by Lola Taylor
And if the aforementioned paranormals were to keep their crowns, they couldn’t very well let that happen, now could they?
She had to concentrate, had to prepare. Had to be ready to lead her people into a brighter age.
Breathe in and out. Through the nose and out the mouth.
A ripple of pain broke her concentration. She gasped, spine arching, head thrown back, mouth wide open in a silent scream. Oh, it hurt. Hurt all over: in her toes, her brain, her bones.
It was gone as quickly as it came. She fell back in the tub, banging her head against the porcelain rim and cursing.
Anger boiled her blood. Her nails dug into the rim, threatening to split.
Damn.
Her body felt as though it had been hit by a car, dropped off a cliff, and ravaged by the most ungodly flu the world had ever seen.
In other words, in this condition, her transference ritual was fucked.
Tongue ablaze with every curse word in every language she knew, she pulled herself from the tub. Her knees shook; God, her body felt heavy. Her foot caught on the rim, nearly sending her toppling down the stone steps and onto the floor. Snatching a towel off the rack, she dried herself, wrapped her hair, and donned a violet silk bathrobe.
She was about two steps away from flinging open the door and giving the guard the beating of his life when cold realization hit her.
The pain hadn’t come from some magical attack within the mansion—it had come from inside her.
But from where?
Sitting on her chaise, she leaned back, closed her eyes.
Breathe.
She sent her magic searching, stretching, reaching its long fingers through her network of witches and warlocks. She was sure the pain had been magically induced, volatile even. Like it would gladly tear her apart.
There.
Her magic latched onto a writhing, pulsing thread of magic, slinking closer and closer to its source. The farther it went, the ache in her body turned into a throb and then into knives lancing down her side. This magic was sickened by something shimmering red wrapped around it, squeezing—Blood Magic. She’d worry about why there was Blood Magic involved later.
Just a bit farther.
Gritting her teeth, she endured, sought out the magic’s source.
A flash of red hair and emerald-green eyes in her mind’s eye had her ending the search. Her body sagged against the lush velvet cushion. Her breaths came hard and fast. Sweat had beaded on her brow.
Verika. The wheels in her head turned, working.
Elijah’s brand was making Verika sick through their bond. But of course it would. Mistress Black had known that.
What she hadn’t known was Verika’s bond to her, through their shared lineage, would also make her sick.
“Fuck!”
Forcing herself into a sitting position, her head pounding and screaming at her for it, she rubbed her temples and formed a plan.
She either needed to remove the brand from Elijah to stop the pain, or she needed him by her side, preferably with Verika. Now knowing she was magically linked to Verika turned the tables a bit. She couldn’t afford to let something happen to Verika on the chance it could also affect her personal well-being. The girl needed to be brought here. And besides, she would never be able to complete the transference ritual as Verika’s pain grew because her borrowed body had to be absolutely calm and in good health.
No, this wouldn’t do at all. She’d have to think of something else, some other way of getting her soul back into her own body. But first, she needed the girl. Either way, she had to acquire Verika. If her power was so great as to affect her in this way, it meant her powers had grown immensely since the last time she’d glimpsed her via scrying. A power like that couldn’t be left unchecked. The threat was too great.
And if there was one thing Mistress Black excelled at, it was eliminating threats.
Rising and stumbling to the door by sheer force of will, she opened it and looked at her guard. “Rick, you were a thief, a killer, and an all-around despicable person before you met me, correct?”
The shadow stepped closer. Red eyes glowed, highlighting the contours of fangs. “Yes, Mistress.”
Apparently, he thought that was a compliment.
She smiled sweetly. “Good. Because we’re about to break a whole slew of laws, and I need someone without a conscience.”
Elijah couldn’t get the image out of his head, of the blood spewing from his Verika’s mouth.
You failed her. He eyed his reflection in the bathroom mirror. The others waited outside, in their bedroom. Waiting for him to get it together, to finally face what he had run from for so long.
He could do this. He couldn’t afford not to.
Verika’s pained expression flashed through his head once more, and he growled.
This was Mistress Black’s fault. She was the reason for all of Verika’s pain and suffering.
So help him God, nothing and no one hurt his mate. Ever. And he would be damned if he let any further harm come to her because he was too much of a pussy to face his fears.
Magic be damned. He was going to save his woman.
He told himself that over and over again, using it as his strengthening mantra, as he inhaled a deep breath, let it out, squared his shoulders, and at last walked into the bedroom.
Everyone glanced up at once. Verika gave him a concerned, questioning look.
He smiled at her. The expression was a bit tight, though he’d meant for it to be comforting. “Let’s start with trying to break the spell on my memories.”
The choice to go through with this at all was his, Verika had insisted, despite what the others said. Though it made sense they would vote for this option over the other. Potentially alerting Mistress Black that they knew the location of her hideout was too risky. Breaking his memory sealant was the safer alternative, even if the thought of doing so made his knees shake and his pulse race.
You sure? Verika said through their mate-bond.
He nodded, determination turning his will to iron. I’m sure.
No, he still wasn’t sure about magic. No, he wasn’t sure whether he ever would be sure and secure around it.
But the one thing he was sure of sat right in front of him, gazing at him with more love than he thought he’d ever deserve.
And he wasn’t about to let her down again.
Verika was officially an asshole. Her shaking hands and her wrenching gut told her so.
She sat on her legs next to Elijah, who lay before her on the floor of their bedroom. He was pale as the moon, and though he put on a brave face, his hands kept clenching and unclenching—an obvious effort at trying to conceal how badly they trembled.
Oh, Elijah. Please forgive me.
Well, as much as one person could forgive another for making them relive every horrible experience they’d ever been through. Which, she was pretty certain, would happen once she broke the seal of her mate’s memories. Memory spells could be brutal. Once the seal was broken, all of his repressed memories would come back, including those blocked by his own mind to protect his sanity.
Like she said—asshole, with a capital A.
“Can we get this over with?” Elijah rasped. “I’d rather rip the Band-Aid off than prolong it, if you know what I mean.”
She did, because she felt exactly the same way. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed.
He took her hand, squeezed it. His grip was clammy and slick, and a reminder of how much he was sacrificing to save her from pain.
God, she couldn’t screw this up. Messing with people’s memories was a shaky business, at best. Sometimes they ended up forgetting who they were, or even had the most important times of their lives erased. She knew of one man who’d paid a witch to make him forget about his wife leaving him for another man, and she’d ended up erasing all of his memories after the age of two. While the mission had been accomplished, he’d had to move in with his parents because he’d mysteriously “gotten amnesia
” and could only respond and think like a toddler.
She thought about what would happen if she accidentally did that to Elijah. If she wiped out all the memories of their time together.
Her stomach, which had grown increasingly more upset the closer they drew to casting the spell, threatened to send back up everything she’d nibbled on at dinner. The words “I can’t do this” almost rolled off her tongue, but she bit it, holding her fear back. She would not allow it to rule her. Though she’d insisted on trying to track down the wards used to hide Mistress Black’s lair instead of performing a memory-retrieval spell, Elijah had refused, stating “the spell could backfire and alert her that someone had found her.” Then she might uproot and hide out elsewhere, or go dark completely. If they lost her now, they might never be able to find her again.
So, here they were, sitting in their bedroom, about to perform one of the most dangerous spells known to witchery.
Don’t. Screw. This. Up, she told herself for the millionth time.
“Close your eyes,” she said. “And though it sounds useless, try to relax.”
He chuckled dryly.
Yes, I know that seems next to impossible, given the circumstances, she said privately through their mate-bond. But the magic will work better if your mind is relaxed. Try meditating, like I taught you.
I don’t think I can calm my thoughts.
Try. She almost rolled out a Yoda reference to when he was beating Luke’s ass on that swamp planet, but she refrained. Now was not the time for jokes, though it was definitely one of those times where she felt if she didn’t laugh, she might just cry. But there was no time, or use, for that either. She had to get serious.
If she didn’t, things could go south quickly.
With one last lingering, loving glance at her, Elijah closed his eyes, inhaled slowly through his nose and out through his mouth. Verika waited a minute, until the jittering of his nerves settled a bit through their bond. Then she lifted her hands, letting them hover over his head, and began to silently chant.
The spell was in Old Gaelic, making it of Irish descent. It was always surprising to find out which country had come up with certain spells. Spells, of course, could be translated, but they held the most power when you used the original language they had been written in. In one of her nerdier moments, she’d made a “spell-ology tree” for her office back at DPI headquarters, similar to a genealogy tree in that it traced the roots of every spell she could find. The research had been fascinating, though she’d earned a few eye rolls and head shakes from her peers. To a lot of them, their gifts were boring, their day jobs something they had to do to live. For Verika, her gifts were precious, and she lived for her job. She’d been lucky, she knew. Most people went through life dreading the nine-to-five, waiting for retirement so they could begin to live. Satine and her parents had taught her to be herself and never settle. “Just because everyone else is content to live life like a zombie doesn’t mean you have to.”
She was thankful for that wisdom, that support, now. Without it, she might not have had the courage to pursue her dream of using her talents full-time. Her time at the DPI wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it had trained her well for the spell she was about to perform.
With shaking hands and a deep breath, she sent up a silent prayer and began to crack open the spell locked around Elijah’s memories.
Elijah felt a prick along his brain, deep in its recesses. It was the only warning he had before he was sucked into a living hell.
He was back at Mistress Black’s mansion, where shadows seemed to cling to every surface of the small, dark room he stood in. A child whimpered in the darkness ahead of him. Even with his werewolf sight, he couldn’t see the child.
Sinewy, feminine hands snaked across his shoulders and down his pecs. The warmth of female curves pressed against his backside as Mistress Black leaned in, resting her chin on his shoulder. “He’s yours for the taking.”
“Who is?” His mouth took awhile to move, and his tongue felt swollen. That’s right—he’d been shooting up some magical cocktail with Mistress Black. A drug that hadn’t seemed to faze her in the least.
“This.” She pointed at the child. Not him—this. An object.
He tried to feel disgusted but couldn’t. He couldn’t feel anything. Couldn’t think. All he could do was stare as light suddenly poured down from a bulb on the ceiling, shining on a large, box-like object as a black drape was yanked from it with unseen hands.
The little boy couldn’t have been older than five. He scampered back from the front of the cage, where his pudgy hands had been gripping the bars. The cage rattled as his back slammed against the back of it. He stared at Elijah and Mistress Black with fearful eyes.
Eyes that burned red like hellfire.
Elijah felt a flickering of surprise, but that was all. He didn’t mind the numbness, because it was comforting. It meant not feeling guilt, pain, or suffering. “What is he?” Elijah asked in a monotone voice.
“Take a whiff.”
He did. A snarl bubbled up. The child cowered, and Elijah had enough sense of mind to clamp down on his tongue before he frightened him further. Vampire or not, he was still a kid. And scared out of his mind. His fear saturated the room like acid. The sharp tang of it burned Elijah’s tongue and nostrils.
“What are we going to do with him?” Elijah’s heart started to pound harder.
“Kill him, of course.”
The child began to cry big, fat bloody tears.
The air vanished. Or Elijah forgot how to breathe. “Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why?’ It’s a vampire, vermin to your kind. I thought you’d be thrilled.”
“He’s just a child.”
“It is an abomination! Honestly, would you want to be stuck at four years old forever?”
It did sound horrible. But killing him solely for that fact wasn’t an option. Killing him wasn’t an option. “So you think you’re granting him a mercy by killing him,” Elijah said flatly.
“I won’t be—you will. End its life.”
The child wailed, crying out for his mommy.
Elijah couldn’t swallow. “I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” A challenge.
He turned around and faced her. “Won’t.”
Her beautiful face gazed upon him with glacial thoughtfulness. She smiled. “We shall see.” With a snap of her fingers, a portal appeared in the air. Through it, Elijah saw two young men in the woods, huddled together by a dimming fire.
Elijah’s breath caught. His heart shot up to his throat, nearly choking him.
“Your brothers are safe for now,” Mistress Black said. “But that can easily change. A sudden gust of wind to blow those embers into that dried grass about a foot away. A freak snowstorm to freeze them in their sleep. Wolves, bears, or other creatures more terrible and fantastic than you can imagine hunting them—”
“Enough,” Elijah growled. “Stop it.”
The image winked out. Mistress Black crossed her arms. “Does this mean you’ll comply?”
“Do I have a choice?” He felt something at last—bitterness. Resentment. Both had been building for a while now. No wonder they were his strongest emotions and able to get through her drug’s spell.
Mistress Black pointed. “Finish it. Show me you’re loyal and can obey orders without question.”
Or else you’ll kill my family.
Every night, he saw his brothers’ faces, younger than the image just showed to him because they’d been younger when he left, but they were his family all the same. And every night, he’d cry out for them in his sleep. Every day they passed through his thoughts several times, plaguing him with worries for their safety and guilt over abandoning them. The guilt had been piled high. It had had plenty of time to accumulate.
He’d thought about running from this mansion, from this house of endless horrors, but by then it was too late. He was in too deep. Once Mistress Black found something sh
e liked, one of her lackeys in a similar position had told him, “She never lets it go without a fight.”
Bitch.
He made a vow right then and there to destroy her someday. To slit her throat and watch her bleed. Or to deliver a cut for every crime she’d committed. He wasn’t sure whether he’d enjoy getting her death over with or taking his time with killing her. He also wasn’t sure with option two if there’d be anything much left once his repressed rage took over.
Another worry for another day. Right now he had to protect his brothers.
So he started forward—and the hatred for himself grew.
The spell cracked at a glacial pace.
Must be careful, must be careful, must be careful, replayed over and over in the back of Verika’s mind—not enough to distract her but enough to remind her. Must be careful, so as not to damage his memories.
Must not do anything that could make him forget about her.
Her heart clenched. Her chest had felt tight this entire time—with guilt, fear, and a hope so bright it nearly crushed her sternum.
Please hold on, Elijah. We’ll find Mistress Black, together.
His breath caught, his body jerked.
Her eyes narrowed on his face.
The color slowly leached from him. Beads of sweat had begun to form on his forehead, his chest.
She didn’t see the claws start to protrude from his nails.
Elijah stopped before the cage, claws extended. He watched the child cringe and cry, his face wet with bloody tears. Tiny fangs protruded over his bottom lip.
He was trembling.
Elijah’s claws retracted. “No.”
Cold silence greeted him. “Do it,” Mistress Black finally said, with quiet fury.
“I said no.” Elijah turned around to face her, jaw set, eyes narrowed. “You can’t hurt my brothers. Your powers have grown, but they aren’t that vast yet.”