by Rhys Lawless
“For what?” he asked.
“Now,” Winston shouted and lunged forward, throwing a spell at the men in front of us and shouting the word to cast it in a split second. Smoke filled the room and hid our movements.
I pushed Troy down the stairs, hearing a thump that must have been his back colliding with the wall on the first landing, while I extended the blade in my hand and charged at the men just as the smoke cleared and they could see us again.
Shots were fired. The sound of metal cutting through the air filled my eardrums. I jumped out of the way of a gun’s barrel and cut across it. The front part of the weapon clattered to the floor just as I rolled around and back to my knees and stabbed another guard’s stomach, piercing right through the vest and making him fold in two.
A quick glance reassured me that Winston was still holding strong and using a mix of spells and sword-fighting to incapacitate the rest of the guards.
I stood back on my feet and jumped at another guard who’d turned his attention toward me. Before he managed to point his weapon at me, I slammed into him, and he grunted. My elbow clashed with his jaw, and he stumbled back.
A shot rang in my ears. Hot, searing pain spread through my right arm. I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in the pain that pulsed through my body. Instead, I turned around to see the guard I’d stabbed in the stomach back up and aiming his gun at me.
I kicked one leg back, and the sole of my foot smashed into the other guard’s face before I used my sword to block the next shot. I ran toward him, moving my sword in front of me, making the bullets raining on me ricochet around the room until I got to him and smashed his face with the back of my hilt.
When I turned to deal with the next guard—and also avoid their fire—I spotted a woman in black in front of a door by the entrance, watching the events unfold from the distance.
Who was she? What was she doing here? Was she Lord Moon’s wife or daughter? Why was she watching us, knowing her life could be in danger, instead of running from us?
I knocked a guy off his feet and kicked his gun away, and Winston backed up against me as he was warding off his lot.
“Dude! You really need to learn how to cast spells,” he shouted, out of breath, and used my back to propel himself forward.
“I know,” I said, but it was too late for him to hear me.
My gaze fell on the woman again who was still standing her ground and watching us. Watching me.
She seemed to be mumbling something. Her lips were moving, but from this distance, it was impossible to tell what she was saying.
One of the men I’d knocked unconscious jumped up wide awake and, in turn, startled me.
How was it possible?
I turned to look around and saw more of the guards that either I or Winston had beat to the ground convulse and open their eyes. Some jumped back to their feet. Others, those whose legs or stomachs had been split open, slithered along the floor trying to get in on the action.
What was going on? Winston had literally put some of them to sleep or made others piss their pants and pass out in terror, and all of a sudden, they’re all fine and ready to go again.
I snapped my attention back to the woman. She was staring at me, no longer mumbling. Her lips curved into a smile, and she winked at me.
It was her. She was controlling them somehow. Was she a witch? Or...
Fuck!
Light reflected off the crystals in her necklace, a delicate choker with several chains that draped in front of her and fell between her breasts.
She wasn’t a witch. There was only one creature that could trap people’s souls inside crystals and command them to do their bidding.
A dhampir.
Before my mind could go wild with different scenarios or think too much about what the existence of another dhampir meant for the witch community, I raced toward her, keeping my gaze on her the whole time.
As soon as she realized I was coming for her, her lips moved again, and with my peripheral vision, I saw some of the guards running after me.
Yes, one hundred percent a dhampir. Who was she? How long had she been a dhampir, and why had the council not heard of the existence of yet another threat? Unless they’d also made a deal with her.
There were so many questions, and I didn’t have the time to figure them out. The men were catching up with me. But I needed to get her.
I came almost crashing down on the woman, but she stood her ground and only backed up a step and leaned against the door she’d been standing in front of.
My blade rested on her neck, and her brown eyes bored into me with intensity, holding the same look I knew I must have been giving her.
“Stop!” she shouted, and I heard the footfalls behind me come to a halt.
“Who the fuck are you?” I asked her.
“I should be asking you that,” she said.
“I’m the man who’s going to kill you if you don’t tell me what I need to know,” I spat out.
“And what do you need to know, witch hunter?” she asked with the trace of a smirk back on her face.
“Where is Wilder Oakley?” I asked.
“I don’t know who that is,” she said too quickly while staring into my eyes.
“Then tell me where Lord Moon of Londinium is so I can ask him,” I said without missing a beat.
She looked behind me and opened her mouth. I pushed my blade harder against her throat.
“If you dare bark an order at them, I’ll chop off your head,” I said. “And I’m sure you know I have no qualms about doing it. I’m a witch hunter after all.”
The dhampir took a deep breath and focused her attention back on me.
“Tell me, what is a witch hunter doing in the company of witches?” she asked.
I looked behind me and found Winston had approached us with Troy by his side, who was holding the back of his head, probably hitting it when I pushed him down.
Shit. That was another thing I’d have to apologize for after we got out of this situation.
“The right thing,” I replied to her. “Tell me where the fucking Lord is.”
“Unless—” she smiled again.
“Unless what.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and my insides squeezed tight.
A flow of energy formed between our mouths, and I found myself unable to move. My breath caught, and my body burned as its magic was being drained from it.
What was I doing? Why was I letting another dhampir take control of me? I might not have any skill in casting spells, but if there was something I was good at, that was using my natural power.
As soon as it came to my mind, my shields went up and my magic stopped flowing out of me. The dhampir’s eyes opened wide, and her forehead creased in horror.
“How?” she shrieked.
I closed any distance between us, and I whispered in her ear, “I’ll tell if you do.”
When I returned to my previous position, I saw understanding glaze her eyes.
“Very well,” she sighed as if she’d just lost in a game of friendly poker and not a play of dominance in a life or death situation.
The difference between her and Christian was striking. Christian hadn’t known when to give up. He didn’t know when to let things go.
“What do you need?” she asked.
“I told you. We need to speak to Lord Moon of whatever,” I repeated, making sure to spell out my indifference at his full name.
“Is it about the Oakley person you’re after?”
“It is.”
“And why are you looking for him?”
“Because we’re his sons,” I said.
Her gaze dropped to my chest, and her shoulders sagged. My arms were getting tired from holding the sword on her neck all this time, but I couldn’t trust her not to do anything stupid.
“He has sons?” she mumbled.
“So, you do know where he is,” I said.
She looked back
at me but didn’t reply.
“If you tell me where Lord Moon is, I won’t hurt you,” I told her, but I wasn’t sure I meant it. Just the thought of all the men behind me that she kept under her rule sickened me. I knew what they felt like. I knew they’d want to be freed. I would if I knew I had been controlled.
“Why are you looking for him?” she asked.
“Because everything is connecting him with Wilder and Christian. I want to find out the truth. I want to meet my dad. I want to free him,” I said.
“Well, you’re too late for that. Wilder is gone. He’s been taken.”
“By whom?” Winston stepped up, and I felt his anger to my bones.
“Who do you think?” The woman raised her eyebrow.
“Christian!” I said.
“Yes, he’s alive and kicking.”
“He’s doing more than kicking. He’s turned all the vampires against witches. Dozens have died because of him,” Troy said and came up behind me on the other side of Winston.
“He was always so reckless. Always about the waves. Never the ripples,” she said.
“Wh—what do you mean?” I asked.
“You can lower this thing. I’m not a threat to you. Anymore. And I can tell your hands are cramping,” she said, and it was almost a command.
“I can’t trust you,” I said.
Winston stepped in front of us and grabbed the dhampir’s necklace, yanking it from her.
If she was irritated by this, she didn’t let it show. She simply let Winston’s act bring the trust in equal measures between us and relaxed her body as I pulled the blade back in its hilt.
“Much better.” She massaged her neck and pushed herself off the door, tidying up her dress. “Where were we?”
“You were saying something about waves and ripples,” Troy reminded her.
She nodded.
“Ah, yes. I can tell from your faces you’ve met him. He’s not changed a bit since I met him a couple of centuries ago. Even as a vampire, all he wanted was to change everything. To be better than everyone. And so did I. But we go about our common goals a very different way. Where he sees resistance, I see challenge. His obstructions are my opportunities. I was always in it for the long run. Christian is rather...short-sighted when it comes to his hunger for power.”
“So you two know each other. Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I said.
“Of course we do. I’m the one who made him into the monster he is today,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Winston asked.
“I’m the man you’re looking for,” she said. “Well, actually, the woman you’re looking for.”
“You’re Lord Moon of Londinium?” Troy said.
“Yes,” was her simple reply.
“So you’re the one who sold Wilder to him?” Troy added.
“I didn’t sell anyone to Christian. He simply paid me for services rendered,” she said.
This conversation was making no sense, and I couldn’t keep up with it. What was going on? Where was my dad? And what did this woman have to do with him?
“My name is Dion. The name you know me by is an alias I created a long time ago,” she said.
“If you didn’t sell my dad to Christian, then why the hell did he pay you half a million, and what does my dad have to do with everything?” I asked.
Dion raised her arms to her sides to show she wasn’t doing anything to hurt us and walked to the middle of the hallway checking on her men who were still frozen by her rule.
“You’ve hurt my boys. I should be mad at you. Heal them and I will tell you everything you need to know,” she said and caressed one of the men’s faces.
“What?” I asked.
“You heard me. You’ve hurt my men. Heal them and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“I—I can’t—”
“We don’t have the spells,” Winston cut in and saved my sorry ass from admitting I was a witch that couldn’t cast spells.
“Why don’t you use your bloody magic to heal them?” I said.
“That’s the deal. Take it or leave,” she said, continuing to inspect all of the guards.
“Then we leave,” Winston said and walked towards the main door.
I reached and grabbed his wrist before he got too far away. He turned to look at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“I won’t fall for the whims of a monster,” he said.
Dion laughed, but I could taste the bitterness in her voice like a foul stench.
“You think I’m the monster. Why? Because I’m a dhampir? No, my dear. I’m not a monster just because of what I am,” she said.
“Winston, we’ve got to at least try. We’re so close,” I pleaded with him. If he left, I’d be on my own, with Troy, if he didn’t leave too. And then I was truly fucked.
He stared at me not backing down, but neither was I.
“We don’t know where Christian is. We don’t know anything about Wilder. If we can get all the answers now, it might save his life. We don’t know how long he’s got if he’s Christian’s prisoner,” I said.
Winston’s nostrils flared, and he pulled his hand away.
“Fine. But I don’t have enough healing spells for all of them,” he said. “I’ll do the ones who are in critical condition.”
“The agreement was for everyone,” she said.
“And if I go out to buy healing spells, those who are bleeding to death will...well, die,” Winston responded.
We stood in silence for moments that felt like years while Dion pondered Winston’s offer.
“Fine,” she said finally, and he nodded at her before retrieving the healing spells from his book.
Troy and I went around the guards and inspected their condition, pointing out who Winston needed to heal next. Dion stood at the edge, watching us intently and trying not to let any emotions show, but I saw her flinch a couple of times, and that was all I needed to know that she cared about them. She might be a dhampir and bound them to her by blood, but she was deeply concerned about their wellbeing.
Once they were all healed, still frozen under Dion’s last command before her necklace was removed, we stood opposite from her and waited for her to give us all the answers we were looking for.
“I guess I need to hold my end of the bargain,” she said and sighed. “Wilder came after me a long time ago. He came to kill me. And instead, I drank his blood. It turned me into what I am today.”
“Wait a minute. Wilder Oakley’s blood made you a dhampir? How?” Troy asked.
Dion shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to find the answers, but there’s as little written about dhampirs as you could possibly find. Our take is the stronger the witch, the more potent the blood, and the more potent the blood, the more likely it will turn a vampire into a dhampir,” she explained.
“We?” I asked.
“Christian and I. We used to be friends,” she said. “We’d come up with theories of why the magical world worked the way it did. It made the centuries bearable.”
“What happened between you two? Why did he pay you such a large sum?” I asked.
Dion turned her gaze to her men and seemed to consider her words carefully before she spoke.
“He wanted to be like me. Even though we had no fucking clue what I was and what the pitfalls would be. He thought it was evolution. And he begged me to let him use Wilder. So I did.”
“And he turned into the monster he is,” Winston mumbled. “That’s what you meant, isn’t it? When you said you turned him into a monster?”
Dion nodded.
“What about the smaller payments throughout the last couple of decades?” Troy asked.
Dion scoffed.
“I told you. He cares about the waves. He let his hunger control him rather than him controlling it. He believed the more he fed, the more powerful he’d become. The more powerful his blood magic would be. The faster, stronger, invincible. So, when his precious hunters could
n’t yield any results, he turned to me.”
“You’d let him feed off Wilder to satiate the hunger,” I said, and she turned her eyes to me before dropping her gaze to the floor.
“We had a deal. A deal that he would only take just enough. That he wouldn’t drain him completely,” she said.
“If Christian and you were such good buddies, what happened now? Why did he steal Wilder from you?” Winston asked, and his words had a stench I couldn’t describe.
Our dad wasn’t an object to be stolen. He was a human being. Not a toy.
“I—I don’t know. He invaded my house with all his vampire minions and took him away from me. I don’t know what he’s planning to do with him. Wilder’s probably dead already for all I know.”
No. He couldn’t be. I’d only just found out about him. If I lost him again, for real this time, I could never live with myself even if I had nothing to do with his demise.
“Where is Christian now?” I asked, just about able to reign in the heat inside me threatening to burst.
“He owns a building in the St. Paul’s area. That’s his new base of operations,” she said.
She gave the information freely with no thought or concern. Was this another trap?
“What’s the catch?” I asked.
Her eyes blinked faster than normal as she tried to process my question.
“There is no catch,” she replied.
“You expect me to believe that you would just tell us all this and give us Christian’s location even though he’s your friend.” I said.
“He’s not a friend anymore. He betrayed me,” she said.
“What’s the catch?” I asked again.
“There isn’t one,” she repeated.
“I can so easily go to the high council and tell them who and what you are. And I will if you don’t tell me the truth,” I said.
“That is the truth,” Dion shouted.
“Then why don’t you go after him yourself?” I shouted back.
“Because he will turn all the vampires against me. And I might be powerful, but they’re my family, and I don’t want to have to hurt them,” she said.
That was more like it. That made more sense. It was the truth. Just like I’d asked.
“Was that so difficult? Huh?” I said.
Dion didn’t bother replying to the question. “Now can I have my necklace back.”
