Jane smiled, but it didn’t look like a normal, natural smile to me. It looked very vague and unfocused, which told me that Jane was still under the enchantment which Blake had put her under earlier. It seemed to be activated by touch, which was interesting because Dad had told me that some spells could be activated only by touch, though I had never seen an example of it before now.
“Stay right there, Blake,” I said, pointing Domination at him. “You’re not going to take Jane anywhere, not on my watch at least. Lift her enchantment and let her go now, or else things will get really ugly.”
“Sorry, but I’m still using your friend,” said Blake, rubbing Jane’s shoulders in a creepy way. “The Mistress would not be very happy if I just let her go, especially after all of the work we went through to get her.”
“I don’t care how hard you worked to get her,” I said. “What matters to me is saving my friend from … well, from whatever you have in store for her.”
“But Jane doesn’t want to go back with you,” said Blake. He looked at Jane. “Isn’t that right, Jane?”
Jane nodded, though her expression was still quite blank. “Yeah. I’m safe with Blake, Tara. You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “Jane, you’re not safe and you won’t be fine. Blake isn’t your friend or lover or protector. He’s trying to use you for something.”
“What harsh language,” said Blake. “Jane knows I would never harm her. Don’t you, Jane?”
“I do,” said Jane in the most emotionless voice I had ever heard another human speak. “I know you only have my best interests at heart. You’re the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.”
My eyes widened. “Blake—”
“You heard the girl,” Blake interrupted. “She said she wants to stay with me. Why won’t you respect the decision of your friend?”
“Because it isn’t her decision,” I said. “You’re controlling her mind with magic. If you took away the spell you’ve cast on her, she would no longer want anything to do with you.”
Blake shrugged. “Be that as it may, there’s nothing you can do about it. Jane is firmly on my side. She doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore.”
I took a step forward. “Let her go. Now.”
“No,” Blake said. “She wants to stay with me, not go with you. Perhaps you should head back the way you came … oh wait, you can’t, because the Maze got rid of that door.”
“If you don’t want me to save Jane from you, then why are you even here?” I said. “Why haven’t you gone deeper into the Maze to get away from me?”
Blake smirked. “Haven’t you figured it out? This is the Heart of the Maze. We can’t go any deeper than we already have. I have been waiting down here for you the entire time, hoping that the Maze would deal with you at some point, but I see that you’ve managed to get past all of the obstacles it threw in your path. You’re stronger than you look.”
“The Heart of the Maze,” I repeated, looking around the room in which we stood. “This is it?”
“It is,” said Blake smugly. “Don’t you hear that thumping sound? That’s the Maze’s heart, which is directly underneath our feet. Technically, though, we’re also standing within it.”
“Then the Maze is a living thing after all?” I said, looking at Blake in horror.
“The Maze is a magical thing,” said Blake. He frowned. “Then again, some scholars theorize that magical objects can gain sentience if given enough time to develop. Maybe that’s what happened with the Maze. In any case, it certainly acts like a living creature at times, which is one of the reasons it is so hard to deal with.”
I had suspected that the Maze was alive, but to have it confirmed by Blake in this way just made me feel sick to my stomach. And being directly in its Heart … that just blew my mind, and not in the good way, either. I half-wondered if we could give it a heart attack if we were too active in here.
In any case, I pushed that thought out of my mind in order to focus on Blake, who was still smirking like he was untouchable.
“Well, it’s too bad for you that the Maze didn’t get me,” I said. I held Domination by my side. “Because now I’m going to make you give up Jane, whether you want to or not.”
Blake tilted his head to the side. “Before you waste any time doing that, where’s your boyfriend? You know, Lucius? I am aware that you and he entered the Maze together, yet you came here only by yourself. Did he run away?”
“He’s still here,” I said. “We got separated at one point, but I’m sure he’s on his way here even as we speak.”
“Or maybe he was killed by one of the Maze’s traps,” said Blake. “Did that ever occur to you?”
“Maybe it did, but so what?” I said. “Lucius is still alive. He just won’t get here in time to help me kick your ass.”
I took another step toward Blake, but before I could get very far, Blake said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Tara Lee. It would be … unwise.”
I frowned. “Unwise? Are you going to use Jane against me? Threaten to kill her unless I let you get away?”
“Oh, I would never threaten little Jane here,” said Blake, squeezing her shoulders in a rather creepy way. “She’s too important for me to even pretend to hurt. No, I just thought you had forgotten about my earlier offer to use the Vampire Flame to turn you back into a normal girl again. Don’t you want that?”
My grip on Domination faltered for just a moment, but then I redoubled my grip and said, in a harsh tone, “You’re a liar, as always. I remember your offer, but you can’t possibly fulfill it, because you don’t have the Vampire Flame. You’re just trying to make me go away so I don’t kill you and save Jane.”
“I’m not even remotely afraid of you, girl,” said Blake. “Nor am I a liar. I don’t have the Vampire Flame myself, but my Mistress does.”
I paused. “Your Mistress? You mean the witch?”
“She’s far more than a mere witch,” said Blake. “But yes, she has it.”
I looked around the room, frowning. “Well, I don’t see her or the Vampire Flame anywhere. I thought that the Vampire Flame was supposed to be down here in the Heart of the Maze, that the Vampire Flame was the source of the Maze’s magical power.”
“Wrong,” said Blake. “Well, half-wrong, I should say. The Vampire Flame was here, but not any longer. My Mistress stole the Vampire Flame and took it away, far away from this place.”
“And, pray tell, where did she take it?” I said. “It can’t be that far away, can it?”
“It is as far away as humanly possible,” said Blake. “Even farther than that, actually. So far away that there’s no way that you or Lucius will ever be able to find her and retrieve the Vampire Flame from her.”
“Then tell me where the Flame is,” I said. “I’ll be the judge of whether or not Lucius and I can get it.”
Blake’s smirk grew even wider. He pointed a finger at the ceiling. “On the moon, of course.”
I looked up at the ceiling of the room, but of course, all I saw was the stone ceiling. I couldn’t see the moon itself, even if it had been open, because it wasn’t nighttime at the moment outside and therefore the moon would not be visible. Then again, I didn’t know for sure how much time I had spent in here already, so maybe it was nighttime and I just didn’t know it yet.
I looked at Blake. “That’s a really bad joke, Blake, and you know it.”
“Joke? This is no joke,” said Blake, shaking his head. “You can disbelieve me all you want, but it’s the truth. As we speak, my Mistress is on the moon, the Vampire Flame with her, studying its secrets and learning how to control it for her own agenda. There’s not a single person on the planet who could get her there, whether vampire or sorcerer.”
Blake spoke entirely seriously about this, but I had such a hard time believing his claim that I was convinced that this was all part of an elaborate con on his part. “But, unless the Mistress is also an astronaut, there’s
no way she could be up there. Even if she was up there, she wouldn’t survive without a space suit and oxygen.”
Blake chuckled. “You wonder how she got up there? That’s simple: She took the Shadow Way, which connects to more than just the Earth. It can even take you to other planets, including the moon. As for how she’s surviving up there, that’s even simpler: Her magical spells, which have helped her construct a fortress up there that allows her to breathe.”
I was about to call BS on Blake’s claim about the Mistress using the Shadow Way to reach the moon, but then I remembered my earlier conversation with Lucius back in the Shadow Way. He had told me that the Shadow Way was theorized to connect to planets other than Earth and that you could even reach the moon if you traveled deeply enough. It seemed like fascinating speculation to me at the time, but if Blake was telling the truth, then the Mistress had turned that speculation into reality.
“Why did she go to the moon?” I said.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” said Blake. “Everyone on Earth will. All I can say at this time is that the Mistress requires privacy in order to study the Vampire Flame, and the moon affords her more privacy than anywhere on Earth ever could.”
When he put it that way, it seemed more logical, but it still seemed so weird to me that she would go to such great lengths to get her privacy. Then again, given how Lucius and I were also after the Vampire Flame, perhaps it made more sense than I thought.
In any case, this seriously inconvenienced me, so I said, “Why aren’t you with her on the moon, then? Does she not like you that much?”
Blake scowled. “The Mistress likes me just fine. She just doesn’t see any point in having me on the moon with her. She’s still interested in knowing what is going on in Earth, so I send her regular reports letting her know what is going on down here while she is on the moon. In particular, she’s wanted me to give her regular updates about you and your boyfriend, especially when you two started chasing me. The Mistress wants to have all her bases covered.”
“I see,” I said. “Is that why you are here? To make sure I don’t follow her up to the moon?”
“Certainly,” said Blake, nodding. “As I said, the Mistress doesn’t like it when people try to ruin her plans. While you two have so far failed to stop her, she has still given me orders to eliminate both of you if necessary.”
“But weren’t you just saying that you wanted to use the Vampire Flame to turn me back into a normal woman again?” I said. “How does that square with eliminating me?”
“Note I said ‘if necessary,’” said Blake. “I dislike murder myself, so I usually try to find as nonviolent a solution to my problems as possible. Giving you your humanity back would work just as well as killing you, if not better, because you already hate your half-vampire nature and would do anything to get rid of it.”
“Does your Mistress know that you are offering me this?” I said. “Or are you doing this on your own initiative?”
“My Mistress doesn’t know, but then again, she doesn’t need to know,” said Blake. “Besides, I’m pretty sure that she would agree to let you use the Vampire Flame to return to normal. It wouldn’t take away anything from her, but it would take out a potential threat to her plans. What do you say? Will you accept my offer or not?”
I had to admit, I was very tempted to accept his offer. The idea of using the Vampire Flame to return to being a normal woman with a normal life seemed almost too good to be true. And this time, I was sure that Blake wasn’t lying. I could tell that he genuinely meant what he said, which made it that much harder for me to be skeptical of his offer. And if he was telling the truth, that the Mistress would be willing to help me, then I didn’t have any reason not to accept it.
But I still hesitated. I looked at Jane and said, “If I accept your offer, what will you do to Jane? Will you let her go?”
Blake tapped Jane’s shoulders. “Let her go? You mean like this?”
Before my startled eyes, Blake tapped Jane’s shoulders a few times and then, in a bright burst of light, Jane vanished, leaving Blake standing by himself with that same smirk on his face.
“Jane!” I said in horror. “What did you do to her?”
“Jane isn’t here anymore,” Blake replied. “Actually, she was never really here in the first place. That was just another illusion of mine, one made to make you think that Jane was here. It was a very realistic illusion, wasn’t it?”
“Where is Jane?” I said. “If she’s not here, then where is she?”
“On the moon with the Mistress,” Blake said, pointing at the ceiling again. “She plays an important role in the Mistress’ plans, so of course she couldn’t stay down here on Earth. But don’t you worry about her. Jane is safe where she is and will be even safer once the Mistress’ plans succeed.”
“Then I take it you won’t let her go even if I accept your offer,” I said. “Right?”
“Right,” said Blake, nodding. “The Mistress has no intentions of giving up your friend and she wouldn’t be very happy if I made such a promise to you behind her back. Not that I ever would, of course, because I know better than to go behind the Mistress’ back and go against her will. The last servant of hers who did that … well, let’s just say that it will be a long time before anyone finds all of his body parts.”
“What does the Mistress want to use Jane for?” I said. “What role does Jane play in her plan?”
“Again, I can’t tell you that,” said Blake. “I can’t tell you anything about the Mistress’ plans at all, mostly because the Mistress made me swear to secrecy. I will say that Jane won’t be hurt by her role, but I can’t say what will happen to her beyond that.”
I didn’t like the way Blake talked about Jane at all. It sounded to me like the Mistress plans for Jane weren’t good or noble, whether they ‘hurt’ or not. And whether or not the Vampire Flame could restore my humanity was irrelevant at this point, because I needed to save Jane, no matter what.
So I said to Blake, “Sorry, but I’m going to have to say no to your offer. I’d like to be normal again, obviously, but right now, Jane needs me and my powers more than I need to be rid of them. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to use the Shadow Way to get to the moon. See you later.”
I turned to head into the shadows, but all of a sudden, I found myself surrounded by a dozen Blakes, each one just as detailed and realistic as the last. They all wielded wands, which they pointed at me like guns.
“Tara, did you really think I would be stupid enough to let you get away?” said the Blake directly in front of me. “I thought you were smarter than this, that you would accept the offer and stop trying to get in the way of my Mistress’ plans. But I see that you’re not thinking very rationally about this and won’t give up that easily, so I might as well kill you and then return to the moon, where the Mistress will be happy to hear about your death.”
The Blakes fired energy blasts at me all at once. I jumped into the air at the last minute, avoiding all twelve of the blasts and landing behind one of the Blakes. I immediately stabbed the Blake in the back, but then all of the Blakes disappeared at the same time and I found myself seemingly alone in the room again, with the heartbeats of the Maze still filling my ears.
“Where are you?” I said, looking this way and that. “Show yourself, Blake!”
All of a sudden, the room changed. The temperature shot up abruptly, making me break into a hot sweat, while I heard what sounded like a lake rushing nearby. The stone under my feet started to soften and even boil, turning into magma and forcing me to jump backwards to avoid getting burned. I almost stumbled when I landed, but managed to right myself at the last second and wipe away the sweat beading down the sides of my face.
“What’s the matter, Tara?” came Blake’s voice, seemingly from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. “You look a little … hot. Here, let me cool you off.”
Abruptly, the heat vanished, replaced by a bitter cold that made me shiver insanely. My s
weat froze to my skin and Domination’s handle became ice cold in my hands, while snow started to fall from the ceiling, turning the floor white and crunchy. A fiercely cold wind blew through just then, making my teeth chatter and causing me to almost cry out in pain.
“Ah, now you’re too cold,” said Blake in an amused voice. “Hot, cold, hot, cold … the weather is certainly crazy to day, isn’t it? Let’s try to warm you up again. I would hate to see you become a vampirecicle.”
Once again, the cold was replaced by the heat. That same sound of a lake rushing nearby also returned, but this time it sounded much closer, like it was coming from that door at the end of the hallway from which Jane had emerged earlier. It was getting louder and louder all the time, which was how I knew that it was getting very close. I briefly wondered how Blake was controlling the environment like this when something burst out of the doorway, but it wasn’t water from a lake.
No, it was molten hot lava … and it was coming directly toward me.
I didn’t quite know what lava did to a vampire, but I had zero intention of finding out if I was lava-proof or not. I turned and ran back the way I came, listening to the sound of molten lava hissing and burning the stone floor as it drew closer to me. The heat in the room had gone up several more degrees, to the point where I was drenched in sweat from head to foot. But I didn’t care about that right now. All I cared about was getting the hell out of here, to someplace where the lava couldn’t get me.
But I had made a big mistake in trying to flee the opposite direction, because I ran into the wall behind me and immediately began pounding my fists against it. But it was no use. The wall was solid and thick, not bending even slightly under my assault. It reminded me of the wall that separated Lucius and me, except that this was an even more serious situation than that, because once the lava crashed into me, I would be dead for sure.
I looked over my shoulder. The lava was still rushing toward me and would be upon me any second now. I could try jumping into the air, but that would only keep me safe briefly, and once I fell back down I would land directly into the lava. That was assuming the lava didn’t just fill up the chamber entirely. Even if I clung to the ceiling of the chamber, I would not be able to survive for very long.
The Vampire Flame (Vampire Sorceress Book 3) Page 12
