High Stakes (Codex Blair Book 6)

by Izzy Shows

  He’d told me to look as threatening as possible, and I liked to think I cut a particularly scary picture standing behind the throne and scowling. I was wearing my black tank top and ripped jeans. I’d chosen to discard my jackets because it was comfortably warm in the mansion, and also because the tank top showed off my muscles in way I thought made me look more threatening than the jackets did. I was gripping the staff in one hand, and with the other I was idly playing with fire, making it dance from finger to finger, as if it was no big deal. As if it wasn’t costing me energy to keep up the pretence. But Dudley had said that I shouldn’t need to be involved in a fight. I just needed to look threatening for now. And that was what I was trying to do.

  Judging by the way the ones who had scowled at me now looked fairly afraid, I counted it as a win. How else was I supposed to judge my success rate?

  And yet, it made me feel a little sick. This wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I was supposed to be patrolling the streets, cleaning them up to make sure they were safe for the innocent citizens of London. I was supposed to be the vigilante on the street who took care of shite. But here I was, watching vampires and trying to scare them. I was a bully at this point. That was the only way to look at it.

  I didn’t want to be a bully.

  I’d already witnessed several hearings. Vampires stepped out of the crowd to walk in front of Dudley, who was seated on his throne, and brought grievances before him. Some of them were small and petty; others were more serious.

  Most of them had something to do with another vampire cavorting with one of their humans. Apparently, that was a Big Problem, and had to be dealt with carefully. The humans were called forward to give testimony, but could they really be trusted to tell the truth? They had their master vampire to be afraid of, and the vampire who had fucked with them might well retaliate. I felt a lot of pity for them, but there wasn’t anything I could do. These were the normal complaints in the vampire world. They weren’t the ones I’d been called to deal with.

  I was going to check with Dudley later and make sure that the humans had come here willingly. They’d better not be like the thralls I’d seen in the vampire house a while back, who had been taken off the street and forced into service. If that was the case here, I’d have to get involved. I couldn’t stand by and allow that to happen.

  Fuck the alliance. I wasn’t going to allow my people to be enslaved. And even if they weren’t Londoners, they still had to be protected.

  I let out a slow breath, trying not to show how bored I was. All of this was fascinating on some level, but it got a little tiresome to stand there and watch it happen. I wanted to do something, move around, just bloody remind myself that I existed on some other level.

  It was then that things took a turn for the interesting.

  The two vampires who had survived from the prior night walked into the room and strode up to the throne without a glance at me. I straightened up, gripping my staff a little tighter.

  Weylyn growled.

  The vampires jerked their heads to the side to see the massive wolf standing beside me, and then their eyes turned to focus on me. I watched the almost imperceptible widening of their eyes, and a smug smile tugged at my lips.

  Oh, hell, yeah, motherfuckers. I’m here to ruin your pretty little day.

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” One of them spoke at last, his face turning absolutely red, his hands clenching into fists.

  I dropped the fire from my free hand and leaned against the throne. “Do you have a problem with me?”

  His answer was to growl. I shrugged. I wasn’t impressed with him. I’d killed his friend easily enough, so I knew I could kill him if I needed to.

  Although if a fight broke out, there was no saying whether or not the other vampires would jump in to assist him.

  “The Hunter is here by my will,” Dudley said. His voice rang out loud in the ballroom, and every vampire in the room shivered at the sound of it.

  OK, that was interesting. He hadn’t acknowledged my presence yet. I’d simply been standing there so far, the silent threat in the room to keep everyone in their place.

  “She has no place in our court,” the offending vampire hissed, his eyes locked with mine.

  “She does if I say she does. Cease.” Dudley stood, and the vampire shifted his eyes to lock with Dudley’s instead. For a moment, the testosterone in the room was unbearable as the two of them glared at each other. It was clearly a power play that was going down, and there was nothing we could do but stand by and watch it happen.

  Well...

  I flexed my fingers, murmured a word, and fire began to curl outwards from my body in little waves, setting me aglow.

  The vampires in the room stopped staring at Dudley and turned their attention to me, fear and awe in their eyes. The vampire glaring at Dudley even broke his staring contest to stare at me instead--and the look in his eyes was one of panic, even if it was just for the briefest of moments before he shuttered his emotions.

  I dropped the spell. The message had been clear enough. Fucking with Dudley was fucking with me, and I wasn’t going to have a staring contest with you to handle it. I was going to bloody set you on fire and watch as your body cooked into unrecognizable remains.

  The vampire took a step back from Dudley and bent a knee. I didn’t let out the breath of relief that I felt rise inside of me, but I wanted to. I couldn’t let anyone see that I was relieved that this had been handled without battle.

  Because that would tell them I didn’t want there to be a battle. I had to appear bloodthirsty and violent and all of these things that I didn’t really feel.

  Dudley returned to his throne.

  “Sirs Vincent and Damien, you stand accused of killing without permission in London.”

  My blood began to boil at that. They hadn’t killed anyone as far as I knew when I’d let them go, and I’d thought my message was clear enough. Kill in my town and I kill you.

  “How do you plead?”

  “Not guilty, your lordship,” Vincent said immediately.

  “And yet, we have witnesses,” Dudley said, gesturing to a vampire who stood at a door to the left of the throne. The door was opened, and two thralls stepped forward. I’d spent enough time around vampires during my last excursion and this one to know a thrall when I saw one: they had sunken eyes and pale skin, and they were a bitch to fight if you did it without magic. They were stronger than your average human.

  “Isadora,” Dudley said, gesturing for the female thrall to come closer. She obliged him, keeping her head down.

  “You said you saw these two men feeding on women outside a bar when you were doing your shopping. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. Her voice was so soft, it was almost inaudible, but I was the only person who’d have a problem with that. All the other vampires would be able to hear her without any issue at all, but I had more normal, sucky human hearing. So, I had to strain to hear her.

  “You would take the word of a thrall over one of your own?” Vincent asked, his voice laced with anger. “I can’t believe this. She could have been made to say these things by her master. You can’t trust her to give good testimony.”

  The other vampires in the hall began to murmur amongst themselves, and I knew they were questioning Dudley’s tactics. I shifted to look at Dudley, my anxiety reaching peak levels, but he didn’t appear terribly concerned by this turn of events.

  Well, what the fuck were we going to do? It was either trust the thrall or trust the vampire, and the vampire couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth about whether or not they’d killed someone. The punishment for that was death, and they had to know that.

  They’d say anything to save their skins.

  “I can prove it,” I said, stepping forward. As I walked, I lifted the staff and stamped it down against the floor. The sound of wood smacking marble pervaded the room as silence fell, all eyes shifting to meet mine. “I can prove you did it.”


  I wasn’t going to let him get away with murder. Not if I had anything to say about it. I was going to prove these fangs had killed someone.

  I just had to figure out the particulars of that before things went too much further.

  “Why would we trust you?” Vincent snarled at me, his lip curling back in disgust.

  “You don’t have to. You’re the accused. It doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what he thinks,” I said, jerking my head to indicate Dudley.

  Dudley looked at me with his eyebrows raised. “And how will you prove this?”

  I was thinking on my feet, but I had an idea. “Can you get me the body?” That was my only hope. “And some salt.” I could use the salt to draw a circle on the marble floor without permanently marking it.

  The vampires were chittering back and forth with one another in the crowd, but I paid them no mind. No doubt they were very anxious about whether or not I’d be able to prove the guilt of these vampires.

  If I could, it would mean not a single one of them would be able to get away with murder again. I liked that idea very much. I was going to do anything I could to handle this.

  A few minutes later, a vampire entered through the door near the throne, carrying a body wrapped in a sheet. He laid it on the floor in front of the steps to the throne. Another vampire came in carrying a large can of salt.

  I swallowed the nervous lump in my throat and leaned my staff against the throne, then walked down to the body.

  “Back up,” I said to Vincent and Damien. They growled at me but acquiesced. I turned to look at Dudley. “Your lordship,” I said, gritting my teeth. I hated having to call him that. “I’m going to ask that you enter the circle with me so that I can link our minds together. I’m going to perform a spell to see the last moments of this woman’s life. In order for you to pronounce these men guilty with good conscience, you’ll need to see it for yourself.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, clearly contemplating whether or not I was up to something.

  Pfft. If I was going to kill him, it wasn’t going to be in a room full of vampires who would leap at the opportunity to kill me.

  He seemed to come to that conclusion all on his own, because he pushed off the throne and walked down the steps to join me.

  I drew a circle in salt around both of us and the body, pushing my energy into it so that when the lines met, the column of energy snapped closed around us. Dudley gasped, his eyes lighting up, and he glanced around as if he could see the energy.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” I said under my breath so that only he could hear.

  He grinned at me.

  “OK, now I’m going to touch your temples, and I’m going to link the two of us,” I said, waiting a beat for him to nod before I reached out and placed a finger on each side of his forehead. “Share,” I said.

  A thrum of energy filled the air.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Indeed I can, Ms. Sheach. Spectacular work.”

  I grinned. I might not get along with Dudley more often than not, but it was still nice to have my work appreciated.

  “Now, I’m going to pull the memories of the woman. You’ll be able to see everything I see, and it’s probably not going to be pretty. And--” I stopped, a thought occurring to me. “And it’s possible it could make you hungry.”

  “Rest assured, Ms. Sheach, I am capable of controlling my hunger.”

  Good. I didn’t need a hungry vampire trapped in a circle with me. That would have gone poorly.

  I knelt in front of the woman and lifted the sheet from her face. I cradled her head in both hands as I pulled it towards me, a wave of sadness washing over me. She looked so peaceful, like she might have been sleeping, save for the twin marks on her neck.

  There was no doubt that she’d died because of a vampire attack, which meant the difficulty here was going to be proving that it had been Vincent or Damien who had attacked her. And there’d been two women, because both Damien and Vincent had killed. Which meant I had to hope they’d been killed at the same time, and that this woman had witnessed at least the beginning of the other woman’s death.

  Oh, Gods, that must have been horrible. I already didn’t want to see any of this.

  “Ostende mihi,” I said. A heaviness pulled at me, drawing me down to the woman so that my forehead touched hers. And then the world was gone.

  I was so tired. I’d just finished the graveyard shift at the restaurant, and all I wanted to do was get home. My kids were already asleep in their beds; Frank would have taken care of that hours ago. I just had to get myself home, and then I could pass out in my own bed and start all of this over again the next day.

  God, I didn’t want to go to work the next day. I was tired already, and I knew it was going to be hell. I’d picked up an extra shift, so I was going to pull a double tomorrow, but we needed the money. Things just kept getting more expensive, it seemed, and there was never enough money.

  My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten in the past eight hours. My kids ate, but I didn’t. Sometimes I thought it would have been better if I’d never had them. At least I would have had enough money to feed myself if that had been the case. But I loved my kids with all my heart, and I couldn’t wish them out of existence.

  I tried to straighten my hunched back and tugged my purse farther up my shoulder as I trudged through the streets. I just had to get to the Underground station and then I could sit down at last.

  Maybe I’d make myself a nice cup of tea before I went to bed. That would be nice.

  I heard a crashing sound in the alley to my left as I walked by, and I stopped, peering into the darkness. Probably just a cat. I started to move again, but then--

  “Help me...”

  Lord, was someone hurt down there? I fished in my purse to pull out my cell phone. I could call the cops and tell them where to look and keep going on my way, but something told me there was a person in real danger down there. What if they were bleeding out, and they needed someone to put pressure on a wound?

  I’d been a nurse once, before I was laid off and had to take any job that was available. I could help.

  I’d never been able to turn away from a person in need.

  “Help me...”

  “Did you hear that?”

  I almost jumped out of my skin when a woman spoke beside me. I hadn’t heard her approach. She’d just shown up out of nowhere.

  “I was kind of hoping I’d imagined it, but judging by the way you’ve been staring at the alley, I’m guessing it was real. We should go help, shouldn’t we?”

  The woman looked nice enough. She had pretty brown hair and eyes and tan skin. I felt a little better about going into the alley if there was someone with me.

  I nodded. “Yeah, we’d better go help.”

  I would call for the cops once I knew the person was in stable condition.

  We walked into the alley together. It was hard to see at first, but things slowly came into focus. A trash can here and there, some garbage on the ground, a fire escape on the wall. And crumpled against one of the bins was a man’s figure.

  That made me anxious. You kept hearing about women disappearing these days. Everyone was saying you shouldn’t go anywhere alone, and as long as you were with other people, there was nothing to worry about.

  And I had someone with me right now.

  But was the someone supposed to tell you not to go down the alley? Because we’d decided to go together. But surely one man couldn’t hurt two women. At most, he could grab one of us and the other could call the cops...

  I realized that I’d stopped walking. The other woman grabbed my hand and tugged me forward.

  We walked the rest of the way to the man and I knelt down in front of him.

  “Sir? Can you hear me?” I hesitated before I reached out to turn his face towards mine. His eyes were closed. I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Can you hear me, sir? Are you hurt?”

  “Should we call the police
?”

  “Now, why would you do that?” A man’s voice came from my right, behind the woman who’d come with me. I jumped to my feet and stumbled back a few steps.

  Behind the woman, who had spun around to look at this newcomer as well, was a man who towered over both of us. His face was dark and swarthy, and he had a thick growth of black hair on his head. He was dressed in a black button-down shirt and black trousers.

  I clutched my phone even tighter. “Don’t... Don’t come any closer!” I took another step back, but when I did, my back collided with another man’s body. I jerked my gaze back down to the ground and saw that the man who had been lying there was gone now.

  He was standing behind me. We were closed in.

  Oh, God, there was no hope.

  “Please,” I said, starting to cry.

  “I love it when they beg.” The man standing by the other woman spoke, and with that, he grabbed hold of her. He wrenched her head to the side and bit into her neck. I watched in horror at the sound of him drinking.

  Drinking! What was happening?

  And then there was a hand in my hair, wrenching my head to the side as well, and pain exploded in my neck. I felt my body being drained of my life-force, and I struggled at first, but I was growing weaker.

  I didn’t want to die like this.

  I had children!

  Please.

  Please, no.

  Not like this.

  The nightmarish scene drifted away so I was looking down at the woman on the floor again. I was myself, Blair Sheach. A mage training to be a Wizard. The Hunter. Protector of London.

  I wasn’t a woman being attacked by a vampire.

  Yet my cheeks were wet with her tears. At some point during the memory, I’d begun to cry. I hastily swiped at the tears, remembering where I was. I couldn’t allow the vampires to see me weak.

  They wouldn’t let me live it down--quite literally.

  A wave of exhaustion washed over me as I stood up, forcing my legs to remain steady when they tried to buckle and bring me back down to the floor.

  I turned and looked at Dudley. His expression was one of pure shock, and I wondered what he was thinking.