by Alexis Hall
Twenty minutes into the road trip, it occurred to me that not only was I going to have to take on a castle full of vampires with my bare hands, but I was going to have to spend five hours in a car with Patrick first. I turned on the CD player and heard the tinkling strains of Clair de fucking Lune.
“Jesus, Patrick, how long can you keep listening to the same piece of music?”
“It is a very beautiful movement.”
“Your whole life is a very beautiful movement.”
“Thank you, Katharine.”
I don’t know why I even try. I got rid of Debussy and dug through Patrick’s music collection. I found a home-burned mix CD labelled For Patrick. It had a heart over the i. I stuck it in, and “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?” whinged through the speakers. I suppose it was sort of his theme song. Why does it always rain on me? Is it because I saw ghosts, got committed to a lunatic asylum, and was transformed into a vampire by a creepy stalker chick when I was seventeen?
I went to pull my hat down over my eyes, and then remembered I’d lost the fucking thing. So I lay back and pretended I was asleep. The next track on the album was the radio edit of “Creep,” which was also strangely appropriate. Alienated, obsessive, and a little bit PG-13.
I thought back to what Eve had told me about the ritual, and kicked myself for not working it out earlier. Though to be fair, I’d had a lot on my mind and going from Patrick’s new girlfriend is having funny dreams, to she’s the last heir of a line of prophetesses dating back to the oracles of Delphi, and the vampire alchemist who abducted me when I was seventeen will need her for the first part of the ritual that he needed me for the second part of was quite a big leap. Hopefully, if I could nip this in the bud now, I’d be able to avoid an inconvenient sacrifice attempt six months down the line, assuming I was still his go-to faery princess.
The last of the light was bleeding out of the sky by the time we arrived many Clair de Lunes later at Trismegistus Hall.
We ditched the car as close as we dared and headed in on foot. The place was pretty much like I remembered, big old house with lots of windows, sort of turrety bits at the corners, and four stone dragon heads on the lawn.
I thought about asking Patrick if he had a plan, but he’d never been one for thinking ahead. Then again, neither had I.
“So, kick down the door, fight the baddies, get the girl?”
He nodded gravely.
We hurried towards the house, but when we were about halfway there, the ground starting shaking like that bit in Jurassic Park. Call me a pessimist, but I didn’t think it was a good sign. At least last time, Percy’d had the good manners to keep the magical death traps inside the house.
I steadied myself, and scanned the area for what I’m sure Eve would call incoming hostiles.
There weren’t any. Just me, Patrick, the house, some neat little woods, and four stone—
Oh, you have to be shitting me.
The perfectly maintained lawn ripped open and an enormous, four-headed stone dragon rose up from the mess, shaking grass and soil from its roughly carved back.
Patrick hadn’t stopped and was already nearly past it. The creature’s tail swung round and smacked him square in the chest, sending him flying. Ordinarily I’d have quite enjoyed it, but tonight he was my backup.
Okay, Kate, you’ve got no weapons, it’s made of stone, it’s standing between you and where you want to go, and it’s just taken out the hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire.
If I was lucky, it’d be slow.
I tried to edge round the thing. It drew one of its heads back, and I saw a dim red glow build in its mouth.
Okay, so slow but fire breathing.
I rolled aside as it lobbed a bolt of searing molten rock at me.
Okay, so not fire breathing, lava breathing. I wasn’t sure that was any better.
Patrick was back on his feet, and with his usual total lack of common sense, charged the dragon head-on. He very nearly got a ball of magma in the face, but ducked aside at the last second.
Well. Fine. Play to his strengths.
“You keep it occupied,” I shouted. “I’ll think of something.”
I tried to think of something.
What I really needed right now was magical backup or some kind of pneumatic hammer. And the only magical weapons nearby were in the mouths of the monster that was trying to kill us.
Fuck it, it was worth a shot.
Patrick was trying to get close, but what with the fireballs and everything, he wasn’t having much luck. Truthfully, I didn’t know what he thought he could do, even if he didn’t get incinerated. It wasn’t like he could bite it. Maybe he was going to annoy it to death.
I waited ’til all four heads were busy trying to barbecue Patrick, then I circled round and scrabbled onto its back. It was damn near vertical and swaying violently, but at least there were plenty of handholds. The instant I, um, mounted, another one of its heads whipped round and tried to bite me. I ducked as a set of massive stone jaws clamped shut in the air above me. Truthfully, I wasn’t mad keen on getting any closer to them, but I sprang up and got my arms around its neck.
It shook its head like a dog coming out of a pond. I dug my fingers and knees into the stone. If it managed to throw me off, I was basically fucked. I could already feel a vibration in the rock as it readied its next blob of molten death phlegm. While I did my best impression of a spider monkey, the head I was on twisted back towards Patrick, and I felt its neck grow warm and then hot beneath me.
Calling up as much of my mother’s strength as I dared, I wrenched its jaw back around and pressed myself in tight as a spew of liquid rock burst out of its mouth and spattered against one of the other heads and part of the body. The rush of heat was intense, and I was pretty sure I could smell my hair burning. Again.
The dragon gave a rough grating roar, and I threw myself to the ground and crawled the fuck away.
I glanced over my shoulder to make sure it wasn’t going to shoot anything at me. Thankfully, it had gone the way of every many-headed monster I’ve ever seen, in real life or on TV, and started fighting itself.
“Katharine,” cried Patrick. He caught me by the wrist and dragged me after him like he was saving my life. “Run.”
Ah, Patrick. How I’d missed him.
By the time we’d got to the lawn and in sight of the house, the dragon was a pile of faintly glowing rubble.
Patrick tugged at my arm. “Come, we must rescue Sofia.”
I twisted into his grip and broke his hold. Over the years, I’ve got pretty good at that.
Taking a quick look at the building, I tried to work out the best point of entry. Decades of experience told me the wide-open front door might be a good place to start. Of course, my decades of experience were also shouting it’s a trap in that raspy voice Eve used to do.
I briefly thought about sending Patrick in first, but not only would it have been kind of a dick move, chances were they would be expecting him not me.
I approached as stealthily as you can when you’re walking on gravel in full view of about thirty windows and have just fought an exploding fire monster.
Nothing killed me.
The entrance hall was decked out in the same style as Syon, all marble, bling, and naked dudes, and as soon as I stepped inside, I remembered the place. I’d been kind of busy getting kidnapped the last time, but I guess it had made more of an impression on me than I realised.
I tried really hard not to be seventeen again.
I followed mirrored corridors that were all too familiar, down a flight of twisting stone steps to Henry Percy’s lavish underground sacrificing chamber.
It was almost the same as I remembered: more bling, lots of dribbly candles, and weird shit on the floor. Except this time I wasn’t chained to the ceiling. Sofia knelt in the middle of a circle with seven
red-robed vampires standing around, masked and chanting. On a raised platform at the far end, a man in white robes and a golden sun mask stood behind a table of magical doodads. He had an honest-to-god wand in his right hand, like he was Albus fucking Dumbledore.
Patrick shoved me out of the way and dashed forwards, shouting Sofia’s name.
The man in white lifted a hand, and Patrick flew across the room and cracked into a marble pillar. In seconds, he was on his feet again, snarling.
I could have told them it takes more than throwing him bodily across the room to get Patrick to back off.
As the chanting reached a crescendo, Sofia jerked to her feet. Patrick rushed forwards, but before he could reach her, she said something in a language I didn’t understand, but I assumed was some kind of ancient Greek, and a brilliant light flared from the golden mask.
If it was possible for metal to look smug, I’d have said it looked smug.
Okay, Operation Nip This in the Bud, probably a failure. I’m not an expert on mystical god rituals but bright flashes of light are usually not a good sign.
Slowly, the man in white reached down and picked up a bloodstained dagger. He turned towards Patrick and raised the blade. Oh crap, they had a sample of his blood, didn’t they? That probably explained why he hadn’t been able to track her. I had no idea how powerful that sort of freaky blood magic was but Patrick was not in a good way.
He sank to his knees, his face twisted in horror and anguish. “Sofia,” he gasped.
“I am sorry, Patrick.” The masked man’s voice echoed everywhere at once, full of power and glory. “The girl has served her purpose, but there will be other mortals.”
I’d been waiting for the best time to act, but having no idea what the hell was going on had made it a bit difficult. But now it looked like I was going to have to rescue both of them.
By fighting eight vampires. One of them possibly a god.
I came running down the steps hoping that raw enthusiasm and good intentions would make up for the lack of numbers, weapons, or a plan.
Before I could really do anything, Patrick suddenly broke free of the spell that had been binding him and lurched to his feet, screaming “Nooooo!” like he was in an actual fucking movie.
So, ancient blood magic? Not as powerful as Patrick’s inappropriate obsessions with underage girls.
Then chaos happened.
The entire circle jumped on Patrick in a blur of red robes and got the full force of his psychotic sense of romance.
When I looked away from the bloody melee, I saw the man in white was gone, and a door, half concealed by shadows, had opened behind his platform.
There was no fucking way I was letting him escape. At the time, I’d taken being tied up and nearly murdered as just part of being a teenager, but in retrospect, I was pretty pissed off about it.
Figuring that, for all his flaws, aggressively protecting seventeen-year-olds was what Patrick did best, I left him to take care of Sofia and pegged it after the man in white.
I ran down what was blatantly a secret passage, up a flight of stairs, and through a door which, of course, had a false bookcase on the other side. I’d come out in the library. Say this for Percy, the guy respected the classics.
“Ah, Miss Kane. I’m so glad you could join me.”
Henry Percy was waiting for me in a wingback chair by the fireplace. He was wearing a pinstriped suit like when we’d met at King’s Cross. I wondered where he’d stashed the robe and the mask, but I didn’t wonder too long because I was distracted by the fact he had my motherfucking sword over his lap.
“Sorry I’m late, the traffic was murder.”
He came gracefully to his feet. “You were much less flippant the last time you were here.”
“I’ve grown as a person.”
I was horribly aware that the last time I’d fought Percy, I’d been holding the sword, there’d been a mage backing me up, and I’d still lost. And now he was halfway to being a god as well.
He prowled around me, trailing the tip of the blade along the ground. “So, we have, at last, come full circle.”
As long as he was talking, he wasn’t trying to kill me, and the more time I had to come up with an ingenious escape plan. “We’ve not come full circle, we’ve just got in a fight twice.”
“Ah, Miss Kane. There is so much more to this than you realise.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got the becoming a god thing. I’m not impressed.”
He stopped dead, that pissed off vampire stillness creeping over him. “How enterprising of you.”
He raised a hand, and I was flung backwards across the room, straight into a heavy oak bookcase. Several volumes came tumbling down on top of me.
He lifted the sword and strolled casually towards me.
I grabbed the nearest book and wanged it at him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t expecting that because the corner caught him on the side of his head.
He blinked and lifted a hand to his brow. I was expecting him to say something condescending, but instead, he just bared his fangs and hissed.
He lunged for me, quick but wild. I rolled out the way, and from the angry snarl behind me, I was pretty sure he’d just wrecked another one of his precious books.
If I wasn’t actually going to win this fight, I could at least do as much property damage as possible.
I nipped round the next bookcase over, and shoved it as hard as I could, which was pretty fucking hard, what with the adrenaline and the remains of my mother’s power still in my system. Groaning like a wounded buffalo, the case pitched and cracked and tipped a good tonne of paper, leather, and antique hardwood onto the Wizard Earl of Northumberland.
It wouldn’t hold him for long, so I bent down and grabbed the most stake-shaped bit of shelf I could find.
There was a wave of telekinetic force that sent me crashing into the wall yet again, and then an explosion of book shrapnel as Henry Percy emerged from the wreckage. He shook dust from his mane and glared at me like he’d gone way past just wanting me dead.
He came forwards slowly and, with each step, made a sweeping gesture with his hand that sent another chunk of library flying right at me. There wasn’t much I could do except bring my arms up and try to stop anything sharp or heavy from going through my head. It wasn’t like I could outrun the room I was standing in.
At last he was looming over me, sword raised. His eyes were wild and cold. “Just f-fucking die.”
He stabbed me.
From experience, I was expecting it to hurt a lot more.
There was just pressure, cold steel against my skin, and the slightest of scratches. Then the blade shattered.
Nim had told me it wouldn’t draw human blood. It was kind of reassuring to know that I counted.
I reckoned I had about three seconds before Percy realised what was going on and just bit me. I snatched up one of the shards of the sword, hoped like hell it had kept some of its power, and thrust it towards his heart.
Percy’s left hand came up protectively, and my weapon went through his palm.
He screamed like someone who was feeling pain for the first time in five hundred years. While he was processing that, I stood up, punching him in the jaw on the way.
He fell backwards into an undignified heap, cradling his hand. Blood ran down his arm and soaked through his expensive suit.
Another wave of force pushed me backwards. It was weaker than before, but it gave Percy time to get to his feet and start scrambling away from me.
I grabbed my bookcase stake and charged. Yet another wave of force hit me, but I just pushed through it.
This fucker was going down, and I think he realised it. He half turned, swept his one good arm in a half circle, and suddenly everything was on fire. Starting with the carpet and the piles of books. Then licking up the walls and spreading over the bookcas
es. Everything bursting into eerie blue flame. It wasn’t hot, but I was starting to feel tired.
I filed all that away in a box marked later and jumped on Henry Percy as hard as I could, hammering my stake into his heart with all my body weight. He had just enough time to look really, really angry before he dropped to the floor, paralysed.
Huh. I’d expected that to feel more satisfying. I guess revenge was cool and all, but the whole trapped in a burning building thing was really taking the edge off.
I’d kind of been hoping that staking Percy would take care of that, but the fire was still there, and still spreading, and if I didn’t get out of here soon, it was going to be a pretty short-lived victory.
Just then, I heard a piercing scream from the direction of the secret passage.
I looked down at Percy’s impaled corpse. Rule Twelve said very clearly that just because you rammed a stake through somebody’s heart and left them in the burning wreckage of their library, that was no guarantee they were dead. On the other hand, I had nothing to decapitate him with, and I’d have felt like a prize dickhead if Sofia got eaten by vampires while I was trying to saw some bloke’s head off with the edge of my Oyster card.
Also fire.
Leaving Percy on the floor and the flames raging, I ran back through the secret passage.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Serpents & Gifts
I’m not usually a stop-and-take-stock-of-the-situation kind of girl, but this time I had no fucking clue what was waiting for me in the ritual chamber. So I lurked outside for a moment, trying to work out what the hell had gone wrong now. It was kind of quiet in there, which was either a good sign or a very bad sign, and I’ve never got anywhere betting on good.