“I will reunite you with your family one way or another!” Rozalin screamed at me in rage.
She floated over the circle and brought it to life with dark magic. The ashes rose up to form a cloud surrounding her. It pulsated and crackled with energy, and from it came the tormented faces of all those trapped within. Everything near the cloud withered and decomposed. The closer it got, the more clearly I could hear the victims’ screams of despair from inside.
I ran for the safe room, pulling more oil lamps down and chucking them at the cloud as I went. It absorbed the flames, but did not slow. The mass of darkness decayed the wood and stone supporting the building as it passed.
I vaulted over rubble and into the trap room, making sure Rozalin was still in pursuit. The doorframe and wall around it eroded instantly upon contact with the cloud. My skin was flaking off as it drew near, but regrew over and over.
For a moment I wondered what would happen to me and how bad it would hurt if Vance’s trap didn’t work, but I didn’t have to. The floor illuminated with her inches from my face. I stepped out of the way, but she couldn’t follow and her deathly cloud dissipated as the magic circle trapped her.
“You think you are so clever,” she smiled. “You cannot contain death. You cannot avoid it, not forever. I will have so much fun in the Underworld when I amuse myself with your family’s souls.”
She was looking behind me at something. A tall, lanky figure in a full-length coat, wide-brimmed hat, and peculiar bird mask was watching us.
“What did I tell you? You cannot contain me, I
am
death! There is a war coming and when it arrives a darkness greater than you can imagine will swallow you all whole and grind your bones to dust!”
I backed out of the room, trying to keep my eyes on both her and this new person. “Now, stop gawking and release me!” she commanded the figure.
Noah and Vivian were observing from a vantage point behind the stranger. It was hunched over on a cane for support and cocked its head inquisitively at her demands.
“I said release me!” she screamed. The stranger chuckled at her from behind the mask and hobbled off with the aid of its cane. “We had a deal!” she screeched. “I will slaughter you and what’s left of your pathetic coven!”
The stranger ignored her tantrum as it made its way to the stairs. Rozalin let out a deafening high-pitched wail that shattered the rest of the oil lamps and sent the library up in flames. The noise was so loud my ears were bleeding and I was seeing red. Noah, Vivian, and Vance were next to me now, but I couldn’t hear if they were saying anything. Noah tore the choker from Vivian’s neck and threw it in the room. Vance read an incantation from the tome and the shrieking stopped as Rozalin was sucked down into the amethyst jewel.
“Please tell me that’s the last we’re gonna hear from her,” Lyle said from a cautious distance before coming over to us.
“I’m disappointed, Vi. You’re slowing down in your old age. I killed at least twice as many as you,” Noah bragged.
Vivi handed him her sword and walked over to pick up the necklace. “I did it in heels.”
“What is that?” I asked, referring to a rumbling from upstairs. Noah disappeared from the library, followed by Vivi. “Come on,” I waved to Lyle.
“I’ll be here,” said Vance as he took a seat.
With Rozalin gone, the illusions and shadows haunting the chateau went with her. The rumbling grew as we followed the sound to the front doors. Outside, Vivian and Noah stood side by side, watching as something in the distance approached.
“Stay,” Noah told Vivian, and handed back her sword.
“This is hardly the time to find your sense of chivalry,” she said.
The noise was almost on top of us now and we could see what Noah and Vivian were concerned about. Dozens of bodies poured out from the woods, surrounding the estate and trampling the ground as they advanced.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Lyle swore. “There are hundreds of them!”
He was right. The dozen Carpathians we first saw were only the beginning. Vivian had said they would attack with all they had, but I never thought I’d see this many in one place.
“Time to go to work.” Noah left, diving head first into the fray. Blood and ash spouted up from the mob like geysers, showing where he had been as he fought against the tide. Vivian returned to safety inside the chateau, but was clearly distraught at leaving Noah to fend for himself against the impossible odds.
“I don’t think even he can do this alone,” I shouted to Lyle over the pandemonium.
“Aurelia’s out here! They’re going for her; we have to help!” Lyle pointed over to the guesthouse where she stood at the top of the steps, looking out over the battle. She was impeccably primped and manicured in yet another glamorous tiered ballgown that stuck out from all the gore and bloodshed around her.
I tried getting Noah’s attention, hoping he would get to her before the Carpathians did, but it was hopeless amidst the roar of battle. Lyle and I ran as fast as we could to reach her as he yelled for her to go back inside and take cover.
One of the largest of the pack reached Aurelia before us. He was an easy seven feet of ugly. Aurelia remained completely still, ready to accept her end as he towered over her. She spoke just when he was about to strike her down.
“You dare raise a hand to me?” Even over all the racket, her words were crystal-clear and just as sharp. “
I am royalty
!”
What happened next was more unbelievable than anything I had witnessed so far. Aurelia backhanded the giant with such force that it splattered him into a rain of ash that showered his comrades. I had to check Lyle’s expression to make sure what I just saw was right. He, along with the others at the foot of the stairs, was dumbstruck.
“Did you see that?” he hollered. “She just bitch-slapped a guy ten times her size!”
Aurelia remained composed and stoic as she fixed her icy gaze outward. A fierce gleam in her eyes halted the hundreds of interlopers. They stayed frozen for a moment and then mechanically turned to one another to tear out each other’s hearts. In only a few seconds the entire battlefield was cleared, leaving Noah standing alone on the grass where he had been fighting. Back by the trees, the man in the bird mask was still watching. He left just as casually as he had before.
“You never let me have any fun. I was just getting warmed up,” Noah said, as he strutted over, cleaning off his
wakizashi
. “What now?” he asked. “Want me to go after the hunchback?”
“We should go check on Vivi and make sure Vance is still there,” I whispered to Lyle, letting Aurelia and Noah talk in private.
“That would have made things a lot easier from the start,” Lyle said once we were inside.
“Yeah, it would have,” I agreed, thinking back to when the creatures invaded on my first night here. If she could annihilate an army that easily, then those mutants would have been nothing to her. Was my attempt at fighting them supposed to be a test, or a source of entertainment?
Vance was right where we left him, along with Vivian, although neither one of them were making any effort to converse.
Aurelia appeared with Noah and immediately took the necklace from Vivian. “Finish off the rest,” she instructed, and turned to leave.
“Everyone’s pretty dead, ma’am,” Lyle said looking around. “You should be safe now.”
“She means us,” Vance chimed in. Noah and Vivian glanced at each other before Vivian turned to accompany Aurelia.
“I gave the mage my word he could go free if he helped,” Noah explained to her. Aurelia stopped and addressed him over her shoulder.
“Your word is not yours to give. Kill them. Or need I remind you it is only my word that is law?”
Noah gripped the hilt of his sword tightly and gritted his teeth at her.
“What?” I cried out. “You can’t be serious! We almost died helping you!” Noah moved between her and the rest of us as she left with Vivian. “Noah, you can’t do this!” I protested as he drew his swords.
Vance tugged at my arm, pulling me with him. There was a blinding light from the floor, followed by thick smoke, and I now realized what he was so busy writing during the battle.
“What the —? Where are we?” Lyle was trying to make sense of the run-down industrial room we had been transported to.
“I told you this would happen,” Vance said, walking to his desk. “They betrayed us the moment our purpose was fulfilled. Now you see why the other covens loathe them. The Archios may play nicely for a time, but it is no different any time we play their game.”
I sat on the floor, exhausted from the fight and equally tired mentally from processing what had just gone down. “I’m not really a fan of the Carpathians either.”
“Is anyone gonna tell me how we got here?” Lyle asked.
“We are back in the Strigoi
arcanum
just past the French-German border, but we can’t stay here long or they’ll find us,” Vance explained. “I knew they would double-cross us, so I prepared a quick exit that would bring us back here.”
“Vivi wouldn’t turn on us.”
“Yeah, she would,” I said to Lyle. “They’re all the same. They’ve been using us, from the start. Vivian gave me some sob story about Noah before I went into the chateau so I’d feel obligated to help out and not get in the way of their plans. The worst part is I actually fell for it.”
“I don’t buy it,” Lyle argued. “Maybe I just don’t have as hard a time finding the good in people. I saw the look in her eyes. Vivi didn’t want any part of it, and neither did Noah.”
“Noah is little more than Aurelia’s personal attack dog,” Vance said to Lyle. “He does not want her praise and attention taken from him, so he will go to great lengths to belittle the weak in front of her. What did you really expect to happen?”
“They’re all corrupt!” I added. “None of them are any better than the other. Some are prettier, some are faster, some are smarter, but they’re all the same. I hate the manipulation and the mind games; it makes me sick. It’s pathetic that they spend their immortality screwing each other for things that humans deal with and get over every day.”
Lyle looked pissed at me for not siding with him, but he needed to hear it. We were always being dragged further away as soon as we got close to getting back to our lives. Now, in place of the Strigoi and the Carpathians, we’d have to deal with being hunted by Noah. I already knew from experience it wouldn’t take him long to track us.
“Humans are no better,” Vance said, seated behind his desk. “We were all human once. There is no magical curse or transformation that makes us any more rotten inside than our mortal counterparts. Time is all that changes us — not on the outside, but within. Our bodies stay forever youthful, but our minds grow sour the more we are forced to cope with surviving in this world.
All the negativity — the corruption, as you put it — poisons us as we are made to swallow it and learn from it. Many even go mad. You will be the same.”
“I’m not one of you and I don’t want to be,” I said. “I’m happy to have an expiration date if it means I won’t become as twisted as the rest of you.”
“You are not quite like us, but you are not mortal either.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“The ritual that fused you with the parasitic entity allowed you to harness the power of the Rift. You saw for yourself how your body recovers from cellular destruction almost instantaneously. An entire dimension, created long before this world, channels its energy through you. As long as it sustains you, your cells will never die; you will never age. I believe you may be immortal.”
“People have been trying to find the key to immortality forever — you just read from some book and it’s done? What’s going to happen when I start outliving everyone?”
“It was a series of events none of us could have predicted at the time of your creation. From a logical point of view, we wouldn’t have wanted your kind to be immortal or you would easily overthrow us, defeating the purpose entirely. It was the only way to cure the infection, however.”
“What if he gets his head cut off?” Lyle asked, with a little too much interest.
“I’m not sure. Decapitation and disintegration work just fine on most anything, but there’s no way of knowing for sure unless we run some tests.”
“Whoa, slow down,” I protested. “You’re not running any ‘tests’ or even touching me. You’ve done enough.”
“Can’t you just undo the spell?” Lyle asked.
“There is no counter-spell. He is technically a new organism, not two parts of a whole to separate.”
“What happens if I get bitten again?”
“You might mutate radically and beyond repair. Or perhaps nothing at all. Come to think of it, with your level of regeneration, you may be immune to all conventional diseases. There’s no way of knowing for sure without having a control to test the variables.”
“You’re not experimenting on me,” I said firmly. “But I do have other questions that you can answer. Who are these other people you created?”
“I don’t know. Only Minerva had knowledge of each specimen. I only participated in your genesis.”
“How do we know he’s telling the truth?” Lyle asked me.
“We don’t. We can’t even be sure any of us will live long enough for it to matter, but just in case, I want that book destroyed so nobody else can be threatened with demonic possessions and experiments.”
“You may be right,” Vance agreed, to my surprise. “This book holds many marvelous things, but at what cost? Deals with the Devil are never a worthwhile investment in the long run; a lesson Minerva is most likely learning in Hell right now.”
“How could Rozalin mimic my parents if she never met them? She did it the other night too,” I asked to change the subject.
“The Carpathians’ creatures infected your parents. Rozalin may have been watching from the Underworld. Depending on how long they had been infected, their souls may have already been consumed by the parasite before she could get to them.”
“But if their souls got eaten, then there’s no afterlife?”
“Correct,” Vance nodded. “They cease to exist.”
“Maybe that’s better than letting Rozalin get her hands on them,” Lyle said, trying to offer some solace.
“I was hoping if all of this stuff was real then maybe they are in Heaven. The parasite sends the energy it eats to that other dimension, but that dimension is linked to me now. Does that mean maybe my parents’ souls are a part of me?”
“Yes, I suppose you could look at it as some form of spiritual cannibalism.” That wasn’t what I was getting at, but of course he took the less comforting solution. It was probably best to move on while I still had time to ask questions.
“What was the significance of giving me the power to move things with my mind? If you wanted a weapon, why not fire or something more destructive?”
“Telekinesis can have varying degrees of subtlety. Setting someone on fire when there is no natural source of fire around will surely raise suspicion. It can also be quite powerful when properly directed. There are very few limitations. I’ve heard stories that psychics once used telekinetic powers to aid in the construction of works such as Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt. Those stories sparked the inspiration for your powers.”
“I got a question,” Lyle spoke up. “Who was the hunchback?”
“I do not know his name. Judging by the immense size of his aura he is a progenitor of the Carpathians, an Ancient like Rozalin and Aurelia.”
“So, why didn’t we kill him?” Lyle asked. “We were on a roll.”
Vance chuckled. “Rozalin’s downfall wasn’t our skill or even luck. Her own hubris led to her defeat. She trifled with us to gain her sister’s attention, believing we were no threat until things got out of hand. If she wanted to, she and most other Ancients could destroy an entire army with barely a yawn.”
“Good thing he left on his own then,” Lyle gave a satisfied smile. “At least we don’t have to see him again —”
“That may not be true,” Vance continued. “I should explain further why Dorian and the others were created, aside from Minerva’s scheme.
“The Carpathians resent mankind for their enforced isolation. They believe themselves to be superior to humanity. While I can’t blame them, their methodology is a bit harsh for my liking.
“The outbreak in New York is not a new trick for them. The Carpathians have a penchant for pestilence and madness. During the fourteenth century, one of their progenitors concocted a particularly vile disease, coined the ‘Black Death,’ that nearly erased mankind from Europe. The Carpathians sought to rebalance the world back in our favor by ‘culling the herd,’ so to speak. Dressed as human plague doctors, like the ‘hunchback,’ they would travel from city to city spreading the disease.
“Of course, the Archios were up in arms when they found out. Their beautiful flock was wracked with decay and falling fast. Soon the problem became an issue of survival for even them. Only the Carpathians could drink from tainted blood without ill effects; the others would involuntarily expel it and suffer lessened symptoms of the humans’ condition for a time.
“For centuries, the Strigoi had already been at ease imbibing conjured blood, so this did not affect us. It wasn’t until the Carpathians drew ire from hunters seeking a reason behind the plague that we became involved. No one was safe as the human population plummeted. The Archios were being starved out and hunted and so were we. Anyone remotely supernatural was persecuted and put to death. We were burned in our sleep, along with human witches and mages who were falsely accused of involvement.
“Eventually, the remaining supernaturals and hunters pushed back the Carpathians to their mountains in the East until only a few remained. The Archios did what they do best and altered the minds of the humans to believe the origin of the plague came from the Far East. They perpetrated rumors of themselves and other supernaturals as nothing more than folktales and children’s stories to falsify their existence and end the hunts against them. Since then, the Carpathians have been reestablishing their numbers and plotting another rebellion, this time targeting both humans and supernaturals alike.
“They have been quiet for centuries, but we know their grudge has only intensified over time.”
“Wow, just awesome,” I sighed. “You still haven’t destroyed that book, by the way.”
“Oh … yes, I almost forgot,” he responded hesitantly and held it up, setting it on fire in his hand.
“Let’s worry about how we’re going to prevent the Archios from killing us,” I said.
“If I can just talk with Vivi, I’m sure we can work it out,” Lyle offered.
“They will be after me first, seeing as they know I will return to the Strigoi for protection and mount a strike against them while their main sanctuary is in ruins. I have very little interest in more conflict at this point, but I will be headed somewhere safe. What the coven decides is their own right. I suggest you return to New York. The turmoil there may be exactly what you need to lose them. They won’t put much effort in to chasing after you if they believe you will die on your own soon enough.”
“One more thing,” I said while I still had his ear. “Since the ritual I feel like I look different.”
“Yes, when you use your powers, your eyes still reflect the parasite, an interesting side effect of the fusion. A tissue sample would be necessary for any further explanation.”
“Besides that. I’m talking about my skin and hair and even my body. Everything just looks better, like it’s all been bumped up a notch.”
“Oh, that. It’s just a trivial aesthetic reaction caused by the Archios blood we used as a catalyst for the spell. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”
“Right.” As if, out of everything that had happened, having tighter abs and clearer skin was going to make me panic.
“I must be off if I’m to have a chance at reaching the next stronghold. I surmise this will be the last time we’re to meet, so I leave you with a bidding of good luck and an apology for the trouble my aunt’s scheme has caused you.”
I thought being rid of Vance would be a weight off my shoulders, but I actually felt kind of melancholy after getting to know him more. “It wasn’t your fault, but thank you and thanks for deciding to help me. I’m sorry that it cost you getting caught up in a losing bargain with Noah, though.”
“Penance perhaps, hmm? So it is …”
“How are we getting to New York from here, dude?” Lyle asked. “We have no money and no way of getting around.”
“You’re free to use the vehicles upstairs. This building will be leveled to erase any evidence of our work here by tomorrow.”
“Can’t you just zap us there? I’m not looking forward to driving aimlessly for hours to find an airport only to get arrested for being a dirty, bloody, and penniless foreigner with nice skin.”
“That was a spell from the tome I just burned.” I could swear there was some sarcasm in Vance’s voice, but that would mean he had a sense of humor. “The spell requires a sigil to be painted in blood ahead of time at both the desired destination and the place of casting. I had it prepared, figuring a hasty retreat would be in order.”
“Well, can you conjure us up some clothes, or money, or something?” I asked him.
“No, I can’t say I’ve ever had the need to learn magic of that sort,” Vance said as he made his way out the door. “Farewell.”
“Guess we better get a car,” Lyle said, sounding a bit dejected.