by Eva Brandt
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I struck the shell with the pendant once more, making Louis cry out again. “You wretched unworthy beast! I’ll tear you apart into little pieces.”
His tentacles didn’t have quite enough reach to knock me off his shell, but he didn’t need to grab me like that to hurt me. Louis’s greatest weapon was still his mind magic and since I was making contact with his body, it was a piece of cake for him to reach into my mind.
The world went black and all of a sudden, the only thing I could see was the gaping maw of the gigantic mollusk that wanted to consume me. I stood there frozen, unable to move a muscle as the snail’s tentacles flew toward me.
The creature missed. A bright shield manifested in front of me, derailing his blow. I heard Louis screech a helpless, “How?”, and then I was propelled back into my body by the same power that had protected me.
I opened my eyes to the sight of a concerned Lucienne staring down at me. “Are you all right?” she asked.
I took a quick look around and realized that, at one point, I’d fallen off the shell. The battle was still raging and Louis the snail was more furious than ever. The Dames Blanches had started to cluster around him, but the Alarians were putting up a good fight, having had time to recover from the surprise attack of the ghostly women. Mathias was still the one who was doing the most damage, but that was to be expected.
“I’m fine,” I told Lucienne as she helped me up. “Looks like Alois’s pendant is just as efficient as ever.”
“Yes, we were lucky,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of the battle. She stared at the pendant still in my hand. I had just enough time to wonder how I hadn’t dropped it when I’d fallen off the snail before she turned on her heel and said, “But we can’t rely on luck. Sometimes, we have to take matters into our own hands.”
“Lucienne, what do you mean?”
She didn’t answer. A bright purple glow enveloped her body as she headed straight toward the battle—toward her mollusk-shaped father.
“You know what? I had made my peace with being an orphan. It wasn’t an issue anymore. I had accepted it, moved on. And now, it turns out that my father is actually a giant, cannibalistic snail whose favorite hobby is hunting down my soulmates. Fuck that. If you have a problem with my decisions, you take it up with me, not anyone else.”
In the chaos, her words shouldn’t have been audible. Somehow, though, they were deafeningly loud. They echoed so heavily over the disaster area that had been a wedding venue that everyone turned to look at her.
It was almost funny to see fighters from both sides stop mid-battle just because Lucienne had decided to step in. Under different circumstances, I would have deemed it unlikely and would have tried to prevent Lucienne from approaching her father.
But there was a thick tension in the air, something that hadn’t been there before, not even during Louis’s attack. My soulmate’s silhouette seemed to blur around the edges, as if she wasn’t really there, as if her figure was only a hallucination or an effect of astral projection. I rubbed my eyes and the strange flickering vanished. Lucienne’s hostility did not. “You will remove yourself and your people from this place or I will make you regret ever having been born.”
Her icy tone made a shiver course down my spine. It wasn’t a reaction born out of fear, but rather, out of excitement. Her anger resonated with the darkness hidden inside me, with the fury and frustration I’d suppressed for so many years.
We had been silenced and used for too long. We had been betrayed, condemned, and tortured. Not anymore. Today, it would all end, and we could start anew.
“I don’t want to fight you, Lucienne,” Louis said, a dose of wariness in his voice. “You’re my daughter and I love you.”
“Do you really?” she asked as she stopped walking, only a few feet away from her father. “Well, I don’t feel the same.”
The light around her turned brighter and started to spread, as beautiful as a blooming flower and as dangerous as a cloud of radiation. Almost everyone in her proximity started to back away. They didn’t move quickly enough.
When the people started screaming, I barely heard them. The purple mist of Lucienne’s magic reached me as well, but it felt welcoming instead of scary. The images that flashed through my mind held the same promise and the same dream that had burned so fiercely in my heart ever since I’d first met her at the club.
“Stop her!” King Sterling shouted. “Stop her now!”
“No, don’t!” Mathias ordered. “Don’t touch her!”
Under normal circumstances, the Alarians would have undoubtedly obeyed their king and ignored Mathias. However, the threads of Lucienne’s power had already taken hold of their minds. Those who weren’t completely incapacitated were dazed, looking around in confusion, as if uncertain where they were and what they were supposed to be doing.
The injuries they received were nothing compared to what happened to Lucienne’s real target. The gigantic snail started to flail so badly he ended up biting off one of his own tentacles. His already damaged shell pulsed from within, and I had a feeling that the flares of purple that emanated from beneath the cracks did not bode well for his future.
The Dames Blanches hadn’t fared any better. They tried to push past Mathias, but he was more ruthless and relentless than ever. Since Lucienne was handling her father herself, he’d been left free to deal with Louis’s underlings and he was having a lot of fun with it.
He did not seem to care about any of the Alarians who got in his way. Maybe I should’ve found this off-putting, but at the end of the day, my loyalty had always been to my soulmate, not to The Pure Kingdom of Alaria.
I didn’t really care about what happened to the Alarians. As far as I was concerned, Lucienne could do whatever she wished. If she enslaved or killed every person here, I would accept it. And while I might not trust Mathias quite as much, I knew he wouldn’t harm me or anyone I cared about. As long as that was the case, he could fight, kill, feed, and take whatever he felt was necessary.
Everyone else was dust beneath our feet. They were irrelevant, tools to be discarded, pesky insects and nothing more.
The screaming reached such extents that I couldn’t distinguish individual sounds any longer. At first, it didn’t seem to matter, as I only had to focus on Lucienne, and she was right there in front of me. Too late did I realize how wrong I’d been. Too late did I understand I shouldn’t have dropped my guard.
All of a sudden, Lucienne’s body jerked. The light around her flickered and started to fade.
Lucienne blinked and stared down at her chest. A spot of rapidly spreading crimson now stained the corset of her wedding gown, making the fiery threads on the silver material stand out even more. “Oh,” she said simply. “This sucks.”
She collapsed, and with her, so did my entire world.
Fourteen
The Power of Death
Bjorn
It was silent after Lucienne fell. As the violet mist of Lucienne’s magic lifted, the fighting and the screaming stopped, and with it, so did everything else. Or maybe it just seemed that way to me, because my heart, my magic, and my muscles instantly became uncooperative.
I was much too far from Lucienne, having engaged the Dames Blanches in battle in an attempt to keep them from my soulmate. I’d done my best and had actually encountered some success since the Dames Blanches were obviously more vulnerable to my abilities than they were to regular elemental skills. But it was all for nothing now that Lucienne had been shot.
On some level, I realized that I could not afford to allow my panic to cripple me in this way. I should be rushing to Lucienne’s side and making sure she received medical treatment. But despite that knowledge, despite my desire to help her, I was frozen, unable to do anything but stare. Spots danced in my vision and my brain felt fuzzy, almost as if I was taking in the whole thing through a thick veil.
Fortunately, Malachai did better. He managed to reach Lucie
nne before she even hit the ground and caught her in his arms. His hands shook as he tried to put pressure on her wound. “Lucienne,” I heard him say, “come on. Don’t do this to me. Stay with me.”
If Lucienne heard him, she showed no sign of it. She had already lost consciousness and the blood kept flowing from the injury, despite Malachai’s best attempts to aid her. “We need help here!” Malachai called out. “Help, please!”
“Nobody is going to help you, vampire, not after what you and your accomplices have done.”
Like a man in a dream, I turned to look at the source of the voice. I should have been more surprised when I took in the identity of the speaker, and of the fact that he was still holding a smoking gun.
It was Cardinal Vaughn. Of course it was. Who else could it possibly be?
Louis noticed the gun as quickly as I did. “Fool! What have you done?” he bellowed.
“What I needed to do,” Cardinal Vaughn replied with a smirk. His eyes flickered from their regular black to purple and then to black once again. “That woman has only brought The Pure Kingdom of Alaria disaster and strife. I did you all a favor by removing her, although I admit I might have had a secondary reason.”
He stared right at me as he spoke, and between that and his earlier reprimand of Malachai, it wasn’t difficult to conclude that this had been retribution for our actions. I’d probably had it coming. Mathias had warned me to be careful, but I’d been arrogant and I’d thought I could handle the cardinal.
I had paid a dire price for my foolishness.
“Bjorn Lindberg and Malachai Braun, guilty of high treason,” the cardinal said. “You dared to use your powers to twist not only my mind but those of countless others. You’ve betrayed your vows and your people. For that, I have enacted—”
His words died into a scream when an overwhelmingly bright inferno enveloped his body. “The punishment you enact will always be returned tenfold if you lay one finger on the people I care about,” Mathias said in a dead voice. “Burn, Theodore Vaughn. Burn and know that I will destroy everything you’ve ever wanted to protect.”
The fire was so intense that no one had time to attempt to stop it. In fact, several people were forced to shy away from the excessive heat the blaze emanated. Even Louis hissed in displeasure, although he wasn’t all that close to Cardinal Vaughn’s position.
It was just as well that Mathias didn’t seem inclined to take his time with Vaughn. Within seconds, his body had been almost completely carbonized. As the blackened ruin of what had been the cardinal’s body crumpled to the ground, the Alarians finally seemed to snap out of their trance. They converged upon Mathias, perhaps finding some kind of clarity in having a foe they could focus on.
Their actions only made matters worse. The battle had been chaotic before, but this time, it turned into an incomprehensible hell where it was difficult to distinguish friend from foe. The Alarians weren’t just fighting Louis and the Dames Blanches. They were also attacking Mathias and attempting to make their way to the fallen Lucienne.
Meanwhile, Louis had taken to grabbing random people with his tentacles and throwing them out of his path. He was no longer bothering to consume them and instead seemed utterly determined to make his way to his injured daughter. He had yet to change back to his regular form, and that made me wonder if the damage he’d taken had been serious enough to disable his ability to shift. At this point, I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
Because of the way people were crowding together, their magic ended up hitting unintended targets. I caught a glimpse of two Dames Blanches accidentally hitting each other while trying to target Mathias.
One of the women was blasted back and landed straight at my feet, at which point I knew exactly what I needed to do.
There was no way for me to pass through the crowd right now, not if I wanted to be fast enough and actually make a difference in Lucienne’s recovery. However, here I had at my disposal a convenient source of power, a target I could use to boost my already considerable abilities.
I dropped to my knees next to the dazed woman but did not bother to kiss her like I had Lucienne. This extraction process would be tougher since arousal couldn’t have been further from her mind, but I’d done far more questionable things. I grabbed her wrist and willed her to surrender, to give me her strength and her magic.
She tried to resist me, but she was still dazed after the blow she’d received and in the end, she succumbed. Her eyes glazed over and she let out a low contented sigh. She didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to. Instead, she grabbed the lapel of my jacket and pulled me in for a kiss.
I hated feeling her mouth on my own, but this wasn’t about passion or genuine lust. This was about power, and the Dame Blanche had plenty of it. I kissed her back, all the while allowing my magic to slither inside her and take what I truly wanted.
She gasped and tried to pull away from me, but it was too late. My hold on her was too strong. I pushed, took and fed until there was barely anything left inside the woman. Satisfied, I broke the kiss between us. She was alive, but only just. I couldn’t have cared less about her condition.
I dumped the shell of her body onto the ground and took a deep breath, forcing myself to adjust to the power now coursing through my veins. I didn’t have a lot of time at my disposal, but I’d never fed on a Dame Blanche. I was unaccustomed to the type of magic my feeding source wielded and I’d only recently returned to a regular diet of sensations and emotions.
It was a little overwhelming and, for a few priceless moments, I actually thought I was going to fail. I thought I’d been rash to jump into feeding on the Dame Blanche while so unprepared for the nature of her abilities. However, my body didn’t let me down. It took longer than I’d have liked, but in the end, I adjusted and my victim’s power settled inside me, waiting to be summoned like an obedient pet.
As I had hoped, the Dame Blanche had a natural skill for healing. All fae did and although the Dames Blanches were an uncommon breed, they still possessed the skills of the main branch of magical creatures. Once I had ascertained that, I only had to find a way to get to Lucienne.
Mathias almost seemed to read my mind. I had no idea if he’d seen what I’d done, or if he was just that pissed off, but all of a sudden, the blaze around him flared brighter and hotter, creating a violent firestorm that consumed everything in its path. The Alarians who possessed some skill at fire manipulation tried to hold it back, but he was much too strong.
The king stepped in himself, and Mathias’s fire curled around him, not quite harmless, but definitely not doing as much damage as it had to the others. “You will free my son, creature, if I have to claw you out of him with my bare hands!”
“Darius belongs to me,” Mathias said, the ice in his voice contrasting sharply with the fire burning at his fingertips. “You will never have him back. I tore this world apart once. I will do it again and you won’t be able to stop it.”
Even before he’d gained the ability to feel, Darius had never sounded so emotionless and dead inside. It worried me, but I discarded my concern in favor of using the chance Mathias had bought me.
Everyone was focusing on Mathias now, his threat distracting even Louis and his Dames Blanches. Nobody realized what I’d done and once I cloaked myself in the power I’d stolen, nobody noticed me at all.
Between that and my natural determination and abilities, I managed to make my way to my fallen soulmate’s side. As I dropped to my knees next to her, Malachai looked at me with haunted eyes. The crimson of his gaze matched the ominous stain on Lucienne’s gown. “Bjorn?” he asked shakily. “What do we do?”
“I’m going to try to help her. Do you mind keeping an eye out? I don’t know how long Mathias will be able to stall.”
Malachai glanced at Lucienne one more time and then nodded quietly. He got up and walked away without looking back. I didn’t follow him with my gaze, choosing instead to focus on Lucienne.
I wasn’t completely out of
luck. The bullet had already left Lucienne’s body, and while the exit wound was messy and undoubtedly painful, it meant that I wouldn’t have to work on extracting the projectile myself. I could go ahead and heal Lucienne. We could still salvage something out of this dreadful day.
Threads of healing magic emerged from my fingertips, knitting Lucienne’s beautiful flesh back together, replenishing her blood and mending torn tissue. The bullet had missed her heart, but it had been a close call, and the silver had done more damage than I’d expected, considering the fact that she was not an Accursed.
Thankfully, the magic of the Dames Blanches was still more powerful and before long, I could sense Lucienne’s body respond. But there was a downside to my success. I was so busy trying to heal my soulmate that I didn’t sense the new threat until it was too late to do anything about it. A blast of magic hit me in the side, violently shoving me away from Lucienne.
“I think that’s quite enough, incubus,” an unfamiliar female voice stated. “We’ve come to claim what is ours and you won’t be able to stop us.”
I shot to my feet, suppressing the urge to clutch my new injury. I probably failed at hiding just how much the blow had affected me, as the beautiful blonde who had spoken smirked at me. “Would you look at that? You’re barely standing. It’s a good thing we’ve come here to—”
“I know why you came here,” I cut her off. “It’s because you’re slaves to the same person who wants to enslave Lucienne. Quite frankly, I don’t care about your reasons. You will not lay a finger on her. Over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged,” a man replied as he walked up to the woman.
I recognized them both, of course, from the photos I’d found in the mansion of the Garniers. They were Diane and Pierce Garnier, Lucienne’s beloved friends and the same people who had hurt and betrayed her. Behind them stood their mother, Clara, the woman who had written that heartfelt letter I myself had brought to Lucienne.
