“Did you have any problems?” he asked Jake.
“Nothing a little telmir blinding powder couldn’t fix.”
Lothar let out an exasperated sigh. “Perfect, Jake. How am I supposed to explain that? Word will get back to Rodrick.”
“And once it does, they’ll be properly disciplined for mishandling telmir.”
“What do you mean?”
Jake shrugged. “I may or may not have planted an excessive amount in their uniform pockets while they were sleeping yesterday morning. Once it’s discovered they won’t have a credible story on what they saw or didn’t see.”
Lothar pressed his lips together as his eyes fell on me. “I take it I don’t need to go into detail as to why you need to keep this a secret.”
‘Hey, mister. It was you who spoke freely about it in the library not so long ago with other students nearby.’
“Yes, I understand.”
“If you’re going to become a Vontex, you have to learn to take the easy with the hard. Few people understand better than us that this is more than just training for you. It’s personal. I think you’ve earned the right to pursue your brother after what he’s put you through. And fortunately for you,” he said as he reached inside his trench coat for a sword. “Ellinor Prescott agrees with me.” He handed me the blade and reached back inside for something else. I did my best to prevent my eyes from widening too much when he pulled out a gun.
“Really, Lothar?” Alina said in disapproval. “She’s not a full-fledged Vontex yet. She shouldn’t have that many weapons.”
“Tonight isn’t a normal night,” he shut her down. “She’ll need the extra muscle.”
“I thought that’s what I was here for,” Jake teased.
When I took the gun I noticed right away that it felt a little light. My father’s affection for hunting gave me enough experience with them. Only this wasn’t a proper hunting rifle. It was a powerful semi-automatic handgun. I checked to make sure it wasn’t loaded. It took less than a second to realize what was wrong.
“No magazine?” I asked.
Lothar dug inside his exterior pocket and pulled out a black leather pouch holding two magazines and handed it to me. One was familiar. The other was unlike any other magazine I had ever seen before.
“What you have there are two magazines,” he explained. “One set of rounds is filled with liquid silver and the other with a newly developed liquid form of locksin. The vixra recently discovered it and thought we might find it useful. We like to be prepared given we don’t know if we’ll run into lycan or witchlings on any given night. Lycan and witchlings don’t tend to mingle but the luxra have a reputation of getting involved in the darker side of things. Which sometimes includes us. And if we do find Margaux, we’ll need all the help we can get.”
I reached inside the slit of my trench coat and hooked up the magazines to my belt. Jake handed me an extra holster and I placed the gun on the backside of my right hip and the sword to my left. I was a properly armed Vontex, without the bells and whistles of the title of a true Vontex. Even so, a surge of toughness made me stand a little straighter than I had a few minutes ago.
Lothar had a hard time preventing his mouth from twisting into a sly side smile. He saw the change in me. And I knew he liked it.
‘One day I want a tour of where you guys keep all your fabulous toys.’
“Ellinor has dealt with the Dolch Erbe her whole life,” Lothar went on. “They are one of the main reasons her family patroned the Northern Vontex. I don’t know this for a fact given much of what’s written about Blackatters has disappeared from the library but I believe she may have been close friends with a few over the centuries only to lose them to the Dolch Erbe. So as you can imagine, Riley, this is personal for her too. Only she’s a high standing vixra witchling with a duty to perform in Hungary. She can’t go gallivanting off to fight those who have taken people she cares about. But we can. It’s our job to do the violence that’s often seen as too barbaric for the likes of the vixra.”
“What do you want me to do if Rodrick finds out?” I asked.
“Deny, deny, deny,” Jake answered for him.
“I’m not the best at lying,” I reminded them.
Lothar stiffened and turned to move away from me. “Get good at it. I don’t have time to vouch for you every time you slip up.”
Whatever confidence I felt inside me drifted away as he showed me his backside. I wasn’t certain but I had a feeling he was referring to my slip with Rodrick in Paris. I didn’t know if his scent was still lingering on me. I spent what felt like hours in the shower trying to scrub away whatever it was he left behind but I didn’t really have a way of knowing if it was gone. I never smelled it in the first place. Although, Alina, Jake, and Lothar certainly could.
Rodrick’s words resurfaced in my mind. He claimed he placed his scent on me to get Lothar to act. Maybe to get him to make a move and take me off his hands. Or at least remove the temptation he felt. Either way, he made me feel like a dirty rag he no longer wanted.
‘Looks like Rodrick failed. All it seems to have done is irritate Lothar.’
Lothar disappeared into the woods as Alina waited behind with her head down and her arms folded over her chest. Less than a minute later the trees parted and branches bent over backward to make room. Lothar drove their large SUV out of its hiding place deep in the forest where no one else could get access to it. The forest’s enchantment quickly closed off the hole after he pulled onto the dirt road and was free from the forest’s long tree limbs, making me curious about what else was hidden behind the forest’s magic.
The car stopped up the road and Lothar got out. “You’re driving tonight,” he said, tossing the keys to Jake.
“Why me?” Jake asked.
“There’s something I want to try. Alina, you take the front seat. Riley, you’re in the back with me.”
I didn’t know whether to feel excitement or dread. What did he have in mind?
I opened the door and climbed into the backseat. Jake took off on the dirt road with his foot like a lead weight on the gas pedal.
“Go through the barrier and head north,” he ordered Jake.
The ripples of the barrier between realms flickered in the distance. We had to gain speed to get through. A task easily accomplished with Jake’s driving. I strapped on the seatbelt and held on tight to the handle just above the door, preparing myself for the bumpy entrance back into the human realm before us.
Brilliant golden light rippled open in a circular shape before us, just big enough for the SUV to tear through. I squinted my eyes as we got closer, desperate not to miss a single detail. The last few times I went to the human realm it was through the vixra tunnels. The barriers between realms was a different form of travel that still fascinated me. The light surrounded us like a cocoon grasping the vehicle and gradually tightening. Then it pushed us out back into the darkness of a highway outside the inner zones of London. This time we didn’t nearly hit anyone. The car ripped through the barrier and continued onward down the road as if we hadn’t just appeared out of thin air. The only problem was Jake had acquired a fair amount of speed when he was breaking through the barrier.
My body jolted forward as Jake slammed his foot on the brakes, nearly rear-ending the car in front of us. As it was, he had to veer to the left to avoid the car and almost clipped the left headlight of the car beside us.
“Jake!” Alina roared. “Are either of you boys even remotely capable of going through the barrier without nearly causing a head-on car wreck?”
“We weren’t head-on, Alina. That would imply I don’t know which side of the road to drive on.”
She groaned and set her feet up on the dashboard.
“Feet down, Alina,” Lothar scolded her. “We’ll need the windshield clear for what we’re about to try.”
Alina set down her feet. I caught her giving Lothar a dirty look in the windshield’s reflection as she sank into the front seat.
Lothar raised his voice over the sound of cars relentlessly honking their horns at Jake’s bad driving. “Get ahead of some of this traffic, Jake. We need some space on the road.”
He did as Lothar asked, weaving around a few cars and nearly making me a bit nauseous in the process. My body swerved from side to side as he steered us right and left.
“Give me your hand,” Lothar ordered me.
I was silly enough to think that he wanted to give me some comfort by holding my hand. Far from it. He wrapped his long fingers around the outside of my hand and turned my palm down.
“I want you to think of one place and nothing else,” he said. “If you don’t this won’t work and I can’t guarantee we won’t end up swimming in the English Channel and scurrying to get out of the car before we drown.”
‘No pressure then. Got it!’
“What are you doing?” Alina asked, still staring at Lothar through the windshield’s reflection. “Wait, you’re not gonna!” she protested.
He ignored her and focused on me.
“Bloody brilliant!” Jake marveled from the driver’s side.
“What? What are we doing?” I asked.
“You’re going to picture Chatsworth House in your mind and nothing else. I’d aim for the road just outside it if I were you.”
‘Oh holy shit! He’s going to have me open a vixra tunnel in the middle of the damn highway!’
I was too stunned to speak. The best I could do was try to prevent my jaw from dropping to the floor of the car.
“I’ll guide you through it.”
“You read about this in the library, mate?” Jake asked. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s brilliant but maybe she should take baby steps.”
“We don’t have time for baby steps. Adeline said her magic placed Margaux at Chatsworth House. We have to get there before she moves somewhere else.”
Alina grabbed a hold of the handle above her door and white-knuckled it with her tightening grip. All the while she shook her head and muttered under her breath. I couldn’t make out what she said but from the little I heard I thought she might be cursing in Russian.
“Close your eyes,” Lothar told me.
I did as he asked, knowing I wasn’t going to get out of my own way on this one. Lothar held my hand pointed down and kept it bound in a fist.
“Now, you’ve been to Chatsworth House, correct?” he asked me.
“My mum took me when I was little.”
“You know the exterior and the road leading to it.”
I saw many buses carrying tourists there on the occasions I ventured into Bakewell. I knew it well enough. Or so I hoped.
“Picture it in your mind and create an imaginary shield around you. Then extend it a solid twenty yards.”
I pictured the way Rodrick had shielded me with his magic in Paris when the luxra were attacking us. Then in the center of my mind, I saw Chatsworth House. It’s large structure and grandiose appearance towered high in the distance with the trees of the garden just behind. I saw the lush green grass and the rolling hills. The clouds that almost always covered the length of the sky, the decor scaling the roof alone the long lines of the historic architecture, and the general feeling of the old world tucked away in the distance from the regal crowd of the nobility in London. I remembered so many of the rooms. But most of all, I remembered how my mum held my hand as we walked up the grand staircase inside one Christmas when she took me to see it. The memory sent a pain through my stomach, making me want nothing more than to feel her hand over mine once more. But it wasn’t her hand holding me. It was Lothar’s. Which was some consolation.
“Now let your magic touch the tips of your fingers,” he told me.
It nestled just under my fingernails, giving me a tingling sensation that ran up my arm and twinged the muscles between my shoulder blades.
“Few people are aware of this, Riley,” he said to me. “But you don’t need vixra blood to open vixra tunnels. Crowning magic is powerful enough to open them on its own. Blackatters have permanent access granted to them. You can use them whenever you like without asking.”
‘Whoopee.’
I fought the temptation to grimace. The tunnels were miraculous but equally terrifying. Especially with what he was asking me to do now.
He motioned my fist upward and forced his fingers between mine, pushing my palm open. It was pointed directly at the front windshield.
I heard Alina scoot herself further to the left, trying to get her body as far away from the angle of my magic as possible.
“Let the shield you’ve pictured form around it,” Lothar instructed me. “It’s going to prevent other cars from getting sucked into the tunnel and seeing it open.”
My magic began to pierce through the lines on my palm, spiraling around my fingers and tickling Lothar’s skin. He flinched a little when my magic sprawled over his hand. It grew stronger and weaved into a ball.
“Push it outside the windshield,” he said.
I kept my eyes closed and motioned my magic farther out.
“You sure you know what you’re doing, mate?” I heard Jake say from the driver’s seat.
I ignored him and let my magic funnel through the windshield in a line of twirling light, dancing outside the car and resting over the hood.
“When you open your eyes, I want you to shoot it outward and carve a diagonal line in the air,” Lothar instructed. “Do it quickly like you’re slashing a knife. And make sure we have plenty of room between us and the tunnel. We don’t want to be too close. Are you ready?”
I took a deep breath and kept the image of Chatsworth fresh in my mind. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Lothar!” Alina cried, still nervous as hell and probably wishing she skipped out again.
“Open your eyes!” Lothar ordered.
My eyes bolted open. I saw everything in a hue of beautiful crimson light. The second I saw through the windshield to the cars racing outside my magic reacted, ready to do my bidding. It was spinning about in a ball like a bomb ready to explode. Only I wasn’t going to let it blow up. I wanted it to shoot out. And that’s exactly what it did.
The entire car shook. Jake nearly lost control of the wheel. He held tight as my magic fired through the air like a crack of lightning, carving a huge gash through the air in the distance until a bright light met my magic and split the atmosphere open. Jake pushed the gas pedal down to the floor and headed right toward it. The shield around the car pushed other cars away as though a strong gust of wind blew through.
“Here we go!” Jake hollered.
I heard Alina let out a scream as we drove right through the entrance of the tunnel and sped through the light surrounding us inside. I kept my eyes focus before me with my palm outstretched in Lothar’s hand, forcing it to stay up and feeling his muscles get tighter as he struggled.
Everything went dark in a flash. My eyes were left blinded from the sudden change. I shut them almost instantly.
I heard Jake slam his foot on the brakes. I was thrown forward. My seat belt caught me, pushing into my skin and probably causing it to bruise.
The car swerved to the side, sliding over the road and eventually coming to an abrupt stop. The tires smoked at the bottom of the car, leaving a smell that made my lycan senses recoil.
When I opened my eyes, Alina had her hands on the dashboard, preventing her from flying forward, Jake’s hands were gripped so hard on the steering wheel that his knuckles were white, and Lothar had finally let go of me. He held his hand close to his chest. That was when I saw his skin. It was badly burned from my magic. I was about to say something when I saw it begin to heal in a matter of seconds. He gave his hand a few shakes as though he had done nothing worse than slam it in a car door. I knew better. My magic was powerful. Especially with vixra blood in my system. He was lucky I didn’t hurt him worse.
When his eyes met mine, he made a face that I clearly understood. Don’t overreact, they said to me.
When I looked aw
ay from him my eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness once more. My lycan eyesight was quick to adapt but magical light was enough to nearly blind me when it was at its strongest.
Chatsworth House was in the distance on the hillside, standing tall in all its glory for the countryside to witness its magnificent opulence.
“Well, that was a new one,” Jake said. “Let’s not apply that to the motorcycles just yet.”
“With your driving,” Lothar spoke up. “I wouldn’t dream of it. But it might make an interesting experiment one day.”
Lothar shot me a wink.
I suddenly didn’t care anymore if he was still irritated with me. Just having him show the smallest bit of affection gave me a sense of security. One I would desperately need. If Margaux was inside, driving a moving car through the vixra tunnel would be the easiest part of my night.
14
“So,” Jake said as we all got out of the car. “Why Chatsworth? I mean, I get it. The woman has refined taste but this is a bit over the top, isn’t it?”
“No,” Alina grunted, doing her best to show her displeasure concerning our means of transportation. “It’s symbolic.”
“Symbolic how?” I asked.
I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the full scale of Chatsworth in the distance up the road. It was enormous. Maybe even larger than I remembered it as a child. Even if Margaux was inside she could be hiding anywhere.
“Chatsworth has a history to it beyond being a home for nobility,” she said. “This is where the pact was made.”
“What pact?”
“Between the vixra and lycan. This is where the Prescott family agreed to patron the Northern Vontex. But it was another few decades before the Northern Vontex started living at the academy. Beforehand, they lived here.”
“Seems like a downgrade,” Jake complained.
“It wasn’t always this big. We occupied it during most of the English Civil War. William Cavendish, the 3rd Earl of Devonshire, was a devout royalist and fled the country for his own protection. Or at least that was the cover story. In reality, he was away trying to survive the trials.”
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