by Cate Corvin
But who had eaten her?
Roman shed his wolf form, staggering as he regained two feet. New silvery scars marked his back in a pattern of slashes and punctures, almost deliberate in their placement. “Hey, cocksucker. We’re here for Lu.”
Albrecht Gilt, now over two hundred years old, didn’t look a day over twenty-five. He ran a hand through his hair, adjusted a rotting lace cravat. He was dressed like he was going to a dinner party hosted by a dowager a hundred years ago.
My stomach swooped as three squat, unnaturally pale witches gathered at the edge of the light, also dressed like they’d raided a clothing history museum. Gore streaked their mouths and hands, and I realized who had eaten Mallory.
My stomach twisted. They weren’t the first witch-cannibals I’d come across, but it was never a pretty sight, no matter how desensitized a Warden became.
“Your new friends are crude, Elijah.” Albrecht’s cold blue eyes ran over Roman from head to toe, his expression twisted in distaste.
That was rich, coming from a warlock who had three cannibals flanking him and should’ve been dead several lifetimes ago.
“You’ve stolen so much,” Locke said quietly. His fists clenched at his sides, white-knuckled and shaking. “Not just from me and Josephine, but from everyone who has set foot in this covenstead. When Lockheart was built, it was not with the intention of becoming a cog in the machine of your necromancy. You stole my home and the only family I had left.”
The trio of witches tittered, and Shane rounded on them, his head dropped low as he eyed their long-nailed hands. All three of them clustered together, making strange noises to each other.
One of them was wearing Lucrezia’s heels, her skin bulging over the edges. The fringe of her flapper’s dress clinked as she shivered, never looking away from Shane as he circled her.
I reached for my daggers, nearly missing one. Exhaustion and venom were making me clumsy.
“You will remove Lucrezia from that device and end this immediately.” Locke refused to break eye contact with Albrecht, whose gaze had morphed into a twisted sort of fascination.
“Look at us, old boy. We’ve both been kicking for centuries and neither of us has aged a day.” Albrecht laughed and raised a hand to his cheek, scrubbing his skin like there was something under it he wanted to remove. “I do have one question- how are you around them?” He jerked his chin towards me and Roman. “There’s blood on your face. You’ve fed, but they’re still alive.”
“I learned to control myself.”
Albrecht’s face lit up with naked greed. “And you never age.”
Locke shook his head. Even in the cool, bluish light, his skin was healthy, flushed with my blood. “Even if you could become a vampire and control yourself, it wouldn’t change anything. You’ve already destroyed too many lives to be permitted to live.”
Roman was too close to the necromantic circle. Far too close. “What’s with your bloody albinos there, Al? If that’s Lu’s blood, I’m going to- wait. Al’s albinos. Al’s Binos!”
Roman let out a harsh laugh with a tinge of hysteria to it and moved to push past Albrecht, aiming for Lucrezia, but the Giltglass warlock shoved him back easily, his hands igniting with flames.
An angry red welt rose on Roman’s arm.
“Ah,” Albrecht breathed, laughing as he clapped his hands together and the flames vanished. “I can transfer the sympathetic attachments of her magic to myself. No one else has ever had that much raw magic to work with before-”
“You stole her wildfire?” Roman sounded caught between outrage and disbelief. The hysterical edge of his laughter was gone.
Lucrezia was just a pale form curled at the bottom of the prison, but no one could make it through that pentagram without their life being ripped right out of their body. An unpleasant twinge of realization was nagging at the back of my mind- this was a configuration mirrored in Death, a soul-machine. I was low on blood, high on venom, and the only one who could go in and destroy it.
“Stay out of the circle, everyone.” The slur was gone from my words. “It’s a soul-catcher.”
“And you told me it would never work, Elijah.” Albrecht exhaled a gush of flame. “You and Josephine, with your small goals and narrow visions. Nobody else has achieved what I’ve done here today. I’ve transferred inherent power.”
His skin was growing luminous, swelling with a bright incandescent internal fire.
“Josephine never wanted this, and you murdered her for it.” Locke took a step closer, heedless of the wildfire kindling to life inside Albrecht. “You used her in the worst possible way. Our friendship was only ever a sham.”
I gripped my daggers loosely, taking a deep breath in anticipation. Albrecht needed to die before he siphoned any more of Lucrezia’s life force or magic.
Albrecht rolled his eyes skywards. “A sham? I quite liked you before you turned into a moralistic, pussyfooting ninny. Your sister was just as bad. And now here you are, for all your morals about life and death, subsisting on the blood of the living to sustain yourself. Oh, how the righteous have fallen.”
“I make no excuses for what I am.” Locke lowered into a crouch, his fangs shining against his lips. “But unlike you, I will spend the rest of my existence atoning for my sins. Starting with my failure to protect Josephine and Lucrezia from you.”
Albrecht grinned. “Girls. Run the dog, will you?”
The trio of witch-cannibals fell on Shane in unison, letting out thin wails that filled the cavern like a chorus of the damned.
Locke and Albrecht clashed, flames gushing from the warlock’s pores and singeing Locke’s skin. Roman laughed, and a wall of water splashed over the two. Steam filled the cavern as Albrecht’s wildfire was extinguished.
He gasped and sputtered, stumbling back from Locke and almost stepping in the confines of the glowing pentagram.
Albrecht caught himself at the last moment, but he was cornered between the two of them. His teeth gleamed in a grimace.
“Yeah, turns out my witchwater can give Lu a run for her money, and she’s much better with her wildfire than you are, Al. Now call those twats off my brother already.”
Shane stampeded through the cavern, two witches hanging off his sides and the third, flopping limply, clamped between his jaws. One of them sank her blackened teeth into his side and he snarled, the sound muffled by the cannibal’s body.
“How dare you disrespect my daughters?” Albrecht said, gritting his teeth. He took a deep breath and the wildfire sparked to life again.
He blew a column of flames at Roman, who dodged aside in a spray of glittering water and send an icy whip towards him. The beads of water sizzled and evaporated when they hit the pentagram’s glowing surface.
Locke snarled, his amber eyes flashing, and I found my chance to lash out when Shane galloped past. My blade cut right through the witch’s spine and she fell to the floor, her mouth still full of his blood and fur. “One left,” I said.
Albrecht glared at me, taking several steps forward and raising a hand full of fire. His bones stood out like dark twigs beneath his skin.
The cannibal scrabbled at the floor with her nails, trying to pull herself away in vain. Bile rose in my throat and I stepped forward to cut her throat and end this travesty as humanely as possible.
The warlock screamed a name. “Eleanor!”
Locke gripped his chin and the crown of his skull and wrenched his head all the way around with a sharp crack.
Albrecht went limp and fell to the ground like a sack of meat.
I stepped over Eleanor’s body and knelt next to him to saw through his neck, separating him so completely that not even the Vita Machina would be able to bring him back.
As soon as his head was irreparably separated from his body he began decaying, liquifying into a brown mass that crumbled into dust. In moments, all that was left of Albrecht’s remains was two-hundred-year-old dust and bones.
The pentagram didn’t die out, remaining bri
ght even as the remaining witch released Shane, stumbling to her fallen sister’s side with an animal keening noise.
Shane whipped his head and released the third sister, who flew into her siblings. He shifted back into his human form, eyes wide with pain and panic. “He’s dead! Why hasn’t the pentagram died out?”
“The Vita Machina is powered by the leylines,” I said, wiping my dagger on my filthy shirt. “Without a recipient to feed, it’ll just continuously churn the unfortunate souls who step into the pentagram.”
My limbs felt like lead, but I knew what had to be done. “I need to go into Death to destroy it. Most necromancy is performed on both sides of the mirror. Gilt must’ve had a mirrorwalker friend who built the other half of this machine or brought him through.”
The twins hovered at the edge of the pentagram, focused entirely on Lucrezia.
I tried not to look at her myself, unwilling to fall apart if I saw that she was too far gone.
“How fast can you do it, Steele?” Shane asked. “The last candle is half gone.”
I had no idea. All I could do was hope that Locke’s venom would keep me running through the blood loss long enough to destroy the other side.
I shook my head and pulled out the candle and mirror. “Shane, anchor me. Roman is in better condition to stand guard now. Kill the cannibal if she becomes an issue.” Roman nodded, his blue eyes flat and cold.
Shane didn’t protest, taking the candle. Exhaustion and anxiety for Lucrezia was written in every line of his face. “What if the candle burns out and you’re not back?”
I lit the candle, temporarily erasing the scent of blood with the scent of the burning match. “At that point, leave my body. There’ll be nothing you can do. If the pentagram is still lit, do whatever you can to destroy the legs of the Cage, but that’s an absolute last resort. You don’t want to leave it running and bring the whole thing down on her head.”
If I couldn’t break the pentagram from the other side, she was lost. Nobody would be able to walk through it.
There was really no choice at all- I couldn’t fail at this or she would die.
Locke abandoned Albrecht’s body, gazing curiously into the mirror as I crouched in front of it, and stepped into Death.
Chapter 17
Locke
The lower we went, the clearer my memories became. Painfully clear, tearing at my heart with each new revelation.
The warrens that were infested with spirits, ghouls, and revenants had once been clean, pure stone, lined with salt and quartz, protected against spiritual intrusion. As magic-binders, we Lockes had always been capable of keeping hungry spirits and magic at bay.
Seeing them now, strewn with filth, blood, and bodies, was sickening. Josephine would’ve wept to see her home defiled like this.
The last time I’d come this far down, we’d been dragged into the depths together. Albrecht had drugged our wine. I remembered the laboratory as a gaslamp-lit haze, the stench of disinfectant and alcohol, needles stinging my arms as I strained against leather straps, screaming for Josephine.
They’d dragged her below while I’d raged uselessly.
The table where Dr. Temple, Albrecht’s accomplice, had turned me was still there, shoved in the corner like so much forgotten detritus. To them, it was just a table. To me, it was where my life had ended, and a new one had begun while my sister was taken below to have her throat cut over the cornerstone.
Subject Alpha. Temple had whispered that name in my ear in reverent tones while the virus chewed its way through every cell in my body. He was my sire, a human, using a needle instead of fangs.
A giant fist squeezed my chest as I looked up at the Vita Machina. If only we had guessed sooner what Albrecht wanted to do with it. I could only blame my own lack of foresight. Josephine was too naïve in matters of necromancy to see what he was planning, and I had been blinded by my trust in the man I’d considered a brother.
Now I had new ones, and they’d proven themselves to be worth a thousand of Albrecht already. They would be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save a ray of sunlight from this dark world.
Dominic’s body went still as his spirit climbed through the mirror into Death.
I was dead, too. The mirror rippled a little at the corner of my eye, like a friendly beacon.
I knelt next to Dominic’s frozen body, just able to resist the lure of his blood and the thrall-mark, and peered into the reflection.
My physical form felt like it sublimated into something else for a moment, and then I was standing at Dominic’s shoulder, buried to my ankles in dust.
He glanced at me in surprise, his pupils still wide with the euphoria of vampire venom. I couldn’t regret giving him so much, not after the amount of blood I’d taken from him.
“Ah, but of course. You’re technically dead.”
I nodded, taking in this side of Death. It was a dim, dreary place, but the light of the pentagram was much brighter on this side. “Yes. I suppose with so few sane vampires, there are many things we don’t know about my kind.”
He sighed with relief. “I’m glad you’re here. If the candle burns out, you must finish this in my place and get her out.”
Albrecht had built the Vita Machina in life, but everything was echoed in Death. Its legs were patterned with blooming splotches of rust, forever held in a slow state of decay. Here, the energy of the leylines feeding the machine was visible in those legs, powering the necromantic pentagram that would suck its victims dry of life and magic.
Lucrezia’s spirit rested in the middle, slowly sinking into the sigils and surrounded by others who were already dead. Hands, arms, faces protruded from the pentagram, the spirits slowly dissolving and being consumed, like a giant flytrap.
I would not allow her spirit to be consumed by this thing. “I will do whatever it takes, Dominic. Where do we begin?”
He strode through the dust, walking to the very edge of the pentagram. A dark stain marked the dust here where Albrecht had died in life only minutes ago.
“Now that you’re here, my plans have changed,” Dominic said. “I will go in and fetch her. I should be able to last long enough to pull her spirit out of the trap. You must be the one to find and break the connection point once she’s safe. It’ll be an artifact or a fetch, designed to provide a connection to Life for Albrecht, possibly made with his blood, hair, or other body materials.” He took a deep breath, shoulders tense. “Do not break the connection until her spirit is outside the pentagram. I have no idea what will happen to these spirits once the Vita Machina is destroyed.”
“They will vanish into the ether.”
Dominic stiffened as a boy’s voice, flat and dead, came from behind us. We both turned, taking in the lanky teenager with sandy brown hair and the faintest hints of old freckles peppered across his nose.
His spirit was spattered with the unmistakable signs of the trauma and abuse heaped on him before his death.
“Simon,” Dominic breathed.
“Dom.” The boy- Simon- gave him a crooked grin. A chip gleamed in one of his front teeth. He was unmistakably one of the spirits of the corpses upstairs. “You’ve grown up.”
All the despair, grief, and rage I felt for Josephine’s premature death was written out on Dominic’s rough features. I, too, understood the heart-wrenching pain of losing a sibling… and believing- or knowing- that it was your fault.
“And you haven’t.” Dominic’s face twisted. “I was too late. I should’ve stopped them.”
“What could you’ve done?” Simon asked, not ungently. “One kid against an entire coven? It wasn’t your fault.”
The Warden wiped a hand over his face, looking up at the milky mist overhead for a moment. “I’ve spent years waiting to see you again and tell you how sorry I was that I let this happen. Part of me was hoping it was all a lie, that you were somehow still alive…” He glanced over his shoulder at Lu’s sinking spirit, tension cutting through the sorrow on his face. “But I’ll
be joining you shortly. Do you know how to shut down the Vita Machina?”
Simon cocked his head to the side. “Nah, not really. I’ve just seen a ton of them get chewed up by it. She might know, though.”
He pointed behind me, and if my heart could beat, it would’ve lurched out of my chest when I turned around.
Josephine strolled along the edge of the perimeter, her dark hair falling down her back as she smiled at me, holding her thin arms out. Her throat was one wide gash, dried blood crusted over the front of her lace dress, and bruises mottled her throat and chest.
She wrapped her arms around me, resting her head on my chest and letting out a sigh. A memory swamped my mind, Josephine in her beaded wedding dress, hugging me with tears in her eyes. The ghostly scent of lavender filled my nose.
This Josephine was much less substantial, as fragile as a baby bird in my arms. I hugged her, but she smelled like nothing, the lavender long-faded. She’d belonged to Death for so long that much of what had made her Josephine had been leached away.
She touched my face, looking up at me with dark eyes that had once been identical to mine. “Elijah,” she said. Her voice was a rough croak, barely understandable. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too, Jo,” I whispered, half-afraid I would break her from hugging her so hard, even though she was already dead. “I’m sorry.”
Josephine gave me a sweet smile that looked out of place on her wasted features, but the expression flickered, like it was too difficult for her to hold. “I never would’ve blamed you, Eli. But I would very much like to go home now.”
There was a burning pressure behind my eyes, like my body remembered how to cry but couldn’t. “How do I bring you there?”
She tugged me forward and gestured to the cornerstone, the hunk of obsidian lit with its own internal light in Death. Every previous Locke before us had been burned on the cornerstone upon death, their souls and ashes becoming part of the mansion, their consciousness blending into Lockheart’s wards.
