The man nearest to me stood, his grave eyes locked on mine. “If this is true, then I don’t care if you’re bone, shadow, blood, or sun. We need a leader who has faced these demons and who has won.”
There were a few murmurs of dissent, but most of the mages stood from their seats and gave me solemn nods. Eyes wide, I turned to glance at Dorian, who didn’t look the slightest bit surprised. He merely gave a slight smile and a nod, agreeing with the mages before me. Somehow, I’d become their de facto Magister, the leader of the Bone Coven. And I’d never felt more scared and exhilarated in my life.
The leather-clad girl shoved through the crowd to stand before me. For a moment, my calm control slipped when I saw the flash of anger in her eye, though I wasn’t surprised. Even though most of the mages here were happy to follow me in this time of turmoil, I’d be an idiot to believe that everyone would go along with it, no questions asked. I wasn’t one of them, not truly, even though I’d grown up surrounded by bone mages all my life. And, to some, I’d always be a dangerous outsider who could snap at any moment.
But when she yanked her blade from her waist and pressed it to my throat, I realized far too late that she wasn’t a bone mage at all.
Chapter 15
Shouts rang up around me. The warlock only inches to my right raced forward and wrapped his arms around the mage’s neck before pulling her back. Dorian lifted me from the ground and carried me to safety. The girl seethed as she writhed against the man’s strong arms, her eyes shooting daggers that were as sharp as her knife.
“Let me go,” she said, squirming. “She needs to die.”
Dorian let go of my arms, and I stood tall, ignoring her repeated protests. “Take her to the interrogation room and prep an empty cell. One with no windows. Make sure there are plenty of wards.”
Taking a deep breath, I pressed a hand on the interrogation room door and called to my Intuition. There was no flicker of warning. No tingling on the back of my neck. Of course, there hadn’t been earlier either. It was if she knew I could tell when something was about to go wrong, and she’d somehow gotten around it. I’d have to ask her how she did that. Not that she’d confess.
“Are you sure you want to be the one to do this?” Dorian asked. “Or that we have to do this now?”
“She just tried to kill me,” I said. “I need to find out why, though I have a hunch already.”
“Wagner,” he said with a nod. “I bet you anything he sent her here when he found out that you hadn’t died in England.”
“That’s two assassination attempts in twenty-four hours,” Anastasia said. “Must be some kind of record.”
“How wonderful for me,” I said drily, turning back to Dorian. “We need to find out what she knows. It could help us form a plan to track down Wagner. He might have been one step ahead of us before, but he couldn’t have expected that we’d take her prisoner and question her. This just might be what we need to get the upper hand.”
“So,” I said, perching on the edge of the table, “how’s Professor Ivan Wagner doing these days? Was he disappointed to find out his plot to kill me didn’t work?”
“Not as disappointed as you were when you found out your grandmother wanted to kill you,” she said with a smile. “That must have been quite the blow. Literally and figuratively, of course.”
Her words grated on my raw emotions, but I kept my face blank despite every instinct to react otherwise. She was trying to rile me up, which meant I couldn’t let that happen. Otherwise, she’d win.
“He must have been pretty desperate to send you here.” I waved at our surroundings. “There was no way he could have thought you’d succeed in the middle of so many bone mages.”
“To be honest, we didn’t know you were having some super serious meeting to announce your shadow status,” she said. “I was just going to sneak in and do it when you were sleeping. I’ll have to say, your little coven friends surprised me. I thought your announcement would be a gift. Everyone would be pissed as hell that a shadow wants to take over the Bone Coven.”
“Sucks to be you,” I said, smiling back.
“Oh, don’t look so smug,” she said. “Wagner won’t stop. Eventually, a knife will hit you, and your vampire boyfriend won’t be around to save you. All it takes is one moment when your guard is down. And don’t even think about trying to block his tracking spell. It won’t work.”
Interesting. So, he’d been tracking me for awhile now. I wasn’t particularly surprised, but it was good information to have.
Unfortunately, the interrogation yielded absolutely nothing else of use. She fell silent only moments after she’d spilled the beans about the tracking, her lips held tight together as if they’d been glued. After an hour of an endless stream of unanswered questions, I gave up and returned to the living quarters to share what I’d learned with the others.
“Right. Wagner is tracking me,” I said to the room full of mages. A couple of the earlier visitors had joined us this time—they’d wanted to get involved in the fight even before Wagner put a hit out on me, so they were gung-ho now that things had developed even further. We’d taken a quick vote in the living room, and everyone had agreed to fight in the war.
“Not exactly a surprise,” Anastasia said. “Maybe you should put a stop to that.”
“No,” I said. “We’re going to do what he did to us. Set a trap. Let him track me. When he shows, we’ll be ready.”
“How can we be certain he’ll fall for it?” one of the mages asked. “Just because he’s tracking you doesn’t mean he’ll follow you wherever you go. If anything, he might be wary after failing twice in such a short time-span.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s obviously impatient, and he wants me out of the picture as soon as possible. All we have to do is make it impossible to resist. And, while we’re at it, we’ll hunt some Nosferatu and get some more fangs, just in case the demons attack before this is all over. It’s going to be a long-ass night.”
And that was how I found myself roaming the grounds of Dorian’s castle seemingly by myself. Dorian, Laura, and Anastasia were inside the main building while I strode through the misty rain with my hands shoved into my coat pockets. Anastasia had come up with the idea that Ivan Wagner might not just be tracking me. He could be tracking all of us. And if he was, he’d be able to spot a trap a mile away unless we did our best to mask the situation.
So, we’d returned to Britain. He might see that move as a quest to track down his location since it was the last place we saw him. By now, he’d no doubt already know about Dorian’s castle, so it would seem normal for us to use it as our base while we went on the hunt for him. And, if he tried tracking me now, he’d see me roaming the hills deep in thought—no doubt mulling over the fact my grandmother had tried to kill me—a thought I hammered home by pressing my hand against the fading wound by my heart.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” a familiar voice slithered out from behind me. Turning, I found myself face to face with Ivan Wagner. This time, he was alone, though the sweeping chill that followed close behind made me question just how alone he truly was. He might have come without another mage, but he hadn’t come unprepared.
Demons were lurking somewhere on these grounds.
“I think it’s probably obvious to anyone that we’re here in Scotland to find you,” I said. “Thanks for doing our work for us. I didn’t think it would be quite this easy.”
“You meant this to be a trap,” he said with a smile. “I think you forgot that when tracking someone, you can hear and see what they’re doing. That includes mysterious meetings in council conference rooms.”
Heat filled my cheeks, and I pressed my hand against my sheath. “Maybe that was part of the plan. Well done on falling for it.”
With a laugh, he shook his head. “Nice try. Go ahead and send out your signal. It won’t be answered, I’m afraid to say. Your friends inside the castle are currently…preoccupied, shall we say?”
&nbs
p; “You’re lying.” I narrowed my eyes. “The castle is warded tight. There’s no way in hell you or anyone else could have gotten inside.”
“Ah, but they might have seen a fake signal,” he said, pointing across the grounds to a light I hadn’t spotted until now. My focus had been too much on Wagner’s face. “And when they reach it, they’ll find themselves surrounded by a dozen or so demons. They’re unlikely to survive, but even if they do, they’ll be held up for a long, long while. So. It finally looks like it’s just you and me, Zoe. I admit, I should have gone this route from the beginning. If you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself, though the look on your face when you saw your murderous grandmother is one I’ll never forget.”
“Fuck you,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“I suppose that means you aren’t going to give me a kiss hello,” he said with a smile as he pulled his dagger from his belt. “Shall we get on with this then? I’ll even give you time to get your weapon ready so it can be a fair fight.” He dropped back his head and laughed. “Though I don’t know how fair it’ll be with your meager shadow powers against my full set. You don’t stand a chance up against someone who can wield sun, bone, blood, and shadow at once.”
Narrowing my eyes, I grabbed my blade and squeezed tight. “You sure do talk a lot of shit for someone who supposedly doesn’t need to. Give it your best, asshole, because it’ll be the last fight of your life.”
Wagner’s smile widened as he curled his palm into a fist, but before he could cast a spell, I launched my body at his. I slammed hard into his chest, knocking him from his feet. He fell onto the ground. With a grunt, I used my knees to pin his arms to the ground, forcing his spell to launch in the wrong direction. He cursed under his breath as his blade clattered across the stones. Rain poured into my eyes, and as I swiped the water out of my lashes to clear my vision, Wagner threw his body weight sideways. It knocked me off of him, and I rolled across the cold, wet ground.
My hand found his dagger before he did. Now, armed with two, I jumped to my feet and danced back. He lurched toward me, but I sidestepped him just in time. Growling, he narrowed his eyes and lowered his body into a crouch. I mimicked his movements, holding up each blade and bracing myself for his next move.
A little voice inside my head rose up. Whispers filled my brain. He was unarmed, though I could tell he was mentally flipping through the offensive spells he knew. Now would be the perfect time to attack, to shove his blade into his heart just as he’d asked my grandmother to do to me. I could kill him before he killed anyone else. Destroy the mage. Or else he will destroy you. But something inside me hesitated. The plan had been to trap him and take him in for questioning and find out exactly how many demons he’d let through the veil.
He won’t tell you, the voices continued to whisper. Or, if he does, they’ll all be lies. Another trap to trick you into.
The voices were right. Killing him meant destroying all the demons he’d summoned into the world. It would be doing everyone a favor, especially my friends who had walked straight toward danger.
“You’re thinking about killing me,” he said with a knowing smile. “Despite your best intentions, you still suffer from your shadow nature. You’ll never be like those mages you’re trying to rule.”
“I’m not trying to rule them,” I said, narrowing my eyes and stalking toward him with both weapons held tight in my fists. “I’m trying to save them. From you. And you wouldn’t be the first asshole mage I was willing to kill.”
In a flash, I’d swung the weapons at his chest. He danced back but stumbled as his feet slipped on the wet grass. Eyes wide, he tried to scuttle back, but I planted a foot on either side of his head, trapping him underneath me.
“Looks like you lost,” I said with a smile.
But just as I lowered the blade toward his throat, Ivan Wagner melted into the shadowy darkness of the night. His body disappeared.
Chapter 16
“Dorian! Laura!” I cried out as my feet pounded the wet earth. From somewhere in the darkness, a scream filled the night. Heart hammering, I flew across the rain-drenched hills, frantically searching for my friends. Through the thick rain, I finally spotted them in the distance. They were surrounded by several demons who were flapping their wings against Laura’s stream of blood magic. She stood there on the hill with her hair billowing behind her, shooting bright red power from open palms.
My feet slowed for a moment as I watched her get to work. I’d been so wrapped up in my life that I hadn’t known just how much she’d been training. Her power took my breath away. And it was doing some damn good damage against the demons, at least enough to distract them from the approach by Anastasia and Dorian, who were both clutching a pair of Nosferatu fangs in their fists.
Heart lurching, I began to run toward them. Their plan of attack was a good one, but there was a fatal flaw that none of them could see. Just behind the three demons that my friends were focusing on, another lurked behind a row of thick trees. It was watching and waiting to pounce, sizing up Dorian and Anastasia.
“Wait!” I yelled when I was within shouting distance. Through our bond, I felt a flash of relief from Dorian. He must have been worried as hell when he’d thought he’d saw my signal only to find the castle grounds swarming with corporeal demons.
He flicked his gaze my way and gave me a nod as if to say that everything was under control. But I knew it was anything but.
I kept running. Rain splashed into my eyes, turning the fight ahead of me into blurry shapes.
Gritting my teeth, I curled my hand into fists and aimed my magic toward the demon who lurked behind the trees. Black strands of electric fire shot from my palm, slamming into the night. Sparks flew in the air, though they were quickly doused by the drench of the storm clouds. The demon roared, but even in the thick of the rain, I could tell I hadn’t hit him. I’d missed. Calling on my powers, I threw out another shot, but the demon jumped sideways just in time before turning to charge straight at Laura.
Choking out a cry of alarm, I threw my feet forward the last remaining feet before slamming into my friend’s side. We tumbled to the ground, elbows and knees knocking together. Dirt sprayed on my face as my hands fell into squishy mud. My head rang from the impact. But it didn’t matter. Laura was safe.
“Zoe, what the fuck?” she shouted as she rolled out from under me and jumped to her feet. “We were in the middle of a strategic fight there. We almost had them!”
“No, you didn’t,” I said, pointing up at the demon charging toward us. Its eyes were lit with dark fire, and its focus was right on Anastasia’s face. “These others were distracting you. And it is going to go for your girl.”
Laura’s mouth dropped open as she stared across the hill at Anastasia. The demon was quickly closing in.
“Anastasia!” Laura shouted. “Stop! Come back!”
Anastasia twisted her head and frowned. She gave us a quick shake of the head, clearly not understanding. With a deep breath, I pushed myself up from the ground and threw myself her way. If I could just manage to move my feet fast enough, I could reach her before the demon did. I cast a quick glance at Dorian. He’d just stabbed one of the creatures with the fangs, and he was turning to the next, too caught up in the fight to realize that something was wrong.
I reached Anastasia and threw myself in front of her when the demon leapt forward. My entire world seemed to slow as my gaze latched onto his dark and scaly hand. He held a sword. And it sliced right into my stomach. Pain exploded in my head, and I fell to the ground just as Dorian whirled toward the demon with a roar. He plunged the fangs deep into its skin, and in seconds, the creature was gone.
“Zoe!” Dorian fell to his knees while Anastasia stood gaping at me, her face chalk white. “Oh my goddess, Zoe. How badly are you hurt?”
Blinking at him, I frowned and then glanced down at my stomach where the weapon had sliced into my skin. There was no pain. Hell, there was barely a cut. It was like it hadn�
��t even happened. Or, like…I’d healed within seconds.
Chapter 17
“There’s something wrong with me,” I said, squeezing my eyes tight. “Why didn’t that hurt? Why am I still alive?”
Dorian shook his head, his eyes scanning my body. Something dark and strange twisted in his pupils, and I felt unease and dread through our bond. He clearly had something on his mind. Some suspicion. Some worry. And he didn’t want to speak it aloud.
“What is it, Dorian?” I asked. “Just tell me.”
“It’s nothing,” he said, turning away to reveal a tense, tight back full of rippling muscles. At least one good thing had happened in the past few hours. Dorian had lost his shirt.
“It’s not nothing,” I said. “It’s like you keep telling me. I know how you’re feeling, remember? You can’t really hide much when I can practically read what you’re thinking.”
He shook his head and sighed. “The reason I don’t want to say anything is because what I’m worried about is next to impossible. There’s no way it could happen, so there’s no way that I’m right. Hell, it’s against the rules of magic.”
My heart thumped. “Just tell me, Dorian. Even if it can’t be real, I want to know what you’re worried about.”
“Unbounds cannot make new vampires,” he said slowly, turning to face me. “Daywalkers cannot create them either. The only way to become a vampire is to be cursed, be born, or be turned by a Nosferatu. None of that applies to you, so there’s no reason to discuss the possibility. I’m a cursed warlock. A hybrid. I couldn’t turn you even if I tried.”
My blood ran cold as the implication of his words sunk in. “Why mention it then?”
“Because.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re experiencing some of the early symptoms. Sleeplessness, hunger, and the biggest one—the ability to heal quickly from a fatal blow. Without my help. Without my blood. Now, our bond might explain some of that, but it definitely doesn’t explain that last part.”
The Bone Coven Chronicles: The Complete Series Page 67