by E. M. Knight
“Well. I’ve certainly overstayed my welcome,” Carter says. “I bid you farewell.”
He walks out the door.
I start after him, wanting to grant James peace.
“Not you,” he says softly.
As soon as Carter is gone, James drops to his knees beside the same man I saw him cradling before.
I pause, uncertain. I’d come to examine the bodies with James, maybe probe them with magic, to see what I could learn.
So I turn around. I see the bodies on the floor, I see the black corruption marring their skin. It reminds me so much of the way Raul’s wound had looked that it’s sickening.
“I want you to tell me,” James says. “If you think any of them can live.”
I’m taken aback. “Me?” I ask. “What do I know?”
“You can do magic,” James responds. “I’ll tell you how I was cloaked, if you help me now.” He turns his eyes up on me. They are big and earnest and almost pleading. “Please. I cannot ask anyone else.”
I swallow. Is this James showing his vulnerability? It’s never been on display before. In fact, I was certain he did not even have a sensitive side. Maybe I’d been too quick to judge.
“Please,” he says again. “I… I can feel their pain. I know you shared a link with Victoria. She told me. Something happened, with the Narwhark, with me, with them, when they were made. And now… it’s like their suffering is my suffering.” His chest moves up and down in heavy breathes. “I thought it was all in my head. But then we came into this room… I saw them… and it crashed into me. I feel them all, Eleira. Every. Single. One.”
There’s no denying the emotion in his voice.
“Please,” he continues. “Please. I have to know. Will they live? Or are they going to die?”
“James...” I stand there awkwardly and rub one arm. “What can I tell you? I can’t see the future.”
“But you know magic,” he stresses. “You have a deeper understanding of what befell them than I do!”
“I’m not sure about that—”
“Please. You must try! I’ll tell you about the cloak. It was Riyu, he cast a spell over me. It was like a tightening, like a plastic wrapping had been placed over my skin. It’s still there, I can still feel it, it’s enormously uncomfortable, it affects every movement, everything I do. But it holds the radiance of my vampiric self locked inside. That’s why you cannot sense me, that’s why no vampire can!” He sounds truly desperate now. “Please. I’ve told you what I know. Tell me what you do.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what you expect—”
“I EXPECT A BIT OF SYMPATHY!” he explodes. “Look at them! Can you not see their suffering? Raul always went on and on about how human you are, how much goodness there is in your heart. Well, prove it now! Otherwise, I’ll just consider you—,” he narrows his eyes, “–another ice-cold blood sucker.”
“Raul said that?” I ask. I can’t think of any time the two of them could have been together. Maybe when the Queen first locked her son in the cell deep underground.
“You or Liana, it doesn’t matter, you’re one and the same,” James says dismissively. “Now look what you’ve reduced me to! I’m begging, on my knees, for your help.” He looks at the man he’s holding. “His name is Norman,” he says. “He was the first to step into the flames.”
My head is spinning trying to take all this in. James equates me to being no different than Liana? Is that what Raul thinks?
I take a deep breath. Immediately I realize it was a mistake, as that awful smell fills up my lungs. “I don’t know what you expect me to do,” I mutter. “But I’ll try… something.”
I step closer to James and the man and kneel down. I look at the oldest Soren brother. His dark hair falls into his eyes. He sweeps it away, and nods down at Norman.
I clear my mind. The most important thing Morgan taught me was that magic cannot be channeled if you have chaotic thoughts.
The other thing she taught me is that, no matter what appearances are on the outside, spells always work best when you have a connection to the subject. A physical piece of them, like a hair, a nail, a flake of skin…
Best of all is a direct physical connection. So I reach down and place my hand on Norman’s forehead…
A torrent of violent images flood into me.
Black, black, and red, everything is tinged in black and red. I see huge evergreens with blood soaking their needles. Entire swaths of land covered in flame. A darkness, a pervading darkness, deeper than night, washing over the whole world.
I gasp and try to pull away. But I cannot. James is gripping my wrist and holding my hand flat against Norman’s skull.
The images continue.
A flame burning bright as the sun in a sea of red. A sickly-sweet odor coming off it as flesh is burned. I see stars, millions upon millions of stars, dancing in the night sky while a cosmic cloud of great bitterness approaches.
I see the Paths. The crystals are crumbling, the roof is caving in. Everything around me is disaster, disaster and mayhem and pain.
And suddenly, I’m in the Narwhark’s head, and I’m looking out through its eyes.
It’s running. Running fast, running through the infinite tunnels of the Paths. It’s searching for something, for a way out, for a way toward its destination. It feels a pull, an undeniable, irrepressible pull toward that spot.
But it does not want to go. It longs to be free, free from the shackling of the one commanding it, free to inflict horror upon the world, free to feast and feed and kill and grow…
I feel its desire for more strength. For more power! As its paws hit the ground and send it throttling forward, that desire grows, it grows and grows, until it becomes all encompassing, until it is all that I know.
With strength I will be free.
The thought is not my own. It comes directly from the Narwhark. Of course, there are no words, just strong impressions, but my brain makes sense of those impressions and pulls the meaning from them.
The Narwhark wants to destroy. It hates the one who summoned it, and it wants to destroy her. All its focus is on that. But at the same time, it is being controlled from a distance, guided by some external force, and as it leaps and bounds down the secret passages of the Paths, I sense her name.
Cierra.
The Black Sorceress.
James releases my hand. I pull away so hard I go staggering back. In an instant, I’m on my feet, eyes wide, full of fury, glaring at him and ready to attack. The vampire inside me is chomping at the bit for a battle.
“Why did you do that?” I scream. “Why did you take my arm, why did you hold me there?”
He looks at me blankly. “It’s what you asked me to do.”
I stare at him. Is he serious? Could he really think me so thick, so stupid, as to believe an outright lie just like that? I feel the rage building, feel it growing past the point of spilling over—
And then, suddenly, in a dazzling flash, the memory reveals itself to me. Just before I touched Norman, right after I had cleared my mind, I whispered the words, “Don’t let me let go.”
I stagger away. My back hits the wall. I feel like a cornered animal. The stench, the stench, it’s making me lose my mind.
“Get out of here,” I breathe. “We need to go. James we cannot stay. James, it’s dangerous. James, we need to go—now!”
And I fly toward him, grab his hand, and haul him out of the room.
Only once we’re outside, with the door firmly shut, does James round on me. “Are you mad?” he demands. “What was that little display? I thought you were strong. I thought you were capable! Did you find out anything, at least?”
“Those vampires,” I say, “are tainted. They cannot be allowed to live. For if they rise...” I swallow and then give voice to my darkest fear.
“If they rise, they will be slaves to the Black Sorceress.”
Chapter Thirteen
JAMES
THE CAPTAIN COMMA
NDER’S ROOMS
“It was her!” Eleira exclaims. “It was her, it was her, it is her. I know it is!”
I stand off to the side while the fool girl spouts off some nonsense about “possessions” and “dark witches” and “black sorceresses” and a whole bunch of other irrelevant, reactive, histrionic crap.
But Phillip and Raul both are intently listening.
“She was the one that took hold of me when I opened the Book of the Dead,” Eleira continues. “She was the one who used me to summon the demon. She couldn’t do it herself, not from where she is—which I’ve seen, by the way, the Narwhark showed it to me—but the Book, and my blood, it activated the latent spell that she set on it, and—”
Suddenly, Eleira gasps. “Phillip! The Book of the Dead! You still have it, don’t you?”
“Mother took it away,” he says. “But I found it in the wreckage. Why?”
“Bring it. Bring it quick!”
Phillip looks at Raul, who nods. “Okay,” he says.
He runs off to retrieve this book, like an obedient little puppy dog.
I scoff from my vantage.
Raul glares at me. But he says nothing, instead going to Eleira to comfort her. He brings his arms around her shoulder and holds her tight.
“You okay?” he whispers, nuzzling her hair.
She nods. “Yeah.”
I turn away from this in disgust. Such little scenes of domestic affection never appealed to me.
After the display in the storage room, I can hardly believe Eleira to be the girl everybody is so riled up about. Yes, she’s strong—but that’s only because she’s been given The Ancient’s blood. It’s through no skill of her own.
Her display in that room was pitiful. And okay, I may have played up my own emotions a bit—just a bit—but that was only because I needed her help.
Besides, I thought showing a trace of vulnerability might help me in my other, more mischievous goal.
But she’d reacted so badly! Why, she was outright terrified! I could not understand it. I still don’t.
The only thing it achieved was lowering my impression of her. Significantly lowering it.
Phillip comes storming back into the room. “Here,” he says. He lays it on the table. “Why do you need it?”
I turn and look over my shoulder. Admittedly this book has attracted my curiosity. From what little I’ve gathered, it seems as if—
“Flip it open,” Eleira says. She stands a solid distance away. “I don’t want to touch it, for fear of… you know.”
Phillip nods. He reaches for the cover.
Raul stops him with a hand on his arm.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asks, looking at both Phillip and Eleira.
“Oh, for the love of...” I walk over briskly and fling the book open. “There! Now it’s done.”
I’m met with a trio of disappointed stares.
“What?” I say. “It’s just some book.”
“It is not just ‘some book,’” Raul stresses. “If you’d ever paid attention to any of the lessons Mother taught—”
“What, the ones from five centuries ago?” I laugh. “Please. Don’t insult me.”
“Eleira?” Phillip says. “Why did you want to see it again?”
“The runes inside,” she says. She goes on her tiptoes to see the book on the table. “I’ve seen them before. And now I remember where.”
Phillip and Raul both perk up at that. “Where?” they say as one.
“When I was a little girl, my dad, err—” she pauses, looks conflicted for a second, then carries on.
“I was on a camping trip in the back country of British Columbia. We had a cabin. My friend Michael was there. He found a… sort of cavern, dug beneath an old stump. We crawled inside—”
“Eleira...” Raul says, voice full of concern.
She continues right over him. “Underground was an abandoned cavern. Except now, I don’t think it was abandoned. I think it belonged to the same dark witch!”
She starts pacing the floor. “Yes, of course, it makes perfect sense. The same runes were inscribed on the wall. I felt a pull to them, the same way I do now to all things magic. But that was the trigger, don’t you see, it was the initiation of my mind into the world of magic. To my Spark!
“And the witch… the witch knew that her lair would beckon somebody who had The Spark. Except… except Michael found it first. Not me.” She frowns. “Hm.”
“You’re saying,” Phillip begins, “that the same witch who lived in that lair used you to summon The Narwhark? The same one both of you now have some sort of link to?”
“Yes, that’s exactly it!” Eleira exclaims.
“I don’t know,” Phillip shakes his head. “It sounds a bit farfetched to me.”
“I’m with Phillip,” I say. “Eleira is making connections where none exist. She’s finding patterns because she wants to see them, not because they’re actually there.”
She turns on me. She scowls. “And what do you know of it?” she challenges.
“I believe her,” Raul says, with such gravity that it makes the rest of us stop cold.
“You… do?” Eleira looks at him.
“Yes,” Raul says. He steps to her and takes her hand. “There are no such thing as coincidences. Not in our world. Not when it has to do with anything concerning you.”
He looks upon the rest of us. “We all know how Eleira’s coming was written in the stars. Perhaps this is an extension of that.”
“You really think it’s the same witch?” Phillip asks. He still does not sound convinced.
“I’m sure of it,” Eleira says. “Morgan taught me that the stronger spells require a connection with the subject—with whatever you’re directing them at. My blood in the book provided that. But years before, simply stumbling into the lair gave her the first step. In fact...” Eleira starts pacing the floor again, “…in fact, I’d bet anything that is where the connection between her and me first formed. It’s why possession of me came so easy to her. She took control of my mind because the seed had been planted years ago, and allowed to root and sprout without my knowing, somewhere inside.”
“We need to exterminate it,” Raul says fiercely. “I will not risk you falling under her influence again.”
She pats his shoulder almost absently. “I have enough control of my powers now. I’ve learned to shield my mind.”
“That’s not what it looked like in the store room,” I snort.
I ready myself for a harsh reprimand, enjoying this little push-and-pull game we’ve got going. But it doesn’t come. Eleira simply looks at me and says, “You’re right.”
I blink, momentarily taken aback. Then I remember myself. “Of course, I’m right.”
“The link between us still exists, and in certain circumstances, it can be exploited,” Eleira says. “I think—I think—that I can use it the opposite way. Instead of her taking hold of me, I can take control of her.”
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Raul says. “Let’s not get hasty.”
“I didn’t say I’m going to do it, only that I might be capable! I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
She looks at all of us.
Phillip raises his hands. “Don’t ask me. I can’t do magic.”
For a distressing moment Eleira meets my eyes. I can see the question in hers: Can you?
I break eye contact and look away. “If you want my advice?” I say. “Wait to ask Mother. She’s the one who’s been a witch for centuries. All we’re doing now is having discourse based on useless conjecture.”
“Not useless,” Eleira says. “Because this all concerns you.”
“How?”
“Your ‘coven,’” she says. “It needs to be destroyed.”
A fierce anger surges up. “No. Never. I won’t allow that!”
“James, you don’t understand,” she tells me. “They’ve all been tainted. Now I know what the Narwhark did. It used some sort of dark magi
c—although it’s probably not even magic, it’s probably just what it does on the regular in the realm it came from. But it’s the same sort of magic, exactly the same, as was infused into the weapon that cut Raul.
“I was told that torrials had an opposite: contra torrials. They were objects used to control the closing of the portals to the demon realm.”
“I’ve read about that,” Phillip says.
“Is there anything you haven’t read about?” I murmur.
He shoots me a nasty look.
“They ran on dark magic. Just like the blade. Just like the Black Sorceress uses. Just like the Narwhark used when it stabbed your coven members.”
“And if it’s just like the blade,” Raul says, seeming to be realizing something, “then that means a link could have been made between the Black Sorceress and the fledglings!”
“Not ‘could have,’” Eleira corrects. “Was. Is. It’s there currently. What I fear, what I experienced, confirmed it.”
“Then you’re right, and there is only one option,” Phillip says. “They have to be destroyed.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he continues right over me.
“We endanger our entire coven by keeping them near.”
“You’re joking.” I look at him. “Right? You guys are all—all three of you—joking. You have to be.”
“I don’t see anybody laughing,” Raul says dryly.
“You think those fledglings are a threat?” I snort. “If you haven’t noticed, none of them are even conscious. All of them are suffering! I felt it when I walked into the room. They’re weak, desperately weak, and they’re not going to get better on their own. If I were you—” I glare at them, “–I’d be more concerned about the implications Eleira’s little revelation has on your Queen.”
“She’s your Queen, too,” Phillip says softly.
“No. I forsake her. I forsake the entirety of The Haven. Its rules and laws have no binding on me.”
“You’re just angry, James,” Raul says. “Think of what you’re saying. We’re still family. You can’t turn your back on that.”
“The Queen gave me no choice when she passed her sentence.” I shrug. “That was some time ago. I’m over it. It’s done. But the hell with it if you think I’m bound by the same laws you are.”
