Authors: Jocelynn Drake
With a shake of her head, Mira got out of the car as I did. Yet, she stopped me as I shut the door. “Did you call and tell her we were coming?” Mira inquired. The house was dark except for a single bare bulb burning away on the front porch.
“Not really.” I hedged.
“What do you mean, ‘Not really’?” she demanded, thumping the top of the car with her fist.
“No, I didn’t call ahead. She wasn’t exactly thrilled to see us the first time. I didn’t want to give her the chance to say no,” I admitted. “Let’s just go. Everything will be fine.”
Mira shoved both her hands through her hair and let out a low growl. “Danaus, you don’t go surprising witches. And judging by the trouble she went to for the dirt in her basement, I’m willing to bet she’s a powerful witch.”
“I hope so,” I muttered as I led the way up to the front porch. My footsteps up the wooden stairs were heavy, thundering in the silence that blanketed the area. Sure, I hadn’t wanted her to know we were coming, but I didn’t exactly want to surprise LaVina either. Mira hung back, moving as soundlessly as the wind.
Before I could ring the bell, a light was switched on in the front room, followed by another light in the main hall. LaVina pulled aside the curtain on the door and frowned at me as she shook her head. But at least she unlocked and opened the door.
“We need your help,” I opened before she could say anything.
“You get that one fed?” she demanded, jerking her head toward Mira, who was hovering behind my left shoulder.
“I’ve been properly fed,” Mira purred, seeming to taunt the witch. LaVina only gave a little snort and opened the door the rest of the way so that we could enter her home. Upon stepping over the threshold, I saw that the old woman was wrapped in a soft floral robe over what appeared to be a white nightgown. On her feet were a pair of worn pink house slippers. We had obviously woken her up.
“Sorry about getting you out of bed,” I murmured. It had never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be awake. I had become so accustomed to dealing with creatures that roamed at night that I had lost touch with the majority of humanity that preferred the warm comfort of daylight.
“It happens from time to time. Come on in,” she said, motioning for Mira to enter the house. After shutting and locking the door, LaVina shuffled down the main hall, leading us into the kitchen, where she flipped on a bright overhead light that left both Mira and me blinking as we struggled to adjust.
“Would you like a glass of iced tea? Or maybe you’d prefer some coffee?” LaVina offered, moving over to some honey-colored wood cabinets. “It’ll take me just a minute to get a pot brewing.”
“No, thank you. We’re fine,” Mira said. The nightwalker stepped forward and leaned her forearms on the island in the center of the kitchen. “We need to talk about the bori.”
Leaning back against the counter that lined the back wall of the kitchen, I folded my arms over my chest and watched LaVina. Her old hands stilled on the paper filter. I could see a grim frown pull at one corner of her mouth.
“Is that the way the wind blows now?” she murmured, resuming the task of putting the filter in the coffeemaker.
“You don’t sound surprised,” I commented, but she didn’t reply again until she had finished preparing the coffeemaker.
“Should I be?” she finally said, glancing over her shoulder at me as she pulled down a coffee mug with kittens on it. “From what I’ve been hearing, the naturi have already broken out of their cage. Something’s obviously gone wrong with the spell that held them. Why shouldn’t the bori be trying to break free as well?”
I looked over at Mira to find her staring down at her hands, her shoulders slumped under the weight of our failure. The naturi were running free because we failed to stop them. Rowe had been willing to take risks we hadn’t foreseen. We weren’t going to make the same mistake with Gaizka.
“I was contacted by a bori called Gaizka,” I slid past her question. “He wants his freedom. Somehow he’s here but he’s not free. I don’t exactly understand it.”
“Are you going to tell him how it works, vampire?” LaVina demanded, settling her piercing gaze on Mira.
“The bori are little more than pure spirit energy,” Mira began with a sigh. “If they want to interact with the world in some meaningful fashion, they have to have a host body, an avatar, a puppet.”
“Like when it appeared at your house in the body of an older man?” I suggested.
“Sort of,” she said with a grimace. Pushing off the counter, Mira stood upright and turned so that she could look at me. “That was only a temporary host. They can use a body for a short period of time, but their presence tends to contaminate the body, destroying the host. That man you saw is probably dead by now. However, a bori can prepare a body to be a permanent host so that it can use the body indefinitely. That’s how we trapped them.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired, a strange twisting in my gut caused me to take a step back away from her.
“The permanent human hosts for the bori were locked away in a magical cage,” LaVina explained.
“Take away their permanent home, the main source of their energy, and they are trapped,” Mira continued. “The bori had to follow their human hosts into the cage. We suspected they’d be able to slip out here and there for a short period of time under special circumstances, but they wouldn’t be able to escape without preparing new permanent hosts—something they would never have the strength to do.”
“Until we came along,” I corrected.
“True,” Mira sadly agreed.
I took a step back toward Mira as my thoughts shifted in a new direction. The floor creaked beneath my shifting weight, making the house seem to groan in the silence as night crawled past the midnight hour. “I don’t understand. You said that you didn’t know how they were caged.”
“I don’t know how they were caged or how the cage itself was created,” Mira replied, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I know what was caged: humans.”
“Their human hosts,” I said.
“Humans,” Mira pressed, sending a chill down my back. “I think the bodies that these bori inhabit still possess the souls and consciousness of their original owners. We locked up humans in an attempt to save ourselves from the bori. The bori are nothing more than parasites attached to the human body. Just like nightwalkers.”
“Innocent people are being tormented by these creatures?” I murmured, my brain struggling to wrap itself about this horrible thought.
“‘Innocent’ is a questionable word here,” Mira said with a shrug. “They had to make some kind of deal with the bori in the first place. Sure, many were probably tricked, but I wouldn’t paint most of these people as innocent. Of course, I doubt any one of them would have agreed to thousands of years of servitude to these creatures.”
“And now you’ve got one with an interest in Danaus there,” LaVina added, drawing our combined gazes back to her thin frame. The old witch shuffled over to the refrigerator and pulled out a container of creamer. “Gaizka is going to go looking for your weak spot. He’s going to find a way to force you into making a deal with him to protect something you care about. And when you do, he’s finally going to be free.”
“Unless you can tell us how to send him back,” Mira quickly countered.
“What makes you think I know how to send a bori back to its cage?” LaVina snapped, putting the container of creamer on the counter with a little more force than was necessary. She filled her mug before putting the carafe back on the coffeemaker stand. “I’ve had no dealings with their kind.”
“But I have no doubt that you know how to summon one,” Mira said. LaVina turned around so that she could glare at the nightwalker, but Mira didn’t flinch. I was beginning to wonder if this house was suddenly going to fall in on our heads. Mira didn’t need to be pressing the buttons of yet another powerful creature. For an undead, the nightwalker had a death wish.
“You’re a powerful witch,” Mira said, leaning forward on the counter again. “Powerful enough to sense the different energies that come from different soil samples and how to mix them so that they work in harmony with your own skills. You may have never summoned up a bori, but I’m sure you know how the spell works. Someone of your ability would want to have the knowledge in her back pocket for emergencies.”
“You’re pressing your luck, vampire,” LaVina warned, staring down at her coffee as creamer and sugar turned it pale brown.
“Maybe, but you know how,” Mira said, a grin finally growing across her face. Some of the tension eased from my own frame as some of her own confidence returned. “We don’t need you to summon one. We need you to tell us how you send one away again. The other half of that summoning spell has to be rattling around in your brain somewhere. We just need that bit.”
“It’s not as simple as you want it to be,” LaVina admitted with a shake of her head.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s simple or not. Just as long as you know how it’s done. You’re going to be the one that performs the spell tomorrow night,” Mira said, to which LaVina let out a wonderful laugh, nearly sloshing her coffee out of her mug.
“You’re not going to get me anywhere near that bori,” she said, chuckling.
“Listen, witch—” Mira started, but I grabbed her elbow suddenly when something appeared on the periphery of my thoughts, something strong enough to cause the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end.
“Are you cloaking me?” I demanded, but I had a feeling I already knew the answer to that question.
“What?” Mira asked, looking up at me with furrowed brow.
“Are you cloaking me? Blocking me from the sight of the naturi?” I repeated.
“No,” she whispered. A tremble went through her frame, reaching my fingers through her arm. “I forgot. Shit. How many are there?”
“Eight, and they’re getting close. Do you have a weapon?”
“A knife at my side, but my gun is in the car,” she said, her expression growing grimmer. I could understand why, since her last few outings with the naturi hadn’t gone well. The mixture of no sleep and Gaizka messing with her mind had left the nightwalker struggling with every battle, no longer sure of what was real and what was just a horrible nightmare. She had been unable to clearly see the world around her, leaving her vulnerable to the naturi.
“We can handle this. We’re in your domain and you’re back to your full strength,” I said, rubbing my thumb across her arm.
Mira gave a soft laugh as she stepped away from me, pulling her arm free of my grip. “Yeah, we’ve been in worse positions before, right? Just a walk in the park.”
Only now our most effective weapon against the naturi had been stolen away. We could no longer combine our powers or we would be feeding Gaizka directly, putting it one step closer to freedom.
“LaVina, we’ll take care of them. You might want to go hide in your basement for the time being,” I advised.
“You think that’s going to keep me safe?” she demanded, slamming her coffee mug on the counter.
Mira rolled her eyes as she turned her back on LaVina and started to walk out of the kitchen. “Just find a place out of the way. We’ll take care of it,” the nightwalker grumbled, the heels of her boots pounding on the floor and nearly drowning out her words.
Wordlessly, I followed Mira through the house to the front door. Anything I said was sure to anger one of the women and I wasn’t about to step into the trap. Why should I get my face ripped off, when I still had to take on the naturi?
“Where are they?” Mira asked as she wrapped her long slender fingers around the front doorknob.
Standing directly behind her, I let my eyes drift shut as I finally sent my powers out of my body and searching through the area. I had become so attuned to searching for the naturi, it had become second nature for me and I was now doing it unconsciously. I could feel Mira’s own powers spike in response to the touch of mine as if her body was reflexively protecting itself from me.
It took less than a second for my powers to pick out the bodies of eight naturi crossing the long front yard that led up to LaVina’s two-story farmhouse. I couldn’t tell which clan they were from or any other details beyond the fact that they were naturi. Their powers were like a glaring, cacophonous noise in contrast to the seemingly hypnotic melody that rose from Mira.
“Directly in front of us and slowly approaching,” I replied, opening my eyes again. “They’re spread out, so they’re most likely on foot.”
“I’m sorry about this,” Mira murmured as her fist tightened around the knob. “I should have been—”
“Let it go. It’s better we face them now rather than tomorrow with Gaizka,” I said, cutting her off.
“Then let’s clean up my domain,” Mira said before jerking open the front door.
We stepped out onto the front porch and quickly spotted eight dark figures approaching from across the lawn. They were all tall and slim, wearing dark clothes that allowed them to blend in with the night. At the sight of them, my heart rate sped up and the muscles in my chest constricted. Adrenaline filled my veins at the promise of battle, while my thoughts slowed down to a precise point of focus. There was only my opponent and me. More than a thousand years of battle had filled my existence, and they all distilled down to that single moment of clarity before the first splash of blood. Until Mira had stepped into my life, even the fear had been drained from the fight. The nightwalker had been the first to remind me that there were worse things than death waiting for me.
“What clan do you think they’re from?” I asked as I descended the stairs.
The nightwalker motioned with her head toward the sky, where dark clouds had begun to churn. “At least one is from the wind clan,” she said as she pulled out a knife.
I frowned. The wind clan possessed the ability to control the weather, which meant they could also bring down strike after strike of lightning. From Mira’s wariness of this particular clan, I was willing to bet that she didn’t think she could survive a direct hit of lightning. I wasn’t even sure I could. We would need to locate and take out the wind clan members as soon as possible.
“Do you want my gun?” I offered the weapon from a holster at my lower back. “I can make a run for the other gun in the glove compartment.”