House of Spells: (A Paranormal Urban Fantasy) (The Vampire Project Book 3)

by Jonathan Yanez

Sloan

  Sloan raised her sword, hitting the button on the pommel that awoke the mage power. Her blade hummed with red light.

  “Easy there, warrior queen.” Kade’s familiar voice released the tension from Sloan’s shoulders. “It’s me. You know, that guy who fed you before you ran off.”

  Sloan lowered her weapon.

  “What is it that you want,” Sloan whispered. “I’m kind of busy here.”

  “I know.” Kade walked into her full view, his boots kicking up tiny clouds of dust. “I’m trying to save you from making a mistake.”

  Sloan felt her anger winning over intrigue. “I don’t need you to save me from anything. I’m a big girl.”

  “No doubt.” Kade leaned against the building opposite the one holding her friends prisoner. It looked like an old house, with flaking paint and a sagging roof. “But the building I’m leaning up against right now is housing the New Hope soldiers who have been scouring Term. If you try to free your friends now, you’ll have to kill a whole heck of a lot of people. You’ll have not only Kimberly’s men to deal with, but the soldiers, as well.”

  For the first time, Sloan stopped to think her plan through. Even with these new odds stacked against her, she might be able to take them all. But at what cost, and to whom? Could she ensure that Edison and Oliver would escape the battle unscathed? They were scientists, not warriors. On top of that, was she willing to slaughter so many people?

  “If you’re insistent on saving your friends”—Kade motioned with an open arm—“then follow me.”

  Kade moved to go, expecting Sloan to follow. When she didn’t, he stopped in his tracks and turned again.

  “Oh, right, you have that whole trust issue thing going on.” Kade sighed, trying to think. “Listen, you obviously have no love for the crown. Neither do I. They took everything from me. We share a common enemy. Keep your sword drawn if you want, but at least follow me and see what I have to say.”

  Sloan weighed the pros and cons in her mind. If Kade really wanted to ambush her, he had his opportunity minutes before when he caught her unawares in the alley. Could he actually just be a nice guy with her best intentions in mind? Doubtful.

  “Okay,” Sloan said, powering down her sword. “Lead the way.”

  Kade nodded and led her down the alley, away from the main street. They emptied out into yet another alley that ran behind the rear of the row of buildings. Kade fell to all fours, looking down at the sheriff office’s foundation.

  “Are you all right?” Sloan looked from side to side to make sure they were still alone. “Need to tie your shoelace or something?”

  “Look, stop checking out my butt and get down here.” Kade pointed to the foundation of the building.

  “I wasn’t checking out your butt.” Sloan rolled her eyes. She joined Kade on all fours, examining the building’s structure.

  The building was new, and whoever had constructed the sheriff’s office had done so using a raised platform. There was a tight crawlspace under the building. It would provide just enough room for someone to maneuver on their stomach and elbows.

  “Give it a few more hours.” Kade rose to his knees, dusting off his hands. “The boys like to drink. They’ll be passed out by then.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Sloan followed Kade’s lead, resting on her feet in a squatting position. “You don’t know me or owe me a cent.”

  Kade took a deep breath. The act made his chest rise and fall in a soft, rhythmic motion. Sloan almost thought she heard a deep purr echo somewhere in his lungs.

  “You’re a tiger.” Kade said, rising to his feet. “You’re the most beautiful tiger I’ve ever seen.”

  “You don’t even know my name.” Sloan blushed, also rising to her feet. “And I’m not a shifter.”

  “Well, what is your name?” Kade looked at her with a boyish grin. “And I didn’t mean you were a shifter.”

  “My name’s—” Sloan hesitated. For the first time in a long time, she wondered if she should give Kade her real first name. It was something she hadn’t done since her first year in army boot camp. “You can call me Charlotte.”

  “Charlotte…” Kade played with the name like a lollipop across his tongue. “I like it.”

  “Why did you call me a tiger?”

  “Because you’re strong, fearless, and confident.” Kade took one last, long look at her that made Sloan feel uneasy in the best kind of way. “You don’t need my help. I’m one hundred percent confident that you would be fine without me. And in a weird kind of way, that makes me want to help you.”

  Sloan and Kade looked at each other through the dusk the early hours of night brought on.

  “If you need—I should say, if you want my help”—Kade turned to go down the alley—“you know where to find me.”

  Chapter Six

  Sloan

  Crawling on her stomach around the underbelly of the sheriff’s building was the very last thing Sloan wanted to be doing. But Kade was right. It would be better to do this quietly than to rush into a frenzy, severing heads and mutilating bodies with her sword. The fact that she had even entertained that idea told her she had been hanging out with Aareth too long.

  Sloan flipped on her mage sword with a quick twist of her thumb. The dull red glow gave her a few feet of illumination in every direction. Her back scraped the top of the small crawlspace as she maneuvered her way through the dirt. It smelled of wet wood and urine underneath the house. She did her best not to wonder what was done with the privy buckets when they were full.

  Mage sword out in her right hand, Sloan inched her way to where she thought Edison’s cell was located. When she first crawled into the space near the rear of the building, she had been confident that she could find the right place to emerge. Now that she was actually under the floor, everything looked so different.

  Sloan did her best at guesstimating where she should emerge. A spot with heavy reinforced wood told her she had guessed well. The floor would need to be strengthened below the cell to ensure it would be able to hold the weight of the steel cell bars.

  Sloan almost gagged at the smell. It had been slowly building in her nose until she could practically taste the odor of a used bathroom.

  Hold it together, girl, Sloan coaxed herself. Almost there.

  There was barely enough room for Sloan to position herself on her back. Light snores from directly above her told her she was underneath Edison.

  Not only were snores wafting down toward her, but Edison was talking in his sleep.

  “No, no, you’re cute,” Edison murmured in between snores that sounded more like coughs. “But I came to the dance because I love you. You don’t think I look pretty?”

  Sloan rolled her eyes, trying to listen for anything else that would tell her this was not the right time to emerge. But besides Edison’s dreams of a dance imagined, there was nothing. No squeaks from the floorboards above, no chatter from the men supposed to be watching the pair of inventors. It was good enough for Sloan.

  With more difficulty than she imagined, she lifted her sword and began to cut through the floor above. The mage sword was silent and made quick work of the floor despite the reinforced wood.

  Sloan barely felt the pressure of the wood against the blade. She would have to remember to ask Edison about the mage sword’s battery supply, if it even had one.

  Within the space of a few breaths, there was a small hole opened in the floor above her. Sloan switched off her sword. She moved the circular piece of wood she had cut out and placed it next to her on the dirt ground.

  She waited again to ensure she was still unaccounted for. The only thing that she could hear was her own beating heart and Edison’s insistence that he was pretty and had come to the dance on his date’s request.

  Sloan slowly rose through the narrow hole, and her eyes widened when she realized where she was. Sloan stood right in between Edison’s spread legs. Fate had certainly had his best interest in mind that day. A few more inches to
the north and Sloan’s escape hole would have turned into Edison’s worst nightmare.

  Quietly, Sloan lifted herself out of the recently carved escape hole. The room was quiet. Only one guard dozed at a desk at the far end. A few muffled voices could be heard from the second floor, but at this range, they sounded like they were either drunk or dead tired, maybe both.

  Sloan removed herself from the awkward position between Edison’s legs and leaned in toward him. She pressed her hand against his mouth.

  “Edison,” Sloan whispered close to his ear. “Edison, wake up and be quiet.”

  Edison continued to snore.

  Sloan pinched his nose shut with her thumb and pointer finger. A brief gag, and Edison’s eyes snapped open.

  “Shhhh…” Sloan pressed a finger to her lips. “It’s me. We’re going to get you two out of here.”

  Edison blinked a few times before realization crossed his stare.

  “Oh, Sloan, am I glad to see you. They have Elwood and Ashley.” Edison turned to take in the hole between his legs. “My goodness, woman, you almost did the females in this world a huge disservice.”

  “Yeah, or maybe I just doomed them.” Sloan moved to the side of Edison’s cell that he shared with Oliver Livingston. Oliver was already sitting up on his mattress.

  “You came for us?” The doctor looked at her through the broken, gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. “I didn’t know if you’d made it out or not. When Edison came for us to tell us the news, I feared the worst.”

  “I told you’d she’d make it out alive.” Edison slapped Sloan on the shoulder. A puff of dirt followed his action. “She’s nothing this world has ever seen before. One part vampire elixir, one part phoenix serum, one hundred percent badass.”

  “Boys.” Sloan turned her sword on once again and began working on the bars separating the two inventors’ cells. “Let’s save story time for after we get out of here. We still have to free Elwood and Ashley.”

  “Right, right.” Edison held the bars while Sloan cut a mini-sized hole through the steel. Not surprisingly, her blade severed it like butter.

  “There.” Sloan finished the last cut, looking over to the lone, slumbering lookout. He was still passed out hard, doing a fair amount of snoring of his own. “Let’s go.”

  Edison grunted as he moved the cut steel bars to his side of the cells to provide Doctor Livingston access to the escape route. He fumbled with the grip on the bars, and they slammed onto the wood floor. It wasn’t a loud sound, but in the presence of utter stillness, it echoed in Sloan’s ears.

  The trio of escapees stood quiet. All eyes turned to the guard who now fidgeted in his chair.

  “I wanna, I wanna ride the pony,” the guard mumbled in his sleep.

  Sloan and the doctor looked at Edison with glares.

  “Pshhh.” Edison smiled, throwing a thumb at the sleeping guard before he entered the escape hole. “What an idiot. Who talks in their sleep?”

  Sloan

  Where are they being held?” Sloan asked as she jogged with the two scientists away from the sheriff’s office. “We need to go and get them now. In a few hours, the sun will rise, and they’ll realize you’ve escaped. When that happens, we need to be as far away from Term as possible.”

  As soon as Sloan had said the words, an image of Kade came to mind. She didn’t even mean to think of him, but a tiny part of her she had locked away for a very long time felt like she would miss him if she never saw him again.

  “There’s a brick house somewhere in the center of town.” Doctor Livingston motioned with his hand to the area of Term where they needed to travel. “We were taken there briefly when we were first captured, then we were separated. Edison and I were taken to the sheriff’s office, while Ashley and Elwood were kept at the estate.”

  Sloan did her best to dust off her clothing. It was pointless. At this time of night the streets were empty. No one would see them, and if they did, they were probably too drunk to tell that they didn’t belong in Term.

  “So how did you get captured, anyway?” Sloan asked the two scientists as they traveled down the side of the dirt road.

  Doctor Livingston shot Edison a dirty look.

  “No, no, you don’t get to look at me like that.” Edison formed the sign of the cross with his hands. “I’m not taking the fall for this one.”

  “How can you say that?” Doctor Livingston looked at Edison as if he had lost his mind. “You open-handedly slapped one of the gang members.”

  “He had it coming. Not only did he not flinch when I told him about the queen’s intentions for the Outland, but he also grabbed Elwood like a stuffed animal. Nearly yanked his arm out of his socket.” Edison shook his head, recalling the incident vividly. “No one pulls Elwood like that. But that’s in the past now. All we can do is free them.”

  “We’ll get them, and then it’s time to get out of Term before we can get caught,” Sloan agreed. “The queen’s soldiers are already in town. It wouldn’t surprise me if they called in reinforcements. There was an incident at a bar where they lost face. Soldiers hate backing down from a fight.”

  “What about Aareth? I can’t believe I didn’t ask sooner.” Edison quickened his pace to keep up with Sloan. “Did he make it out all right? Is he … himself? And Jack and the girls?”

  “Yeah, about that.” Sloan took in a long breath, letting it out of her mouth in a slow puff. “He’s fine-ish. I left him just outside of town. He’s kind of a wolf-human hybrid thing now. I haven’t seen or heard from Jack or the girls.”

  Edison and Doctor Livingston looked to one another with wide open mouths. Before they could ask any more questions, Sloan pointed to a massive house at the end of the block. “Is that it?”

  “Yes.” Doctor Livingston nodded. “That’s where we were held before we were transferred to the prison. That’s where Elwood and Ashley were the last time we saw them.”

  Sloan took a moment to consider her options and take in the lay of the land. Compared to the rest of Term, the building was indeed a behemoth of a structure. It was the first one Sloan had seen made of anything other than wood. Dark red bricks made up the outside of the building. Like the sheriff's station, it was two stories tall, but much wider.

  A pristine, manicured lawn led to the front porch where two figures stood on guard. Torches flickered in the early morning light, casting weird shadows across the grass. The very fact that there was a lawn at all spoke volumes as to the amount of money the unofficial mayor brought in. Watering something like that in the desert would cost hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars to maintain.

  “There’s no need to be quiet.” Sloan rotated her wrists and rolled her shoulders. “We’ll go in and speak with their leader and make her give us our people.”

  “That’s one plan we could try.” Edison scrunched his nose as he caught a whiff of Sloan and her stolen cloak. “But is it the best? What’s that smell? Did you piss yourself?”

  Sloan ignored Edison’s comment. “It’s the fastest way to getting our people back, besides going straight in and killing everyone. You two stay close. If things go bad, we have backup within earshot. We’ll be fine.”

  Before either of the scientists could ask what she meant by “backup,” Sloan began to move again. When she was halfway across the dirt road, the two guards standing sentry at the front of the house caught sight of her.

  “Stop right there,” one of them shouted in a nasally voice. He lifted a rifle in their direction, as did his counterpart. “What’s it you want?”

  Sloan kept her sword low by her side. She knew she could be on top of the two guards within a heartbeat. Her accelerated healing would allow her to take the bullets with minimal pain. She hadn’t been shot in the face, though. The idea made Sloan wonder if her body could heal from such a wound. Instead of testing her question, Sloan placed her sword in her belt.

  “You have two of my friends.” Sloan continued to walk forward until she was at the building's gate. She pl
aced her hands on the smooth, metal fence. “I want to speak to your leader about their release.”

  The two guards looked to one another for a consensus. Sloan was surprised to find out she could hear their whispers at such a distance.

  “What do you want to do?” the nasally guard asked his counterpart. “Kill them here, or get the boss?”

  “The boss isn’t sleeping, but she’ll be pissed if we bother her.”

  “Yeah, but will she be more pissed if we kill them and she actually wanted to speak with them?”

  “You’re right. Keep your rifle on them and I’ll go wake her.”

  “Stay where you are,” nasal-voice shouted. “If any one of you three moves, I’ll blow your heads off, I mean it.”

  “Calm yourself.” Sloan raised an eyebrow. “We’re not going to try anything.”

  The other guard disappeared into the house. While the trio of New Hope escapees waited, the guard squinted through the dark.

  “Say, aren’t those the two fellows who were in the sheriff’s station?” He got on his tiptoes and leaned farther off the porch. “They are! You freed them, and then you came here to demand your people be released? You’ve made a bad move, lady.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess that was my move to make.” Sloan shrugged, not feeling a bit of regret at her actions.

  The door to the house swung open again and the guard who had disappeared inside came out. “She said she’ll see you.”

  Sloan looked over to Edison and Oliver. Both of them shrugged.

  No more words were needed. Sloan could tell by their body language the last thing they wanted to do was to enter the house. However, neither of them had seen the latest she was capable of. Along with that, they had no idea Aareth was waiting for Sloan to send a whistle for him to come and help.

  “We’ll be fine.” Sloan opened the steel gate, taking the lead. “Stay close.”

  The gate was heavy, even for Sloan. It was solid steel, the thickness of each bar equivalent to the shaft of a spear. Sloan followed the cement walkway through the front lawn.