Vampire Mage

by Rosemary A Johns

  Drake stared at me, his grip tightening. “Be silent. I apologise for my roughness, but we’re breaking the Code by speaking.”

  “Stick the Code.”

  Drake flinched. He peeked down at Kunel and then at his dad, before murmuring, “Hit me.”

  “Kinky,” I smirked. Then I backhanded him, twisting him around in the dance of battle, as he soared high above the arena.

  Hell, if he dropped me…

  “Why do you insist on this win, my Queen?”

  “Didn’t your dad put on the musical? I want to prove myself.”

  Drake stiffened. “Lie.”

  Why did he have to see me? I’d been invisible for so much of my life, it was freaky now to finally be understood.

  “Trust me.”

  Drake’s gaze was assessing but then it hardened. “No matter what my father believes, I’m a Commander. And I shall win this battle honourably for you.”

  Hell, he meant it.

  “If you love me,” I caught myself because — screw it to Unicorn City — that was the first time I’d said it out loud, and Drake’s expression had slipped into the vulnerable and raw…and I’d done that, “you won’t win to prove any of that medieval mind control by your NOT Dad of the Year. Your honour, worth, and place by my side…you already have that.” Drake was trembling; his mouth pressed into a thin line. “You’ll lose because my blokes sacrifice.”

  “And have I not sacrificed enough?”

  “Have you?”

  I didn’t understand the way Drake clutched me closer, as he pretended we were struggling, resting his forehead against mine. “I drown in it. In you. Just once…I’ll win.”

  I squealed, as Drake hurtled us towards the floor of the arena. At the last moment, he twisted, bellowing like I’d winded him, and landed in an agonizing crunch beneath me.

  I lay in confusion on top of him, like a hunter on her felled lion, stroking a stray curl behind his ear, whilst a snaking trail of scarlet matted his hair.

  “Truth,” he wheezed. “I was always going to lose for you.”

  How could he see me, when he was still so hidden to me?

  Suddenly, I was yanked backwards by my top and hung in Rahab’s grip. He glowered at Drake. “I believe you’ve shown us all, including our little apprentice here, your worth.”

  Drake reddened, as he scrambled to his knees. He held out his arms in front of him.

  It was only then that I saw the welts: faded bruises criss-crossed from wrist to shoulder.

  “We’re all closed today for flogging,” I snarled. “I win the three rewards, not punishments.”

  Rahab threw a cat o’nine tails between us: a rope whip with nine fierce tails of knotted cord, spiked with little metal balls. “You win the overall battle, but my son lost. Did you imagine it would be without punishment?” Did hoping on wishing stars count? “And I’ve judged sparring for centuries. You’ve both been the terror of armies. That was like kids wrestling. Whip him and be done with it.”

  “That’ll be a no way, Sauron.”

  Silence.

  Even the mages were standing to sweating attention now. Maybe I’d better tone down the cult leader baiting.

  “Pick it up.” Rahab’s irises flickered.

  I bit the inside of my cheek. “Not even if it was the One Ring.”

  Rahab booted the whip towards Drake. “Then it’s our Queen Apprentice’s turn.”

  My stomach turned.

  Don’t pick it up…

  When Drake gingerly lifted the rope handle, dangling the cords between his fingers like hair, I trembled from the hot betrayal flooding me.

  “How many lashes do you think our little apprentice earned, Duma?” Rahab asked casually.

  I knew a trick question when I heard it.

  Drake’s pink lips pursed. “I do not believe she has earned any, father. She bested me; I am the failure. If lashes are owed, then they’re owed to me alone.”

  The brave bastard.

  Yet, wasn’t that the true meaning of the Brotherhood? Defending each other, loyalty, sacrificing… Drake was my fam. He loved me, and I’d mourned him when I hadn’t known whether he’d been alive or dead.

  Did I love him as well?

  Rahab nodded. “As you wish.” Prick. “I shall deal with your chastisement this evening.” Drake dropped the whip, as if it’d sunk its fangs into him. “And you…?” He twirled around to the mages. “Shall the Queen of Apprentices rise?”

  Lazarus rises! Rises! Rises! And we will rise!

  The Lazarus Mages, like golden butterflies, shot into the air, beaten into a fervour by their own chanting: ecstatic, rapturous, and thunderous. They spiralled on flaming wings, whilst my own remained mutilated.

  Lazarus rises…?

  I tremored: Eden, the psycho leader of the vampire fanatics had shouted that at me. And when two fanatics on either side in a war chant the same riddle, it’s never a candy cartload of fun. Also, hadn’t the second line been that everyone would then say all our goodbyes?

  Maybe it’d just been a campfire story to scare vampire kiddies but it still made me shiver.

  Rahab’s grin was wild. “The Brotherhood have spoken. You’re honoured. You’re both to start Initiation Purge Week.” Drake’s horrified gasp did nothing to make me believe chocolate treats were part of the Purge. “Of course, there’s only one position to train as Lazarus Mage. We thrive on competition. At the end, the loser will be reduced to Underserving to serve the winning apprentice.”

  Drake drew himself to his feet, casting his father a furious glance, before stalking away.

  An Underserving? Lower even than apprentice…

  When I looked up, I caught Rebel’s glance from across the arena, where he’d been left kneeling. He smiled, but I could see the tightness around his eyes.

  What the hell was this Initiation?

  Purge didn’t sound like pleasure. More like hell.

  Delicate fingers clasped mine. I glanced at Mischief, who’d sidled to my side. Yet the way he stroked his thumb across the back of my hand, just like Rebel would’ve done had he been able to, didn’t reassure me. Because Mischief wouldn’t be comforting me if he wasn’t terrified himself.

  I’d won the Battle of the Bailey — and Mischief. But I’d humiliated Drake, forcing him into a contest for the only place as a mage. Now I had to take on a week of hellish initiations. I couldn’t ask Drake to throw the Purge because whoever lost, faced a lifetime as little more than a slave.

  4

  To find a genie is not to be its master but its slave. Because wishes always have a price

  I’d once found an antique tin lamp in a flea market on the way back from school. Although I was no thief, I’d stolen it for Gizem, my best mate at Jerusalem Children’s Home. The Two Orphan Muskateers, we were the storytellers; Gizem loved to scare the other kids with tales of jinn (and not the Disney singing sort).

  It’d become the tradition after that for each kid to take a turn holding the lamp like a holy relic, making a wish to the Jerusalem Jinn.

  I think we half-believed in the jinn ourselves within the year.

  Except, a wish to a jinn never went the way you meant it to, even we knew that. It was dangerous to tempt the dark magics.

  What had I wished…?

  For the angels to want me.

  I bastard got what I wished for, didn’t I?

  I spluttered, spitting out silky mouthfuls of hair.

  Oomph.

  The Blood Familiars — fox brothers, Blaze and Spark— wriggled more firmly onto me, squashing me under their heavy flanks.

  Blaze tipped back his head; his amber eyes met mine as they narrowed, then he let out a throaty gekkering.

  Thwap — Spark’s white-tipped tail swiped me across the nose.

  I cracked my head against the glass floor of my chamber in the Mirror Lodge. I groaned, as my wings were jostled; my accelerated angelic healing powers were already knitting together the broken bones, but they still ached. I i
gnored the molten slivers of pain, twisting to tickle the Blood Familiars’ sides.

  We tumbled in a thrash of fur, feathers, and tails, until I wormed out from underneath them, panting.

  “No fair,” Spark whined telepathically.

  “Life’s not fair, foxie, suck it up,” I panted, staring up at my dishevelled reflection in the glass ceiling.

  An orb of violet fire, like a magician’s ball, flared and sputtered in the centre of the room, casting it in a spectre glow: a box lit from the inside. Rough ropes, as if I was at sea, coiled from the ceiling, either to hold me, my Broken, Underserving, or some other beast: in this shifting castle of the impossible, it could be anything Rahab imagined.

  And wasn’t that a thought that buzzed with the happies?

  Blaze leapt onto my bed — a glass slab that was too close to Sleeping Beauty deathbed chic for comfort — and circled round and round nesting into the bronze velvet sheets. “We’ve bided a long while now, and you swore this time you’d bring at least one of our lads home with you.”

  Home…?

  How long had it been since I’d had a home? My apartment with Jade…? But then, Toben and his gang had still controlled it…

  Never…?

  Spark nudged me with his head, before grinning in submission. “Aye right, we miss them, Keeper.”

  I stroked my fingers across Spark’s ears, and he nuzzled closer. I stifled a yawn. When had I last slept?

  Sleep deprivation: Cult Brainwashing 101.

  I rolled my eyes at Blaze, who’d wrapped himself imperiously in my velvet sheets like a gown. “Easy, bro. I go — BOOM — with my new wizarding skills, turning the entire Legion into baby gargoyles, then burrow my way off this island because magic grounds all Angel Airlines, with a bloke strapped under each—"

  “Are you mocking me, lass?” Blaze growled into my mind.

  I winced. Maybe Mischief’s sarcasm was catching. “Turn down fox radio, I’m getting a migraine. And that’d be a yeah.” When Blaze’s eyes blinked with worry, my tone gentled. “I saw Rebel. He’s alive…safe.” They didn’t need to know about the way Rahab’s hand had curled possessively around his shoulder. “Plus, the reason I look like a sailor doll that got snapped in half, then dunked in the pond, is I fought for Mischief.”

  Spark let out an excited bark, his green eyes sparkling, before cringing low to the floor. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

  Mischief had himself a fanboy.

  “You freed him?” Blaze demanded.

  I shuffled my foot backwards and forwards. “What’s free mean anyway?”

  You should’ve known better than to trust wishes. The Mage is the Phoenix Jinn: he burns those he tricks to ash.

  You’re done with the Scaredy-pants routine then?

  I’ll be wearing them in reinforced sequins every moment we’re stuck with these angelic assholes. You should be too.

  How are your wishes working out for you?

  Wish three? To prove myself…? I had to destroy Drake to do it. And I set us both up for this psycho Initiation Purge Week.

  Dick move, Feathery-love.

  Plus, Lazurus rises chanted in ecstatic fervour seems less Aslan and more Loki.

  Then let me serve you some space Viking realness: the dead rise, when the Mage resurrects angels as slaves.

  Yet you’ve only seen one terrifying sliver of the Legion’s truth.

  There’ll come a time, when you’ll have to decide whether the rewards the Mage grants, outweigh the price he’ll demand.

  And you haven’t even seen Wish Two yet…

  A wide screen to the side of the chamber, which glittered with amber shards like a Phoenix bursting into flames, shook.

  Splash — water sprayed from behind the screen, followed by an elegant foot and ankle pointing out in a striptease.

  “Enough of the free semantics, look you,” a teasing voice called. Then a wet — naked — Broken, Ceri, crawled from the bath behind the screen towards me. Less like a slave, however, and more like he was the auburn-haired lion, and I was the prey. He grinned as he shook his hair, raining pearly bubbles across the mirrors and to their sizzling death on the violet fire. “I ran this bath for you, and you haven’t even joined me. Rude, and the waste of all this soapy good time fun.”

  Hell, why did he have to be so pretty?

  Ceri had been delivered to me as my personal slave on the first night that I’d been brought to the castle, and in case I hadn’t been able to read between the lines of why, Ceri had been quick to read it out to me in smutty detail.

  I rolled my eyes. “Do most Broken get in the baths they run for their mages?”

  Ceri rolled his shoulder, whose skin was bronzed as caramel. Yet he had only stumps where his wings should’ve been: as a slave, they’d been cut off. “Do I look like most Broken?”

  I flushed. “Screw that, you’re my Lion Boy.”

  He gave a light laugh, licking my thigh.

  I shivered: bad thoughts, down girl. Then he slithered up my body, as I clasped my arms around his slippery waist. “Just a quick wash to get clean, then dirty…” He murmured.

  He lifted his arms, grasping onto the ropes above his head and arching his back. His chest stretched, pushing himself out to me: an offering.

  I gasped.

  For the first time, this wasn’t a bloke bound but willing.

  When I ghosted my hands down Ceri’s chest, his breath hitched. I circled his nipple until it peaked, then sucked it; it tasted of ginger, as hot and spicy as Ceri smelt. He moaned; his prick was hard and straining. Unexpectedly tender, I trailed my hand up his neck, towards his cheek. He turned his head, pressing his lips to the back of my hand.

  Just like Gwyn and Haman: the other Broken slaves.

  Had Ceri been trained in the same tricks…?

  What the hell was I allowing myself to do again?

  The semantics of free…? How was Ceri any freer to choose what he did with me? He’d been gifted to me as a Broken, just as Gwyn once had: my sex slave…

  I recoiled, shaking my head. “Not going to happen.”

  Ceri held onto the ropes for a moment longer, examining me with a shrewd look, before letting go. He pouted. “Why won’t you play with me? I refuse to believe I revolt you because I have eyes, see.” He jiggled his soapy arse, and I sniggered. “And here’s a secret: I just want a good shag, isn’t it?”

  “Kinky bastard angels,” I muttered as I backed away to the wall. “And you enjoying sex isn’t a secret.”

  He stalked after me. “It’s really not.”

  “We’re not flirting anymore. The Non-Flirt Zone has been reached.”

  “Are you certain?” Ceri rested his hand against the wall, pressing his naked body against me, as he tilted his head in thought.

  “We’re not doing anything…” I gestured with my hands, whilst Ceri blinked at me in faux innocence; I was so adding him to my List of Asses to Kick. “…Naughty together because there’s no we.”

  “Don’t worry, I can solo flirt. You should try it some time. I’m the Solo Flirtster. But there’s no we…?”

  Smack — dramatically, Ceri collapsed to the floor.

  Then he cracked open an eye to see if his death scene had my full attention. I crossed my arms, glaring down at the Drama King.

  Spark nosed Ceri with a whimper.

  Ceri winked at him. “Tragic, to die so young and beautiful…but at least I have my wank bank to console me.”

  “Try again, bro.” I snatched Ceri by the arm, yanking him up, whilst he giggled. When his head nestled against my chest, his auburn hair brushing against my skin, I couldn’t help asking, “How’d you survive in this nightmare sect?”

  When Ceri stiffened, I stroked the curl of his ear and regretted saying a word.

  “I didn’t,” he whispered at last. “Maybe I’m a rebel Broken, see, like you’re the rebel princess? When we first heard about that…I hoped I wasn’t alone…” He snuggled closer, and his words were almost lost. “O
r maybe I’m just faulty. That’s why they gave me to the freaky cold magicked Glory.” Then he drew back from me, his eyes wide. “I don’t—"

  I caught his chin. “Ever thought you’re the only one who’s good enough for royalty?”

  This seemed to short-circuit his flirty-tongue; Ceri froze, staring at me in awed shock. Finally, he managed to grin. “If this is a dream, then I’ll take it. Ceri: by Royal Approval.” He slammed his hand against the glass. “Not a failure, shameful, let-down…”

  “Chosen,” I repeated firmly. Hell, it was too close and raw. Every shadowed doubt that’d played on my own thoughts, here the Legion used them to control. “Saved for the queen.”

  “Then long live the Queen!” Ceri bounced on his toes. Then he blanched, backing away from the wall.

  I frowned, twisting to see what’d freaked him out.

  Wish Number Two: you asked to see your brother. In the world of warped wishes, you watch your words, hooker.

  Now you’ll see him… Yet how much crueller is it to see but not be able to touch?

  The mirror wall no longer reflected back my own room but the room on the other side of the Lodge.

  True to his word when he’d first brought me to the castle, Rahab had placed me with my half-brother, just never in the same room. Now I’d got my second wish: I could see my brother, but only through the one-way mirror on my wall.

  I clanged against the mirror, sticking my palms flat against it, whilst I stared through at the other side.

  The Looking Glass room was identical, except that the sheets on the bed were golden and lying on his side amongst them was my brother.

  I pushed myself onto tiptoe, grinning; my mouth was dry, and my pulse raced. My magic stirred, striking against the glass to reach out to him, just as the shadows danced inside, until I could’ve twirled Ceri around from the fluttering feeling, if I hadn’t been so stuck to the picture in front of me.

  Even if I could only see brunet tresses cascading to my brother’s shoulder — and a snowy peak of skin.

  Bruised skin.

  I bit my lip hard. The hint of shoulder above the sheet was swollen and purple.