Cursed Relic: (Witchling Wars: Vampire Echelon Book 1)

by Shawn Knightley

  “Not one to let go of the past, are you?”

  “You’re one to talk,” I snapped as I headed for the door.

  “What did you see in your vision just now?” he asked randomly.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “I heard you,” he said. “You were gasping for air and you were clearly disgruntled. Now tell me what you saw.”

  I took a deep breath before answering him, hating all the while that he knew so much about kruxa. “Me trapped in the hole.”

  “What else?”

  I didn’t want to tell him. I wanted to keep my secrets so I had at least a few things that were mine. A few precious details that I could know that no one else was privy to. But slaves don’t have such luxuries.

  “I..” I stammered, trying to decide in those few seconds how much to reveal to him. There wasn’t exactly a choice in the matter. I had to work with him even if he was deciding to work with me from afar. “I saw Victor.”

  Tobias’s expression changed. But not to a look of surprise. His eyes lit up.

  “What?” I asked, already angry that he would dare seem so amused or even happy by what I had said.

  “It’s rather pleasing to know certain vampires I know from the coven are still alive and thriving.”

  If there hadn’t been so little space between the two of us, I would have thrust my magic into him the same as I had Christophe.

  “You know our orders, Tobias. We must hunt down those who are too rabid and dangerous to pledge allegiance to the vixra. That includes Victor.”

  Memories started flooding through my mind. Unwelcome memories of encounters I had with Victor in the past. The man had tried to kill me multiple times. Victor was more dangerous than any other vampire I had ever fought. And I didn’t buy the notion that the vixra believed. The notion that if vampires had control over their urges then they weren’t as dangerous. Knowing Tobias as long as I had taught me one key and salient thing. A vampire who is in control had room to be cunning. And a cunning vampire can kill more methodically than one who isn’t in control of their urges and impulses. Vampires in control of their cravings can cover their tracks, go on a spree night after night, and make the deaths look like nothing more than the act of a common criminal without leaving a single trace between the killings to link them. That made Victor a force to be reckoned with.

  “I want to find Victor and speak to him,” Tobias said. “Before you make any rash judgments.”

  “Yes, I shouldn’t judge someone who has tried to kill me in the past. Nor bring up the fact that he obviously has vixra blood. And he knows how to use it efficiently. How else would he know how to manipulate my visions? And I wonder who taught him how to do that?”

  I took a step closer to Tobias with a scowl on my face that could damn near compete with his. Something in his eyes shifted as if he knew something I didn’t. He was smiling at me without moving his lips. I could sense his amusement. Although, one thing was clear. My accusation didn’t bother him in the slightest.

  “I don’t need to teach Victor such things. He has his own set of skills,” he said. “You’d be shocked the amount of magic vampires can wield after when they know how to use it.”

  “I don’t care to know.”

  “Yes, you do. Your efforts to find them and fight them will be close to nothing without knowing the depth of their training. Only I can tell you that. You will wait until I’ve found Victor and I will determine if he is capable of being reasoned with. Go home and I’ll call you once I’ve learned more.”

  I turned around and headed for the door, feeling the cylinder on my side with one hand to give me confidence that he wasn’t outmaneuvering me. Arthur trusted me with a deadly weapon used to hunt vampires. I would use it as I saw fit. And I would follow Tobias where ever he went once night fell to hunt down Victor and kill him myself. Tobias couldn’t be trusted to handle it. He had too many attachments to the former members of his fallen coven.

  “You do that,” I said with a sneer before the elevator doors closed, separating us and showing me nothing more than my own reflection in the metallic box surrounding me.

  Once I was out of the underground parking garage and back out on the street, Kitty flew down to my arm. I stroked her feathers before lifting my wrist back in the air so she could fly above me.

  “What happened, nanna? What did he say?” she asked me.

  “He wants to save Victor. And probably many of the other vampires hiding out. You were right. We can’t trust him. He might be enslaved to the vixra but he also might be willing to suffer more punishment from them if it means saving certain vile members of the Catach-Brayin. He’s out to salvage whatever he can.”

  “So we have to find Victor before Tobias does.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said, remembering the news blip that appeared on my phone only ten minutes before. “Victor likes a show. If he seeks to control the other vampires as Tobias did then he’ll have to showcase his ruthlessness to exert his power. I have a feeling he will come to us. We won’t even need to set out some bait.” I took out my phone and read through the article about the president’s impending arrival. “It’s coming straight to us as well.”

  6

  I watched from a hillside overlooking the highway as President McAllaster drove by in his presidential motorcade along with armed vehicles and Secret Service agents surrounding him. I had seen a few presidential escorts during the brief years I lived in Washington DC, watching over the Catach-Brayin by orders of the vixra when the vampire coven was at its most powerful. This was different in some way. There was an air of alarm. I could sense that the agents inside the vehicles were nervous. Almost as though they could feel the danger growing in the city where vampires had chosen to make their home in the nearby mountains.

  ‘They can’t possibly know.’

  Or could they? My vision suggested that they might one day. Was that day sooner than I anticipated?

  Humans were once so acutely aware of the danger. They believed in witches. They believed in beings that would break into their homes at night and take their children’s souls. Possess them. Curse them. Even kill them. Only they associated such work with the devil. My kind are not of the devil. Neither are the creatures who would love nothing more than to feast on their human blood. But they were still other. Something ghastly that wasn’t meant to come into being. I was the one trying to stop them from making humans into their evening meal. And yet, the average human once placed my kind in the same basket as those who wanted to feed on their blood.

  I felt for the metal cylinder at my side, wondering what sort of magic the vixra used when swinging the sword. Arthur said it had certain capabilities. I hoped they would come through for the likes of a kruxa with diluted magic. Because whether or not I was willing to admit it, I was nervous too.

  I trudged down to my Jeep parked on the hillside after traffic resumed to normal and the president made his way with the Secret Service agents down the highway. Once he reached the Molly Brown Hotel, I knew it was time to start scoping the area being prepared for his speech. A large park inside the city sometimes used in the summer for Shakespearean theater plays. People were already starting to gather in the grassy area in front of the stage barrier, feeling as though they were getting a chance to see something special. If my vision was true, they weren’t entirely wrong. They just didn’t know the true nature of it yet.

  I sneaked into one of the nearby buildings. One I was certain the Secret Service had already checked inside and out to make sure nothing nefarious was going on. But I wasn’t a lone gunman in the back of a building or a gathering of mysterious men on a grassy knoll. I was just a single witchling. A slave. An immortal. A reincarnated soul. A woman trapped that had no other choice but to make sure the Secret Service was able to do their job properly when they probably weren’t even aware of what they were facing.

  Once I was on the roof of the building, I cast a shadow charm over my body high enough to avoid detection and not be se
en by any cameras in the area. Then I scoped the park below me where a podium was being prepared for the president.

  The best place to watch him was definitely from the park. There would be a few who got up close enough to see him. I needed to be one of them. As I searched around a little more I realized that any vampire looking to attack the president might be a little mad. There were so many cameras. And the highways leading out of the area would be too congested and too narrow to make a quick getaway.

  Unless a getaway or going around undetected wasn’t the goal. For all I knew, Victor wanted a show. He wanted to be seen. Maybe even the unthinkable was on his mind. Perhaps he wanted to reveal vampires to the world by attacking the president in broad daylight.

  The memory flashed before my mind of the encounters I had with him in the past. He was old. Extremely old. Perhaps as old as Tobias. But his skin didn’t have the smooth appearance that Tobias’s did. Ancient vampire age didn’t suit Victor. The last time I saw him I could see some of the veins in his face through his white vampire skin. His eyes were more pale than blue. His sandy hair was always cut short but long enough to give him a somewhat boyish appearance. One he definitely needed given that any magical being would know what he was by looking at him.

  “Kruxa,” his voice whispered in my ears with a strange sort of echo. This time, he didn’t need to wait for me to have a vision. Somehow, he had a direct link to my mind. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why. But I knew for sure that I didn’t like it.

  “Let me guess,” I whispered. “You’re watching me.”

  “You make it so easy. How can I resist?”

  “You’re not going to get away with this,” I said to him, closing my eyes and hoping that I might get a glimpse of his less than appealing appearance. At least to me. Some girls would find him attractive. Only to realize their mistake after he plunged his teeth into their necks.

  I heard him start to laugh. As though the notion of stopping him or even attempting to try was somewhat comical.

  “Same kruxa. Always trying to prevent the inevitable. Look where that got you.”

  A flash of anger erupted inside of me. So few people knew of my curse. The past lives I’ve lived. The number of times I’ve run from the vixra to make sure the prophecy surrounding my birth didn’t come true.

  ‘How does he know such things?’

  “Why quit a winning formula?” I taunted him.

  “Winning? How’s it working out for you now?”

  He squeezed the invisible cord around my throat, reminding me once again of what I was. A slave.

  I shot my magic through my palm at my throat to stop him. It might have prevented him from squeezing any tighter but it certainly didn’t prevent the shock of my magic from jolting straight through me with a hard zap.

  He let go of the cord and I let out a massive gasp, crumbling to the floor of the roof as I struggled to maintain my balance. In my moment of distraction, the shadow cast around me disappeared. I frantically threw the charm back up to hide me before any Secret Service agents saw a young woman with a gun on her belt standing on top of a building awaiting the president’s arrival and got the wrong idea.

  ‘I can’t waste any time. He’s going to try something.’

  I huddled in the corner and peered over the side as the spell worked its magic and made me invisible with a shadow cast over my form. I saw more Secret Service agents scanning the buildings, on the hunt for any sudden movements that might give away any potential assassins.

  ‘I recall a time when presidents had no protection at all. What times we live in.’

  I heard the familiar sound of a bird cawing in the sky above me through a nearby open window. Kitty was soaring high in the air as the crowd started to cheer and boo all at once as the president was introduced by the Governor to come give his speech.

  “He came to speak out against terrorism that I caused to save a life only for me to have to save him from the exact same beasts,” I complained.

  “I dunno, nanna,” Kitty said as she flew closer to the window where I was watching from the corner. “You could let it happen. I never did like this president much.”

  “There’s rarely been a president I did like. But that doesn’t mean that I want him dead. Or that I want our kind revealed.”

  “You said that the military convoy in your vision was wearing special armor. It protected their necks. So maybe witchlings won’t be revealed. Maybe only vampires will be.”

  “That’s not a desirable alternative,” I said. “One will inevitably lead to the other. Lord knows a vampire won’t keep quiet about our kind if they’re captured and tortured.”

  “If they can capture one. Fat chance.”

  I took out my gun from my leather holster hidden under my leather jacket and cocked a bullet in the barrel. The magic-infused bullets would paralyze any vampires in the area if I saw them but they would also reveal my location. One shot would leave people wondering where the sound came from and would cause a panic. Two shots or more would reveal where I was to any trained ear. And there were many of them about.

  I cast a shadow once more to keep me hidden and watched the eyes of the agents scanning the area, only to realize too late that their eyes were looking for the wrong sort of bad guy. A few vampires were moving through the crowd of people, edging their way closer to the stage and podium where the president was now standing.

  ‘For god’s sake! How many day walkers were in Tobias’s coven?’

  The people below were cheering too loud with their arms held up high recording with their cell phones to notice that some were starting to drop like flies. The vampires were stabbing random members of the crowd and feeding on them each time they cheered. It was the same tactic the vampires used at concerts.

  ‘Damn it! They’re getting more and more brazen!’

  Then a familiar face reached the edge where the president was blocked off with a metal barrier away from the crowd. I only saw the back of his head at first. Then he turned around and I saw the small frame of his face down below. He made eye contact with me as if he knew exactly where I was before he even turned around.

  ‘Victor!’

  He was smiling at me. Taunting me. He knew right where I was and that I was watching him. I saw him raise his hand up as a bright orange light seeped through his palm. A ball of fire weaved over his skin as he summoned elemental magic right there in the crowd. He was ready to aim it directly at the president and set him ablaze. Right before all the video cameras, the Secret Service agents, and the entire world.

  ‘He’s not going to feed on him. He’s going to burn him alive!’

  I raised my gun and took aim right at his head. I would gladly risk causing another panic from a shot being fired near the president than have him burned alive before the entire nation.

  ‘Wait a minute. Victor’s not a day walker. How is he even outside?”

  “Nanna, watch out!” Kitty screeched above me.

  I turned around to see a familiar man standing ten feet behind me with a gun aimed right for my chest. “Christophe?”

  ‘How is he seeing through my shadow charm?’

  He shot me faster than I could whip around my hands to stop him with my magic. The bullet soared through the air and struck me right in the shoulder, throwing me backward with tremendous force. An unbearable pain exploded in my side as he shot again, grazing the right side of my torso. I tumbled right over the edge of the rooftop and plummeted through the air only to hit a cloth awning over a cafe several floors down. The awning broke my fall gently enough but only for a second before I slid right off and onto the sidewalk in front of people standing on chairs and tables trying to get a better view of the president.

  The crowd in the park heard the gunshots fired and began screaming. Followed by a stampede of people rushing out of the park as fast as possible. A Secret Service agent only a few feet away from me hollered into the walkie pinned to his collar. “Shots fired! Shots fired! Get POTUS out of here.”
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  “Is he down?” Another nearby agent shouted through the walkie.

  A few people in the cafe saw me tumble from the awning with blood pouring down my arm and leg. It didn’t escape the attention of the Secret Service agent either. He didn’t hesitate to pull out his weapon.

  “Get down!” he screamed.

  ‘I’m already down you half-wit. Can’t you see the blood?’

  Kitty screeched above me and soared down to attack the agent with her long talons, striking him in the face again and again as he cried out.

  ‘Bless you, Kitty.’

  It was a small distraction but it was what I needed. I got up as fast as I could. Which wasn’t fast at all. I was hobbling. There was no time to wait for the wounds to heal all the way. I had to get out of there.

  I quickly raised my right arm and cast another shadow charm around me, forcing an invisible cloud over my form so people wouldn’t see me stumbling around the corner and desperately trying to get away.

  It didn’t matter. There was blood on the sidewalk, an array of panicked humans running everywhere, and vampires catching my scent as I struggled to move down the street with two half-healed bullet wounds. Lucky for all the humans running around, vampires would much rather drink from a kruxa than a human if it meant they could get day walking abilities.

  I could feel the magic from inside the bullet streaming through my blood, trying to paralyze me. I felt it first in my shoulder. Then my side. It gradually started working its way down as my body tried healing, counteracting the mixture inside the bullets a little too slow.

  ‘Magic-infused bullets. How did Christophe get magic-infused bullets?’

  I pulled out my gun as I leaned against the wall of a building to check the magazine. Sure enough, there were two bullets missing.

  ‘Fool! I should have known by the weight of the gun.’

  Christophe must have taken them out of my gun while we were in the car heading back to Denver.