by Tracy Wolff
“Because I can feel him. He’s desperate to get to you. But no vampire can enter a room he isn’t invited into—even the most powerful vampire in existence. If he wants in here, he’ll have to use more power than he even knows he has.” She laughs, and this time there’s no hiding the crazy in it.
“I hope he’s suffering. I hope he knows what’s happening to you in here and that it’s killing him that he can’t get to you. I can’t wait for you to serve your purpose so you can die and finally, he’ll know just how excruciating it feels to lose a mate.”
It turns out that even in the middle of all this, I can still be shocked. “You’re wrong, Lia. I’m not—I’m not Jaxon’s mate. I don’t even know what that means, but I’m sure if it were a thing Jaxon or Macy would have told me.”
“It’s cute that you believe that. But it doesn’t matter what you think. What matters right now is that it’s true. And that he believes it.” She shrugs. “Then again, he also believes he can get around thousands of years of safeguards and break down these doors to get to you. So he could very well be delusional. Who knows?” She shrugs. “And who cares? As long as he suffers when you die, I don’t care what he believes.”
As if on cue, the door rattles, its hinges screaming at the pressure brought to bear on them by Jaxon’s powers. “Jaxon!” I scream his name, desperate for him to hear me.
The rattling of the doors stops for just a second. “Grace! Hold on! I’m almost in!” The door shakes so much that the rocks around it start to crumble.
“Come in! You’re invited in! Please! Come in, come in, come in!” I shout the words loud enough for him to hear them.
Lia just laughs. “Not your room, Grace. Not your invitation to issue. Sorry to burst your bubble.”
The alarm on her phone goes off before I can respond, and suddenly she’s all business. “It’s time.” Raising her arms above her head, she begins to chant, her voice low and rhythmic and strong, so strong.
She doesn’t falter at all, doesn’t stumble over words even though the written spell is long gone. Looks like she wasn’t lying when she said she’d been practicing for months. Which means I really did throw myself off this altar for nothing.
My shoulder is not impressed.
I mean, logically, I know this isn’t going to work. There’s no way she’s going to be able to bring Hudson back from the dead—life just doesn’t work like that. Believe me, I know.
But I’m not going to lie, when a breeze sweeps over me out of nowhere, ruffling my hair and brushing against my skin, it chills me to the bone. As does the sudden electricity in the air that follows it.
Every hair on my body stands straight up in response. Combined with Lia’s odd chanting that’s only getting odder, it’s more than enough to have me screaming for Jaxon like the hounds of hell are after us.
He bellows in response, a primal sound from deep inside him that has me yanking on the ties around my wrists as hard as I can. It hurts—ohmygod does it hurt—but the pain doesn’t matter. Nothing matters right now but stopping Lia and getting to Jaxon.
This time the whole wall shudders under the force of Jaxon’s power. I’m facing away from the door, but I can hear the grinding of stones being pulled loose and the crash of them as they hit the floor. He’s close now, so close, and everything inside me strains toward him and away from Lia’s madness.
I can’t believe I let Flint get inside my head, can’t believe I thought even for a second that Lia and Jaxon were working together. And I definitely can’t believe I ran from the only boy I’ve ever loved. Jaxon would never be involved in something like this. Especially if that something aimed to hurt me. I know that now.
Plus, how could I forget just how much Lia hates Jaxon? No way would she bring him in to her own personal Project Lazarus.
I really am a fool. And it’s going to be the death of me.
Lia’s chant grows louder, echoing throughout the cavernous room as she grabs a long, ceremonial knife from inside the lectern. I watch in horror as she slices open her wrist and lets her blood drip onto the altar.
It sizzles as it hits the stone, where it turns into a noxious black smoke. The wind picks up, starts churning the smoke into a kind of mini-tornado that has me pulling against my bindings as hard as I can even as I scream for Jaxon.
I’m beginning to think there just might be something to this raising Hudson from the dead thing. And if there is, I want absolutely no freaking part of it. I sure as hell don’t want to be the catalyst that brings everything together.
Lia obviously has other plans, though, because she walks toward me with the knife. Her blood is still gleaming on the blade and I have an oh God, please let her clean it off before she touches me with it moment. Which seems absurd considering: One, shouldn’t I be praying that she doesn’t come near me with it at all? And two, what does it matter when I’m already covered in her blood, my blood, and some stranger’s blood? What’s a little more at this point?
Still I shrink back, pulling my legs up and trying to curl into a ball as best I can. It’s not much protection—or really any protection—but it’s all I’ve got until Jaxon manages to break through the ancient safeguards.
I expect Lia to start hacking at me with the knife as soon as she gets to me, but instead, she stands above me—arms spread wide and knife pointed directly at my midsection.
Not cut, then. Stabbed. Awesome.
I brace myself for more pain, but the knife never descends. Instead, the black smoke surrounds us, winding itself tighter and tighter as the breeze picks up and Lia finally stops chanting.
“Open your mouth!” she screams at me as the smoke centers itself directly above me.
No freaking way. She can kill me if she wants to—in fact, at this point she can feel free to do just that—because there is no way I’m opening up and sucking some noxious and terrifying smoke into me that may or may not be Jaxon’s dead brother. Not going to happen.
“Grace!” Jaxon yells from the other side of the door. “Grace, are you okay? Hold on! Hold on for me just a little longer.”
I don’t answer him—doing so would require opening my mouth, and right now I’ve got my face pressed into my arm and my jaw clenched as tightly as I possibly can. No way is this going down the way Lia seems to think it will.
“Do it, or I’ll kill you!” Lia screeches. “Right here, right now.”
Like that’s going to scare me? I resigned myself to death a while ago, so the threat of dying doesn’t hold much weight at the moment—especially since I know she’ll kill me once she gets what she wants anyway. So why on earth should I give it to her? Especially when it involves me turning into some kind of bizarre host for an ancient vampiric ritual?
Lia abandons the threats and throws herself on top of me as she tries to pry my mouth open with her fingers.
Don’t let her do it, the voice inside me warns. Hold the course.
I kind of want to answer it with a resounding no shit, Sherlock, but I’m too busy trying to buck Lia off me.
It’s not working—big surprise considering she’s a pissed-off vampire with superhuman strength and I’m a human in really, really bad shape. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up, though, doesn’t mean—
A giant wrenching sound suddenly fills the air. Lia freezes on top of me as stones go flying in every direction. And in walks Jaxon.
“No!” Lia screams as she picks up one of the stones that landed near us and chucks it back at him as hard as she can. “You can’t be here! You’re not invited in!”
Jaxon deflects the rock with little more than a look. “No wall, no invitation needed.” And then he’s leaping across the room in a single bound. He lands next to us on the altar and rips Lia off me, sends her flying across the room.
She hits the wall with a crash but comes right back at him. Jaxon, in the meantime, whispers, “I’m sorry, Grace,” a
s he waves a hand over me. The bindings on my wrists simply fall away. Then he’s crouching down next to me, stroking a hand down my face. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not—” My voice breaks as relief sweeps through me. “It’s not your fault.”
His voice is bitter. “Whose fault is it, then?”
I start to answer, but—big surprise—Lia’s not going down without a fight. “Look out!” I scream as she hurtles across the stage straight at Jaxon. He waits for her to get close then uses her own momentum to send her flying off the altar and across the room.
She lands with a sickening crunch of bone, but that doesn’t keep her down, either. She staggers to her feet, holds her arms up, and starts that horrible chant again. The black smoke responds, circling Jaxon, circling me, cutting off our view of Lia and the rest of the room.
“What’s happening?” Jaxon demands.
I don’t answer him now that the smoke is right next to me again, too scared of opening my mouth to so much as make a sound.
Jaxon uses his powers to try to move the smoke away from us, but it must be the one thing in the universe not under his control. Because instead of clearing out, it winds itself more and more tightly around us, until I can barely see Jaxon, let alone the rest of the room.
Which, apparently, is Lia’s plan, because as soon as Jaxon turns his back in search of an escape, Lia is on him. She leaps onto his back with a primal kind of war cry and plunges the knife straight into Jaxon’s chest.
It’s my turn to scream—or as close to a scream as I can get with my jaw clamped shut. I try to get to him, but Jaxon throws a hand out, uses his telekinesis to keep me where I am. Then he reaches down and yanks the knife out of his chest.
It falls to the ground with a clatter.
Blood is steadily leaking out of his wound, but Jaxon doesn’t seem to even notice. He’s too focused on Lia. Reaching over his shoulder, he grabs Lia by the collar and pulls her over his head and onto the ground at his feet.
I expect him to use his powers on her now, but instead he plunges his hand down, aiming straight at her chest. She rolls away at the last second, tries to kick him in the face. But he grabs onto her leg and twists it, fast and hard.
A sickening crunch fills the air, followed by Lia’s howls of pain. Jaxon grabs on to her hair, prepares to break her neck and put all of us out of our misery, but before he can do it, the black smoke circles his neck and starts to choke him.
He claws at his neck, tries to get it away from his throat, but it’s not letting go no matter how hard he wrestles with it.
Somehow, Lia is on her feet again. Her left leg is bent at an unnatural angle, but she’s standing, arms raised as she starts that horrible chanting again. The spell only seems to make the smoke stronger as it continues to strangle Jaxon.
He’s sheet white as he falls to his knees and tries to wrestle with something he can’t get an actual grip on. Blood continues to seep out of his chest wound, and I know if I don’t do something, Jaxon is going to die right in front of me.
I can’t let that happen.
I crawl forward, hands stretched out in front of me as I search for— My fingers come across the cold steel of Lia’s ceremonial knife, and I grab onto it with all of my waning strength.
It’s sharp and it cuts me, but I barely feel the pain as I push myself up off the floor. And swing the knife at Lia’s chest with every ounce of strength I have left in my body.
She’s wide open, her arms spread out to the sides, so I connect. The knife makes a sickening squishing sound as it sinks through skin and flesh to the organs below.
She doesn’t scream this time. Instead, she rears back with a strange gargle-gasp and falls straight backward onto the floor.
The horrifying rattle coming from her chest tells me I punctured a lung instead of her heart, but at this point I don’t actually care. As long as she’s out of commission, I’m good. Or I will be as soon as we figure out how to get the greasy black smoke off Jaxon, who honestly isn’t looking much better than Lia at the moment.
If he’s not strong enough to pry it off—with or without his telekinesis—I know I’ve got no shot. So I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing guaranteed to get the smoke to let him go.
I open my mouth and take a long, slow breath.
62
Where There’s Smoke,
There’s a
Dead Vampire
It takes a few seconds, but the smoke—or whatever that thing is—finally catches on. It relinquishes its hold on Jaxon and arrows straight for me.
Which, gotta say, is probably the most terrifyingly awful thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.
But considering the alternative is standing around and watching another person I love die, there is no alternative. And so I open my arms and gather the smoke toward me. Once it’s surrounding me, I take a breath, start to suck it in.
“No!” Jaxon roars.
Suddenly, I’m falling backward, flying backward off the altar and halfway across the room while Jaxon stumbles to his feet. He’s nearly gray at this point, but he manages to stand tall as he holds his hands out in front of him. Then slowly, slowly—so slowly I think I may have a heart attack watching him—he starts to compress the air between his hands into a spherical shape.
As he does, the entire room—the entire tunnel—starts to shake. And then it starts to crumble around us.
And still, Jaxon doesn’t let up. Still, he continues to compress the sphere, his hands slowly rotating in a circle as he pulls more and more energy, more and more mass into the sphere.
The smoke flattens itself out, starts streaming in the other direction, but Jaxon is having none of it. He just starts pulling harder, until stones and candles and vases filled with blood start flying across the room toward him. He takes it all, pulls it all into the sphere and then reaches for more, until even the air in the room is streaming toward him in what looks and feels an awful lot like a tornado. And with the air comes the smoke, no matter how hard it struggles against Jaxon’s power.
It’s getting harder to breathe as Jaxon absorbs more and more of the oxygen in the room, but I don’t even care. I just drop to the floor the way they taught me in fire safety and try to breathe whatever’s left down here as I watch him draw the smoke inexorably closer to him. Closer and closer and closer.
Soon even Lia and I are caught up in the energy suck, getting dragged across the floor by Jaxon’s power and his indomitable will. I don’t try to fight it, don’t do anything that might possibly make this harder for him. Instead, I just give myself over to Jaxon and trust that somehow he will keep me safe, even from himself.
He always does.
He’s got the smoke in his grasp now, floating between his hands as he struggles to condense it, to break it down into whatever he needs it to be so that the vortex or whatever he’s got going on in there can absorb it.
But the smoke isn’t going down without a fight. Every time it looks like Jaxon might have it contained, a small stream escapes his hold and he has to start all over again. But Jaxon has a will of iron and more power than I even imagined possible inside of him. He won’t give up.
Instead, he spins the sphere between his palms faster and faster. The ceiling starts caving in, the walls fall to pieces, even the stones on the floor start to crumble. And still Jaxon doesn’t relinquish his hold. Still, he continues to pull.
The oxygen in the room is getting thinner, and I’m really struggling for breath now. He must be, too, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he continues to manipulate every single thing in the room.
The smoke struggles to escape one more time, but with a roar, Jaxon yanks it back inside the sphere once and for all. And then he just shuts it down, just turns off the conduit or the energy suck or whatever it is so that everything around us just settles.
The room stops s
haking, the walls and ceiling and floor stop breaking apart, the remaining candles drop to the floor, and the oxygen slowly starts to stabilize. I settle back against the ground and just breathe for a few seconds, even as I watch Jaxon condense the sphere between his hands into a glowing orb only a little larger than a tennis ball.
And then he pulls his hand back and fires it straight at Lia.
It hits her in the stomach, and her whole body arches off the floor. She gives one last terrifying gasp as she absorbs the energy, the matter, the smoke. Then she looks straight at him and whispers, “Yes. Finally. Thank you.”
Seconds later she explodes into a cloud of dust that slowly settles back onto the ground.
All I can think is that it’s over. Oh my God, it’s finally over.
“Jaxon!” I turn to him, try to crawl toward the only boy I’ve ever loved. But I’m weak, so weak, and the altar is too far away. Instead, I hold a hand out to him instead and call his name over and over and over again.
Jaxon staggers across the altar toward me, then half jumps, half falls off of it to the ground below, where I’m waiting for him.
He takes my hand, brings it to his lips. And whispers, “I’m so sorry,” before falling into a dead faint at my feet.
“Jaxon!” Frantically, I call his name. “Jaxon, wake up! Jaxon!” He doesn’t move, and for one, terrifying second I’m not even sure he’s breathing.
Somehow I find the strength to roll him over. I press a hand to his chest, feel the shallow movement of his chest up and down, and nearly sob in relief. But there’s no time for that, not when he’s still bleeding out from the chest wound Lia gave him. And not when he’s turned a pasty, sickly white.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper to him as I grab on to one of the ragged strips Lia actually left on my shift and rip it off. I ball it up, press it firmly to Jaxon’s wound in an effort to staunch the blood. “I’ve got you.”
