by Ann Gimpel
“I’d be a fool not to be,” he countered. “Make no mistake, we’ll be in the thick of it as soon as this casting disperses.”
“Try not to worry about me. I don’t want you to get yourself killed because you weren’t paying attention to defending yourself.” Even in telepathy, her words were fierce.
“And I’d tell you the same, darling.”
He waited until it felt like too much time had elapsed. Just as he was about to pull the plug on the threads holding himself and Sarai to the group’s magic, the casting developed an insubstantial aspect. They were nearly at their destination.
“Soon,” he said.
“I know. I felt the change too,” she replied.
Mist surrounded them as they rolled out atop an Aubusson rug. Niall surged to his feet, dragging Sarai upright along with him and drew power to cut through the fog making it impossible to see.
Once it cleared, he was almost sorry he’d been in such a hurry. An enormous room that looked more like it belonged in a manor house or castle than somewhere in the States formed. Beams crisscrossed high above him, and a fireplace tall enough to accommodate an ox for roasting took up one end of the room.
“Where are we?” Sarai asked.
The air glittered wetly. Vampires came into view, one after the other, until at least twenty surrounded their small group. One stepped forward and engaged in a parody of a bow. White silk robes sashed in red fell around him, doing little to conceal his perfect form. Golden curls framed his patrician features.
How could they be so beautiful—and so rotten-to-the-core evil?
“Welcome to my home,” the vampire purred. “I do hope you’ll decide to remain. Adding shifter magic to our own is the next step in our experiment. I’ll ask that you toss your weapons into the center of the room. It’s not polite to bring sabers inside.”
Niall threw his blade a few feet away. Close enough he could retrieve it in a pinch. He hoped. The vampire stalked to the other two shifters clutching swords and pried them loose, adding them to the pile. He didn’t seem to sense the hunting knives.
Out of sight, out of mind. Good to know. Niall filed the information away.
The vampire transferred his obsidian gaze to Jeremiah. “Nicely done, my lad. Step forward and claim your reward.”
Offering them a withering gaze over on shoulder, Jeremiah sauntered to the vampire and presented his neck for feeding.
Fury roared through Niall, but he needed a cool head. How the hell had Jeremiah managed to divert their travel spell to Castle Vampire? A quick glance at the four shifters yielded an answer. All had the glassy-eyed look that meant they’d been hypnotized.
Sarai cast a surreptitious look his way from beneath lowered lids and slipped the opal under her top. The gem glowed with an angry light, and Niall understood it was what saved them from Jeremiah’s trickery.
Stephan shook himself, his glazed appearance falling away. “Where the fuck are we?” he boomed.
“Jeremiah sold us out.” Sarai’s tone was flat.
Stephan narrowed his eyes and scanned the room. When he saw Jeremiah in thrall to the vampire, he set his jaw in a harsh line but didn’t make a move toward him. No doubt, he’d absorbed the vampire host, hanging about like a flock of beautiful, deadly birds with their variously colored robes.
Niall stuffed his fisted hands into his pockets. The other three shifters would come around eventually. Once they did, he’d figure something out. Had the whole story about Micah been nothing but fabrication?
Likely, since Jeremiah had been the messenger.
Niall forced a neutral expression. He’d get to the bottom of this, and when he did, heads would roll.
Chapter 8
Sarai kept her eyes downcast. Danger lay in looking directly at the vampires, and she needed to think. As a mage, Jeremiah’s magic was similar enough to theirs, he’d found a way to splice into the eagle shifter’s travel spell. Even so, it was a bold move. He must have been confident he wouldn’t be caught.
Had everything the mages said been lies? Were all of them part and parcel of the vampires’ bid for what was looking a whole lot like world domination?
Heat pulsed from the opal. Clearly, it had its own magic, but why hadn’t Niall mentioned it? Maybe because there hadn’t been time. Or it might have been a path only she could tread. Some magics were gender-specific.
She stole a glance at Niall and rearranged her jacket as a cover for moving the gemstone out of sight. So far, the vampires hadn’t noticed it—at least she didn’t think they had.
Sarai did a nose count, coming up with twenty-one vampires. She swallowed around a dry-as-dust throat, not liking their odds. Six of them against better than triple their numbers.
I can’t think like that. If I do, fear will take over and I won’t be worth a shit.
Around her, the other shifters were shaking off the effects of whatever perverted magic Jeremiah had drugged them with. Fury rolled from them in dull red waves once understanding sank in, but no one was stupid enough to wage a one-man war.
The vamps lounged, moving about the room and chatting with one another. Even though they were lowkey about it, Sarai felt their attention and their readiness to strike if any of the shifters so much as thought about launching a counter-attack.
She knew the feel of vampire magic now.
It made her skin crawl with its prickly heat and dead-things stench. They could cover up their reek, but they weren’t bothering to. Why should they? Dinner was already here.
What had the vampire feeding from Jeremiah said? That shifters were the next link in the chain.
“I do not think so,” her wolf muttered. “We’re nobody’s pawns.”
“Do you see a way out of this?” she asked and waited, hoping the vampires hadn’t heard her question. She could sense shifter magic when bond animals talked, but the vamps in the cabin hadn’t been able to.
After two long breaths, she figured she’d been right about the vampires not hearing her—or her wolf. “Well, do you?” she repeated, anxious for ideas.
“Maybe.”
While she waited for her bondmate to say more, she scanned the room. It was enormous, perhaps fifty feet long and half that wide. The ceiling soared a good twelve feet above her head, reinforced with beefy beams. Lush wall hangings, metal sculptures, and paintings lined the walls. The floor was rough wooden planks mostly covered by an Oriental rug she supposed was worth millions given its size and thickness. Only thing missing was windows, but it made perfect sense. Daylight was a showstopper for these fuckers, at least it had been before they’d sullied mage power, tacking it onto their own in some unknown fashion.
The vampire was done with Jeremiah. With a vacuous smile on his face, the mage walked to another vampire who bent to take a few swallows. From there, Jeremiah offered himself to a third, a fourth, and a fifth. None of them took more than a few token swigs.
Sarai was confused. The vamp who’d spoken with them had drunk for at least five minutes. Had the others already eaten. Was that why they didn’t feed as long? She suppressed a shudder, not wanting to give them any indication they were getting to her. The whole blood-drinking thing was so unnatural it gave her the creeps.
Or maybe it was their total lack of concern for the natural world. If they could turn it into their own personal fountain, they’d do it in the space between two heartbeats. Not that they either breathed or had beating hearts.
Jeremiah had worked his way through half the room. He was weaving now, as if the various vamps had taken too much blood from him, but he doggedly marched to another who latched on.
“He’s up to something,” the wolf said.
She’d been thinking the same thing, but other than suicide by vampire, she’d be damned if she could figure it out.
Niall edged closer to her and clasped her hand, keeping his low and between them. She understood. The physical link might mean their telepathy would go unnoticed. “Be ready.” He barely breathed the words into
her mind.
She wanted to scream, “For what?” but squeezed his hand to let him know she understood.
Jeremiah had made the rounds of all but two of the vampires. He swayed and went to his knees. A vampire hooked an arm around him and deposited him on a sofa, offering something thick, dark red, and nauseating looking in a glass. Jeremiah ignored him and dropped his head back. His eyes fluttered shut with dark rings inscribed beneath them that hadn’t been there before.
Sarai had kept her power shuttered, but she snaked a tendril of magic outward until it wrapped around Jeremiah. She had to find out what was going on here. The jagged bite of poison ricocheted back at her, and she would have stumbled if Niall weren’t holding onto her.
She still didn’t get it. Had the vamps poisoned the mage? Why would they do that?
The first vampire, the one who’d taken his sweet time feeding uttered a cry. His body began to smoke, skin sloughing off it in long, nauseating strips.
The world shifted on its axis, and Sarai understood. The poison had originated from the mage. It was why he’d kept going, presenting his neck to one vamp after the next until he couldn’t walk anymore.
Niall leapt forward, snatching up the saber on top of the heap. Stephan snapped up the next one, and the eagle shifter the fencing foil. The other shifter, a wolf like her, pulled one of the hunting knives from a thigh sheath. The men jumped into the fray.
Not all the vampires were in as bad a shape as the first one, but then they hadn’t drunk as much poison. Maybe they’d sensed something—or more likely they looked at mages much the same way she viewed vampires. As hideous manifestations not worth their time.
Niall swung the blade, beheading the nearest vampire amid a shower of black, stinking ichor. Stephan caught two standing side by side. He kept the blade moving until both heads lolled on the priceless carpet, staining its intricate pattern beyond recognition.
Sarai yanked her knife free. The opal burned against her skin, and she instinctively linked her magic to it. Power surged through her, and she plunged the blade into the nearest vampire, not expecting to kill it—only beheading would to that—but she could damn good and sure immobilize it for one of the men to do away with.
The two vampires who hadn’t fed from Jeremiah were edging toward a door at the end of the big room. They’d shrouded themselves, but it didn’t fool her. She shifted, clothing shredding around her and the golden necklace still in place around her wolf’s neck as she ran for the fucking no-good cowardly vampires who thought they could escape.
Oh hell no, not on her watch, they wouldn’t.
She leapt on one, growling and snarling, and closed her fangs around its neck, biting hard. The nasty, bitter taste revolted her, but she didn’t stop to spit it out.
Motion next to her turned out to be Stephan, blade swinging in an arc as he beheaded the other would-be escapee.
“Let go,” Stephan told her.
She jumped away from the downed vampire, spitting out blood and hair. Stephan brought the blade down in a two-handed maneuver that neatly severed its head.
Panting, sides heaving, she surveyed the room. Five vampires were still on their feet, but their smoking bodies didn’t pose much of a threat. Her gaze fell on Jeremiah, still collapsed in the same chair.
His face was white, his breathing labored. Clearly, the deadly substance he’d ingested was killing him too. After thanking her wolf for its valor, she summoned magic to shift back to human and threaded her way through vampire remains in various stages of decomposition until she reached him.
Sarai clasped his hand. “Jeremiah.”
His blue eyes fluttered open, and he offered a ghost of a smile. “Tell Chloe it worked and that I love her.”
Sarai’s eyes rounded in surprise. “She knew.”
“T-they all did.” He made a gagging sound.
She looked around for water but didn’t see any. “Why did you do this?”
He closed his eyes as if keeping them open took too much effort.
Niall crouched next to her. “What can I do?”
“Look for some water for him.” Sarai turned back to Jeremiah. If she was any judge, death hovered close by.
He blew out a breath, followed by bubbles of blood-tinged saliva. “We set this up to warn mages aligned with evil. They will sense what I have done, know mages are behind…” His words disappeared in a coughing fit. Blood flowed freely out of his mouth.
“It’s all right.” She tightened her hold on his hand. “I understand. Other mages will take this as a warning not to parlay with vampires.”
He nodded.
Niall returned with a carafe of water and held it to Jeremiah’s lips. He tried to swallow but coughed most of it back out. Sarai took the jug and tipped some water into her mouth, swishing it around and spitting it out to rid her mouth of vampire residue. She thought twice before spitting on the carpet, but it was such a godawful mess, one more mouthful of anything wouldn’t make a whit of difference.
The eagle shifter ran to them and placed his hands on either side of Jeremiah’s head. Sarai felt a jolt of magic and figured the eagle must command healing magic. She could do simple things, but Jeremiah’s problem was beyond her skills.
Jeremiah cracked his eyes again. “Let me go,” he said to the eagle shifter. “Too far gone.”
“You are not.” The eagle’s tone cracked like a whip. “Are you going to help me or feel so sorry for yourself you give up?”
“I will help.” More blood gushed, this time from nose and mouth, running down his chest. “Hurts,” he moaned. “Burns.”
Sarai didn’t see how the eagle shifter could intervene. The death she’d sensed earlier was indeed close.
“Give me room to work,” the eagle instructed.
Sarai let go of Jeremiah’s hand. “I’ll be here,” she told him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Niall led her to a small table where a pile of clothing sat. “While I was on the prowl for water, I poked through a closet or two. Didn’t figure you’d want a vampire robe, but these bastards made a practice of imprisoning human slaves to feed from. They had quite a clothing collection.”
“Did you free who you found?”
“Aye. Those who weren’t too debilitated have already left.” Niall didn’t mention the others, and she didn’t ask not wanting any more of a visual than she already had.
Sarai picked through the stack, finding woolen pants, a stretchy top, and a tightly woven sweater. Niall had even come up with socks. “Thanks. Want to help me find my shoes?”
“Where are they?”
She pointed to where she’d been standing when she’d seen the vampires heading for freedom. Niall kicked vampire bones aside, digging until he came up with first one running shoe, and then the other.
Shoes always survived shifting. She put them on about the time a pitiful howl rose from Jeremiah. Her eyes filled with tears when she looked at Niall. “Damn but he was brave.”
“Aye, but he used us. Lied to us.”
“True enough, but if we’d known, he probably couldn’t have pulled this off. One of the vamps might have picked up the plot from our minds.”
Niall wrapped his arms around her. “Darling, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“You’re quoting proverbs?”
He smiled. “Is that what it is. I’ve always credited Saint Bernard of Clairvaux with that one.”
She rolled her eyes. “When did he live?”
Niall shrugged. “Middle of the twelfth century, give or take.”
Another gut-wrenching shriek filled the room. Stephan joined them. “We need to leave. I’ve ascertained we’re in Eastern Europe. It will take a long time—and a lot of magic—to get back to the ghost town where we left everyone.”
“That would explain the castle,” Niall muttered.
The harsh astringent smell of poison grew far stronger. Sarai worked her way around pools of ichor and vampire remains to return to Jeremiah. It fel
t like she’d abandoned him to the torments of the damned.
The eagle shifter sat next to the mage, hunting knife in hand, chanting in Gaelic. He’d stripped off Jeremiah’s clothing and made a series of ritualistic cuts along his torso, inner arms, and inner thighs. Whenever he hit a certain note, all the cuts pulsed, and clear liquid oozed from them.
Sarai looked closely at the mage’s face. It didn’t appear quite so pasty and drawn, and he was breathing a little better. She hadn’t believed the eagle shifter, but damn if his intervention wasn’t working.
Stephan knelt next to the eagle. “Ronnie. How much longer?”
“I’m almost done. We have to get moving, huh?”
“Is Jeremiah strong enough for a long teleport?” Sarai asked, concerned about the mage who’d decided to play double agent, with foreknowledge he’d pay the ultimate price for his valor.
“I think so,” the eagle replied. “He’s tough. I wasn’t sure I could stop the poison’s spread, but once we got going, things went better than I expected.”
Niall and the wolf shifter joined them.
The eagle sang one more round of chanting. This time, barely anything extruded from the cuts. “Good enough,” the eagle muttered. He placed his hand atop each of the wounds, and they closed as if they’d never been there.
Groaning, Jeremiah rolled to a sit, and the healer helped him with his clothes. Jeremiah made a face. “Ewww. I stink like vampires.”
“We all do, son,” the eagle said. “Welcome back from death’s doorstep.”
“Thanks for not giving up on me.” The mage smiled crookedly but winced as he slid his jacket over his shoulders.
The eagle shifter made a face. “I work as hard as my patients. If you’d told me you were finished, that you’d given up, I’d have had second thoughts about stepping in.”
Niall planted himself in front of Jeremiah. “Was the tale about Micah false?” At Jeremiah’s nod, he continued. “How could you be sure he wouldn’t return and spoil everything for you?”
Jeremiah focused bloodshot blue eyes on Niall. “I wasn’t. It was the only part of tonight that was a calculated guess. I assumed if we moved quickly enough, none of the ones who’d gone for weapons would be back.”