by Dima Zales
If I’d done this before I realized Hekima was the murderer, I would’ve had to escape from a heavily guarded castle and elude Enforcer vampires for the rest of my life—a venture with almost zero chance of success. But now, armed with my new discovery, I only need to locate someone from the Council and tell them what I know.
Assuming Hekima doesn’t stop me.
And assuming they believe me.
Still, better chance now than before.
I take a dozen hurried steps down the corridor before Filth rounds the corner, beady eyes locking onto me.
Puck. The last thing I need.
“I figured out who’s been killing the Councilors,” I say quickly. “It’s Hekima. He—”
“Don’t care.” Filth smiles nastily, and his eyes turn into mirrors as his voice shifts to glamour mode. “Freeze, stupid blood bag.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I wriggle my toes inside my shoes. I was right—they’re wriggling away. His glamour didn’t work. The vampire blood has left my system and my resistance to glamour is back—or Filth simply isn’t as powerful as Kain when it comes to penetrating my defenses.
I pretend like I am frozen, though, and frantically ponder my next move.
Filth takes a syringe out of his pocket. “I’ve been designated as your executioner. The Council wants me to provide you with a choice between euthanasia”—he waves the syringe in the air—“or starvation.” He nods at the room behind me.
Inside my chest, my heart is jackrabbiting, but I do my best to keep my face placid, as if frozen by glamour.
“I’ll simplify it for you, though.” He turns the syringe needle downward and presses the plunger until all the poison is on the floor. “I’ll drink you dry, then toss your body out for Nessie to munch on. As far as the Council is concerned, you opted for starvation and then proved dumb enough to try to escape via the sewers.”
He’s thought this through. Anyone who doesn’t know me well might even believe him—never mind that I’d sooner starve a hundred times before I’d jump into that excuse for a toilet… even if there weren’t a monster lurking in the sewers.
Filth stalks toward me.
I furtively position the lockpicks to stick out of my fist and wait for my moment. This is a vampire, and no martial arts training can overcome the fact that even a skinny, weaselly specimen like him is ten times stronger than I am, and impossibly fast. The element of surprise is my only hope—and a faint one, if I’m honest with myself.
“I could command you not to feel anything,” he says when he’s within striking distance, “but I won’t. This will hurt.”
He’s right. It will hurt.
Him.
Without warning, I smash my fist into his face. With a disgustingly squishy sound, the lockpicks enter his right eye.
He staggers back, roaring in pain. I fight the urge to heave, and kick him in the groin. He roars again and strikes me with the back of his hand. My head jerks sideways, and stars explode in my vision.
He throws a punch at my jaw. I somehow dodge it, moving purely on autopilot. By now, I’ve recovered enough to hit him, only he moves preternaturally fast and I miss. Before I can block, his elbow crashes into my midsection. My solar plexus explodes in pain, and I bend over, wheezing.
He grabs me by my shirt and effortlessly tosses me into the air. As I fly through the hallway, I spot a ray of hope down the corridor.
Thud. I crash into the iron bars with my back, and the two molecules of oxygen left in my lungs escape with a whoosh. The pain tries to drag me into unconsciousness, but I fight it with my whole being. I need to stall in case that ray of hope wasn’t a hallucination of my rattled brain.
Gulping in greedy breaths, I look up at Filth pleadingly and raise my hand as if I need to say something.
He doesn’t look like he wants to talk. His eye hasn’t healed. Some vamps have better recuperation abilities than others, and his is clearly on the lower end of the spectrum.
Fangs sliding out, he hisses, “I’ll make this slow.”
Chapter Forty
I spit out blood and croak, “I told Kit. She knows—she knows about Hekima. About seeing him in the dream world. You won’t get away with this.”
There’s a flash of movement at the end of the corridor.
Yep. There’s no doubt now.
I sneak a peek through Filth’s legs.
Creeping toward us are Ariel and Felix. He’s dressed in a tux, and she’s wearing a dress that shows off every curve. In her hand is a butterfly knife. I don’t even want to think about where she hid it when they went through castle security.
They must be here for the Mandate ceremony Felix mentioned.
I can’t get my hopes up, though. Without his robot suit or some powerful weapon, Felix is basically human. Ariel is another matter. She’s an uber and they’re strong—but not quite vampire strong. And Ariel has issues with vampires.
Filth grips my throat and lifts me off the ground with one hand. “I believe your Kit bullshit as much as I believe in Hekima’s miraculous resurrection.” With a swift chomp, he sinks his fangs into my neck, startling a pained cry from me.
It hurts even more because it’s the grossest thing to ever happen to me.
He begins to suck—and that’s when Ariel rips him away by the shoulder while stabbing him in the torso.
My tailbone hits the floor, hard. Gritting my teeth against a wave of nauseating pain, I scoot away from the combatants, clasping my bleeding neck. Vampire saliva is known to act as a coagulant, but I’ve never been bitten and have no idea how long it’ll take for my neck to stop bleeding. Also, gross.
Ignoring the stab wound, Filth throws a punch at Ariel’s face. She dodges, rips the knife out, and stabs him an inch lower.
Felix kneels next to me. “Are you okay?”
“Help me up,” I rasp, extending my free hand toward him. My throat’s in agony, and not just from the wound on the side. Filth all but crushed my trachea while lifting me off the ground.
Felix grips my hand and helps me to my feet while Ariel and Filth fight, moving so fast it’s hard to follow them.
Swaying in place, I pull my hand away from the wound in my neck. The bleeding seems to have stopped. Seeing that I’m not in imminent danger of dying, Felix jumps in to help Ariel, but Filth knocks him out with a punch to the temple. As Felix collapses, Ariel uses the distraction to slice a bone-deep gash in Filth’s bicep. The vampire grunts in pain as blood sprays them both.
If Felix weren’t already knocked out, he’d faint from the gore. I’m less sensitive to these things, and even I feel woozy. Or maybe I’m just woozy from the blood loss. Either way, it’s my turn to help Ariel—and I want it to count. Ignoring the pain in my bruised throat, I sprint back to my jail cell, grab the heavy padlock I defeated earlier, and rush back.
Filth smashes an elbow into Ariel’s solar plexus, same as he did with me. But Ariel must’ve done an obscene number of crunches and built abs of steel, because she keeps fighting as if nothing’s happened.
I wait for a moment when Filth’s back is to me, then lunge forward and slam the padlock into the back of his head.
What would’ve stunned or knocked out a human only seems to distract the vampire. He throws a punch at my face. I duck. He still manages to block Ariel’s next hit.
I jump back and hurl the padlock at his head with all my might. He twists out of the way—and that’s what puts his throat within reach of Ariel’s blade.
Whoosh.
Blood gushes from the gaping neck wound.
Puck, I might’ve underestimated Ariel’s strength. She’s nearly beheaded Filth with one slice.
Some sort of gurgling sound escapes Filth’s mouth, but Ariel takes no chances. She chops at his throat again and again, until the head and body separate completely—a wound no vampire in history has been able to heal.
Filth’s torso collapses to the ground, and his head rolls over to Felix. At that moment, Felix’s eyes flutter
open. As soon as he sees the bloody mess next to him, he faints again.
Ariel stares at her bloody knife with eerie fascination. She looks—oh crap, she looks on the verge of licking the blade.
This is it. Her vampire blood addiction is being put to a real test.
I hold my breath. It’s better if she does this on her own. She’s at the stage where what she needs most is to believe in her ability to resist temptation.
I, too, was recently on my way to addiction, but I feel zero urge to imbibe any of the crimson liquid around us. Then again, I should find the situation a lot more gross than I actually do. Is that a bad sign? Still, I’ve got a feeling that if I avoid vamp blood for a while, it will eventually seem as yucky as other bodily fluids.
Ariel’s jaw firms. I guess she’s made her choice.
She lifts the knife.
My fingernails bite into the palms of my hands. Don’t lick it!
She tosses the knife into the jail cell. It clanks on the floor as she ceremoniously spits on Filth’s body and turns away.
Grinning, I clap her on the shoulder. “See? You can resist the temptation in the real world.”
She grins back, then kicks Filth’s head back toward his body and walks over to kneel next to Felix. Her lips quirk in a rueful smile as she lifts his limp arm and lets it drop. “Out cold. I guess a severed head is where he draws the line.”
Something flickers in my peripheral vision, but when I look down the hall, I see nothing. When Ariel follows my gaze, however, she stiffens, her smile disappearing.
“Leave now!” she yells at the empty hallway. “If you don’t, you’ll join your underling here.” She jerks her chin toward Filth’s remains.
Underling? Is she talking to Kain? Then I realize what’s happening—and my remaining blood turns to ice.
“That’s not Kain!” I shout. “It’s Hekima. He’s using illusions on you.”
She doesn’t seem to hear me. Leaping to her feet, she rushes an invisible foe, throws a punch at nothing, and dodges an invisible strike. Jaw clenched tight, she follows her illusory enemy until she’s a few feet from where I’m still standing, gaping at her.
She looks at my feet and screams. “No!”
Puck. I can guess what Hekima is showing her: Kain is here, and he’s just killed me. I’ll bet Hekima’s making me look like Kain, a trick he used to commit those other murders as well.
As if to prove my theory correct, Ariel balls her hands and advances on me, her beautiful face twisted with hate. “You’re dead.”
Chapter Forty-One
Puck, puck, puck. I don’t think I can bring myself to hit Ariel or hurt her in any way—not that my qualms are anything but academic. After seeing what she did to Filth, I know I don’t stand a chance of hurting her. She’ll be the one doing the hurting, and it won’t even take that long.
My heart gallops at two hundred miles per hour. This is called a fight or flight response for a reason—and the time to fight is over.
Turning on my heel, I bolt for the jail cell.
Ariel’s footsteps echo behind me. Panting like a dog after a day in a desert, I leap inside the cell and slam the door in her face, sliding the bolt into the locked position.
“You think this will stop me?” She slams her palms against the bars.
I jump back. “I certainly hope so.”
She grabs a bar in each hand and strains to pull them apart, her lean muscles flexing beneath her skimpy dress.
No way. She can’t—
But the heavy-duty bars are bending. She’s stronger than any uber I’ve heard of.
I’m so dead.
Or not. I scoop her knife from the floor and frantically squirt a bunch of hand sanitizer onto the hilt. No blood, can’t have all this blood. Once it’s clean, I turn to face the door, where she’s diligently working on the bars.
Would she give up if I stabbed her? Maybe I could do it in the arm or some other nonlethal place?
The bars are almost wide enough for her to fit her head through. I look around frantically for some alternate solution. Looking down, I finally see it—a horrible, horrible option, something I’d normally say is a fate worse than death. Except here, faced head on with my mortality, I realize this fate may be just a little bit better. I guess my will to live overrides my squeamishness.
Maybe.
I dash to the hole leading to the sewer.
My first mistake is looking down. When I see the murky, foul-smelling liquid down there, I decide maybe Ariel can kill me after all. If I have to be killed, it might be nicer for a friend to do it.
Except it’s not just my life that’s on the line. Pom will die as well—and so will Mom, if I don’t convince the Council that Hekima’s the murderer.
Shaking all over, I sanitize the blade of the butterfly knife, fold it, and slip it into my pocket. And yes, I realize how crazy I am to do this, given what I’m about to dive into. Gulping in a breath of fetid air, I plug my ears with my index fingers and my nose with my pinkies, like a kid learning to dive for the first time, and sneak one last peek at the cell bars to see if maybe Hekima has given up.
Nope. Ariel is sticking her head into the opening she’s just made. It’s now or never.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I jump feet first into the sewer abyss.
Chapter Forty-Two
As I fall, obscenities in all the languages I speak repeat on a loop in my head.
Sploosh.
The gooey substance closes over my head, and I don’t feel anything resembling a floor under my feet. The sewer must be really deep. Don’t think about flesh-eating bacteria and the open wound in my neck. Or brain-eating amoebas. Or the people-eating monster that’s made these sewers a home. Or where the monster goes to the bathroom. Or—
Survival instinct wrenches my hands away from my face, and I begin to flail. My head emerges, and I suck in a breath. The stench is unbearable, as if someone had formulated the worst odor that could exist in nature. What the hell is this stuff?
I’d rather not know. That way lies insanity.
Everything around me is dark, but there’s a faint light in the far distance. I swim toward it. No one jumps into the sewer behind me. That’s good. I guess Hekima can’t maintain the illusion without joining Ariel, and he isn’t willing to follow me here. He doesn’t want his earlier lie of being eaten by Nessie to become reality.
Speaking of the monster, I haven’t been eaten by her either. Not yet, anyway.
I keep on swimming.
The horrific liquid is thick and viscous, and I’d rather not think about why that is. At least that makes floating here easier than in the lakes from the black windows in Nina’s dreams. Now that I’m out of immediate mortal danger, the grossness of what I’m doing is overwhelming. Is it possible to die from disgust? Desperate, I remind myself that even when I’m clean, there are more microbes in and on me than cells with my own DNA.
Nope, that doesn’t help at all. Better not think, period.
I focus on the movement of my arms. Upstroke. Downstroke. Upstroke. Downstroke. The light is nearer. It’s daylight outside the castle’s mountain.
My foot bumps against something mushy, and I’m able to stand and rest. Best not to think about what I’m standing on.
In the direction I came from, the muck ripples. Has Ariel finally jumped in? Hekima? I pull out the knife, unfolding it frantically—not that it’ll help much. Defending myself with this knife will be like trying to put out a forest fire with a water gun.
The ripples intensify, and a head emerges from the mucky water.
My stomach drops to my feet.
There’s no mistaking the long neck and the maw full of dagger-like teeth.
It’s Nessie, and she’s here to eat me.
Chapter Forty-Three
I squeeze the knife so hard my knuckles whiten.
“Go away!” I shout at the creature.
She doesn’t even blink. Her head rises from the muck atop a neck like an anaconda.<
br />
“I’m not a pucking goat,” I shout, waving the knife. “Last warning.”
Nessie strikes. Her maw opens as her head flashes toward me. It takes all my martial arts training to stay still and wait for my moment. When the teeth are ready to close around me, I strike.
My blade sinks into her squishy tongue. Yes!
Nessie jerks her head back, ripping the knife from my hand. I dive for the sewer exit and swim for all I’m worth.
Behind me, Nessie roars.
My arms windmill with insane speed, and the light draws nearer. I might be beating a world record of some kind—assuming some sadist keeps track of sewer swim times.
The beast roars again. She’s gaining on me. I impossibly speed up, the proximity of the exit urging me on.
When I finally burst into the light, my eyes take a second to adjust. I’m in the moat in front of the castle, just outside the mountain. The shore is nearby, filled with monks carrying a goat.
Just my luck—Nessie has come across me at lunch time. The good news is that if I hurry, she might eat the goat instead of me.
Fresh air gives my muscles a much-needed boost, and I close the distance in seconds. The stunned monks help me stumble out of the water.
“Nessie,” I pant. “I think she—”
Before I can finish, two monks seize the poor goat and heave it into the moat.
A familiar head appears above the water. Nessie opens her maw again. There’s no sign of the knife I left there, or a wound of any kind. I guess it makes sense that she has some super-healing ability. She’s an incredibly long-lived creature; the legends about her go way back.
A blink later, the goat is gone. So is Nessie.
Whew.
I fish my hand sanitizer out of my soaked pocket and use it all up on my face and hands. “I need to see someone on the Council.”
The tallest of the monks eyes me like I’m crazy. “You can’t. They’re in a meeting and—”