Viktoria's Shadow: Jael

by Ysobella Black

  “That’s gross. Scourge sounds like some disease animals get.” Dream wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “Their memories are gone.” Memory prodded one unconscious man with her shoe. “They’re... empty. How interesting. I’ve never seen grandmother’s beer work like this before.”

  Viktoria's sister's voices hardly registered. A need for vengeance like she hadn't felt for over three thousand years sang in her blood and firmed her resolve, burning fear and doubt away. Viktoria had to find Lurky. "Come on. We need to -"

  Four spider legs erupted from each man, two from each of their arms.

  “Get behind me,” Viktoria ordered her sisters. “Break that light if you can, to give me some more shadows to work with.” The open door let some flickering torchlight in. That would have to be enough,

  Memory swung one of the chairs towards the light fixture in the ceiling, plunging half the room into darkness. “I never need to see any spiders ever again.”

  Wet, squelching sounds came from the men as the four huge arachnids tore their legs out of the men's arms and pushed against the floor for leverage, ripping the rest of their bodies free. They scurried away and shook themselves like Surma ridding his coat of water, as if glad to be liberated of the men. Each black-furred spider stood two feet tall and had a different color stripe down its back. Fangs glistened with poison and sixteen pairs of eyes focused on Viktoria.

  Viktoria reached through her magic to the shadows she'd marked, pulling them along the walls outside the cell, reeling them in, and readying whips of shadow. She wouldn't let these spiders feed on her sisters like the ones that had hurt Musette. But the arachnids made no move toward them. “Good spiders. You don’t want to bite us.”

  Her voice triggered movement. Green stumbled forward. Tripping over his own legs, he bumped into Orange, and the two fell in a squirming heap. Red tried to take a step, but slid to the floor, legs splayed in eight directions. Purple bounced and rocked back and forth, almost like he danced to music no one else heard, leaning almost to the tipping point one way, then over-correcting to lean too far the other.

  An unsuccessfully stifled giggle escaped Dream.

  Viktoria's lips twitched in a smile. The spiders were kind of cute like this, but she made her voice firm. “Stay behind me, but move toward the door.” She approached the two spiders struggling to right themselves, keeping herself between them and her sisters. They stopped their frantic movements and Green extended a fuzzy leg to her in a plaintive plea for help.

  She reached out, instincts telling her to help the poor stuck spider. Hadn’t she learned not to try petting everything? Biting her lip, she curled a tendril of shadow around the proffered leg instead, tugging the creature upright with a gentle pull.

  Proving the other Maidens of Pohjola still had no innate sense to not touch all creatures, Dream knelt to help Orange to his feet, cooing when he rubbed his head against her. “I think they’re drunk. They’re kind of adorable when they stumble around like this. Do you think they forgot they exist, too?”

  “I don’t know if they ever had enough identity to exist on their own.” Memory laughed as she lifted Red to stand. He sank to his belly when his legs slid in eight directions again. “Maybe some of the toxins in Grandmother’s beer are reacting with them somehow.” She lifted the spider again and held him as his legs steadied.

  “Or maybe it was something in the sweat.” Viktoria scooped up her cell phone, the flask, and a ring of keys one of the men had dropped. “Musette’s magic is poisoned. If Selene can’t heal her, maybe we can find someone to make an anti-poison from one of these guys. Come on. We can lock them in here with Thomax and his friends while we search for Asim.”

  The spiders moved fast, staggering into and careening off of one another as they scuttled out of the room and lurched into the corridor.

  “I don’t think they want to stay here.” Dream stifled her laughter behind a hand pressed to her mouth.

  “Maybe they know where the mage is.” Viktoria waited for Dream and Memory to exit and locked the door. “They seemed to move when I said his name.”

  Wooden doors with small windows lined the length of the hallway on both sides. The spiders wove side to side with purpose down the corridor.

  “We’re not in a basement, we’re in a dungeon.” Viktoria peered into one of the cells. A woman lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling. A peek into another cell showed the same view. What had the mage done to them? All the magic in the area felt...shredded. Was this what happened to Musette? What would have happened to Ember? Viktoria peered into one of the cells. A woman lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling. A peek into another cell showed the same view. She handed the keys to Dream. “You two use the keys and open these cells. You can help the women forget what’s happened to them and let them sleep until help arrives for them.”

  “Who’s going to help them?”

  Viktoria pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through her contacts to dial Tabitha. “I know a witch. She runs a coven.” After four rings, the call went to voice mail. “Hi, Tabitha. It’s Viktoria. I, well, it’s a long story, but I may have stumbled across some of your missing witches. We’re in a lair of some sort under an apartment building downtown.” She listed the address. “They’re not in great shape. There’s a mage here. I think we dealt with all the men who work for him, but I can’t be sure. Bring some healers and backup.”

  She slipped her phone into her pocket. “That’s all I can do for now. While you two are helping the witches, I’m going to follow the spiders.”

  “You don’t know the spiders know where they’re going,” Memory protested.

  “If they had scattered in different directions, I’d agree, but they’re all going together, no hesitation. Worst case, I’ll come back and find you.”

  “I know you’re a good fighter, but be careful, Shadow.” Dream said.

  “Yes,” Memory added. “I’m pretty sure if you get killed, the deal’s off, so don’t do that.”

  Like Viktoria ever forgot about that deal hanging over her head. “Not everything is about the deal.”

  “It is for us!”

  “I promise I won’t get killed. You two do what you can for everyone you find. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Viktoria turned to follow the spiders. They’d gone around a corner at the end of the corridor when she caught up with them.

  Several times, the spiders stopped in the middle of the passage, turning in circles as if they were confused. A couple times, one of them returned to her and lifted two of its front legs, like a child wanting to be picked up.

  Unable to bring herself to pick up the spiders, Viktoria crouched and patted their heads. “Go on.” She waved a hand in the direction they’d been going. “Find Asim.”

  The spiders made three more turns before they teetered over one another to enter a doorway on the left.

  CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

  JAEL

  JAEL FLAILED AT THE spiders falling onto him in a constant cascade, wincing as fangs bit and sharp claws sliced into his skin. The spiders slipped beneath the collar of his turnout coat, and skittered over his eyes, ears and nose.

  He sliced and spun, but their bodies disappeared as soon as they struck, leaving him with a crawling sensation in his blood. But no targets. The white light winked out, the arachnid waterfall vanished, and he was left wondering if they had been real. Jael blinked to clear his vision and froze.

  In an underground, earthen-carved room lit with torches and a white-flames in a fireplace, Viktoria sat in an upholstered chair, her head tilted back by the man from the gallery. He stood behind her, one of his hands tangled in her long hair, a gun in the other, pressed to her temple. Her torn dress bared her shoulder, and a fat, white spider perched on her chest, its head close to her neck. A white-eyed mage sat on the arm of the chair, a spelled knife in his hand.

  His Dragă’s blue eyes accused him of everything he’d ever felt responsible for.

  Two swords and too many th
reats to Viktoria. Even if he threw his blades across the room, he couldn’t take out all the dangers before one of them hurt or killed her. The blades sang a war chant in his mind.

  “I’ve been expecting you. Throw your swords in the fire.” The mage shifted the knife, so the point lay against Viktoria’s skin. “Or I will kill it.”

  So this is how it would end. Three thousand years of killing mages because they murdered his wife and daughter, only to find his Dragă and have her end up in the hands of a mage and die himself. Why hadn’t she listened to him? He’d rather be dead than live with failing yet another person he cared about and had vowed to protect, but he had to make sure Viktoria got away.

  The swords hummed quietly, ended on an ominous silent note and tugged towards the fireplace, offering to sacrifice themselves.

  “Let her go.” Jael inched forward, eyes darting around the room, searching for something, anything else he could use. “Give her, and the others she came with safe passage out, and neither you nor any other mage will so much as think about her or any of her family ever again. I’ll stay.”

  “I think not.” The mage sliced the knife down, cutting through skin and cloth, straight towards Viktoria’s heart. Bright red blood spread outward, staining her grey dress. "You have no power here." The spider lunged, fangs aimed at Viktoria’s neck.

  “No!” For the first time, Jael dropped his swords. Unwilling to see them burn, he opened his hands, expecting them to drop to the floor, but they soared through the air and clattered into the fireplace.

  The fire blazed the same white that had burned down his village. His blades withstood the heat, holding their shape in defiance for a few moments before they curved and bent in the unnatural flames. That was almost enough to break Jael, but he stood stoic until the hilts melted, freeing the medallions. The clinks as they landed on the floor of the fireplace fractured his very being.

  A gurgle, the sound worse than any scream, tore Jael’s eyes away from the destruction of his swords, back to Viktoria. The mage’s knife was lodged in her chest.

  Jael’s world crashed down around him.

  A ghostly image of Viktoria rose from her body and hovered over the floor. She looked back at herself, and when she faced Jael again, her face was full of pity.

  “It’s okay, Jael,” Ghost-Viktoria said. “It’s not your fault you can’t save anyone. I don’t blame you. I’m just the last in your long line of failures to protect those you’ve said you would, aren’t I?”

  JAEL AND RIORDAN RODE their horses through what was left of the fifth destroyed village. Limited by their low tolerance for daylight, they’d arrived too late, and no one had been spared. The bodies of men, drained by vampires, shredded by shifters, and blasted by mage magic, lined the way to what they knew they would find at the end of the path laid out for them — the women.

  “I never thought I’d see mages, vampires and shifters working together.” Jael said. “I wish I hadn’t seen it now.”

  “I think the mages have forged this alliance with the aim of annihilating those they cannot control, and the vampires out of jealousy for what they will never have. The strygoi have always been rare, never before so numerous as they’ve become. Strygoi magic is wild and resistant to being taken. For mages to use it, it must be surrendered.” Riordan waved a hand at the bodies. “Who wouldn’t surrender for the chance to save their loved ones?”

  They reached the end of the village and stopped. Riordan swore, and Jael’s sword hilts burned hot in his hands. Mage magic lay heavy in the air. A pyramid of women’s heads stood piled on a rock. Their open eyes stared at Jael in accusation. The rest of their bodies, the pieces of them, lay scattered around the clearing. At the foot of the boulder lay three heaps of ash, a set of mage manacles atop each one. The mages had left vampires chained among their dead Dragăs to be burned by the sun.

  A rage equal to that of the hilts in his palms burned in his blood.

  Riordan dismounted and knelt, sifting through the ashes until he came up with a golden torque. “He won’t have made it easy for them. They will have taken losses to do this.”

  “I told him I would stand by him,” Jael said. “I should have come with him.”

  Riordan stood and offered the torque to Jael. “He chose to live here with his Dragă. We all thought everyone would be safer if most of us scattered and hid so they would focus on us in Dacia. We came as soon as he sent word.”

  Jael turned the torque over in his hands. “I will avenge him. I will avenge them all.”

  “If they intend to slaughter all the strygoi, it won’t be long before they come seeking the first. As long as Selene lives, there is always the possibility of more. You must return to Dacia. I will continue searching for the others. Any I find alive I will send to Selene. I will do what I can to whittle their numbers as I go.”

  “But —”

  “I can take care of myself,” Riordan said. “Selene is preparing to take us somewhere else, but she needs time, and I need you to make sure she has it, in case I do not return. I will hold them off as long as I can. Your job is to protect Selene, Tazraus, and Requiescere. And my sons.” Riordan took Jael by the shoulders. “Above all, make sure my family is safe.”

  A NAKED VIKTORIA ASSEMBLED herself out of the pieces of dead women and sauntered towards him. “Didn’t save your friend. Where are Requiescere and Tazraus, Jael? No one’s heard from them in a thousand years. And Riordan, where is he? Killed after you abandoned him to fight on his own? Selene may as well have been dead for years, her sons without both of their parents, because she had to save herself and you.” She shook her head in disappointment. “But no one should be surprised, right? You destroyed your family, too.”

  Faba held onto his arm, her eyes filled with tears and pleading with him. “Don’t go. They are treacherous men. You cannot believe anything they say. Let’s leave this place and find a new home.”

  “Don’t worry foolishly, wife. I’m going to negotiate peace. We are under a truce. If we cannot come to an agreement with them, we’ll talk about leaving when I return.”

  “Shame on you, Jael. She wasn’t a Dragă, but she was your wife. She deserved to be protected, didn’t she? But you left her alone. And not just her, your daughter, too.”

  Everything around him burned in white flames as he knelt in front of his house, too much of a coward to end his life in the fire that had robbed his wife and daughter of theirs.

  “You could have been there to protect them. She begged you to stay,” Ghost-Viktoria said. “They didn’t deserve to die like that, did they? But even that’s not the worst of what befalls those under your protection, is it?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  VIKTORIA

  “LITTLE ONES, WHAT ARE you doing here?” a low voice asked. “I didn’t summon you.”

  Viktoria chanced a peek around the doorway. They were still in the dungeon, but instead of a cell, this area was arranged as living quarters, with rugs on floor, comfortable looking furniture arranged in front of a fireplace, and a bed in a corner.

  The spiders crowded around a tall man. Asim crouched and held out his hands. “Why have you left your posts? Show me.”

  The spiders backed away from him.

  “What is wrong?” The mage grabbed one spiders’ face in his hands, forcing its jaw open, and swiped a finger across its fangs. He put the collected venom in his mouth and closed his eyes. “Ah, you have led the Scourge’s witch to me.”

  The Scourge’s witch. Viktoria huffed.

  “Come in, witch.” Asim opened his eyes and rose to his feet, scattering the spiders. “I know you are here. I saw what my little ones —” The mage lurched, holding onto the back of the couch. “What?” He leaned over and dry heaved.

  Viktoria stepped into the room. There were too many lights on, and only a few shadows. Most of the lamps were beyond the mage, and she couldn’t reach the ceiling fixtures. The light glinted off something round and silver on the floor in front of the fireplace. She ran to
wards it.

  She was almost there when Asim crashed into her, knocking her down. She craned her head.

  The mage’s skin had a greenish pallor, but he was strong as he tried to hold her down.

  Viktoria shoved her arm back, catching Asim in the face with an elbow.

  He snarled, tangled a hand in her hair, and smashed her face into the floor.

  She gasped as she saw stars. Fighting through the pain in her cheek, she pushed and kicked with her feet. Bucking, she gained enough freedom to scramble forward. Her hand closed around the fireplace poker and she rolled to her back. She froze as she saw what had glinted before. One of the medallions from Lurky’s swords.

  The distraction cost her as Asim threw himself on her again, his lanky body heavier than it appeared. “Yes, your vampire is here. Not so formidable without his swords. I’ve been enjoying watching him languish. Maybe I will wait until he wakes, so he can watch me make another witch suffer because of him.” He straddled her, cold white gaze staring at her as he tried to pin her wrists. “Come little ones, some poison to calm this one.”

  Viktoria swung the poker into his shoulder, earning a howl of pain, then threw the poker at the ceiling, where it smashed into a bulb. Shadows bloomed, and she called them to her.

  “You enjoy watching so much? Watch this.” Viktoria shoved shadows into his eyes.

  Asim screamed as the whites of his eyes clouded, light grey as the first of the shadows took hold, turning darker to black when Viktoria poured more shadows into him.

  Viktoria stifled a shriek as the spiders lurched. It turned into a relieved breath out as the spiders landed on the mage and sank their fangs into him. He thrashed, trying to shake and swat the spiders off, and she found herself in the unexpected position of defending the spiders trying to help her. Shadows leapt from the wall and wrapped around Asim’s wrists and ankles, holding him in place.