Her eyes narrowed as they shifted from the Reii to the ranks behind the warlocks and settled on Angie, who stood next to Lena. The vampire’s face was impassive, but oddly, Victoria didn’t feel any of her usual animosity toward her. Perhaps it was because of Lucian, or perhaps it was because of the way she stood next to Angie, almost like she was protecting her.
Angie made her way forward, and Victoria frowned. She would prefer that Angie be out of harm’s way, but she knew that Angie was going to do what Angie wanted to do. They’d always joked that her superpower was pigheadedness.
“Are you okay?” Victoria asked her.
“Yeah,” Angie said, hefting her crossbow. “Although I have to say that your dad has some serious issues.”
Victoria rolled her eyes at her friend’s dry humor. “Making new friends?” she tossed back as Lena edged toward them.
“She’s okay.” The quiet way Angie answered made Victoria quirk an eyebrow, but she didn’t push the matter. She had more crucial things to worry about, like a very pissed-off demon, as Angie had noted, standing not a stone’s throw from them.
The witches’ enduring immobility spell held him fast, but Victoria could sense their control waning. They were tethered and she, too, was bound by their magic, but it was weakening. She could feel it. Leto had gorged himself on the lives she’d taken and she could feel the power emanating from his form. She frowned. He wasn’t even trying to fight—he just stood there watching her with a heavy malevolent stare.
What was he doing? The answer to her question came in the next breath. He was waiting for the portal, she realized. It was his out. But Victoria knew that he wouldn’t leave without taking as many souls with him as he could. A desire for vengeance shone in those chartreuse eyes. It curled along the link between them, making her blood boil with anticipation.
No. She steeled herself against her blood’s willful influence. I am your master and you will yield.
Momentarily thwarted, the blood magic simmered beneath her veins. She felt its resistance keenly and now, without the power of the amulet, she was on her own. But Victoria knew that she was its ruler. She was the alpha. Not Leto and certainly not the blood itself. It was a matter of dominance and she had to assert her will or become the one subdued.
Her eyes slid to the shimmering sphere that was nearly fully formed. She had minutes before they were both pulled through it, which meant that Leto would be free and she would be trapped for an eternity.
Use my strength, Christian told her as if sensing her agitation.
Her fingers brushed against his and she shot a sidelong glance at Leto. Thanks, but I think I’ll take his. I’ve earned it. Christian frowned at her and then his eyes widened as he took her meaning.
Victoria released him and focused her magic on the bond that stretched between her and Leto. “devoro,” she whispered. She sensed Leto freeze as the spell whispered along the space spanning between them. Her blood trilled in her veins. She latched on and extracted the power that they had both stolen, and with each passing second, she grew stronger and stronger. He would fight her, she knew, once he felt the drain.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before his eyes snapped to hers. With a snarl, his lips drew away from his teeth, his will pitting itself against hers and slamming into her with such force that it made her dizzy. Her fingers shook and she felt the warm slide of Christian’s grip. She didn’t take his strength, but she took comfort from his touch. He believed in her. He always had.
With an inhuman grunt, Leto tore free of his magical restraints and howled. The sound was full of wrath and power. With the exception of a few, nearly every single creature within the immediate vicinity—witch, warlock, and vampire—dropped to their knees and clapped their hands to their ears. Victoria felt something pop in her eardrums as she, too, was released from the witches’ broken spell.
Christian’s grip yanked on hers as his legs buckled. Her gaze fell to the vampire at her side, and with horror, she saw a thick trickle of blood seeping from his ears. Only the Reii remained erect, although they seemed visibly disoriented by Leto’s battle scream.
“Are you okay?” she asked Christian.
He nodded and swiped at the blood, shaking his head to settle himself. “Already healed.” His eyes narrowed, alarm brewing in them. “What is he doing?”
Victoria followed Christian’s gaze, watching as midnight blue energy dribbled from the open portal toward Leto. The demon manipulated it into a sphere around his hands, a globe that was growing bigger and bigger.
“That’s dark energy,” Victoria whispered. “I can feel it.”
“From the demon dimension?”
She nodded. “It’s not from here.”
Christian glanced over his shoulder. Scrambling to her feet, Freyja looked as afraid as they did, but still the warlocks kept the portal open.
“Close it!” he shouted.
“We can’t,” she yelled back. “Something has to go through it.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Victoria stared at him. “She means that it’s a reverse summoning. It won’t close unless something is summoned back. We have to get him in there.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. He is getting stronger. Whatever power he’s drawing from that dimension is not going to be easy.”
Just as the words escaped her lips, a blast of something spread outward, and Victoria felt a writhing sensation in her stomach. All around her, vampires and witches dropped like flies, clutching themselves.
“Oh my god,” Angie whispered, her eyes flying wide. She seemed unaffected, but perhaps it was because she was the only human there. Her eyes were unfocused as she used her second sight to see something that only she could. Victoria linked her mind to her friend’s and sucked in a sharp breath. Tentacles of dark energy reached outward from Leto’s body to encircle those closest to him. He wasn’t killing them. No, he was doing something else … something far worse via his dimension’s energy.
One by one, those who had fallen stood. But they weren’t the same. They were possessed by whatever dark matter Leto had summoned via the portal and were now his first line of defense. He controlled them like puppets. Spells flew toward her head and she ducked, taking Angie with her.
“Stay down.”
“But I can help,” she insisted.
“I don’t want you getting hurt or anywhere near that portal.” Victoria’s eyes slid to Lena and they exchanged a look.
“I’m right here,” Angie said with an eye roll, “and I don’t need a babysitter.”
But Victoria was already gone. She chanted under her breath, forcing her rogue magic into submission and spread a protection spell wide to the fighting few that remained uncontrolled by Leto’s darkness, including Angie, Lena by default, Christian, the Reii, Aliya, and Freyja. “Protectum!”
His army surrounded him like a sphere as vampire attacked vampire and witch attacked witch. He was using their own powers against them. Leto had blocked her, too, and cut off the lifeline of power between them.
Suddenly, across the field Aliya screamed as four witches swarmed her. Victoria recognized two of them from the temple earlier.
“Aliya!” Their eyes met over the distance and Aliya smiled, sorrow and acceptance written all over her face—as if she knew she was going to die. “No,” Victoria shouted, shaking her head in denial. But it was too late.
She blinked in shock as members of her own coven tore Aliya’s body in four different directions and the scream throttled to a choked gurgle in her throat. Her limbs popped with wet sounds, and the possessed witches pounced on the severed pieces with unrestrained glee. Bile rose in Victoria’s throat and she felt the ground start to sway.
Focus, she growled to herself.
Victoria rolled her neck and set her jaw. She was part demon and the sooner she accepted that the better. Leto would kill everyone without conscience. She had to beat him at his own game.<
br />
She took several purposeful steps forward before a hand stalled her. “Tori, where are you going?”
Christian looked worried. His face and body were streaked in blood and her heart clenched before she realized the blood wasn’t his. Her eyes fell to the bodies he’d left in his wake. She sensed his misery lying like a shroud upon his shoulders. Because of Leto’s possession, it was either kill or be killed. But every time they were forced to kill one of their own, another took its place. Leto was doing what demons did—taking control of malleable hosts.
“He killed Aliya.”
“But it’s you he wants,” Christian shot back.
“Then let him have me.” Victoria raised her hands and pulled herself into relentless focus. The beast had already been unleashed. It was time to become what she loathed the most.
Christian grasped her shoulders. Tension radiated along his arms—having just been in her head, he knew intimately what was at risk. “Tori—”
“I have to.” She lifted a hand to stroke his mouth with her fingers, edging over the razor sharp incisors just visible beneath his upper lip. Leaning into him, she stood on tiptoe and pressed a kiss where her thumb had traced. “If I forget to tell you later, I love you.”
There in the middle of that blood soaked common with her lips joined to the man she loved, Victoria understood her purpose. She may have been born to destroy, but she was also meant to protect. She was the daughter of a demon and a witch and her magic was hers. Her power was an extension of her, not the father of her line. Releasing Christian and striding away to the line of rogue vampires, she faced Leto.
It was time to become the demon.
She waved a hand, and the vampires and witches in her path collapsed, creating a gap. She stared him down, even as the severed tentacles sourced new hosts.
“Cruentus devoro,” she snarled, invoking the blood magic within her. The spell amplified a thousandfold. It sucked greedily and dark power coursed into her, rippling along her veins like an incoming tide.
Leto’s eyes snapped wide as he tried to stop the outward flow, but he couldn’t do that and keep control over the bodies at the end of his phantom arms. Victoria was merciless, focused only on absorbing what she could. The blood magic bucked and rolled within her, but she held it under unbending control. She would release it when the time was right.
Leto growled and bellowed. “You can stop this, daughter.” He nodded to the creatures around him. “Their lives for yours.”
“There’s only one more life to take,” she said. “And I already told you—I’m not your fucking daughter.”
She flew at him then, magic crackling from her fingertips as she barraged him with spell after spell. He dodged, shoving his minions in front of her to take the brunt of her attack. They didn’t die because the spells were not fatal. Victoria didn’t mean to wound him. She wanted to distract him.
At the last moment, she twisted and ran straight into the dark energy. She felt it sink into her, making her gasp. God, it was powerful. Leto was powerful. More than she had imagined. Victoria swallowed hard. Which meant that she was strong, too. She pushed into the remaining tentacles until the dark magic sizzled between them.
“You think to defeat me, child?” He wrenched against the connection, drawing her toward him in a burst of midnight blue light. “With my own power?”
She eyed him and held her own. “Yes.”
“You would save them over your own blood? Their souls have been corrupted and dishonored by the actions of their revered ancestor. Yet you would call them family?”
Victoria nodded, hearing an odd note in his voice. “What do you mean, them?”
“Witches.” He spat the word. “This plane must be cleansed of the taint of the Goddess. She and her descendants must be punished for what they brought upon me.”
“You stole their daughter.”
A spasm of pain rippled across his face. “Thaia came willingly.”
“You killed her.”
Something undulated between them. “She knew they were coming for the babe. She tried to defend against those the Goddess sent. They killed her, not me.”
“You lie, demon,” someone—one of Aliya’s priestesses, maybe—screamed from behind them. “She died in childbirth.”
Leto’s eyes slid to hers. “She died at the hands of your own. You were fed a concocted story. This is the truth.”
Victoria’s body trembled with the force of his pain ricocheting along the link between them. She would know if he was lying. And he wasn’t. Understanding filled her—he’d been punished for an eternity after his child had been stolen from him. No wonder he hated the witches.
“The actions of one doesn’t define an entire race, Leto,” she said. “You taught me that.”
“They must be cleansed.”
“Then I must also be cleansed, as I, too, am part witch.”
“You are part of my Thaia, not these diseased creatures,” he snarled.
Victoria drew a long breath. His bitterness and anguish consumed him and deep down she knew she would not be able to talk any reason into him. But she could not allow him to eradicate an entire species just because he was wronged by one of them a thousand years ago. Still, a part of her couldn’t give up on him.
“Let go of the past, Leto. Forgive and leave it behind. It is done and nothing can change that.”
“The past—and the pain—are all I have.”
“You have me.” She felt him waver then, but the moment was brief. He was too riddled by his own acrimony. No, Leto only wanted vengeance, and he wanted her to be his right arm. “I am sorry for what you have lost, but they do not deserve the cost of your anger. They are innocent, too.”
His gaze hardened as he released his hold on the blue-black energy. “If you are with them, then you are against me.”
“So be it,” she whispered and braced herself.
Leto whispered an ominous chant. Dark magic swirled from the portal, surrounding him and starting to take shape. Victoria felt the breath steal from her body as she realized what he was doing. He was summoning demons.
“Close the portal, damn it,” she heard someone shout dully. But she knew that the portal would only close if something—or someone—went through it. She took a deep breath. She was the closest. It would mean leaving the rest of them here to face Leto, but at least he would be alone. They would have a fighting chance. She did not know what lay on the other side of that glowing sphere, but she would survive. Her demon blood would protect her, she hoped. She moved toward it.
“Tori, no!” The scream was feminine. She heard the thud of darts as they sank into Leto’s corporeal body. They wouldn’t hurt him. Unlike vampires or witches, demons weren’t susceptible to silver or poison. But Angie wouldn’t know that.
“Angie, stay back.”
But it was too late. A tendril of darkness snaked toward Angie, quick as a striking cobra, and gathered her close. Victoria halted in her tracks. Leto’s eyes glittered in triumph. “You care about this one. I will spare her if you give me your loyalty.”
“Leto,” she began. “Release her.”
“Your bond.”
“Don’t do it, Tori,” Angie shouted. “I’m nobody.”
“You have ten seconds to decide.” Leto held her body aloft. Angie, for her part, didn’t give one inch. She struggled against his magical hold even as more demons materialized around them.
Victoria glanced over her shoulder. There were only a handful of them left, and if he continued at this pace, they would be outnumbered ten to one in a matter of minutes. She had no choice.
“Tori, no.”
She met Christian’s eyes and then each of the others in turn. Her silent message was clear. Seal the portal at any cost. She would do what her ancestor Brigid did before allowing Leto to have any control over her or the blood magic.
“Fine, you have my bond,” she said, walking forward. “Release the girl.”<
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She waited until she was within inches of them before her right hand balled into a fist at her side—the signal to bring down the portal. Movement filled her vision as bodies rushed the gateway. Leto snarled in rage, his attention drawn to protecting his means of escape. He did not release Angie as Victoria had hoped he would. So she threw herself between them, severing the demonic tether. Angie fell in a heap to the grass and rolled to a stop directly in front one of the spectral shapes.
Leto growled, unleashing the demon wraith toward Angie. This would not be like the dark energy he had cast forward before. The wraith would consume her soul and take over her body. Angie scrambled to her feet, her face contorted. There was no way she could get away and no way for Victoria to reach her before the wraith did.
Impotent rage flowered like an explosion in her chest. “Angie!”
A blur streaked in front of the wraith, catching it squarely head-on an instant before it connected with Angie’s body. Lena twisted and convulsed as the specter shuddered through her. She was immortal, but the pain would be agonizing. It wouldn’t consume what was left of her soul. Instead, the possession would incinerate them both. Within seconds, a hot red glow spread like a stain over her alabaster skin and she fell to the ground, writhing as her vampire nature fought the demon writhing inside.
Victoria reached her contorting body at the same time that Christian did. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Freyja fall to her knees at Angie’s side, her face wracked with concern. She tried to draw her away, but Angie shook her head as she crawled to Lena’s side.
“Lena.”
But Lena’s unseeing ice blue eyes shone with pain. They turned to Christian. Blood flecked her lips. “You were right about them. The humans.” Each word was a gasp of agony, but she had more to say. Her gaze slipped to Angie. “Out of all my years as a vampire, I never wanted progeny. No human was worthy.” Her smile was pained. “Never, until now.”
Bloodcraft Page 30
