Stakes and Stones

by Bilinda Sheehan

  “I hope this is part of your plan,” Sofia whispered to me, barely audible above the maniacal screams from the fae on the dais. In a way it was, but it wasn’t as though I could stand around and explain my thinking to Sofia, not now that we were in the thick of it.

  The music faltered and I could sense the humans in the room had paused what they were doing and had turned their attention to the stage.

  Carmine’s shrieks cut off as abruptly as they’d began and she levelled her gaze on mine, her one cornflower blue stood out amongst the bloody gouge marks she’d left in her skin.

  “Take them,” she whispered into the silence.

  Nothing happened, clearly her outburst had shocked her vampires into inaction.

  “I said take them!” Her shrill voice shredded the stillness of the room.

  The room exploded into action. Vampires crawled from the shadows lining the walls, far too many to count.

  I pulled Grey’s sword from the hilt on my back and prepared to defend against the oncoming attack. The first vampire went down easily, the sword slicing through his body as though he was made of paper. The second was a little harder. He dodged, fighting to get beneath my guard as he slashed with claws as long as my fingers.

  Pirouetting on the spot, I brought the sword around in a sweeping arc and split him from shoulder to hip. For a split second he stared down at his body and I found myself doubting if I’d actually managed to hit him at all. Blood oozed from the wound and he dropped to his knees, allowing me to sever his head from his neck with one brutally efficient blow.

  Something heavy slammed into me, driving me to the ground, the sword knocked from my hands as the sound of a snarling greeted my ears.

  Teeth tore at the hood, the grinding of metal on the vampire’s fangs buying me a couple of seconds before they got wise to it and changed their attack. I rammed my elbow back into the vamp’s face, confident that the armoured scales would protect me from its mouth. Its pained shriek caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand at attention. Without hesitation, I rolled the vamp, pinning it beneath my body as I ripped a silver stake from my boot and rammed it into its chest.

  Its cries increased in intensity, drawing the attention of three other vampires who rushed toward me, their faces a mask of rage.

  Another shriek rose above the others, the deafening sound of a predator enraged. A dark shape shot straight up from the ground just a couple of feet away from me. It arrowed upwards and then paused, suspended in the air fifty feet up. The sound of feathers rippled over the air as the creature spread its wings wide, the moonlight glinting off the sapphire and violet feathers, each one tipped in crimson.

  I looked up into the face of the woman, her yellow eyes studying the movement below her as her raven coloured hair streamed out behind her. She threw her head back and let go another shrill shriek, her hair suddenly iridescent in the moonlight making me think of the rainbow effect of oil on water. Her body was almost entirely human, sleek and muscled, but from the thighs down, her legs became that of a huge bird of prey and instead of feet she had the largest talons I’d ever seen.

  I’d never seen a harpy in the flesh before but I’d heard enough tales of them to know they were fearsome adversaries. Some even believed they had been the hounds of Zeus but that was before my time. The last I’d heard, they’d all but disappeared from the earth and yet…

  I stared up into her strikingly beautiful face and found her staring down at me. She winked, the wicked glint in her eyes sending a thrill of recognition rocketing through me.

  Sofia.

  Sofia was the harpy… It seemed impossible and yet, staring into the harpy’s face, I knew it was true. The final pieces of the puzzle tumbled into place, making me think of all the times she’d looked at me with what seemed to be an almost birdlike manner. Her being a harpy certainly explained a few things.

  She beat her wings almost lazily and then drew them up behind her strong and muscular shoulders. Sofia spun in the air and then dropped, cutting through the air with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible.

  The sound of bones crunching as she made impact with the vampires beneath her and drove them into the tiles reverberated throughout the room.

  I cut another vampire down as she once more beat her wings and carried a vampire up into the air, her powerful talons ripping the unlucky creature in half and discarding the pieces to the opposite corners of the room. Another vampire with silver hair and bloodshot eyes charged me. I skipped out of reach, narrowly avoiding the axe he wielded as he brought it down in a bone crunching blow.

  He moved in toward me, driving me back toward the edge of the dais and the vampires nearby.

  A whisper rippled through the room, the power behind it causing the hairs to stand on my arms as a sneeze tickled the back of my nose. As though working in unison, the vampires who’d surrounded us turned away. The one who’d backed me into the dais stalked away but not before I’d caught the frustration that had lit his eyes.

  It took my brain a second to catch up with what was really going on and by the time it did, it was already too late.

  Panicked screams cut the air, terror mingled with the distinctive scent of blood, carrying toward me on a soured breeze.

  I darted into the fray, catching sight of a woman desperately trying to run from three vamps that were circling her, cutting and slicing at her, the way a cat might play with a mouse. I fought my way through the vampires, cutting and hacking them. For a split second I saw hope in the woman’s eyes as she realised what I was doing. Her hand caught my arm and she stared at me with wide terrified green eyes.

  “Please…” It was the only word to leave her lips and then she was gone, ripped away from me as a vampire dropped out of what seemed to be thin air.

  He dragged her across the floor, just out of reach of me and then he fell on her, driving her to her knees, his teeth ripping into the tender flesh of her neck with the kind of savagery you’d expect from a starved and mistreated wolf.

  She scrabbled at his face, her mouth moving, but no sound escaped her.

  The whole thing took less than a second and I reached her as the vampire ripped a chunk from her throat. Arterial blood sprayed, hitting my cheek and lips, still warm from where just moments ago it had carried life-giving oxygen from her heart to the rest of her body.

  I caught her as she slumped forward but her eyes were already beginning to glaze with the look only the dead carry. The vampire turned away, running toward its next hapless victim.

  “You see, Jenna, fighting only ends in the deaths of the innocent,” Carmine said, her voice carrying over the noise.

  The room spun in sickening circles, the screams of the innocent as they died echoing in my head. I laid the woman in my arms down carefully on the checkered floor, her blonde hair stained with the violent crimson of her blood. Grabbing the sword, my fingers slid over the ornate hilt, my hands so slick with cooling blood I could barely keep it in my hands.

  “Stop this.” The words were little more than a whisper but I knew Carmine could hear me. She listened through every vampire that moved in the room, privy to every evil deed that was carried out in her name.

  The chaos in the room ceased as suddenly as it’d started. Only the moaning of the still living but injured continued to proliferate the growing silence.

  Sofia’s wings beat high above our heads and I glanced up at her. Her yellow eyes blazed with rage and I could see her disgust for me. She thought me weak for giving in to Carmine, weak because I couldn’t bear to see so many others die because of me. But I couldn’t stop them, I knew that now. There would be no end to the violence, I couldn’t fight them all, we would inevitably lose.

  There was only one that I needed to kill and she was standing on the dais. But to do it, and protect as many innocents as I could, I would have to give Carmine what she wanted. And right now, she wanted me.

  “Let them go, Carmine,” I said. “Let them go and I’ll do whatever you want.”
r />   “No!” Sofia shrieked, her voice higher than I remembered.

  She darted toward me, her wings beating a terrible tattoo as she flew at me, her talons ready to strike. In that moment I saw my death reflected in her eyes.

  From the side of the room, a bolt zipped through the air and knocked Sofia’s flight off course. She whirled, but one of her beautiful wings was pinned to the side of her body. She clawed at the bolt, her undamaged wing beating frantically as she tried to stay aloft.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I cried, moving toward the dais. “I told you, I’ll give myself over to you—”

  My words were cut off by the deadly whistle of another bolt. It struck Sofia dead centre of her chest, shock registering on her face for a moment before she plummeted toward the ground. The vampires converged on her like a pack of ravenous wolves.

  I cut through them, breaking through the circle that surrounded her in time to see her lifeless body hoisted into the air. The bolt sticking out of her chest was thicker than my wrist, violet blood so dark as to appear black oozed out around the shaft and slid down over her iridescent skin.

  “Sofia!”

  A dark figure stepped out in front of me and I raised my sword to block the swing of his axe but the shock of seeing Sofia dead made me sluggish. He knocked the sword from my hand easily, twirling the axe in his large meaty hands as though it were a baton and he was a cheerleader leading the charge for victory.

  The butt of the axe connected with my jaw, snapping my head to the right with enough force that had I been human I would certainly have died. I felt my body fall. My reflexes urged me to respond, to brace against the impact, but it all seemed so disconnected from where I was. I expected to hit the ground but the darkness claimed me, sucking me under to float in the bliss that was unconsciousness.

  Chapter 39

  “Wakey, wakey…”

  It was the same voice I heard whenever I had the nightmares about Kypherous. Sweat slicked my skin and I jerked as a cool hand pressed against the side of my face.

  “Jenna!”

  Grey.

  There was an urgency to his voice that felt wrong but my head was still full of the fog that came along with the nightmares.

  “Time to wake-up, Jenna.” Carmine’s voice cut through the fog as easily as if she’d sliced through it with a knife. Goosebumps broke out on my skin as I realised it was her hand I was feeling against my feverish face.

  “Get your hands off her,” Grey growled, the words barely understandable, his voice practically inhuman. “I don’t care what you do to me, but you will not touch her.”

  Cold air caressed my skin and I jolted awake, or at least I tried, but my wrists were secured with leather cuffs, pinned above my head. As soon as I realised it, I felt the ache in my shoulders. Just how long had I been out for?

  The not knowing caused my heart to speed up. So much could happen while you were unconscious.

  My eyes felt as though they’d been gummed shut. I could feel something sticky around the right one, making it hard for me to open it all the way. When I did, the world tilted violently in red and purple streamers of light.

  Panic threatened to overwhelm me. I’d been here before. How many times had I woken up at Carmine’s mercy when Kypherous had owned me?

  Terror, so familiar to me it saw tears squeeze out from between my lashes and crawled up the back of my throat like a living animal bent on escape. I could feel it scrabbling around inside me, the stink of its desperation seeped out through my pores, infecting everything in its vicinity.

  My terror, this thing that lived in my chest, had kept me alive for all those years. But it was a creature so wretched, so abused by those who should have cared for it, that it would do anything to get away. In its mind it would tear flesh if it just had the chance, but that opportunity, even if it arose, would never be taken. Instead, it would cower in the corner, beaten and bleeding, hoping to melt into the ground. Praying to be invisible so that they might just pass her by for once, just this once…

  I was that creature. I was his creature…

  But I wasn’t hers.

  Breathe. The voice in my head spoke so softly as though afraid if it talked to me as it usually did, she would hear it and crush it out of existence, such was her power.

  You are not that girl, not anymore. You have survived and you will survive this but you have to breathe.

  I sucked in a deep breath, fighting to slow the beating of my heart that threatened to beat straight out of my chest.

  Something sharp pressed to my skin. The cold metal made me draw a sharp intake of breath between my teeth that sounded a lot like a hiss.

  Forcing my eyes open, I waited for the room to come into focus. It didn’t take as long as I’d thought it might. My right eye was clearer now and the nausea caused by the ringing inside my head was slowly subsiding.

  When I got the chance, I was going to take the head of that vampire with the axe. I would cleave it from his shoulders and then I would—

  “Nice to have you back in the land of the living,” Carmine said, leaning a little heavier against the knife she had pressed to my stomach. The green dress had been cut open down the front, exposing far more of me than I was comfortable with. The blade bit into me and I gritted my teeth.

  “I wouldn’t have thought it mattered if I was awake or not,” I said. “I mean it’s not as though you need my consent to open the rift.”

  She smiled, that strange cryptic smile that only touched one side of her face.

  “Your boy here thinks I should leave you be. I think maybe he wants me all to himself. What do you think?”

  I raised my gaze to Grey and my heart stalled in my chest.

  One eye was completely swollen shut but the other glittered with an obsidian darkness that threatened to swallow the world, my world. There was such pain, such heartbreak and something else I couldn’t pinpoint. The bruises would heal but I knew what Carmine had inflicted upon him had changed something inside him, broken something that could never be repaired.

  My heart ached and I felt the first of my tears track down my cheeks.

  “Oh, Grey…” It was little more than a whisper, but he looked away, staring down at the ground as though unable to meet my gaze anymore.

  “How touching,” Carmine said, breaking the moment between us, “but the moon is beginning to fade and we have an Elder to call.”

  I flexed my fingers, testing the strength of the cuffs keeping my arms in place. They were strong but there was so much rage coursing in my veins in that moment that I knew I could break them. I wasn’t sure where the confidence had come from. I’d never felt anything like it before.

  She had already taken so much from me. Ruined so many lives. So what if Kypherous had mistreated her, broken her heart and treated her like garbage. He’d done the same to me and yet I wasn’t out here trying to conjure a goddamned Elder God.

  I strained against the cuffs but they held. To the side of the dais I could see the pile of weapons they’d stripped from me but the whip was still wrapped around my arm. Most didn’t recognise it for what it was, thinking it was just a large coiled bracelet, the kind of ornament that the ancient Greeks and Roman ladies wore.

  If I could just get free…

  Emily stood next to Grey, her face alight with, what was it?

  Joy?

  No.

  Excitement.

  In her hands she held a short, blackened, curved blade. The handle was smooth and yellowed with age but the blade itself looked wickedly sharp.

  Carmine took it from Emily and proceeded to press the tip of it to Grey’s chest. I gritted my teeth and strained against the cuffs around my wrists as she carved into his skin.

  His face blanched, the colour draining away as she dug the tip a little deeper than was necessary. A guttural groan tore from between his lips as she marked him with the symbols necessary for the ritual.

  “Your turn,” she said, facing me, the blade still slick with Grey’s bl
ood.

  I bucked and heaved in the cuffs as she pressed the blade to my abdomen and carved the first line into my flesh.

  It was a pain unlike anything I’d ever felt, a white hot blinding agony that tore through every cell in my being as though I was being ripped apart and remade anew with every stroke of the blade.

  “You won’t get away with this,” I said. I knew it was a feeble threat but I had to say something to her, anything to distract her for just a little longer. Blood trickled down my stomach, warm and wet.

  “Are you going to stop me, Jenna?” She quirked an eyebrow in my direction as she raised the blade to her mouth and licked the blood clean, smearing it across her lips as she did so.

  She handed the blade back to Emily who stepped toward her, eyes alight, lips parted, her breathing coming in short little excited gasps.

  Carmine ripped the fragile fabric of her dress, leaving herself bare, the bites I’d seen in her flesh earlier had healed, her skin now as pale and smooth as the moonlight that filtered down from overhead.

  Emily started to carve a similar set of symbols into Carmine’s flesh and when she was done, Carmine slid her hand through her own blood and painted it over her lips.

  “Time to kiss the bride,” she said, leaning over into Grey.

  He strained away from her but she wrapped one wiry hand into his hair and jerked his head forward, forcing him to meet her questing mouth. When she pulled away, his mouth was bloodier than it should have been and I realised she’d bitten his lip.

  He spat on the ground, anger and power gathering around him like a cloak made entirely of the blackest magic I had ever seen. As though she could sense it, and perhaps she could, Emily reached out toward Grey’s shoulder. For a moment, her fingers danced in the air above the black mantle that floated about him. Tiny sparks of silver light gathered, darting back and forth, faster and faster as though they anticipated her touch.

  “Don’t…” The word barely had a chance to leave my lips when Emily’s hand brushed the skin of his shoulder. The effect on her was immediate and intense. Her knees buckled as her eyes rolled back in her head. She dropped toward the ground, her body trembling and twitching, her face twisted into an expression of utter ecstasy.