by Alyssa Day
Which led her back to the gun.
Oddly, however, even though night had fallen with its characteristic desert suddenness, the vampire who she’d thought had been in charge wasn’t there. Smithson had dragged her to this new location during the afternoon, after she’d barely gotten five hours of sleep. He’d forced them to eat some nasty beef jerky on the hike from the other cave and given them a little water. She’d felt a dehydration headache looming even before he’d dragged her into this new structure and forced her to use the amethyst again. The vampire wasn’t with them, though, and that made her wonder if their criminal partnership was falling apart and, if so, how she could use the knowledge to her advantage.
She put an arm around Ian and wiped her nose with the cloth he’d handed her, and then she looked at Smithson and tried to appear totally unafraid of the gun aimed at her head.
“Where’s the vampire?”
His eyes shifted a little, the classic “I’m getting ready to lie to you” indicator, and she wondered why a so-called criminal mastermind wasn’t a better liar. Especially since she’d heard he was a banker, too.
Scumbag.
“He’s no longer important. I’m in charge now. You can have five minutes, and then I want you to try again.” He waved one of his thugs over to give her another bottle of water.
She took the cap off and handed it to Ian first, who took a drink and handed it back. She drank deeply, finishing the bottle, thinking furiously all the while. If he’d killed Nicholas, the odds were against her getting out of this alive. The vampire, at least, had seemed to have a little bit of reluctance to hurt Ian.
If this worm hurt her boy, he was going to die in agony. She was making very sure to retain enough of her magic, protected and shielded from the damage the gem was doing to her, for a last-ditch escape attempt.
Not attempt. A last-ditch escape success.
“All right. Stop dawdling,” Smithson said, lowering the gun. “You don’t need to see this gun to know I’ll use it. And I won’t even use it on you, because you’re too valuable to me, at least for now.”
He smiled and glanced at Ian. “I have heard that being shot in the kneecap is very painful. Might mess up a boy’s growth forever. What do you think about that, Ms. Witch?”
A red wave of fury pulsed through her brain, and she had to bite hard on her lip to keep from speaking the words to a spell that would maim the bastard. He had too many thugs around the place, with instructions to take her out if she tried anything. She couldn’t get to them all before they could hurt Ian, and Smithson knew it.
“I think there is no place in this world or the next that you can hide if you harm my son,” she said, slowly and carefully, in order not to scream, cry, or fly into a rage that would get them both shot. “Even if you kill me, my death curse will follow you and your sons and your sons’ sons for a thousand years of torment and pain.”
Smithson paled and clenched his jaw, but then he raised the gun again, this time pointing it at Ian’s head. “Well, then. We both have the same goal, don’t we? To get this business over with quickly so you and your son can safely leave this place, and we’ll never have to see each other again.”
One of the thugs by the door rolled his eyes behind Smithson’s back and grinned at a fellow guard. His meaning was chillingly clear to Ivy. They had instructions to kill her and her son as soon as Smithson escaped. He’d probably paid them enough to make them willing to brave a witch’s wrath.
But none of them knew she was more than a witch. She was a sorceress of the black arts, and she would not die alone.
Ian hugged her, and her inner bravado blew away like a tumbleweed in a strong wind. She didn’t care about taking them with her; she just wanted to escape with her son. She’d try again.
“Tell me again,” she said wearily. “What exactly do you think we’ll find here?”
“Rubies.” Smithson’s voice was dark with greed. “Look at this painting. The chief or medicine man or whatever, bowing to the figure with the staff. Between them, on the floor, is a pile of glowing red stones. Our pet archaeologist thought it must be a cache of rubies.”
She caught the past tense. “Thought?”
He grimaced. “He was a little too concerned with preserving our heritage, blah blah whatever. He didn’t survive the interview.”
“Torture, you mean,” Ian said hotly, rising up off the ground. “You’re a monster. That vampire was a better man than you, and he sucks blood for a living!”
Ivy grabbed Ian and pulled him back, shielding him from Smithson’s gun with her body. “Ian, stop it. He didn’t mean it; he’s just a boy. Don’t hurt him.”
But Smithson was laughing. “Sucks blood for a living. That’s a good one. Look, I have no time for this and no intention of hurting you or the kid, if you just do your job. Get up off your ass and find those rubies. Then you’re done. Simple as that.”
Ivy didn’t believe a single word out of his lying mouth, but it didn’t matter. She had no choice. She hugged Ian again and whispered “stay safe” in his ear, then stood up.
“Give me back the amethyst and point me in the direction you think most likely for those rubies. I’ll make it work this time.”
Smithson nodded to one of his guards, who held the gem in a cloth-lined wooden box. The man turned a sickly greenish-white, clearly terrified of the scary witch, but he stumbled forward, holding the box as far away from himself as his arms would extend.
She couldn’t really blame him for that. The gem had enormous power and would probably fry his eyeballs in their sockets if he touched it with his bare hands. Only she could do that.
Lucky her.
She gently lifted the amethyst, and it immediately began to glow with deep purple light, warming in her hands until it felt almost malleable, and not like stone at all. She glanced at Ian again, hoping beyond hope that what she was about to do wouldn’t kill her, but knowing that she would almost certainly die at Smithson’s hand if she didn’t try it.
She closed her eyes and centered her power in her mind, carefully building it from a flicker to a flame before aiming it at the gem and trying again to combine the resonance of her magic with that of the amethyst. The gem held an old and enormously potent magic, but most of its power was far beyond her reach. This treasure-seeking ability felt like an afterthought to her; almost like a parlor trick tossed off by a master magician simply to amuse the children. She had no idea what the true extent of its power might be, but she had a feeling that even a fraction of it would be enough to burn through her, leaving behind only the smoking husk of her body and mind, if she were foolish or unlucky enough to ever try to access it.
But she didn’t need to try this all on her own. The other attempts had felt awkward, straining. This time she would pull out her not-so-secret weapon and open herself to the vortex energy in the area. Traditionalists and so-called practitioners of New Age mumbo-jumbo claimed the vortex energy was limited to Sedona itself, but she knew better. She could access the power for hundreds of miles, especially that from Bell Rock, her totem rock.
She’d just see what the massive power of Bell Rock had to say about one ostrich egg–sized gemstone and its dangers.
Calling silently to the vortex to lend her its strength, she opened her mind to the power of the amethyst, which was now pulsing in her hand like a beating violet heart.
Lend me your power one last time, please, spirit of this gemstone. My son is held hostage to a greedy man’s whims, and I offer you a mother’s love and a sorceress’s magic as consideration for this request. Help me find the rubies for this monster, before he harms my child.
An image appeared in her mind; a beautiful dark-haired woman, drawn and pale, who seemed to be staring through space, time, and magic directly at Ivy. The woman fell backward, pierced by a spear of purple light. The image disappeared when the amethyst’s magic smashed into Ivy, combining with the energy from the Bell Rock vortex, and levitated her within a column of glowing purple light
until her head gently bumped the ceiling. She looked around, and a slim beam of light flashed out from the column around her and illuminated a tiny drawing on the ceiling; a miniature of the design Smithson had pointed out to her below. She lifted a hand to touch it, and a stone panel slid aside—more magic—and a waterfall of sparkling red began to stream out of the hiding space in the ceiling. She tried to move out of the way, but the column of light held her fixed and nearly frozen directly in the path of the falling treasure.
All she could do was shield her head and face with her hands, and try not to cry out when the sharp edges of the stones struck her skin. She could hear Ian shouting something, but the magical light acted as a sound buffer and she couldn’t make out the words. She tried to smile reassuringly at him but a falling stone smashed into her cheek, cutting her skin, so she covered her face again, deciding she could reassure him after she got out of the path of the rocks.
Long minutes later, the beam of light finally released her. She fell awkwardly to the ground, which was at least two yards beneath where her feet had been hanging, suspended, in the air. She hit the ground hard and crumpled as her ankle twisted underneath her.
This time she cried out. She couldn’t help it.
Ian rushed over and helped her up so she could limp, leaning heavily on him, across the floor to sit down near the wall farthest from the enormous pile of rubies. Dozens of small cuts and scrapes from the falling gems ached and bled all over her hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and face.
“I guess whoever hid the gems wanted anybody who found them to pay for it,” Ian said bitterly. “It was like one of those Indiana Jones traps.”
“Luckily not a rolling boulder,” she said, trying to smile. Judging from Ian’s reaction, she must have looked ghastly.
“Mom, your nose is bleeding again, plus all these cuts, and your ankle—I have to get you to a doctor.”
“If only you were old enough to drive,” she murmured, suddenly dizzy and faint. If the exhaustion or the drain of her magical powers didn’t get her, the dehydration would. Either way, she would be just as dead, and her son in just as much danger.
Smithson, meanwhile, was ignoring her completely as he all but danced around the pile of rocks. His rubies, then. They must be. Ordinary rocks wouldn’t have caused this level of capering glee. She’d seen them anyway, on the way down. Uncut and rough as most of them were, the occasional deep red glow, even in the unusual purple light, had told her all she’d needed to know. There was probably millions of dollars of rubies in that pile—maybe more, she didn’t know, she was no gemologist—and surely, surely Smithson had to be happy now. His thugs were quickly gathering all the rubies into a dozen or so large duffel bags and, one by one, heading out of the cave.
The slimeball in question smiled at her, rubbing his hands together. “Now, that wasn’t all that hard, was it?”
“My mom is bleeding all over, and she hurt her ankle falling. She could have died! You promised to let us go, so do it now, already,” Ian shouted at him.
Smithson paused and pretended to look regretful, but Ivy could see the mad, gleeful joy deep in his soulless eyes. “Oh, I’m so sorry. But your mommy is just too valuable. I’m afraid I still want her, and since I need you to keep her in line, well, it looks like we’re all going to take a trip together.”
“I will kill you if you hurt my mother,” Ian said hotly. He started to say something else, but Ivy shook his arm and gave him her most grim “stop right this instant because I’m your mother and I said so” look.
He subsided, but not for long, judging by the way his lips were pressed together in his “I’m going to explode any second” expression. She’d known this boy since the moment she’d pushed him crying out into the world nearly fourteen years ago, and when her son felt there was injustice in the world, he couldn’t keep silent about it, no matter the cost. She’d always loved that about him, but right now it might get them killed.
Still, “I will kill you if you hurt my mother” would have been fantastic last words. Ian was so going to score on his next birthday. She might even buy him a car. She laughed out loud, and realized blood loss was making her loopy.
“I want to laugh, too, from the sheer joy of it,” Smithson said, flashing his hideous Hollywood-white, over-veneered teeth. “This is miraculous. I do wish Nicholas had turned me, though, before I double-crossed the nasty bastard. Think of all that lovely interest, compounding for centuries.”
Ivy blinked. “You’re unbelievable. What kind of fool betrays a master vampire?”
Then she blinked again. And yet again. The blood loss must have taken her from dizziness straight to delusion, because she could almost swear she saw a hand sticking out of Smithson’s stomach. She decided that it was really a very good time to close her eyes and lie down, before dancing pink elephants appeared, too.
That’s when Ian and Smithson both screamed.
She jerked her head up and forced her eyes to open, only to wish that she hadn’t.
It had been a hand, after all. Nicholas’s hand, which had smashed clear through Smithson’s abdomen and ripped out much of the man’s intestines on its way back out.
“Unbelievable is an apt word. There is much about this scene that I find unbelievable, Ivy Khetta of the Crescent Moon coven,” Nicholas said, standing there calmly as if he hadn’t just eviscerated a man. “Fortunately for you, I can see that you were coerced into helping this fool who thought he would betray me and get away with it.”
Ivy pulled Ian into her arms and hugged him until he stopped screaming, but his thin shoulders shook as he fought back sobs.
“I have been coerced every step of the way, and you’re just as guilty as he was,” Ivy shot back at the vampire. Pretty brave of her, she figured, considering he stood there with Smithson’s guts wrapped around his arm like bracelets. Or else really, really stupid, for the same reason.
She decided to be helpful. “His goons are carrying the rubies off in duffel bags. You can probably still catch them if you leave now.”
Unbelievable must have been the word of the day, because—unbelievably—he smiled at her. “You have quite a bit of courage, my little witch.”
“I’m glad you think so, because I plan to throw up and pass out now,” she said, as the light from the lanterns wavered in pretty, pretty patterns in front of her. She tried to hang on, for Ian’s sake, but her body and magic had been pushed far beyond the level of her endurance. She clung to Ian and fell forward instead of back, until her head rested on his shoulder. Nicholas said something, and Ian said something else, but the words blurred together in her mind and could have been spoken in Mandarin Chinese for as much as she understood them.
She couldn’t leave her son alone with the vampire. She fought so hard to maintain consciousness, she really did, but she had nothing in her reserves, nothing at all, and even when she tried to focus on what they were saying, the last thing she heard didn’t make any sense at all, because she was almost certain her son asked Nicholas to turn him into a vampire.
And she thought she heard Nicholas agree.
After that, she didn’t hear anything at all.
Chapter 20
Serai put the cap back on her water bottle and took a deep breath, trying to convince herself, yet again, that she had the strength for this quest. Her legs were as heavy as if sculpted out of marble or orichalcum by a cloddish artist, and each step was harder than the last. The intermittently missing and damaged connection to the Emperor was draining every ounce of her energy, both magical and physical, and she was terrified about what it was doing to the four maidens left in the stasis pods in Atlantis.
Delia was already gone. Helena, Merlina, Brandacea, and Guen remained. Serai’s connection to them was weak, and growing weaker every moment, so she wasn’t entirely certain that they all still lived.
She hoped they did. If their lives could be sustained by the sheer force of her will, then they did still live.
“What is it?” Daniel a
sked, soundlessly dropping down next to her after a short flight to scout their area.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever see that and not be amazed,” she said. “That you can fly. How wonderful it must be.”
“You can fly as mist, can’t you? Or is that only a warrior thing? I’ve seen Ven and the guys do it. It’s pretty spectacular.”
She tilted her head, considering. “I think I may still be able to do so. It’s simple enough, part of the magic the sea god gifts to his children. I don’t know if I could do it now, though, since I’m so tired. And the problem—” She broke off, not wanting to let him see how pathetically weak and cowardly she was about something so minor as a fear of height. Lives depended on her.
He nodded, as if he could read her mind. “The acrophobia still applies. Perhaps, also, your connection with the Emperor won’t work when you’re in mist form.”
She smiled at him, aware that he was giving her a graceful excuse. She was grateful for his kindness, but not willing to spare herself the truth. “I’ m afraid, and we both know it, but I think it won’t matter. We’re very near the Emperor now. We just need to travel a bit farther and—”
The worst pain yet slammed into her with the force of a tsunami. The witch was using the Emperor, and this time she was mixing the gem’s power with something else—natural magic from the land around them—oh, gods, it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt . . .
She clenched her jaw shut against the scream, but a horrible moaning sound escaped her throat, and Daniel caught her arm.
“Is it the gem again?”
“Yes, it’s—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. She couldn’t breathe. Her legs wouldn’t support her. The Emperor’s power drove through her, pulling at her own magic, siphoning off her strength in a flood. She could see the witch’s face, and the woman was terrified of something, or someone, but she was being forced to channel the Emperor. For an instant, Serai believed she’d made a connection with the witch, but then the power surged again, and she screamed and collapsed into Daniel’s arms.
