Summoning as much of my remaining power as I could muster, I pushed back against the tendrils of magic blocking my mouth. I couldn’t escape the bonds locking me in place, but if I could regain the ability to speak, I hoped to be able to stall Eskola while I figured out how to free Chase from his seemingly inevitable fate. It took a considerable amount of pressure on the blood magic invading my throat, but after a few minutes of manipulation, I’d rejected it enough to regain the use of my voice.
“Eskola,” I croaked.
The vampire lifted his head from Chase’s arm, letting the limp limb drop into his lap. Chase had slumped so that his body draped over the armchair, and I worried Eskola had also been lying about turning Chase into one of his kind. It was just as likely that he’d decided to bleed his victim dry instead.
“Patience, dear,” said Eskola. “I’ll get to you in due time.”
My mind raced to find a way to get us both out of this. If I didn’t think of something soon, there’d be no hope for either of us.
“I want to make a deal,” I said. “But first, I need to see that my friend is still alive.”
“The boy lives,” said Eskola. “For now anyway. What is it that you propose?”
“I want proof. Show me he’s alive, or no deal.”
“Very well,” said Eskola.
He waved a hand over Chase’s eyes and Chase regained consciousness with a terrified gasp. Seeing Eskola hovering over him, Chase fell over backwards, scrabbling away from the vampire until he’d backed up against the wall. With nowhere to escape to, he brought his knees up to his chest and hugged them tightly, his body wracked with choking sobs as he curled into a protective ball.
“Pathetic,” Eskola said under his breath. He returned his attention to me. “Now, what’s this deal you’re on about? I’m enjoying this little diversion, but the night grows old, and I don’t tolerate sunlight as well as I once did.”
I looked past him to the windows. Despite the heavy tint, I could see that the darkness of night had faded, rich purple sky heralding the coming dawn. We’d been underground for so long that it was almost morning. While most vampires could easily survive exposure to the sun without melting into a hissing puddle of goo, it weakened their inherent blood magic enough that they tended to avoid it.
“On the condition you let Chase go free with the promise that he will live the rest of his life under your personal protection, I will agree to be your personal mage for as long as you require my service.”
“That is an interesting proposition,” said Eskola. He glanced at the whimpering Chase, and then seemed to make his decision. “I accept your terms, but with one minor clarification. You agree to become my personal mage, obeying all of my orders without question. This includes allowing me to feed on you.”
“It hardly seems different from what you were going to do anyway,” I said.
“Under these terms, my feedings would be much more… restrained,” he said with a bloody grin. “Or we can revert to my original plan where I gorge on your blood until you’re nothing but an empty husk.”
“Fine. I accept your deal.”
Eskola clapped his hands together and held them clasped in front of him. “Excellent. I’m going to enjoy having a personal mage again. It has been an age since the last one died in a most unfortunate accident.”
“Not that I don’t trust you to uphold your end of the bargain, but I won’t agree to anything unless we perform a blood oath.”
“That seems a tad excessive, don’t you think?” Eskola flashed me a look of mock indignation.
“We are talking about a lifetime of indentured servitude on my part. If what I know about your abilities is even half true, I imagine you’ll be able to make that last much longer than I might otherwise expect to live. I think a blood oath is perfectly reasonable under the circumstances.”
“Have it your way.”
Eskola walked to the other side of the room where he lifted a small silver dagger from an ornamental stand. He returned to me, lifted my hand, and drew the tip of the dagger across my palm. A fat line of blood welled up along its path. He then held out his own hand and repeated the process, leaving a matching slash of crimson across his palm.
Knowing I only had seconds to make it work, I touched my energy and sent it surging towards Eskola’s blood. I cast the same spell I’d used to boil water back at Chase’s house what felt like months earlier. It was a spell that took hardly any energy, and I had no idea if it would work or not.
When Eskola screamed and jerked backwards, steam and smoke rising from his upturned palm, I knew my gamble had paid off. His hold on me broke almost immediately, and I tossed out a magical protection barrier as I rushed past him to check on Chase. The shield wasn’t much, but it would be enough to block another attempt to bind me against my will.
Once I was sure Chase was physically intact, if not entirely emotionally so, I glanced at Eskola and was relieved to see him writhing on the ground, shrieking in pain as his blood continued to boil inside of him.
There was no time to enjoy my victory. Guards would be arriving any second, so I zapped Chase with a light jolt of energy to bring him back to alertness. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him up to his feet, supporting his weight until I saw he’d recovered his balance.
“What did you do?” he asked as he took in the scene.
“No time,” I said as I yanked him away. “We have to get out of here.”
I briefly considered running back the way we’d come, but escaping via the private subway car would likely only take us back to D.O.I., provided we made it far enough before they shut the system down remotely. Instead, I led us the opposite direction into what turned out to be the kitchen. Chase snatched a large chef’s knife from a block on the counter, and he held it out in front of him as we ran into the next room. A stainless steel blade wouldn’t do much to deter a vampire, but if it made Chase feel better holding it, I wasn’t going to tell him he was wasting his time.
“Alex!” Chase shouted as a dark form appeared in the hallway in front of me.
Without thinking, I summoned a column of air that slammed into the vampire’s chest, knocking it to the ground. It wasn’t enough to seriously injure or kill him, and I didn’t wait around to see how quickly he’d get back up to come after us.
“Through here,” said Chase.
We ducked into a side room, and Chase slammed the door shut behind us. There was a tiny lock on the doorknob, but it wouldn’t do much to slow down a determined vampire with strength enough to rip the door off its hinges. Our best bet was to hope no one had seen us duck out of the hallway. I cast a small magical barrier around the door to prevent them from tracking us with their natural ability to sniff out human blood from great distances.
“Your hand,” said Chase.
Blood dripped from my fingertip and spilled onto the carpet. I might as well have been sounding an airhorn and lighting fireworks off wherever I went. With this much blood dripping everywhere, I’d probably left a trail that led straight to this very room.
I strengthened the barrier mere seconds before the first vampire slammed into the door. I was running on reserve power now, and I didn’t know how long I could keep the spell in place.
“We have to get out of here,” I said. “I can’t hold them off for long.”
Chase scanned the room. It appeared to be a guest bedroom of sorts, and the only other way out was a large window looking out over a two story drop to ground that sloped away below us. As with every other window in the house, it was heavily tinted to block out the UV light that was so irritating to vampires. Even so, it was still obvious the sky had lightened enough that we were likely minutes away from sunrise.
I watched as Chase picked up a heavy wooden chair, straining as he hurled it at the window where it bounced back without leaving so much as a scratch.
“Are you kidding me?” asked Chase.
“Stand back.”
Diverting just enough power from my shield
to create a pinpoint of heat energy, I sent the tiny bullet into the window with enough force to penetrate the reinforced glass. It did nothing more than leave a tiny smoking hole in the center of the pane, but it would be enough to weaken it.
“Try the chair again,” I said.
This time it worked as intended. The chair sailed through the window, shattering it and sending a shower of glass down onto the lawn below.
Chase peered out over the drop. “Can you, like, levitate us out of here or something?”
“Maybe if I was fully rested,” I said. “But I might be able to soften the landing. When I say jump, you jump, okay?”
“Wait, Alex there must be anoth—”
“Jump!” I shouted as I dropped the shield and sprinted past him.
My hand caught Chase’s sleeve as I launched myself over the edge of the window, and I was relieved when I felt him jump with me instead of hesitating and staying behind. I only had enough energy for one last desperate move. As we hurtled towards the ground, I sent kinetic energy outwards as I would have if I were trying to push a lighter object away. It simply rebounded off the solid earth, dissipating dramatically, yet reflecting enough of the initial force that it slowed our momentum at the precise moment of impact. It lessened our fall enough to save us from shattering legs as we landed and bounced, rag-dolling down the hill away from the house.
Dark figures jumped from the window behind us. I whirled around to blast them backward, but I’d hit the end of my reserves. I was well and truly tapped out, and the only response was a slight ruffling of the grass from the pathetic breeze I’d managed to conjure.
I turned and yelled for Chase to run, but he was already careening down the hill, sprinting as fast as his legs would carry him.
The downward sloping hill made it hard to stay upright without tripping over my own feet as I ran after him, but it was probably the only thing keeping us ahead of the vampires just a dozen or so strides behind. We wouldn’t be able to outrun them for long though. Only the first rays of light shining over the horizon were slowing our pursuers enough to keep them from overtaking us with their normally superhuman speed.
I caught up to Chase as he hurled himself over a waist-high hedge that marked the boundary of a neighboring mansion.
“This way,” I said once I’d cleared the hedge as well. “We need to find a vehicle.”
We raced around the side of the house, frantically trying to outpace the vampires trailing behind us. Orange light from the morning sun bathed the driveway in golden light, and there in the driveway sat our salvation.
With the last bit of power I had left in me, I snapped my fingers and deactivated the alarm on the big white SUV. Another trick I’d learned in my less responsible days.
“You drive,” I shouted as we split up and each went for a door.
We made it inside and slammed the doors shut just as the first vampire caught up to us. The sound of his nails clawing at the glass and metal made my blood run cold, but I was too out of gas to cast the spell necessary to start the vehicle without a key.
Before I could say anything, Chase reached under the steering column, fumbled around for a second, then tore away the plastic cover. His fingers worked quickly, ignoring the dull thump of our pursuers hammering at the window. The glass next to Chase’s head splintered and cracked, but he continued to yank at the wires, peeling back the rubber coating on them until he’d exposed enough of the underlying cable to spark the engine to life.
Chase threw the vehicle in gear and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. The SUV surged forward over a vampire as we peeled out of the driveway, and I saw its broken body lying behind us as Chase took us out onto the road and sped away from the house. I twisted in my seat to get a better view out of the back window, but it seemed none of his companions bothered trying to follow. Each passing second of rising sun weakened their ability to hunt us down, and I fought off a fit of nervous giggling at the thought of how close we’d come to not making it out of there.
“Slow down,” I told Chase. “We can’t afford to get pulled over by the cops.”
“What about those vampires chasing us?” he asked.
“They can’t follow us now,” I said. “The sun won’t kill them, but it’ll slow them down enough to keep them at bay.”
Chase eased off gas and looked at me with terror in his eyes. “Are you telling me the only reason we made it out of there alive is because the sun saved us? In Vancouver? In January? After nearly two months of constant rain?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
I opened the glove box looking for a tin of mints or a pack of gum. I lucked out in the center console, finding a single unwrapped lozenge that looked like it had fallen out of the package and been overlooked when the car was last cleaned. I brushed the dirt and hair off it, and I popped it in my mouth.
“Fuck me,” said Chase. “That was insane.”
“Chase?” I said, reclining my seat to try to rest while he drove. I’d given everything I had to get us out of there, and I didn’t know how long I could stay awake.
“Yeah, Alex?”
“I’m glad you were there tonight,” I mumbled. “I don’t know if I’d have made it without you.”
If he said anything in response, I didn’t hear it. I fell fast asleep as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I woke in a strange bed, head cradled in a plush feathery pillow. A peek under the covers confirmed that I was still dressed, and that someone had wrapped my bleeding hand while I was asleep. When I sat up and slipped out of bed, it was obvious I was in a hotel room, but it wasn’t until I pulled back the heavy curtains that I saw I was in the middle of downtown.
Chase lay snoring on the other bed in the room, and although he’d slept even less than I had, I wouldn’t be able to accept that we were safe until I had answers to a few questions.
“Chase,” I said as I shook him gently. “Wake up, bud.”
“Huh?”
A bleary-eyed Chase blinked at me with confusion until he registered what was going on.
“What did you do with the car, Chase? How did you pay for this room?”
“Relax,” he said as he rubbed his eye with his palm. “I ditched the car in an underground lot like eight blocks away, then I called a cab. I paid for that in cash, had him wait while I booked this room under a false name, paid for that in cash too, then snuck your unconscious ass up here while trying not to have anyone call the cops on me for roofieing you.”
“You did all of that while I was asleep?”
Chase yawned. “You were dead to the world. If it hadn’t been for your drooling and snoring, I’d have probably taken you to the hospital. What time is it anyway?”
“It’s almost seven o’clock at night. We must have slept all day.”
“And yet I still feel like shit,” he said.
I took hold of his arm and inspected the two red circles where Eskola’s teeth had pierced his skin. For Chase to have done so much after having lost such a considerable amount of blood was nothing short of heroic.
“How are you feeling after last night?” I asked.
“I’m okay,” He winced from the effort of pushing himself up into a sitting position. “Every muscle in my body hurts, and I feel like I ran a marathon, but I’m so happy we made it out of Eskola’s house that I can’t really complain.”
“What you went through last night was pretty intense. Where’s your head at?”
Chase looked down at his wrist, and his voice sounded far away when he spoke. “I keep seeing his fangs coming for me. While he was… you know… I could feel him inside my head. He was laughing at some secret joke, and I can’t stop hearing the echoes of it in the back of my mind.”
“There are going to be some lingering effects from having his saliva in your bloodstream,” I explained. “But I promise it’ll go away eventually. As soon as we get a chance, I’ll take you to see a healer who can help with that, okay?”
>
“What do we do in the meantime? I guess it’s pretty obvious the Conclave isn’t going to help us. Does this mean we go after the grimoire?”
I laid back on the bed next to him, and I stared up at the ceiling. Chasing the grimoire to Scotland had seemed like our only option not so long ago, but now it felt wrong. Eskola hadn’t been the least bit surprised to hear the amulet was in play, and it made me wonder how much he knew about the Dark mage at the root of everything. The entire trip to D.O.I. had been a giant waste of time. The only thing I’d learned was that the Amulet of Duan Marbhaidh was harmless to magic users since it only targeted ungifted humans.
The click and creak of the room’s door opening sent me rolling off the edge of the bed. I summoned energy for a spell, launching the electric bolt directly at the intruder’s head the second it came into view. The tall bearded figure sidestepped the blast with ease, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace while the energy from my spell fizzled out harmlessly behind him.
“Viktor?” I said when I realized who it was.
“I’m sorry for barging in like this, but I felt rather uncomfortable in the hallway. I hope you’ll forgive me my intrusion?”
I’m not too proud to admit that I practically ran to the old man so I could throw my arms around him in a big hug. He responded in kind, and for a moment I stood there, breathing in the comforting smell of his musty old sweater while trying to forget about the growing list of people who wanted me dead.
“Uh, hi,” said Chase when I finally released Viktor from my grasp.
“Hello Chase,” said Viktor as he reached out to shake hands. “I’m glad to see you in such good spirits after the events of last night.”
“You know about that?” asked Chase.
Black Magic (Black Records Book 1) Page 21