The Vampire Gift 2: Kingdom of Ash
Page 17
Phillip gives me a stringent look, then opens the book to a page at random.
The pages are entirely blank.
“Well, that was anti-climactic,” I say.
“Just you wait,” Phillip says. “This particular book requires blood.”
“Blood?”
Phillip retrieves the goblet Eleira was drinking from. Her thirst has not abated one bit since the transformation.
“Yes,” he says. “Human blood.”
Carefully, he pours the tiniest trickle onto the spine.
The blood simply pools into the middle. Nothing happens otherwise.
“That’s it?” I ask. The only impressive thing—if you can call it that—is that the ancient pages don’t soak the liquid up.
“Eleira, be a dear and hold out your hand, would you?”
She reaches out and gives it to Phillip. He pulls out the tiniest needle and pricks her finger.
A drop of blood leaks out. Phillip turns her hand toward the book. Gravity beckons the drop down. It falls through the air.
The moment it hits the human blood, a loud hissing sounds.
All three of us step back.
I watch, fascinated, as the pool of blood starts to trickle into the pages on either side. It flows onto them and takes shape, forming delicate lines of an unknown script. Intricate pictures full of arcane symbols flourish beside the blood-red text.
The whole book comes alive with the infusion of Eleira’s blood.
“Only a witch can access the secrets hidden inside,” Phillip says in a low and spooky voice.
“Good thing we have Eleira.” I look at her, but her attention is fixed on the book.
Once all the blood has gone out the middle and seeped into the pages, Eleira brings one trembling hand out. She traces some of the symbols on the page.
“I recognize these,” she says in a bare whisper. “I’ve seen them before. These runes. Long, long ago, when I was a little girl.” She shudders and withdraws her hand. “I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I,” I tell Phillip. “What’s the purpose of this book?”
“It’s called…” Phillip flips it over to show the front, “The Book of the Dead.”
Now there are symbols on the cover, glowing in a faint, dull blue.
Eleira shakes her head. “No,” she says. “No. This is wrong. No. We shouldn’t be looking at this. No. This isn’t ours.”
“Eleira.” I look at her in concern. “Don’t worry. It’s just me, you, and Phillip. He found it in my library. There’s nothing wrong with—”
“No,” she cuts me off. She backs away until her shoulders hit the wall. “No, no, no,” she keeps repeating.
I glare at Phillip. “What’s wrong with her?”
Eleira keeps going on. “No, no, no…”
“I don’t know,” Phillip admits. He spreads his hands helplessly.
“Is it the book? Is it affecting her?” I demand. “It’s doing something to her, isn’t it?”
The glow on the cover is getting stronger. I rush to Eleira and hold her by the shoulders. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
But she just keeps muttering the same word. “No, no, no, no.” She shields herself against me.
I throw my arms around her body. “I’m here. I promise. Just tell me what’s wrong!” Again I glare at Phillip. “Get that book out of here!”
“NO!” Eleira screams and suddenly a violent blue light explodes from within the pages. It knocks me back, it knocks Phillip back. It knocks everything in the room back, except for… Eleira.
She is standing upright, her eyes fixed straight ahead but unseeing. Her hair is being blown away from her by a wind that’s started gusting from the pages of the book. The whole room is enveloped in that blue light.
Eleira steps forward. I try to move—and find myself unable to. None of my muscles respond.
And yet it’s not like I’m locked in place. Rather, it feels like my mind has started to operate at hyper-speed, watching, seeing, processing everything. Yet the physical restraints of the world prevent my body from keeping up.
Or maybe time has crawled to a standstill, and the only thing operating at proper speed is my brain.
I see Phillip. He’s frozen, too.
Eleira, however, approaches the ghastly book with ease.
She starts to mutter something in a horrible language. The room pulses with violent energy. Her inclination grows louder. The voice is not her own. I fight against the light pushing me down, but I’m like an insect caught beneath a panel of glass. I feel like a specimen on display in a museum—forever watching, forever unable to affect my surroundings.
Eleira reaches the table. Her voice takes on a truly terrible bass. The pages of the book flap this way and that. All the energy inside is escaping and feeding into the blue light. It pulses in time with the cadence of Eleira’s speech.
A dim shape, thick as ink and dark as the deepest night, starts to rise out from the midst of the book.
No! I want to scream.
I push against the force holding me down. Panic takes over when I realize that strength is still not enough. I cannot move. I’m trapped, and all I can do is watch as Eleira draws that malevolent black shape out of the book.
The room’s temperature quickly drops. Eleira keep chanting. The shape continues to grow. It’s the size of a rat, now, and I can already see its body taking form, the hideous lines, the misshaped head, the crooked torso—
Suddenly the main doors fly open. Morgan is standing there, staff in hand. She takes one look at what is happening and steps into the blue light.
Somehow she’s able to penetrate the force field. Her lips move, yet I cannot hear what she says. But I feel the power of her words as they clash against Eleira’s chant in the air.
Eleira snarls at my Mother. Such a viciousness contorts Eleira’s face that it frightens even me. She draws her lips back and shows her fangs. Her eyes have gone almost completely black—nothing like the eyes of the girl I love. Her cheeks look hollow, gaunt, as if she is undernourished.
Eleira’s incantation grows louder. She screams the words at Morgan.
But Mother’s focus is all on the creature rising from the book. She deflects Eleira’s words and points her staff at the black shape. The blue light draws inward, like a deflating dome. It seems to be flowing into Mother’s staff, and yet…
And yet Eleira is doing everything she can to stop it.
Eleira grips the edge of the table. Her claws have come out. They carve deep marks in the wood. Her entire body is tense and sinewy. The foul words continue spewing from her lips, challenging Mother’s.
A blast of white explodes from the tip of Morgan’s staff. A beam of the stuff, almost like fire, scorches across the room and collides with the awful black shape.
The creature howls. The noise is worse than any I’ve heard in my life. Worse than the cries of The Convicted, worse than the squeals of a tortured animal, worse than…
Worse than damn near anything.
More and more of the white fire pulsates into the creature. Eleira is flinging spell after spell at the Queen. She deflects them all. The creature continues to scream.
There’s a sudden explosion. The dark shape flies across the table, misshapen, burnt, and wounded.
But it’s still alive. Alive, and gasping.
Mother’s eyes line onto it. She begins the spell that will end it for good. Another beam of light shoots from her staff, aimed straight at the creature—
Eleira throws herself in the way.
The cry that is wrangled from my throat is unlike anything that’s been ripped from my vocal cords before.
Mother’s spell strikes Eleira straight in the chest. The girl’s body is flung backwards. She hits the far wall and drops to the floor, completely limp.
The moment that happens the blue light dies. Eleira’s wicked spell is gone. I can move again.
That horrible black creature jumps to its feet and dashes away.
I drop to my knees beside her. She’s out cold. But at least—at least I can feel her pulse.
It’s frighteningly weak.
“Get out of my way!” Mother snarls, shoving me aside. She runs her hands over Eleira’s face, then rubs them together and brings them to her chest. She presses them into the spot her beam struck.
“What are you doing?” I scream. Anguish takes me.
“Saving her life,” she tells me. Under her breath Morgan utters the words of a new spell. Another glow surrounds her hands, tinged red this time.
Mother pushes that energy into Eleira’s body.
The girl’s eyes pop open, and she gasps. She coughs—dark blood spurts out.
Then her eyelids close and she drops back to the floor.
“Delightful,” Mother mutters, wiping her hands clean of the mix of blood and phlegm. She takes instant control of the situation. “Raul, you take her to the infirmary. No—take her to my rooms in the castle. They’re closer to the blood banks, and she will need a near-endless supply if she is to recover.”
“If?” I demand. “If?”
Phillip speaks. I was so focused on Eleira I didn’t even notice him approach. “What happened to her? Why did she throw herself in the way?”
“She was possessed,” Mother says calmly. She stands up, and glares at my brother. “You, my son, made a grave mistake when you brought out that book.”
Phillip has the grace to look crestfallen.
“I might expect such rash behavior from James, or even Raul,” she continues. “Not, however, out of you. I know it comes from your reawakened instincts. Learn to control them! Next time you do something like this, you will be properly punished.”
I cradle Eleira in my arms. Her breathing is so shallow it’s terrifying. “Forget about him!” I say. “Tell me, what’s going to happen to her? What do you mean, ‘possessed?’”
“And what was that thing from the book?” Phillip adds.
“I mean just what I said, Raul,” Mother says stiffly. “Somebody, or something, took control of Eleira’s mind and made her do what you witnessed.”
“How?” I gasp.
“Being a witch makes her vulnerable. I should have taught her to shield herself. But with The Haven sealed off, I did not think she’d be under threat. At least, not so soon…”
She turns to Phillip. “That thing, son dearest, is called a Narwhark. I’d have thought with all of your constant meddling, all of your computer systems, all of your furtive interest in my affairs, you would have come across its mention before.”
Phillip shakes his head. He looks shaken.
“Come now. You’ve only been looking at all things magic for twenty years!”
Again, Phillip shakes his head. He stares at his feet.
I think: Phillip has an interest in magic?
“A Narwhark is a type of demon,” Mother explains. “It comes from the underworld—not the literal underworld, but a parallel dimension existing on a plane beneath ours. Narwharks are nasty, nasty things. They crave only death and destruction. The world is porous, you see, and at certain places there is an overlap between the planes. That overlap allows portals to be made between dimensions. Some say that is the key to discovering the true origin of vampires and witches alike.”
Mother walks back to pick up her staff. “But now is not the time for a history lesson. All you need to know is that the first witches had a true purpose—they sought to eliminate all such demons from the world. The different clans banded together and succeeded in closing the portals that let such creatures into the world. When that was done, they turned their attention to other things.
“Some witches, however, were not fully committed to the cause. Some witches rebelled, because they saw the closing of the portals as a great opportunity lost. To have access to other worlds, to new realities, to learn their secrets… it was not a gift to be discarded so rashly.”
“You were one of them,” Phillip breathes. “Weren’t you?”
“No. This was long before my time. I always have, however, shared their opinion. So, when I was given the Gift of Immortality, I took it upon myself to gather scraps of anything the dissenting witches left behind. I took it upon myself to collect as many artifacts as I could that were linked in any way to sorcery.”
“And what did you discover?” I ask.
“The ancient witches were not able to sever the connections between worlds completely. A few, they eliminated… but most, they simply masked. They did not have the raw strength required to close the portals.
“The masking spells, however, had to be maintained. So they created objects called torrials that did exactly that. But the dissenting witches… they also created objects of power. A counter to the torrials, called contra’ torrials, are used to summon creatures out from other worlds.
“Using a contra’ torrial requires blood magic. The sort that you activated when you let Eleira’s blood drip onto this book.”
Phillip has gone an even paler shade of white. “I had no idea.”
“Clearly.” Mother looks to me. “Now get Eleira to my rooms. Hurry. Don’t let any others see you—you don’t know what they might attempt if they saw Eleira like this.”
“Oh, I have a very good idea,” I say darkly.
I also know, that until Eleira wakes, I won’t leave her side… and the other vampires would be fools to try anything against me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
SMITHSON
“There’s been a complication,” my Queen informs me.
I stand with my back rigid and my arms clasped behind me. I show none of the discomfort I feel at being summoned personally by the Queen so soon after my little talk with April. “Yes?”
“A demon has been summoned. It’s loose in The Haven now.”
I blink, caught completely off-guard. “A demon?”
“A Narwhark, to be precise.” She peers at me. “You have experience with those, don’t you? In your… previous life?”
“You mean my time with The Order.”
“When you hunted down clan after clan of witches, yes,” she says. Her voice is flat, emotionless. “When you burned so many of my sisters.”
“I put all that behind me the day you turned me into a creature of the night,” I vow. I go to one knee. “I am eternally grateful for the gifts you have given me.”
“Hmm,” she considers. “Charming. Now get up. I don’t like to see the Captain Commander of my guard groveling.”
I hide my scowl and rise. “I’ve… only heard rumours of demons, my Queen. The Order never considered them anything more than folk stories. Meant to frighten children and old folk. Not to be taken seriously.”
“Then you don’t know about the role witches played in cleansing the world of such demons?”
I shake my head.
“Interesting. Perhaps if you had, you wouldn’t have persecuted us so.”
“That was a long time ago,” I say. “I know who I am now. If you brought me here to question my loyalty—”
She smiles a grim smile. “Whatever would give me reason to do something like that? You’re not feeling guilty over something, are you?”
“I have nothing to feel guilty for,” I lie.
“So you say, so you say.” She sighs and sits. “Demons are real. The Narwhark is real. And it’s loose in The Haven.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Keep order amongst the vampires. The Narwhark is unpredictable. It is much like us—a predator. But it kills without discretion. It’s wounded now and hiding. A search would be useless. Even our vampire capacities won’t help find it. Only a powerful witch has any chance of stopping it.”
“So it falls onto you.”
“It does. But we have to wait for it to reveal itself. In a few days it will go for the humans. They are weaker, there are more of them, and they mak
e for vulnerable prey.”
“You want me to protect them?”
“Oh, no.” Her eyes shine. “All I want is for you to be vigilant. When the Narwhark strikes, I will be the first person you inform. But—” she raises a finger, “—knowledge of the demon is not to leave this room. Only you and I and my two sons know of its existence. That’s how I want things to stay. There is no use causing a panic.”
Yes, I think. Especially after you’ve trapped all your subjects inside.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
RAUL
I sit by Eleira’s bedside, watching her sleeping form.
She looks so beautiful asleep, so very peaceful. Her chest rises and falls in smooth, soft breaths. They seem delicate rather than strained, nurturing rather than concerning. Her hair falls around her face like a darkened halo, and I’m struck by the symbolism of it.
She looks like a fallen angel.
I catch my thoughts and stop them from going down that path. There are no angels in The Haven. Only murderers and slaves. Only beings of the night and our human captives.
“How is she?” Mother’s cool voice sounds from beyond me. It’s completely dispassionate.
“Same as she was an hour ago,” I say. “And the hour before that, and the day before that, and…”
I trail off. No matter how peaceful she looks, Eleira is fighting for her life right now.
I take her hand in mine. Once again, I’ve failed to protect her.
“You sound so forlorn.” Mother stops beside me and draws a hand through my hair. I stiffen at the unwanted display of affection. “Don’t worry. She’ll wake. She’s just as important to me as she is to you, you know.”
“Yes, but for entirely different reasons,” I say under my breath. I turn my head to Mother and glare at her. “You’re going to use Eleira.”
“I need her for her powers, yes. As do you. As do any who want The Haven to prosper.”
A pillar of anger comes to life inside me. “You call this prosperity?” I demand. “Your subjects are frightened. The vampires are running weak. You keep our humans trapped in an age that ended centuries ago!”