Squirming from under the mage, she got to her knees, searching for the medallion. She scooped it from the floor and found the second in the fireplace. Where was Lurky? What did they do to make you give up your swords?
Asim quieted as the poison from his spiders went to work on him. Viktoria was binding him in more shadows when Dream and Memory came in, laughing at the spiders sitting atop the mage’s motionless body in a row.
“What good spiders!” Dream gushed, patting them on their heads.
“We took care of everyone we found.” Memory touched Viktoria’s cheek. “Maybe I should have made you promise not to get hurt, rather than not dying.”
“I’m fine.” Viktoria brushed Memory’s hand away. “We need to find Lurky.” Slipping the medallions into a pocket, she walked towards the bedroom and found the space curved, opened to a new area not visible from the living room. It resembled a laboratory. Cages of spiders lined the walls, and a variety of glass containers in racks on counter tops held liquids and magics of different colors.
Lurky lay on the floor, eyes closed.
Viktoria fell to her knees beside him. “Lurky! What have they done to you?” She shook him, but he didn’t wake. “What happened to your swords?” Lurky had been bitten hundreds of times, leaving his skin full of swollen, red puncture marks. Could he be poisoned? Didn't vampires heal?
“He’s not sleeping,” Dream said. “He feels like Musette did. Separate from himself.”
Memory held Lurky's hand, eyes filled with tears. “Shadow, he gave up everything for you. Now he’s reliving all his worst memories, and you’re in them, blaming him for everything.”
Things were bad if Memory was about to cry. “I’ll call Idris. Maybe he knows what to do.” She fumbled for her phone and found Idris’ number.
“Viktoria, are you all right?” Idris asked when he answered.
“For the most part. We found Jael. He’s been bitten by the mage’s spiders. But we caught the mage. He’s bound and blinded by shadows. The men working for him aren’t a threat anymore. And there are some women here, witches the mage was taking magic from. Dream and Memory have helped them forget what happened to them, and they’re sleeping now, but —”
A chill wind blew through the room, bringing a flurry of swirling snowflakes with it.
“Uh oh,” Dream murmured.
Memory heaved a sigh. “Mother’s coming.”
“Idris, I’m going to have to call you back.” Viktoria disconnected the call. “I didn’t ask for or accept help! I don’t need to be rescued!”
The flakes swirled together, forming a portal, and a woman with red hair and a gap-toothed grin stepped through. “Stealing my Sieluluntu.” Louhi shook her head. “You girls! If you keep up this sort of behavior, I will need my soul bird. Birthing nine plagues was easier. You two I will deal with at home.” She waved an arm.
Memory and Dream shrieked their protests as Louhi's wind swept them into the portal to Pohjola.
“I don't need to be rescued,” Viktoria said.
“But you were kidnapped.” Louhi gripped Viktoria’s chin, tilting her head to the side. “And look at your face.”
“That was the plan. It wasn’t a real kidnapping! We didn’t need rescue. I wouldn’t have let the mage hurt Dream or Memory. I freed by us and captured the mage. Everyone here is safe! The men who kidnapped us don’t even know who they are anymore. You were watching. I know you were. You saw what happened.”
“You didn’t save everyone.” Louhi nudged Lurky's still body with her foot. “And what about consorting with this... cursed one?”
“He’s different.”
“The number of times I’ve heard you girls say that before.” Louhi sighed. “I thought you were smarter than this, Shadow.”
“He is different.”
“Shall I judge him? Set him a task to see if he’s worthy?”
“You can’t! The mage did something to him. He’s not in any shape to be judged about anything right now.” Viktoria brushed hair back from Lurky's forehead. “I can come back to him when he’s well. And you already know perfectly well that he protected me when you couldn’t once before.”
Louhi studied Lurky, reaching out a hand to cradle his face. She closed her eyes and muttered under her breath, then opened her eyes. “I can help him. If you ask for it.”
“You’re being cruel, Mother.” How could she have done everything right for over a thousand years and lose it all now?
“I am offering you a choice. What was our agreement?”
“If I live in the human world for a thousand and one years without asking for or accepting help, or being rescued, I don’t have to return to Pohjola, except for when I choose to, and I am free to leave anytime without interference. If I succeed, you will allow my sisters the same chance to be free.”
“And how long has it been?”
“You know how long it’s been.”
“How long has it been, Shadow?”
Viktoria sighed. “One thousand years, eleven months, twenty-eight days.”
“Your cursed one won’t last two days like this. He can't die, but his mind will be lost. If you want me to save him, you must ask for help and return to Pohjola. Or you can stay here and win the challenge in two days. Your freedom or his mind. Choose, Shadow.”
Viktoria allowed a single tear to roll down her cheek, but just that one, as she took Lurky's face in her hands. All the things she’d denied herself, all the precautions she’d taken, every moment of watching her step, keeping to her shadows, and not letting anyone in for over a thousand years. Her dream of being loved and having a family. It had all been for nothing.
The disappointment and bitterness her sisters were going to feel towards her when they realized they were all going to be trapped in Pohjola with no chance of reprieve was going to be hard to live with. But it would be harder to live with herself knowing she could have saved the only man who ever loved her and hadn’t.
Lurky gave up his swords, his mind, and would have died for her. He would have sacrificed everything. Had sacrificed everything. How could she do any less for him? “Please help him. I’ll return to Pohjola.” She pressed a kiss to Lurky's lips. “I’m sorry, Lurky. If I had known things were going to turn out like this, I would have let you bite me when we met. I would have been your Dragă, even for one day.” Shifting him off her lap, she laid him on the floor. “You promise he’ll be all right?”
“He will be well.”
Idris was on his way. He would take care of his friend. Viktoria stood and stepped towards the portal.
“Shadow,” Louhi called. “I thought your... Lurky meant something to you. If I’d known you would discard him so easily, I wouldn’t have offered you the choice to save him.”
“You are being cruel again, Mother. You don’t allow vampires in Pohjola.”
“No, I don’t. But I can fix your cursed one easier at home. Take him with you.”
“I... we... you... he...” Viktoria glanced between Louhi and Lurky.
“It’s good to see being in love has not robbed you of your pronouns.” Louhi smirked as she pulled Viktoria into a hug. “I knew Selene and Riordan before you girls were born. I know what a Dragă is. If you have found a love like theirs, I am happy for you, Shadow. Everything could have been so different had we known your human was really a vampire all those years ago.”
Viktoria closed her mouth.
“I didn’t place all these restrictions on you to make you miserable. I wanted you to be sure of your choice. If you are willing to give up everything you have worked so hard to achieve over the last millennia, you must be sure. I saw what he went through, is still going through, for you, too. I couldn’t find anything more for him to prove himself worthy of one of my daughters.”
“You do?”
“Of course. I am also Loviatar, am I not? Goddess of Love. It’s how I know all the idiots who sneak into Pohjola weren’t the ones for my daughters. At least, not yet. I want all my girls t
o find love and be happy. You think I want to be surrounded by foolish girls mooning over faithless, unworthy men forever? It’s been six thousand years. I’d like to have a life someday.”
“Did it ever matter if I succeeded or not?”
“Had you won our bargain, I would have honored the terms. Did you want to feel like you earned your freedom, or that I handed it to you? I treated you like I treat all the others who want something from me. The difference between you and all those silly boys forever chasing my daughters, is that when faced with the real challenge before you, you made the right choice. Now bring your Lurky. Let’s go. And bring your new pets, too. Your grandmother is interested in seeing what happened to them when her beer mixed with their poison. I think she might be considering a new flavor.”
Viktoria cajoled the spiders to follow her, pulled shadows and smiled as they coiled around Lurky. With no instruction from her, they lifted him and carried him through the portal.
CHAPTER SIXTY ONE
ASIM
HIS HEAD SWAM AS SPIDERS sank fangs into flesh. Poison flowed into his blood rather than his magic, the stings sharpening his fuzzy thoughts. A witch had touched him. Defied and defiled him. Something in the poison, magic he couldn't catch, swept his mind into a web.
What was his name? Voices raved in his head, all clamoring and shouting. Parts of his mind turned liquid and slipped, carrying thoughts away.
His consciousness drifted. Unimportant things floated beyond him, and he watched them disappear.
Cold filled the room, bringing him to alertness, and he shivered as he heard women talking. Their words ran together, but a memory surged in his blank mind.
Witches.
Their voices evoked hatred and disgust — something known to him. Before he could remember what to do, though, the voices faded and disappeared, taking the icy air with them.
Eyes burning, he blinked, but his vision didn't return. His skin ached, stabbing agony swirled over his body. The voices in his head united, struggling to relay a message.
Spells. Empty.
Fear rose in him and all the voices, making his heart beat fast and his lungs fail to inflate.
Think. He had to think. Panic served no purpose. Who was he? A name seemed crucial. Was he the voices? Did one of them know his name?
We are one, the voices spoke in unison. One pressed harder, loomed larger.
Desperate for something to repel the nothingness, he accepted the voice.
Too late, he recognized the presence, though part of him wasn’t him. It latched on and tried to shunt him aside. He fought. The scrap of his being strove to survive, to keep control of the body. His body. Bigger and stronger, the voice tried to hold him back, keep him mired in itself. Breaking free cost more slivers of psyche. The voice insinuated itself into the new tears, joining its knowledge to his.
In spite of the danger, he relaxed, becoming more complete.
Mage. He was a mage.
It wasn’t a name, but it gave him identity.
One by one, the rest of the voices joined the first, pushing to meld with the scrap of his self. Bits of knowledge, tantalizingly offered secrets, dangled all around him. Each would add to him, drive the terrifying void away. Each would make him something less, smaller in the amalgamation of becoming.
Vengeance. Revenge. Punishment.
More familiar things. Promises to the witch.
Cooperation sealed the voices into his mind. Name. What was his name?
Yexu. Niaku. Kaxas. Asim. Djieien.
Now he had too many names. Which one was his?
Spider Mage.
He couldn’t be sure if he thought that or one of the voices, but they all agreed on that appellation.
The accord set off a series of connections, one interlocking with the next like puzzle pieces, rebuilding him not as he was, but into something new.
As awareness returned, physical discomfort asserted itself. Injuries to his face. Tightness around his wrists and ankles, holding him still.
Instinct sent magic to his healing glyphs and drained them, directed the power to his face. Bruising and cuts healed. Pain eased. But darkness remained. Why wouldn’t his sight return? He strained to see anything at all. Varying shades of grey and black spun across his vision. Nothing beyond. What could he do? Thousands of sigils on his skin, and none could help with blindness.
His children. Their eyes would give him sight.
He reached out with his magic, trying to see through his spiders. None of the children on his acolytes responded. How many spiders had entered with the witch? Three? All four? Had all his acolytes been compromised? How? What had caused this disconnect? Without sight, this body was useless.
Worst case, he killed himself and the magic escaped to take over a new body. Mages often switched bodies when the current one took damage or deteriorated too far. They always did, eventually. With his acolytes unavailable, he'd need to search for a suitable vessel.
Maybe Dmitri would get his wish to become the Spider Mage after all. He would make a powerful body for the magic to inhabit. Allister could serve, too. Someone close. Too long without a vessel, and he would weaken.
The Spider Mage fought against his bonds. Shadows, stronger than webs, immobilized him. But they were magic. He detested touching a witch's magic directly, but with his children gone, he had no choice. The slicing glyph rose when summoned, sharp edges eager and hungry.
Setting the glyph against the shadows around his ankles, he tasted the witch’s magic. Impossible to siphon magic this way. He ignored the unfortunate waste and focused on breaking free. The sigil cut witch shadows.
Male voices and boot steps echoed down the tunnels. His acolytes? Their voices didn’t sound familiar, but his head rang with pain. Who else would be here? The wards had been going crazy all night, overloaded hours ago.
He held still as one set of boots entered the room he lay in. His back was to the door, not that he could see anything, anyway.
“Holy fuck. Look at this place.”
He wanted to snarl that he couldn't, but refrained.
The feet moved closer, setting one of his sigils off. Vampire.
Rough hands mauled him, searching and rolling him to his other side. Some of the shadows obscuring his vision darkened as someone leaned over him and stretched his eyelids open with careless fingers.
Laughter. The vampire laughed. “Bet you didn't see that coming.”
He jerked his head away from the vampire’s touch.
The vampire huffed. “That was funny. Don’t tell me you think I’m not funny, too. My heart couldn’t take it.” A rough hand smacked his shoulder. “Oh, never mind. Vampire. Get it?”
No, no, no! He couldn’t be a prisoner. Not of vampires. “Kill me, vampire.”
The vampire sighed. “No one appreciates my jokes.”
Cold metal snapped around his ankles and wrists, augmenting the shadow bindings. Cloth wrapped his hands so tightly he couldn’t move his fingers, and a hood settled over his head.
“Don’t worry. We’ve got a nice room for you. The view’s not great, but that hardly matters, right? We’ll put you right next to your friend.”
CHAPTER SIXTY TWO
JAEL
JAEL BLINKED, THE FACE of a red-haired woman coming into focus. Not Ember. This woman resembled his Dragă, but had a gap between her teeth.
“He’s waking up! Is he well?” His Dragă’s voice, so rich before, cut into his soul.
“No,” the red-haired woman said. “Worse is coming.”
He closed his eyes as pain seared through his body and he screamed.
“You’re not real,” Jael said to Ghost-Viktoria as she materialized beside him again, wearing a tailored dress in black.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m real. It matters that all your failures are.” Viktoria flashed him a brilliant smile. “Show me how you protected your daughter, Jael. She would have been strygoi.”
JAEL MADE HIS WAY DOWN the corridor, swords in hand
. Magic pressed in around him, forced and corrupted. Weaker than when he’d first entered, but still present. He’d killed four acolytes as they slept, but at least one mage, Ubus, the Jackal Mage, still lived.
He gripped the hilts of his swords tighter, once again grateful to the witch who had spelled them for protection.
Finding no one on the upper floors, he stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the lower levels. Mages liked their cellar rooms. He’d never found anything good in the underground spaces of a mage’s residence.
This was the third pyramid he’d searched in Kemet. The Snake Mage hadn’t been lying about Ubus returning to Kemet. The Jackal had quite a few places to hide here.
He searched each room. In what was some sort of workshop, he found numerous scrolls and sheets of papyrus, all written in a language he didn’t understand. Some were kept in neat rows on shelves, but many were strewn in a pile in front of the shelves, like someone had searched for something in a hurry and dropped everything else on the floor. Across the room, a long table held potions of all colors.
Jael used the razor-sharp blades to slice scrolls and papyrus into shreds, crossed the room and picked up vials and bottles of potions. He threw them, shattering glass against the shelving and letting their contents drip onto the scrap pile.
If he couldn’t find the mage, he could at least ruin the work.
Smoke drifted up from the sludge, and the room filled with an odor that made his nose wrinkle before he realized he didn’t have to breathe anymore. When he heaved the last potion, sparks erupted from the heap, and flames licked at the shelving.
Even better to let the place burn.
He stalked out of the workshop into the long corridor. Cells lined the hall on either side, but they were empty. Smoke filled the passage, and he turned to leave. He didn’t need to breathe, but his eyes stung and he didn’t want to burn.
A muffled pounding turned him around. He blinked, staring at a place on the wall that wavered in and out of being. Moving to stand in front of it, he extended one sword into the portal. No, not a portal, an illusion, disguising a wooden door, smoke curling under it and through a barred window cut into the top half. The voices of two women screamed for help.
Viktoria's Shadow: Jael Page 30