Shadows of Mist, page 9
part #8 of The Vampire Gift Series
“Why not, indeed,” I murmur. “What are you suggesting?”
“An ambush,” he says clearly. “You set up the meeting place. She arrives. And my men—” he offers a vicious smile, “—descend upon her and kill her.”
“You presume I have some means of contacting her,” I say. “I do not. I promised her a vampire cure. She gave me thirty days. At the end of that time, she will find me.”
“So we make sure you are in a strategic location when the time is up,” he says. “I can arrange all that.”
“James,” Victoria interrupts.
I look at her. “Yes?”
“I do not think anybody here appreciates just the sort of witch we’re dealing with. Cierra is called the Black Sorceress for a reason. She takes joy in death. There are no human weapons on this earth that can be used against her. Not without a huge number of casualties being sacrificed.”
“And you can’t just go somewhere surrounded by the Crusaders’ soldiers,” April cries out.
We all turn to her.
She shuffles closer to Paolo.
“Do you have something else to add?” I ask.
“I… I saw what they did to Liana!” she exclaims. “I saw how easily they destroyed the other vampires of the pack. These are not ordinary human soldiers, James! They’re trained to kill. Trained to kill vampires!”
“I know all that,” I say impatiently. “Do you have anything of substance to add?”
“April and I were both awakened by the Divine Sight,” Paolo steps in. “We survived the massacre for a reason.” He glances at her. I think I see a bit of affection in his eyes.
“I agree that it is too big a risk to place you at the mercy of those men,” he concludes.
“Then what?” I snap, feeling like I am at my nerve’s end. “Cierra will come for me, nonetheless. I bought myself thirty days, but when that time is up, she will discover I lied about the vampire cure and destroy me! The only chance I had was learning how to harness my own magic, and that chance died with Melvin! And no,” I add, “I will not be going to chase some specter of the slender man.”
“There is one possibility we haven’t considered yet,” Victoria says slyly.
I turn to her. “What?”
“Return to The Haven,” she says. “The Queen is strong.”
“I will not go running back to Mother.”
“Why not?” she counters. “She is a powerful witch. And she has Eleira. Together, they might be enough to stop Cierra.”
“I don’t think you remember,” I say sardonically, “the terms on which we left The Haven.”
“That doesn’t matter!” she exclaims. “You want to live past your next encounter with the Black Sorceress? This is the only way I know how.”
“Well,” I say slowly, thinking. “Perhaps not the only way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Father has a coven as well,” I say carefully.
“What? James, are you crazy? You talk to me about how we left The Haven, and then you suggest we return to The Crypts? Why?”
“Because now,” I say, glancing at Paul, “I have something concrete to offer Logan.”
“No,” Victoria says. “No, I won’t let you do it. It’s suicide!”
“You hate The Crypts just as much as I do,” I say. “But if we take shelter there, even if father refuses to help, we will have a strategic advantage.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Think! Father has The Ancient at his command. We think magic is the only thing that can counter magic. But we are vampires! We are strong! Do you really think the strongest ones of all fail to match up against some goddamn witch? And what’s more, Father has thousands of vampires there, thousands, all of whom have been strengthened by The Ancient’s blood. I would rather have such an army of vampires behind me than any number of humans!”
“Logan won’t help you,” Victoria says with contempt. “If you think he will, you are a fool. He will imprison all of us the moment we are in the vicinity of his coven.”
“Yes, that is a possibility,” I say. “But then Cierra will have to break through all of them to get to me. Either way, the vampires of The Crypts will go up against the Black Sorceress. And I think,” I add with a smile, “they will be quite successful.”
Chapter Eleven
Eleira
The Haven.
An army of white screechers appears over the hill.
They run at us, thousands upon thousands of them. They make barely a sound, leaping over the ground with limbs light as air.
I feel the vampires behind me start to push forward. I spin back.
“Stay there!” I command them. “None of you are to leave the safety of the barrier. That is a direct order from your Queen!”
The creatures keep coming. When I turn back they’ve already crossed a quarter of the distance. There seems to be no end to the horde, with more and more of those white things appearing over the crest of the hill like a tidal wave.
How the hell did so many of them spawn underground? I wonder.
Another few seconds pass, and they’re now halfway. I take a deep breath, channel all the calm that I have, and grab hold of the Elemental Forces.
When the Tentoria reach the three-quarter mark, I unleash my magic on them.
A beam of pure fire bursts from my hand. I sweep it across the army, from left to right. Hundreds of those in the front ranks instantly perish.
But the rest of the horde shows no sign of slowing down.
At the top of the hill, a section of the army has stayed behind. They take their positions, open their mouths, and emit that awful scream.
It slams into me, and I stagger back. Goddammit, the torrial was supposed to protect me! With great haste I fashion a pair of invisible earmuffs, made entirely of Air, and tie the weave off.
I’m now completely deaf, but that means I can fight.
Anger surges through me at that misstep. The screechers are still running straight at us, leaping over the ashes of their comrades without a care.
I ready another fire beam and unleash it on them. It burns through rows upon rows of the horrid creatures. But more keep coming over the hill. It’s a tsunami that cannot be stopped. For each one I kill, five more appear.
In desperation, I clutch onto weaves of Air and Fire. I use them to erect an invisible wall between me and the screechers, pushing my arms out as I do so.
The first row of screechers slam into the wall and fall back, stunned. I afford myself a small smile. I start readying another fire attack, but then, to my complete shock, the screechers simply start to climb the barrier.
I blink. That doesn’t make any sense! The wall is smooth as glass, there is no way they should be able to get a grip on it.
But there, right in front of my eyes, is evidence of the contrary.
Hastily, I adjust my weaves and grab hold of the same pattern I used to erect the wall. As the vile creatures scale it, moving at incredible speed, I extend the wall up and up, then curl it back to dome over us, and it falls back on the other side, sealing all of us in.
The white army quickly surrounds the barrier. The screechers climb up, to the very top, and stay there.
Within seconds, the entire dome is covered by those damn things. They don't try to break through. They just stay there, absolutely still, totally silent, waiting.
A touch on my shoulder makes me jump. I turn, startled, and find Felix standing there, along with Geordam and a host of his guards.
I release the weaves making up my earmuffs and look at them. “I told you to stay where it’s safe.”
“I think this new dome constitutes safety,” Felix says dryly. “Congratulations, you have us surrounded on all sides. What do you propose to do?”
I bristle. “Do NOT forget who I am,” I remind him.
He bows his head deeply, almost in a… mocking way.
“Of course not, my Queen,” he intones. “We are beholden to you.”
I sniff.
“My Queen,” Geordam says, gesturing at the gathered vampires. “Your subjects are getting restless.”
“Do you not see what we’re surrounded by?” I explode.
“Of course, I do,” Geordam answers smoothly. “So do all of my men. So do all of your vampires: They want to fight.”
“In case you forgot what happened last time—”
I cut off as a reverberation ripples through the dome. For a second, the waves holding it waver, as if under direct assault.
Immediately, I grab hold of the Elements and strengthen them. But I find there’s nothing to be strengthened—they are as solid as when I first made them.
Then what was that strange shock wave?
I look at the vampires around me. They are peering up at the transparent dome, uncertainty clear on their features.
“Will this hold?” Felix asks. “And for how long?”
“It will hold as long as it needs to,” I snap. I don’t dare shoot any fire out from where I stand because it would rip through the weaves of the dome and instantly shatter it.
I curse myself for being so damn short-sighted. Now I’ve trapped us all. I don’t know how to get out.
“I call a meeting of the Royal Court,” I announce. “The Queen needs the expertise of her most trusted vampires.”
Chapter Twelve
Eleira
The Haven.
Hours later, I find myself in a tense, painful meeting of the vampires who are supposed to give me good counsel.
I say “supposed to” because we have not accomplished anything yet. I’ve laid out the situation: I cannot do anything to the Tentoria without the domed shield falling apart.
They’ve failed to come up with any palatable suggestions.
I look over the heads of the Royal Court members to the rest of my vampires. I can feel their uncertainty, like a palpable scent on the air.
I glance up at the dome. All I see are those awful white bodies, blocking everything else. They remind me of leeches, or barnacles on a ship. They don’t so much as move. None have opened their jaws to scream.
Their stillness is uncanny. I only know of vampires who have that ability. But these… things… are some sort of vile derivation, like The Convicted.
“What if we go underground?” a Court member suddenly suggests.
My ears perk up. “Underground?”
“If we’re surrounded on all sides, and we can’t get out, why not go down?” he continues.
Something about the idea resonates with me. “That… could actually work.”
I turn to face the Court. “Felix. You are the one who knows most about these creatures. Are they individually sentient? To me it seems like they’re ruled by a hive mind.”
He considers the question. “I think it is both,” he answers after a moment. “Each of them listens to whomever controls them. But each is its own entity, too.”
“So that means they’re watching us,” I say, glancing up. Thousands of lifeless eyes peer down at me. “If we just disappear, they will know we’re gone.”
I tap my lips and start to pace back and forth. “They cannot be sensed by us. But I think that works both ways. They cannot sense us, either. They do not have the capacity for it.”
“They have parts of the vampire essence,” Felix confirms. “But they do not have access to our abilities.”
“So then,” I say, thinking. “So then, if I cast an inverted weave over all of us, it can create the illusion of all of us being inside.” I start collecting the Elemental Forces required to do so, knowing instinctively which of the currents are needed and in which order. “The screechers won’t know anything is different. The dome blocks sound waves. They cannot hear us, and we cannot hear them. Neither of us can sense the other. They can see our assembly, much as we can see theirs, but that will not take much to change…”
With a burst of magic, I envelope the entire inside of the dome in an intricate, inverted net. It reflects all of us back at ourselves, but on the other side, it obfuscates the screechers’ view. We become hazy, uncertain, blurs to look at. As if we are looking out upon the world with a pair of extra-strong glasses.
I let the net sit for a few moments, channeling more magic into it, then cut the feed off, and loop it.
From now on, the screechers will simply see a long, drawn out reproduction of the last few minutes, adjusted and modified randomly so as not to give awareness of the loop.
I step back, coming back to myself, and marvel for a few moments at what I’ve done.
The net is an incredibly complicated spell, and I did it all relying on base instinct. Strength in magic has nothing to do with complexity—this is pure art.
Too bad nobody is around to appreciate it.
That thought instantly makes me think of Riyu. Stupid! I curse myself. I had forgotten all about him, even though he has been here, in my vicinity, the whole damn time!
“Stay here,” I tell the vampires, and rush down to Morgan’s chamber.
When I get inside, I discover Riyu sitting on the floor, cross-legged and absolutely still. He looks like he is in a trance—I glance at the stone slab Morgan’s ruined body lies on. I can feel the torrial in the room feeding her life. I can feel her presence, ever so faintly, emanating out to me from under the covers.
“Riyu,” I say. He makes no move to indicate he’s heard me. “Riyu!”
Nothing.
Strange, I think. I come up to him, testing the air very carefully for any additional inverted or hidden weaves.
I find nothing.
“Riyu,” I say once more, a little louder. I take him by the shoulder, and—
The moment my hand touches his body a freezing cold rips through me. I want to jolt back in surprise, but I cannot, my body totally frozen, my muscles refusing to move…
The cold washes over me, taking over my whole body. No time passes at all, and suddenly, I am back in that vortex, the strange, inexplicable space that is somehow outside the regular passage of time.
Fear grips me. What have I done?
I cannot move, cannot breathe, but my mind is operating at lightning speed. I start to see webs of light forming in the corner of my vision. Like an avalanche in slow motion they barrel over the entire space, until the whole room is covered in them.
This reminds me eerily of what happened in the moments Morgan was about to kill me, about to force me to drink the Narwhark’s blood.
But something about this web is softer, safer, less sinister. My hand is still glued to Riyu’s shoulder, and the icy cold continues to seep into me.
“Turn around, Eleira,” a voice says to me.
A mixture of shock and surprise washes over me. It’s Riyu’s voice, but it’s coming from behind me.
I try to turn my body but, of course, my muscles don’t respond.
Gay laughter. “No, no,” he says. “Do not use your physical body. Use the ethereal one.”
I have no idea what that means. I have no idea how to do it. When I exited my body once, in Morgan’s torture chambers, it was done by pure necessity. Here, I am stuck.
“It’s easy,” Riyu says. “All you have to do is clear your mind and let go.”
I struggle, again. As Queen, I have to be in total control—I cannot just let go! Especially not with the danger present above me, the danger facing all the vampires of The Haven!
“Let go,” Riyu repeats. He floats into my reach of vision, a translucent spectrum of himself. “It’s not hard, Eleira. The difficulty is only in attaining this state. I only got here because of you.”
I’m stuck. I cannot speak, cannot respond, cannot communicate with him! I struggle against the invisible force holding me in place, knowing that it’s useless because there is no force, that it’s just the freezing of time around me that keeps me still, knowing that I’m stuck here for however long, knowing that—
“Here,” Riyu says gently. “Let me help you.”
He reaches out, reaches forward, reaches into me, and gently pulls my spirit free.
For a moment, I just float there, feeling a strange disconnect from my body. I look down and see my ethereal force—I didn’t last time this happened—then I look back and see my totally frozen physical form.
“You’re welcome,” Riyu says.
I frown. I push myself forward, floating through the air, causing the web to ripple around me as I move.
“You’re very strong,” Riyu notes, with a tone of reverence. “Very few who have accessed this realm can affect it directly…”
To demonstrate, he floats in front of me, and the intricate web remains untouched.
“How did we get here?” I ask.
“You brought us,” he says. He laughs. “I was just the conduit through which you did it. You do not know how incredibly difficult it was to stay absolutely still as you entered. The hierarchy and all that.” He motions in a roundabout way with his hand. “But if I told you what I intended to try, your unconscious mind would have blocked off the possibility. I am sorry, but the only way to do this was to take you by surprise.”
“What exactly did you do?” I wonder.
“I made it possible for you to expand your mind and access a different dimension.”
“But we are still on earth,” I say.
“We are,” he admits. “And we are not. Time does not flow right now. Yet here you and I are, interacting as if it does. If that is not another dimension, I don’t know what is.”
“Interesting,” I consider. “So, what exactly did you do? When I touched you, something cold seared into me—” I give a start. “—I do not feel it now.”
“No, of course not,” he says. “As for what I did, it is too cumbersome to explain in full. The most I can say for it to make sense to you is that long ago, when I was trained by my teacher, in the Red Keep, she taught me an incantation that she said would give access to another realm. It is a secret belonging to her ancestors. She was too weak to use it, and obviously, so was I, but I uttered the words and cleared my mind, and then waited for the presence of one much stronger for it to take effect. When you touched me, the link was made, a physical one, and the incantation was given life through you.”
