by E E Everly
My chin trembles.
No.
We both…?
No.
When did Thandoran and I…? I take a deep breath. When? Thandoran loosens his hold on me and steps back with a look of disbelief on his face.
He just figured it out.
My body shakes so hard I can’t see straight. When Killian and I had… it took about half a day or more after sex for me to conceive. As soon as it happened, he lost his powers. They went right into the fetus.
How long ago did Thandoran and I…? Did the vampires compel us? Is that why I don’t remember?
“Sasha…” Thandoran mutters. “What? No. How?”
We stare at each other. Does he realize what this means? Other than the fact that we’re super weak and surrounded by thirsty vamps?
I carry his child.
A very much, supernaturally enhanced child.
THIRTY-TWO
My body trembles. From my toes to my fingers. I can’t make sense of what’s happening to me.
Rage, anguish, disappointment, alarm, all pierce my belly, heart, lungs.
I gasp for breath.
I feel violated by my own abilities. I suck the powers from those I love. Rip the powers right from them.
This can’t be happening.
I’m pregnant again—
Because we carried vampire and demon powers. I never thought carrying them could backfire so badly.
“This is enough shock for one evening,” Ciprian says. “I don’t want any harm to come to your baby. You must retire to your room.”
Vadik materializes beside me. I recoil. I hate it when he surprises me by blurring with inhuman speed.
“Wait.” I wave Vadik back as I suck in a shaky breath. “I don’t understand.”
“Which part, my dear?” Ciprian asks.
“When did Thandoran and I…? How?”
“You may be unfamiliar with this. There’s possession by demons and there’s possession by spirits.”
“What?” I ask.
“That poor woman in your washroom. She was waiting for such a pretty host. It didn’t take much for her to possess you, and she simply loved using vampire compulsion. Neither you nor Thandoran knew what happened. All you did was tell him to submit and not to remember.”
I turn to Thandoran, my face contorted with regret.
“I’m afraid you’ll never remember what happened to you while you were possessed, Sasha,” Ciprian says, “but we can fix that for Thandoran.”
A female vampire grabs Thandoran’s chin and locks her eyes with his. “Remember,” she simply says.
Thandoran stumbles into me when she lets go. Then he flinches away as if I carry the plague and backs toward the wall.
“I’m so sorry,” I mouth. I can’t remember any of it. What hurts more is that I’ve broken my promise to never compel him.
Thandoran and I need to leave, but I have one more question. I can’t put everything together. All I know is it feels as if they’ve played us from the beginning. I’m not sure who I can trust. I feel the locks of hair in my pocket. Did Natalia and Dumitru have a hand in this? They didn’t know anything. I never texted them. So when did the vampires do this?
“When did you attack the demons?” I ask.
“As soon as you were on your way here,” Ciprian says. “You and Thandoran set off into the unknown. Of course I knew where you were headed. I have spies everywhere. It doesn’t take much to compel people and demons. I have several who follow my command at Vondur Estates.”
“So that’s it. We played right into your hand.”
“The entire demise of the demons unfolded so smoothly. Vadik received his demon power and teleported ahead to make sure he was here to greet you and prepare the castle. We arrived much later but instantaneously. How else could I have traveled from Deorc Mansion to Castle Blestemat so quickly?”
“You had this all planned,” I say. “Just to get me pregnant so you have another sprite to give you fresh sprite blood.”
“It does seem like a lot of work, doesn’t it? I did bide my time. You were so well protected by Natalia and Dumitru.”
“Did they—?”
“They did not betray you, if that is your concern. Such noble creatures,” Ciprian says. “Very honorable. Killian sired valiant friends.”
“He sired them?” I whispered under my breath.
“Killian once served me, Sasha. He and his sister were loyal. They sired quite a few vampires in my coven until the day Killian gained a conscience and went rogue. He was on his own for some time before he found you. Natalia and Dumitru never wavered in their loyalty.”
“They aren’t heartless like you!”
“No more!” Ciprian says. “Take Sasha and her consort to their room. She needs her rest. She’s frail.”
Vadik grabs Thandoran and me by our collars and halls us out of the dining hall and down the corridor. We struggle, but we’re weak. The lack of vampire and demon powers is too much of a shock to my system. I haven’t moved like a human in so long that I’m extra slow. Already to our rooms, Vadik shoves us through the doorway, shuts the door, and locks it.
I have to act fast. There’s a million things to do before we’re trapped by new wards. I push off the floor to find Thandoran standing like a zombie.
I don’t have time for this. I step toward him, but he steps back as if I’m acid.
“Come on. Hold still.” I fish in his pocket and pull out the compass. Then I take the locks of Natalia’s and Dumitru’s hair. One right after the other, I confirm that they’re alive. It looks as if they could be down the main corridor, in one of the rooms, but which floor, I don’t know.
Now we have two more people to add to our rescue mission. If we find them first, then we have two more people to help us escape.
I shove the compass into Thandoran’s pocket. When he doesn’t move, I slap him across the face.
“Ouch!” He shoves me away and rubs his cheek.
“Good. Now that I have your attention, we can leave.”
His face pinches with brokenness. I hate that I have to push him, but we don’t have time. He can feel his sorrow later when we’re home safe.
“I don’t have time to hold your hand, Thandoran,” I say with a patient voice.
“You don’t get it.” His eyes are filled with hatred—for me. “You took my firestorm!” He holds up his trembling hands. “I have nothing!”
“I didn’t take it.” My hands find my stomach. I can’t think about the life that’s growing inside me and what it means, not now, but I acknowledge one thing—it’s happening all over again. My child is making the person I care about suffer.
I’ll be damned if this will lead to his death.
Thandoran’s forehead wrinkles as he glares at my hands. “I didn’t want any of this.”
Oh, has he pondered all the ramifications?
There’s no time!
My insides are screaming, but I pull everything back and answer calmly. “I know.” I barely know Thandoran. Is he even the type who wants a child? This small pause allows enough time for tears to sting my eyes. “You just wanted your sister.” I grab Thandoran’s arm. “We will save her. I promise.”
Thandoran shakes me off and sinks to the floor. His breaths are labored. He’s working hard to control himself. At least he doesn’t have his firestorm to hold off.
I fall to my knees beside him. “I will get your firestorm back. Once the baby’s born, I can transfer the powers to you with the amulet.”
“How will we get the amulet, Sasha?”
I grip his shaking hands. “Look at me.”
“I can’t. I feel sick.”
“Stop being a baby.”
“A ghost possessed you and seduced me and stole our powers,” he says. “This is not okay.”
“Our extra powers. The powers we’re not supposed to have.” I touch Thandoran’s neck, and static shocks him.
He flinches away and gropes to his feet. “Stop messing
around.”
“I’m not.” I push after him as he paces. I pull a mandarin from his backpack and chuck it at his head. Then another one.
Thandoran dodges them, with his hands protecting his face. “What’re you doing?”
“Eat some ambrosia.” I hit him square in the chest with another one.
“Oof.” Thandoran rubs his chest but bends to pick up the fallen fruit. Reluctantly his bites into it.
Good. I nod.
As I down a dozen sugar packets, I feel the wards in the room, the same ones keeping the vampires out but not keeping us in. Ciprian doesn’t want any of the vampires to harm me now that I’m carrying something precious inside, but they haven’t added to the wards.
We still have time, but they might even now be forcing Isac to add more spells to imprison us.
Slightly giddy from my sugar rush but more than ready to kick some vamp butt, I press my hand to Thandoran’s chest and brace his back with my other one. He scarcely has time to swallow his last mandarin before he registers that I have my hands on him. “You are a storm sprite.” I rub his chest hard. “We’re going to use what the creator gave us.”
“I’ve never used anything but my firestorm. It’s always overridden my other abilities.”
“Not today it won’t.”
I whip toward the window and blow it open with a gust of wind. The glass shatters and spits into the dark. Frigid air rolls into the room. With wild eyes, I turn to Thandoran. “You bring the thunder. I’ll bring the ice.”
“How?”
“Think electric.”
I stir the elements in the air. Clouds heavy with moisture form in the sky. The moon darkens. I wrap the clouds with electricity, and lightning cracks to the ground, followed by a boom of thunder.
“They will have heard that,” I say. “We have to move.”
Thandoran just gapes.
“You have this too.” I send a jolt of my power across the room to him. Thandoran sparks and threads of electricity wrap around his body.
“Holy hellhounds!” His hands fly up, and he pulls the cords of electricity and coils them into the air until they hit the ceiling light and rain glass and sparks on us.
I laugh maniacally. “Yes. Bring the storm.”
Thandoran’s body throbs for a new reason. He ropes a cloud with an invisible thread and pulls it into the room.
We’re in a vortex of spitting rain.
“Yes! You’ve got this.” The room is utterly destroyed from our whirlwind, and with nowhere else to go, I blast the bedroom door off its hinges. I add cold air to my own storm cloud, and we race into the dark corridor, ready to level this place.
THIRTY-THREE
The moment we’re in the corridor, vampires barrel at us from all sides. Thandoran sends his lightning in sizzling snaps before us. We ascend the small staircase just beyond the corridor near our room and head to the third floor where Isac resides.
I hope Natalia and Dumitru are on the same floor.
As we pass doors, I blow them open, hoping to find my vampire bodyguards.
We find more vampires instead, and they immediately attack.
I have us covered. My winter storm forms deadly spears of ice that I launch at enemies. There’s nothing more satisfying than a tube of ice spearing a vampire in the heart and seeing their look of surprise.
Thandoran and I are a sight as we stroll tight passages like a mighty king and queen. Sparks rain and hail pelts around us like a flurry of thrown confetti. Lights shatter when Thandoran passes. He pulses and glows. His eyes aren’t their usual orange. They’re yellow and filled with determination.
He has a kill-or-be-killed vibe that makes him fiercely alluring.
I keep an eye out for Natalia and Dumitru. I have to be careful. On first instinct upon seeing a vampire, I want to attack, but I blink twice to make sure the person’s unfriendly.
After we squeeze through a narrow section of corridor, a vampire dives under Thandoran’s lightning coil. As the vamp kicks out to trip Thandoran, I impale him with a spear.
Then there’s a choice of direction. A section of hall opens into a narrow passage that leads to a cluster of doors around a center receiving area. My gut tells me Natalia and Dumitru could be down there. The compass pointed in that direction, but Isac’s room is to the right.
Thandoran zaps an incoming vamp. She convulses and drops to the floor, limp and smoking.
“I have to check out those rooms!” I cup my mouth so my words reach him over our tornado of a storm.
“Isac is this way.” Thandoran points in the opposite direction.
“I have to make sure Nat and Dumitru aren’t down there!” The receiving area would be a great place for vamps to ambush us, but I have to look.
“Fine. Let’s go.” Thandoran moves ahead and cracks his lightning.
I cover his back as we step into the center of the large room. Five doors around us fly open. We’ve made ourselves vulnerable.
“Duck, Sasha!” Thandoran yells.
Before I can react, Thandoran wraps his arms around me so I’m within his storm. I can barely see past his shoulder in his crushing embrace, but as a dozen vamps blur forward, the tight lighting coil around Thandoran explodes outward and strikes all of them at once.
With several horrid screeches, they ignite and catch fire. A few topple backward, but some of them lunge forward, still aflame.
“Oh fraz!” Thandoran exclaims.
“Get down!” I shove Thandoran to his knees and release a barrage of ice daggers that pin the flaming vampires to the walls.
Thandoran pushes to his feet. “Great job.” He’s breathing heavily. His lightning coil went out, but sparks crackle around his body.
“You’re getting winded.”
“I’ll be fine. Just catching my breath.” He braces himself on his thighs, half bent.
I frown. We may have been too energetic with our early attacks, and we haven’t even reached Kaelea’s room.
The flames from the vampires snake up the walls. We don’t have time to linger.
“Rein the storm in a bit,” I say, “but don’t let it completely go.”
Thandoran nods and coughs. The room is filling with smoke. My ice storm somewhat protects us from the heat, but the wood is so old that flames already lick across the ceiling.
I step toward the passage to move back the way we came but hear someone calling from a room to my left.
“Sasha! Down here.”
Natalia?
I race through a tiny entry to find three more doors. Good griffins, this place is a crazy maze.
“Here,” Natalia moans.
She’s behind door number two. I open the door, ready to attack should another vampire barge out.
Two shadows are in the middle of the space, in the dark. “Is that you, Nat? Dumitru?”
They aren’t moving, and it looks as if their arms are pulled over their heads. I flick a light on. It’s a bedchamber, but it’s cleared of furniture. Natalia and Dumitru are dangling from chains hanging from the ceiling. They are at least two inches from the floor, and the weight of their bodies cuts the cuffs into their wrists.
Silver shackles. Dumitru’s unconscious. His head lolls to the side. I release my ice storm and wave my clouds into the entry behind me. I rush up to Dumitru and lift his head. “Geez, you never do well with silver.” I turn to Natalia. “You’re still conscious?”
“Only just. I heard your commotion. Vhat are you doing out there?”
I grin. “Having a little fun.”
I check the cuffs. They lock with a key.
“Break them apart. Come on.” Natalia wiggles, and the chain jerks. She winces.
“I can’t. I don’t have demon strength any more.”
“Vhat happened?”
“We’ll get into that later,” I say.
Thandoran runs into the room. “We have to go. The fire’s out of control.”
“Put it out,” I say as I tug on Natalia’s cuff. He m
ust forget that he can do that with his storm.
Instead, Thandoran blasts the base of the chains attached to the ceiling. The links break apart, and Natalia falls on top of me, and Dumitru thumps to the ground.
“Ouch!” I huff. “A little warning next time!”
Natalia rolls off me, and I rub my rump.
“Is there a key? We have to get the silver off.” I crawl to Dumitru and roll him onto his back. He flops over, limp. “Dang it.” I lift his eyelid. His eye is glassy. He’s not waking up anytime soon.
“Check the vampires who were in here,” Nat says.
“They’re fried corpses.”
“I’ll check.” Thandoran heads out of the room.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Nat. I follow Thandoran and find him using a rainstorm and putting out the flames on the corpses closest to the room. Soon they’re partially charcoaled, partially melted, but dripping soot. I cover my nose. The distinct scent of burnt flesh over burnt wood is overwhelming. “I don’t see a key.”
Thandoran pats corpse number one down. When he comes up empty, he moves to the other one. As soon as I hear the jingle of keys, a beam across the room crashes, bringing half the ceiling with it.
A pile of debris just blocked our exit.
“Move!” I shout as I cower from the heat.
We race into the room and unlock Natalia and Dumitru. Natalia gingerly prods her wrists. The skin has several gashes that are not healing.
“What are we going to do about Dumitru?” Natalia says.
“You both need blood.” I give them a what-else look. I’ve been here before. Done that. They’ll have to drink me.
“Princess,” Thandoran says. “We have to go. We can come back for them.”
“He’s right.” Natalia slides over to Dumitru. “You have to leave.”
“Like hell,” I say. “I’m not leaving anyone behind.”
“He could be moving Kaelea!” Thandoran exclaims. “He could be compelling Isac to do something. We have to go!”
“We need a way out first. The other room is toast.” Smoke already billows along the ceiling here.
“The fireplace,” Natalia says. “There’s one on the other side, so the brick between them is thin.”
