Witch's Blade

by Jenna Wolfhart

  Grabbing Dorian’s arm, I shoved the book into his hands. “I think this is it. What’s it say?”

  Dorian scanned the words, and then gave a nod, his lips breaking out into the first smile I’d seen all day. “Great find, Zoe. This is it.” He ripped the page out of the book and shoved it into his pocket. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

  A high-pitched alarm shook through the room. Whirling toward the door, I spotted a camera and a bulb that was now flashing red and white. Shouts cried out from somewhere down the hallway, and fear gripped my gut. The mages might have been asleep before, but they certainly weren’t now.

  “Time to go!” Dorian yelled, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the door.

  We flew into the hallway, Ben just behind us. When we exited the room, a blast of red shot past our heads, slamming hard into the stone wall. Chunks of rock fell to the ground and broke into a dozen pieces.

  “Here,” Ben said in a hurried whisper as he shoved the keys into my hands. “Escape out through the dungeons like I told you. It’s the best way to get out of here. Maybe the only way.”

  “Wait,” I said, eyes wide as he began to jog backward toward the approaching mages. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure you get out of here alive,” Ben said with a sad smile. “You may not realize it, but you’re important, Zoe. Much more important than me. We need your powers if we’re going to win against the demons. Go straight to the Magister when you can. He’ll forgive you. He knows the importance of your powers, too.”

  With one last smile, Ben whirled toward the blood mages. He lifted his blade and murmured something under his breath as he drew a rune on his palm. Magic blasted all around him, and every instinct within my body told me to rush toward him instead of away. I couldn’t let him sacrifice himself like this. I was nobody. A con artist with terrible powers that never helped a damn thing.

  “We’ve got to go, Zoe.” Dorian wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me from the floor, carrying me down the steps and away from the fight. I kicked my legs, but it was useless. He was ten times stronger than me. Still, as fast as he moved, he didn’t stop me from seeing what happened next. A blast of magic hit Ben right in the skull, ripping a hole through his eye and shooting out the back of his head. A cry of rage ripped from my throat as I watched him fall to the ground, his broken body crumpled like a discarded doll.

  Tears stung my eyes, falling with big plops on my cheeks. Of all the mages I’d met, Ben didn’t deserve to die. Especially not for me.

  Chapter 12

  “Zoe, I know you’re upset, but we have to move,” Dorian said after he’d locked the dungeon gate behind us. “They’ll figure out where we’re going, and they’ll be behind us in moments. Ben gave us a head start, and we should use it.”

  Eyebrows furrowed, I stared up at Dorian. “They killed him. Those blood mages actually killed him.”

  Dorian flinched and glanced away. “And they’ll kill us, too.”

  “But we’re their allies,” I said. “Ben was their ally.”

  “It’s an alliance that has struggled for a long time now,” Dorian said. “And according to them, we’re a couple of rogue mages working with rebels. They were reasonable enough to give Ben a pardon, but not after he helped us escape.”

  My entire body felt weary, like the weight of the world was pressing down upon it. “We just shouldn’t be fighting like this, Dorian. Forcing each other to battle. Killing each other for trespassing. There are so few of us left. And there are so, so many demons. How can we ever expect to survive if this keeps happening?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that question, Zoe.” Dorian grabbed my hand and squeezed tight. “All I know is that we need to get out of here before they decide to kill us, too. Though they’d probably end up doing far worse to me.”

  I didn’t want to ask exactly what could be worse, especially for a hybrid like Dorian. In the Blood Coven’s eyes, he was probably just as bad as a Daywalker. In fact, Dorian had to drink blood to survive, so he might even be considered worse. Either way, I didn’t want to stick around to find out.

  “Alright, let’s move,” I said with a nod.

  Dorian grabbed a torch from the wall and moved down the corridor with the kind of grace that most people could only dream of. He was strong and silent and simmering with a deadly force that often took my breath away. Looking at him now, I couldn’t imagine how I hadn’t realized what he was when I’d first met him. It was impossible not to see it now in the way he moved, the way he spoke, the way his eyes were lit by a kind of dark fire that warlocks didn’t have.

  Dorian might have been cursed, but his vampire nature was just as much a part of him as the warlock half. It should have scared me, but it didn’t. Instead, it made me feel impossibly safe when he was around. These Blood Coven warlocks had it all wrong, and I was starting to believe the rebels had a really good point. Maybe all this time, I’d been fighting for the wrong side. Maybe I should have been fighting for someone else.

  As Dorian and I made our way down the corridor, the sound of shrieks grew louder and louder. I grabbed his hand and fell into step beside him, my heartbeat hammering hard in my chest. We might be running from what followed behind us, but it was what I knew we were about to see up ahead that really scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

  I’d never seen a Nosferatu in my twenty-one years on this planet. And I had no desire to change that tonight.

  Torches flickered up ahead, mounted on the walls of the next prison cavern. Dorian’s hand tightened around mine, and he slowed for a moment before we continued on up above. Casting a glance behind us, I stepped in close while he dropped his mouth to my ear. Despite myself, shivers engulfed me when his lips touched my skin. Even in the middle of this insane and dangerous situation, the effect he had on me wasn’t diminished in the least.

  “They’re behind bars, but they’re still dangerous. I won’t be that interesting to them, but they’ll crave the scent of your sweet blood,” Dorian murmured. “Trust me on that. I know how good you smell. Just keep your head down. Keep moving forward. And don’t look them in the eye. They can enthral you in seconds.”

  His words sent a storm of shivers through my body. “Like you did that time. To the bouncers at Slayerville.”

  “Yes,” he said with a nod. “Though the effect they’d have on you would be far worse than that.”

  I didn’t want to even consider it. Dorian had only used his thrall once—at least since I’d known him. Later, he’d told me that it was a power he didn’t like to call upon, and there had only been a handful of times when he’d broken it out of his arsenal. For one, using magic to manipulate minds was against our coven’s laws. Two, well, it was just a shitty thing to do.

  With a deep breath, I followed Dorian’s lead down the tunnel. As soon as we stepped foot in the cavern, the shrieks and hisses stopped as if someone had suddenly hit the mute button. The lack of sound made my blood run cold. For some reason, the silence was much more deafening than the shouts. Swallowing hard, I continued to move forward, following Dorian’s directions. I kept my eyes on the rough stone floor, but I could feel a hundred Nosferatu eyes watching my every movement.

  It felt cold in here. Far colder than it had only moments before. And the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. This was all wrong. Unnatural. Demons in vampire form. I’d grown up knowing the difference between Daywalkers and Nosferatu like a normal human child knows the difference between cats and dogs. But even though I’d always understood the logistics, I’d never truly known until now. The Daywalkers, while sometimes dangerous and violent, were just like any other supernatural race. They belonged in our realm just as much as mages did.

  Nosferatu, on the other hand, they were something else entirely. They were wrong. This entire place reeked of evil. Just like the monstrous demons that tried to punch holes through the veil in order to get into this realm, these creatures didn’t belong here.

  And I couldn’t he
lp but wonder if they came from the same place. Something I’d have to ask Dorian about. When we weren’t surrounded by a bunch of hungry Nosferatu.

  “Shadow witchhhhh,” came a long low hiss from my left. My feet slowed on the stone, and my entire body went tight. Swallowing hard, I shook my head. Keep moving, I thought. Keep going. But my feet couldn’t move an inch.

  Deep inside me, a darkness shifted, a darkness I’d kept locked inside a box.

  “Listen to your shadow,” another voice hissed, engulfing my arms in chill-bumps.

  Tendrils of shadows curled inside my gut, rising up and reminding me of who I was. It called to me, hissing in answer to the Nosferatu’s words, coming alive as if on command. Gritting my teeth, I shook my head and tried to force the voices to shut their fucking mouths.

  “Zoe.” Dorian sounded so far away, like he’d fallen into a deep tunnel below me. Something took ahold of my arms and shook my body hard. Was it the Nosferatu? Had they somehow escaped from their cells? Were they going to sweep me up and carry me down into the depths of darkness and into a world where no light existed at all?

  “Zoe!” Dorian’s voice broke through my thoughts, and I peeled open my eyes to see his face hovering before me. His eyebrows furrowed with concern, and his jaw clenched tight as the hisses grew louder. “You have to block them out. Don’t let them control you. I know you have the power to command whatever it is that drives your magic, and you know it, too. Come on, baby. I believe in you.”

  Baby? There was something both sweet and hilarious about hearing that word come from Dorian’s mouth, the serious, stoic Unbound vampire. Enough that it made me snap out of whatever thrall the vampires had put on me.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I whispered.

  We rushed through the rest of the cavern, and the Nosferatu’s shrieks grew louder and louder. But despite the pulsing darkness that tempted me to stop, I kept my feet moving, forcing that part of me to obey me instead of them.

  Finally, we hit the edge of the prison cells, and entered the next tunnel. A quick left at the end led us to the next gate where we used Ben’s keys to escape outside. I expected sunlight, but instead, found a cloudy gray sky overhead. Rain splattered down around us, soaking us within seconds. Dorian pulled me along beside him, shouting something into the wind, but I couldn’t hear his words. It didn’t matter. I trusted him to get us to safety. So, all I did was run.

  It must have been two hours later when we finally stopped, ducking inside a tiny stone building in the middle of the Scottish Highlands. My teeth chattered, and my entire body trembled from the cold. Swiping my wet hair out of my face, I glanced around. We were still in the middle of nowhere. In the distance, a large dark form loomed ahead, but it was the only thing I could see besides rain and trees and mud.

  “What are we going to do? How are we going to get back to the rebel base?” I gasped, my lungs aching from the long and soaking wet run. I was in pretty good shape, but I definitely wasn’t prepared for a race through rolling hills during the middle of a massive downpour. And I hoped to hell we weren’t camping out in this dirty abandoned building. I needed a roaring fire and some dry clothes, stat.

  Dorian shook his head, droplets of water sprinkling the dirt-caked walls. “Well, since Ryker refused to tell us where it was, we can’t go back. And I have a feeling it’s nowhere near here anyway.”

  “So, what does that mean?” I asked, gaping at him.

  “Unfortunately, I think we’re stuck here, Zoe.” He grimaced. “Unless you happen to have your passport on you.”

  The full reality of our situation crashed down on me. We were in a foreign country, and I had no way to get home. “I don’t have a passport. I’ve never left the states before. It’s not like I knew we were travelling to the United Kingdom when I went to work that night.”

  “I assumed as much,” Dorian said with a sigh. “We’ll figure out a way to get home, but for now, we need to get out of this rain and hold tight and lay low. The Blood Coven will probably be combing the hills looking for us. Knowing them, I can’t imagine they’ll take our escape very well.”

  “So, we’re fugitives,” I said. “In a foreign country. With no way home or place to stay.”

  “We have a place to stay,” Dorian said, pointing through the thick bands of rain. “Up ahead. It’s safe and warm, and we can build ourselves a fire.”

  It took another twenty minutes to reach the castle. Looming high with gargoyles dotting the battlements, the sight of the expansive stone dwelling did little to slow the churn in my gut. We’d just been inside of a castle, and things hadn’t gone very well. Who knew what the hell we’d find inside of this one? It looked vacant and empty and devoid of life, but I knew as well as anyone that looks could be deceiving.

  Still, I was so eager to get out of the rain that I didn’t question it.

  Once we’d stepped through the front door, Dorian began moving through the entryway, flipping on lights and tossing his soaking cloak onto a coatrack as if he’d done it a hundred times before. When he dropped a set of keys onto a marble-topped table, I furrowed my eyebrows.

  “You’ve been here before,” I said as he disappeared into a closet only to return with a bundle of firewood. “What is this place?”

  “Years and years ago, I lived here,” Dorian said as he motioned me to follow him out of the entryway and into a living room where a majestic fireplace lined an ancient wall. “There was a time in my life when I became what you’d call a hermit. After I got cursed but before I moved to the states. At the time, I figured it was better for everyone if I holed up in the middle of nowhere.”

  “This was your castle?” I asked, eyes widening. “You actually owned this place?”

  “Own,” Dorian said. “When I decided to move to America, I didn’t sell it. I thought it might come in handy one day. After all, I’m going to live a long, long time, Zoe. As long as I don’t get killed somehow. There’s always a chance I might end up coming back to Europe one day. Maybe in ten years or maybe in a hundred.”

  Something about the way he spoke made me in desperate need of a seat. Coming face-to-face with the reality of Dorian’s existence took my breath away, and not in the good way he normally did. While I’d known he was immortal—to an extent—I’d never really thought about the length of his life and what that meant. He would live hundreds of years, never ageing more than he already had. When I eventually became an old and withered woman, Dorian would still be the same as he was now. And he’d be the same long after I’d been buried in my grave.

  Dorian paused after he threw another piece of wood onto the fire. “By the look on your face, I’m guessing you’ve never really thought about my lifespan until now.”

  “I have, but—”

  A loud bang sounded on the door, and I jumped up from my seat. Dorian stood tall, his body going tight. He grabbed his blade from his belt and motioned for me to do the same. Heart hammering hard in my chest, I followed him into the entryway. Another pound hit the door, so hard the wood rattled on its rotting frame. Had the Blood Coven found us already? It had taken us hours to get here. How could they have found us so fast?

  Chapter 13

  “Kostas! It’s us!” a familiar voice called out on the other side of the door. “Open up. It’s fucking pouring out here.”

  Frowning, I glanced at Dorian. “Does that sound like Ryker?”

  “It does,” Dorian growled.

  Keeping his weapon held high before him, Dorian swung open the door to reveal three of the rebel crew standing on the stone landing, all shivering from the intense wind and rain. Their eyes were hollow, and their cheeks dotted pink. Obviously, their day had sucked as much as ours had.

  “How are you here?” Dorian asked, crossing his arms as he blocked the doorway. “No one knows about this place.”

  “Let us in, and we’ll explain,” Ryker said through chattering teeth. “We’re freezing.”

  “No,” Dorian said, refusing to budge an inch. “Tell me how yo
u knew where we were. Then, I’ll think about letting you inside, but I’m not making any promises.”

  “Okay, okay,” Ryker said, holding up his hands. “We may have put a tracking spell out on Zoe when you’d been gone for so long without contact.”

  “You tracked me?” Irritation boiled through me. “Let me guess, you didn’t trust us to actually go in and take the rune, so you’ve been spying on us this entire time.”

  “We only started tracking you when we thought something might have gone wrong,” Gigi said, pushing her drenched hair out of her eyes. “Swear to the goddess. We were only trying to help.”

  “Fine,” Dorian said through gritted teeth. “Come inside. But if you so much as look at me wrong, you’re out.”

  The rebels hovered around the fireplace while we filled them in on what had happened at the Blood Coven headquarters. When we got to the part about Ben, they actually looked shocked and enraged. I almost felt bad for expecting the worst of them. Almost. But then I remembered that they’d kidnapped us, held a knife to Laura’s throat, and I stopped that feeling from making me forget exactly what they were capable of.

  “Listen, I know you might not believe it, but we are deeply sorry about what happened to Ben,” Ryker said, shaking his head. “I’ve always known what the Blood Coven was capable of, but I’m still shocked they went that far. Killing a council member of their own ally. That’s pretty horrific, even for them.”

  “Well, he sacrificed himself so you could get your fucking rune,” I said, pointing to the grimoire page that we’d hung up to dry. “So, you better use it wisely. Don’t make us regret this.”

  “I promise we won’t,” Ryker said. “After we get you two back on Bone Coven soil, we’ll go straight to the Sun Coven headquarters and free the mages trapped there. Unless you’d rather go somewhere else. I imagine they won’t be too happy to see either of you.”