My heart galloped in my chest, and I tried to think of some way, any way, that we could win this battle.
“Kori!” A hand grabbed my arm, and I spun to find my brother Timothy. His eyelids went wide and gaze traveled far away. “Everyone in the rebel army will die,” he whispered, his voice echoing with the telltale resonance of prophecy. “We all will die, except you. Jump into the chasm underneath us. It will take you to the kingdom of Nightendale. You can raise the dead, but you need to answer a lethal puzzle first. The Tree of Life spawned four flowers—only one holds the power to bring the deceased back. The riddle is to figure out which of four colors would represent life to an immortal tree. You have to pick the right one, or you’ll turn into a . . .” Blood spurted out of his mouth and hot liquid splattered up my face.
The world stopped.
For just an instant, time halted as blood froze midair and bullets held in their course. Everything seized for one beat, and then Timothy’s body collapsed onto mine.
“Timmy!” I screamed. The slaughter around me drowned out my voice even to my own ears. I scrabbled to hold him, but his dead weight pulled me down to slam into the bricks. Air whooshed out of my lungs, and my hair caught under someone’s boot. A burning sensation spread over my head.
Bodies scattered out before me, flying in all directions. A figure moved through them on hands and knees. He bit and tore at the soldiers, ripping out their throats with his fangs. He was a whirlwind of movement, clearing a path straight to the tunnel. The vampire’s red gaze fixed on me, his mouth dripping crimson blood.
My breaths heaved as I crawled out from under my brother and stumbled over his corpse.
“Brendan, Genevieve, run to the tunnel!” I yelled as I looked around frantically, only to find my brother and sister lying on the bricks, their bodies bloody and torn and eyes staring, sightless.
Clawed fingers sliced into my shoulder. My body yanked to the side as a fanged mouth descended. There was a rip of gunshots, and the vampire shuddered and jerked me down on top of him. My stomach collided with hard muscle. Breath whooshed out of me, and I struggled to draw in air.
“Go, Kori!” Griff fisted my shirt and yanked me to my feet, shooting vampires as he ran. “You can’t fight! Run!”
Screams and gunshots echoed in my ears, and I dodged my way through bodies as the world blurred around me. A hand fisted in my hair, and I stumbled. With a searing pain, I ripped away. I ran, leaping over bodies, heading straight for the gaping tunnel that led to the chasm below.
Griff stayed close behind, shooting vampires as they tore through the rebels. I rushed for the tunnel, but he veered in my path.
“What are you doing?” Griff yelled.
“Timmy told me to go in there!”
The thunderous battle drowned out my words. A vampire leaped for us, his hands reaching out to grab me. Griff shot him once, and then his gun clicked.
The vampire stood at probably seven feet tall, his hair was barely a dark bristle on his head, contrasting with his pale skin. His mouth and dark beard dripped with blood as his glowing green eyes fixed on me.
Griff cracked the butt of his rifle against the vampire’s face, as we ran toward the tunnel. Griff was right beside me, and an echoing growling sound was just behind us.
“What are you doing? It’s a pit to nothing in here!” Griff bellowed as we ran.
“Timmy had a prediction. I need to jump in to save--” I cut off as something slammed into my back, and I careened into the wall. My head banged into the rock, and the taste of metallic blood exploded in my mouth. There was the sound of a scuffle, and then a roar echoed through the cavern.
When I turned, I found that Griff’s body had stretched, gray fur sprouted from his flesh, and talons lengthened from his fingers. His shirt and pants ripped at the seams. Griff clawed at the figure, slicing through the vampire’s pale cheek. The vampire lunged, burying its fangs into Griff’s neck and ripping away. Griff’s massive fur-sheathed body slammed back into me. We tumbled, and then the ground fell away.
My stomach flipped as we plunged into nothingness. Bitter damp air whistled past my ears and buffeted my face and body.
Then, I crashed with a squishy mass. Pain echoed through every inch of me. Instead of falling down, we tumbled forward and into stone after stone. My ribs collided into rock, and I felt every bone in my body shattering. Then, I slammed back onto Griff’s furry body.
We seemed to fall for hours, and the world faded in and out as pain dragged me under. I saw only darkness, and I felt only agony. And then suddenly, there was light. Light streamed in from the cave below, we slipped through, and then the whole world was glowing. We fell through the air once more, slamming down onto the thick leaves and sharp wooden stalks of a hedge, rolling off and hitting the ground.
Griff’s body slammed down beside me. He was little more than a bloody mass of fur. It took all of my energy to lift my hand and touch his broken form.
“No,” I gasped and tore my gaze away.
We lay among the smooth leaves in a bed of lilies. My thoughts jumbled together, and so I concentrated hard on what I knew must be true. Luca had betrayed us. The vampires came in through the tunnels we dug out of the city. The rebel army had fallen. My siblings were dead. Griff was dead. And Timothy said there was a way to save them. He’d said that the chasm would lead me to the Kingdom of Nightendale, the underground vampire kingdom, where a flower from the Tree of Life held the power to raise the dead.
My vision wavered as I peered up through the plants at a smear of white. It was vaguely tree-shaped, though I could barely see.
“Move… get moving… move.” I gritted my teeth and crawled through beds of lilies. One of my arms had numbed below the shoulder, even as it dragged under me over pebbles and thorny stalks. Sweat coated my forehead, and my vision tunneled to only the stretch of dirt before me.
My stomach churned and body shook as I raised my head out of the flower bed and peeked through the foliage. The garden path ended at a circle with a perfect spiral of black and white stones spanning out from the center. Growing from the middle of the circle was an ivory tree. The tree stretched up five feet to where it branched off in four directions. Each branch bore a single flower, the one nearest was blood red, the next was a startling shade of blue, the third a vibrant yellow, and the last was pitch black.
Four flowers—Only one holds the power to bring the dead back to life. The riddle is to figure out which of four colors would represent life to an immortal tree. You have to pick the right one, or you’ll turn into a . . . Why, oh why hadn’t Timothy had the time to finish that sentence? A tear slid down my cheek, and I scrubbed it away. Timothy said that I could save them, meaning, my family would not stay dead.
It was a riddle, and like most riddles, the answer would be infuriatingly obvious and yet not the first conclusion the mind would go to. My shoulder pulsed with agony, and I shoved my fist against my lips to hold back a scream. Pain pushed away my ability to think complex thoughts as I wracked my brain, trying in vain to come up with some sort of answer. Red, yellow, blue, or black . . . What did they have in common? If I could only think.
I gripped onto the tree, using it to pull myself up. While leaning against the Tree of Life, I reached for the black flower. My back screamed at the movement, and I clenched my jaw as ragged whimpers fought to escape. I pinched the stem, but it held tight to the branch.
With a release of pressure, the stem snapped off, and I stared at the flower as it wavered in my vision. What type of creature would I turn into if I got this riddle wrong?
I raised the flower up and plucked one petal off with my teeth. It tasted a little like licorice on my tongue. The petal dissolved into liquid, and after hesitating one moment, I swallowed.
Warm, soothing relief instantaneously trickled from my shoulder, radiating out through my chest and down into my legs. It felt like relaxing into a warm bath. A prickling sensation sent gooseflesh up my arms, and I examined my skin, seeing no c
uts whatsoever.
“How did you know to pick that flower?” A man with a low, melodic voice asked from behind me. “How could you possibly know the riddle of the Tree of Life and the answer to it?”
Gasping, I spun on my heel as my hand flew to the knife at my belt. A vampire stood on the path, only five feet from me.
“Don’t come any closer,” I whispered as I pulled the blade. During the battle in Portland, I had forgotten that I was armed, but I remembered now. It was a five-inch dagger, only effective if I got close enough to slice his throat.
Maybe.
So far, it had only been used for cutting mold off old food stores.
The vampire smiled, showing his long, sharp canines. His teeth looked far deadlier than my puny dagger. He wore his flaxen hair braided back to one side. He was probably seven feet tall and easily twice my width. He had sharp, chiseled features and a pointed jawline and nose. He wore a plain shirt and jeans along with steel-toed boots, likely he was the landscaper of the beautiful garden I just dragged my body through. Regardless of who he was, he was just standing here, watching me steal something that was probably priceless.
“I’ve never understood the riddle of the Tree of Life,” he said as he strolled down the garden path. “Did someone tell you the answer?”
“No one told me. I just guessed.” My legs shook under me, and my vision swam with the overload of adrenaline pumping through my veins, but I managed to keep my breathing even. Shrugging my newly healed shoulders, I tucked the flower into my back pants pocket and stepped to the side, hoping to block the sight of Griff lying dead in the bushes behind me. “I promise you that this flower will go to a good cause. Please, let me go.”
He didn’t move, and an unbidden tear splashed onto my cheek, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Time was slipping past. Griff lay only feet from me, but he might as well be on the other side of the world for how easily I could reach him.
“They didn’t deserve to die.” I raised my knife. “I have this one chance.”
“It baffles me that even with your fragile mortality, humans get confused every time one of you dies.” He stepped closer again, so close that I could smell his sweet and metallic aroma. His hand reached out toward my blade but came short of touching it. “Tell me how you picked the right flower, and maybe I’ll let you live.”
“I . . .” I took a steadying breath, “I picked it because three of the flowers are primary colors, red for blood, yellow for the spark of life, and blue for water—I couldn’t pick one out of the three, they’re all the essential ingredients to life. But, when you add the three primary colors together in equal parts, they make black. So, that’s why I picked the black.”
“That’s so simple. I wonder if it’s right.” He laughed through the words and shook his head. The vampire took a step forward, so my knife touched the soft material of his shirt. The move probably did what it was intended to do, show what a puny excuse for a weapon I was threatening this behemoth of a man with. Knowing the futility, I dropped my arm and weapon back to my side. I looked up into his face as he peered down, and an extreme and almost overpowering urge to run came over me. The urge was absurd, of course, I would never abandon Griff, and this vampire would catch me in two strides. Yet, the urge was there, whispering through my body: run.
The vampire cocked his head to examine me. “Where did you come from?”
I tilted up my chin and attempted to straighten my shoulders, hoping to look a little more like a threat and less like dinner. “Portland.”
“The fallen city.” His tawny brows shot up. “That must make you one of the courtesan traitors.”
I looked like a bedraggled half-dead soldier. I had no idea how he guessed, but I wasn’t confirming anything. Perhaps he could smell it in my blood. I didn’t have the powers of a blood mage, but I had the blood of one. There were blood mages who never entered training as blood courtesans, but not many would choose backbreaking factory work or farming and poverty over the riches and splendor of court. The only price we had to pay for it was sex and blood, and, arguably, a piece of our souls.
I gestured between us with my knife. “Please. I don’t have time for this.”
“You stole from my garden, so your life belongs to me now. I can kill you, keep you, or let you go.” He lifted a brow. “Meaning, you do have time for this. Please, sheath that knife before you hurt yourself.”
That instinct rose in my mind again, the one that led me to say what people wanted to hear, and I followed it. “All right, vampire, you clearly want to talk.” I sheathed my blade. “How many answers do you want from me to let me go?”
“Five,” he said, without even seeming to think about it. “But you better be honest—I have a distinct feeling that doesn’t come naturally to you. If I suspect you’re lying, I’ll kill you where you stand.”
I nodded and swallowed hard. “I can be honest. I was a courtesan.”
The vampire hummed and leaned so close that a couple strands of his long blond hair caressed my cheek. “And what do you want to be, courtesan or consort?”
“Queen,” I said, even though I might as well have said that I wanted to be a god.
“Such treasonous ambitions.” Reaching forward, he tucked a piece of my knotted black hair behind my ear and chuckled when I recoiled. “Then again, you betrayed the royals you served, your lovers, didn’t you?”
My gaze fixed on the sharp edge of his right fang. “Not directly. I planned the coup to be almost entirely bloodless, but the consort disagreed with my methods. She and the other courtesans intentionally deceived me, but, after a few months, I started helping the rebellion again.”
“For my fourth question: what is your name? I want the name that the people closest to you call you by, first name and mage family.”
A physical pain sliced through my chest at his words, and tears again ran down my face. All of the people I loved were dead. He was keeping me from saving them. “Kori—short for Koribella. My mage family is . . . Ignis.”
His gaze lit up with sudden interest. “Ignis. One of the fire blood mages. Interesting. Prove it.” He nodded to my wrist. “Your power is not bound.”
“I’m latent. But I have a royal seal of approval. My blood has been confirmed many times over.” I zipped down my fly before sliding my pants over my hip to show my Ignis mark. Quickly, I pulled up my fly. “Does that count as your fifth question?”
“I have all the answers I need for now.” The vampire stepped closer, still grinning with his canines fully exposed. “You should never steal from a vampire king, Kori, unless you know the price that you’ll have to pay for it.”
CHAPTER NINE
KORI
A cold dread spread through my chest. Part of me was very certain that I was looking at my death right in the eyes, and death had razor-sharp canines. There was a hunger in this vampire’s gaze that terrified me to my core.
He shook his head slowly. “The petals come at a price, a price for each petal used. Do you want to know what that price is?”
I swallowed, took a steadying breath, and then shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
His eyes widened and lips parted. “How can it possibly not matter?”
“If you tell me the price—I might hesitate.” My breath caught. “I might think twice and lose precious seconds. It’s better that I don’t know.”
“If you say so, Kori.” The wicked grin he gave me sent a pulse of terror into my heart. “But, if you use any more of those petals, you’ll have to pay the price for each, whether you know what it is or not. Hurry home. Then, return here as soon as you’re done, and we will talk about the debt you owe for the magic you stole.”
I would never voluntarily return here. I spun and rushed away from the vampire king—not trusting that he was truly letting me go. Dirt rained down as I skidded to a halt beside my fallen friend. I crouched down, rushing to pull out another petal when I glanced back over my shoulder and found the garden empty. My hands shook
as I fished into my back pocket and felt around until I touched the soft fibers of a petal. I hesitated only a moment before pinching open Griff’s wide jaw and dropping the petal past his sharp, animal teeth.
Nothing happened. The rocks and pressure of me landing on him had crushed his body. He was too dead. I crouched there over the animal mage who was in all ways, but blood, my father, and I contemplated dragging him and abandoning his body in the garden. I didn’t have time to see to his remains or carry him home. Truly, I didn’t have time to stay crouched over him and wait. Yet, I couldn’t make myself leave him like this.
Then, his body began to writhe like hundreds of snakes were under his pelt. Fur retreated, leaving smooth skin. His smashed frame gathered and reformed. Griff’s large eyes snapped open, and his unfocused gaze darted about the long, wooden hallway. He mumbled a stream of what I was pretty sure was mostly curse words, probably aimed at my foolishness, but I couldn’t care.
“Kori, what have you done?” Griff reached up, and his thick fingers encircled my wrist. He didn’t grip me painfully, but he held me firmly. “What did you do to me?”
“I’m sorry… I couldn’t let you die.”
“No. You didn’t save me, Kori. I was dead. I was gone. You pulled me back.”
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head and stumbled to my feet, though he still held my arm. “And I have to leave you here. I need to save Brendan, Genevieve, and Timmy—”
“They are dead. You need to understand the difference. You’re not saving them from dying. They are already dead, Kori,” Griff growled as he climbed to his feet. Scraps of bloody material hung from his massive frame, but, like me, his skin was smooth. “The vampires have taken the dome. You can’t go back.”
I stepped away. “I need to go back.”
“What you’re doing is wrong, Kori. It’s the worst kind of magic. It can only lead to the darkest of evils.” He reached for me. “And there’s no point. If you go, you’ll die.”
Ruin: A Reverse Harem Dark Fantasy Vampire Romance (Fire & Blood Book 1) Page 6
