by Misty Evans
Vicky stared at me with unseeing eyes. Her neck bled black in the darkness. When she didn’t kneel as instructed, the bodyguard kneed her from behind and another faint cracking noise echoed in the air. She went down, knees kissing the snow.
Asmund was my kind of guy. Less talk, more action. And action was what we needed.
I signaled Neve to get to the house. She stuck her tongue out at me, but fired up the wheelchair and left. Grabbing Vicky by the collar, I hauled her up and propelled her across the threshold and into the cemetery. “Thanks, As. Appreciate the backup.”
“My queen,” he said on a nod. He licked his lips. “Master Alexandru insists I accompany the prisoner wherever she goes.”
That could be a problem. I didn’t want anyone in the cemetery but Vicky, me and Salmad. “For your own safety, it would be better if you remained outside the graveyard’s perimeter.”
“My safety is not the issue. Yours is. I will take my chances to serve and protect you as instructed by my Master.”
Well, hello new bodyguard. Dru might be pissed at me, but he was worried about Maria kicking my ass just like Neve. Either that or this was a simple political move any House Master would make for his queen.
I stepped closer and lowered my voice so Vicky wouldn’t hear me. “Just so we’re clear, I’m summoning a spirit. On the off chance she possesses your body, I’ll be forced to stake you.”
“Understood, my queen.”
Cool. I could use Asmund as more than a bodyguard inside the graveyard. He was now my new anchor to this world. Once that portal opened, any demon inside the boundaries was at high-risk of heading to the pit of hell. Vamps, however, had some kind of innate immunity. Hell didn’t want them any more than I did. “The rest of your men will stay here. One of them should be able to contact Neve if necessary. Your cellphone won’t work inside these borders.”
“Agreed.” He and his second-in-command traded phones.
I looked over my shoulder at Vicky. She was still zoned out, leaning against a tall grave marker and staring at nothing. “What did you do to her?”
“My skill set includes the ability to temporarily paralyze my prey. I shared a small dose of toxin with her.”
Nice. There were demons and shifters who could do the same, but they were rare. Very rare. I needed this guy on my payroll. “It won’t hamper her abilities to summon the ghost will it?”
At this he tilted his head, considering. “Should wear off in about thirty seconds. Her normal faculties will be dulled, but not inoperative.”
Perfect. I waved him in, shut the gate and started walking the perimeter, running my fingers over various grave stones and trees—the touchstones of my magical barrier. The snow was deep, forcing me to raise my knees high, and the brambles and overgrowth impeded my progress.
My demon was happy, cavorting and frolicking with the cemetery’s dark magic. But as I reversed the spells I’d placed on the area and walked the inverted pentagon created by the tombstones, I noticed she was a little off. The earth magic swirling in the graveyard buoyed her, but she wasn’t as hyper and obsessed as she usually was. Her energy was dulled in direct contrast to my senses which were so heightened, I could smell the decaying bones and moldy soil buried under several feet of frozen ground and snow.
Salmad joined me halfway through my spell reversal. I had to lower the barriers inside the place in order for us to get Maria in. “How will you summon Maria’s ghost?”
“The vamp over there. She was a witch and is still practicing the dark arts. She summoned Lilith from hell. Maria should be a snap.”
“And then you’ll exorcise her?”
“You’ll exorcise her. To a different plane of existence.”
“Me?”
“You’re Salmad, the mad priest, aren’t you? I thought that was one of your special skills. Exorcising demons.”
His robe made shuffling noises against the snow. He seemed to wrestle with a response. “I have only performed a few successful exorcisms, and as your friend pointed out, if Maria does not inhabit a physical body, it will be most difficult to exorcise her.”
Details, details. “And if I get her in a physical body? Will that help?”
Vicky was coming out of her stupor. Her eyes narrowed as Salmad and I came out from behind a mausoleum. “Hey, wait. I know this place. Why have you brought me here? Going to send me to hell like you did my savior?”
Only a fucked up witch would think Lilith was her savior. “That’s one option.” And a pretty good one. “But first, I want to thank you for resurrecting Maria. That’s some powerful magic you’ve got.”
Asmund stood off to her side, his gaze shifting between watching her and watching the area. Vicky was suspicious of the compliment, but proud enough her ego puffed up. Her chin rose a bit.
I hefted my butt up onto a marble tombstone with a wide, flat top, swung my legs as if I had all night to sit there and chat. “Was it your idea or Toel’s to bring back her ghost?”
Again the chin lift. This time in defiance. Guess that answered that question.
“To help Toel with his quest for world domination or for revenge on me?”
The fog in her brain was completely gone now. She was warming to the task of schooling me. “Maria is not just your everyday spirit. She’s a revenant and I can control her because she’s Undead like a vampire. Her power will manifest with mine and secure the future of the Undead. And her desire for revenge on you matches mine. She’ll wreak havoc on you and yours while I sit back and watch.”
Revenants were more like vamps or zombies than ghosts, but they didn’t come back from the grave in their own bodies. They jumped into one already walking and talking. “Then why not summon Maria and let her possess your body rather than that other witch?”
Her face twitched. “What other witch?”
Just as I suspected. She really had no idea what she was dealing with. “You didn’t know? She’s been inhabiting the body of a sexy witch who hangs out at club Fright Night. If you have the power to summon her from the ghostly plane, then why not use Maria yourself? The powers you have now…she could increase them tenfold. Maybe more. Combine that with your vamp blood and your skills as a witch and you’d be more powerful than Toel.”
Salmad shifted from foot to foot. Cold or nervous. Maybe both.
“What do you care?” A strand of red hair blew across her face. “Either way, you’ll be dead.”
“Exactly. And I’m not ready to die, so I want to make a deal.”
A shot of renewed energy made the ends of her hair lift. She hated me to her core, but she couldn’t resist hearing me out. “Toel doesn’t make deals.”
“I’m not asking Toel for a damn thing. I’m talking to you. Nothing would please me more than to see you get what’s rightfully yours. You’re already more powerful than Toel and we both know it. I mean, you raised Lilith from hell. You summoned Maria. He couldn’t do that on a bet.”
The defiance was gone, and in its place, measured contemplation. I had her full attention. The gears in her head were turning. “Why would I make a deal with you?”
“Because Toel’s plan to take over Carpathia and the Bridge Institute won’t succeed. I’ve already made sure they’re both secured against his attacks. And I know about his plan for the blood at Chloe’s. I’ve taken steps to thwart all three.”
“But…how?”
I waved her question away. “The how doesn’t matter. The why is what’s important. I’m sick of being a puppet for the Bridge Institute and I’m now a blood slave to Alexandru. Do you know how much I hate him right now?”
In the background, Asmund stiffened, but he made no move to strike me down. Dru had probably warned him I’d do and say some things that went against vamp politics.
In front of me, Vicky’s contemplation turned calculating and I continued. “So here’s what I’m thinking. I know the Bridge Institute like the back of my hand, and I have an easy in with the sons of Vlad the Impaler. I can sense everyth
ing they’re thinking. Everything they’re feeling. You and I team up, and we could run the world, Vicky. Without Toel. Without Dru. And no Bridge Council to stand in our way.”
Her body leaned forward the slightest bit. The fish eyeing the hook.
I gave her what she wanted. “All you have to do is summon Maria to this place and let her enter your body instead of that other witch who’s so weak and worthless. You’re the most formidable witch in this area, maybe the whole continent. It’s time you took your proper place and quit relying on Toel to get what you want. Maria is the key.”
Her mouth worked but she didn’t say anything. She worried the inside of her bottom lip. “You’re saying this to trick me.”
“Trick you how?” I slid off the tombstone and spread my hands wide. Time was ticking by. I’d known this wouldn’t be an easy sell, but dealing with Vicky always made me impatient. “I’m offering to help you instead of kill you. Where’s the trick in that?”
“The last time you brought me here, I ended up a vampire.”
There was that. “And stronger and more powerful than you were as a witch, correct?”
She eyeballed me, still looking for the trick.
Come on, come on.
Her body stiffened, her gaze went blank.
What the hell? I shot a look at Asmund, but he remained still and silent. Had I done that to her?
Take the deal, Vicky. I pushed at her mind with mine. You know you want to.
Her body jerked like I’d startled her. Her features went as flat and unemotional as the headstones dotting the landscape around us. “I’ll summon Maria.”
Hot damn. Another new skill to add to my burgeoning set. I clapped my hands together. “Let’s do it. And when she gets here, bind her to you to make sure you have control over her.”
She responded with a single downward nod. “I must draw a triangle on the ground to contain her.”
“Of course. Salmad will make one with his holy chain.”
Asmund regarded me with cold, hard eyes, but seemed to understand this was all some wacky demon plan. Salmad looked like he wanted to give me a high-five…and then strangle me.
At my suggestion, he hurriedly undid the chain from his waist. I drew him and Vicky to a spot in the center of the cemetery and instructed him to form the triangle there. My demon recognized the portal under our feet and started throwing herself against the magic imprisoning her inside my chest. She wanted out of there. Fast.
When Salmad finished, we both looked at the witch-turned-vamp. “Will that work?” I asked.
She stepped forward and raised her shackled hands toward me. “Cut me. I must bleed inside the triangle.”
Her neck wound had already stopped bleeding so a quick slice of my dagger across her palm opened up a new blood source. She dripped blood around the inside of the triangle, chanting a spell under her breath. When she finished, she looked up at me. “I have your word, demon, that you will assist me in my endeavors.”
“Whatever you need,” I lied.
Demons, you can’t trust ’em.
Chapter Thirty-two
Vicky went into a trance-like state, muttering a spell in another language. I glanced at Salmad and he shrugged. Neither of us was familiar with it. It sounded like a combo of ancient Hebrew and Martian.
The temp dropped at least ten degrees, raising gooseflesh all over my skin. I motioned Sal and Asmund off to the side and we huddled together against the cold air. “Things are about to get real messy, so I need you to both be ready to act,” I told them. “Salmad, perform the exorcism as quickly as possible, and don’t sweat the details. The opening is directly under that triangle and once I open it, it will suck Vicky, Maria and probably us in.”
“Us?” His face was all hard lines and shadowed determination. “I prefer not to travel through that portal.”
“Me, neither. That’s where Asmund is going to help us out.” As the wind picked up, lifting the edges of my cape and blowing snow over my boot tops, I explained how the Undead bodyguard would be an earthly anchor to me and Salmad so the exorcism didn’t toast us as well as Maria.
Asmund puffed up his chest and looked down his long nose at me. “I will keep you safe, Queen Kali.”
“Salmad, too,” I reminded him. “The priest may be susceptible to the exorcism, so do whatever it takes to keep him topside, got it?”
Above us, clouds roiled and darkened. Whatever Vicky was doing was certainly having an effect.
“I have performed a few exorcisms in the past on the battlefield. I was never susceptible to them,” Salmad said over the rising noise of the magical storm.
“But you weren’t standing over a pseudothryrum infernum. You may have more vitium than vice inside you, priest, but the vice is still there. Don’t ever forget that.”
His jaw tightened in displeasure, but he gave me a confirmation nod.
A bolt of lightning flashed, striking a nearby tree and splitting it down the center. We all jumped. “She’s here,” I said.
We broke our huddle and turned to face Vicky inside the triangle.
Pale lips continued to move, although no words came out of her mouth. Her wild, kinky hair rose from her head, flying in all directions as if she were plugged directly into an electrical outlet. Her irises were white, the pupils black as the clouds overhead. And around the vamp’s body, the air sparkled and surged with white sparks.
On the previous 4th of July, Di had dragged me to a fireworks display at Navy Pier. I preferred my fireworks to take place over U.S. Cellular Field after a White Sox game, but I enjoyed the show at the Pier even though I complained through the whole thing to Di. I didn’t want her to think I’d gone soft.
The triangle of space surrounding Vicky was minute in comparison to Navy Pier, and yet, as we watched the vamp try to bind Maria’s spirit to her, the show was no less incredible.
“Why have you summoned me?” a disembodied voice said as Vicky’s lips moved. “What do you want from me?”
“That’s not Maria,” Salmad said at the same time I said, “Oh, shit.”
Asmund grabbed my arm and started to step in front of me, my own personal Undead shield. I stopped him, and stepped toward the triangle. “We didn’t mean to call you,” I told the spirit, wondering why it sparkled like Maria but was obviously of demon origins. I would have opened the portal and sent Vicky and the unwanted spirit on their way, but Vicky was my conduit to Maria. “Our apologies for bothering you. You may go.”
From behind the three of us, I heard a laugh. A female laugh full of seduction, lust and gluttony. “Did you really think you could fool me, Kalina?”
Double shit. I touched my fingers and thumbs together to raise my protective magic, but before I could turn and confront Maria, lightning struck once more…
And I was the target.
Intense, burning pain seized me, a giant hand lifting me from the ground before dropping me just as fast at Maria’s feet. Talk about a stun baton of epic proportions. My blood boiled inside my veins for a split second. My heartbeat flickered, went out, came back on with a stuttering ka-thump, ka-thump.
My brain stuttered as well, then rebooted. This wasn’t exactly what I’d planned, but there was a silver lining. Maria was here. Which meant she wasn’t protecting Toel.
I sunk my hands into the snow, pushed myself into a sitting position and coughed against the snow swirling in my face. The lobes of my brain did a cha-cha dance with each other inside my cranium and my magic mimicked the snow, whirling in frantic circles.
But my senses were overachieving in the sensation department. Wet snow soaked through my pants, freezing my ass. Maria’s magic sucked at my skin, luring my demon into a stupor. The night smelled of white-cold electricity, frigid winter air and the rotting scent of dark magic running through the ground’s veins.
Salmad ran to my side, dropped to his knees and gripped my upper arms, supporting me as he glared up at Maria’s ghost. “I adjure thee that thou torment us not, evil spiri
t, Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum. Be gone…”
The storm went wild, a great wind bending the bare branches of trees, lightning cracking in jagged bunches at the directional four corners. Raising my gaze, I met Maria’s eyes, keeping my hands buried in the snow and digging furtively to reach the soil beneath. “No. Don’t leave. Stay with me. I need you.”
I didn’t need to see Salmad’s and Asmund’s faces to register their shock. Salmad made the sign of the cross and folded his hands in prayer. I was a bit shocked myself, but I had to do something to keep Maria engaged. She never could resist being needed.
The ghost of my tormentor regarded me with suspicious pleasure. “Change of heart, Kalina?”
You don’t fight evil with prayer any more than you fight vampires with Q-tips. I bowed my head in acquiesce, my stiff fingers striking gold and touching frozen ground. Bingo. At that same time, I let the demon inside rise to power, the direct connection to earth magic fueling her vigor. “My queen, I live to serve only you.”
Complete folly, this, but Maria saw what she liked in my eyes when I lifted my gaze to hers. “There you are, daemon. Time to come out and play.”
She reached forward and stroked her slender ghost fingers down the side of my face. I shivered. Succubus energy flowed from her fingertips, an eerie touch, and potent, causing me to lean into her hand, a dog seeking his master’s caress. Maria was smart, but like all good demons, she had her weaknesses. I licked my lips, calling her attention to them. Then I shifted my head and kissed the palm of her ethereal hand.
“Rise, daemon.”
Tendrils of earth magic continued to shoot up my arms and the graveyard’s noncorporeal citizens huddled around me. I couldn’t see their ghostly bodies, only sense their sinister energy. Whether they were attaching themselves to me out of fear of Maria or because I’d linked into the earthly magic below, I couldn’t be sure. Either way, I accepted the union of their energies with mine, and as Maria stroked my face and sent her paralyzing venom into my cells, I sucked it up with relish. It was time Maria was treated to a dose of her own medicine.