Bloodcraft

by Amalie Howard

  Christian’s knees buckled and he sank into the chair. “Le Sang Noir,” he whispered. It was the only explanation for his recent and accelerated changes. No ordinary two hundred-year-old vampire could survive without feeding for three weeks, and yet he had. And he’d been able to hold himself back far longer with Victoria the last time they’d been together.

  Somehow, Le Sang Noir had awakened something within him, far earlier than Enhard had ever expected, and now, he was changing, altering, becoming. He recognized the unfamiliar feeling burgeoning in his stomach as mind-numbing, heart-stopping fear.

  With a harsh inhale, Christian rose and folded the letter back into its envelope. He walked to the receptionist, who eyed him with barely veiled interest.

  “Where is Lord Argyle’s office?”

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace. David has left for the day,” she responded, blushing prettily. The invitation in her eyes was unmistakable. Christian ignored it.

  “Where did he go?” His voice was stricter than he’d intended and her smile faltered.

  “He didn’t say, Your Grace.”

  A flurry of activity in the lobby near the elevators drew his attention. Several of the Council members had congregated there, and as he focused his attention in their direction, the words he overheard rooted him to the spot.

  “… four more murders.”

  EIGHT

  Beneath the Surface

  “Focus, Tori. You’re not paying attention!” Pan admonished. “We’ve been working on this shield spell for hours.”

  “I’m sorry,” Victoria said with a guilty flush. “It’s just that I haven’t spoken to Christian in days and I can’t help feeling that something is wrong.”

  “Ah, yes, the boyfriend,” Pan said in an overly dramatic tone. “And when am I going to meet this elusive creature who has captured my magnificent Tori’s heart?” he said. “I’m starting to think he’s your imaginary boyfriend.”

  “He may well be, for all I’ve heard from him lately,” she muttered, wiping the sweat from her brow. At Pan’s grin, she shook her head and sighed. “He travels for work and I rarely get to see him,” she explained, fearing that Pan would see right through her lies. There was no way she could confide in him—or any student at Belles Fontaines—that Christian was a vampire. He wouldn’t understand. No witch would.

  She’d gotten around the security issue by moving in temporarily with Aliya in Saint Cloud, but being away from Christian was starting to affect her more than she cared to admit. It was making her edgy, and she couldn’t focus when she was worried about the slew of murders, and whether he’d be targeted next. She couldn’t prove who was attacking the vampires, but she guessed that the Council was growing more convinced that the Witch Clans were behind it.

  What made it doubly worse was that the Clans were also being targeted. Three more witches had been found dead, their bodies drained in the same way as the others. That put the total death toll at twelve, eight vampires and four witches. Tensions were high and only getting higher as suspicions escalated to new heights. They were days away from declaring an all out war.

  The first witch, who had been rendered unconscious, had died soon afterwards, and Aliya had been unable to get any information that could help identify the killer. What the seers had divined had been inconclusive—spotty images of a single assassin who moved incredibly fast and was very powerful. Naturally, the conclusions of the High Priestess Circle went in much the same direction as those of the Vampire Council. They suspected the vampires of masterminding the attacks.

  In passing conversation, Aliya had mentioned to Victoria that they’d invited peace talks with Council representatives and were awaiting their response. Their intent was to prevent all out war, but things were slowly spiraling out of control as the body count rocketed. Everywhere Victoria went, people were discussing the murders and laying blame on each other’s doorsteps. It was turning into a circus.

  Already, the school had had to intervene when a teenage witch retaliated against a vampire in the seventeenth arrondissement. It had taken officials on both sides to stop the incident from garnering unwanted human media attention, but they’d been successful. Since then, unofficial vampire and witch patrols were put in place to prevent volatile situations from erupting, and a curfew had been ordered for any underage witch or vampire.

  “Tori!” Pan chastised in exasperation. “Where are you? You’re in the clouds.”

  “Sorry, I have a lot on my mind,” she said, frowning. “Doesn’t it worry you about these murders and the fact that we’re about to jump into an all out war with the vampires?”

  “I’m pretty sure there won’t be a war without some pretty heavy negotiation up front. Plus, we don’t even know if it’s really the vampires murdering us. It could be anyone. Could be the warlocks. I have a distant cousin who is really, really evil. Like he tried seven times to murder me in my sleep evil.”

  “But the vampires also think we are killing them,” Victoria said, and Pan’s eyes narrowed in sudden awareness.

  “Where did you hear that the vampires think that?” he shot back.

  Victoria stifled a guilty flush. “It was something that Aliya said,” she said.

  Pan grabbed a hold of her shoulders, and she pulled away. “What are you hiding? I can see it all over your face.”

  “Look, can we drop it? Let’s just work on the spell, okay?”

  “We’ve tried the spell to death and you can’t block me. I get through every single time. This is way more interesting, I think,” he teased. Victoria wanted to smack the smirk off his face.

  “More interesting,” she said softly, warningly. But Pan didn’t notice or he was too busy strategizing on how he could find out what she was hiding. She smiled. “Come and get it then.”

  His eyes widened and a grin split his face at her arrogantly issued challenge. “You do realize what you’re asking, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “To be clear, you want me to attack you.”

  “Just get on with it, hero,” she said. Pan’s blue eyes flashed in challenge. He threw an energy blast so fast that she barely had time to repel it.

  “Reditio!” she shouted, watching the ball of energy flip on itself and fly back towards Pan. He dodged it easily.

  “Is that all you got, transfer?” he said as he teleported to stand directly behind her. Victoria felt the shift in the air and teleported herself just as a pillar of fire scorched the ground where she’d been standing.

  “Try again! Why don’t you bring it instead of talking such a big game?” she cried breathlessly.

  Pan hissed, smirking at her challenge. Suddenly, he became invisible and struck out, landing her flat onto her back. The wind whooshed out of her. Victoria tried to get her bearings, righting herself, but all she could see was a blur as he spun around her in a blinding circle. His speed generated a cool wind that buffeted her on all sides. Victoria started to move and realized that Pan’s spin was part of some clever holding spell. Her body felt sluggish as if she were suspended in invisible quicksand.

  “What is this?” she asked. Even her voice sounded tedious and drawn out. The air felt thin, making her gasp for breath.

  “An air retention spell. One of my own making. Like it?” He laughed aloud as she struggled against the powerful bonds. She couldn’t deny that it was a daunting spell, trying everything in her power to escape it. He was inventive, she’d give him that.

  “Resolvo,” she cried, trying to break up the root bindings of the spell. It didn’t work.

  Pan laughed, enjoying her predicament. His laughter was tinged with a madness that made a tendril of fear curl around her—he was enjoying this too much for her liking. “Now if I were truly an evil witch, you would be dead meat right about now,” he crowed.

  Victoria pushed against the magical restraints and her fingers barely moved. She could feel the blood rushing beneath her skin, begging to be set free. The blood magic wou
ld destroy the spell with no holds barred, but she’d promised Aliya that she wouldn’t engage it. And true to her word, she hadn’t.

  But lately the problem had become separating the blood magic from her own magic—it felt more and more like they were becoming one and the same, and it terrified her. She intuitively understood that it was a natural progression. The more she used her magic, the more in tune she’d become with it—all parts of it. The blood was hers, after all, and eventually when she grew strong enough, its magic would become an innate part of her, too. But for now, it was too raw, too unpredictable … too untrustworthy.

  A jeering voice interrupted her thoughts. “Still think I’m talking too much?” Pan said, his tone growing deeper and rougher as if the lack of oxygen was making her dizzy. Even his features seemed to shift—his cheekbones elongating and his eyes bulging. She was going to pass out if she didn’t do something. She blinked as Pan leered at her. “Try to block this! Amnis cinctum!” he cried. A rushing wall of water rose out of nowhere like a spinning cyclone, drawing closer and closer toward her as if it were a noose. She struggled harder, willing her body to move.

  “Resolvo!” she shouted, more forcefully this time. The spell thinned, but not nearly enough to release her. Victoria felt the blood surge within her as the magical mountain of water cinched tighter. She could hear the rushing in her ears, and as she looked at Pan’s unfamiliar expression, she felt the bloodlust fill her eyes.

  “Exscindo,” she shouted.

  Like the pop of a light bulb, the wind around them winked out of existence as energy coalesced into her center. Victoria felt it building, and the second before she released it, she whispered “protectum” in Pan’s direction. The silence was deafening in the seconds before the counter spell exploded outward, completely obliterating the two attack spells and taking Pan with it. His body rolled in midair and crashed into a nearby tree.

  Released from her bonds, she raced breathless to Pan’s side where he lay dazed but unhurt. The smell of sulfur hung thick in the air from the charged energy particles that had annihilated the wall of water.

  “Are you okay?”

  “What did you do?” he said, gasping, his face back to normal. “And why am I not completely pulverized? You should hear what the trees are saying now.” Victoria glanced at the trees in the immediate vicinity and noticed that their leaves were browned and wilted. She winced.

  “Curo salus,” she said, waving her hand. I’m sorry, she added under her breath. Pan’s eyes widened as he heard her voice the spell and listened to silent voices in his head. The leaves of the trees returned to their lustrous vibrant green as if they hadn’t been scorched in the first place. Pan’s eyes widened until they were huge blue orbs.

  “Seriously, who are you?” he whispered. Victoria was saved from having to answer as Monsieur George, the Defensive Magic teacher, teleported into the glen.

  “Everyone okay? We felt a very powerful shift in energy.” He glanced at Victoria, and she flushed in delayed guilt. Pan’s eyes narrowed as he noted the silent exchange and cleared his throat, rising on unsteady legs.

  “Actually, Monsiuer George, it was my fault. I attacked her with a tricky combination of spells and her shield charm caused them to rebound. No one was hurt.” The teacher stared hard at Pan and then looked at Victoria, who returned his stare evenly.

  “Fine,” he said with one last searching look at Victoria and vanished as suddenly as he had arrived.

  “Thanks, Pan,” Victoria said.

  An irrepressible smile lit up his face. “It’s the least I could do for that protection charm you put on me at the last minute. That was quick thinking. The trees told me,” he said.

  “What else did they tell you?” she asked in a small voice.

  “That you’re one badass witch and I should rethink teasing you going forward.”

  Victoria bit her lip. She knew he was joking, but a small part of her had known exactly what her counter spell would have done to Pan and it’d been easy to protect him. Perhaps her magic was coming together, after all.

  He walked beside her and poked at a speck above her lip. “You’re bleeding,” he noted. “Did you hit your nose or something?”

  Victoria wiped the tiny smear away quickly. “Must have,” she said.

  “So, Super Witch, I think we should call it a day.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Victoria said with a frown. “I think that’s a good idea. Any chance you can give me a ride to Aliya’s? I think she already left.”

  Pan nodded, and as they walked towards the parking lot, Victoria could feel his preoccupied gaze on her. She knew he wouldn’t just let it go, but she was hoping that he would. No such luck. The minute they got on the road away from the school and prying ears and eyes, his glances became more searching.

  “So what really happened back there?” he asked eventually.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Tori, you know what I mean. We’re not near the school so you can be honest with me. What was up with that bit of really advanced magic? You know, a spell that counter-attacks offensive spells and simultaneously destroys everything in its path? I’ve never seen—or felt—anything like it.” Victoria was silent. Pan continued speaking, unable to stop himself. “On top of that, I felt the power surge right before you cast it and there’s no way you should be standing after a spell that intense. You should be unconscious. Not unless you were a high priestess … by the Goddess, that’s it, isn’t it? You’re some kind of high priestess prodigy!” He looked so pleased with his own conclusions that Victoria remained silent, grateful for the reprieve. Pan stared at her. “So are you?”

  “Something like that,” she evaded.

  Satisfied with his own deductions, Pan didn’t push the matter as they drove the rest of the way to Aliya’s house, each preoccupied with their own thoughts. Slowing at the top of Aliya’s driveway, Pan whistled, breaking the silence and looking in his rear view mirror.

  “Whose car is that?” he said.

  Victoria spun around and noticed the sleek, black Lamborghini that was pulling in behind them. On cue, she felt the familiar brush on her senses. It had been far too long. She melted into it.

  I missed you. Her heart skipped a beat and she couldn’t stop the warm blush that colored her cheeks. I thought we could go to dinner. I already spoke with Aliya.

  “Now what’s the matter with you?” Pan said as he parked in front of the garage. Trust Pan’s attention to detail not to miss a thing. “You’ve gone all blotchy.”

  “Nothing,” she said, smoothing her hair and trying to sneak a glance in the mirror before getting out.

  Pan arched an eyebrow. “Why are you preening? Do you know whoever owns that sex machine?”

  “Sex what?” Victoria sputtered, but Pan had already stepped out of the car. She opened her passenger door and got out.

  “Oh. My. Goddess,” Pan’s stage whisper was loud in the silence. “Who is that?”

  Victoria turned in slow motion and braced herself. She hadn’t seen Christian in three weeks, even though they’d spoken often. With her daily training and his evening hours with the Council, it’d been impossible to get together. All the bones deserted her body in the second that their eyes connected, and her breath disappeared altogether as he pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. She grasped his arm for support, the touch of his body making her fingers tingle and burn.

  Conscious of Pan, Victoria found her voice. “Pan, this is Christian, my … ah … boyfriend. Christian, this is Pan, my mentor at Belles Fontaines.”

  “Very nice to meet you.” Christian’s cultured baritone was warm and courteous. “Tori has told me a lot about you.”

  “And me, you … um … she’s told me a lot about you, too.” Pan’s voice was breathy. Victoria had never seen him act so oddly, like a lovesick puppy, and suddenly she had a delayed epiphany—Pan liked boys, and, well, Christian was … Christian. She glanced at Pan with a smirk.
She wondered whether he’d guessed that Christian was a vampire and whether his opinion would change then.

  “You can come inside if you’re finished gawking, Pan,” she said under her breath in his direction. He could only open and close his mouth and Victoria had to laugh. In Christian’s presence, she felt exactly the same way.

  Christian, for his part, didn’t seem affected by Pan’s look of adulation, and watched as they walked into the foyer. He did not follow them and waited outside. Victoria glanced at him inquiringly. His answering look was meaningful and she immediately understood.

  I thought that was a myth. About being invited, I mean, she said mentally.

  It is. This is just common courtesy.

  She rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue at him. No need to be snarky about it. I’ll get Aliya.

  Aliya came to the door, a curious smile on her face. “Your Grace, what an unexpected pleasure.”

  “May I come in?” he asked politely. She looked taken aback, but smiled at his consideration and nodded for him to do so. Aliya would of course know that vampires didn’t need permission to enter someone’s home. Christian was being polite and making a point at the same time that he was aware they considered him an enemy.

  “Can I get you some refreshment?” she asked. “Cognac, if I recall?”

  Christian nodded his thanks. Victoria trailed behind them, heading to where Pan was waiting in the living room. He wore the same beatific expression on his face and she nearly laughed out loud.

  Sorry about Pan, she said.

  He is harmless.

  “So … cool car,” Pan said, interrupting their silent conversation.

  “Thank you,” Christian said, taking a seat opposite them. “How is the training going?” Pan leapt at the chance to enter into conversation with him just so he could stare at Christian openly instead of hiding his furtive glances.