Once I collected myself off the floor and bolted for her door, there was nothing but a wall there. The door was gone. As if it had never existed.
A nightmare. This had to be a nightmare.
I turned around to see Emily standing there only inches away. Her hair was drenched in the blood that was practically raining from the walls. Her skin was gray and rotting. Her eyes were sunken. Her lips pale.
As frightened as I was to see Samantha’s body being raised from the murky swamp, and as horrified as I was to see Andrew’s body on the police station floor with his chest burst open, this was worse. Because I loved Emily. She was my friend. And she couldn’t even find peace in death.
“Why did this happen?” I begged her to tell me. “Why can’t you move on? Why are you not moving on?”
“Because you failed me,” she said.
No. That couldn’t be it. The only thing I hadn’t done was find Brian. Unless…
“Brian? You want me to find Brian.”
Her hands reached up to her head and she started pulling at her hair with her long fingers. “Stop failing me!” she screamed. Only this scream was enough to break all the windows in Georgeanna’s small apartment. They shattered to the ground. This time, I was prepared. The shards didn’t strike me as they had in my bathroom. I dropped to the floor and let the blood saturate my body, avoiding the sharp glass as it desperately tried to find my flesh.
My body was thrown back like someone had punched me.
“Harper!” a familiar voice shouted my name. “Harper! Snap out of it! Come back!”
My eyes opened, suddenly remembering where I was and what I was doing. The entire thing had been a setup. A state of mind that got Emily to appear to me. Georgeanna had been guiding me in the meditation. She made a circle of candles around me along with a trail of sage encircling me. I was sitting in the middle of her living room floor with my legs crossed and my hands resting on my knees. And I most definitely hadn’t gotten any sleep that night. We had been at it for hours.
Georgeanna told me I wouldn’t like what came next. She was right. The memory slowly came back to me. She said we had to channel Emily. We had to bring her back. We had to summon her spirit and get her to tell us what was wrong and how to fix it.
“Anything new?” she asked. “Did she tell you anything?”
“Just the same thing over and over again. That I failed her. I think she wants me to find Brian but she won’t come out and say it.”
Georgeanna crossed her arms and paced outside the circle, back and forth between the kitchen and the living room.
“I’m sorry. I’m not good at this,” I said. Exhaustion was getting the better of me.
“I don’t expect you to be,” she said. “We kruxa aren’t designed to deal with croxa and other undead beings. That’s a luxra specialization.”
“What specialization do we have?”
“Our visions,” she answered.
“You mean the vixra and luxra don’t have visions too?”
“They do. But not quite like us. We experience them on a more emotional level due to our mixture of human blood. Humans know that the supernatural is exactly that. Not natural. It’s not human. Therefore they have a very emotional reaction to it. And therefore, so do we.” She sat down outside the candles. “I want you to summon your magic in both your palms and try again,” she said.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and did as she said. My magic came crawling out of my hands and swirled in my palms. But it took effort. I was getting more and more tired and the minutes turned to hours.
“Let it guide you back. And this time, listen closer.”
I let my mind drift back to that awful scene. Where Emily was trying to haunt me. Where she thought it was safe to completely terrify me. The wind was howling through the shattered windows. Emily was standing over me. I slowly stood and got even closer to her. Her hands were still on her head. She was getting ready to scream again. Only this time, I reached for her hands and forced her to look at me.
When she did, her eyes changed. They weren’t the Emily I knew and adored. They were full of rage.
“Who did this to you?” I asked her. “How can I make it right? How can I not fail you again?”
The walls began to shake. If she managed to kill me in this vision, hallucination, delusion, whatever it was… I knew I might not be able to get her back. I would have to wait until she started haunting me again. I wouldn’t be able to summon her with a witchling circle of candles. There was only a waiting game.
“Was it Brian?” I asked.
Her eyes darted back and forth, unable to focus on me.
“You know you didn’t do this? Don’t you?”
Her eyes shifted back to me, boring straight through my insides.
“Emily, you didn’t do this. Someone forced you. I have to stop them! Was it Brian or someone else?”
The walls fell away along with the floor. I was free falling into a dark abyss. My legs dangled in the air as I started to tumble. The sensation brought me back to reality with another jolt. I nearly fell backward this time and only managed to stop it by forcing my hands into the floor with my magic still in them.
A loud crashing struck my eyes as if lightning had smashed into me. Only I knew better. That was the sound of my magic doing a fair amount of harm to Georgeanna’s floor.
“Sorry,” I said, bringing up my hands and doing my best to force my magic back inside. I let the anger inside me for what happened to Emily come to the surface and my magic obeyed me almost instantly. Just like Tobias said it would.
She surveyed the damage done behind me. “No worries. I wasn’t expecting to get the deposit back on this place anyway. I’ve spilled too many potions.”
‘We have another trait in common. Clumsiness.’
“I don’t know what to do. She won’t tell me who did this to her.”
Georgeanna eyed the floor, almost as though she was trying to decipher a code. “What if she can’t? She thinks you failed because Brian isn’t the one holding her spirit hostage. It’s someone else.”
“Who?”
“That’s what she doesn’t know. She can’t tell us because she doesn’t know. She needs you to find out.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
Georgeanna blew out a few of the candles and removed the sage, opening the circle and guiding me out by the hand. “We’ll have to find a way. She won’t leave you alone until you do. We might have to use more extreme measures.”
“Like what?”
“Like getting a luxra’s help.”
It took me a moment to get steady on my feet again. My brain was starting to get foggy. I had a feeling that might be why she opened the circle and made me stop. There was too much risk of me getting sloppy. Or just plain not knowing what I was doing. I had never created a proper witchling circle before that night. Hell, I didn’t know how. Such knowledge was lost to kruxa over the centuries. Nor had I ever tried to summon a croxa. The last few months brought on quite a few firsts in my life.
“Tobias does. Get him to make a proper introduction and then perhaps we’ll get more answers.”
An hour later, I was standing in front of Georgeanna’s run-down apartment complex and waiting for a familiar Audi to drive up the lot. She waited with me until a very irritated Christophe appeared from around the block and parked right in front of us. She kept to the shadows under the entryway, not wanting anyone to see her. Or the resemblance between us. The fewer people who knew the better I suppose.
“How do I look Nathaniel in the eyes knowing what I know now?” I said to her as she stayed hidden and Christophe parked in the car. “He misses you. He thinks you’re dead. I know it pains him.”
She hung her head, unable to look at me for a brief moment. “His pain won’t last forever. One day I’ll come to him. When the vixra will it. I avoided it once. I won’t be foolish enough to do so again.”
“Why can’t you tell him you’re alive at least
? You don’t have to mark him tomorrow.”
“It’s part of my punishment, Harper. The vixra have their own way of dealing with those of us who fall out of line. Now they’ve set plans into motion that are far beyond my standing to intervene or argue. One day I’ll come back to Nathaniel. I’ll mark him. And we will live out one human life together. A happy one I hope. Then he will die with me. More has to happen between now and then. There are so many things in place that I can’t possibly stand in the way. It would be wrong of me to do so.”
“What do you mean? What things?”
She sighed and allowed her eyes to meet mine again. “I’ve told you all I can for now. Just know that the vixra are wise. Wiser than you or I. I may resent them but I know better than to question them ever again. You would be smart to do the same.”
With that, she turned around and headed back inside before Christophe got out of the car with a scowl on his face.
“I happened to like driving that vehicle,” he sneered.
“May it rest in pieces,” I said with equal frustration. Yes, he was a vampire, but really? I nearly died and he was worried about the damn car. Tobias and Nathaniel were probably the only two vampires in the world that would be glad to see that I was alive.
He drove me back to Tobias’s manor in silence. And good thing too! I wasn’t at all pleased with him either. I slammed the car door shut without so much as a thank you and didn’t give him time to come around and open the door for me like I normally did. Then I walked inside and looked around for Tobias. He was nowhere to be found.
‘Did he actually do what I asked? Did he go to get my sister?’
The thought startled me as I ran around the manor, searching for the one man I had spent so much time deliberately trying to avoid. If he did manage to get my sister and bring her back, would I have the stomach to hold up my end of the deal? Would I mark him? Could I mark him?
‘That’s a definite yes. My magic took a liking to him from the first moment I saw him.’
I stopped in my tracks when the words went through my mind. Was that true?
‘No! My magic was on edge because I thought I was going to die that night.’
Then there was the moment we shared when he sat on the bed, edging closer to me and taking a brief moment to touch me. My magic was eager to come out. But not from danger. It knew I wasn’t in harm’s way. It wanted to mark him. It wanted to create a bond between me and a man I barely knew.
Was Georgeanna right? Was this why I was born? Was I meant to do this? To tame a beast who was born from darkness and bring him back to mortality?
I finally gave up on finding him and went back to the library in my private wing. A heaviness swept over my body and made my entire soul feel heavy. Like an additional weight I had to carry on my back. Perhaps it was the knowledge that I would soon be trapped in a deal of my own making. A deal I made in haste to get my sister back.
‘If I have to give up my own free will to save Maddie, then so be it. She would do the same for me.’
I opened the door to see that the fireplace was still crackling. Someone had kept it going all night. There was a tall man standing before the flames, watching them curl around one another and lick the logs burning below.
“Nathaniel?” I asked, knowing full and well that it was him. I’d seen the man walk away in those pristinely pressed suits enough times to know him anywhere.
He turned around and greeted me with his usual severe expression. One I half expected and had to remind myself didn’t always mean he was displeased.
I ran up to him and nearly embraced him. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it was months of uncertainty. Months of being alone. Months of not knowing what was going on around me. But his expression stopped me. It told me not to get too close. That he was uneasy and he wasn’t sure how to face me. How to look at me. How to greet me.
“I heard there was an incident,” he said. “Are you alright?”
I gave a simple nod.
I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell anyone. All this time, he and so many others had kept me in the dark. Now I had to do the same to him. Not because I wanted to. Not because I thought it would keep him safe. But because I knew the vixra would be furious with me. Eli…Felix…whatever his name was told me not to cross him again. I had to keep Georgeanna’s secret.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you where I was,” he said. “Tobias wouldn’t allow it.”
“Figures.”
I could sense the emotions seeping from his skin. They hit me so hard that it nearly felt as though I had been assaulted. I reached for the arm of the couch to hold myself steady, doing my best to block out the essence coming from him. It was a deep and unrelenting sense of apprehension. Like he had to be careful around me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
He stiffened his posture. Like he expected me to get mad. “I suppose you haven’t heard yet.”
“Heard what?”
“Carlton was convicted. He took a vial of poison to kill himself before the courtroom after his sentence was read by the judge and was rushed to the hospital. He didn’t survive.”
The air in my lungs completely abandoned me. I sat on the couch nearby and let his words wash over me. I should have known it was going to happen. Hell, I expected it to happen. And even so, it came as a sort of shock to me. The Congressman made mistakes. He neglected Emily. His expectations for his daughters were far too high. But I knew too much now. He didn’t intentionally put them in danger. Tobias worked his own magic over them. And the Congressman had been lured to forget about his dealings with him. Which from what it sounded like, he wasn’t terribly keen on from the start. I was fully aware, more so than most, that Tobias always got what he wanted. That might even include me if he managed to bring back Madison.
“I lost Tobias one of his best assassins,” Nathaniel went on when I said nothing, standing close enough to me to touch but refusing to sit across from me.
“Yes, I know. But you had to. It was practically self-defense. He would have kept coming after me.”
“No, Harper,” he said. His voice was pleading with me to understand. “I lost him one of his best assassins. And the plans he finally confessed to me after my trial regarding Carlton were destroyed.” His eyes were reaching out to me, asking me to think hard and comprehend what he was saying without having to speak the words out loud.
I shook my head, not really getting what he was trying to say. “Tobias told you then? That he wanted to give Carlton the highest office in the world?” I let a light laugh escape me. “Even the weakest of men probably would have given in to their ambition for a deal like that.”
“Harper!” he scolded me. Almost like I was a child he couldn’t get to pay attention.
“What?”
“I had to make it right. I had to give Tobias something in return for killing Isaac.”
‘Okay, mister. You definitely have my attention now.’
I got up from the couch and backed away from him. As far back as I could get without walking right into the wall. “Please tell me you didn’t!” I hollered.
“Tobias didn’t give me a choice. His life had been destroyed and Tobias’s plans failed. This will give him a new purpose.”
I shuddered. It might have sounded like a good deal to a human. To someone who glamorized the thought of immortality. To someone who has been brainwashed by Hollywood and Gothic novels. All witchlings knew better. Immortality was a curse. And vampirism was a perverse and degrading existence that should never have happened.
Tobias had forced Nathaniel to do the unthinkable. The worst thing a being could do. He turned the Congressman into a vampire.
Chapter 11
“H-how could you do that?” I stammered.
My hands instinctively came up from my sides to protect me. My magic began to stir in my palms. I didn’t even have to summon it. Then just as he started walking toward me in a slow and somewhat calculating way, it dwindled down into nothing bu
t a mere glow in my hands.
“Don’t to that,” he warned, cornering me near the wall and taking my hands into his. “You know that I have to follow Tobias’s orders. He didn’t give me a choice.”
I shook my head, not wanting to believe what he was saying. If it was true, I had told a ruthless man that I would mark him and be his for the rest of my life. Someone who saw fit to enslave the already broken Congressman into a life of being a vampire. An eternity of living with his guilt and the knowledge that both his daughters were dead. I knew Tobias had done many terrible things. One doesn’t become the leader of the most powerful vampire coven in the western world by being nice. And even so, knowing Nathaniel had done the deed pained my heart. I didn’t want to look at him. I tried turning my head away. He took my face into his cold hands and refused to let me.
“I will train him to control his cravings for blood,” he said. “And when the time comes, Tobias will make him one of his assassins. He has the motivation and he will do what Tobias asks.”
“You mean he’s been beaten down and will go after anyone who angers him. This wasn’t right. You shouldn’t have done this. He shouldn’t have done this.”
“Would you rather Carlton die? Or spend his days rotting in a prison cell in shame and despair for the rest of his life? The mind will drive a person mad with guilt and isolation in a cell. You may look down on my kind, but we hardly care. We learn to live with what life has given us and we strive to become stronger.”
“Some of you. Most vampires won’t.”
A smirk crossed his face. A smirk that I resented given he had just done the unthinkable and was trying to justify it.
“I will teach him how.”
I tried breaking free of the corner where he had me completely closed in. He reached for my arms and wouldn’t let me move.
“Let me go,” I demanded.
“No.”
“Nathaniel, stop it!”
My eyes met his. They were practically drilling into me. I suddenly didn’t care about getting away from him. My limbs felt as though they were melting, giving into him and commanding that I don’t resist him anymore.
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