Ravening Hood

by Kendrai Meeks

  “An hour before, I was prepared to offer you use of the mating sweet for you and your lover. Now I have to ask myself, how tight should I make your chains?” A kick in the side brought blood to my mouth. “And should they be silver?”

  Because a werewolf would try to free me if they weren’t? If he succeeded in killing Tobias, I doubted any would even let out a sigh at my death. Certainly not the Pera Pack, who must be blaming Markus and me for their discovery. Certainly not the Paradise Pack, whose alpha had sent me packing.

  With a twist of my arm behind my back, Vlad pulled out my curdled cry and straddled my waist. The agony shot through me, from my wrist to my shoulder blades the strain bit into my resolve. I turned, catching sight of the sword he’d gifted for me setting on a nearby table, the belt of coins discarded beside it. If only I could get to it...

  “Just because I can’t kill you without killing myself doesn’t mean I can’t cause you inexorable levels of pain. Act out against me, and this will be the baseline of your suffering.”

  “Wait, what? Why can’t you kill...” Did I really want to finish that question?

  The prince’s hands flattened against the floor on either side of my head. He lowered his upper body, pressing his cheek to mine. “The bite I took: you said it felt different. Didn’t you realize why?”

  “Because I’m relinquished?” It was the only thing that came to mind when I compared Vlad’s attack with that of Xin’s child.

  “Oh, you’re something all right, but relinquished isn’t what I’d call it. It’s because what you felt was a maker’s bite. My blood now flows through your veins, Gerwalta. You are of me.”

  The dim hall blurred in my vision, but I didn’t need my eyes to see the truth. “That’s how you keep the slayers from revolting. You’ve taken them hostage. You’ve made them Dracule.”

  “True that we cannot turn a slayer, but Igor discovered long ago a maker’s bite will immunize a vampire his victim’s solarium. Sadly, though, it only works with the females.” I could feel his smile stretch out next to my face. “As I said, I learned from the Ottomans well. Mehmed tried to infect me, to drive his ideology and his politics into my veins, to internalize my slavery, and make me my own captor. And that is what makes my hasekis so compliant: my blood is in their veins.”

  “You’ve given them all the slayers in your harem the maker’s bite. If they killed you, they’d die too.”

  “You really are quite the smart one, aren’t you?” Vlad’s stood, finally ending the onslaught of pain. I struggled to push myself up on all fours. “Though sadly, their solarium can still knock us out for a few hours. Also, that still doesn’t keep them from escaping. That doesn’t assure their loyalty. Have you figured out that part of it, hood? Have you?”

  No, I hadn’t. I searched my memory, recalling the saloon where I’d seen all the female slayers lounging, Caleb the only male in their midst.

  The only male.

  “By threatening the men.” Agony ebbed as I rolled to my knees, struggling to my feet. “But how? How could you keep them from killing you?”

  “Every supernatural creature has its weakness, doesn’t it? Vampires: sunlight. Werewolves: silver. Hoods: electricity. And slayers?”

  Vlad’s arms wrapped around me just moments before the scenery became a blur. Moving so fast played havoc with my lungs, leaving me a coughing mess when we came to a stop in his back garden, lights dancing like pixies over the Bosporus.

  “Water.” The vampire grinned as he beheld the vast resources surrounding his home. “A slayer forced to stand in water is powerless to conjure their damned solaria. Oh, yes, I learned. The way to keep power in check isn’t with chains around the wrists, but with chains around the heart.”

  Igor’s explanation of why he’d rented the rundown house in Eminönü bubbled up in my memory. In the old part of the city, there’s hundreds of them. Every grand home or even apartment block in Byzantine or Ottoman times had one, and a number of them still survive in one form or another today.

  “There’s a cistern under the house.”

  “And I flood it just enough to keep their power—and their hopes—dampened. The moment one of the women acts out against me or tries to flee, the males pay the price. Alexandra could tell you from personal experience. I killed her husband only a month ago when she tried to escape.”

  My eyes flew shut, but the vision still danced on the back of my eyelids. “Caleb?”

  “Your Caleb resisted the charms of my beauties far longer than I supposed he could, given how long you denied him. Let me guess: every time you got close to consummating, your body rejected the experience?”

  I refused to dignify the question with an answer, or acknowledge even to myself that the reminder that Caleb had slept with one of the slayers hurt. Instead, I huffed, glaring at him like my eyes could rip off his head.

  The vampire planted his hands on his knees and bent over, laughing at my quivering frame. “That was pretty much the way of it, wasn’t it? And the way you’re staring at me, like you’re shocked that I knew that, tells me that you don’t know what’s so special about you.”

  Fury fueled my strength, rage drove out the pain. The shaking stopped, and though I moved slow, I rose to my feet.

  “I know what’s so special about me.”

  Straight back, flashing eyes, firm voice...

  “I am Gerwalta, namesake of The Betrayer, and I will be the one to ensure you never hurt another living soul, even if it does kill me in the process.”

  The vampire nodded, amusement brightening his features. “A nice sentiment, but all bluster, I’m afraid. You see, you don’t have any power. You’re nothing but a relinquished hood.”

  The cloaked figure in the tree at the edge of the yard crouched, the silver in his hand dancing. “I have the best power of all: allies.”

  Blood spayed across my face as Markus’s weapon found its mark. Crimson rivulets drained down the vampire’s mouth as he keeled over. Markus pounced, another ball of liquid silver at the ready, even as his eyes scanned me for injuries.

  “No broken bones,” I reported, even though I suspected at least a few ribs were cracked. “I’ll heal. Ayşe?”

  “She’s sweeping the perimeter, taking out any guards who would see us escaping from the seawall.” Markus turned to the house. “Tell me where we’re going.”

  I pointed to the second story, even as we ran towards the doors. A silver spear through the neck could only sideline Vlad for as long as it took him to pull it from his throat and heal. Given the power of my blood on a vampire from my last encounter, I didn’t suspect that would take too long.

  “The women are there. The men are in the basement. I suspect that’s where the wolves are too. There’s at least one other Raven on the property, probably along with a handful of other vamps of later generations.”

  “So you go up and I go down?”

  “No, we both go up. This house is expansive, and we need someone who knows it.”

  MARKUS EYEBALLED THE two headless corpses outside the entrance to the harem. “If I had known beheading them was so easy, I’d have done that with Vlad. Nice sword by the way.” He balanced my new weapon in one hand. All his silver had gone into piercing Vlad’s chest. Literally. “Where’d you get it?”

  Not a story I wanted to go into right now. “Just saw it downstairs and thought to grab it as we came through.” I searched through the pockets of one of the victims of Markus’s attack. “These vamps were young. I don’t think a Raven would have been as easy.”

  Light spilling from a newly-opened door blinded us. I threw my free arm up, creating a band of shadow over my eyes. The measure against so many cocked and loaded solaria proved useless, as did the sword I grasped.

  “We’re here to save you, but we need Alexandra’s help.”

  With a wall of ebbing luminosity behind her, the redhead stepped forward.

  “Is this why I saved you?” she barked. “Just so you could get us all killed? What kind
of fool are—”

  “A hood!” I shouted. “A hood who knows that as long as the Ravens survive, we’re all in danger.”

  Another of the slayers, a dark-haired one with brilliant blue eyes, cackled. After a few blinks, my eyeballs toasting like marshmallows, I realized I knew her. This was the slayer who had taken Tobias. “Idiot! Even time could not defeat them. What makes you think a wolfsretter stands any chance?”

  “Because I’m not a wolfsretter. I’m something much more dangerous: a woman in love with someone they’ve taken. I will not be stopped. Not by reason, and not by regret.”

  Alexandra let her solarium extinguish, along with the fury in her features. “After Caleb did what he’d been put here to do, the Ravens took him below with the others.”

  I shook my head and let my sword fall to the side. “He’s not the one I love.”

  At that, most of the others dropped their defenses as well.

  “If not him—” Alexandra inched forward, confusion marring her features. “—then who?”

  “His name is Tobias Somfield. He’s a wolf.”

  The room repolarized, as all eyes went from me and Markus, to Alexandra herself. The redhead’s eyes dropped to the ground as her hand rounded the child within her, cradling it in her grasp.

  Her brilliant brown eyes sparkled with tears when she looked up. “You know of our limitation?”

  I nodded, even though Markus managed a muffled “no” in the background.

  “We’ll figure out how to kill them all later,” I said. “Today, our goal is freedom. There’s a boat, just a few hundred meters off the seawall behind the house, waiting for us.”

  Alexandra gave a curt nod before turning to a woman with mocha skin and coal-black eyes. “You must be swift, Rashidi.”

  The slayer drew back, like she’d been signaled out for ridicule. “There are too many guards at the gates.”

  “I’m not suggesting to lead them through the gates.”

  Rashidi went ashen. “Surely you’re not suggesting we attempt to escape by diving into the strait. We’d be powerless in the water, you know that.”

  “The only power you will lack in the water is the power to destroy a vampire. If you are brave, and if you are steadfast, you will not lose the power to save yourselves.”

  Markus stepped between the two women. “Swim far away from the landing, straight out, staying as close together as you can.”

  My cousin drew one of the two flare guns we’d brought from inside his hood. “After fifteen minutes, if we’re still not there, you fire this. They’ll come pick you up. Don’t wait for us. If we see the flair, we’ll know you’ve gone. We’ll find another way.”

  Rashidi glared confusedly at the hood before her. “Why are you helping us?”

  “Because it is the right thing to do.” Markus closed her hand with his own around the flare gun. “Which, frankly, isn’t enough for me. But I know Geri. She’s not going to get out of here unless all you are safe, and I can’t get out of here unless the same’s true for her.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Every creak of the stairs signaled our defeat.

  Alexandra noted my nerves. “The home is old, and it was shaken harshly by the last great earthquake. Don’t worry, I will know if one of the staff approaches. We can sense vampires the way you sense wolves.”

  Probably not the way I sense wolves, I thought.

  A keypad outside a white door beeped as the slayer punched in the code, a feat that Markus found suspect.

  “Does everyone have access to the dungeon?” he asked as he swished a ball of liquid silver around in his hand. At least that obnoxious harem costume belt had come in to some practical use. Otherwise, my cousin might have insisted on requisitioning my new favorite weapon. “Doesn’t seem very secure.”

  “It’s a cistern, not a dungeon,” Alexandra replied. She held up a hand at shoulder level, sparking a solarium to light the stairway below. Three feet under a modern lattice, the walls morphed suddenly from smooth concrete to rough plaster. “Each man is secured with chains. We do not have the keys to those. The access is necessary for... visits.”

  The presence of the baby bump on the slayer told me what kind of visits.

  “And the wolves?” I asked, fretful of the visions my imagination was conjuring. “Are they down this way too?”

  Alexandra shook her head and took another step. “Not anymore.” She swallowed, and I didn’t miss the crack in her voice. “I suppose they decided that the wolves needed to be kept somewhere the slayers couldn’t access.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Alexandra grabbed a high-powered flashlight off a charger mounted onto the wall. The moment we splashed into knee-deep water, her solarium coughed out.

  “Are there any more Ravens in Istanbul other than Timur and Vlad?”

  “Not right now. They travel in pairs, and rarely are the other four here,” Alexandra answered. “When they are, it’s only for a few hours, just long enough to receive a treatment.”

  Remembering how Inga had been “treated” by Caleb’s blood, I didn’t need to question that part. “So we only have to worry about where Timur is, then. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to avoid him.”

  “Timur is already down here, lying in wait.”

  Sloshing water created ripples as Markus stepped around me to catch up to Alexandra. “Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

  The redhead paused to blink at him in confusion. “Were you expecting this to go smoothly?”

  Markus’s cheeks went crimson. “Why should anything be easy at this point?”

  Suddenly, a low-level buzz tickled my hairline and a lurch of my insides pulled in the direction to the right, to a space that seemed to be just more of the ancient foundation. Only, the direction in which I was drawn wasn’t the one Alexandra was leading us to.

  I pushed my hand flat against the wall. “It’s him.”

  Markus came up alongside me, weaving the strands of silver around his arm like a chain and pressing his palm flat against the plaster. “How can you feel that? You’re relinquished.”

  I ignored his question, and posited one of my own. “How do we get in?” I eyeballed my sword, wondering if I sliced into the wall and managed to break through, would its weakening bring down the whole house atop us?

  “Get in where?” Alexandra asked. “The slayers are in a room up ahead.”

  As far as I could see up and down the corridor, there were no breaks in the wall, which arched overhead like an excavated cave. “There’s a chamber on the other side of this wall. The wolves are in there. I can feel them. I can feel...” His name—his presence—almost broke me. “Tobias.”

  Markus joined me. “There’s no way you could possibly sense the wolves.”

  “Tell me I’m wrong, then.”

  “You’re not, but it’s impossible—”

  We both yelped when Alexandra’s fingers laced through our hair and yanked us along.

  “You swore to save the slayers!” she whispered. “They come first. After that, your wolves.”

  Tobias. My heart reached for him, latched on to him, and yearned for physics to break its own laws and let him pass through the wall to me. With every ounce of my being, I focused on getting my message to him. I am here. I will save you. Just be strong.

  But Alexandra was right, and if she were to be believed, there was a Raven in wait ahead. I twisted from her hold as Markus did the same.

  “The slayers first,” I agreed. “But how do we kill Timur? We don’t have any wood.”

  “Markus will take off his head.” Alexandra turned, guiding us forward. “Without wood, it’s the only way to kill a vampire.”

  Markus trudged on. “Or if we can get you out of the water, you can burn his ass with a solarium.”

  “Out of water, he can simply smoke and escape. Water weakens both vampire and slayer. They can’t evaporate, but we cannot summon solaria. Besides, Geri and I can’t kill him.”

  I gulped, hoping my cousin would
chalk up Alexandra’s declaration to the fact that I was relinquished and, therefore, unequal to the task.

  No such luck.

  “And why would that be?”

  “Because Vlad has infested her,” Alexandra said. “As he has done with all the female slayers. If we kill a Dracule, we kill ourselves.”

  “Whoa, wait.” Markus’s hands went out to the side. He came to a halt and turned on us. “Are you saying that a vampire’s bite makes them immune from harm from their victim?”

  Alexandra shook her head. “Only a maker’s bite, only from the Dracule, and only in a female slayer. Or, it seems, a hood.”

  Realization dawned on me. “That’s how you were able to hit Timur with a solarium and he didn’t die?”

  Alexandra’s brow furrowed. “This is a topic I will gladly expound upon, at a later time when we are not all dead or imprisoned.”

  “I have got to write that down, and Geri, we’re going to have some major tests to run. Okay, if I’m going to kill him, you should probably let me get in the front and I should—”

  But Markus never got to say what he was going to do. One moment he had pulled out ahead of us, the silver under his command warping into a hanger sword, and the next, he was on his back in the water, his head submerged, and a vampire atop his frame. His weapon flew backward, splashing my face as it plunged beneath the muddied surface.

  Even if they couldn’t smoke, water had no apparent effect on a vampire’s strength.

  Alexandra tried to advance, but I pulled her back.

  “You go,” I said. “Save your people. I’ll take care of him.”

  “But how will I cut the chains?”

  The weapon in my hand vibrated, as though reminding me she was still here.

  She. Swords didn’t have genders, but something about this one felt particularly... feminine.

  I pushed the hilt into Alexandra’s hand. “She’ll cut through them.”

  The slayer examined me, then the sword. “But this sword is so...”