Camila stopped dead. Her dark brown eyes grew wide as they flitted over the smoldering corpses and landed on the crowd of strangers regarding her with intense interest.
One . . . two . . . . there. Forty sets of nostrils flared. The scent of human blood coursing through delicate human veins had reached the Ratheus vampires. It was all they needed. Eyes began morphing into the hideous red globes of ravenous vampires, the only time one of our kind could be considered grotesque.
Camila’s jaw dropped. Her terror flooded my mind like a potent memory. Another vampirism. I knew the others would sense it as well. It would only feed their lust. Camila’s feet began sliding backward as she edged stiffly toward the building. Her four inch snakeskin heels scraped against the concrete steps. She stumbled into her husband before pushing past him to run, Carmelo on her heels. I sighed. Bad move, running.
“The garage!” I heard Camila whisper to her husband as surely as if she stood next to me.
So they thought they could hide? Despite myself, I chuckled. Silly humans. There’s no hiding . . .
The swarm took off, Caden and Amelie in the lead, tearing into the building after the humans, in a race to see who would taste human blood first. Sympathy for Evangeline swallowed my anger, the likelihood that her friends had deceived her growing with each minute.
“Wonderful!” Viggo muttered sarcastically, throwing his hands up in the air. “Who’s going to clean up the blood?”
I rolled my eyes. “You think there’s going to be a drop of blood left?”
Camila’s shrill scream silenced any retort.
“How long before they discover they’re trapped?” Mortimer asked, the legs of a bistro chair scratching against the cobblestones as he dragged it away from a charred body. He repositioned it on the other side of Veronique’s statue. “And how angry do you think this Mage will be?”
“Yes, she may prove thorny,” Viggo mused absently as he inspected the leaves of a wild rose bush—an ancient and rare variety that Veronique loved, now a crisp mess.
I wondered the same thing. I began tinkering with the Merth the second Evangeline left for Ratheus for the last time, testing out different magical weaves and chants, combining basic witch binding spells with my own concoctions, adding my own unique signature to make the spell unbreakable by anyone but me. It had taken days to figure out and thousands of helix threads but, in the end, no vampire was getting within twenty feet of an exterior wall without facing paralyzing pain. Given we now had forty vampires within these walls instead of four, I couldn’t be more thankful that the spell was in place. It was the only thing I was thankful for.
We didn’t have long to wonder how Mage would react. “What have you done to this building?” her crisp voice called out. I turned to see the delicate vampiress gliding toward me, her movements smooth and controlled. She dabbed a blood-stained cloth against her mouth. More dark red stains covered her shirt—a gray button-down meant for Fiona. A mutant accompanied her on her right, the only surviving mutant. To her left, at a distance but clearly intent on hearing the conversation, Rachel slinked.
A flood of Ratheus vampires trailed the three of them through the doors into the atrium, their angry crimson eyes settling on me. I counted twenty-eight now. The rest were no doubt lying on the cold tile within the Merth’s border, waiting for someone to drag them to safety. But twenty-eight could still prove difficult to control, that fact driven home as I caught whispers of “witch” and “torture.” I glanced from Mage back to them, and to Viggo and Mortimer. I’m surrounded by angry, desperate vampires. This couldn’t end well. “What do you mean?” I asked, my voice intentionally airy.
Mage paused for a moment to regard me, a knowing smirk touching her lips, her eyes narrowing slightly. She turned to a tall, willowy blonde standing near the security door beside the iron garage gate. “Tanith? Please demonstrate.” The blonde vampire hesitated. “Go and open that door,” Mage pressed gently, her voice a soothing song.
Tanith stalked toward the metal door. She reached out slowly, her face pinched, her long fingers approaching the metal handle as if anticipating pain. Like a cobra, her hand shot forward the last few inches to graze the handle and pull back.
Her eyes lit up in pleasant surprise; what she had expected hadn’t happened. She glanced over at Mage as her hand clamped over the door handle. She gave it a yank. It did little more than creak. I had expected as much, given it was triple-reinforced with titanium deadbolts and a system of iron rods tunneling ten feet into the brick surrounding it. Even Viggo with all his strength couldn’t open that door without exerting significant strength.
With a sigh, Mage floated over to the door. She reached out to grasp the handle with her dainty hand as Tanith had before her. She pulled. A hair-raising metal screech echoed through the atrium as Mage ripped the security door out of its frame as if it were nothing more than a sheet of paper, sending concrete and brick flying in every direction. I had never seen a display of strength like that before. It was all I could do to keep my mouth from hanging open. In my peripheral vision, I spied Viggo’s jaw drop for a split second before he schooled his expression and clamped his mouth shut. Mage was no longer his competition. She had just proven herself to be vastly superior.
Now, with a gaping hole in the wall, the Ratheus vampires—Caden and friends falling in at the rear—bolted. They poured through the opening into the tunnel, heading toward the exterior door, the final barrier between them and the streets of Manhattan . . . and the blood they’d been craving for seven hundred years.
I wasn’t worried about them escaping. Instead I stood frozen, watching as Mage tossed the heap of metal aside and calmly approached me. I have no magic and I’m facing off against the vampire queen that I’ve single-handedly trapped in this building. I wondered how long I would survive. The mutant lingered beside her, his eyes shifting furtively to the gaping hole, no doubt wondering if he could pass.
Shrieks of pain echoed from the tunnel.
Mage crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s what I’m referring to.”
“Oh, that.” I was going for aloof but it came out sounding like a petulant child. “Well . . . ” I paused, evaluating my options. What should I tell her? They already knew I was a sorceress. Should I play dumb? Could I pretend I was as much a victim of some witch’s trap as she was, that I couldn’t get out either? Or could I blame Evangeline’s spell, say that this was a consequence? Various webs began spinning at warp speed in my mind. It was all I did lately—lie. Lie to Viggo and Mortimer to protect Evangeline; lie to Evangeline to protect her. Heck, I even lied to myself to ease my guilt over the choices I’d made.
I regarded Mage’s shrewd, hawkish eyes and some instinct cautioned me against lying this time. The truth it is. A rarity. “We can’t have blood-crazed vampires tearing through the streets of our city, especially ones who’ve already had a hand in the extinction of one world’s humans. So, I’ve laced the building with Merth. None of you will get out until I release the spell.” Go ahead and kill me, Mage. You’ll never taste warm human blood again.
Mage leveled a hard stare at me, the corners of her almond eyes crinkling as she thought. “You’re telling me the truth.” It was a statement. “I appreciate that. I know it doesn’t come naturally for our kind. Thank you.” She turned her back on me to walk toward the tunnel. “Everyone, listen!” Mage shouted. She waved them all out of the tunnel to form a circle around her in the atrium. Only fourteen returned, throwing daggered glares in my direction. The rest were caught within the Merth. “I’m sorry, but every one of us will need to stay here for now . . . Jonah, stop!” Her hand flew out toward the mutant Jonah as he slowly edged toward the tunnel exit. He glanced over his shoulder at Mage, his face twisting into something more repulsive, if that were possible. But his feet still moved forward. He could get past the Merth. He could be free.
He can’t escape. With desperation on my side, a flame suddenly erupted at my fingertip. Oh, thank God. My magic is back. “Stop,” I commanded, my hand rising, my finger pointed, ready to burn the mutant to the ground.
Mage suddenly appeared in front of me, her powerful hand clamping over mine, thwarting my plans. Her hand remained on mine as she turned to regard him. “Jonah,” she said, her voice calm.
“Just for a bit . . . promise,” he murmured, continuing forward.
Viggo and Mortimer appeared before the gaping hole in the wall, their tall, lean frames creating a formidable barrier. Luckily we agreed on one thing—we couldn’t have a mutant loose.
“Seriously?” Jonah chuckled arrogantly.
“Now would not be a good time to make your exit.” Mortimer’s French accent made him sound calm and diplomatic but I could see the mixture of rage and panic in his eyes. Viggo, on the other hand, swayed side to side, hands at the ready, sneering. He was eager to pounce, his distaste for mutants evident.
Jonah rolled his hideous white eyes. “I disagree! I’ve waited seven hundred years. Now is the perfect time. You two aren’t strong enough to match me so I suggest you let me pass before I rip you to shreds.”
Great. Another volatile situation. How many more of these would we endure under this roof? How long before one of us died? My attention slid to Evangeline’s friends, who now stood in a far corner under a sizeable fig tree, their shirts speckled with blood. Clearly they’d been at the head of the line for the Foreros.
“No, but with my help they are,” a prissy voice called out, drawing my eyes back to the hole. Rachel stood next to Viggo, offering Jonah a wicked grin. “Thanks for tying me up, freak.” Whatever had transpired on Ratheus, Jonah had made an enemy of her. “If I can’t go out there, neither can anyone else.” She offered Viggo an over-exaggerated grin and a wink. She’s choosing a side. “Besides, you can’t go out there. You’re hideous!” she sneered at the mutant.
Jonah smirked, unperturbed. “So what?”
“So what?” Mortimer shouted, never one to control his anger. “So you’ll only attract the attention of a bunch of fanatics watching us every minute of every day, waiting for a reason to uncover us!”
“You’re being watched?” Mage glanced at my fingertip and, seeing the flame extinguished, released her grip.
I nodded once.
“Humans?”
A second nod. Not just any humans—the People’s Sentinel, a group of zealous humans whose sole mission was to kill vampires. They had been nothing but a thorn in our side for centuries.
“Have they made an alliance with the witches yet?” Mage asked.
Yet? “No . . . ” I began, processing her words and her tone. A few had helped the elusive Ursula—a scorned witch from my past—attack Evangeline in Central Park the day she hoodwinked Leo and the dogs. Max was kind enough to bring one of the victims’ hands home to show me the awkward crucifix on the thumb: the Sentinel’s trademark. I wouldn’t call it an alliance, though. The Sentinel hated witches as much as they did vampires.
“And so it begins,” Mage murmured.
Unease stirred in my stomach. She knew something. She expected something. I opened my mouth to demand she share her knowledge, but she had already turned her back to me, her attention on Jonah.
“I need you to remain within these walls until we decide how to eliminate this threat,” she told him. “We must avoid a repeat of Ratheus. Understand?”
A repeat of Ratheus. She was afraid of a world war ending human life here. She and I shared one thing in common, at least.
“Understand?” Mage repeated more loudly when Jonah’s gaunt face twisted in displeasure. After a pause, the mutant nodded, scowling.
It was as if she had power over them, as if she could control them. There was something so elusive about her, so . . . I seized a magic bud and quietly chanted a few lines of a probing spell as I let my magic drift toward her. The glowing tendrils curled around her skull, preparing to enter and download information buried deep within her core. I would know everything there was to know about our dear Mage in fifteen seconds . . .
Black hair fanned outward as she whirled around to face me, anger flashing in her eyes. “Don’t you dare,” she hissed.
My magical fingers recoiled.
“Don’t ever do that again, or you and I will have a problem,” she warned quietly.
I pursed my lips tightly, torn between feeling like the child caught with her hand in a cookie jar and pure fascination. How did she know what I was doing?
Satisfied that I would not continue my magical assault, Mage looked to Viggo and Mortimer. “We know everything. We know about your venom issue. We know about Sofie’s sister in that tomb over there.” She pointed to the statue behind Mortimer. Viggo’s eyes bulged with panic, that the secrets he guarded so closely were thrown out into the open. “It’s in everyone’s best interest that we consider a truce. No more killing—anyone. No more of Sofie’s magic.” She looked at me to confirm that I heard her. “In return, Jonah stays inside and this group will behave as appreciative guests, accepting your asylum.”