The Vampire's Spell - Surrendering to The Night: Book 2

by Lucy Lyons

  “Not that they’ll need to see the light. If they’re really giant rats they already smelled us, even over the sewage.” I complained under my breath to Simi. With that, Simi turned her torch up all the way. The light danced up the concrete and turned the shadows into monsters at every turn.

  “Can you reach out with your psychic sense?” Simi asked, her light spinning around so quickly I started to get nauseated. I inched my way up the edge and crouched with my back against the wall just out of the murky, ankle-deep water.

  “I can’t even imagine a real sewer if this is what the storm drain smells like,” I hissed. Colette laughed.

  “I can carry you so the dirty water doesn’t touch your shoes Princess.” I glared in her direction in the shadows and she laughed a high-pitched giggle that clawed at my brain like shards of glass.

  “Send her away now Nicholas. She doesn’t get to climb inside my head. Period.” Colette growled and I shined the flashlight into her face. She lunged at me and I slapped her down with my enhanced power, slamming her into the brackish water so hard it sprayed up and hit me, droplets landing as high as my face.

  She made a mewling sound of pain and fear and scuttled on all fours to hide behind Nicholas. I stood up and wiped the thick wet droplets from my face and glared as he leaned against the curved wall, one hand on Colette’s head.

  “Are you finished?” He asked and I checked my Glock to make sure I had a round chambered.

  “Is she going to behave?” I was more scared than angry, but I was doing my best not to let either of our supernaturally strong guides feel the terror compressing my chest.

  “Colette will do whatever you ask of her. Although you could have simply asked. She’s bound to you just as I am.”

  “If I believed Colette was capable of remembering that; I would’ve. Now we are all clear on what I mean; I think Colette will remember now. Won’t you, Colette?” I shone the light on her muddy face, her eyes shining in the glare like a cat’s.

  “I hate you,” she growled but there was no real venom in it.

  “The feeling’s mutual Sugar.” I turned the light back to Nicholas, but didn’t shine it directly on him. I couldn’t stand to see that same inhuman reflection from his eyes. “Can we go on now? We really need to be on the same side for this. I can’t be worrying about Colette and whatever freak show we’re about to walk into.”

  “Maybe we should wait. I texted Dominique and Clay our coordinates before we came in. Backup is on the way.” Simi shook out her gun hand and adjusted her grip. Guns in real life aren’t like the movies; your hand gets tired. It can cramp up rendering you useless. Simi needed something to shoot; just like I did. Colette was looking like a better target by the minute.

  “Are you sure? What if your fellow Venatores lamiae decide that you’re acceptable collateral damage if it means killing me or Caroline?” Nicholas countered and Colette laughed her wild, high-pitched laugh. I shuddered, then realized that somehow, I’d broken her tenuous hold on me. Her laugh was creepy, but unable to harm me. I could see from her pout that she felt it too and I gave her a mirthless smile.

  “Wow. Let’s just go. I can’t stand still anymore anyway. This place makes my skin crawl.” Simi shuddered; Nicholas flinched and glanced at me. I pushed outward with my power, searching for that scorching wind that had led me to the art gallery and I found it. It headed straight towards us. Fast.

  “Back up,” I panted. “Move towards the opening but keep the concrete on your flank. I don’t want to fight where I need a flashlight. Colette, with me.” I added the last so that Nicholas would keep Simi safe.

  Moonlight was visible in the mouth of the tunnel when I heard the first scrabbling noises. It sounded like an ocean of tiny claws skittering over the concrete at once and I shivered violently and pushed my back to the tunnel wall. Colette stood between me and the scrabbling and I grabbed her arm and shoved her behind me.

  “Hold the flashlight and stay out of the way. I don’t want you getting shot accidentally. Nicholas probably wouldn’t believe it wasn’t on purpose.” She started to argue, but a sea of furry bodies rushed at us from the dark and her argument was lost in the thunderous sound of their advance.

  Simi leaped to my side and pulled out a flare. She lit it and tossed it into the pack. Belatedly, I remembered my fanny pack and flipped my duster behind my fanny pack. I unzipped it enough to grab a flashbang and yelled out a warning. I flipped my dark lenses down over my eyes and threw the first grenade without waiting to see if Simi had done the same.

  There was a flash of light, the smell of burnt fur and flesh and screaming as the small rodents scattered and fled in front of us. We took the opportunity to turn and run for the park and the moonlight. I slowed enough to put Simi ahead of me and ran almost full out to the end of the tunnel. The cool air grew sweet and clean and I glanced behind me confused that I still felt the power, but the rats were gone.

  “Hold on!” I shouted, and skidded to a stop in the mud near the entrance. “Where’s the car-sized rat Colette was talking about? It’s still here. I can feel it.” Colette scoffed and turned back to the entrance just as two glowing red eyes appeared between us and freedom. I screamed and fell back; pushing my back to the wall and firing into the black space between the glowing eyes.

  A sound made me turn and there were two more sets of eyes flanking us. I swore and Simi set off her last three flares lighting the tunnel with an eerie glow and the smell of phosphorous. The rats were even more sinister in the sputtering glow of the flares, their dark fur blending in as their eyes and teeth glowed in the unnatural light.

  They weren’t as big as Colette had estimated them, about five feet nose to tail, from what I could see. Still it was huge for a rodent and if they were as strong as she said; I didn’t want to fight them in close combat.

  “What do we do?” I hissed at Nicholas and Simi.

  “You come with me or you die. It’s your choice,” a deep voice rumbled out of the rodent mouth of a rat larger than the others, as it stepped forward. Its fur was gold instead of brownish black like the others in the tunnel. He had a large black marking on his shoulder if the voice was any clue. It looked like a crescent moon had been stamped on him.

  “Who are you?” Nicholas asked and I felt a hum as a thread of his cool power wound through the almost overwhelming heat of the wererat’s power. I focused on it and saw them as symbiotic, a blue thread braiding itself into fiery gold. Nicholas seemed unaware, as did the leader of the rats, so I bit my tongue.

  “I am the king of the rats, hunter of vampires.” The rat stood on its hind legs, and I averted my eyes from his obvious maleness.

  “Seems to me the only things you’ve been hunting are helpless people,” I snarled to cover my discomfort at his nudity.

  “How better for me to draw the vampires out than to thin the herd and reduce their food supply?” A white rat walked up on two legs and draped a toga around the rat king while we watched. The rats closed in around us and herded us farther into the tunnel nudging us along with their muzzles and snapping at us with giant jagged teeth.

  We traveled down past the waterways and the concrete to a giant cavern of stone. It was well-lit with torches on the walls and a bonfire in the middle of the room. The smoke rose to the vaulted ceiling and out through more tunnels above.

  “Think you’re GPS is working down here Simi?” I whispered.

  “There’s no point in trying to keep secrets huntress,” the rat king called out from ahead of us. “Imagine all the sensory attributes of our natural animal counterparts, then magnify them by our size. Whispering doesn’t make a bit of difference.” I bit my lip and reached out for Simi with my psychic powers; reassuring her as Nicholas reached out to me. A wave of relief washed over me.

  “He isn’t a psychic though, is he?” Nicholas’ voice rang out in my head with a chuckle.

  “Do you feel your power winding through theirs?” I asked him silently. I sent him a picture of the colors I saw, hi
s midnight blue cold and the rat’s collective aura; the color of the bonfire in the center of the room.

  “If you want us dead, why bring us here at all?” Nicholas asked aloud. I felt him tentatively layering glamor to our party without the rats noticing. He flexed his power and Colette appeared clean instead of covered in the muck from the waterway. I saw both images, one layered over the other, and fought a wave of nausea from trying to see both at once.

  “He was waiting for me,” a familiar voice called out and my stomach sank. David appeared in an opening across the cavern from us with the weasel-faced Jaime Call next to him. Right before our eyes Jaime tore his shirt off and roared as his skin began to swell and split down the center line of his torso. He fell to his hands and knees on the dais and dark brown fur appeared in the tears of his flesh, then exploding outward in a spray of slimy clear mucus.

  It only took a few seconds and there on the stone floor in a ring of his own skin and bodily fluids was a thin, brown rat. David stood over him and I felt his power whisper through the room. At his command, every rat was focused on me and I felt wave after scaling wave of power push against me.

  “Nicholas, help me!” I pled, my voice cracking. His power flowed through me like a cool breeze and I gathered my energy to fight back. “So, David; you control the wererats. Do they have any freedom, or have you finally found a creature weak enough to be the literal slaves you’ve always wanted?” The rat-king snarled and spun to glare at David.

  “They are mine to control, as long as they’re in animal form,” David gloated and I felt the fear and impotent rage of the king.

  “I know what to do Caroline. It might not work because we aren’t fully bonded. But once vampires have animals they could command; in some stories they can shapeshift.” He didn’t bother trying to speak directly to my mind. David had taken control of the rats, but he didn’t have superhuman hearing.

  “What do I have to do?” I asked. I gripped Simi’s hand then released it and she nodded. She’d put her gun back in its holster when it became less useful and more dangerous to us than to them. Now she moved her hand to the knife at her hip and I did the same.

  “You are my focus. I must drain your power and use it to strengthen my own,” Nicholas said. The rats continued to stare at us as David watched from his perch up above.

  “You’ll protect us?” Simi whispered so softly that I barely heard her from inches away. Nicholas nodded and Colette stiffened. I realized why he was so confident. Cool power closed in all around us encircling the entire cavern. He took my hand and that power amplified and tightened like a cord snapping into place.

  Simi gasped and took my hand. I forced myself not to yank it free but started to panic as my gun hand was compromised, despite the close quarters. I glanced down as power moved through us raising my hair with static electricity and Simi trembled and gripped me tighter. As Nicholas filled with power I shook Simi loose so he couldn’t take from her through me. I planted my feet and set my aim on David.

  “Leave me something to fight with Nicholas,” I thought to him; sending him an image of David unconscious on the floor.

  “Or dead,” Nicholas replied. “Dead is good too.” I glared up at him and he raised my hand to his mouth, kissing my knuckles. “If I do this correctly you will feel as though I haven’t touched your energy at all. But I need time and a path to the rat king and I need to be connected to your power.”

  I pulled my knife and Simi did the same. “David,” she called out, “This is going to end badly for you.” He laughed and pulled a bowie knife from his belt.

  “Come and get it, you fang-banging witch.” I spun my knife in my hand and took an experimental step away from Nicholas. I felt the power tug between us like a bungee cord and I kept moving.

  “You are surrounded. You know that, don’t you?” I took another step and the rats started to follow my movements.

  “You’re assuming they aren’t on my side Caroline,” he scoffed.

  “You’re assuming I was talking about hunters,” I countered. A white rat leaped at me, knocking me down and pinning me to the floor as it worked at my shoulder, trying to bite through the tactical-lined leather. I swept out with my blade, holding it against my forearm and slashing at its face with all 12 inches of tempered steel. Sparks flew from its teeth and it screamed and jerked back.

  The room erupted in a cacophony of shrill rodent screams as the vampires poured into the caverns from the tunnels on every side. I slashed at the rat on top of me and connected with its throat. It gurgled and fell to one side; I kicked it off me and rolled into a crouch. I scanned the room for David but he’d ducked down a tunnel and away from the fight. With Nicholas still attached to my power by the invisible tether of energy he’d created; I cut my way toward the rat king. Vampires flanked me and for the second time in a year, they fought by my side.

  I caught a black, furry blur out of the corner of my eye a split second before I was flung twenty feet over the backs of rats and vampires alike. A dead wererat broke my fall and I bounced off the bloody, matted fur into a crouch. Instantly my Glock 9mm was in my hand in a teacup hold, one hand cupped under the other to steady my aim. I inhaled deeply; exhaling slowly as I fired directly into the black furry monster racing towards me. Blood exploded from its shoulder and I squeezed the trigger repeatedly until the rat slowed and fell to one side.

  Suddenly I heard more gunshots around me and yelled at Nicholas to get the vampires out. There was a blur of bodies leaping into the air and the fight was down to two vampires; two dozen wererats still standing and a ring of hunters. Clay led one team and Vladikk the other. I wondered how many in the room were loyal to the Venatores and how many belonged to the extremists. I didn’t have time to read every mind in the room with me. I did the only thing I could. I turned my back to the people who had sworn the same oath I had, to protect one another and the humans of the earth from anything preternatural that would bring them harm.

  Glancing around at the regrouping rats I suddenly realized why the oath hadn’t just said “Protect humans from vampires”. The society knew there were other things, maybe even worse things out there.

  “Nicholas?” I called out. I couldn’t see him for all the bodies of rats and vampires that covered the cavern floor, but I felt him. I followed that line of energy that connected us and found Nicholas straddling the rat with the crescent on his shoulder. The rat had buried its claws in the master vampire’s chest. Nicholas had his hands around the rat-king’s throat. I raised the gun to shoot the rat in the head and the eyes of every rat in the room turned and stared at me.

  “Don’t,” Nicholas gasped. “Almost have him.” I stepped back, but kept my gun trained on the rat as Nicholas pushed his power and the power he’d “borrowed” from me, into the rat king. When Nicholas broke the tie between David and their king; David lost control of the entire pack. That was why the rats were silent. David didn’t have control of any of them anymore. Their king wasn’t under his control and they followed only their king.

  My pulse raced. If Nicholas could put a leash on the rat-king, then what other powers would he gain? Now that he had my abilities to draw from, and an animal to call, he had pulled ahead in the vampire power game. I didn’t want to be part of the war that might cause.

  “Everyone hold!” I called out and took another step back. “The man who was controlling the rats disappeared into the tunnels. He might be back on the surface already,” I yelled across the crowd. A hunter I didn’t know with dark hair and a shiny scar across his throat took aim at a rat near him. “Don’t!” I repeated as the rat turned its head to face the hunter. “Nicholas, make them change, before they all get killed!”

  I saw almost human strain in his face as the master vampire fought to force the change on the entire pack at once. Kneeling I cast out with my psychic energy and “saw” the rat inside Nicholas, as though he was a shapeshifter too. I tried to see the rat king the same way. Instead what I saw was the man inside. I could feel h
im there and reached in as though I could pull the man out of the rat’s body.

  When I touched the man-energy, a hot wind of power blew over me and knocked me on my back. By touching the rat while tied to Nicholas I’d closed some sort of a circle, amplifying Nicholas’ power enough to give him control of both the wererat and me.

  With a guttural yell, Nicholas ripped the claws out of his chest and I watched from my prone position as the claw reformed into a human hand. As the king shifted back to human form, the rats collapsed and began to change as well. The hunters took a collective step back and guns were trained on everything that still moved as the furry beasts were suddenly both very human and very naked.

  Chapter 15

  The room was silent except for the soft echoes of panting breath as hunters and shifters alike recognized the standoff. Dominique jumped down from the ledge she was on and raced to my side. She held me close to her chest and I heard her murmuring the words of a spell softly. My arms and legs began to shiver and she wrapped her jacket around me.