Reign of Nightmares (Blood Throne Book 1)

by Quinn Arthurs

  The door opened as Elsie entered, adjusting the sleeves of her gown. She rarely wore long sleeves, but facing off with other vampires with a visible oath bond on her body wouldn’t have been a wise idea. Until she completed her debt, she would most likely continue to wear similar clothing so she would not be caught unaware.

  Draven handed me the journal, indicating a passage further down the page. “I thought there was something odd about this since I could understand a few words. I thought it might mean it had a root in a language I knew, or that it was something I had picked up in the past and mostly forgotten. Do you really think this is more than one language combined together?”

  I made an agreeing noise as I took the journal and Elsie settled in beside me, looking over my shoulder to review what Draven had pointed out. Her gasp was sharp as she caught the same thing I did. It seemed we knew what the witch twins were looking for—now the question was, would Elsie kill them for it?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Elsie

  Draven had practically thrown himself over the table at my unfortunate, shocked display of emotion, his knife spinning so quickly between his fingers it was nothing more than a silver blur. “What is it?”

  Sebastian looked to me, and I placed a firm hand on his shoulder as I pushed to my feet. “What exactly do you think this is, witch?” I growled, and Draven whistled slowly, exchanging a look with his brother.

  “Apparently something important,” he retorted, his eyes returning greedily to the journal as though he could force it to reveal its secrets by his desperation alone.

  “You told me you were looking into the history of the witches, to know more about your own kind. That is not what is in this passage, so why is it of such interest to you?” I glanced between the pair, my fangs aching to pin them down. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it, not with the damned oath bond, but it was possible Sebastian could if he would allow his darker side forward.

  Crowe cocked his head to the side, a small smile playing on his lips as he watched me. “We’re interested in many things. It’s the nature of a witch.” While the statement was true, it had nothing to do with the current situation, and I merely stared at him, waiting for the truth. What this told of was impossible, and I had only managed to understand a small part of it. It would require a deeper translation than what I had been able to do on a cursory review. Sebastian had turned to the next page, continuing to translate, his lips pressed tightly together to prevent himself from repeating any words written.

  “We can always ask your pet,” Draven taunted, flipping his knife into the air in an attempt to distract me and draw my gaze, but I didn’t flinch.

  “His bond to me forces him to keep my secrets, as you well know. That magic will outweigh yours.” It was something witches hated. While vampires didn’t have true magic, the pet bond was something even their manipulation and truth spells were unable to fracture.

  Draven snarled. “On your oath—”

  “No!” Crowe interrupted, holding up his hand. Draven gaped at his twin who was studying me intently.

  “Crowe, she can’t refuse to tell us,” Draven objected, glaring at me.

  “We don’t know if it’s what we need.” Crowe’s words were slow, his dark eyes never leaving mine. “If you burn through the oath for it, and it isn’t what we need, then everything will be lost.” Draven froze as though the thought hadn’t occurred to him. He shoved to his feet with a yell, throwing his dagger across the room so it embedded with a hard thunk in the wall of my wardrobe, the handle quivering madly as he gasped for air.

  It was clear there was something important going on here, something significant enough that both were ready to lash out at a moment’s notice. Sebastian was looking between the book in his hands and the witches with knowing eyes.

  “Pet?” I murmured, squeezing my hand on his shoulder.

  “I can translate all of it with time, I believe,” he told me, understanding the question. “Though I still don’t believe it.”

  “As it’s clear you’re lying to me, how about we try again before I ask my pet here to destroy this.” My tone was cold, my eyes hard as I looked between the twins. Their muscles trembled with the tension of holding still, a flurry of silent communication flying between them. Draven growled, throwing his hands into the air and pacing away, so it seemed that Crowe had received whatever he had wanted in that mental argument. I merely waited, watching silently, knowing he would break before I did.

  “On the oath bond, we ask that this conversation not leave this room.” Heat flared on my wrist, and I slipped the tight sleeve down. The colors had lessened from some of the strands, but the tattoo remained. Apparently asking for my secrecy hadn’t drained the debt I owed—not surprising, really, though a small inconvenience. I heard Draven exhale slightly in relief before Crowe continued.

  Crowe’s eyes were watchful and sharp as he assessed both Sebastian and me, his gaze tracing the way Sebastian’s finger moved across the pages as he flipped through the journal. “We are seeking information on casters. It’s one of the words Draven had been able to translate in the journal that drew his interest.”

  I scoffed, shaking my head even as I looked back at the journal. “Casters are a myth. A bedtime story. No vampire has ever held magic before and no witch can be turned into a vampire. It’s impossible. And this isn’t just speaking of casters. You wouldn’t have been as excited if it was just a fairy tale. What exactly do you hope this is?” I could hear the rapid beat of Sebastian’s heart pounding at my side as I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck, squeezing lightly to encourage him to halt his assessment.

  It was Draven who spoke now as he went to retrieve the dagger he had thrown. “A spell.” A wave of his hand had the damage he had inflicted on the wood disappearing as he turned to face me. “I believe it’s a spell to undo a caster’s binding.” This time I didn’t betray my emotions, didn’t let the shock slip through as I regarded the twins and their hard, assessing eyes.

  “Casters. Do. Not. Exist.” I said each word slowly and evenly. “They are as much of a fairy tale as the human stories on princesses. Vampires have drained witches over and over again attempting to possess magic. It never works. We can bind a pet, yes, but that’s biological.” I stressed the word, waving my free hand in the air. “It encourages us to eat correctly, ensuring our survival.” Well, at least I assumed that. I had skimmed over information on pets in the past, not truly caring since they weren’t relevant to my needs. A pet could help sustain a vampire, but they couldn’t feed an entire species on their own and they carried other risks, as was proven with Victor and Geraldine’s schemes.

  “Casters exist,” Crowe replied shortly. “We hunters should know.” I thought I couldn’t be shocked twice in so short a time, yet he had just proven me wrong. Even Sebastian let out a low whistle at that announcement.

  “Your sense of smell,” he murmured, his blue eyes squinting tight as he looked between Draven and Crowe. “I assumed you meant you were holding a spell, but that wasn’t it, was it?”

  “Sebastian?” Hunters were as much of a bedtime story as casters, and I knew very little about them.

  “They have heightened senses like you do,” he explained to me. “They may possess other gifts as well if what I’ve heard is anything close to correct.”

  A headache pounded in my skull as I tried to process what they were saying. “But it’s not possible.”

  Crowe sighed, indicating my wardrobe with a wave of his hand. “Your cabinet. Second shelf. You have a hidden cabinet in the back behind the wood paneling. There’s something silk there, heavily scented with herbs.”

  I snarled at him. “You snooped in my wardrobe?” When this oath bond was completed, I was going to enjoy shredding him a little at a time and making him scream.

  “My gift is heightened senses, which are even superior to your own, though I can dull them at will unlike you,” he divulged, his voice cold. “I can smell it. When you had your wardrobe d
oor open yesterday as you dressed, it was clear that whatever it is isn’t visible, hence my knowledge that it’s hidden behind the wood.” My hackles lowered slightly at that as I turned to Draven.

  “Healing,” he said shortly. “Also mutable, though I don’t see a point.”

  Sebastian made a humming noise. “Do you believe your higher healing abilities contribute to your masochistic tendencies?”

  I laughed, unable to help myself. Trust my pet to ask that. A deep red blush stained his cheeks and neck as the blood rushed to the surface, but he waited patiently for Draven to answer.

  Surprisingly, Draven snorted in amusement. “I’ve considered it, though I have no way to actually prove it.”

  “Okay, so you have gifts.” My mind raced as I tried to process what they were telling me. “That doesn’t prove casters exist. It just proves the witches have evolved. Or devolved, possibly depending on the train of thought, though that seems less likely.” I considered the journal again before looking back to them.

  “Casters are rare indeed, Elsie, but they exist.” Crowe’s tone was layered with ice, his eyes flaring with sparks of lightning as he met my gaze. “We have seen them. Killed them. One of them bound our triplet to another dimension, and the spell we seek will bring him back to us.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Elsie

  After Crowe had dropped his bombshell into the room, the silence seemed loud enough to echo. I settled back into my seat beside Sebastian, my gaze turning to the journal he held as if it was made of gold. If they were telling the truth, and at this point there seemed to be no reason to expect them to lie as the oath bond was in place and my bond with Sebastian held him to the same silence, then not only did casters and hunters exist, but the twins were in actuality triplets. I could barely handle two of them, what would a third be like? The thought blasted across my abused brain before I pushed it aside.

  “Assuming something happened to your triplet, to…” I trailed off, unsure. It felt odd to refer to him as “triplet,” but it felt disrespectful to simply use “witch” when I was speaking of someone who was clearly so dear to them. I was a monster, yes, but I wasn’t needlessly cruel if I could avoid it.

  “Bran,” Draven whispered, caressing his knife with gentle fingers. My eyes caught the movement and widened slightly. The knife he carried wasn’t his, it was his brother’s. The realization hit me like the burn of a whip’s weal. That was why he had nearly lost control when I had taken it from him. “His name was—is Bran.” I heard the forced correction and exchanged a pointed look with Sebastian.

  “Bran,” I repeated, inclining my head. “Assuming something happened to Bran, how would you know a caster did something to him, let alone that he’s in an alternate dimension?” I held up a placating hand, gentling my tone slightly before either of them could snarl at me. “I’m not attempting to be harsh here, I’m trying to understand. Isn’t it more likely that if Bran disappeared it was for a more logical reason? Families fight and fall apart, even witch siblings. I’m sure you all have enemies as well. Wouldn’t it be possible that something else happened to him?”

  Crowe shook his head, the rejection of my conjecture swift but sure. “We know what happened to him.”

  “You know, or you hope?” Sebastian whispered, his eyes searching their faces as if he could see the truth on them.

  “We were hunting a caster,” Draven explained. “One we’d been after for a while. Bran thought he could take him, thought he knew what he would do next. We were young. Competitive. Bran was the youngest of us.” His voice was rough from buried emotion, and I wondered if they’d ever told anyone else this story. “He wanted to set a trap for the caster, lure him in. The caster was draining hunters with rare gifts—risky, of course, but extremely powerful when he succeeded.”

  “And your gifts are rare?” I inquired, looking between them. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe them, but vampires already had increased healing and heightened senses. I couldn’t understand the draw for a vampire, especially against hunters if what they were saying was true. They shrugged in unison.

  “Ours, not so much, but they are powerful. Bran’s gifts though…” Crowe shook his head.

  “We’d only heard stories of this caster,” Draven added, picking up the story, and I bit back the urge to ask what Bran’s gifts had been. Either they didn’t want to tell us, or they were simply waiting to announce it when the thread of their story had reached its peak. “Whispered rumors that finally reached us. We searched and searched but had turned up little until we came across a different journal.” He indicated the one in Sebastian’s hands. “A coven that had been wiped out, thousands of miles from here. In the burned out hull of one of their buildings, we found a journal that indicated a caster couldn’t simply drain someone. They had to keep them alive to do it. Their gift only lasted as long as their body did.”

  “So you believe Bran’s gifts were so cherished by this caster that he wouldn’t have killed him.” Sebastian mulled over the idea, running his finger across his lips. “Even assuming that what you read was true, how did you make the leap to him being held in another dimension?”

  “In several ways,” Crowe replied. “There was a note of something similar in the book, although it called it a binding. Witches are not easy to hold, especially hunters. Many would kill themselves if they believed they were caught rather than see their powers utilized against them or those they cared for. The caster had to have a way of totally incapacitating them yet keeping them alive. That would require a massive amount of magic, unless another dimension was used to hold it together.”

  “Your torture room,” I breathed out, the realization clicking at once. “I knew it wasn’t part of the castle.”

  “You were right.” A small smile tugged at Crowe’s lips as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “That area is built into a pocket, reinforced again and again by those of our bloodline. It does not require a constant expenditure of our powers to hold it, merely for us to enter or exit it. Many have hidey-holes created for just that reason, someplace they can escape to in order to heal. It’s a closely guarded secret in how they are created—even Draven and I do not know for sure. The room we took you to was passed to us, not created by us. Yet, somehow, we believe that this caster learned how to do it for himself.”

  “He would be able to lock a hunter, or many hunters, away for eternity if he so chose, depending on what magics were used to enforce his dimension, to draw on them again and again as long as their bodies held out.” Draven spun the blade he held, ignoring the way his blood coated the tip from a missed catch.

  “Alright, so you began chasing this really bad caster. I still don’t understand the part about knowing Bran was taken.” This seemed more like a bedtime story than real life, but from the pure agony carving itself into Draven’s features, and Crowe’s slight loss of control as lightning crackled across his skin, it was clear that, at the very least, they believed what they said was true.

  “Bran was a rarity even among hunters,” Crowe explained. “Seamus, the hunter who trained us when we were young, believed there had been a mistake when we were in our mother’s womb. Rather than the strength of our gifts being fully separated between the three of us, Bran held the majority.”

  Draven laughed, though the sound was strained and sad. “Bran said it was because he was the prettiest, the universe’s way of making sure he was always the best of us even though he was the youngest.”

  “Normally hunters keep their gifts a secret, but when Bran heard that this caster was hunting rare gifts, he spread word and proof of his gifts through the community.” Crowe’s tone was hard now, his hands curling into fists. “He didn’t tell us what he had done because we had rejected the idea when he first brought it to us. It was pure stupidity, making himself a target when we knew nothing about the caster.”

  “The first gift Bran ever got was precognition. It’s one of the reasons we were sure the information we heard in pass
ing about this caster was true. He’d seen bits and pieces of what the caster was doing in capturing and holding hunters so their powers could be utilized.” Draven brushed his fingers across the blade in a soft caress, his eyes never leaving the sheen of the metal as he spoke. “His second gift was the touch.”

  “Fuck,” Sebastian hissed, reeling backwards so far he nearly came out of his chair. The twins smirked, pleased to have made the man react.

  I looked between them in confusion. “The touch?”

  “That’s not possible.” Apparently it was Sebastian’s turn to deny the legitimacy of what they claimed, but both shrugged.

  “Whether you believe it or not doesn’t change what his gift was. Luckily, Bran’s gifts—including the touch—were still developing at the time, and it’s possible the caster who captured him did not know the true extent of what he could do. The rumor he spread focused on his precognition.” Crowe’s voice was calm and even, though apprehension crept up my spine at the implication of what he was saying.

  “Will someone translate the witch speak for the vampire in the room?” I snapped, the boiling tension making me edgy.

  “The touch is an abbreviation of the full name for that power. A power that normally results in a witch’s death even by the hands of their own people,” Sebastian told me softly as he reached for the journal again, apparently needing to do something with his hands. “It’s the touch of death. If they lay a finger on you and press their will forward, you will die. Your species doesn’t matter. They don’t need a weapon. They don’t need to overpower you. They simply need to brush their skin against yours for even the briefest of moments and then, if they wish it, you just cease to exist.” I snarled, my body reacting before my mind did. What the hell kind of power was that? “I’d only ever heard stories about that ability, I thought it was more of a threat to keep witches in line. I never assumed it truly existed.”