by Brandon Witt
“Omar, fuck, man—” I cut myself off. The last thing that was going to help Schwint was pissing off Omar even more. “Listen, Omar, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I said to get you upset. I’m totally sorry. Please. Don’t hurt him. If you have to hurt someone, choose me.”
“I wasn’t given that choice. Why should I give it to you?”
I searched for the right thing to say but couldn’t come up with anything.
“Answer me!”
I held up my hands in surrender, trying to appease him and pull his attention from Schwint. “Omar, I don’t even know what you’re talking about! I’m sorry, but I don’t.” I considered running at him. Using some of my new power. Maybe if I was able to catch him off guard. He wouldn’t expect me to try to engage him in combat.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you. You’ll find out just how much better I am than you will ever be.”
Without taking his gaze off me, Omar’s left hand made a clenching motion, and Schwint screamed in pain above us.
I looked up at him, still suspended inches from the jagged branches. The left segments of his wings looked like they had been crumpled up into a ball.
As I watched, Schwint plummeted the twenty feet to the floor and hit the copper with a resounding crash. Even above the bang of the impact, a loud crack could be heard split seconds before he screamed again.
I rushed to his side, throwing myself between his body and Omar.
Schwint let out a moan, and I turned to look at him. The lower portion of his right leg was at an odd angle, so much so that I felt my stomach churn at the sight. My eyes traveled up his body toward his injured wing. The blue-tinged cells looked like shattered stained glass, and the major costal veins of both the upper and lower segments on his left wing were crushed in several places, causing the wing to stay crumpled upon itself.
His yellow eyes met mine briefly, then rolled in agony.
“Oh, babe.” I reached for him.
The copper door flung open with a resounding clang, and Schwint’s body soared over the floor and through the doorway. With another sickening crunch, his form crashed down the spiraling stairs and out of sight. Though I heard when his body hit the wall farther down, I didn’t hear him make any other sound.
I rushed toward the doorway, desperate to get to him. When the door slammed shut, I crashed into it, causing me to collapse to the floor.
Shaking off the impact, I whirled around, forgetting about magic, and threw myself at Omar from my crouched position.
He was already whipping one of his golden chains in my direction, and it smashed me across the face, confirming that was what he’d hit me with before.
I felt a slash open across my cheek and warm liquid begin to run down my face.
With a thrash of my arm toward the ground, the copper floor buckled, a wave travelling along its surface. It collided with Omar, sweeping him off his feet. Instead of falling to the ground, the warlock rose a few inches into the air, completely avoiding the smaller wave that followed.
Like Schwint before me, I was pulled through the air. Instead of rising to the roof, I was slammed against the metal wall, another hollow boom echoing through the room.
Omar let out a low laugh. “Well, I’ll be. You have learned something new, haven’t you?”
I opened my mouth to curse at him. It slammed shut so hard, I was certain I felt a couple of my teeth crack at the impact.
“Not enough, though. Not nearly enough.” Omar hobbled toward me, having returned to the floor, his chains clanking around him. “No more words from you. My God! No more words. I’m so tired of hearing your damned pathetic voice.”
He reached me, standing so close his warm, stale breath washed over my face. He lifted a dirty finger in front of my face, then lowered it to my cheek.
He used the long nail to dig into the cut, ripping it further. Again, he offered his finger in front of my face for inspection. My blood filled the inner portion of his nail and ran down his finger. His dark, cataract-hazed eyes held mine as he slipped his finger into his mouth and swished it around. Slowly, he withdrew his finger, now clean of my blood, only wet smudges of dirt streaking his skin. “Familiar?”
Hazel! I tried to speak but of course could not.
Omar leered at me, a sinister smile breaking over his face. “Yes. Hazel.” Once more, he raised his chain and brought it down on my face, smashing it over my eye.
Blood instantly poured from the cut in my brow and obscured Omar from view in my left eye.
“She died because of you! Because she dared harm the chosen one! All these decades. Promises and promises that I would be reunited with my wife, if only I do as I was told. Then you! You show up, and that fucking vampire wants something new and shiny. Never mind that you’re a cheap replica of me! Even when you reach your greatest, you’ll not begin to touch what I was in my weakest moment.”
He brought the chain down on my face once more, momentarily causing the world to go black.
“She died because of you!” He raised the golden chain. Even the act of shutting my eyes so I wouldn’t see the deathblow was denied me.
Halfway through the chain’s arch toward my head, Omar flew from me, a blur carrying him across the room.
For a second, I thought it was Schwint.
Gwala held the warlock by his throat, up against the wall. “Release him, Omar.”
The warlock only stared at me over the vampire king’s shoulder.
“I said release him!” The king’s bellow ricocheted around the room, causing the ringing in my ears to spike. He tightened his grip on the warlock’s throat, and a trickle of blood ran down from the place Gwala’s nail pierced him.
Omar held my gaze for a bit longer, his hate and anger so strong, they entered me as surely as if they’d been injected into a vein. Then I crashed to the floor. I let out a groan, and the room slid into darkness.
Twenty
FINN DE MORISCO
Turning my head felt like I was ripping out nails attaching the back of my skull to whatever I was lying on. I opened eyes, which only added to the pain. Bright sunlight caused me to slam them shut again. Letting them adjust slowly, I peered through my lashes, trying to determine where I was.
After a time, Schwint’s and my room came into focus. I tried to place the pieces together. For the briefest of seconds, I thought the events in Omar’s tower had been nothing more than a nightmare. The screaming pain that radiated through my body told me differently.
A motion drew my attention to the window. A woman with long hair stood gazing out into the sunshine. Despite the pain, my heart leapt in my chest, a shot of happiness coursing through me. Cynthia!
Before her name left my lips, I realized it wasn’t her. Instead of her warm reddish-brown hue, this hair was raven black. It shone in the sun as the woman turned her head, her cold violet eyes locking onto mine.
No. Not Cynthia.
“Sonia.” My voice cracked, my throat dry and tight.
She didn’t acknowledge me, looking more like a piece of art than Brett’s old roommate.
I paused, trying both to moisten my tongue and to determine what the safest move would be. It made no sense that Sonia was waiting at my bedside. Then I decided I didn’t care. How much worse could things get?
“Where is Schwint? How is he?”
Her perfect brow creased slightly, whether in confusion or distaste, I couldn’t tell. Turning, she looked back out the window, closed her eyes, and let the sun wash over her honeyed skin.
When she spoke, her voice was familiar, sounding like the girl I’d met lifetimes ago. However, all warmth and the overflowing joy she’d exuded had vanished. “Gwala had the fairy taken to your sister for healing, as you weren’t able to assist.”
“Cynthia is with him?” The thought gave me a rush of hope. Cynthia was the best healer of all of us. If she was with him, he would be fine. And she would know that we were here with her.
Sonia turned toward me. I had no doubt this tim
e. Her expression left no question about her revulsion at the situation. “No. Not the witch he has here in the Cathedral. The other one.”
“Caitlin?”
“I don’t know her name.”
So Gwala did know Caitlin had come to Costa Rica with us. We’d figured as much. “Is she here?”
She stared at me before answering, as if each word took effort that she had to decide if she was willing to expend. “The fairy was taken to their cave. The king felt that the other fairy would be able to heal him more effectively than Gwala’s other witches would.” Again she sneered as she referred to witches.
“Gwala has other witches?”
She didn’t reply, only stared at me before returning to the view, getting lost to whatever she was watching out the window.
So much was implied in what Sonia said, I wasn’t sure what to focus on first. Not that the pain in my head would let me concentrate on any of it to any great extent.
Gwala had made the right decision. Newton would be able to help more than even Cynthia. The more a person knew about the body, the easier it was to help it heal. He would understand how a fairy’s body worked. Knowing not only that Schwint was still alive but that he was being helped lessened some of my own pain.
With the relief came the worry of what would happen to Caitlin and Newton now that it was clear Gwala knew about them.
And what did Sonia mean about Gwala’s other witches? I’d been under the impression that Omar was the only other witch here.
I continued to watch Sonia as she stared out the window. Though I hadn’t really known Sonia before her death, I’d liked her when we’d been introduced. She’d been one of those people you fell instantly in love with. Her beauty, exuberance, and innate kindness had emanated like a physical force.
Looking at her now, it seemed impossible, but she was even more beautiful, nearly otherworldly. An ache coursed through me, both for her and for Brett. She was a shell of the woman she’d been. So much lost. My family had been worried about the possibility she’d been turned, but I’d never mentioned the chance to Brett, seeing no reason to add worry to his pain.
I was glad he never needed to know. Better he thought her dead than becoming this. How she came to be at the Vampire Cathedral and became a Royal, I had no idea. It seemed a complete impossibility. I thought of the nymphs. Although they weren’t fortune-tellers, surely they had known about this. Surely there had been a way to have saved her. Saved Cynthia. Saved all of us—or at least one of us.
I guess they had. Brett had been spared. I still wasn’t sure what the nymphs had told him that night on the cliff. Maybe they’d given him a warning. He might still be battling his demon blood, but other than that, he’d escaped the rest of our fates. As long as the vampire that had been pursuing him wasn’t still trying to find him. I couldn’t let myself consider that possibility.
Thinking of Brett brought with it the ever-constant pain. I was fully in love with Schwint, but a part of me would never completely heal from the way Brett had left. It had been the right decision for both of us, but still… Along with the pain came a momentary wash of jealousy. He’d managed to escape all of this. He was the only one to truly come through this unscathed. No sooner had the feeling emerged than I shoved it away with a rush of guilt. Thank God he’d escaped. I was glad he had. I hoped he’d found some peace somewhere and that he’d never have to deal with any of this.
“I’m sorry.”
Sonia turned her head slowly, a warning in her violet gaze.
“I’m sorry. If I’d had any idea the vampire knew where Brett lived… If I’d realized you were in danger…” My words trailed off weakly. How did you apologize for not being good enough to save someone from the torture they’d gone through? Thoughts of Sonia’s family flashed through my mind. Her mother cold on the bed, father mutilated in the shower. Maybe she’d never found out what the vampire had done to them.
The unusual hue of her eyes intensified as she glared at me.
I tried again, knowing I should leave well enough alone. “I wish I’d been able to kill the vampire when I had the chance. Then you’d be okay. We all would. None of this would have ever happened.”
Sonia stepped away from the window, trading the sun for gas sconces. Her gaze never wavered, never lessened in its intensity of fury. Step by graceful step, she neared until she was less than a foot from me. As she stood over where I lay, I thought she was going to kill me.
“He’s here, you know.”
“Who’s here?”
A small smile curved her perfect lips. “The vampire. The monster. He’s here. I’ve seen him.”
I rushed to sit up, but the pain that coursed through me caused me to crash back onto the bed. I lifted my hand and squeezed my forehead, as if that could help. “The vampire is here in the Cathedral?”
She shrugged. “He does not stay in the Cathedral, but I have seen him. He is still on the peninsula.”
“Why?” It seemed too much that we were all here. All at once. It couldn’t be coincidence.
Sonia’s smile faded once more, her eyes going distant. “Who do you think brought your sister here?”
The pain Omar had inflicted on my body was nothing compared to what Sonia’s words caused.
The redheaded vampire was the one who had taken Cynthia? If that was true, he was the one who caused my parents to be hospitalized. He’d caused everything. I don’t know why it made a difference who was responsible for it, but it did somehow. The only thing that surged greater than my anger was my guilt. Truly, if I’d been able to kill him that night in the alley, none of this would have come to pass.
I stared into Sonia’s eyes, and for a moment, I thought I saw the girl staring back at me, not the vampire. Before the realization could form, she sneered once more. “I am supposed to bring you to Gwala.”
The journey Sonia led me on as we made our way to Gwala seemed to encompass miles. Each step was agony, both slicing through my body and sending spikes through my brain. Try as I might, I couldn’t use my power to heal. Some master warlock I was turning out to be. The most I was able to accomplish was numbing some of the pain. I’d done better healing when I’d been a teenager. I chalked it up to the severity of the injuries and the stress level the past few hours had brought crashing over me—as if I hadn’t had enough.
Every step I took added to the turmoil churning through my mind. Even if I hadn’t been able to kill the vampire and stop the events that followed, at least I could have insisted Schwint stay home. He wouldn’t have been almost killed by Omar and wouldn’t spend whatever days he had left trapped in the Vampire Cathedral. No matter how much Gwala wanted us to sink into the illusion of freedom and for all our talk about escape, I knew Omar had been right. We weren’t going to be able to scheme up some plan that would actually work. The most it would do would be to get one or both of us killed or chained up like Omar. All for what? So I wouldn’t have to face this alone? So I could have my boyfriend with me in the big, scary vampire castle? Was I still really that weak? I’d thought if anything good was going to come from my little downward spiral after Brett left, it would be a nearly impenetrable strength. Only to crumble the first chance it got, it seemed.
That didn’t even begin to address Caitlin and Newton. What had been the point of them staying again? To help us and Cynthia escape when the time was right? Had any of us really believed that was going to happen? It was ludicrous. All of it. And each of us had been proven fools, and I the greatest one, or at least the most cowardly. Everyone else had come because of Cynthia or me. If I was completely honest, the reason I’d let them was because I’d been afraid to do it on my own. And now here we were. All at the mercy of Gwala. If the thought hadn’t scared me so badly and my body wasn’t screaming in pain, I would have laughed. At the vampire king’s mercy? No such thing.
By the time Sonia paused outside a huge stone door, I had no clue where we were. It seemed like we’d descended to the center of the earth through endless p
assages and stairways. I wasn’t certain if we were directly below the Cathedral or miles away.
Despite having known Sonia longer as a vampire than I had as a human, it was still a shock to see such a petite, beautiful woman move the large stone as easily as she might roll a Hula-Hoop.
At first, I didn’t notice the circular marble room or the crystalline pool in its center. Gwala stood as still as a statue a few feet from the entrance to the room. A wave of emotion crashed over me as his eyes met mine, none of them induced by the vampire king. As always, fear met me first, but this time it was closely followed by gratitude. He had saved Schwint and me. He had sent Schwint to Newton. He hadn’t killed Caitlin, even though he knew she’d been hiding in the forest. Then rage, as I remembered he was the reason my sisters and I were here to begin with. Why my parents had been hospitalized. I dropped my gaze so he wouldn’t see—as if he didn’t know.
As soon as I realized I was staring at his feet, I averted my eyes once more, finally taking in the starkly gorgeous room. Gwala was dressed in his preferred flowing robes. However, unlike the typical satin and silk he normally wore, this material was mostly transparent, like gossamer or a bridal veil. The only substance it had at all were thin strands of silver crisscrossing through the textile. His obsidian-black skin gleamed through the fabric, shining in the flickering flames. The robes highlighted his nudity almost to a greater extent than if he’d truly been wearing nothing at all.
Despite knowing he was older than I could ever really conceive, he looked like nothing more than a young teenage boy standing in front of me. His nudity was at once revolting and deceptive. He looked like it would take nothing more than a few sturdy blows or halfhearted spells to destroy him. If I let myself look at him, I might give in to the illusion.
After a moment, Gwala stepped forward, meeting us where we stood in the doorway. “Thank you, my queen. It seems I cannot trust those who serve me to the point I had believed. Please consider such a task of retrieval a testament of my faith in you—not that I believe you equal to a servant.”