Well, no more.
I jump to my feet. I share a look with Raul. He realizes, at the same time, exactly what I did:
The Queen would have killed me if she missed.
There is no sympathy in his eyes.
“Come on,” he grunts, and chases after the Narwhark.
I follow him, Morgan quick on my heels.
We get to the top. I skid to a halt and curse. The door to Victoria’s room is wide open. But the tanned vampire lies on the floor in front of us. There are nasty, infected wounds all over her body.
I scan the surroundings for the demon. I don’t see it.
“It must have gone in the silver cell,” I exclaim. I run forward to close the door. “If we seal it inside—“
Just then, a tall, man-shaped streak blurs toward the Queen. I’m too startled, too thrown off, too distracted by the loss of my sword, to do anything.
I hadn’t noticed the vampire hidden in the shadows.
He collides with the Queen and knocks the staff from her hand. It skitters across the floor.
I catch a glimpse of his face, and realize that it’s James.
JAMES
The creature comes leaping up the stairs. I watch from my hiding place as it pauses for a flicker of a second, looking at Victoria.
My body tenses. If it tries to attack her, I won’t just turn the other cheek. I’ll need to help.
But the decision is taken out of my hands when the sound of pursuit scares the thing into the silver cell.
I go absolutely still as three vampires spill out into view. First is Raul. Next is Smithson. And finally…
My own Mother, the Queen. She is carrying her staff.
I can hardly believe my luck.
If I’m only given one chance, this is it. As Smithson rushes to slam the door shut, I spring from my hiding place and go straight for Mother. The only reason I stand a chance is because she is momentarily distracted by the sight of Victoria on the ground.
I body-slam into her. The staff flies out of her hand. Such a look of surprise flashes on her face—she hadn’t been expecting to be taken unaware. But then she sees that it’s me. Her mouth twitches up in a crude smile.
“Come to claim your place as one of The Convicted?” she mocks.
I have no time for fun here. I push off and dive for her torrial.
But somewhere in all the confusion I had forgotten about my brother. Raul reaches it at exactly the same time as I do. His hand wraps around the staff simultaneously with mine.
“Don’t get in the way,
little
brother,” I snarl. “This doesn’t involve you!”
He flashes accusatory eyes at Victoria. “You did that,” he condemns.
I laugh, even though I don’t feel it on the inside. “Don’t tell me you care about her. I thought Eleira was the one true love for you. Bored of her already?”
“Never,” Raul snarls. He tries to jerk the staff out of my hands. I hold on tight.
In the back of my mind I wonder how it is neither Mother nor Smithson have tried to interfere.
I cast a quick glance back. Mother is kneeling over Victoria’s body, eyes closed, muttering some sort of incantation while running her hands over the other woman’s wounds. Smithson has his shoulder jammed against the door of the silver cell. It shakes and trembles as the thing inside tries to break out.
“What are you doing here?” Raul demands. “You got out, you were free. Why did you come back?”
We grapple some more over the staff. “I came for precisely this,” I hiss. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll give it to me
now
!”
“Why should I?” Raul challenges. “What do
you
want with it, James?”
“That doesn’t concern you.”
“On the contrary. Anything of interest to you does.”
I swear and try to fight him off, but his grip is impossible to break.
“Raul!” Mother gasps his name. “Eleira—you must get Eleira to me! If Victoria dies, and the connection still exists between their minds, there’s nothing I’ll be able to do. Hurry! Forget about him!”
Raul casts one last look at me… and shoves off. He runs for the door of the second silver cell. The empty one, with nobody inside.
I don’t have time to contemplate his irrational behavior. Glorious triumph seizes me as I hold the staff in both hands. With
this
I will be vindicated, with
this
I will be redeemed in my Father’s eyes.
A maddened sort of laughter takes hold. With this staff in hand—
I don’t get to finish my thought. The amulet around my neck quivers with sudden energy. A surge of power explodes out from it and runs through my body.
“YES, BOY!”
The Ancient roars in my mind.
“YES, YOU HAVE GIVEN IT TO ME. YES, YES, YES!”
The power concentrates in my fingertips and flows into the staff. I lose all sense of self as The Ancient takes control of my body. I feel him in my head, in my limbs, I hear his snarling, zealous, depraved euphoria spoken in a language I do not know.
Suddenly, all the power from the amulet surges into the staff. A light brighter than anything I’ve seen explodes outward from it. Mother, in shock, cries out, “No!”
The light swells and then constricts. It concentrates into a point at the staff’s top.
Still unable to control my body, I thrust the tip down, straight into the floor.
A sound like thunder crashing comes from the spot I struck. And all the light, all the energy, all the magic, all of The Ancient’s
hate
surges down into the stone, into the very marrow of the castle. My body starts to convulse, but still I cannot do anything. I cannot let go. It feels like I’m being burned alive, burned from the inside, the power raging through me is so foreign and great.
In a wink it cuts out. For a second all is still. I recover from my daze and hurl both amulet and staff away.
But then the ground starts to shake.
ELEIRA
A deep-set, heavy male voice pitches through the darkness.
“WAKE, ELEIRA. WAKE, YOU ARE NEEDED. WAKE!”
The final scream jerks me to my senses. I open my eyes, feeling the phantom after-effects of the lashing pain that raced through my head after the connection with Victoria broke.
I roll over with a groan. I steady both hands against the floor, start to push myself up—
A terrible shaking takes the room.
I’m on my feet quickly.
Not another earthquake,
I think. But then I sense a great effluence of power coming from the other side of the door. Enormous power, terrible power, enough magical energy to make me instantly afraid.
There comes a sound like glass breaking. A giant, splintering fissure races across the floor. I jump away, and wobble when I inadvertently land in a place where the silver’s power is amplified.
For a moment, all is still. And then the fissure breaks—and the whole floor gives way from under me.
I scream as I fly down with the rubble. All the silver artifacts rain down with me. I hit the story below. Great rocks come crashing down from the ceiling as it caves in from above. I shield my head with my hands, knowing if one of those slabs lands on my I’ll be done for, vampire or not.
Then the breaking stops. Everything goes still, still and eerily silent. I open my eyes hesitantly, amazed that I wasn’t hit.
And there, in front of me, picking themselves up from the dust, are Raul, Smithson, James, Victoria, and the Queen.
They all look as dazed as I feel. Except for Victoria, who is unconscious. I gasp when I see the awful wounds on her body.
The reunion lasts no longer than the second it takes to make eye contact. Another deep groan takes the castle. The floor we’re standing on pitches in on itself and collapses down.
I scream again as I’m sent throttling through the air.
We crash from one level to the next. The entire castle starts to collapse inward, as if a great gaping hole has been opened in the earth beneath its core.
My body strikes one hard surface after the next. I’m bounced around like a ragdoll. Down, down, down I continue to fall, as the Queen’s castle crumbles around me.
We hit the ground floor and stop. The reprieve lasts barely a second. Another massive roar comes from beneath the earth. A gaping hole opens in the middle of the castle floor.
All of us go screaming down.
It all happens so fast. I’m tossed this way and that in the landslide, rebounding off rocks and objects I cannot even see. The fall into the earth takes eternity.
If this ever ends, I swear—
The final impact knocks all the air from my lungs. I only have the vaguest sense of my body. All I know is that the motion has stopped. We’re no longer falling.
Beyond me, the sound of settling debris continues. I close my eyes and mutter a prayer of gratitude. Somehow, through all that, I’m still alive. Somehow.
I look up. We’re far beneath the earth. There’s a gaping hole above me, and the night sky is so distant I can barely see the stars. All the broken pieces of the fallen castle surround me.
I know the only reason I survived was my vampire strength. But it seems incredible that any sort of creature could live through a fall like that.
Alarm grips me when I realize my leg is pinned beneath a boulder. I cry out. I can’t even feel the pain!
I try to yank my leg free. But even if my body is whole, it’s still in a very weakened state. The adrenaline is ebbing away, and a weary exhaustion starts to take over. Dust catches in my throat. I start to cough violently.
“Eleira?” Raul’s voice, distant and fragile, calls for me. “Eleira, where are you?”
“Here,” I croak. “I’m over here.”
I hear him curse, and then, a few moments later, see him stumble down a pile of rocks.
He looks like absolute hell. His clothes are torn, there are long cuts all over his face and body. He staggers to a stop, searching the ruins for me. The moment he sees me he picks up the pace, then drops to the ground at my side.
“You’re hurt,” he says. Concern paints his voice.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
He looks me up and down. “Your leg,” he says. “Hold on.”
He stands and shoves his shoulder into the boulder. It takes him considerable effort, but he manages to lift it just enough for me to pull my leg free.
“It’s not broken,” he observes, a trace of wonder in his voice.
“No,” I echo. In fact, considering the distance I fell—we all fell—I would have thought we’d suffer more injuries. “How is it we’re still alive?”
“Vampires are a resilient bunch,” he mutters.
“No kidding.”
The sound of scraping stone makes us both spin around. James is picking himself up from the dirt.
Before I know it Raul is on him. He pins his brother to the ground.
“You have ten words to explain what you did up there,” Raul growls.
James coughs, and I think it might be an attempt at a laugh. “Only ten?” he starts. “Surely that isn’t enough—”
“Four left,” Raul warns. “Make them count.”
James leers up at his brother. He must see something frightening in Raul’s gaze, because he sighs and rumbles out exactly four words, “Father wanted the staff.”
“The staff!” Raul curses. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”
“It wasn’t me.” James shakes his head. “I was possessed. The Ancient—”
“—used you as a surrogate to mount an attack on The Haven.”
All three of us turn to see Morgan emerge from darkness. Smithson trails her, carrying an unconscious Victoria in his arms.
“He succeeded,” the Queen concludes.
I’m surprised by how little anger I hear in her voice. She simply sounds… weary.
“If you’re wondering how we survived the fall,” she continues. “I cast a protective spell over each of us the moment I realized what was happening. Good thing, too.” She looks around. “We would have been crushed were it not for that.”
I stand up and face her, the hairs on the back of my neck prickling.
“What she giveth, she taketh away,” Morgan mutters. She makes an intricate, circular motion with her fingers. A faint blue orb, about the size of a fist, retracts from each of our chests and flies back to her.
As soon as it happens all the pains and aches of my body crash into me. I stagger down. I’m barely able to hold myself upright. I grit my teeth against the pain.
Slowly, it starts to ebb away as my body begins healing itself. The process is not pleasant. Being shielded by Morgan’s spell and then having it ripped away is like being wakened from a pleasant dream by being dunked into a tub of ice.
I look around me. All the other vampires are suffering similar afflictions. I presume, because of my strength, I’m the first to recover.
All the others, that is, except Morgan. Her eyes land on me, and she sends me such a look of revulsion, such a look of disgust, that I feel no better than a maggot she might have found in a stale piece of bread.
Raul is the next one to stand. He lumbers to me. I meet him halfway. We fall into each other’s arms. He holds me against his hard body and strokes my hair.
“You’re safe,” he whispers. I’m not sure if the words are meant to assure him or me. “You’re here, you’re with me, you are safe.”
I gulp down the welling emotions that try to rise in me from the sincerity in his voice.
He really does care for me,
I think.
“AS IF THAT WAS IN ANY DOUBT.”
I jerk away. “What was that?”
Raul looks at me in concern. “I didn’t say anything.”
It takes my frazzled brain an extra second to process that the Voice came from
inside
my head. When the realization hits…
“YOUR LOVE IS YOUR WEAKNESS,”
the menacing Voice booms.
“IT WILL BE THE END OF YOU. IT IS WRITTEN IN THE STARS. ONLY I CAN BE YOUR SALVATION. FOR THAT TO HAPPEN, YOU MUST COME TO ME.”
“I… no!” I grip the sides of my head and stagger away from Raul. My foot catches a stray rock. I trip and fall.
“YOU WILL COME TO ME. IT IS NOT A CHOICE.”