, breathing in the heady scent of his warm blood. “Perhaps you’ve been misinformed.”

  “It’s difficult to survive without a head,” he snarled.

  I laughed, and the resulting sound was darker than I’d intended. “That depends on how quickly you reattach it.”

  Beau reared back — though not in fear. To get a better look at me.

  “Am I lying?” I asked mockingly.

  Shifters could smell lies — or at least could sense them through an increased heart rate. And of course, I didn’t have a heartbeat. Not a regular one, anyway.

  He narrowed his eyes. “We’re on the same page.”

  “We are.”

  He nodded curtly, then turned to walk down the hall.

  The shifter was deliberately baiting me, turning his back like I was of no consequence — whether or not he’d intended it. I ignored the urge to spring forward and latch onto his neck.

  He was just walking ahead of me down the hall, for goodness’ sake. Not everything was about games. Or blood.

  I stopped by Pearl’s room, staying just long enough to ascertain that Olive and Burgundy had managed to erect a stasis field, through which they could take shifts monitoring minor changes in the wounded witch’s health. I couldn’t see the casting — even as a witch, I hadn’t had any sight for magic. But I could feel a tingle of energy from it. So far, Pearl wasn’t dying. But no magic usage came without a cost, and if the elder witch didn’t start holding her own in the next forty-eight hours or so — let alone improve — then the witches who were trying to help her heal were going to need to recharge.

  What we really needed was a healer. Problem was, the Godfrey coven didn’t have one. In fact, since the death of my Aunt Rose, the Convocation didn’t even have a healer occupying one of their thirteen seats.

  As I left the witches, I began to realize that even flush with human blood, ignoring their heartbeats was impossible. I hadn’t app
reciated how much Kett had insulated me with his powerful, ancient blood.

  Beau was waiting at the base of the main staircase, but he quickly headed toward the basement when he saw me.

  I caught up to him, but didn’t press too close. For both of our comfort levels. The house was dark, as if no one had bothered turning on any lights when the elves’ attack had drawn them from their beds or from the map room. I was pretty sure that Burgundy had been on shift, but I was less certain whether Scarlett had even left to change or shower or sleep since I’d brought the news of Jade being compromised. And Olive was staying with Pearl for the duration of Jade’s wedding festivities. I wondered if anyone had thought to cancel the caterers and the florist —

  “It’s bad, then?” Beau asked in a whisper. “With Pearl?”

  “Yeah, it’s bad.”

  Beau said nothing else as we neared the door to the room that held the central hub of the witches’ grid. A laundry room, bathroom, mechanical room, and a neatly organized storage room were accessible farther down the hall. I’d been spending as much time in Pearl Godfrey’s basement as I was allowed to. The grid map fascinated me. I’d been working on figuring out how to tie its magical detection system into a computer interface, so that Kandy could receive alerts automatically or even access the map from her phone. But it had been slow going. It was a monumental task — and would have been so even if my tech magic still came to me as easily as it once had.

  The map room occupied what had once been a recreation room that took up at least half of the footprint of the house. The door stood open.

  Pearl’s home was modestly sized, at least compared to the real estate the Fairchild coven held. But seeing as how it occupied a chunk of low-bank waterfront in Vancouver, it was an easy guess that it was worth even more than the currently empty and gutted Fairchild estate.

  I pushed the thoughts of that house, of that basement — the site of my human death — out of mind just by stepping into the converted rec room. A detailed map of Vancouver had been painstakingly painted across all four of its walls. Usually a chair sat in the center of the room, but that had been moved to the hall.

  In the room now, Rochelle was slowly painting an intricate design on the tightly woven berber carpet. The white of her oracle magic blazed from her eyes. Including the previously plain-white baseboards, she had covered nearly half the room in twisted vines of ivy and barbed wire. Tucked into the curls and spiked waves were other seemingly random objects … a snake, links of a chain or necklace, a sliver of a crescent moon. And there were more images that I couldn’t even guess at … runes maybe … or Elvish script even, depending on what the oracle was channeling.

  Scarlett was standing at the center of the room. A basic circle encompassed her bare feet. I had a feeling that Rochelle was working toward tying that inner circle to her intricate design. But in hope of creating what? Making Scarlett function as what? An all-seeing quarterback?

  “We need an elf,” Scarlett said. Hands on her hips, she was wearing a simple black silk sheath that fell to her calves. Her strawberry-blond hair cascaded across her shoulders and down her back. She no longer reeked of blood, but she still wasn’t completely healed. “Jasmine?”

  I nodded. “You want to try tying the elf blood to the map? To see if that will help the magic of the grid track them?” I had floated that idea to Jade and Kandy even before I’d first laid eyes on the map room, and the witches and I had discussed it again after I’d brought the news to Pearl that Jade had been compromised. “How much do you think we need?”

  Scarlett turned to look at me. “All of it.”

  Dread flitted through my stomach. It was an emotion I’d had no idea I was still capable of in this new immortal, invulnerable form. “You want … you want me to capture an elf alive?”

  “You and Beau.”

  “Then what? A … sacrifice? You’re going to slit a sentient being’s throat and bleed him out?”

  Scarlett’s expression turned grim. “I won’t be able to do it. The oracle has indicated that I need to stand in the circle and that nothing can cross into it with me.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling a little faint. And not because I hadn’t drunk enough.

  “I can do it,” Beau said.

  “No.” Scarlett’s denial was absolute.

  “I’m the vampire,” I whispered. “Bloodletting is my … deathly deed to deal.”

  “Yes.”

  Seven months. That was how long I’d been a vampire. That was how long Kett had shielded me from my true nature.

  But Kett was gone. Possibly dead. And many, many others were going to die if the elves had their way. Not that I knew what they were up to, but it had to be seriously nefarious if they’d taken out all the warriors and were now attempting to pick off the witches.

  It was time to take off the training wheels.

  “All right,” I said, thankfully sounding much more detached and focused than I felt. “Where do we find an elf? We should stay away from BC Place, if possible. We don’t want to draw attention to Mory and Liam.”

  “I agree.” Scarlett pointed to her left. About a quarter of the way up the wall, a location glowed softly blue, tinted with gold.

  “The bakery?”

  “The magic keeps flaring,” Scarlett said. “I believe the elves are trying to breach the wards.”

  “Why? Does Jade hold objects of power there?”

  Scarlett nodded. “And the portal.”

  “Excuse me? There’s a portal in the bakery? Like … permanently?”

  “It’s guardian magic. An anchor point, I suppose. But I doubt the elves could tap into it.”

  Doubt? Doubt? Holy hell. I momentarily lost my mind imagining what the elves could do if they tapped into a power source of that magnitude. And then … then I put two and two together. Or at least I attempted to inject a bit of rational conjecture to my rapidly dissolving day. The sun hadn’t even risen yet.

  “If they had Jade under control,” I said thoughtfully, “and if the elves wanted into the bakery, why wouldn’t they just use the dowser? And actually, that would hold for getting through any wards in Vancouver. The dowser practically walks through wards that she isn’t even keyed to, doesn’t she?”

  A brilliant smile spread across Scarlett’s face, filled with love and magic. The power of charm and charisma that the witch wielded so effortlessly brushed against me, filling all the empty places that Kett’s disappearance and the stab wound had created.

  Beau shifted, rolling his shoulders.

  Then Scarlett’s involuntary magic dissipated. Pressing my hand to the invisible wound at my rib cage, I felt utterly bereft. Possibly even worse than before.

  “Yes,” the witch whispered, turning her attention to the opposite wall and the black-sketched outline of the stadium, BC Place. It stood out, surrounded in pale-green magic, almost white — the elves’ wards. “My girl would never let anyone hold her.”

  I didn’t repeat the fact that Jade had been influenced so heavily that she had taken down a guardian dragon, her fiance, and one of her best friends. I could speak only to what I’d seen, not whatever had come after. Or whatever was going on now. That wasn’t my task, it seemed. Because apparently, I wasn’t the brains in the new order running Vancouver. Just the hired gun.

  I shook off the sense of heaviness. There was no difference between hunting an elf and capturing them alive, and killing one to protect myself and others — which I would do without question. Except there was a difference, of course. But there shouldn’t have been. Kett wouldn’t have hesitated to take on the task. Hell, he’d have done it and been back by now.

  “The bakery,” I said, glancing at Beau.

  He nodded. “I’m with you.” He looked toward Rochelle.

  The oracle was crawling backward toward Scarlett, connecting the inner circle to the outer design as I’d thought she might. Still in the grip of her magic, Rochelle hadn’t acknowledged our presence at all.

  “She’ll need w
ater,” Beau said. “And apples, if you have any.”

  Scarlett nodded. “Burgundy will care for Rochelle. If she finishes the spell before you return.”

  “Well, then. Let’s go hunt an elf,” I said overly brightly. “How hard can it be to keep one alive?”

  Beau grunted, amused. “I suggest an ambush and a concrete brick to the back of the head.”

  “Seems reasonable.”

  As it turned out, ambushing the elf would have been a lot easier if he hadn’t already held the higher ground. Well, not higher, exactly. But definitely exposed. And soon to be even more out in the open as the sun rose. Dawn came late this time of year, but over half the apartments were already lit to either side of the alley behind Jade’s bakery. Thankfully, most people still had their curtains drawn.

  The elf in question was pacing before the exterior steel back door, moving back and forth between the bakery’s green recycling bin and a black garbage bin midway between the door and the neighboring wine store.

  I paused at the mouth of the alley on Vine Street, a half block north from West Fourth Avenue. Though we could have easily walked to the bakery from Pearl’s, given that our intent was to kidnap an elf, Beau and I had borrowed Pearl’s car, parking it at the corner of Vine and West Third. Close enough to get to it quickly, but far enough away that we could still sneak up on the elf.

  The occasional car drove past, but I was tucked against the side hedge and fence of a converted house on the corner, and the elf didn’t notice me. Without any discussion, Beau had crossed up toward the corner when we’d first spotted the intruder, his footsteps silent on the grass that edged the paved sidewalk. Hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie and head bowed, he would scout forward of my position, double-checking for any elves at the front of the bakery.

  The elf had outfitted himself in what appeared to be purloined sports gear printed with a soccer team’s logo. He glanced both ways up the alley, just after Beau had stepped out of sight. He then peered up at the sky. It was an easy guess that he was concerned about exposure and the rising sun as well.