Until Dawn

by brett hicks

  Twenty-Four:

  To say Bix was not a fan of the current plan, was to say the Yankees were just another baseball team!

  “You’re crazier than Seri thought possible! You do realize that the Sky Lord is going to blow the city if he doesn’t get answers, right?!”

  I nodded in confirmation.

  “Yep, but we have to take our crisis as they come, not out of order. Bix if we focus on what’s in Dean’s left hand, we leave his right hand open to slight us and pull-down whatever curtain he has.”

  Bix snorted and snipped back, “You think you’re the only one smart-enough to figure that out?! Seri is an excellent strategist; she has already considered this possibility! She is prepared for Dean to act!”

  I shook my head in a very loud, but silent “no!”

  “Sorry Bix, but she has no idea what he has planned and to walk in now, would be to give Dean too much of an advantage!”

  The venue of our meeting was to be Randall’s Island Park. It was an island between East Harlem and Brooklyn. The East River on one side and the Harlem River on the other side made this a perfect place to ambush, trap, or kill all these powerful players on the inhuman chessboard.

  “You have no right!”

  Bix took a very graceful and deadly step forward. Liam stepped back, and he just watched, as if he were just here to observe history, never to participate. Something curious crossed his expression, but he was masking his emotions very masterfully.

  Bix on the other hand looked barely contained, as if she was a very beautiful six-foot female snake about to shed her human guise. Her silver-toned blonde hair shone with her fae magic, a power that would have cowered a lesser woman, a power I didn’t even begin to understand now, even with a few days to process what I was becoming.

  I made no threatening gesture; she was at the crossroads of violence and peace. She knew that I had more of a right to make this choice, but she was too accustomed to obeying only Seri.

  I tipped my chin up and I leveled my gaze on her. If she wanted a princess, then she was going to get one! My magic unfolded around me like a massive pair of wings that have been pinned to my back all my life. I felt a flood of enormous energy I never knew, never experienced before; this put my little show the night before to shame.

  Cold death greeted my skin, tingling with the sweet lover’s touch of necromancy. The cold was similar to the cold of the vampires on so many levels, magic akin, but older, the root of all vampires. I filled that information away for later.

  “Careful Bix, I’m not playing games. If you want your mistress to survive this war at our door, then trust me!”

  Bix hissed and twisted her nose up in revulsion at my power. This was a natural reaction to her nature power, to my death magic. This was an instinctual reaction to the raw torrents of power from me; a being that was born to the species that once enslaved all inhuman kind.

  “How do you dare expect trust when you would leave Seri, your own kin, trapped?”

  I waved my hand, as if to wave away that statement.

  “I’m not going to leave her! I have a plan, one that Dean would never have accounted for, not in a million years!”

  Bix took another step forward; her power was beginning to infuse the wood of the walls. Moss and floral life began to bloom around us; soon the room was filled with the natural scents of the deep forest. Nature was a deadly thing of beauty, and I could smell the poison dribbling from the fresh wild roses of multiple colors and species.

  “What are you planning to do, tell me?!”

  I sighed, and I shook my head.

  “You’re way too pissed to understand my idea right now Bix. Please, trust me, and get Seri to safety when my trap snaps closed on the island. Don’t take her to Brooklyn, bring her to me, here, so we can figure out what the hell to do next. Because her safety is going to come at the highest price imaginable to us all.”

  Liam’s eyes registered comprehension and he sighed, closing his eyes. I was unsure how he knew, but Liam was so perceptive that it bordered on clairvoyance—a theory to explore another time.

  “What price?”

  Bix demanded, and I looked to Liam.

  “Ride, or die dude, are you going to trust me?”

  Liam’s lips quirked at the cheesy biker line I had picked up from hanging out with a wild bunch of real leather-clad bikers back when I was seventeen. I had spent eight-months with them, yet another place I had picked up fighting moves, and unorthodox methods of conflict resolution.

  Liam nodded, barely perceptible to me in agreement.

  “Indeed, ride or die… I would rather ride, naturally, since I am sure that my horse is the winner of this particular race.”

  “Liam, what are you talking about?”

  Liam stepped forward and he placed a kiss to her temple. He mouthed something to her hairline so low, even I couldn’t hear it, but Bix did. Her eyes widened.

  “I believe we have now entered the Grand Junction Bix, it’s time to decide what side of the future we’ll be on in the days to come.”

  Bix looked from Liam, to me, and back again and sighed in exasperation. Her plants didn’t die, but they did stop dripping poison. Her fingers stopped caressing the hilt of a hidden short-sword I knew she was concealing.

  “You’re going to have to explain this ‘Grand Junction’ business to the less informed later, Liam.”

  My tone was harsher than intended and more chiding. Liam flinched, as if I had punched him with a giant metaphysical fist. Bix flicked her gaze to me and sniffed in annoyance.

  “Kindly retract your magic; you’re going to kill someone if you’re not careful.”

  I gave her a feral grin, she was pissing me off and my nerves were already frayed. Some part of me wanted to fight, longed for a battle, and for death.

  “It’s not like I picked this fight, technically, you did Bix.”

  I focused on pulled my metaphysical wings of power back closer to my side, but I didn’t even try to bind it back like it had been. I wasn’t sure I could repress so much power a second time, or if I had even been the one to suppress my magic to begin with.

  Yet again, more data to comb through later, assuming we were not up to our eyeballs in black helicopters later.

  I gave Liam an apologetic smile and shook my head.

  “Sorry about that, I really didn’t know what I was doing.”

  Liam waved me off and simply stated said, “It’s quite alright lass. I’m used to Seri’s power rushing out like a violent whip when she’s pissed. She has a very similar temperament to you, only Bix doesn’t ever antagonize her.”

  Bix looked between us and she sighed, her silvery aura receded completely.

  “So, are we going to meet Seri, or aren’t we, Liam?”

  Her magic flashed and in a silver explosion of light, she was standing with curly raven hair, brownish-amber eyes and a wicked smile I didn’t recognize. Her cruel expression looked alien on my Latin features, and her sudden loss in height was a bit disorienting. I blinked a few times and Liam chuckled.

  “Push some power into your eyes, like you do when you compel a human to forget a feeding, and you should see the seams in the spell. Hell, considering how your sight works, you should see through the guise entirely.”

  My magic redistributed through my eyes and I began to see the glow of all the silvery tendrils in the room around me, all emanating from Bix. I was like a fly caught in her flowery web. She was herself again and I could vaguely see a cloak of the humanoid disguise hanging over her, just outside her skin. It was like seeing a second translucent image imposed over her body. This power was new and foreign to me now!

  “Holy blue-balls batman! That looks very gross and strangely cool at the same time Bix.”

  “We should be on our way; how will I know when to pull Seri to safety?”

  I smiled a wide cunning smile of a predator in her element now.

  “If you don’t recognize my signal, then you’re screwed beyond help at t
hat point.”

  Liam sighed and shook his head slowly.

  “I will be with you Bix, don’t worry, I have a mind for what the young princess here is planning. She might be wrong to taunt you so, but she is correct, you will know when the right time has come.”

  Liam’s eyes met mine and he nodded subtly to a question I hadn’t even asked him. I knew what his power was now, why he had saved me, and why he had known to trust me.

  He is clairvoyant, but Bix doesn’t know! Hell, does anyone know?

  The reason he had been held as a slave, considering the inhuman opinion of slavery now became very clear to me. The Baron, who once held him, had done so because he could see the future!

  Not the right time for this Thea!

  I chide myself and I walked my new friends out the door. I had many plans to set up, and not a lot of time to set them up.

  Twenty-Five:

  Seri was sitting in the back of the SUV with Liam; they had met up off the interstate and begun to plan for the confrontation to come. Liam was being—well Liam—tight lipped and begging she and Bix trust him.

  She did trust Liam, but the issue was she didn’t have the foggiest idea what her willy and intimidatingly sexy kin was up to now! Seri had never met a woman whose sharp wit scared her, no Thea was in a class all her own!

  Thea had refused to come, and Seri could understand that move, it actually made sense, but what was the young woman planning?! She didn’t have an army at her beck-and-call, not yet. How was she planning to level the odds against them? Hell, even Seri wondered if the woman might just throw them all under the bus and be free to crawl under a rock again and pretend to be mortal.

  No, she’s not like that. I don’t know how I knew she was mine, but I knew! I have to trust her; this is only the very beginning.

  Seri was caught up in her mental maze so much, she hadn’t heard Liam’s last sentence.

  “I said, we have until dawn, and then Thea’s plan will blow everything wide open.”

  Liam was properly cryptic, as was per-usual with him. Seri was used to her second being closely guarded with his words. It’s like Liam seemed to refuse to dispense information like a normal inhuman. Not that she would have ever thought Liam to be a normal inhuman!

  “Dawn, you’re sure of the timeline, considering she didn’t actually speak a word of her plan to you?”

  Liam smiled and nodded, his knowing and mischievous glint infuriated Seri. Liam had a knack for knowing more than should be possible, yet he always held this information close to his chest, damn him! Still, Seri had never been betrayed by his tightness with information distribution. She had learned to stop asking stupid questions a long time ago.

  “What in the bloody hell is my kin up to Liam?!”

  Liam sighed and shook his head slowly.

  “Sorry princess, but I cannot discuss this now; it would interfere with the many moving parts in her plan. However, when her plan snaps open, do not let any humans in this area die at our hands, that is all I can tell you, or you will not win. In fact, we are going to have to thread the bloody needle to survive what’s coming for us next.”

  Chills rushed down her spine as she considered possible implications.

  “War?”

  Liam nodded in confirmation.

  “Aye, we are on the very precipice of a revolution the likes of which, none of us have ever imagined possible.”

  So, Dean has finally decided to turn on my father?

  Seri pondered to herself. Liam was going to spill his guts to her and soon, but she trusted him with her life. She has trusted Liam since their first meeting; similar enough to how she had instinctively known Thea was hers, her kin.

  “One of these days, I am going to just have to retreat to a bloody beach filled with naked women for a few centuries! I am over do for some R&R”

  Liam snorted, and he nodded in agreement.

  “Aye, that sounds like a right good change in our domain, don’t you agree Bix?”

  Bix didn’t look very amused with Liam, and he had the good sense to shut up and look repentant. Seri could see the change between her two closest advisors, her only sort-of friends. They had broken down the wall between themselves. Seri felt a phantom pang of lonesomeness now, because she didn’t have that closeness now. Her kin barely trusted her, if at all, and she was off playing psycho necrovamp in Harlem. They might as well have been worlds apart.

  “So, let’s go over the most likely machinations Dean will lay out for us to overcome.”

  Her tone was calm and cool, but her gut churned in disgust at his name coming from her lips. She had a special level of disgust and revulsion for Dean. He wasn’t like her father, he seemed to long for degradations, destruction and total suppression. He was like the filthy warlords in the many wild human countries, all clinging to power and abusing the people in his path on his whims.

  Dean had killed sons and daughters in front of their parents, only to raise them and use them to devour their own parents and siblings.

  What she couldn’t begin to understand was what Dean’s obsession with her stimmed from, since he could find several other single immortals of equal or greater power to mate with. Some of them might even be willing! Hell, Seri was strong, but she was not the strongest in the world, no that honor fell to her father, at least as far as she knew.

  “Well, he is going to have the Ice Queen of Manhattan here, without a doubt.”

  She nodded in agreement with Bix.

  “She will be at the meeting like a party-crasher, that’s a surety. Where will her armies be? Here on the island, or set on Harlem?”

  “Or, she could send them to sack Brooklyn Kingdom in your absence.”

  Seri furrowed her brows and she tried to figure out where the armies would come from. There had to me more! This was all predictable!

  “Send word and have our people go on high alert. If they are flooded in massive numbers, then tell them to go underground, use the older sewer system to journey to Harlem. If we must sacrifice one kingdom, let it be the one less logical on our part, because we will have to settle these debts soon enough one way or another. Anything lost in this night can be retaken once we have our people rallied and added to what Thea has in Harlem.”

  Bix looked at Seri with wide eyes.

  “That’s insane, you do know that, right?!”

  Seri shrugged and plainly stated, “Often the key component to victory is to be crazier than your adversaries. They will be very weary of us if we make a move they never expected, and they will likely become extremely defensive. Besides, if the Ice Queen gets her greedy fingers wrapped around Brooklyn, she will become obsessed with holding it, she had longed to steal all of New York for herself. We can ultimately play her own baser natures against her in the days to come.”

  “What of the arse-fucker himself? Dean will not have come alone to New York. I am willing to bet he has a sizeable force stationed somewhere in Brooklyn, considering how he had vampires in Thea’s house within hours of word trickling out about her being your kin.”

  Seri bit her lip and leaned forward, lost in her thoughts. She was so focused on the many possible moves with the data she had at her disposal, that she blocked out everything else in the SUV’s cab.

  “Worst case, Dean sacks Brooklyn, Ice army hits Harlem and we have to survive being caught between two armies, just to find sanctuary.”

  Liam nodded in agreement, but didn’t say anything one way or the other, damn him! Seri could really use an ace in the hole. Her kin was supposed to be the ace, but a girl could hope for a pair of aces, right?

  “My primary hope is to defuse our Sylph Sky Lord. Lenard Chase has been my strongest ally for all my life. The two most important goals for this visit are defusing tensions between us and Lenard and surviving certain death odds.”

  Liam nodded.

  “Aye, threading the needle, that’s the way of things lassie.”

  Seri huffed at him and snipped, “I’m not Thea, so don’t call
me lassie!”

  Liam’s lips quirked into a handsome crooked half-grin and his eyes danced with a knowing mischief.

  “You two could pass for twins in the personality and temperament departments.”

  Seri flashed him her fangs and grinned at him.

  “Do you really think this is the right time to provoke your princess?”

  Liam shrugged and seemed completely unaffected by her powers, but for the small tremor in his wrist. Seri was a very literal force of nature, something far more potent than she herself could comprehend.

  “So, get in, talk to Lenard, run for our lives and survive the trip to Harlem, easy!”

  This time it was Bix giving Liam the wintery gaze. Seri would have laughed at this new exchange between the two lovers, but not at this particularly vicarious moment.

  Seri scratched her neck and slumped forward. She looked as young, if not slightly younger than Thea as she slouched like a human. She was a seasoned immortal, but in these rare moments, she was just a girl, just a very overwhelmed girl perpetually on the run from a tyrannical father and his megalomaniac understudy. Seri had never understood why Cain allowed Dean to live, considering his hatred of Necros and Alchemists.

  Dean was the last living first born, or so she had thought, until Thea. How an original Necro Lord had survived three-thousand-years in the hostilities of the inhuman world, were beyond Seri. She had tasted it in Thea’s delicious blood; she was a true first-born daughter. If Dean knew her heritage, then he would likely drop everything just to obtain her, not Seri. Seri was lucky that Henry was too much a blind fool to have known anything beyond Thea being a human-born necromancer.

  Seri was falling in love with her very literal ancestral foe. She was trusting in the child of her father’s greatest foe, to deliver her form the hands of his psychotic Lord of France.

  “Guys let’s bury the extra weapons cash out about a mile from the meeting place. We will stash it north, so when they find the dug-up spot later, our foes will not immediately know which exit we were taking. The rules of parley state one sword, one dagger and no projective or ballistic weapons.”