by Cate Corvin
Locke let out a harsh laugh, wiping his dead sister’s dust off his hands, but his laugh became a snarl as one of Shane’s wounds reopened and fresh blood trickled out.
He needed to feed, or he would eventually turn on us. The therianthropes needed to remain as whole and strong as possible.
I slammed one of the daggers in its sheath and wiped my wrist on one of the few clean places left on my shirt. Most of it was red or black now. “Take three mouthfuls of my blood, Locke. It’s not as good as thrall-blood, but the vampire laboratories are next. We need you clear-headed.”
He recoiled even as his amber eyes dilated with need. “I’m too thirsty now. It would be difficult to release you, Dominic.”
It would be almost impossible for him to release me, but it was a better chance than having Locke turn on us. If he succumbed to madness we were fucked. There were no second chances left. If we wanted Lucrezia back, we had to get it right the first time.
I braced myself on the wall. If she died before I could properly make it up to her…
No. I wouldn’t let myself wallow now. The therianthropes assured me that she was still living, albeit terrified.
Eyes on the objective.
“We need you at your best, Locke. You’re the strongest of us, and you sense the dead. The Frosts will step in if you go too far.” I held out my exposed wrist so he could see the veins, the beating pulse.
Locke’s eyes were glued to the blue tracery under my skin. His tongue flicked out to lick his lips, like he could almost taste my blood already. “It would be faster to drink from your throat. I could… I could make you my thrall. That might make it easier for me to keep control.”
“Fine. Make me a thrall, then. I don’t care what you have to do, as long as you do it.”
Locke took a step closer, and then moved so fast he was nothing but a blur, only an inch away with his hands resting on my shoulder and tilting my head aside.
Every fiber in my body tensed. It felt so unnatural, being this close to a predator and allowing him to do as he wished to me. Letting him feed from me was an aberration of everything I’d ever been taught.
“Relax. I won’t let it hurt you more than necessary, and I’ll give you a tiny dose of my venom. It’ll help you forget your injuries for now,” he said. His breath touched my neck and I felt my pulse speed. A year ago, I never would have believed I’d willingly let a vampire feed from me.
A year ago, there were many things I never would’ve done. It was hard to tell if I’d become a better person or a worse one since meeting Lucrezia and her lovers.
I wished I could go back and rewind the clock on the things I’d done… and at the same time, I knew I would’ve done nothing differently. I would’ve done anything to keep Ivy’s hands off her, anything to keep her safe from Gilt’s machinations.
Now I’d become a thrall, if that’s what it took. It might cost me my medallion, but that was a small price to pay to bring her up alive.
Locke’s tongue grazed over the pulsing vein in my neck. Goosebumps rose over my entire body as every hair stood on end. “The more you struggle, the more pain you will suffer, Dominic.” The sharp tips of his fangs scraped his target, then he exerted enough pressure to dimple the thin skin over the vulnerable vein.
I was all too aware that Locke was far stronger than I was, stronger than either therianthrope. I was completely at his mercy.
Shane made it clear where his priorities lay. If Locke had to drain me completely to save her, I’d open a vein for him. “Just drink already,” I rasped, forcing myself to relax against my animal instincts that screamed predator! in the back of my mind. “Here’s to Team Us, cheers.”
A quick grin pulled at my lips, and Roman looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
Locke’s teeth sank into my carotid artery amid a bolt of agony, which dissipated almost immediately. A rush of heat ran through me from head to toe. The faint tingling sensation in my veins burst to life as Locke’s lips pressed against my throat, drawing my blood with a deep swallow.
Was this what Lucrezia felt when he drank from her? It was intoxicating.
He did it twice more, and I felt a vague presence near us that was almost lost in the glittering euphoria of the vampire venom. Nothing hurt anymore, pain was nonexistent.
“You gotta let go now, Locke.” It was Roman Frost, touching the vampire’s shoulder hesitantly.
Locke froze, his fingers digging into my shoulder blade. His growl reverberated through me, but Roman didn’t back away.
With an effort Locke released me, gliding his tongue over the two neat holes in my neck and sealing them instantly. He licked his lips, swallowing the last of the ruby-red blood on them, but he kept his arm under my shoulder.
“Thank you. You’ll be light-headed,” he said, still focused on my pulse. “But the euphoria will make it easier to push through.”
“You did it,” Roman said, his hand sliding from the vampire’s shoulder. “Looks like the vamp lore is wrong.”
“It’s not wrong.” Locke shivered as I touched the healed marks on my neck. “Releasing someone when I’m starving is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m not sure a younger vampire could manage it.”
I pushed myself upright as Roman shrugged. I was light-headed, but I also felt amazing, every fiber in my body infused with a touch of vampire venom and completely painless. “Give me a moment and we’ll continue.”
Locke’s skin was no longer deathly. At least my blood would keep him going if I fell.
The next door’s charm was simple, but I’d learned to be wary of simple charms. In Cimmerian’s warrens, they seemed to conceal much more complicated curses or guardians.
This time, though, the guardian was a simple bound spirit that barely raised a hand before my rowan knife cut through it.
The stench of blood was thick here. Locke swallowed convulsively, but his eyes remained clear as we ventured into what had been marked as the feeding chambers of the vampire laboratories.
Galvanized metal tables lined the walls, glazed with old brown crust, and the drains in the floor were clogged with old matter.
Some of it was still fresh, water sluicing into the grates, but an entire row of tables along the back wall had been forgotten, the heaps on them covered in a layer of dust.
I moved closer as the wolves prowled ahead, uttering a stream of growls, and examined each mummified corpse.
A shock of brown hair sent a sickening jolt right through my stomach. The body was splayed over one of the tables, held down with thick leather straps. Ancient rubber tubing was still jammed in the desiccated arm, trailing to nowhere.
He was withered, but I recognized the messy haircut, the chip in one exposed front tooth. Simon Wicke, sixteen years old and bled to death in the warrens of the damned.
I touched his arm with a shaking hand and heard a dry crunch, and braced myself on the edge of the table, my hands shaking. The Fenwicke coven had so much to answer for.
They’d condemned him to this.
My lungs didn’t want to fill. I’d spent years training for this moment, when I would find Simon and finally have the answers behind his disappearance. When I was younger, I’d been filled with righteous fury, convinced that everything would become clear on the day that I brought him back.
But nothing was clear now, and there was no bringing him back. All that was left of the person who’d been as close to me as my own brother was a dried-out husk, forgotten and alone.
I was the only person in the world who cared about him. The indignity of him being fed on and left to rot made me want to burn this entire mansion to the ground.
Locke gripped my arm. “This is the boy you’ve been looking for?”
They all knew why I’d done what I’d done. I’d done it for Lucrezia, and I’d done it for these sad, pitiful remains.
“Yes. Simon Wicke.” I touched Simon’s shrunken cheek, tried not to think that maybe his blood had gone to feed Locke. He’d never asked to be fed
the innocent. “My foster-brother. He had no magic for the Cage to feed on… so they must’ve drained him for the vampires.”
Locke inclined his head. Of all of us, he alone would understand this loss the most, how it gnawed at my bones until it was all I’d thought of for years. He’d lost his sister to the same cunts who were going to pay with buckets of their own blood.
After a long moment of silence, he squeezed my arm. I felt a faint, strangely magnetic pull towards him now that the thrall-mark linked us.
“We will have years to grieve our losses together, but right now the living need us,” he said. “She needs us.”
Lucrezia was waiting. Simon was past help, but she wasn’t, and if I knew Simon at all his spirit would be with her.
I took a deep breath and forced myself away. I could do nothing but go forward. The answers I wanted weren’t here.
We found the next door easily enough. The iron was pitted and streaked with gore.
The vampire laboratories were next.
According to the blueprints, these were the most loosely-guarded charms against intruders. Albrecht, the architect of the endless traps, seemed to have thought that anyone willing to break into this particular room would find death on their own.
If the air of the feeding room was fetid, it was horrific in here. It was warm and pressing like a blanket, the sickly-sweet smell of rot permeating the air.
Like the prison out in the forest cavern, there was another prison built into this room. Several writhing bodies were trapped inside, amber eyes flashing as they prowled the other side of the bars.
Shane became a human, leaning over a ledger on the table. “This smells like Gilt.” He ran his finger over the pages and recoiled.
“What is it?” My voice was rough and cracked.
Shane’s gaze had snapped to the vampires in the prison. “New students. They arrived last month, right after Carmen Flora’s group.”
Not a single staff member outside those in Mallory’s confidence had been told about an extra group of students. She must’ve brought them in right under our noses and had them turned almost immediately.
The fledgling vampires seemed torn between gazing lovingly at Locke and trying to lure the living over to them.
I looked over and saw that Locke was frozen in place, staring at the fledglings. “Locke?”
He didn’t answer. The group of fledglings crowded closer, gazing back at him in eerie, wide-eyed silence.
I pressed two fingers to the thrall-marks in my neck. He jerked a little, tearing his eyes from them.
“I’m fine. I can resist them.”
The answer to his control had been in Temple’s little diary all along. As Subject Alpha, the oldest vampire in Cimmerian, Locke’s blood made him the strongest of his kind, the first vampire made with that strain of the virus.
Just to be sure, I inserted myself between him and the vampires as we moved on, and he cut his attention to a rusted old table lined with thick leather straps instead of the vampires.
They were safely caged for now. No doubt Lucrezia would insist on finding a humane way to treat them, but it wasn’t going to be possible, and she’d have to accept that hard truth.
The next door’s curses unraveled without a hitch, thanks to the venom’s euphoria giving me a dose of energy I’d desperately needed. It took the work of seconds to cut through the spirit-guardian, a slick-skinned humanoid with spindly arms, and the wolves bolted ahead of us.
Locke slammed the door behind us as an all-too-familiar figure stood up, pressed against the wall as the therianthropes cornered her. Hate coiled deep in my stomach, burning me from the inside out.
Ivy Bloom was disheveled, covered in grime and shaking like a leaf. “Oh thank god,” she gasped.
Shane and Roman surrounded her, backing her against the door. Their growls rumbled from their chests like thunder.
“What are you doing here?” I didn’t keep the vitriol from my voice. It was a relief to let that one emotion come through clearly at last.
“He cast me out,” she said, gazing at me with desperation. “I barely made it this far-”
“Where is Lucrezia? What are his plans?”
Ivy cringed as Shane snapped at her hand. “I don’t know! I left hours ago. He wasn’t going to hurt her.”
“Lies,” Locke whispered. “That’s all he knows how to do.” Ivy’s gaze whipped to the vampire and she sneered. Locke just stared back, utterly unconcerned, and her gaze dropped first.
A spill of rotting vines trailed around her feet. She’d put most of her magic into creating the monstrous, blood-fed golem out of the rose brambles and hedges, and after hours of trying to work her way up, she was completely expended.
A perverse sense of satisfaction twisted through me. After the lengths to which she’d forced my hand, it was gratifying to see her brought so low, even if it wasn’t my doing.
“So, you’re just going to leave me here to die? Some Warden you are.” She spat at me, the glob of saliva missing by a mile. “And after I gave up my safety to help you!”
I wasn’t going to justify that with a response. At no point had she been altruistic in her motives.
“Go on then. Leave me to die. I hope it stays on your conscience forever, Dom.”
There was already too much on my conscience to make room for her. “Shane. Roman. Lucrezia is more important.” The wolves snarled and reluctantly pulled themselves away from her.
The next door’s curses were already unraveled thanks to Ivy. I felt a new guardian materialize, its presence registering as a ravenous hunger against my mental wards, and time seemed to slow.
Roman plunged through, and a pale shape dropped on him from the ceiling.
Over Shane’s howl and Locke’s shout of warning, I saw a swift movement from the corner of my eye. Ivy glowered, her eyes bulging as she lunged for Shane’s side with a knife.
My mind was frozen- save Shane, save Roman, torn between the two- but my body responded automatically, years of muscle memory kicking into instinct.
Ivy’s wrist thunked solidly into my palm, the knife skittering along Shane’s spine as he moved, and I hauled her forward, her screams driving into my ears like a siren.
Locke ripped the guardian off Roman’s back, and it hit the wall with a thump, a human torso with multiple arms growing from it like a grasping spider.
Roman limped to the side, his teeth flashing as he ripped several fingers off one of those hands. The spirit struggled, straining to right itself and go after Roman, its only imperative to rip apart the living.
I shoved Ivy into the heart of the spirit before it could complete its mission.
The multitude of arms closed around her like the bars of a cage. Her shriek petered out to a thin wail as bones crunched, and then a low groan as it squeezed the last of her air from her lungs.
Locke ripped open the next door and Shane pushed Roman through. I slipped in a pool of fresh, wet blood and yanked the door shut behind us before I pushed a locking spell into the iron.
The guardian for this room was already reduced to dust, sloppily spread everywhere by Ivy. Roman collapsed as blood flowed freely from his wounds. The spirit had torn a deep gash along the back of his neck and fingerprints punched into his sides.
Locke knelt next to him as Shane trembled, his pupils dilated to tiny points. Amber eyes met mine. “Can you spare more blood, Dominic? I can’t risk feeding on him.”
I had no idea. Soon I’d be running on nothing but desperation and vampire venom, but I nodded. “Do what you need to do.”
Roman couldn’t die down here. She needed him.
Locke exhaled, breathing out all traces of blood that might tempt him to feed otherwise, and buried his face in Roman’s fur to run his tongue over the open wounds.
The blood flow trickled to a halt as the vampire closed them one by one, and Roman let out a tiny growl, discomfited by the predator’s fangs so close to him while he was vulnerable.
When he was
done, Locke was at my side in a heartbeat, almost wrenching my head aside with his need to bury his fangs in my neck.
Gray fog fuzzed the edges of my vision as Locke took a deep draught. After what felt like an eternity, but was probably only seconds, he released the euphoric venom into my bloodstream and sealed the bites.
The lower half of Locke’s face was coated red, but Roman was back on his feet, and the sparkling euphoria of the venom was enough to keep me going. I leaned on Locke’s shoulder, struggling to think through the shimmering fog in my brain.
We’d descended to floor twenty-eight and we were still alive. For some of us, just barely alive, but we’d made it this far. There was only one floor left between us and our objective, our shared love.
“Two more doors.” My words came out slurred, but Locke nodded, and Shane’s ears flicked back and forth. “The bitch cleared the way. We’re almost there.”
Roman limped ahead, giving a brief wag of his tail. We were so close.
The twenty-ninth floor was empty, the ghoul-guardian eaten through with tiny vines, and the last door finally opened for us.
We stepped into a massive cavern lit with the eerie glow of necromancy, the pale, milky light spilling from a massive pentagram inscribed on the floor. It illuminated six titanic metal legs that flew upwards into the darkness, where the machine would converge on the leylines beneath the mansion that were its sole source of power.
A small prison was set in the center of the pentagram, with a strangely-painted figure collapsed at the bottom. I knew without a doubt that it was Lucrezia in that box.
A man with thick, dark red hair waited by the legs, watching Lucrezia. He turned slowly, almost lazily, a self-satisfied smirk on his lips, but his eyes widened as Locke stepped into the misty light.
“Well, if it isn’t a night for reunions. Elijah Locke.”
“Albrecht.” Locke inclined his head. His voice was polite and even, but the muscles in his back were taut as wire, standing out under his skin. He was barely holding himself in check.
Shane sniffed at a red mound lying at the edge of the darkness and snorted. A hand attached to the mess made it clear who it had been: Mallory Gilt had sported those vivid, garishly-painted talons. Human bite marks littered her calves.
