Sword of Elements Series Boxed Set 2: Bound In Blue, Caught In Crimson & To Make A Witch

by Heather Hamilton-Senter

  “Step away, you grey-souled bastard,” a British-accented voice commanded.

  When Ethan’s grip loosened in surprise, I wrenched my arm away and ran to Ava. She stood and swore softly. “Damn. Security.”

  But the man and young girl approaching us weren’t security guards. The man was tall and slender, with a shock of red hair, high cheekbones, and delicate, foxy features. The girl trailing behind him could only be twelve or thirteen at most. She had a pale, oval face and tattered blonde hair falling to her waist from under a black newsboy cap.

  The girl folded her arms and sighed. “Don’t bother, Bel. We’re too late anyway. They’re gone.”

  Ethan slunk in front of me like an animal guarding its kill. “These are my hunting grounds! Get out!”

  The man looked at the girl and she shrugged. When he looked back, a small smile flitted across his lips. Extending his arm, he flicked his index finger at Ethan.

  The young man who’d lured us to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 to kill us and stuff our bodies into an empty tomb, burst into flames. He made no sound as he flared once and then disintegrated into ash, leaving nothing but charred bits of skin and a few sparks among the offerings to Marie Laveau.

  Someone started screaming. It had to be Ava, because I hadn’t even cried when I saw my brother’s white face and the plastic T-rex clutched in his little, rigid hand.

  Even over the screaming, I could hear the man comment drily, “I do hate vampires. They burn too quick.” He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Be a good girl and shut up, won’t you?”

  The screaming stopped, filling me with surprise. It was me, after all. It gave me a strange feeling of hope that I could still feel something after everything I’d seen and done.

  But standing in the ashy remains of a serial killing vampire, I could also feel the pull of the world of magic—a world where I’d been on track to becoming a monster. A different kind of monster than Ethan, maybe, but still a monster. “No,” I whispered, clinging to the thought of salvation.

  “No?” Bel replied, misunderstanding what I was denying. “You do realize your young man was planning to drain the blood from your nubile bodies and hide them inside that tomb?”

  “An empty tomb,” the girl at his side reminded him.

  He made an impatient gesture. “Yes, empty. I caught that the first time. I’m not deaf, you know.”

  The girl shrugged. “I told you it would be. We should have gone to the head of the New Orleans coven as soon as we got here.”

  The man smiled. “But then we wouldn’t have found these two pretties.” The girl rolled her eyes but didn’t respond.

  I glanced at Ava. She was silent, staring, and her normally golden skin was ashy. She was in shock.

  The man approached us languidly with one hand in his pocket, like a model on a runway rather than a decaying cemetery. Heat poured off him and a line of sweat sprang up across my shoulders and trickled down my back. When he lifted my chin with his finger, his touch burned, but there was something else beneath it—a pleasure that was both repellent and attractive. I jerked away. He was like the city, golden and corrupt, and the stinking tomb behind me was a reminder that both were equally dangerous.

  “Bel,” the girl murmured, her tone neutral and her face expressionless, but the man backed away.

  I felt the disturbance in the air rather than saw the blow. When my mind could comprehend what I was looking at, I realized the man was on the ground. Ava stood over him with her bag dangling from one hand; she’d knocked him out cold with a powerful backhand.

  The blonde girl walked over and gave the man a nudge on the shoulder with her foot. He didn’t move. “Wow.” I couldn’t be sure, but she sounded amused.

  The girl looked at me, but now that Ava had broken from her near-catatonic state, she was running and screaming my name for me to follow.

  The girl’s eyes widened slightly, pale eyebrows lifting. “Lacey McInnis?”

  I hesitated, wanting to demand how she knew my name, but Ava had already disappeared from sight. I had no hope of getting up the side of that tomb and over the wall without Ava’s greater height to help.

  Even though the girl looked like she was about to say more, I couldn’t wait around to hear it. Turning, I careened wildly through the city of the dead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AN EXPLANATION

  With Ava’s help, I clambered over the wall and out onto the street. We ran as if demons were on our heels until we reached Basin Street where we were able to catch a cab. Clutching her bag to her chest, Ava trembled in the back seat beside me, but wouldn’t say a word. When the cab dropped us off on the road to the side of the school, she stumbled out while I threw some bills at the driver.

  “Ava, wait!” I cried, but she was already disappearing through the opening in the fence. I scrambled after her and through the vegetation, leaves brushing against the sore spot underneath my chin. I pushed through in time to find Ava vomiting violently onto the grass.

  As I waited for her to finish, I picked up her discarded bag and was surprised to discover how heavy it really was. I looked inside. Jumbled with loose change, a wallet, and an impressive supply of cosmetics was a ten pound hand weight.

  “I always carry it around.” Ava was rubbing her mouth and still shaking, but she looked a little better. “Passive weight training,” she added as she took the bag back and hung it on her shoulder.

  “Good thing,” I replied, but Ava wasn’t listening. She was striding towards Stradford Hall.

  Guessing what she intended to do, I caught up and grabbed her by the arm. “No, Ava.”

  “We need to tell security to call the police! We need to tell them what happened!”

  “We can’t.”

  She shook me off, but I moved to block her. “What are you doing?” she screamed.

  I glanced around nervously, hoping the guard on duty hadn’t heard. “Listen, I know you’re freaked out. So am I, but we can’t tell the police. Believe me, I wish we could. ”

  “But . . .”

  I called on the glamour of my lorelei heritage and there was no feeling of warmth on my wrist to protest—my last spell was truly gone. Pushing an unexpected surge of sadness aside, I focused on the terrified girl in front of me. “What are we going to tell them? That a vampire lured us to the cemetery to kill us? That a man flicked his finger and turned the vampire to ash? They’ll think we’re crazy or that it’s some kind of prank.”

  Ava’s expression became uncertain. “How could Ethan be a vampire? Vampires aren’t real.” Her voice shook.

  Taking her arm, I guided her towards the residence. “They’re real, but usually they just feed and let you go. They must have some sort of glamour magic as well because the only reason I agreed to go with Ethan was because I thought he looked like . . . someone I used to know. He didn’t, not really. Maybe the bars are where he goes to look for prey at night. Maybe we were just unlucky enough to attract his attention. He must have discovered a long time ago that the cover of the cemetery allowed him the privacy to do more than just feed.” I thought of how Ethan had lifted me down in that courtly, old-fashioned way. “A very long time ago, I think.”

  The natural magic of my genetics was calming Ava down. She even looked like she actually believed me.

  “Are we safe here?”

  One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. I counted off my steps until I was sure I could reply in a steady voice. “Yes, we’re safe from vampires here.” I had no idea if it was true. The Crone had little interest in anything outside of witchcraft and saw all the other beings that lurked in the shadows on this side of the Wall as vermin. Vampires were supposedly not able to enter a home without permission, but what about a public building like a school?

  But I was more worried about the man called Bel whose touch burned, and a girl who knew my name.

  Less wobbly now, Ava pulled away. “OK then. Let’s go home. I just want to get into my bed and pretend the whole thing was a
bad dream.”

  We went to the back of the residence where Ava produced a key that opened a metal door—another Westover Academy Senior Class secret. It was the door to a utility room that collected the garbage bags thrown down the chute on each floor. Up a small flight of stairs and through another door, and we were in the hall that led to our room.

  Once inside, Ava began brushing her teeth and gargling as if removing the last traces of vomit could bring the world back into order again. I couldn’t judge. I was scrubbing my hands in my own sink under water almost as hot as Bel’s touch. An itch in the back of my mind urged me to make the water hotter and hotter until I lost myself in pain. Worse than that, I couldn’t stop thinking about the small surgical knife at the bottom of my makeup bag.

  “Again,” the Crone demanded.

  I tried not to whimper. The Crone didn’t like it when I complained. I’d promised to obey under oaths that made me shudder to think of them, and I knew she would punish me and those I loved if I failed her.

  But that wasn’t the only reason I was whimpering. Every time the Crone commanded me to slice the knife across my skin and spill my blood into the cup, she made me stop at two cuts. The pressure to complete my ritual was almost unbearable, but she wouldn’t allow me release. The very nature of my compulsions made me the ideal candidate to master certain types of magic, but the Crone demanded that I be that master, not a slave.

  I wondered if she knew that when I was alone, I completed the third cut, deeper and longer than the others.

  Turning off the tap, I dried my red, throbbing hands. I hadn’t cut myself since the night the Crone died, but I hadn’t got rid of the knife yet either. Folding the hand towel neatly into a small square, I forced myself to turn around.

  Ava was sitting on her bed staring at me, her face shiny and her hair wet and spiky. “Explain,” she demanded.

  Sighing, I sat down on my bed facing her and began. “To understand, you need to know about a girl I grew up with. Her name was Rhiannon Lynne, but everyone who could see her called her Rhi. The thing was, not everyone could see her, not really . . .”

  When I finished the story of how I’d ended up on the wrong side of a fight between King Arthur awakened, Merlin who was also the Lord of the Grey Lands of Avalon, and Taliesin the warrior-bard who had sworn to protect mankind, Ava seemed to pass out more than fall asleep. I followed almost immediately after, but by the next morning, the girl had bounced back to normal and had acquired an insatiable curiosity about all things magical.

  I was awakened by a hand shaking my shoulder. “So this Rhiannon you hate so much, she’s Merlin’s and Guinevere’s daughter brought through Time? And she remade Excalibur, like, the Excalibur?”

  “Rhi,” I corrected automatically as I sat up, pushing the hair out of my bleary eyes. “And yes. I mean, no, I don’t hate her exactly, but yes, that’s what she did. I didn’t find out everything firsthand, but the Crone connected me with witches all over the world using the Darknet. News travels fast in the magical world. What time is it?”

  She ignored my question. “And this Rhi basically threw you out of your own town?” The girl’s voice was indignant.

  I turned the alarm clock on the desk so I could see the time; it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. “She had her reasons. She only wanted me gone until she and Peter joined Taliesin in Nevada, but I decided I needed a more permanent change.”

  “I can’t believe Peter would chase after that fairy slut Miko all the way to Las Vegas!”

  I flopped back down onto the bed and suppressed a sigh. Ava seemed to have only two speeds: on and off. Now that she’d adjusted to the idea that magic existed, she’d transitioned into complete acceptance of everything I’d told her—and obviously I had to be the heroine of the story. I probably should have, but I couldn’t tell her I was actually one of the villains.

  Maybe it was because I didn’t feel like one. It was true that Peter was blind to Miko’s real nature. It was also true that Rhi had her own agenda and couldn’t be trusted. The whispers all over the Darknet—even those surfacing onto the mainstream Internet—were that Rhi was a leanan sidhe. No one really knew what that meant, but the consensus among witches was that it was something old and monstrous.

  If there are no heroes, how can those on the opposite side truly be villains?

  I escaped that question and the rest of Ava’s by promising to answer everything I could, but only after I’d showered and had breakfast. She agreed and only tapped her foot and sighed a few times as she waited for me to belt a sweater over my denim skirt.

  The morning air was moist, but mild. Stradford Hall had disappeared into fog, but I could see a black town car parked in front.

  “I wonder who’s here.”

  Ava shrugged. “It takes a lot of fundraising to keep a place like this going, even with the tuition they charge us. There’s always a politician or local celebrity being shown around by the dean.”

  As we passed through the foyer into the dining hall, I noticed a security guard going through some paperwork inside one of the offices, but otherwise the building seemed quiet.

  The entrance to the kitchen was behind the currently empty serving stations. Ava was already pulling down cereal boxes from one of the upper cupboards.

  “Are there any baking supplies?”

  The girl looked at me as if I had two heads. “How would I know?”

  I rummaged through the kitchen until I found a cast iron pan and all the ingredients for pancakes. Baking was something my mom had showed me how to do before I was tall enough to reach the counter. It didn’t take long to whip up a stack of pancakes. The fridge produced a bottle of syrup, but Ava refused to try anything that wasn’t pure Vermont maple and dropped a small slab of butter on top instead.

  “So what should we do?” she asked between quick bites.

  I shrugged. “Well, I didn’t expect the school to be so dead over the holidays. I even thought I would need to wear my uniform the whole time so I didn’t bring a lot of clothes, mostly skirts. I should probably pick up a couple of pairs of pants.”

  Ava put down her fork and stared at me. “That’s not what I meant. I thought maybe we should go back to the cemetery.”

  “Why?”

  “If there were bodies in Marie Laveau’s tomb—recent ones—shouldn’t we do something? Let someone know? Somewhere in the city, people are waiting for their loved ones to come home, but they never will.” Her eyes were moist with tears.

  Shame made my cheeks hot. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Maybe we could call the police and leave an anonymous message about the hole in the tomb, say that we saw something inside.”

  “That’s a good idea.” The girl was energized again. Pulling out her smart phone from the back pocket of her jeans, she searched online for the police tips number and began dialing.

  Claire Benoit appeared in the doorway to the dining hall. “Miss McInnis, could you come to the office please?” Her hair was coiled in a high bun and she wore extravagant, dangling earrings; she looked like she’d been headed somewhere much more exciting than the school. “Just leave the plates. I’ll get someone from the cleaning staff to take care of them.” As she walked away, she wasn’t smiling.

  Ava held up the phone. “It’s done.”

  “Good. I’ve got to go though. Miss Benoit wants me to come down to the office.”

  “What did you do to piss her off? She didn’t look too happy. Not that it takes much with her.”

  “I don’t know.” A thought struck me. “Rats! I forgot to pick up my schedule. She told me specifically to get it off her desk, but I completely forgot. Do you think that’s it?” The old Lacey would never have allowed such a lapse in attention to academic detail.

  “Benoit always has a bug up her behind over something, so it’s possible. I better go with you for back up.”

  “Is she that bad?”

  Ava grimaced. “The rumor is that she used to be a model or something when she was younger, but som
ething happened and she ended up stuck here as a glorified secretary. She’s always acting like everyone else is beneath her, even the dean.”

  Claire Benoit was tapping away at her computer keyboard when we entered the reception area. Her eyes flicked up from the screen. “Go on in. They’re waiting for you. You might as well go too, Ava.” Scowling, she jerked her chin towards the office.

  Ava and I shared a look as we stepped inside. I could feel there was trouble, but I didn’t expect who I found seated in front of Dean Dalton’s desk.

  The red-haired man called Bel and the young girl with tattered blonde hair.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A MESSAGE

  “Hello, Lacey, Ava.” Dean Dalton didn’t invite us to sit.

  I could feel Ava tremble beside me as she stared at the red-haired man. I hadn’t explained anything to her about him because he was a mystery to me as well, but I’d told her that many beings of magic lived in this world like normal humans. We were actually lucky Bel showed up when he did. Without any power, my only defense against a vampire was my strong singing voice and childhood dance training—meaning my ability to scream loud and run. Still, it was probably a good thing she’d left her bag back in our room or she might have gone on another swinging spree. By the way Bel was surreptitiously rubbing his jaw, he seemed to be thinking the same thing.

  “Does the Amazon really need to be here, Dalton?” Bel drawled, jerking his chin at Ava.

  It was his young, blonde companion who answered. “She saw the vampire and what you did to it, Bel. Lacey has probably already filled her in on everything else, so there’s no point keeping her in the dark. Besides, she’s pretty good with a weapon.” The girl looked at me. “That’s probably going to come in handy.”

  The dean crossed her arms. “I’ve been apprised of your adventure last night. Have you taken it upon yourself to inform Ava of all the details on our kind?” Her voice was cold.