Circle of Embers (Shadow Realms Series Book 2): A vampire hunter novel

by Kelly Carrero

  I rushed forward and put my hand on the driver’s seat. “You better stop this car before I make you.”

  “Kali,” Finn said. “Max is right. We need to get you to safety. We all knew what we were risking when we agreed to this mission.”

  Ignoring Finn, I pressed my hand against the driver’s neck, curling my fingers around him, and squeezed hard enough to let him know I would snap his neck if he didn’t do what I said. “Stop the car.” My voice came out with authority that left no negotiation.

  The driver nodded, pools of sweat forming on his brow.

  I snapped my head to the cabin of the van just as I saw Finn and Kade standing, glancing at each other, concocting a plan to take me down. “You two are going to get your asses kicked if you so much as try to stop me.”

  Mason chuckled. “You better listen to the woman. You know how crazy Kali gets when someone stands in the way of protecting those she loves.”

  Crazy didn’t even begin to describe the fury that consumed me when they were talking about letting Max die. That shit just wasn’t happening while I was—

  I froze as Mason’s words hit me, fear striking me to my core as I realized Max had heard my brother declare my love for Max. I wanted to see the look in his eyes, to know his reaction, but at the same time I was scared he didn’t feel the same way.

  “Do what she says,” the woman said, breaking me from my thoughts.

  Now wasn’t about the way Max did or didn’t feel about me. It was about saving his life.

  The driver kept going then pulled onto a small dirt track a quarter mile up the road, stopping under a thick blanket of trees, hiding us from anyone traveling on the road.

  He killed the lights and got out of the car.

  Ignoring the hammering of my heart, I kneeled down, slid my arm under Max’s arm, and lifted him to his feet as the driver opened the back door.

  Kade supported Max on his other side and helped him out of the van.

  “Lay him down there, against the tree.” Blondie pointed to the trunk of an old gum tree.

  Max groaned as we sat him down, careful to position him so he wouldn’t fall over. He looked so weak, and all I wanted to do was rip the bullet out and give him blood. But that wouldn’t help Max. He wasn’t vampire-gifted like I was. His healing abilities came from Orphelia, and it seemed she also had the ability to screw him over, temporarily stripping him from the powers that previously allowed such wounds to be inconsequential.

  As I slipped my hand away from his back, Max caught my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, sending a flurry of questions through my mind, none of which were important right now.

  “You can’t be touching him,” the woman said. “There needs to be a clear separation between his energy and yours.” She quickly added, “Or anyone else’s.”

  Letting his hand slip from mine was torture, and I hoped to high hell I would once again feel his hands wrapped around mine—or some other part of me that also didn’t matter right now.

  The woman kneeled and grabbed a fistful of dirt, letting it slowly slip through her fingers over Max’s legs. Then, she placed one palm against the ground and her other on Max’s shin. Her eyes glazed over into a pearly white, muting the color of her irises.

  A small tremor erupted around her. A few moments later, a shimmering ice-blue light spread across the ground, up the tree, and snaked its way around Max.

  My heart leaped into my throat as I watched in a mixture of awe and fear at the display of magic before me, hoping whatever she was doing would undo that of Orphelia’s spell.

  Kade came up beside me and dropped his arm over my shoulders. “He’ll be fine. Nessa will fix him.”

  Nessa. I had a million questions for Kade about who this Nessa was, what they were doing with these people, and why they’d broken me out of the compound, but for now, all that mattered was Max.

  He had to be okay.

  This was the second time he’d risked his life for me, and I wanted to punch him or kiss him for being so stupid.

  That bullet had most likely been meant for me, not him. Or maybe the both of us.

  A fine spray of that blue white magic rained down over him, covering his body in a shimmering mist of light.

  “Now,” Nessa said.

  One of the other men kneeled beside Max, holding a set of pliers in his hand. He pressed his hand against Max’s shoulder and plunged the pliers into the wound.

  Max’s face twisted in agony, his teeth clenched, wincing in pain, and I would’ve done anything to take that away from him.

  “Got it,” the man said. He ripped the bullet out of Max’s body and placed it into a small sample jar he had ready. He put down the pliers, twisted the lid on the jar, and held it up for Nessa to see.

  “Just as I thought.” She took the jar from him and studied the slimy green bullet inside before turning and handing it to Finn. “This was most likely meant for your sister. It’s a binding spell that would’ve trapped her within their grounds.”

  That would be right. Orphelia never wanted me to leave. She wanted to trap me like a caged animal, completely at her mercy.

  I’d been shot by a bullet, but somehow, I was lucky enough for it not to have been one of Orphelia’s, which seemed more than a little strange.

  Confusion swept over Finn’s features. “Why would they risk killing Kali if they need her?”

  Nessa stood. “It wouldn’t have killed Kali. Only prevented her from leaving them. It didn’t work on Max because he didn’t already have the other half of the spell inside of him.”

  My eyes widened in realization. “Is that what that smokey green shit she shoved down my throat was?”

  She nodded. “And that’s what we’ve been slowly stripping from you with the little amounts of blood we could smuggle into your cell.”

  My mind exploded with questions. Who was this woman, and how did she know so much about me? Why was she risking her life to save me? But before I got a chance to open my mouth, she said, “We need to keep moving. The spell I cast to hide our location will start wearing off shortly, which means they’ll be onto us soon.”

  20

  Kade and Finn helped Max back into the van, and we continued down the road, heading to who knew where.

  I sat on the bench seat that ran along the side of the van, military style, with Finn keeping an eye on our drunk-ass father, who was still passed out on the floor and had no idea what had just gone down. I guess he’d somehow slipped some more alcohol into himself without any of them noticing. The guy wasn’t above any form of alcohol. Once he’d even downed a whole bottle of hand sanitizer during a hospital stay. This time, it had probably happened on Finn’s watch, as he hadn’t been around to know just how low our father would sink to get his fix.

  Max was laying on the other half of the floor leaning against the back of the passenger cabin seat, the color slowly returning to his face. Mason sat beside me, and the witches lined the bench seat opposite me.

  My gaze darted between the three. “I think it’s about time someone tells me what’s going on.”

  Nessa nodded. “I understand this will be a lot to take in and I know you will undoubtedly have a lot of questions for both me and your friends, but I will try my best to explain what I can. We are members of the Circle of Embers, the true keepers of the demon huntress descendants. We come from a long line of mages who have sworn our lives to protect the ones that will banish the demons from this world.”

  My mouth dropped open as my face scrunched up in confusion. “Hold up. Did you just say ‘the ones’ as in there is more than one?”

  “That is correct. Contrary to what you have been told, you are not the only one. There are many descendants of the great huntress. You are but one, be it the first in a long time that showed promise during your early years.”

  Eyes widened, I stared at her in disbelief. “So there are more like me?”

  She nodded.

  “And you’ve known what I am since I was little?”


  “Correct,” she said. “When it came to light that you possessed not only the markers but also your powers had started to ignite, we placed a spell on you that would bind your true powers and identity until your eighteenth birthday. Your mother was instructed by the coven to disappear, take on a new name, and not say a word to anyone about your true identity. Then return when you had awoken.”

  “A what spell? And you’re saying that my mother knew what I was?”

  “We bound your magic until you were old enough to possess the power needed to defeat the demons,” she explained. “And yes, your mother was a very powerful witch whom we suspect met with foul play.”

  The world spun around me as her words circled my mind on a never-ending loop. My mother was a witch, and she knew who I was. My gaze darted to the drunken man passed out on the floor.

  Finn leaned forward and rested his forearm on his bent knee. “If you’re wondering if he’s your father, the answer is yes.”

  Mason chuckled. “Believe it or not, he carried the gene of the huntress, coupled with Mom’s, and you were born.”

  My mind was blown. I thought I knew it all, and clearly, I was still very much in the dark. Then again…

  I snapped my gaze back to Nessa. “How do we know we can trust you?”

  A warm smile spread across her face, softening her hardened features. “Because we’re not the ones trying to contain you. The supposed prophecy about you having to wait until your eighteenth birthday for you to open yourself to the huntress is a lie. You already are exactly who you were meant to be, only we’re missing the one item that can prematurely break the spell we bound you with when you were an infant.

  “The Society needed to keep you bound, waiting until the exact moment the spell became ineffective, allowing one of the demons to slip into you during the split second that your soul would reopen. Then they would be in possession of one of the most powerful beings to ever walk this land.”

  Holy. Shitballs.

  I wanted to believe everything she said, but after trusting Lana, her parents, and Orphelia, I was having a hard time accepting what anyone said at face value. People lied. People had ulterior motives.

  “You don’t believe me,” she said. “That’s fair. Neither did your brothers or their friends.”

  Finn’s expression hardened. Then he nodded. “She’s telling the truth. Nessa finally found Mason and me when we were in the hospital. They’ve been trying to track all of us down for years.”

  Mason ran his hands down his face as his eyes glistened. “They’ve got proof.”

  “Show me,” I said. “I need to see it.”

  “Absolutely.” Nessa grabbed her phone out of her pocket and began searching through it. A moment later, a holographic image landed between us.

  My breath caught in my throat and a lump formed in its place as I stared at my mother. Tears welled in my eyes as I watched a younger version of her, holding a baby on her hip, her chest turning shades of blue and black from where the baby’s hands were splayed against her skin. “Is that…?”

  Finn stood and sat next to me. “That baby is you.”

  Tears slipped down my cheeks as our mother stared down at baby me with love in her eyes. She placed a small kiss on my head then turned her attention to the room.

  Mom was standing in the middle of a circle, surrounded by figures in robes. I couldn’t see their faces, but blue light illuminated from their hands, telling me they were witches like Nessa. With a heavy smile, she caressed the side of my face then pressed another kiss on my forehead before placing me in the center of a white sheet in the middle of the circle.

  Stepping outside of the circle, she stood behind the witches, next to a younger version of Nessa, void of the hardened eyes that were present on the woman before me.

  The witches joined hands, the blue light connecting them, growing stronger by the second until it spilled out from them, traveling around the line of the circle and engulfing me in the swirl of light when it seeped inside of me, disappearing from sight.

  My mother stepped forward and scooped me into her arms, my hands no longer having the effect on her skin they had before. She held me tightly against her as she smiled sadly, her eyebrows furrowing while she held back tears. Then she mouthed, “Thank you,” and fled from the room.

  The image disappeared, leaving a gaping hole in my heart. I briefly wondered why I was the only one of us three with magic, but that was a question for another time. All I could think about was my mother and the fact that I would never truly see her again.

  Finn put his arm around me. “It was pretty hard for Mason and me to watch that, too.”

  “And to wrap our heads around the truth of who Mom actually was,” Mason added.

  The van pulled off the road and onto a dirt track hidden by tall grass, trees, and vegetation.

  Nessa stood as we came to a stop. “I wish I could give you more time to adjust to what you’ve learned, but the truth is we’re running on borrowed time.”

  One of the guys opened the door, revealing nothing but bushes surrounding us.

  “Why are we here?”

  Kade stood. “You’ll see.”

  I frowned as everyone began to pile out of the van, Mason helping Max to his feet, and Kade and Finn propping Dad up as they dragged his unconscious body across the floor then outside, leaving only Nessa and me in the van.

  “You’ll see soon enough.” Nessa twisted off the cap of a small bottle containing a yellow liquid and tipped a small amount onto her finger.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “All will be revealed.” She placed her finger on my forehead, swept it in a semi-circle just above my eyebrows, and followed it with a line running from the top of my forehead, stopping just before she reached my nose.

  It took everything in me not to push her hand away and run for dear life, but there was something other than the fact that she not only knew my mother but also helped her that sent a wave a trust through me. I needed to find out more. “What is this?”

  Just as I finished my sentence, the liquid began to move as if it had a life of its own, moving in circles then darting toward my eyes.

  Shock marred my face as the yellow liquid blurred my vision before disappearing behind my eyes, leaving me gobsmacked by what I was seeing. “How…?”

  Nessa smiled. “There is a lot you don’t know about.” She gestured toward the van’s open door.

  21

  I gaped as I stared at the scenery before me. Where there had been dense bushland, now stood a community of modular homes. Some looked like basic shipping containers, and others were put together like architecturally designed master pieces. Men, women, and children wandered around, casting long glances in our direction, obviously intrigued by their new guests. “How?” was all I managed to say.

  “Magic.” With a grin, Nessa hopped off the van.

  Following her, I spun around and saw the village was surrounding us. It was absolutely insane.

  “Come with me,” Nessa said and headed across a stretch of dirt toward a blue container ship.

  Taking a few seconds to adjust, I raced after her, catching up as she arrived at the door.

  “Ideally, I would’ve liked to give you more time to settle in before we got down to business, but time is not on our side. The Society will be scouring the lands for the last piece.”

  “Piece to what?”

  “To undo the spell binding your powers.” She gestured to the door. “Go inside.”

  A prickly sensation spread across my back as I stared at the darkness through the door, unable to see anything. It was like a pitch-black cave, void of any light, which made absolutely no sense considering there should’ve been sunlight filtering in through the open door. But then I heard Max moan from inside, followed by Mason’s voice asking if he was okay.

  With bated breath I waited for his response, relief flooding through me when I heard his reply.

  No longer concerned that Nessa was luring m
e to my demise, I headed inside and was surprised to find that even though I couldn’t see anything from the outside when looking in, the small medical facility was illuminated in a soft blue glow.

  What was with everything being blue?

  Finn and Kade were attending to my father, helping him onto a bed as he groaned, still out of it.

  Max was sitting on top of a hospital bed of sorts, his legs hanging over the edge, and his hand pressed against the wound in his chest.

  Mason hopped onto the bed beside him and looked at me. “Your boyfriend’s going to be fine.”

  My cheeks flushed as anger swirled around inside me, wanting to be released into the form of a punch to Mason’s gut. Instead, I swallowed my anger and said in my most dry tone, “Very funny. I thought you would’ve grown up a little after your time with the vamps, but it’s good to see you’re just as immature as ever.”

  I didn’t dare look at Max for fear of his reaction.

  Mason feigned being hurt with a hand over his heart. “How could you be so insensitive after everything I’ve been through?”

  Max knocked his elbow into Mason’s side. “Be careful. The tables have turned, and your sister can now beat the shit out of you.”

  A small sigh escaped my lips, knowing Max wasn’t taking Mason’s words the wrong way. I wondered if he had any siblings—or parents. I really had no clue about his past other than he’d been an offering to the fledglings.

  “Enough bickering.” Nessa strode a short distance to a tall cabinet on the side of the room and retrieved a jar containing a bunch of herbs—or grass. I really couldn’t tell the difference. She twisted off the lid and placed it beside Max.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as Nessa shoved a handful of the grassy herbs over Max’s wound. I stepped forward, going into protection mode.

  “Removing the remainder of the poison so he can quickly heal on his own,” she said, unaware of how close I was to ripping out her throat. Because you know, I still had no idea who I could trust. The video seemed real, but after what I saw with the magic hiding this place, I couldn’t look past the possibility that they had made me think I had seen my mother on the video.