by E. M. Knight
I shake my head. “You’re telling me that you saw her, and somehow, you’re still alive? She would have killed you the moment she was near!”
“Well, I guess I’m evidence to the contrary,” he tells me.
“How did you survive? What reason would she have for letting you live? To let any of us live?” I narrow my eyes. “Is it because you inherited rule of the pack and stood in Chandler’s place?”
James snorts. “Absolutely not. She let me live, and the rest of you go unaccosted, because I cut a deal with her.”
“Cierra would never make a deal with a vampire,” I say.
“Not true. She wouldn’t make a deal with you.”
“So what was this deal, then?” I ask.
James lowers his voice. “If I tell you, you cannot reveal it to anybody. Not Victoria. Certainly not Paul. Not Sylvia, or Liana, or April, or any of the pack. They will only learn of it if and when I decide it necessary.”
“Then why are you willing to tell me?” I question.
“Because you have history with her,” he admits. “And because… I respect your intellect.”
I bark a laugh. “That’s a first.”
“I believe you can give me better advice and council than anybody else,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about this long and hard, Smithson. I know that we were once enemies. But the things poor leaders don’t understand is that you do not need to keep enemies when you can convert them to friends. Or at least,” he hedges, “allies.”
“We’ve already crossed that bridge,” I remind him.
“Yes, sure, right,” he says. “But not in full. This is my olive branch to you.” He sticks out his hand. “Are we allies?”
I look at him… then clasp his hand and firmly shake it.
“You speak a lot of sense when you’re not distracted,” I say.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He glances back. Victoria and Paul are waiting in silence, far away.
“So what is this deal you made?”
He takes a deep breath. “Cierra wants to build an army.”
I laugh. “Doesn’t everyone these days?”
“No, but she wants to build it, consisting of vampires, and when its purpose has been served, destroy them all.”
“Like that’s news,” I grumble.
“Cierra wants me as her puppet,” he continues. “Just like she attempted with you, I believe. That bone shard Victoria extracted from under your skin? Cierra was going to do something similar to me. If I let her do it, I’d have become her slave.”
I narrow my eyes. “How did you stop her?”
“I managed to convince her she needs me.” He drops his voice. “She regretted losing her youth, her beauty, her vigor. I told her that if she were made a vampire, she could have it all back.”
“You offered her the Dark Gift?” I ask, horrified.
“Yes.”
“But she would never do that. She hates vampires with a passion. Unless,” my eyes widen. “Unless you offered her a cure…”
James steps back. “Bingo.”
“Such a thing doesn’t exist.”
“I convinced her it did.”
“So now you’re reeling, trying desperately to figure it out before you can be caught in your lie.” I drum my fingers over my leg. “How much time do you have?”
“I told her thirty days.”
“Thirty days!” I exclaim. “Damn, James, does your arrogance know no bounds? And what do you think Cierra will do when you don’t deliver?”
“Who says I won’t?” he asks. “You heard Paul.”
“I did, but…” I exhale a deep breath. “James, none of it is proven. You think Cierra will risk something like that, putting her life on the line?”
“It doesn’t matter what she decides,” he says. “I have no intention of fulfilling my part of the bargain.”
“Then what are you aiming at?”
“I want to lure Cierra in. My Father had the ability to see into a vampire’s heart, to tell if he was telling the truth.”
“You think the Soren’s all possess that ability?”
“With magic in the mix, blood magic, who knows what’s possible? All I know is that when I meet Cierra next, I will hold knowledge of the cure in my head.”
“And then what?”
“We set a trap. We lure her in and shut the door. Victoria confirmed the potential of my strength.”
“Your strength in what?” I ask, even though I already know.
“My strength,” he answers, “in magic.”
I grunt, push off the wall, and stride toward the others.
“If you think you can best a witch who has been practicing magic for longer than you’ve been alive, then your delusions have no bounds. You think the man in the Crusaders will somehow get you up to speed to the male side of magic in thirty days?”
“Less than that,” James interjects. “We’ve been traveling.”
“Right,” I scoff. “I wish you the best of luck, James. This is a suicide mission.”
“Not if we can involve the Order.”
I miss a step. “What?”
He takes my shoulder and turns me around. “You said your organization has facilities and compounds all over the world. Well, look at us now! We hold Paul in the palm of our hand. Together, the Crusaders and the Order can be united. Then not even Cierra will stand in our way!”
“You’ve got an awful lot of confidence in this plan…”
“Why don’t you? I know what the Order has been up to all these years. While the Crusaders worked with witches in the past, the Order was dedicated to eliminating them! To destroying all the supernatural things in the world. Don’t think I haven’t heard the legends of Witchbane.”
“Witchbane is destroyed,” I spit, a flash of anger raging through me. “Destroyed by the very witch you aim to take on!”
“She cannot be ignored, Smithson. There is time pressure now.”
“That you cast on yourself!”
“On us all,” he says. “On all the vampires bound to me. That now includes you.”
I look at him, blinking, shoving my deepest emotions all the way down.
“I know you want revenge,” James insists. “Once you wanted it against me. Now you crave it against Cierra. When did you become so downtrodden? What happened to the Smithson my mother appointed as Captain Commander? I can’t imagine you did that out of altruism or loyalty to The Haven. You had your reasons. You wanted control. I am offering it to you!”
“All you’re offering me is a way back to misery,” I mutter. “A way back to emphasizing my failure. My failure with Cierra, with Witchbane…”
He turns back and slams me into the wall. “This is not,” he growls, “the Smithson that I took on.”
From the corner of my eye I see Victoria start toward us. I hold up a hand to let her know I’m okay.
Though I doubt she was coming because of concern for my condition.
“Fine,” I say. “Fine, you want to know why I haven’t called the Order?”
“Tell me,” James says.
“Because I failed them,” I hiss. “I failed my men. I let so many be killed. They will not have the same loyalty to me that they once did.”
“Your members all knew Cierra’s strength. They knew—”
“Yes,” I say softly, “but almost none knew Cierra was there.”
James blinks. “What?”
“That’s the real reason,” I admit. “If I let them know it was a witch that caused the damage, and that I was harboring her there for years, they would all turn on me. They would revolt.”
“So lie,” I say. “Tell them it was an experiment gone wrong. There actually was an explosion.”
“Very few would believe that,” I mutter. “Even now, some of the other leaders have already examined the wreckage. They would know that magic was the cause.”
“Is your damn pride so high that you cannot admit you made a mistake? They will forgive you. If t
hey don’t, you can get rid of them. They are all still under you.”
“The structure of power within the Order is a little more complicated than that,” I say sourly.
“So change it,” James demands. “I want the Order on my side. The Crusaders are already there. You know the strength we will hold if the two groups are united.”
I hesitate. Of course, I see the potential for great success in this place. Even with Cierra tangled in the middle of it.
But I also see the potential for grave and enormous failure.
James considers me for a quiet moment. And then he whispers, “You’re afraid.”
My head jolts up. “What?”
“You are scared of what might come.”
“Never in my life,” I snarl, “have I been accused of cowardice.”
“You’re scared because you failed once with Cierra,” James presses, leering into my eyes. “She’s implanted in you some psychological block. Was it Witchbane? Was it the loss of the sword that did it?”
“It has nothing to do with the sword,” I hiss.
“Yet I see you reach for it, trying to feel the hilt that isn’t there.”
“Never,” I scowl.
“You don’t realize you’re doing it,” James continues, battering the point home. “I’ve seen it. But your conscious mind does not.”
“This is lunacy,” I say.
James turns back. “Let’s get Victoria over here.”
He calls her name.
Paul starts toward us, too, but James tells him to stay where he is.
He complies, almost too easily.
“Victoria,” James says when she arrives. “Smithson has a question for you.”
I frown. “What?”
“About the sword,” he prompts. “Remember?” He softens his tone. “I don’t want to ask so I don’t influence her answer.”
“Fine,” I say. “Victoria, have you ever, even once, seen me reach for the sword I once carried at my side?”
“All the time,” she says, without a trace of hesitation. “I assumed it was just force of habit.”
I blanche.
James gets a triumphant look on his face. “See?”
I touch the side of my head. I’ll admit, I haven’t felt like myself at all since the encounter with Cierra, but I thought I’d done a good job covering it up.
Apparently not.
“You see?” James says. “You hesitate to do what you can, to achieve what you’re capable of, because of fear. And you don’t even realize it’s holding you back.”
Those deep emotions I’ve kept shoved far, far down threaten to boil over to the surface.
“Victoria,” James asks. “Do you think there’s any way that shard you extracted could have caused more permanent damage?”
She thinks about it for a moment. “From the point of view of a witch? No. I don’t think so. I got rid of everything that was poisoning him.”
“What about psychologically?” James asks. “Could there have been effects beyond the physical?”
“Well, of course,” Victoria says. “But I don’t think Smithson would fall victim to them. He’s seen too much of the world.”
“He didn’t know he was reaching for his sword.”
Victoria looks at me. “Really?”
I grunt and give a curt nod.
She narrows her eyes. “Come closer,” she asks. She holds her hands up and takes hold of both sides of my head.
“What are you doing?” James interrupts.
“Shh,” Victoria hisses. “This will take all the ability I have.”
A sudden light explodes around her. A power surges into my body. It’s foreign. It alarms me. I try to jerk back, but the weaker vampire has my head in a vice-like grip.
A cold chill rises from the base of my feet. It runs up my spine, coating everything. It feels that if I move my arms, they would snap like crusted twigs in the dead of winter.
It crawls up and up and up, but when it gets past my neck, it cannot envelop my skull.
Victoria gasps. “You’re right,” she tells James. “There is a residue!”
I’m incapable of even taking a breath.
“Can you remove it?” James asks.
Victoria concentrates. “I can… try.”
“Do it!” he insists. “Do it. I need Smithson back to who he was before.”
Victoria grips my head tighter. I feel as if I’m a spectator looking out at the world through somebody else’s eyes. The cold intensifies to the point I stop being able to feel my limbs. Yet that little ball of heat in my skull, in my mind, seems immune to it.
“Smithson,” Victoria stresses. “You have to let go!”
I have no clue what she’s talking about.
“It’s in your head, man!” she says. More of that otherworldly power flows out from her into me. “If you don’t release, I can’t pull it out of you!”
Terror as I’ve never known comes to life inside me. Is she talking about those suppressed emotions?
The cold continues getting worse, growing around the ball of heat, trying to extinguish it, but failing.
“I cannot cleanse you if you fight me!” Victoria hisses through gritted teeth. Blood sweat forms on her forehead, she is concentrating so hard. “Let go, Smithson! Let go of the block.”
I… can’t! I try to say. But the cold has hold of my entire body, making it impossible to form the sounds.
The light around Victoria flickers. She’s running out of steam.
James spits out a stream of curses.
“Beatrice is as good as dead if you don’t do it!” he snarls.
For some reason, hearing her name aloud shocks me. My mind flashes to a vision of her beautiful face.
The moment it does, that cold sweeps past the defenses of the heat and envelops it completely. A maelstrom of emotions tears through me—anger, betrayal, sadness, grief—and then somehow, they get sucked into the void of the cold and simply cease to exist.
The light around Victoria dies. She gasps and falls back.
James catches her before she can hit the floor.
“Did you do it?” he asks her. “Were you able to remove the taint?”
A new sort of power, a power I had before, a personal strength that I had forgotten, flows over me. In a moment of absolute clarity I see how weak and miserable I had been, how cowed, and rage at Cierra for turning me to that takes hold of my entire body.
“Oh, yes,” I tell James, my voice a low and deep warning growl, as it always sounds when I am completely determined and dedicated to one task. “It worked.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Phillip
The Yukon
As Raul sets the plane down in a mountain valley in the Yukon, I give him a little nod of appreciation.
“Here’s to a successful flight,” I say. “Reminds me a little of the time we let Eleira escape and had to rescue her from The Crypts, don’t you think? Ah, nothing like old times. The two of us, working together, with none of this animosity that mars our relationship now. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Quiet,” Raul grunts. “You keep babbling and I’ll leave you behind.”
“Remind me again who the stronger vampire is among us, brother dearest,” I say casually, looking at my nails.
“Eleira granted me command,” he snarls. “Don’t test it.”
I hold my hands up in an expression of innocence. “I would never presume to do anything so untoward.”
He turns his head and fixes me with a long, level look.
“You just love being the thorn in my side, don’t you, Phillip?”
“I have absolutely no idea what could have given you that impression,” I say, pushing myself up. “Should we go out? From what Felix told me, the search of the mountains will not be an easy one.”
“Why don’t you tell me just what it is Felix told you?” he suggests.
“And render myself useless in this whole expedition?” I shake my head. “No. Absolutely n
ot.”
“At the very least,” he says through gritted teeth, “you could tell me what our final destination looks like.”
“It’ll be a burial ground,” I say breezily. “There’ll be some marks on the rocks depicting the preternatural nature of the place. Past that? Well, we’ll have to find it and see for ourselves.”
“Sounds lovely,” he mutters.
“You don’t entirely trust me, do you?”
Raul stares at me, the incredulity clear on his face.
“How can you even ask that? After all the things you’ve done, you should be prisoner in our cells, not walking free in the outside world!”
“Lucky for me, then, that you’re not in charge,” I smirk. “What would Eleira think of you, if she knew you harbored such an opinion?”
“Eleira knows full well what I think,” he mutters, brushing past me. He stops at the door and looks back at me. “Are you coming?”
“It’s still light outside,” I say with a smirk. “Are you sure you’re capable of handling the sun in your state?”
Raul scoffs, opens the cabin door, and jumps down to the ground.
Grumbling under my breath, I follow him out.
As soon as the sun’s rays make contact with my skin, an intense pain takes over. I grimace for a second and then smooth my features and offer Raul a smile.
I spread my arms to the sun, satiating in the pain it brings. “Nice out here. Don’t you think?”
He ignores the remark and points out a crop of trees in the distance. “We can take shelter there while we wait for nightfall.”
He takes off, racing to the spot. I follow him, close on his heels.
When we reach the shadowed area a great sense of relief takes me. I do my best not to give evidence of the feeling.
“Right,” Raul says, looking this way and that. “We are miles away from the nearest human settlement. Flare your senses, tell me what you feel.”
I narrow my eyes. “Why can’t you?”
He smiles sweetly. “Like you said on the plane. You’re the stronger one.”
“You’re just blowing smoke up my ass,” I mutter.
Still, I do as he asks. I open my mind as far as it can go, scanning the surroundings for a trace of life—
Without warning, and with my guard down, Raul crashes into me. I snap back to myself, but not fast enough to stop Raul from clamping some sort of collar over my neck.
