“And if you haven’t turned me, then…” My eyes widened, and I took a step back. “You think I’ve been cursed.”
“Wagner could have cursed you,” he said. “But I don’t know why he would. It only makes you more dangerous to him and much more difficult to kill. And one thing is certain, he’s made it clear he wants you dead.”
I sat hard on the sofa, the wind going out of my lungs. Could Dorian be right? Had I been cursed to become a vampire? If I had, then why didn’t I crave blood? Why was I still fine in daylight? Of course, I hadn’t stepped out into the sun the past few days. It had been cloudy in Scotland, and I’d only been in the Bone Coven headquarters when I’d been in the states during the day.
“No, it’s impossible,” I said. “I have zero desire for blood.”
“Is that really true though?” Dorian dug his teeth into his arm and pierced the skin, and then he held his wrist to my mouth. My tongue darted out to lick my lips, and I leaned forward as the desire to taste him took ahold of my body. Everything inside me yearned for him, to drink him up until there was nothing left. And when he pulled away, an intense ache shot through my core.
“See?” he asked as his wound began to close up within seconds. “You were aching for a drink.”
I shook my head, refusing to believe him. “Yeah, but I’ve always wanted to taste you, Dorian. Way back before we were even bonded and especially since then. Your blood doesn’t even taste like blood to me. It’s like a magical elixir that makes me feel alive.”
His lips quirked before his expression turned serious again. “That might be true, but doesn’t it feel different now?”
Shaking my head, I sighed. “I don’t know, Dorian. I honestly don’t know.”
“I realize that we just got done fighting monsters, but we’re going to have to head back out for round two,” I said as our foursome gathered in the castle’s living room. “With Wagner wounded, he’s probably out of commission for a few days, so we can turn our focus onto collecting Nosferatu fangs.”
“Unless he has a vampire on tap like you do,” Anastasia said as she glanced at Dorian. “Speaking of, your scent is more and more Dorian-like today. Have you been swapping blood again?”
Frowning, I glanced at Dorian. Anastasia’s sense of smell was much stronger than his, and she’d be able to sniff out any change that was taking over my body. I had to hold out hope that we were both wrong and that everything happening was just remnants of our previous blood exchanges and the bond that was growing between us day by day. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate right now.
“We’ve bonded,” Dorian said quietly.
Anastasia’s eyes widened as she nodded. “That certainly explains a lot. How interesting. I didn’t think an Unbound had the ability to link his soul to another. Tell me more about your blood exchanges and your bond. Is it…” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Let’s get back to the task at hand,” I said, pointing at the clock on the wall as heat filled my cheeks. “We have a bunch of mages back in Boston waiting for orders, and demon attacks are proliferating the news. We need to get these fangs and move on.”
Dorian leaned forward and pressed a finger on the map spread out before us. “The fact we haven’t seen any Nosferatu on these castle grounds means that they’ve most likely given up patrolling this area. So, we need to spread out. This is the closest town, one that has historically had issues with vampires. It may be a long-shot. The Nosferatu like to stay on the move so that the Blood Coven doesn’t catch up to them, but there’s a strong chance that at least a few will be in the area. And with Zoe’s scent hanging in the breeze, we should be able to tempt them out of hiding.”
“Basically, I’m bait,” I said.
“Irresistible bait,” Dorian said with a slight smile. “The second they get a whiff of your shadow magic, there’ll be plenty of fangs to go around.”
Instead of using my travel spell, Dorian pulled a Range Rover from his garage and drove it to the front double doors for the rest of us to pile inside. To have two exit strategies, he’d said. But I knew what it really meant. He wanted Anastasia and Laura to have a way back to the castle if the bait got caught—meaning, if the Nosferatu killed me. About fifteen minutes later, he parked the car on the edge of the town and cut the engine. Clouds rolled across the sky as the trees trembled in the wind, cold air seeping in through the cracks of the doors. Shivering, I hugged my arms around my body and leaned forward to look out the window. Cobblestone streets wound up and down rolling hills, surrounded on either side by houses with patched roofs. It was as if we’d stepped back in time.
“The graveyard is down that street and around the corner,” Dorian said, cracking open the door. “We’ll walk from here. Let your scent fill the air.”
The four of us fell silent as we stepped quietly along the dark streets. It was late—way after midnight here. This place was full of normal people, ones who slept when the sun went down. My chest ached as I glanced at the shuttered windows. As much as I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself and do something more important than sit on my ass all day, there was a part of me that wondered what a normal life felt like. It was something I didn’t think I’d ever know. For me, life had never been normal, and I couldn’t see how that would ever change. Not with the cards I’d been dealt.
I glanced at Dorian. His face was backlit by the street-lamps, and the silhouette of him highlighted the strength of his shoulders and jaw. A sweet soft feeling filled my chest as I sucked in a deep breath through my nose. The scent of him was almost overwhelming—a spicy aroma that sang of magic and blood. He flicked his dark gaze my way, his eyes intense and full of shadows. It was a darkness that churned within me and now churned in him, and our bond snapped tight. My hand reached for his instinctively, like I needed to have my skin on his.
“What’s going on?” he murmured as we fell a few steps behind Laura and Anastasia.
“I feel different,” I said quietly. “You feel different.”
“Are you scared?” he asked. “Of the Nosferatu? Last time we were here, they were hyper focused on you.”
“No,” I said with almost a question mark in my voice. Because, strangely enough, I wasn’t scared at all. While the Nosferatu were strong, powerful, and deadly, and while they’d killed a mage right before my eyes, the thought of them didn’t bring on the terror I’d felt once before.
“Well, you should be scared,” Anastasia’s voice drifted back to us. She’d heard us talking, of course. There was no being secretive when you were near a Daywalker with enhanced hearing. “Hell, even I’m a little worried, and I never worry.”
A few moments later, we reached the cemetery. It wasn’t much different to the one Belzus called home. Ancient headstones dotted the hills, and several crypts were clustered near a row of thinning trees. The paths were dirt, disappearing into packed patchy grass. The cemetery itself was a square, surrounded by wrought-iron gates. Beyond them, small houses squatted in neat little rows. I took one look around before I decided that this was a terrible idea.
“We’re not exactly in an isolated environment,” I said, pointing to the windows that overlooked the cemetery. Anyone inside would be close enough to see anything happening in this graveyard, and the vampires could be inside their homes within seconds if they decided they wanted a human snack.
“The people in this town are aware of vampires,” Dorian said. “A lot of Scotland is, in fact. With the number of Nosferatu running around, it’s been impossible to keep their existence completely secret, especially in these smaller towns where words spread like wildfire. And this one in particular. They have several pubs Daywalkers have owned throughout the years. They’ve had back rooms for human blood bags. At times, the Nosferatu have tried to fight for control of their property, and the human population has been aware of it all.”
“Really?” Laura arched an eyebrow. “Then, why the hell have we managed to keep magic so secretive in the states? It’s not like peop
le don’t travel.”
“It’s easy enough to chalk these stories up as myths and legends,” Dorian said. “If you were a human who had never seen a vampire or a werewolf, would you really believe they were real? Based on a random story you heard in a pub once when you were travelling abroad?”
“Okay, but there’s still the issue of safety,” I said. “Even if these humans know about the things that go bump in the night, it doesn’t mean we should lead those things straight to their back doors.”
“You’d be surprised,” Dorian said. “With knowledge comes safety. There’s a local witch who lives here. She wards people’s homes. For a fee, of course. Anyone who lives on the perimeter of a graveyard will have seen things. And they’ll have taken the proper precautions.”
“Good enough for me,” Anastasia said with a sharp clap. She rubbed her hands together and smiled. “Time to trap some vamps. Bait, get into position.”
With a sigh, I gave a nod and moved to the center of the cemetery, waiting for a vampire to come and try to rip out my throat.
Chapter 18
Hours went by, and nothing happened. My feet were blocks of ice from standing out in the wintry wind, and I had to blow hot breath on my hands to keep them from curling into fleshy icicles. Stamping my feet, I turned in a slow circle and peered through the darkness. The moon had popped out from the dark clouds, and it highlighted the weathered headstones, and the fact that there were zero Nosferatu lurking in this place. Sunrise was only about an hour away, and so far, we’d come up totally empty on the fang collecting front.
“Guys, I don’t think any vampires are going to come. Maybe we should go. I’m starving, and I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept for days,” I called out across the graveyard. In response, a light popped on in one of the houses that lined the cemetery before a silhouette appeared behind a thin curtain. “And now I think we have an audience.”
Dorian slid into view from his spot behind one of the larger headstones. “I don’t understand. Last time I was here, the place was crawling with Nosferatu.”
“That was a long time ago, though, wasn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, you haven’t lived here in how long?”
“I’ve visited,” he said. “A year ago, I came to check up on things at the castle, and there were plenty of Nosferatu lurking around.”
“Where were they?” Anastasia asked. “Here? In this graveyard? Or somewhere else?”
“In this graveyard. Though…” Dorian trailed off and gave a nod. “I know where they are. Inside the crypts. Sometimes they go through periods where they spend months asleep in their coffins, building their energy back up for a next spree of attacks.”
The four of us slowly turned toward the cluster of crypts that we’d spent the past few hours mindlessly milling around, completely unaware that slumbering Nosferatu were among us.
“Yeah, that’s the kind of information I would have preferred to know when we first got here, dude,” Anastasia said, wrinkling her nose as she took a sniff in the direction of the crypts. “But now that you mention it, there’s a distinct rotting stench coming from the direction of those things. I didn’t notice it before because there’s a bunch of garlic hanging on the door, and that masked it.”
“Garlic?” Striding closer, I eyed the stone doors. Anastasia had been right. On each stone crypt door, a wreath of raw garlic had been hung on an iron rod. “What the fuck is that about?”
“It’ll be the people who live in this town,” Dorian said. “Like I said, they know how to take the proper precautions here.”
Laura strode closer to the crypts and leaned her ear against the solid stone. Frowning she said, “Think we can collect some fangs without waking them up?”
“Unlikely,” Anastasia said, “but if we’re fast enough, then we can do some stabby stabby before they realize what’s happening. They’ll likely scream, so we’ll need to split up and do it all at once, or else it’s just going to wake the others up. We each take a crypt.” She tossed me a sharp and pointed stick. “Open the coffin. Stab them in the heart. Easy peasy.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” I said.
Anastasia shrugged. “Everyone in the Dogaru Clan has played vampire slayer at one point in time. In order to be a member of our family, we need to prove our worth. For us, that means taking out some of the demonic vampires. As much as it might surprise you, we don’t like them any more than you do.”
Anastasia never ceased to amaze me.
After she’d doled out the stakes, each of us moved to one of the crypts to take down the sleeping vampires. Once inside the dark enclosure, I stared at the wooden coffin that almost looked as though it had been shoved unceremoniously in the corner. Inside, I would find a sleeping Nosferatu, who had no idea the fate we were about to bring upon him. For a moment, I felt a pang of guilt. These creatures were evil, sure. And they existed without the slightest hint of humanity or soul. So, why should I feel this way about killing one? Especially when his teeth would be used to save humanity?
With a deep breath, I shook my head and threw open the coffin. Inside, a female Nosferatu slept with her arms crossed over her chest. Her long red hair cascaded around slender shoulders, and her full lips were painted a deep red, giving her the effect of a fiery goddess. In this state, she didn’t look demonic at all. She looked almost…normal.
The vampire opened her eyes and darted out her hand, snatching my wrist in her grip. She squeezed tight and pain flashed down my arm. Her fingernails were sharp enough to slice into my skin. Blood spilled onto her face.
Gritting my teeth, I yanked my wrist out of her hand and she rose from her coffin with a hiss. Her eyes were wild as they locked on the blood that had fallen around her. She’d been asleep for who knew how long, and she was hungry.
“Sorry,” I said as I threw all my weight behind my throw. The stake hit her square in the hart, and screams shook through the crypt. From outside, a half a dozen screams answered in respond as Dorian and my friends made their moves. The vampire began to crumple in on herself, her body folding like a deflated balloon. She shook and trembled, her screams falling into whispers as her demonic body turned to dust.
With a deep breath, I ripped her fangs from her mouth and shoved them into a bag. We’d gotten our weapons, but nothing about tonight felt victorious at all.
Chapter 19
“Laura and I will take the first patrol in and around the cemetery. That area of the city seems to be a hotspot for demonic activity,” I said to the crowd gathered in the coven headquarters. “There are a few other areas highlighted on the map, and I’ve listed assignments for the evening. Everyone is to go in pairs, and no one should wander off alone. If anyone runs into any trouble at all,” I said, holding up the cell phone, “call if you can. Send a text. Whatever it takes. I’ll alert the other teams on patrol, and we’ll come to you for backup.”
“But what about you? Who will you call if you and Laura run into trouble?”
“This is why Dorian and I are splitting up.” I gazed across the room at my partner. At first, I hadn’t wanted to go along with it. Splitting up with Dorian felt like tearing my heart in two. But I knew it was the right call. Out of everyone here, we were the most trained in combat, and we were the strongest fighters other than Anastasia. We’d make one hell of a team, but it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. We needed to split up our firepower. “If we run into trouble, he’s our first point of call, and he’ll get everyone together.” Taking a deep breath, I gave my partner a nod. “Dorian? You’re up.”
Dorian gave me a grim smile and stepped into the center of the room. He held up the jar of Nosferatu fangs, some bloody and some not. Gasps punctuated the silence as he turned in a slow circle for everyone to see.
“Professor Ivan Wagner has developed a way for demons to become corporeal in our realm,” he said slowly. “This means that our usual banishment spells no longer work against them. However, since Nosferatu are demonic in origin, we’re able to use their ven
om in order to destroy these creatures. We’ll pass these out. Each team takes a pair of fangs. If you come across a demon, you’ll need to get close enough to stab them with this.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” one of the mages murmured.
“This is why we need your help,” I said, levelling my gaze at the mage. “These are no normal demons, and we don’t know how many of them we’re up against now. It could be a handful, but Wagner could have gathered several hundred by this point. Luckily, he still seems intent on targeting Boston for now, so we don’t have a huge amount of ground to cover.”
The older mage who had saved me from Wagner’s minion lifted his hand in question. “Why do you think that is? If he has a hundred demons, why not go everywhere on this planet?”
“To be honest, we’re not completely sure.” I exchanged a glance with Dorian.
“We’re operating under the assumption that he wants to get rid of as many mages as he can,” Dorian said. “He could see the coven as a threat.”
“The Bone Coven?” the older mage frowned. “Why not start with Blood or Shadow then? They’re larger and much more dangerous than we are.”
“We’ll be sure to ask him when we have his head on a stake,” Anastasia said as she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. When several mages flicked nervous glances her way, she merely raised her eyebrows and laughed. “Oh, come on. Don’t be such tight-asses. I know we aren’t really going to put his head on a stake, though you can’t lie and say you don’t kind of want to. At least a little.”
“Continuing on,” I said as I cleared my throat and shot the vampire a look, “let’s all meet back here at sunrise, and we can compare notes. If you see anything out of the ordinary, investigate and keep a note of it. Because while we could spend every night of the rest of our lives patrolling for demons, the end game is to find and neutralize Ivan Wagner. Until he’s stopped, the demons will just keep coming.”
The Bone Coven Chronicles: The Complete Series Page 68