“Strike is fighting one of Death's lackeys,” someone called from the other side of the street.
“Death's lackey, I like that,” I said as I bounced from foot to foot, smiling at the vampire.
Strike widened his eyelids at someone behind me and nodded to where Death and Ash stood.
Boot falls sounded all around us, and warriors spilled out on the street. Surrounding us in a circle. Several large warriors stood around Death and Ash, forming a wall of muscle that kept the two from going anywhere. I watched it all in my periphery as I circled the big guy with my fists up.
Strike lunged between us throwing a jab, so slow that I knew it was a fake. I dodged and sidestepped the left hook, only to have a right uppercut clip my jaw. His hits just kept coming, like the vampire was a fucking whirlwind of fists. I jumped from one side to the next, ducking and rolling out of the way. Each time I flipped one way or the next, the crowd of warriors around us erupted in laughs and guffaws. What looked like ration tickets exchanged hands. And someone called out, “Ten to one! I’m taking bets ten to one!”
“Ten to one? I would have given you better odds.” I squinted an eye and pretended to evaluate him. “At least five to one.”
Strike guffawed, and a smile bloomed on his face each time he narrowly missed hitting me. “They’re trying not to hurt your ego too much.”
“Impossible.”
“Looks like the Queen of Seattle accidentally turned a fucking jackrabbit,” a warrior called out.
Strike bellowed a laugh, and I jumped in and popped him straight in the chin. Blood trickled down his chin, and he laughed harder. An arm thicker than my leg wrapped around me, effectively pinning my arms to my side and lifting me up off the ground. I tried to wiggle out of it, but Strike might as well have wrapped me up in steel cables, he was so strong.
A gigantic hand came down and patted me on the head.
“What's your friend's name, Death?” Strike boomed as he turned me to face the crowd.
Death and Ash hadn't moved. They both looked upon the scene as if they couldn't be more bored.
“His maker named him Ruin,” Death said, lifting his sandy brows.
“Well, I'm renaming the little fucker. From this day on, we call him Jackrabbit,” Strike boomed, making the crowd erupt in laughter.
“Who needs dignity? If you give me a drink, you can call me whatever you want,” I said, my voice coming out strained, as I couldn't get in a full breath of air.
This had the effect I had hoped for. Several of the warriors bent forward in stitches while all of their eyes warmed to us. A few were even clapping Ash on the back, while, not surprisingly, everyone avoided Death. Instead of setting me down, Strike carried me across the space, holding me to his side. We barged into a tavern that was carved into the stone, and Strike called, “Get Jack here a drink on me, Bones, and get me my usual.” He set me down on a barstool and patted my head for good measure. The crowd of warriors surged in behind us, filling the stone cavern. The smell of burning moss filled the room, along with the sweet scent of fresh human blood. The smell was there but I didn’t see anyone feeding in the area.
The vampire called Bones washed two beer steins, scrubbing the green glass. She opened a bottle for me but filled Strike's cup from a tap directly out of the wall. As the amber liquid started to pour from the wall, the fresh scent of blood grew stronger.
“Can I have some of that instead?” I asked as Bones slid the cup over to Strike.
Everyone in our direct vicinity fell silent, as if they were holding a collective breath. Strike and Bones’ gazes met, and I could see a silent message pass between them.
Strike laughed so loud, my heart flipped. “Don’t be ungrateful, Jack,” he said as he slid the bottled brew over to me. “This is just cheap swill, anyway. I bought you the good stuff.”
“Well, thank you. I’ve never had my ass kicked by such a gracious host.” Ignoring the rapid beating of my heart, I clinked glasses with Strike. I took my first sip, tasting the familiar bite of moss beer, and forced it down my swollen throat. The light bruising was the worst I’d sustained, thankfully it would heal in the next few hours.
“So, how did it feel to be a warrior, a king, and then knocked back down to a warrior?” Strike asked.
I laughed and took another swig. “I was always a warrior, Strike. I just dressed up like one of them for a couple weeks, but no one was fooled.” As I talked, I examined behind the counter, looking at the bottles lined up, marked with the stamps of Portland's one distillery. A web of ivory tree roots jutted in and out of the stone back wall behind the bar as well. “Only difference is now the nobles know my fucking name.” I squeezed my fingers around the mug, feeling the cold glass warm under my fingers. “Not a good thing.”
Strike patted my head again. “I hear that.” He took another swig and sighed, exhaling a cloud of pungent moss beer mixed with fresh blood. “She's fine, by the way.”
I took another sip and kept my gaze pinned forward. “Kori?”
Strike set his beefy arms on the counter and leaned in. “The consort. She walks by my post barefoot every day. Even with no shoes, you take one look at that woman and know she’s a force to be reckoned with. She looks like she's just wandering around, but her eyes are sharp, like she's planning an attack. Even so, she always has a kind word for everyone she passes. If King Ravage wanted to hurt her, he would have done it by now. I guess he just likes her company.” Strike clapped me on the shoulder. “Who knows? Maybe he'll grow soft and let her out before the five years are up.”
My heart raced at his words, as I tried to understand the implication of the fact that Ravage's warriors didn't know that Kori's deal with the king had changed. Maybe Ravage was the kind of leader who didn't inform his underlings of his plans until they needed to know, but from what I understood of the ruler of Nightendale, everything he did was deliberate. I chugged the last of my moss beer and lifted my bottle in thanks to the big man. “Ravage told us that he's going to marry her. I can't remember the last time I even heard of a vampire marrying a human--or anyone at all, for that matter.”
Strike took the time to wipe the blood from his chin, and he gave me one more pat on the shoulder. “Well, the king watches her like she's his reason for living. You might not miss the royals, but I bet you miss the courtesans, eh, Jack?”
When Bones lifted a bottle to see if I wanted another drink, I waved her off with a smile.
“Funnily enough, Jack was my human name,” I lied with a shrug.
“Not fucking surprised in the least.” Strike bellowed a laugh before patting my shoulder and heading into the crowd. “Keep ahead of the punches, Jack.”
When I made it back out of the tavern, Ash and Death were in the same spot, though the warriors around them had dispersed.
“What I want to know is...” Ash said as he fell into step beside me. “How come when I hit someone, they immediately try to kill me, and when you hit someone, they adopt you as their long-lost brother?”
“Because I'm too pretty to kill, Ash.” I pointed to my scarred cheek, split lip, and my scraggly hair that I'd pulled back in three braids. Between the three of us, no one in their right mind would think I was the good-looking one. Death was larger than a bear, muscular in a way that made me feel thin, and had long silky ass white hair and lips redder than a fucking rose. Ash was even worse. His hair was a blonde halo of short curls, and his chiseled face made old, hardened warriors blush. We were about the same build, average for a vampire if not on the small side. And then there was me.
Kori had actually been the only person to ever notice me first out of the group. Back before we had been kings and Kori was the favorite courtesan of another king. What a strange parallel we were again in, as if we had been granted a quick moment where in a parallel reality, we could be with her, and she would be happy. Then, the world reset, and Kori was again controlled by a vicious vampire king, and we were lowly warriors who weren't even allowed to be in her presence.
As we exited the town and headed back toward the palace, Ash swore, “How did we not even fucking notice that there are no humans here?”
“Because last time we were here, we were only in the palace with dozens of courtesans,” I said. I hadn't even really considered the fact that every single courtesan left with us on the train back to Seattle last year. I had assumed that some of them were from Nightendale, but now that I thought back on it, they could have been from Seattle.
“Strike told me that Ravage might let her go before her five-year sentence is up. I guess the king watches her like she's carrying his reason for living with her. I informed Strike that King Ravage plans to marry her.”
Ash rubbed the back of his neck while his gaze combed over the shimmering kingdom. “Interesting.”
That was the biggest understatement of all time. I was getting a real clear picture of what was going on here, and it wasn’t good.
Clearly there was a reason that King Ravage closed the doors to his kingdom for so long. He had hundreds of vampire warriors and no humans. What if Ravage didn't take Portland because he wanted another kingdom? What if instead, he took it for its largest natural resource: human blood? Was Kori staying to save the humans of Portland or was there another reason she’d agreed to marry him?
Regardless of her motives for staying, I doubted that Ravage planned to love and cherish her from this day forward. His citizens didn’t even know there was going to be a wedding. If Kori had ever truly been free to walk out of Nightendale tomorrow as per her consortship contract, Ravage would have told his warriors. Ravage had no plans to let Kori leave alive or us either for that matter. for the first time since we stepped foot in Nightendale, dread flowed through me. I could deal with the idea of her moving on, even moving on to a cruel asshole if that’s what she wanted. What I couldn’t cope with was the idea that Kori was trapped with someone who had wrapped her up in an evil plot.
As we turned out of the town and started up the long stone stairway that led up to Nightendale palace, something hard collided with the back of my skull.
“The hell?” I said, rubbing my head as I turned around on the stairway.
I peered back at the town, which was more a long line of caves painted into the stone wall. There was a flash of movement, and then a figure with a sweatshirt on and the hood pulled low slipped into a crack in the stone wall I hadn’t even seen.
“Well, that right there is a trap if I ever saw one,” Ash said as he came to stand beside me. “Then again, this whole fucking thing is one big trap.”
I turned toward Ash. “I say we see what the hooded guy wants. They seemed human-sized.”
Ash nodded down the stairway. “Doesn’t look like we have much of a choice now.”
When I glanced back, Death was disappearing into the crack behind the hooded figure and vanishing from sight.
Chapter Six
Kori
The night garden shone under the illumination of the palace lights. It looked so beautiful and so very far away as I dangled thirty feet above the roses. The tang of leather overwhelmed my taste buds as I bit down on my boot. My neck ached and my arm muscles screamed. The impractical sheer blue lace dress did me no favors, catching on every bit of roughness on the trellis wood. I shoved the ends of my one booted foot and one bare foot into the wooden trellis diamonds as I climbed down.
Sweat gathered in more than just the usual places, like in the folds of my eyelids and behind my knees. Reaching for the next thick stock on the vine-covered trellis, my foot slipped. Scrabbling for purchase, I hooked my fingers in and practically yanked my arm out of its socket.
“Damn it,” I grumbled into the leather, finding that though the words were just a muffled mess, it did make me feel a little better.
“What happened to your clothing?” Someone whispered up.
I gasped, making the leather shoe slip out of my mouth and plunge downward. Frantic, I glanced down just in time to see my brother Timothy snatch my boot from the air.
“You should be glad I caught that since you were trying to burn my eyes out with your nakedness.” He pretended to hold up a hand to block his face. “I really don't want the first naked person I see to be my sister.”
Timothy was being ridiculous. With three siblings as courtesans, he’d seen way more nakedness than he could probably scrub out of his eyes in a lifetime. My youngest brother was the only one of us four that escaped a life of what was tantamount to being a vampire prostitute, and he only avoided that life because it was an absolute necessity.
Unlike my two older siblings who inherited the blood mage power of Ignis, or the ability to make fire surge from their hands, Timothy was born with the blood mage power of Tempus, or the ability to see snatches of the future. It was the most sought after and dangerous power a blood mage could possess, and we hid him from vampire society for all of his life.
I had inherited both, but for some reason, that meant that I couldn’t use either.
“Trust me, I don't want to be wearing this,” I said as I continued descending the trellis.
When I made it to the ground, Timothy was holding out an empty leather shoe. It had been overflowing with a small fortune in jewelry when I’d begun my descent. I was never quite sure how my brother made his living back when we resided in vampire-controlled Portland, but in moments like these, I suspected pickpocketing.
“Thanks,” he said, handing the boot back.
His black hair curled in a halo around a face with a sharp slightly crooked nose, cleft chin, and mischievous eyes. His eyes were the most disconcerting part about him and part of the reason he'd never fit in anywhere, not with humans, not with vampires, not even with other blood mages. His yellow eyes split up the center, like cat eyes, giving him a look like he was always plotting something, which wasn’t far off from the truth. “Well, this is going to be awkward, but I suppose you want a hug anyway.”
“Yes.” I finished pulling on my boot, hopping in place as I did. “I’d love a hug.”
Timothy held out his arms, and I fell right into them and hugged him tight. He felt exceptionally small, though my younger brother stood a few inches taller than me, and his arms wrapped me up and squeezed me tight. I couldn’t have anticipated the depravation of having no one but Ravage touch me for a full year. I didn’t even know that I was so sated with love and affection until I was starving for it. Timothy's infrequent visits and bear hugs were the only thing that got me through the weeks here in Nightendale.
“Tonight is still the night of the escape, Kori, but Death, Ash, and Ruin’s arrival here changed what I saw. Be ready for anything.”
“Ravage brought them back here. I don't know what to do.” I did my best to even my breathing. Before Ravage gained access to my Tempus powers, Timothy’s premonitions rarely changed. Fate was an ever-changing thing, but Timothy usually only gained glimpses into the future when they were almost certain. Now that Ravage had premonitions as well, Timothy’s prophecies changed course every time he visited me. It was as if Timothy and Ravage were waging a secret war to orchestrate the course of the future, only my brother had the advantage as the King of Nightendale still didn’t know Timothy existed.
My brother’s gaze travelled a thousand miles away, though he didn’t have that glazed look that came with prophecy. “I saw Ravage killing Death in front of everyone—it’s a close fight, but Ravage tears out Death’s throat and then tears his corpse apart in a rage. Ravage is so angry. Then Ravage will use his powers to kill the other two with air and fire, it’s horrible. He burns them from within. You don’t want me to describe it. That’s when Ravage will chase you down, covered in all of their blood—”
“Timothy.” I squeezed his forearm. “You’re right. I don’t need the details.” After all this time, Ravage planned to reveal his sorcerer powers, and apparently kill everyone with them.
It had taken weeks for Timothy to find a way in to see me and report the extent of Ravage's powers. It had been my own fault
as when I started feeding Ravage my blood, I gave him access to the Tempus ability to see the future—a power I forgot that I had in my blood. Timothy revealed that too. Apparently, the reason that I didn't have access to my powers was because I was both a latent Tempus and a latent Ignis. I had two blood mage powers and access to none at all.
Unfortunately, I had no idea if I discovered all of this before Ravage stole my memories or not. Timothy only knew what he'd pieced together from prophecies and information from our other siblings, whom he also kept tabs on.
I didn't want to pull away from my brother, but I knew he couldn't stay. Composing myself, I broke away and looked up into my brother's face. “I wish I could know the plan.”
“There can't be a plan, Kori. We're coming up with them continuously, one after the other.”
I shook my head. “I know.”
The moment we decided to do something, there would be an outcome, and Ravage might see it. Timothy insisted that the only way I could ever escape was by spontaneous action. Brendan and Genevieve were part of this, too, but none of us knew what the others were doing.
“Has anyone made it back into...”
Before I finished my statement, Timothy was shaking his head. No one had made it back into Portland. All we knew was what Timothy foresaw, and that was a thick darkness through the whole city and empty streets. The only lights came from the Portland High Court, where a party was in full swing, and blood oozed from all of the windows and poured out the door into the street. Timothy didn't know when it would happen or if it had already happened, he just knew that was where fate was leading us.
“Okay, well, the new method Ravage gave me was to cut out his heart and let it sit in a vat of liquid silver for days.”
Timothy rolled his eyes to the darkness above. “That's one of the more feasible ones though still not anywhere near practical. First of all, his healing powers would make it very hard to get his heart out in time. Also, he could just swat us away like flies with his power over air.” Timothy rubbed his chin. “Ask him for a method of killing him that would poison his blood.”
Ash (Fire & Blood Book 2) Page 4