The Hidden Court

by Vivienne Savage

  She would be dead by then. I couldn’t shake the feeling, and because I didn’t specialize in visions, no one would take me seriously.

  Gabriel squeezed my shoulders again. “Go back to your room. We’ll keep an eye out for her and let Sebastian know about your vision.”

  “The hell I will!”

  “This isn’t a game, Skylar. You see all this?” He gestured to Rodrigo’s enormous .357 and the holy water grenades strapped to his own chest in a bandolier of righteous badassery. “We’re not going out there to party. Things are so bad the school is willing to send junior and senior sentinels into the streets with the combat mages.”

  “I can’t abandon Holly. If you won’t help me, I’ll go alone.”

  Gabriel and I locked gazes, both of us standing straight and stiff.

  Just when I thought he’d kick me out—or worse, call and tattle—he grabbed the shotgun mounted to the wall then shoved it into my hands. “I guess you get to have a crash course in being a sentinel.”

  Rodrigo stared at him. “Gabriel, she can’t—”

  “You don’t gotta come with us, man. Take your car.”

  “If they find out you disobeyed—Ah, fuck it.” Rodrigo sighed and gestured to the door. “You know I got your back, so let’s go do this thing. That girl may as well be my ward too.”

  No one stopped us on our way down to the garage. In fact, the whole campus felt like a graveyard, eerily quiet and empty. I crawled into the back and huddled down behind the driver’s seat.

  “Any idea where she could be with him on this date? Favorite places she likes to go?” Gabriel asked.

  “One second. I have that app that lets you find your friends. I almost forgot about it.”

  Rodrigo glanced into the back at me. “Stalker app?”

  “Shush.” I ran my finger over the screen and opened Holly’s contact card. A map of Chicago generated, listing streets and landmarks with a green icon displaying her location. “It says Castle Chicago.”

  “Club Excalibur?” Rodrigo’s voice raised in surprise. “That place has been shut down forever.”

  “Castle Chicago now,” Gabriel said.

  Rodrigo grunted. “Whatever. They renamed that place like five times, and it’s always shuffling between owners because of the hauntings.”

  Gabriel glanced at his cousin once as he turned onto the highway. “You don’t really believe that load of bullshit, do you? The building wasn’t really haunted.”

  “Of course it isn’t. More like mages fighting over property to control the ley line in the area.”

  “I don’t care what it’s named or why it’s closed down. All I know is that one of my friends is missing and that our time to find her is limited. Castle Chicago or whatever the hell seems as good a place as any to find her.”

  The guys quieted for a time, exchanging meaningful glances in the front seat. Clear of the campus grounds at last, I slid up onto the back seat and buckled the belt across my chest in time to see Gabriel’s lips moving, whispering words only another shifter could hear.

  Rodrigo shook his head and swiped his finger across his phone screen. “Sebastian says to exit early and take 290 if we’re going to Castle Chicago. Otherwise we’ll hit traffic. They’re at Navy Pier and loaded down with frenzied baby vamps. Surprised he even answered.”

  “You told Sebastian?” My voice squeaked.

  “About you? No. About your friend, yeah.” Rodrigo looked over his shoulder at me. “I’m not that dumb. I told him we received a lead about a missing student and are gonna check it out.”

  “Thank you.”

  Gabriel snorted. “Don’t thank us yet. Since you’re here, think you can cast Inconspicuous on us? The faster we get there the better.”

  “Yeah.” Thanks to all our drives out to check on Sharon and Gabriel’s lead foot, I’d mastered the spell.

  Without traffic slowing us down or a need to obey the speed limit, we crossed the usual hour-long journey in record time. Every so often, the truck headlights cast the ominous shadow of a darkling over the road or some structure in passing. Nosferatu could climb like spiders, and the shadows of them scurrying over walls and scaling bricks freaked me out. Thankfully, the news kept mortals abreast of the common knowledge about their kind, and a lot of homeowners, even the ones who weren’t religious, kept icons of power in their homes beside their doors or windows.

  The moon hung high in the cloudless, midnight sky, a mere sliver of pale white remaining at the edge of the red orb.

  A blood moon.

  Mages waited years for eclipses to arrive, performing specific rituals at the point of completion. It couldn’t be coincidence.

  Rodrigo kept tabs on communication between the sentinels while his speed-demon cousin tore down the one-way street.

  “Keep clear of Washington Square Park. There’s a wendigo in the area,” someone reported.

  “Spectral activity high at Congress Plaza Hotel,” another voice said over the comms.

  The fallout from a magical spell lifted shards of yellow and red mana into the air, like twinkling motes of stardust. Buildings obscured the source of the evocation, but the shrieks reached my ears through Gabriel’s truck.

  “That’ll be Simon,” Gabriel muttered. “He likes those colors, says it reminds him of—” A dark shape leapt onto the hood of the truck. “Fuck!” He swerved left then right.

  The creature shrieked at us through the windshield, its corrupted appearance a cross between an oversized pug and a bat with a mouth filled with serrated shark teeth.

  Gabriel slammed on the brakes. The darkling tumbled off the truck and hit the pavement. Before it had a chance to get up, Rodrigo leaned out the window and shot it. Silver light exploded at the point of impact.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked.

  “Bloodhound,” Rodrigo said. “The nos breed ’em as guard dogs. Deadly fuckers can see and smell through most magical spells.”

  Another glimpse of Holly hurdled through my brain. Erratic images flashed, accompanied by low voices chanting in monotone, though much of it was drowned out by rumbling growls and petrified shrieks echoing in a cramped space.

  When I gasped and came back to the present, we were already moving again.

  “She’s hurt.”

  Gabriel frowned at me through the rearview mirror. “You sure? You told me yourself this isn’t your strong suit.”

  “Yeah, I know, but these visions are pretty clear.”

  Rodrigo glowered at the vacant city streets. The only lights in the city came from the magic being tossed through the air. Everything else was black. “Could be her close tie with Holly. We read about that in class, right? Skylar’s a faerie, and they bond with humans close to them.”

  Gabriel looked unconvinced, but after glancing at me in the back seat, he floored it through the red light ahead of us.

  No one was out on the streets anyway.

  22

  The Queen of the Castle

  Following Rodrigo’s directions, Gabriel got us to our destination in under five minutes. He pulled up to the curb a few feet down from Holly’s supposed location, a random stone castle in the middle of the city. When I glanced at it through the Veil, I saw the building surrounded by an oily aura that seemed to suck in all the light from the Twilight. Looking at it turned my stomach.

  My sentinel turned to me once we were all on the sidewalk. “All right, here’s the deal. You stay behind us, Skylar. I mean it. If I tell you to run, you do it. I tell you to cast a glamour, you find the energy to cast it. For now, save your magic and use the gun first.”

  Excitement cast a nervous buzz over my entire body, worsened by the gloomy sense of foreboding pulsing from the castle. All my life, I’d wanted what Gabriel and Rodrigo had—to become a sentinel. Now that I had a taste of it, fear for Holly’s safety soured the moment and crushed it beneath an iron wall of cold dread.

  We stepped toward the entrance of the foreclosed building, only for a few dozen bats to lift
from the ledges of the rooftop and swoop toward us as a cloud of winged vermin.

  Gabriel stepped back, the shotgun in his hands aimed at the descending swarm. “Incoming!”

  At that same moment, a nosferatu streaked toward us from the shadows to the right of the building. Rodrigo shifted midstride and bashed into it. He slammed the darkling into the ground, and a noisy crunch announced he’d successfully broken it beneath his immense paws.

  Two more dark shapes rushed out from the shadows. Rodrigo took one and Gabriel the other. A third tried to flank them, but I spotted the creature from the corner of my eye. I twisted, aimed, and fired. The first shot missed entirely, a spray of buckshot striking the wall, but I’d gained the vampire’s attention. Swearing, I pumped the weapon and fired again. The second attempt caught my opponent in the chest as it streaked toward me, mouth open and claws outstretched. My point-blank shot laid the fresh nosferatu down on the ground where Gabriel finished it off with a stake.

  “All that boxing and fighting, what you should have really taught her was to use a shotgun,” Rodrigo said. “Aim for the head, girl.”

  My shoulder ached, and the endorphins flooding my veins made my hands shakier than a cold chihuahua.

  Three more vampires exploded from Castle Chicago’s double doors, and another pair burst from the windows of the upper floor. Before I realized what was happening, a sharp crack echoed in the Chicago night. Gabriel stumbled back.

  “Shadowstride, Sky!”

  I stepped forward into the Twilight as a bullet ripped through the spot I’d occupied moments earlier, missing my head by a split second. A mere fraction of a second. These weren’t clumsy, feral newborns. They knew how to move, remembered how to use firearms, and were that much deadlier. Three of them tag-teamed Rodrigo while the fourth came after Gabriel.

  As a fae, I had an advantage over both the shifters and their vampire assailants. Pushing myself, I slid forward through the Twilight, invisible to the men battling in the mundane world but still armed.

  Emerging a few steps away placed me in the ideal position to engage another nosferatu. Snarling, it dove toward me in a tight horizontal line, slavering for faerie blood until I leveled the firearm and pulled the trigger. Pieces of vampire skull and brain matter became ash and dust instead of showering me in blood. I swallowed down bile and refused to tremble, trying instead to focus on the look of approval Rodrigo shot me, or the fleeting pride in Gabriel’s eyes.

  I could do this. I could be like them.

  A stench wafted from inside the historic building through the shattered windows. Somehow I managed not to puke on the remaining vamp. Holly was in there, and I had to get to her.

  Gabriel remained in his human form throughout the fighting, only shifting twice to evade a pounce or attack. A third time when a vampire lunged from the shadows in my direction. He flew in front of me like an arrow, becoming human midflight to slam his booted foot into my assailant.

  “It smells like fucking death and evil here,” Rodrigo snarled once he retook his human shape.

  “Yeah. Something’s up. They’re trying to keep us from going inside this place.”

  Static electricity hung in the air, building and intensifying like a snowball rolling down a magical hill. It seeped from the nightclub doors and choked the air with malignance.

  “I have to get to Holly.”

  “Go! We’ll hold them off here until Simon and Sebastian arrive.”

  “Gabriel…”

  He shoved a stake and a silver flask into my hands before pushing me toward the building. “Go!”

  The chaos outside vanished once I made it through the rotating door, muffled by an impenetrable veil of silence. Magic buzzed in the air and danced over my arms. Before I could pinpoint the source, flames erupted behind me. The barrier stretched from wall to wall. It was an effective deterrent to keep anyone else from entering. Or was meant to keep me inside?

  With no way to go but forward, I prepared to encounter more vampires and moved through the deserted front lobby. No one came out to challenge me, but I stepped forward into an unnatural blanket of night.

  Unable to see more than three feet in any direction, darkness shrouded my vision all around. I fumbled forward, waving the silver stake in one hand while pressing my thumb against the cap on the flask. One flick would knock it off.

  My breaths came in quick, short gasps, and my pulse thundered between my ears. Fear spiked down my spine when I heard a whisper in the distance and saw the flicker of a single candle flame.

  The farther I walked, the quicker it raced, my heart sensing something my eyes couldn’t see. At last, I broke through the black fog and reached the concert stage.

  Surrounded by the phantasmal lights of a mage’s spell, Holly floated limp and unconscious in the air. Below her, a swirling cloud of ashes arose from the opening of an old bronze cauldron. It had to be the missing ding vessel from the museum, an old artifact once used by an ancient Chinese wizard searching for the elixir of youth.

  Matt Sinclair’s dead body lay discarded by the edge of the stage, and blood pooled below him from his gaping neck. His exsanguinated features made bile churn in my stomach. I guessed the person in charge didn’t care much about their recruiter.

  A soft, sweet voice spoke from the darkness. “And so you have finally arrived.”

  More candles burst into flame. Their combined glow illuminated the stage behind Holly and the single figure standing there.

  Nothing about Carmilla met my expectations. The young woman wore a scarlet dress with a deep, plunging neckline, and didn’t appear to be any older than me. Maybe even younger. The innocence of her cherubic, heart-shaped face contrasted with the cold gleam in her black eyes. Her sharp, high cheekbones appeared rosy, flushed with fresh blood. Some of it still trickled down her chin and glistened on her ruby lips.

  How much faerie blood had she drank to restore her beauty after walking the path of the nosferatu?

  Paralyzed with fear, I clutched the stake Gabriel gave me in a white-knuckled grip and drew my crucifix from my shirt with the other, snapping the chain and dangling it from a fist.

  “At last, we meet, little one. The progeny of my most loathed enemy. Your blood will taste the sweetest when my beloved awakens from her slumber.”

  My gaze darted again toward Holly. “What do you mean, awaken?”

  Carmilla laughed and the sweet sound, like chiming bells, made my skin crawl. “Has your family truly not told you?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Her laughter faded away and cold fury took its place. She stepped forward and hissed. “When I turned my beloved Laura so she might be with me always, your meddling grandmother sent her pet wolf to strike her down. She couldn’t bear the shame that her charge chose the life of a vampire over her fae-guided destiny.”

  “That’s why you killed Dedrik.”

  “Yes. The last living descendant of that accursed, murderous line. But now I have found a new body for my dearest.” She stroked Holly’s face with one white hand. “An improved body capable of retaining her magical abilities. She will rise again with her sorcery intact, and no one will stop us.”

  Mixed terror and revulsion flitted through me. If Carmilla channeled a spirit into Holly’s body… what would happen to the original soul?

  “There are sentinels on their way here at this very moment. We warned them you might be in the area.”

  “By the time anyone arrives, Laura and I will be long gone. The spell is nearly complete, and you… you shall be her first meal—”

  Desperation, or maybe outright stupidity flicked the stopper from the flask. In one underhand arc, I swept a stream of holy water into Carmilla’s face. Wherever drops of blessed water landed, smoke and steam arose from her skin. It bubbled and scorched, lifting away porcelain flesh to reveal raw muscle.

  Screaming in fury, Carmilla flew at me. I managed to sidestep, but not far enough. Her backhand caught me in the face and rocked my head
back. The inside of my cheek split on my molars and blood filled my mouth, some of my teeth loosened, or maybe even knocked out. Everything above my neck blazed in agony, and I saw stars.

  The countess tossed me aside then whirled to return to the stage. A quiet voice murmured words of power, though it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. I couldn’t pinpoint the source...

  Which meant it came from the Twilight. A mage was casting a spell from the spiritual realm, and every syllable edged the ritual closer to completion.

  Carmilla rushed past me, a literal blur too fast for my senses to perceive. Claws raked across my arm. Before that pain had a chance to fully register, she whipped past again, ripping her nails down my spine.

  She appeared on the stage while licking my blood from her fingers, a cat toying with an injured mouse. The bubbled, blistered flesh on her face healed instantly. If one sip of half-faerie blood regenerated a vampire countess’s holy water burns, what would draining me do for Laura?

  Giggling, Carmilla materialized on my left side, but I spun and caught her with the crucifix. She recoiled from it, one split second of hesitation all I needed to strike with the stake.

  When I buried the stake in her chest, she didn’t disintegrate into ashes. It must have missed her heart by inches. Her fist struck my side, and the crack of my fracturing rib echoed before she flung me across the room onto the stage, exactly where I wanted to be. I hit the floor and rolled.

  Everything hurt, but I pushed aside the pain and stumbled to my feet into the Twilight despite the overwhelming fear that I’d faceplant like a baby instead.

  Without time to hunt down the spellcaster and stop the ritual that way, I decided to disrupt it by tipping over the mage’s focus item.

  Taking five yards in two steps placed me against the ding vessel. I shoved with all my strength.

  It didn’t budge.

  Magical fatigue drilled the back of my head, chisel strikes cracking my skull, driving into my brain. The bronze cauldron must have weighed hundreds of pounds in the real world.