by P. C. Cast
She knew she only had seconds, so instead of trying to avoid the creature called Biddle, she crouched, put one hand on the thick bark of the tree. The other she placed gently on Bryan’s throat. Anastasia closed her eyes and thought of the earth below the tree-the rich, timeless, living strength that she believed with all her soul to be there. She envisioned it as a green fountain shooting up through the ground, to the tree’s roots, into the tree itself, and from there flowing into her, through her, and into Bryan.
“Come to me strong, wonderful earth;
a healing intent is the magic I birth!”
Instantly, heat surged from the tree trunk, into her hand, though her body, and into Bryan’s neck.
“Time for foreplay to be over. Let’s us get to the good stuff. Come on. I never had me no vampyre,” and so saying, Jesse Biddle reached down, took her ankle in a grip that was like a blacksmith’s metal press. As if she weighed no more than a child’s doll, he dragged her from Bryan and toward the dark rear entrance of the jailhouse. Anastasia watched to see if Bryan made any movement at all-even the smallest hint of breath lifting his chest again. She saw nothing but his crumpled, still form before Biddle tossed her inside the building and slammed the door shut behind them.
“Sssshe is not dead!”
Anastasia stared at the thing in the cage. It wasn’t bird. It wasn’t human. It didn’t even appear real. Except for the glow of its scarlet eyes it seemed unsubstantial, ghostly-something made of nightmares and shadows.
“Not yet she ain’t,” Biddle said. “I’m gonna have me some fun before I drain her.”
“Using her wassss not part of the plan,” the creature hissed.
“There ain’t no plan! There’s just me feeding you her blood so’s you’ll give me more of what I want. What happens before to her don’t matter.”
Anastasia looked from the creature in the cage to the sheriff. “What is that thing?”
“Don’t rightly know,” Biddle said as his hand slid up from her ankle to her calf. “Just ignore it-it ain’t real anyway.”
From where he’d thrown her on the dirt floor Anastasia kicked out, trying to break away from him, but his rail-thin body was deceiving. The strength in his bony hands was incredible, and with a single pull on her leg he jerked her back to him.
“No! Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!” She struggled against him.
“Aw, come on. Everybody knows about you vampyre women. Y’all have lots a men. So, don’t act like you’re some kinda virgin.”
Cold fear filled Anastasia, freezing her. She stared at the human who loomed like an animated skeleton above her.
He smiled. “That’s right. Just be still and it’ll go easier fer you.”
Keeping one hand clamped around her ankle, Biddle began unbuckling the belt to his pants with the other.
It was then Anastasia knew the truth-this human was going to rape and kill her.
Oh, Nyx! Please help me! I don’t want to die like this, she prayed frantically.
Then, through the shock and chill in her blood, she felt the warmth of the ajoite crystal that she’d shoved in her pocket as her spell had been broken, and beside it was the heaviness of a velvet bag filled with salt crystals.
As Biddle reached into his pants, Anastasia reached into the pocket of her skirt. She scooped a handful of salt out of the velvet bag and threw it into the human’s face.
Biddle cried out and jerked back, blinking hard and wiping his tearing eyes. “You bitch!” he yelled.
He’d given her all the time she needed. Anastasia scrambled backward as she lifted the bag of salt and the fist-sized ajoite, a crystal infused with phantom magick from deep within the earth. Since ancient times, priestesses had been using it to bring peace through clarity of spirit, and now Anastasia, a priestess dedicated to peace and the earth, reached deep within her spirit and connected with the element on which she crouched. With a single motion she whipped the open bag of salt around her so that it surrounded her with a crystal circle, saying:
“Binding salt, of you I ask,
link me to earth as your task.”
Then, holding the ajoite like a dagger, she plunged it into the dirt, crying:
“Earth below, filled with might,
grant me protection this dark night!”
She felt the surge of power come from below, as if a dam had broken free. Like a thunderstorm on the prairie, green light sizzled all around her. Pressing her palms flat against the element that had just gifted her with an affinity, Anastasia was weeping tears of happiness and thanksgiving when Biddle tried to cross the circle of salt. He recoiled with a cry of pain just as the creature in the cage shrieked, “No! The green light! It burnsss me!”
“Shut up, you!” Biddle kicked the creature’s cage and the thing of spirit quieted to a keening whimper. Then he began to circle the glowing shield. “What is this? What have you done, you damned witch?”
“I’ve called my element to protect me. You can’t hurt me now.” She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “I’m not a witch. I am a vampyre priestess with an earth affinity, and you can’t hurt me now!” she repeated.
“It won’t last! It won’t last!” Biddle said, nervously plucking at his shirt. “When that light dies, so do you.”
Anastasia shook her head. “You don’t understand. The earth is protecting me. It’s not going to die or fade or fail. And I’m going to sit right here and wait for my High Priestess to find me. I promise you, she will. The House of Night knows I’m here. They’ll find me and Bryan.” Her voice started to break, but she pulled more power from the earth below her and continued, “And then you’ll answer for what you’ve done tonight.” Her gaze went from him to the pathetically whimpering thing in the cage. “And you’ll have to answer for whatever you’ve done to that poor creature, too.”
“Don’t nobody care about vampyres or ghost things,” he said.
“That’s not true,” Anastasia said, and as she spoke she felt the rightness of her words. “There are good people in St. Louis. They trade with us. They even become our consorts. They won’t like what you’ve done, what you’ve turned into, or what you’ve trapped down here.”
He paused and she saw a flash of something that might have been a spark of sanity in his eyes. “You know I’m right,” she said. “Just leave here. Go, before anyone else is hurt.”
Anastasia saw understanding or even regret in his eyes, and then there was the awful wet, violent sound of a sword being plunged through a body. Biddle’s eyes widened as he stared down at the blade that had suddenly gone through his back and sprouted out of the middle of his chest. With surprising gracefulness, the sheriff dropped to his knees and then lurched sideways in a growing puddle of blood as Bryan pulled his sword free of him.
The fledgling stood over Biddle, breathing hard, his throat no longer crushed but still cruelly bruised and battered. His lips were pulled back to expose his teeth in a feral snarl, and Anastasia saw that he was completely the dragon then. The sweet fledgling was gone, as was the kindhearted, handsome Warrior. As she watched him breathe in the heady scent of blood that lifted around them, she knew when he crouched beside Biddle that he was going to slash the human’s throat and drain him as he died.
The sense of foreboding that had been shadowing Anastasia all that night flooded her, and she knew then that her intuition hadn’t simply been warning her about Biddle’s plans. There was more, much more to it than that. Reaching deep to pull more earth magic to her, the priestess whispered, “With earth’s might cut like a sword-reveal the truth of Bryan Dragon Lankford.”
With a green flash of light an image appeared before Anastasia. It was Bryan, a fully Changed vampyre. He was on a battlefield, and again, he was completely the dragon. She gasped as she saw who he was slaying: brother vampyres.
What you see
is what will be
if his strength is not tempered with mercy.
The words were in her mind, but they weren’t her own and
though she’d never heard the voice before, Anastasia knew the Goddess, Nyx, was speaking to her.
Anastasia also knew what she had to do.
Bryan had drained Biddle dry of blood and, swollen with power and victory and violence, he was descending upon the creature of spirit in the cage with his sword raised.
“Bryan, stop!” Anastasia cried as she stood and stepped out of the protective circle to stand between him and the thing in the cage.
“Step aside, Anastasia. I don’t know what it is, but it was allied with Biddle. It must die.”
She held her ground and said, “Bryan, it’s in a cage. Biddle was keeping it prisoner.”
“I don’t care!” Bryan practically snarled at her, his breath smelling of blood and hate. “It needs to be killed!”
Anastasia repressed the shudder of fear she felt at the sight of the base, violent being he had become. It is him. It is still Bryan, she reminded herself. Moving slowly, she reached out to cover his bloody sword hand with her own. “You don’t care about that creature, but do you care about me?” she asked softly.
He hesitated. Through his hand she felt the tension in him release just a little. “Yes,” he said. “I care about you.”
“Then listen to me. There has been enough killing tonight. I’m asking you to let mercy win. Be stronger than your sword. Become the Warrior I know is within you.”
Their eyes met, held, and when he finally sighed and lowered his sword Anastasia saw her future, her Bryan, within them.
“Yes,” he said, touching her cheek gently. “I choose to become the Warrior you believe is within me.”
Anastasia was stepping into his open arms when his face twisted in pain and, with a terrible cry, Bryan fell to the ground at her feet.
Frantically, she dropped to her knees beside him. “Bryan! What has-”
And then she broke off as he raised his tear-streaked face to her.
“Oh!” She breathed a long, awestruck breath. “They are so beautiful.” With a trembling hand, she reached out and traced the new tattoos of the fully Changed vampyre beside her.
“What are they? What do they look like?” he asked.
“Dragons,” she said. “They look exactly like dragons.”
“Dragons!” he said, laughing. And then almost immediately he sobered and took both of her hands in his. He cleared his throat and on his knees beside her said, “Anastasia, I want to be your Warrior. My lady, will you accept my pledge of my heart, body, and soul as your protector?”
“Only if you add one more pledge to that. Bryan Dragon Lankford, if you are pledged in service to me, you must give me your oath that from this moment on you will temper your strength with mercy.”
With no hesitation he responded, “I do so pledge my oath to you.” Bryan fisted one hand over his heart and bowed his head to his priestess.
He helped her to her feet and Anastasia’s gaze went from him to the indistinct creature of spirit and darkness that crouched watching them from within silver bars of Biddle’s cage. “Please, show mercy to it,” she said simply.
“Then let my first act as your Warrior be a merciful one.” He strode over to the cage. “Creature, I know not what you are, but I warn you, if you mean harm to us, I will protect my own.”
“Freedom…,” the thing said with its strange, whispery voice.
Holding his sword at ready, standing between the ghost thing and his priestess, Bryan reached down and opened the cage. There was a flapping sound, and then the creature faded completely away, hissing, “It is finisssshed…”
“Thank you, Bryan,” Anastasia said.
Her Warrior took her in his arms, saying, “Come to me, my lady, my own,” and Anastasia happily and naïvely stepped into what she truly believed would be their happily ever after.
At the same moment in the bowels of the earth a winged prisoner stirred and through the scarlet eyes of the creature Dragon Lankford had just released, Kalona began to hunt for another piece of the puzzle that would align the fates and bring to fruition his desires for the future.
EPILOGUE
Present-day Oklahoma
“No!” Though tears tracked down his face, Dragon Lankford’s voice was like stone as he stared into Jack’s funeral pyre. “I can never forget or forgive. That thing I allowed to escape-it was the spirit of a Raven Mocker, the creature who, given a body, murdered you. Had I destroyed it all those years ago, my own, my love, we might have avoided this fate, this future.” He shook his head and repeated, “No, I can never forget.”
Then, with cold, perfectly controlled movements, Dragon fisted his hand around Anastasia’s locket and pressed it over his heart, bowing his head and saying, “I no longer have a priestess. I no longer am bound to my oath. Without you, Anastasia, I am only the dragon, and a dragon does not temper strength with mercy.” He opened his fist and held the locket up before him, kissed it, and then threw it into the burning pyre.
Green flames blazed from the pyre and reality divided and opened, curtain-like, to reveal a ghostly vision of Anastasia. She was sobbing and her voice, echoing eerily, came to him.
“You have cut my heart with your sword,
Bryan Dragon Lankford.”
He fell to his knees in despair, reaching toward the flames as if he could pull her spirit to him, and cried:
“Your death has broken me;
the dragon is all I have left to be.”
The apparition was fading, but her voice drifted over the crackle of the fire:
“If you are not my mate, kind and true,
how will I ever again find you?”
As his hungry eyes stared at her, Anastasia, still weeping, turned from the rent in reality and stepped into the arms of Nyx. The Goddess pressed a palm to her forehead and light cascaded into the priestess’s soul.
“Nyx!” Dragon cried. “Let her remain with me!”
The Goddess’s gaze was infinitely sad.
“You must be brave
to find the peace that you crave.”
The curtain to the Otherworld shivered and closed, cutting off Dragon’s vision of his mate and the Goddess.
“Brave!” he shouted. “That is your only answer for me before you steal away my mate? How can you be so cruel? I deny you, Nyx! I found Anastasia once on my own. I’ll do so again, but only after I have exacted revenge for her untimely death. Thus I do swear on my sword-my oath as Dragon Lankford!”
Dragon stalked away into the darkness, and the sickly white flanks of an enormous bull caught the reflection of the moon as the beast, pleased, turned away to pursue other pleasures.
In the Otherworld, Nyx gazed down at Anastasia’s fallen Warrior and wept.
P C Cast
***
Kristin Cast
***
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