by Rye Brewer
Salvation
Is it salvation when the sacrifices are greater than the ends?
Addiction to power can make a supernatural being commit the most human of sins, but is safety found with one’s own kind or does it lie in the shade of the ones who have become a hybrid half-breed’s new family?
Where does salvation exist? When does love become salvation? Or does it?
1
Jonah
I could still remember the early days, right after my parents had disappeared.
It was a hectic time, to say the least. Leading a vampire clan. Like trying to herd cats—that was the old saying. Except I was grieving at the same time. My siblings were grieving.
I was the oldest of the Bourke children—which meant I took over the clan, which meant my twin brother, Gage, lost his mind over it, which meant I had yet another thing to handle. It was a living nightmare, every minute.
Up until the moment when I realized Vance’s cell was empty, I had always considered it the worst situation I’ve ever had to navigate. How naïve I was.
I glanced left and right, searching for something that would make even a scrap of sense. There was no sign of him, no evidence of a struggle or a breakout. The cell was locked, damn it. How had he gotten out?
I dashed down to Genevieve’s cell. I recognized the shape of a woman sitting on the bunk with her knees drawn up to her chest. She had released all pretense of grace, that sweeping coldness which had once dominated her every movement. The moment she’d realized I wasn’t about to release her, I supposed.
Seeing her allowed me to breathe at least a brief sigh of relief. She was still there—so, too, was Marcus.
I could make out his profile as he leaned against the wall of his cell, looking down the corridor toward me.
“What happened to Vance?” I managed to ask over the breathlessness which was threatening to turn into panic.
Keep control of yourself! some much saner voice screamed inside my head.
I wanted to ask how that voice expected me to stay in control when the most dangerous of my three captives was on the loose.
Genevieve’s sunken eyes stared cold, unblinking into me. “How should I know? I don’t know why I’m here.”
I waved that part off.
She knew very well what she’d done—granted, she might not have had anything to do with Lucian’s demise, but there was much more. The tainted blood she’d snuck into the Bourke blood bank, for starters.
“You didn’t hear anything?” I challenged.
He hadn’t moved. It was clearly enough for him to stare, frozen in place. I wondered if a little time in a cell had given him some perspective.
“What was I supposed to hear?”
Snarling, I advanced on the bars, wrapping my hands around them.
She didn’t so much as flinch.
“Stop playing games with me, or whatever you’ve suffered thus far will seem like a trip to a spa. Did you hear Vance escaping?”
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “I heard him leaving, if that’s what you mean.”
“How did he do it?”
The corners of her full mouth quirked up in a smile.
I was used to her lips being crimson, with whatever lipstick she used. Probably something expensive, in keeping with her taste.
Her imprisonment had stripped away everything unessential, leaving a washed-out shell. “Don’t you wish you knew?”
“Tell him what he wants to know, damn it.” I glanced over in time to see a dejected Marcus slinking away into the shadows. “Not that there’s anything worth telling.”
“All right. I’ll take it easy on the would-be big shot who locked us up for no reason, knowing we had nothing to do with what Vance—if it was, in fact, Vance—did to Lucian.” She straightened her posture, her feet touching the floor. “There was no way to see anything, naturally. Even if I crane my neck to look down toward where Vance was locked up, I can hardly see more than the floor outside the cell. There was a robed figure. I couldn’t see anything but one shoulder and its back, but the height told me it was a man.”
“Nothing else? Did he speak?”
She shook her head. “I heard the jangling of keys, the opening of the cell door. Two pairs of feet walking away.”
“As simple as that?”
“As simple as that.”
I turned toward the cell, and, sure enough, the damned keys hung on a hook not far from it. Where the hell were the guards? Why did they exist if they would simply allow something like this to happen?
“How long ago was it?” I regretted the question almost before it was entirely out of my mouth. There was no clock on the wall, no watch on her wrist. No window through which to see whether it was day or night.
All she did was tilt her head to the side, a mystical smile on her lips.
I didn’t wait to hear whether she had any further thoughts. Self-doubt and the recurring question of why the guards hadn’t done anything to stop him followed close on my heels as I took the stairs three at a time to the ground level, then past the Great Hall to the guards’ quarters.
“What are you doing?” I bellowed when I found them playing cards around a table.
There were eight of them in all—some sat with their feet up, some straddled their backward chairs as they decided what to discard.
I wished more than anything I could tear their heads off and place them on pikes around the perimeter of the cathedral. That might dissuade those wishing to sneak past before Sirene had the chance to perform the enchantment. At least they jumped to their feet when they registered my presence, but it was too little, too late.
“Why aren’t any of you on duty at the moment?” I bellowed, glaring at all of them.
One of the wooden chairs hit the wall when I kicked it. They flinched, falling back.
I caught sight of myself in a gilded mirror, something which had no place there but was perfectly in keeping with what Lucian would’ve wanted our headquarters to look like.
My fangs were down, my claws out. My eyes were red, flaming marbles in a deathly white face. I could understand why they were intimidated—but that did nothing to ease my rage.
“Where were you?” I prompted in a voice which sounded insane even to my ears. Insane and violent and dangerous.
They glanced at one another, each soundlessly daring the others to speak up. Finally, one of them spoke—I vaguely recognized him, having seen him during prior visits to headquarters.
“None of us knew who should be on duty. There was no schedule in place. We’ve been taking turns, but…”
“But?” My hands twitched, eager to be wrapped around his throat. All of them. They were all useless.
“But we didn’t see anything. The place has been empty.” His chin trembled as though he were on the verge of weeping, and his eyes bore the look of a man who wished very much that he hadn’t opened his mouth.
“The place has been empty?” I hissed, glaring at all of them. “Yes, and it’s emptier now. Vance escaped.”
There were gasps, exclamations—the group of them stopped short of pointing fingers at each other.
They reminded me of my brothers and sister and me when we were children, when we lived on the farm, getting into mischief and always blaming the others for it.
“We heard nothing,” one of them swore, shaking his head hard enough to make me wonder if it would fall off.
“How convenient!” I shouted, and they all froze. “Perhaps you would’ve heard something if you hadn’t been playing cards here on the other side of the damned building! Perhaps if even one of you had been watching the cells, you would’ve seen an intruder sneak into the building and take Vance from his cell! What would happen if one of them became violently ill down there? Or tried to hurt themselves for some reason? You wouldn’t know, would you? Because you’re up here, enjoying yourselves, wasting time! You’re all pathetic!” I was roaring, venting every ounce of rage and hopelessness.
“We
’re sorry, sir,” the first guard said, speaking for the rest again. “We won’t let anything like this happen again. You can count on it.”
“That doesn’t inspire much faith,” I spat. “I ought to sack the lot of you and lock you up in those cells for good measure. You’re all too stupid to be allowed to live as free men. As it is, I need you. Get your act together, fast. I want round-the-clock duty reinstalled. Every entrance, two guards in the dungeon at all times. The way it would’ve been under Lucian’s leadership.”
They nodded, shifting their weight from one foot to the other and looking generally uncomfortable. I decided to put an end to it by spinning on my heel and marching away, pulling my phone out as I did.
I had no answers yet and needed to get some, fast.
Gage was the first person I called, in the hopes he had gone back to the penthouse for any reason and could tell me if Philippa was acting especially sketchy. Not that I thought my sister was the one to free Vance—she didn’t match Genevieve’s description anyway.
No answer from Gage. I was hardly surprised, seeing how we’d left things. I could only rely on the theory that if his little girlfriend, Sara, had been discovered, I would’ve heard about it by now.
I called Philippa next, hoping she wasn’t in the vault where she’d get no signal. Nothing from her, either. Had everyone dropped off the face of the earth? I waited for her voicemail greeting to play out, my mind spinning.
What should I say? How much did she need to know?
I had to warn her, at least.
“I don’t know if you’ll get this, but you should know somebody helped Vance escape the dungeon.” I heaved a heavy sigh, rubbing my temple with my free hand. “Keep an eye out. I don’t know if he’ll go looking for his body or not. Be careful.”
Telling her might have been a mistake, but I didn’t want to run the risk of her doing anything rash if his sudden appearance shocked her.
Soft footsteps echoed through the Great Hall, and I turned to find a figure I never thought I’d be glad to see, ever—but there she was, and there was my relief at her presence.
It took a potential catastrophe for me to admit that I might need her.
“Sirene. I have a big problem.”
2
Jonah
In the dungeon, Sirene surveyed the cell, her face blank. I waited, holding my breath as she examined the bunk, the lock. Not that she would find anything there—they’d used the key, whoever they were.
“Well?” I asked when she stepped out.
I didn’t need to ask. It was obvious from the dejected look she gave me that she was as lost as I was.
“Who had reason to do this?” she asked, instead of answering my question.
I growled because there was no response which made any sense. I waved her away from the other cells—I didn’t need either of my other guests overhearing us—and didn’t reply until we were alone in a small alcove off the Great Hall.
She settled into a chair, her serene expression doing little to conceal her fatigue. It was written in the soft sigh she let out when she sat down, and the way she sank into the cushion behind her. I needed to keep that in mind. My father, Fane, would never forgive me otherwise.
“The only person I keep coming back to is Philippa,” I whispered, still uncertain whether or not we were fully alone. With my luck, a guard would decide to do his job and would happen by as I was speaking. “But Genevieve said the person outside the cell was male. I can’t imagine anybody else who would want to take a risk like this.”
“It couldn’t have been Elazar,” she murmured, shaking her head. “He’s locked up on Shadowsbane.”
I remembered Fane saying that Sirene knew what he was doing, trying to get my mother back into her body, so she had to know that was where my father was headed. I looked away, suddenly uncomfortable for her.
“Do you think Valerius would go to Shadowsbane to find this Elazar?”
He was the necromancer Fane had been referring to.
“I don’t know. It could be… If he wants to return to his own body, he might.”
“That still doesn’t explain who came in here to free him. He’s out there somewhere. It’s almost frightening, the thought of what he could do. Wandering around as Vance.”
“There aren’t many in our world, the non-human world, who don’t know what he did to Lucian,” she reminded me. “I highly doubt he’ll be welcomed into polite company.”
“Valerius has no interest in polite company,” I reminded her. “He’ll slink around, causing trouble the way he did here. As much as I’ve wanted to thank him for doing something that needed to be done…”
“Perfectly understandable, given everything Lucian did to your family.”
I raised an eyebrow at that.
She continued, “Yes, of course. I know the history he had with your family—particularly your parents.”
“What of this Elazar? Do you know anything else about him?” If anything, it would be good to know who my father and Anissa would be dealing with on Shadowsbane.
She nodded with a knowing look on her face. “There aren’t many as old as I am who aren’t aware of Elazar and his history. Not to mention his sister’s.”
“Was she the one who helped him? His sister?”
“No, that was Samara, his mate. Though she wasn’t imprisoned, the way he was. Elewyn is possibly the most powerful elemental witch in existence—her ability matches the level of her brother’s. They’re a formidable duo. From what I understand, she’s devoted to him. Has lived on Shadowsbane ever since his sentencing, so as to never be too far. All this time, she’s waited for his release.”
I snickered at the thought of Philippa making such a sacrifice for me. The image wouldn’t solidify in my mind. I had relied on her counsel more times than I could count. There was much more to her than she allowed the rest of us to see. But the day she moved to a prison island to keep me company would be the day I laid an egg.
Perhaps this cynical mindset was what made me ask, “Are we sure her reasons are entirely pure? For staying so close to him, I mean.”
“Ah. You believe she may be planning something.” When I nodded, she replied, “Do you believe it would take centuries for a powerful witch to bring her plot to fruition?”
“Depending on what she had in mind. But that’s neither here nor there. She has nothing to do with Valerius.”
It did make me think though. This Elewyn might prove herself to be a valuable asset to Fane. It was likely he already knew this, that he had talked it all out with Sirene before leaving. Fane hadn’t survived as long as he had by making rash decisions.
“There’s no way for Valerius to get back into his body without their assistance,” Sirene reminded me as she rose to her feet. “We may need to wait until he announces himself before we can counter him.”
“It’s what he’ll announce himself with that disturbs me,” I murmured.
She surprised me then by linking her arm with mine. “Come. I need to prepare the enchantment. We must keep moving forward and do the best we can with what is in our power to control.”
Her words were a much-needed comfort in the midst of my turmoil—and it didn’t escape me that she kept using the word “we.”
I didn’t bother correcting her, since her presence was a comfort.
3
Anissa
I couldn’t breathe easily again until the Witch Senate swept away, moving as one.
Their ghostly skin and white hair stood out against the dark sky above Shadowsbane Island as they bobbed away in their black robes, down the stone road leading from the castle. Where they were going, I had no idea—nor did I have the desire to follow them. The greater the distance between us, the better.
Instead, I broke free of the stunned surprise which had kept me frozen in place and went to my sister, Sara. She trembled in my arms as we held each other. She wasn’t the only one.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered into her ear.
“I should ask you the same question.” She pulled back, arms still around me, frowning. Her eyes searched my face for an explanation.
There it was again, that extra something about her. A sharpness, an understanding that had never been there before. She wasn’t my frail sister anymore, the one I had to protect at all costs. Good because, for once, I had no idea how we were going to get out of the mess we’d landed in.
“It’s a long story—one which you’ll hear all about when we meet with the Senate.” I glanced in Scott’s direction.
He was still encased in ice at least six inches thick on all sides, and still brooding. His eyes shot daggers in our direction. No sense in hiding his disgust, I supposed.
Sara noticed, too, and very deliberately let go of me to allow Stark’s arm to slide protectively around her shoulders. I would’ve felt bad for Scott if he hadn’t been the one to get us all into trouble.
“We’ll all be all right,” Sara whispered, peering up at him. “Won’t we?”
I looked at him, too. Who was this Stark? The one who was supposed to be training her, if I remembered Mom’s explanation correctly. Considering the way he held her and the glares he repeatedly shot Scott’s way, there was obviously much more between them. It had to be serious for her to have forgotten everything that had happened since we met the Bourkes—like the way she and Scott had been joined at the hip.
Stark didn’t appear as confident as I would’ve hoped. “I don’t know. I have to be honest. I’ve seen what they can do. I know how seriously they take their laws. This may not end well.”
“Then why did you bring her here?” I snarled, forgetting any attempt to be cordial for my sister’s sake.
His eyes widened. “I didn’t mean that it wouldn’t end well for us.”
Us.
Witches.
My stomach dropped. I turned to Sara for answers. She drew a deep breath, glancing at Stark one more time before explaining. “I’m here in order to train with a witch. Elewyn. She’s an extremely powerful elemental who can help me develop my abilities.”