The room grew silent.
Nosh cocked his head. “You said viable a couple times. I assume they need both a heart and a brain for this to work, right?” Nero smiled at his intended line of deduction, waving a hand.
“Deganawida only listed vampires that he had beheaded, not those he staked through the heart.” He paused for a moment. “Because he sewed the heads back on before burying them.”
Isabella gagged.
I glanced out the window, peering up at the sky. I blinked. “The clouds are entirely gone. All of them.”
Dr. Stein rushed over, staring up at the sky. Her face paled and she whipped out her phone. After a minute of growing tension, she frowned. “That’s impossible. A storm can’t simply disappear out of nowhere between one minute and the next.”
I glanced up at the sky again. “Well, nature doesn’t concur,” I said with a frustrated growl. “Did we just do all this work for nothing?” I demanded. If so, I couldn’t do anything about it. I would just have to focus on my other plan and hope for the best.
Nosh cleared his throat, turning away from the window with a pensive frown. “You just need lightning, right? Plugging them into the outlets on the walls isn’t enough power, I assume?”
Dr. Stein recoiled, offended by his relegation of her science to plugging a wire into a wall.
“Just trying to understand, Dr. Stein,” he reassured her, looking skittish.
She nodded brusquely. “No engine or power source I have tested has quite the same effect as the wild, erratic qualities of lightning,” she said longingly. “Something about its unpredictable nature made it more successful than the other power sources I tried. It is wild at heart, and we are trying to bring some of that spontaneity back to a living corpse. Perhaps it is a little bit of Lady Luck fiddling with the genetic dice of existence.” I didn’t know any Lady Luck, but I knew about Hermes, and doubted he would have bet on our odds. He might also be one of the Olympians desiring to kill me. “It’s why I chose the Statue of Liberty. They call her Lady Liberty, which was about as close to Lady Luck as I could get. And we’re liberating bodies. Giving these poor souls a second chance—another hand at the card table of life.”
Everyone was staring at her, surprised by her very unscientific explanation, and then to see a nostalgic smile on her face.
She noticed and abruptly snapped out of it, glaring at the men in the room. “My daddy used to gamble. Lost everything on a bad roll of the dice.” She glared out the window, silently cursing the entire world—past and present—with two beady eyes. “Looks like I followed in his footsteps like a blind fool.”
Nosh cleared his throat. “Hello? Shaman, here. I can get you lightning,” he said with an anticipatory grin. “I know a rain dance that works wonders,” he muttered. “Every time. I spent a few years in the Southwest.”
33
I eyed him discreetly, wondering if he had conned these Native Americans in the Southwest as well—adopting a new body to make them think he was part of their tribe—because the way I recalled it, tribes didn’t often share with other unrelated tribes. They usually just tried to kill one another. Nosh shot me a stern glance when no one was looking.
I didn’t really care as long as it gave us a storm. “What do you need?” I asked, recalling some of the traditional dances I’d seen Deganawida’s tribe perform. It typically involved sacred feathers, turquoise, and other precious or symbolic items.
Nosh grunted. “Surprisingly enough, I think I have it all in a duffel bag downstairs. I sent that mustached alcoholic over to my place to get Isabella and me a change of clothes—” Isabella elbowed him so swiftly it may as well have been a scalpel between the ribs. He gasped for air, unable to do more than wheeze.
Isabella winced. “Sorry. I felt a shiver. Left my jacket downstairs.”
She was wearing a jacket, but I wasn’t dumb enough to point that out. Especially when she obviously didn’t want anyone knowing she had stored clothes at Nosh’s home.
Nosh managed to regain his breath, narrowing his eyes at Isabella. “I had him grab my bag of ceremonial gear. With the witches hunting me, I didn’t want to risk them stealing it. Dangerous stuff inside.”
“How long would it take to get a storm?” I asked, glancing up at the sky. The clouds had returned, but they seemed to be fighting each other in a strange, unnatural way. Like…they were being manipulated.
Was I imagining things? Being paranoid? Or had the Olympians come out to play like Selene had warned me? Were they messing with the weather? How much did they know about my plan?
What else had she warned me about that I had overlooked? My name—although I didn’t see how that answer would help me fight the Olympians tonight.
“It’s not really a science, Sorin,” Nosh said, unaware of my internal panic. “It’s taken anywhere from a few days to an hour,” he said, shrugging. “But the odds improve if I have others dancing with me.”
Dr. Stein was frowning up at the sky quizzically, muttering under her breath. She didn’t look convinced by Nosh’s suggestion.
“My parents owned a casino, Dr. Stein. Maybe we can count that as an extra bit of luck?”
Dr. Stein went still, slowly turning to face the shaman. She glanced back up at the sky. “Something is strange about those clouds, but I can’t put my finger on it. Perhaps a little more luck is precisely what we need. Can’t hurt, anyway.”
I frowned over at Nosh. “Others dancing with you?” I asked. “We’re fresh out of other shamans to help, and none of us know the dance.”
Nosh studied me with a sincere smile. “It’s not about the knowing, it’s about the needing—the spiritual desire for rain. The drums and my words carry my request up into the sky, but the more dancers I have, the louder and more insistent my request will be. The magic will be stronger. I just need people who really want it to storm—deep in their hearts.” He paused. “You need the lightning very badly, don’t you, Sorin?” he asked, shooting me a meaningful look. “Maybe you know a girl or two who might want to help me out? I’ve got one right here,” he said, pointing at Isabella.
Her eyes widened in alarm. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly—”
Nosh placed a finger over her lips and kissed her on the forehead. “You’ll do wonderful, Izzy. Just cut loose and let your hair back. I don’t need any skill, just raw passion. You have that in spades.”
She blushed profusely, still looking uncertain, but pleased by his compliment. “I’m not sure, but if you get a few others to join, at least I won’t be the only one making a fool of myself.”
I smiled, nodding. “Worth a shot,” I said, thinking of Natalie and Victoria. This was the universe paying them back for the cold shower I’d been forced to take. I just knew it.
Dr. Stein was still staring up at the clouds uneasily. “Not normal,” she murmured under her breath, sounding troubled. “Not normal at all.”
I ignored the icy shiver that traveled down my spine as thoughts of the Olympians came to mind as the obvious answer. “You guys get started as soon as you can. Do not wait for me. I have a quick errand to run and I’ll be back.”
“Don’t worry,” Stein muttered, “our world will somehow continue to rotate without you for an hour or so. But once the light show starts, you better get your ass back here in case we have a problem. I need someone to stand over there looking pretty while I change the world. And our new horde of vampires will need to see their father. I’m not sure how they’ll react if he’s late for dinner.”
I nodded in understanding. We were in uncharted territory. Nero knew how to kill all the vampires if necessary, but if that was our only option, then there was almost no point in even attempting this insanity. All our work would have been for nothing.
Nero shot Dr. Stein a silent look and she nodded imperceptibly. Then he was following us out, leaving Dr. Stein alone in the Crown of the Statue of Liberty, staring out at the world in which she was about to birth seventy-seven vampires.
I was more c
oncerned with how I was going to talk Victoria and Natalie into a rain dance.
I caught up to Nosh on the stairs, leaning in to whisper into his ear. “Be careful. The moment you start doing shaman stuff, the witches might sense it. And there might be other, more powerful, foes to worry about.”
He nodded, not seeming concerned by my warning of other foes as he whispered back to me. “Do you think they bought the rain dance thing?”
I missed a step, almost tripping on top of him. “What?” I hissed, soft enough so that Isabella didn’t overhear.
He grinned. “I’ve never been to the Southwest and a rain dance won’t get us rain in the timeframe you have. There is magic in the air tonight, Sorin. Even with an authentic rain dance, it wouldn’t break through the magic I sense up there. I intend to throw a whole helluva lot of magic back at it and see if I can make the skies explode. Find out who these more powerful foes are.”
I grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him back. Nero shot us a concerned look, but I waved him on past, giving us a moment of privacy. I stared at Nosh, leaning in close. “You better know what the hell you are doing, Nosh.”
He nodded. “I do, Sorin. I’ve been doing this for a while, you know. Few hundred years, to be precise,” he said softly, gauging my reaction.
I arched an eyebrow. “You know, there are better times to mention things like that. Like when we spoke earlier.”
“We weren’t talking about a shaman or fake rain dances back then,” he said dryly, not mentioning the obvious topic—that he was also a skinwalker.
“What kind of power do you sense up there? Can you explain it?” I asked curiously. “Is it familiar to you? Witches maybe?” I asked, almost hoping for a yes. It would be better than the Olympians.
I think.
He shook his head. “No. I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s almost not even accurate to say magic. But it’s powerful enough that I think I can figuratively throw a match at it and watch it explode.”
“Then why not just tell everyone that?”
He gave me a flat look. “Tell everyone that some unseen force is preventing the storm and that I want to pick a fight with said unseen force because it is so powerful? Or maybe I should let them think that I am so powerful that I can single-handedly make it look like Armageddon up there? That won’t make me any new friends, and Dr. Stein is already terrified of me. No one will want to come near me. This way I can blame it on the rain dance—an inanimate ritual.”
I sighed irritably. He wasn’t right, but he wasn’t wrong.
“And we get to see the girls dance and laugh. Which I think we could all sorely use right now,” he added with a genuine smile. “You probably shouldn’t miss it, so hurry up with whatever you’re doing.”
Then he was jogging down the stairs ahead of me.
After an indeterminable period of time spent descending the spiral staircase, I found Nero waiting for me at the base. I stared at him with a wary frown, having trouble meeting his eyes rather than staring at the crucifix branded into his forehead. He’d taken to letting his hair cover his forehead, but up close it was hard to ignore.
“Walk with me,” he said without preamble, guiding me towards a small office. He opened the door and then shut it once we were inside. I stared at him, waiting. He hadn’t turned the lights on. “You need to take me with you to Central Park.”
“Why?” I asked, wondering if this had something to do with Dr. Stein’s silent nod upstairs.
“Because you’ll need to get back quickly. I can do that.”
I threw my hands into the air. “I can get anyone to drive. You’re needed here!”
He shook his head firmly. “I’ve learned a thing or two while you were sleeping, Sorin. I can make portals between places—as long as I set up a totem in my destination.” He grabbed a replica of the Statue of Liberty off the nearby desk, pressed it to his lips and then murmured a word. Then he set it back down on the desk with a satisfied nod. “Now I can bring us back here to this office in seconds as opposed to driving through the rain and traffic, and then getting in a boat. Imagine how much could go wrong during that trip—especially when things have already kicked off. And then imagine how much you might miss in that span of time…” he trailed off meaningfully.
I gaped at him in disbelief. “And you’re just now telling me this?” I demanded.
“We weren’t exactly on the right terms for you to entertain my requests. I was trying to earn your trust, not bribe you. Me telling you about some amazing magic that required you to remove my collar? You would have laughed in my face, trusting me even less than you already did, and then who knows how long it would take you to—”
“Did you just say remove your collar?” I asked very slowly, eyeing the collar he still wore around his throat.
Nero’s confidence crumpled and he let out a sigh. “See?” he said dejectedly, turning his back on me to reach for the door handle with his remaining hand. “I understand. I’ll make sure a boat is ready—”
I touched the back of his collar, interrupting him. The device snapped off, falling to the floor with a metallic clang. He gasped in disbelief, spinning to face me.
“We still have to drive there, though, right?” I asked, smiling at the joy on his face.
His joy faltered minutely. “I wasn’t permitted to leave the Museum as the Necromancer. Dracula wanted me to be a nameless, faceless, collared menace. So, yes. We need to drive.” He paused, a ghost of an old, familiar smile splitting his cheeks—the smile of my old friend, not the smile of my recent prisoner. He was taking a gamble, gauging how much damage had been repaired with my gesture of trust. “And you’re on indefinite probation from driving. You have to be at least sixteen years old, and I have it on good authority that you are merely a seven-year-old girl.”
He grinned, dashing out the door as I crouched to scoop up the collar with a growl.
He laughed all the way to the elevator. So did I, chasing him with the collar and cursing his birth mother’s existence with flavorful expletives not spoken for hundreds of years.
Just like old times.
It felt…nice.
Nosh and Isabella watched us with the strangest looks on their faces, making me laugh harder.
“Tell my devils—Natalie and Victoria—that I command them to take part in your rain dance!” I bellowed at Nosh, even knowing they would punish me for it.
The experience might be fun.
But I wasn’t brave enough to tell them to their faces. Especially when they might later learn the rain dance was just for show.
34
Nero drove, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s exciting, Sorin! That’s all I’m saying. You just took two Nephilim souls for crying out loud. Who does that?”
“The Devil,” I replied dryly, leaning forward to stare up at the sky. Clouds hovered over the city, but they were constantly shifting as if blown about by wind—yet there was no wind. “You’ll see the Nephilim soon enough.”
“You’re beginning to look like the man you used to be, before America,” Nero said cautiously.
I nodded distractedly, glaring up at the clouds, and wondering which Olympian was causing it. “I remembered the words of my father—that there’s no point improving on perfection.”
Nero was silent for a few moments. “You didn’t know your father,” he said slowly.
I shrugged. “I’m sure he was thinking it deep in his heart when he abandoned me.” Nero’s answering silence told me that he had finally caught on to the fact that my earlier humor had dissipated, replaced by stress. “Sorry, Nero, but right now I need to think,” I said tiredly.
“Of course. Sorry.”
Despite my obvious stress, part of me felt like shouting and dancing at the task ahead. It was the waiting that always soured my mood.
I had no way of knowing for certain if my assessments about turning the Nephilim and affecting the castle were accurate, but I truly believed them. Otherwise I wouldn�
�t have told them so, knowing full well that a lie would permanently tarnish our relationship. If my theory about them infecting the castle was right, and I was able to summon my castle to New York City with the coffin dirt Nero had originally recovered, then there was a very strong chance that it would instantly throw the castle into war—both factions of vampires believing that it was their home. Not just in their minds, but in their hearts.
Because the bond was a very powerful magic.
The castle had been originally bonded to me, and my vampires were bonded to me, forming a continuous link between all of us.
Dracula’s faction was the same. In my absence, the castle had bonded to him—whether willingly or unwillingly, I had no way of knowing. He could have altered the castle so much that it no longer bonded with me at all.
Which was why my coffin dirt was crucial. It repaired and solidified the bond between me and the castle. No matter what Dracula had done, the fortress would have to respond—even if it no longer wanted to. In a way, the obsidian palace was a living entity, not just a pile of stone and marble. I was its maker. Its father.
Back when the castle was mine, it was a constant source of magic, empowering my existing vampires and then growing as I added yet more vampires to my horde. We had a symbiotic relationship.
And I was about to confuse the living hell out of it. There was every chance that my act would split the structure in two, right down the center, the castle forced to obey both masters—Dracula and Sorin.
Which was another reason I’d been turning more and more vampires in recent weeks—in preparation of me bringing my castle back. The castle would need my vampires as much as they would need the castle. Especially if I broke it. The stronger I was, the more likely my side of the castle would be larger and more powerful.
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