Bound: A Vampire Romance (Marked by Night Book 2)

by Sara Thorn

  “For those of you who have gone into these rooms before, you know that sometimes you can feel like you’re in a life-or-death situation inside some of these games. Well, now we really have a life-or-death situation, and we need your help. It’s not a game, and you’ll be risking your life to come with us. But I can promise you something that most people here in our world will never see or know about. I can promise you an otherworldly experience and an adventure that you’d never thought possible. I can also tell you that there are a lot of good people on the other side of this world who need your help. If you don’t want to come, now is the time to leave.”

  Cassius and I looked around, but all of the people David had brought with him stayed firmly planted in their spots.

  “Okay, follow me,” I said as I led them into one of the rooms. I left them in there and closed the door, and Cassius sent them through the entry point to Mystreuce.

  “It’s a start,” he said. “Now, we just need to do that at every entry point around the world within the next twenty-four hours.”

  The hours flew by at a blurred and exhausting pace. There was no way we could get to all of them, but we got to as many as possible. By the time a full day and night had passed, Cassius said that it was time to get back to Mystreuce and see how many people we had collected to our cause. Even if there weren’t enough, it was too risky to stay away from Mystreuce any longer. The humans there with Bree would be confused and start to feel trapped, and no one had any idea what Athan would try to do next or when he would make his next move.

  When we got back to the castle, Bree was busily feeding and talking to all of the humans who had assembled. It wasn’t a bad turnout, definitely more people than Athan had, which would be necessary if we were going to try to pit humans against vampires.

  “Everyone,” Cassius said as he stood at the head of the table and projected his voice to quiet all those that sat around the room, “thank you for coming. I assume that Bree has given you a basic idea of why you’re here and where here is. I also expect that she has told you that you are free to leave.” He paused to look around the room until he saw that no one wanted to get up and walk out. “What we are up against will not be easy to defeat. But I believe with the right training and the right purpose in our heads and hearts, that we can be victorious.”

  “Will we be able to stay here?” a guy from the crowd called back. “If we win this battle that Bree has told us about. Can we stay here in this world, or will we need to go back?”

  Cassius looked thoughtfully out at the sea of faces. He was surprised to be asked that question. “You may stay here for as long as you like if I succeed in regaining my rightful reign. It is my vision that humans, vampires, and fae can live together in peace. If we succeed, you are welcome to stay here forever.”

  The word “forever” obviously had a different meaning to a mortal than it did to Cassius, but still, he got the point across well enough.

  “When is the battle?” David asked.

  I looked up when I recognized his voice and saw him sitting toward the far end of the table. “It will be either when we are ready, or when my wicked half-brother gains the capability to reach and attempt to storm this castle. I do not know which of those things will be first.”

  “Well then,” said a woman with a long, blond ponytail that stretched down the length of her back. “There’s no time to lose. When do we start training?”

  Cassius looked at me and smiled. “We did it,” he said. “Your people came to help. We might even stand a chance now.”

  I reached my hand to him and wove my fingers between his. “We absolutely do.”

  Cassius looked up at everyone with a renewed determination. “Now!” he said with zeal and purpose. “We start now. Anyone who wants to train now, follow me.”

  Almost everyone got up to follow Cassius as he led them out toward the open atrium in the castle where there was enough room to train them all at once. I couldn’t get an accurate count, but there were hundreds.

  “Do you think his plan will work?” Bree asked me after the last person had left.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You’re the seer; what do you think?”

  “I think it will work.”

  Whether or not she actually saw a victory or was just trying to be hopeful and positive, it didn’t matter. This was the best chance we had, and I was going to throw all of my energy behind making sure it worked.

  I lingered at the edge of the courtyard and watched for a few minutes before heading back inside.

  “How did they do?” I asked Cassius as he climbed into bed with me later that evening.

  “They did fine,” he said. “Better than I had expected actually. There are enough weapons in the armory here to equip them all. I think their biggest asset is that they aren’t afraid, which I find strange. Even within myself, I have always believed my human side to be more weak and fearful than my vampire side, but you continue to show me that I am wrong at almost every turn.”

  “Me?” I asked. “I wasn’t even out there at the training.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant that you continue to show me that the part of me I always felt was dominant, strong, and possibly the most terrifying, might not be the more prominent part after all.”

  I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking about how scared he was when I saw him uncorking the wine bottles with his fangs. I guess even our toughest, most monstrous sides can be afraid, too.

  “Speaking of which,” he added. “Why weren’t you at the training? You should be training with them, too, so that I can continue to teach you how to be a better fighter to protect yourself in case I’m not around.”

  I pouted dramatically as I laid next to him in bed and tilted my face up so that he could see. “You said you would always be with me.”

  “I will,” Cassius said as he kissed the top of my head. “I just meant in case anything happened to me again.”

  I didn’t want to think about what had happened while he was chained up in Athan’s stronghold. The image of him at Athan’s mercy made my skin crawl.

  Cassius held me closer. He didn’t want to think about it, either.

  I didn’t tell Cassius the real reason that I wasn’t at the training. I didn’t want him to worry or be distracted by thinking he needed to comfort me. So instead, I walked the numerous inside corridors of the castle alone with my thoughts and in the company of my guilt about leaving Quinn behind. At night, I had nightmares of his face burned into my mind and the searing flesh around his neck, wrists, and ankles that never stopped. I saw in my head, the blackish purple on the tips of his fingers grow and spread until he looked more like rotten ink than flesh. And I worried that by the time we were ready to raid Athan’s stronghold, there would be nothing of Quinn left to save. His sister’s death was on my hands, possibly not directly so, but enough. Now Quinn’s death would be my fault as well.

  I attended the next several days of training and pushed my body to its limit as I worked to be a better, faster, stronger fighter. Cassius was impressed and pushed me even harder. He was an excellent warrior and an excellent trainer, too. After several days of intense sparing practice, we were almost ready to attack Athan and his men.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was hard to tell that I was inside a dream again, or more accurately, a nightmare. I felt as though I were simply awake and walking around inside the castle. Except for this time, the hallways and staircases led up higher than I had explored before. So high that I found myself on a rooftop viewing area that looked out from one of the golden spires that framed the castle’s corners. I heard the sound of air moving, a sort of powerful swish like a gust of wind, and when I looked up, I saw the great, black raven flying overhead. It was closer than I had seen it before, which revealed how large the bird actually was. And just as I was thinking about its size, the raven came and landed on the rooftop next to me.

  At first, it startled me simply because of how massive it was. Then, I was in
trigued by how beautiful the glossy sheen on its feathers reflected the overcast light coming from between the clouds. It wasn’t until I saw the tips of its feathers as it fanned out its wings that I noticed the edges were a deep, dark purple and not black.

  I jolted straight up in bed and tried to catch my breath, then scared myself when I couldn’t seem to get my lungs to work to get any air. Cassius immediately sat up next to me, and I stared at him with what I imagined was a look of sheer terror. He wrapped his arms around me and held me against his chest as he rubbed my back.

  “Shh, it’s okay. Breathe, Mara. It was just a dream.”

  His voice coated my thoughts like a salve, and I listened again for his heartbeat, the sound of which always seemed to ground me when I felt myself getting pulled somewhere that I didn’t want to be.

  “The raven is Quinn,” I said once I had finally caught my breath.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I just do. I had a dream about him, actually about the raven. But it’s him, Cassius. And he’s in trouble. We can’t wait any longer; we need to attack Athan’s stronghold now.”

  “Okay,” he said as he ran his hands across my arms to stop them from shaking. “We’ll launch the attack tomorrow.”

  I hoped that it wouldn’t be too late already. Something was wrong, something was happening to Quinn, and I just hoped that it wouldn’t pull him under before we were able to get to him.

  In the morning, Cassius assembled everyone and told them the plan. He would lead our human army to Athan’s fortress, and we would attack at full strength without hesitation. The daylight and number of our troops would be to our advantage. The fact that all of us, aside from Cassius and Bree, were humans would be our disadvantage. Some of the people here would surely die, and others may be captured. But our singular goal was a victory that would end Athan’s cruel reign once and for all. We would need to either capture Athan and Dregon or kill them.

  As soon as everyone was suited up and armed with weapons, we headed out. Cassius, Bree, and I walked in front of the assemblage of makeshift warriors and began the long journey back toward Athan’s citadel. At times, during our trek forward, I saw the swooping shadow of the raven flying overhead. With all of us amassed together, there was no way that the bird didn’t spot us. But whether or not Quinn would report our arrival back to Athan was uncertain.

  We were nearly there the night before we reached our destination, and as we sat by the small bonfire while the others were either resting or talking quietly among themselves, I remembered something that Quinn had once told me.

  “Cassius?” I asked as I rested up against his chest with his arms wrapped around the front of my stomach. “Is it true that the fae sometimes get stuck in their shapeshifted form?”

  “I’ve never known any that have gotten completely stuck for any long length of time,” he answered. “Just Sen, with her cat-eyes. But even that was just one lingering piece of her animal form, not her entire self. Why do you ask, are you worried about Quinn being stuck as a raven?”

  “No,” I said as I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s what I’m worried about for him.” I wasn’t sure if that might be it or not, but then once I had asked the question, I started to feel as though that wasn’t it.

  “Maybe it’s the shadow magic that worries you,” Cassius said. “Extended, forced use of shadow magic against a fae’s will is enough to cause irrevocable damage.”

  Bree looked up from across the bonfire and shuddered. “Poor guy,” she said. “I don’t know who he is, but I take pity on anyone put in that position. For a fae, that is the equivalent of torture.”

  “Do you know anything about shadow magic?” I asked her.

  “No,” she said. “But I would like to. Being able to see things into the future is a rare talent among the fae, too, and sometimes I felt ostracized by it. People would want to know what I saw until I would tell them, and it ended up being something horrible that they didn’t want to hear. That was when many started saying that it was more of a curse than talent and that I should use it sparingly or not at all. One person once even compared it to wielding shadow magic. So I guess I’d be curious to see what the big deal is about shadow magic. I’m sure it can’t be quite as bad and dangerous as they say it is. Everything has a balance to it.”

  “Well, I would definitely wait until you are more stable with your magic before you go trying to search out shadow magic mentors. Unpredictability combined with dark magic is not the best mix,” Cassius said.

  “True,” Bree agreed as she curled up by the fire.

  In the first light of morning, beneath the slight safeguard of daylight, we made our final approach to Athan’s stronghold. The guards outside spotted us immediately from their covered towers, and the mouths to the tunnels leading down into his dwelling were immediately swarmed with his men. We may have outnumbered them, but not by much. Not enough, I didn’t think, to secure a victory against the vampires.

  As soon as we neared the entrances, the fighting began, and the clash of metal against metal was outshone only by the screams and groans of anyone who was struck down. The raven that had been circling overhead during our approach had disappeared as we pushed our way farther into the caverns beneath the ground. Had it not been for Cassius’s impressive training, we would have already lost by now. Once we had gotten through the initial corridors and into the open areas of below, the battle spread out, and we tried desperately to hold our own. Cassius kept me close to him, and he kept an eye on Bree during the fighting as well. David seemed to be almost as good a fighter as he was a dancer. But every time it appeared that we had cleared a few inches of ground, more of Athan’s men seemed to pour out of adjoining tunnels and rooms to engage us. I was starting to see, and I thought Cassius was, too, that we may be able to hold our position for a while, but we weren’t likely going to win.

  Horror gripped my nerves as I thought about being captured by Athan again and thoughts of what he would do to Cassius and me clawed at my brain. Just as I was starting to become immobilized by fear, I saw them—Athan and Dregon…and Quinn. Cassius saw them, too, and he pulled me to his side as we made our way through the fight to engage them. Quinn stared at me with hollow eyes that looked like they belonged more to the bird than him. His shackles were off, probably because they needed him to be able to help in the battle, but the scars of where they had been remained etched into his skin.

  Just as Athan and Dregon were readying to draw their swords to launch at us, something happened. Quinn raised his hands into the air with his palms turned upward into half-circles that looked like little cups he had made with his fingers. I was horrified to see that the purplish magical decay had now almost reached the middle of his forearms. His green eyes looked like faraway torches as they set ablaze and as he opened his mouth, words that I had never heard spilled forth.

  Athan looked to see what Quinn was doing, and Dregon attempted to strike down Quinn with a sweeping movement of his blade, but it was too late. Suddenly, all of the weapons the vampires held turned to liquid and spilled from their hands into a deluge on the ground. In a matter of seconds, the entirety of his forces became defenseless and at our mercy.”

  “What’s happening?” I whispered to Cassius.

  Bree answered for him, in a voice that sounded like she was standing in the presence of the divine. “It’s elemental magic,” she said in awe. “Your friend has combined shadow magic with the magic of the elements, something I have never even known to be possible. The vampire’s weapons were all made out of iron and ore, and he has just melted it all.”

  Our weapons, however, were made out of stone and steel, and they were all still held solidly in our hands.

  “Surrender,” Cassius shouted at Athan. “Anyone who does not surrender will be killed where they stand.”

  I looked around the caverns, and all of Athan’s men and women began to raise their hands into the air and drop to their knees. The only one who didn’t was Dregon. He
tried to run. He didn’t get more than a single step away, though, before Athan grabbed him by his shirtsleeve and swung him onto his back. Dregon looked up at him like a turtle whose shell had just been turned over.

  “Where are you going?” Athan growled at him as Dregon tried to scurry to his knees and get up. Athan planted his boot firmly on Dregon’s chest to keep him pinned in place. “You are a coward that you would flee a battle instead of accepting the consequence of loss.”

  “I am not a coward, you fool,” Dregon spat up at him. “I know when to try to save and protect my own interests for a later time.”

  “Say that again?” Athan snarled at him slowly. “Your interests?”

  Dregon glared at him and realized that he had let his loose tongue slip and exposed his disloyalty to Athan. In an instant, Athan reached into the top of his boot and pulled out a knife, one made of steel instead of iron. My guess was that he was saving that knife to plunge into Cassius’s heart at the first chance he got close enough to do so. But Dregon’s betrayal had so enraged him that his anger and pride got the better of him once more, as Athan sank the knife through Dregon’s skull squarely between his eyes.

  Everyone stood, staring to see what Athan would do next and whether or not he had any other hidden blades to pull out and plunge into skulls.

  “Consider that my last courtesy to you, brother,” Athan sneered. “I would have preferred that to be your lifeless eyes looking up at me from beneath my boot right now, but some things just need to be taken care of when the matters present themselves.”

  “Will you surrender to me?” Cassius asked his half-brother. “Or should I just kill you now to make this easier on both of us?”

  Athan had no intention of making things easy on anyone. He held out his wrists as Bree conjured a pair of shackles to bind him.

  As Cassius pulled Athan alongside him and the others gathered up the prisoners from the battle and freed the fae from their place of bondage, I went to Quinn.