Cursed Relic: (Witchling Wars: Vampire Echelon Book 1)

by Shawn Knightley

  ‘Worry about her? Hell, you can have her.’

  As soon as the thought entered my brain I realized it wasn’t the best of thoughts to have. Any being with the capacity to wield magic was dangerous for humans to have in their clutches. Even if that being was a vampire that I would much rather see dead than alive.

  ‘Hopefully, the vixra blood is out of her system and she can’t wield her elemental magic anymore.’

  The man withdrew an even larger syringe and dabbed another spot on my arm, getting ready to send it through my flesh once more to extract my magic. I struggled against the locksin only to feel its electrical binding practically crush my skin. I let out a yelp in pain and the asshole barely even noticed. He didn’t hesitate for even a second before sticking me with an impossibly large needle and removing more golden light from my blood. This time, I did more than yelp, grunt, or groan. I screamed. If I thought it hurt the first time I must have been coming around still and didn’t have all my senses yet. This time, I could feel my magic being pulled right from my blood and sticking me like a hundred little knives jutting into my skin from the inside out as he pulled the suction in the syringe backward, admiring the weaving spirals of light funneling into the test tube.

  “How incredible!” he exclaimed.

  It was no use. The more I thrashed about and tried to get loose, the tighter the locksin became.

  ‘You better be glad that you have this stuff, otherwise you’d be left wishing you did.’

  I spent most of my life avoiding human eyes. It wasn’t my nature to summon my magic in front of humans that could potentially see me unless I had enough vixra blood in my system to cast a shadow charm. Only this time, I would make an exception.

  I pushed my magic through my palm, hoping I could send it right into the man’s backside the second he turned around to place my magic in a large test tube for safe keeping. Nothing came out.

  I started to sweat. The more I tried to get my magic to come through, the more of a struggle it became. The vixra blood was gone from my system. And what was worse, the man had drained what magic I had right out of my body.

  I had seen the vixra do this as a sort of punishment to luxra and kruxa who disobeyed witchling law over the years. They would often slice both arms or legs just enough to allow the culprit’s blood to drain of the majority of their magic. It took weeks, or sometimes in extreme cases, even months for it to come back. Our magic never truly leaves us but we can definitely exhaust it. Just like a muscle can reach exhaustion and no longer work, our magic worked in the same way. And no small amount of magic left in my body would help me to get out of this mess.

  I eyed the other items he had on the nearby table in test tubes. There was my gun and the magazine in a separate tube with the bullets in various tiny glass bottles.

  ‘Does he know what’s in the bullets?’

  The small pieces of dissolvable paper with speckles of vixra blood on them were sitting in the corner. Then there was the cylinder inside a taller and thinner tube.

  ‘Well, at least there’s one thing he can test over and over again and never quite figure out what it is.’

  The sword needed a touch of vixra magic to work. And if he tried ingesting the vixra blood it would kill him. Humans don’t have the strength to harness magic. The vixra blood would slowly drive him to madness before killing him.

  ‘Now there’s a thought. Tell him he can use the magic if he ingests the vixra blood.’

  The thought bounced around in my head as I considered the possibilities. Would he tell others what I said? Would he try to use the blood himself if I convinced him of its power?

  No. It was too much of a risk. I had to find another way out of here.

  A bright green glow appeared from the corner of the room. The test tube with the cylinder inside was doing something that not even I can explain.

  The man in the lab coat took a closer look but didn’t touch it. The glass of the test tube started to crack as the green glow coming out of the cylinder got brighter by the second.

  “What is this?” he demanded. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” he snarled. “Tell me.”

  The green light got so bright that I had to close my eyes to avoid being blinded. I saw the man lift his hands up to his eyes to do the same right before the sound of breaking glass exploded through the room, followed by the sound of a stiff wind. Various tubes started to shatter, sending shards of glass clear everywhere as he ducked for cover on the ground.

  I forced my eyes open once more to see that the cylinder was no longer just a cylinder. The sword had appeared out of one side and was emitting a bright array of magic across the room, as if electricity had charged throughout the blade and was lashing out at any potential victims it could find.

  I was being pulled backward. Or pushed. I couldn’t be certain. But I did know that wherever I was going, there was no way for me to stop it. The locksin restraints pulled harder, my breathing started coming out in heavy gasps, and my long red hair was being thrown about as though the roof had been pulled right off. I was sucked out of the room. The table holding me down spun through the air and sent various objects crashing into me only to fall to the side. In all the chaos, I realized what was happening.

  A vixra tunnel opened inside the room. I didn’t know where I was. Nor did I know how I got there. But someone else was able to track my where abouts from the magic inside the sword. And they had the ability to open up a tunnel and yank me right out. Along with the mad man poking and prodding me with needles. I could hear him screaming all the way to the other side before I plopped out of the tunnel and the table tying me down crashed into the dirt right side up with me staring at the overcast sky.

  Debris fell everywhere, missing me by mere inches as pieces of the white lab room shattered across the length of a large open field. The mad scientist landed ten feet away from me and promptly lost all the contents inside his stomach.

  Humans don’t handle going through vixra tunnels very well. They’re too powerful for them. Or if they did they instantly became sick. Given I was half human, I knew the feeling. Vixra tunnels made me unfathomably ill the first few times I ever used them.

  When the debris stopped falling and the vixra tunnel closed in the air above us, I shifted my gaze from left to right to see what the hell was going on. Who got me out? Who opened up the vixra tunnel?

  The answer didn’t excite or thrill me.

  Edmund Matthews stood a few feet away with the blade in his right hand, still glowing with green light as he held it up in the air, ready to strike down at my helpless body.

  8

  Edmund swung the blade down hard. But not at me. He severed the locksin’s magic tying me down and shattered the binds around both my wrists and ankles. When I sat up, I wasn’t entirely sure if I would be permitted to actually stand. I hadn’t seen Edmund in a while. He was never particularly kind to me. And regardless of how much he had aged over the last two centuries, I could still see the anger in his eyes for what I did all those years ago.

  In a miraculous act that I never expected, he extended a hand to me. I reluctantly took it, not entirely keen on the idea of our skin touching but willing to accept the small act of kindness. Once I was standing I refused to meet his eyes.

  “Where are you hurt?” he asked me in a thick British accent. All the Matthews had accents. They could drop them when they wished to become accustomed to who they were speaking to. I never gained such a skill. My Scottish roots always lingered when I spoke no matter how hard I tried to shake them away.

  He eyed the blood soaking my clothes as he let go of my hand.

  “I already healed,” I answered him. “I just haven’t changed clothes.”

  “You didn’t change in three days?” he asked. Clearly, he found the thought repulsive.

  ‘They don’t provide fresh clothes in captivity.’

  I lowered my head as I usually did to him and other hi
gh ranking vixra. “Has it been that long?” I asked.

  Before Edmund could answer me we were interrupted by the sound of my captor screaming at the top of his lungs. Both the mad scientist and the blonde vampire had come through the vixra tunnel with me.

  ‘How much of the building did you destroy, Edmund?’

  By the looks of it, the entire floor had been ripped open and brought through time and space to the field where we stood. Along with pipes spurting out water, drywall laying in the nearby mud, and the test tubes carrying my gun, bullets, and my magic swirling around in a glass container.

  The girl had her large fangs deep inside the mad scientist’s neck. I didn’t move to rescue him. In fact, I was tempted to actually enjoy it. I sure wasn’t going to stop her from killing him. But Edmund clearly had other ideas in mind. He lifted his hand and let his magic come barreling out, knocking the vampire backward with a force so strong that she looked like she had been struck by lightning. She shook uncontrollably after crashing back into the grass then went tense like countless volts of electricity were passing through her body and paralyzing her.

  “Don’t do that again,” Edmund said to her. From the looks of it, she had been knocked completely unconscious. But her emotions were still potent. I knew she could hear every word he was saying.

  The magic swirled under her body and lifted her in the air. Edmund pulled his arm inward and she came floating over where we stood, completely motionless but alive.

  The mad scientist with ungroomed hair sat up with his hands coverings his neck.

  ‘What? Do you think your bare hands are going to stop the bleeding? Vampires strike to kill.’

  Edmund threw his magic directly toward the man and curled it around his throat, giving it a slight squeeze just to let him know that he was serious.

  I could sense the man’s fear from where I stood. And even though I had only spent a few minutes alone in his presence I relished the sight of seeing him suffer.

  “Who are you?” Edmund demanded.

  He didn’t respond. I thought it might serve the situation well to inform Edmund that the man probably wouldn’t be able to speak if he was, in fact, strangling him but even I could see as we both took steps closer to him that Edmund had left just enough room for him to breathe. His gasps for air were shallow and each breathe hurt his wounded neck. He was in flight or flight mode, leaning more toward flight. But where? Where the hell did he think he was going to go?

  ‘He doesn’t even know enough about what he’s dealing with to know that he’s already dead.’

  “He claimed to know a lot about our kind,” I said to Edmund. “But I think he might have been lying.”

  “Don’t make me ask again,” Edmund ordered him. “What is your name?”

  “Richard,” he answered as he exhaled. “Dr. Richard Foster.”

  “And who do you work for?”

  The man hesitated once more. Edmund made sure he regretted it.

  The green light circling his neck descended down his body and gave him a shock that I knew all too well. It was the same shock I felt when Edmund or other vixra thought I had done a poor job following orders. I watched as Dr. Foster’s muscles tightened and he opened his mouth wide to scream. But nothing came out. Then once the pain stopped he gasped for what little air his lungs could possibly take in.

  “Do you work for Gandira?” Edmund said sternly.

  The man’s eyes flashed with anxiety and I knew Edmund’s guess must have been right. But who the hell was Gandira?”

  “Yes,” the man hissed through his teeth. His gray and white speckled hair was starting to stand up on end from all the electricity Edmund was sending through his body. It certainly didn’t do anything to help his untidy appearance.

  “How many others do they have in captivity?” Edmund asked.

  ‘They? So it’s not just me and the vampire?’

  “Several.”

  “Are they all vampires?”

  “I’m not sure he knows the difference entirely,” I said to him. “He only noticed that I healed the same way that they do and extracted my magic from my blood. From the way he reacted to seeing it I don’t think he really even knew what it was.”

  ‘Although, he does now.’

  Dr. Foster’s eyes lit up at the word, magic, as if he was mentally saying to himself, ‘I knew it!’

  ‘Only you don’t know a damn thing.’

  I eyed it across the field, wondering if I went and grabbed my magic in the test tube if I could somehow absorb it again. Doubtful, but after being deprived of it for only a matter of minutes I desperately wanted it back. I could feel the weakness in my body from not having it and suddenly understood why the vixra would drain it as a sort of punishment for witchlings who broke witchling law. It was a sort of torment knowing it wasn’t there with me. Like a missing limb that would impair my ability to do everyday tasks that I always took for granted.

  “Some are vampires. Others don’t seem to want the blood we give them,” Dr. Foster answered him as he fell to his hands. He barely had the strength to hold up his neck.

  ‘You really have no idea, do you? You don’t know who Edmund is or what he can do to you.’

  Edmund stiffened as if he had the answer he was looking for and it didn’t please him at all.

  “Is the president funding your company?” Edmund asked.

  I could see spit spewing from Dr. Foster’s mouth as he struggled against Edmund’s magic and tried to stop the temptation to speak and give him all the answers he desired. He was failing miserably.

  “We don’t need his approval,” Dr. Foster grunted against the pain. “He answers to us. If anything he’s stood in our way.”

  I saw something change in Edmund’s eyes. A flash of anger that I was all too familiar with. And once, years ago when he first enslaved me, I was the cause of that anger. I knew what was coming. I took a generous step back away from Edmund with my eyes glued to Dr. Foster.

  “Excuse me?” Edmund snarled. “Why would the most powerful leader in the world answer to the likes of you?”

  Dr. Foster gave into his ego. I could sense his arrogance as the words started tumbling from his mouth. Now we were on a topic he didn’t mind bragging about.

  “You didn’t think governments were ruling the modern world, did you?” Dr. Foster said as a mischievous grin crossed his face. “People are so naive. They worry all day long about governments controlling their lives. Those times are long gone. They’re in the palm of our hand. Gandira Corp told the president to come to Denver. That there might be a population of vampires living among humans and he would likely draw a decent crowd. When the terrorist attack happened we had the opportunity we wanted.”

  “For what?”

  “To capture as many of your lot as we possibly could. To understand you better.”

  Edmund moved closer to Dr. Foster. The man’s fear was quickly abandoning him in exchange for the glory of thinking he’d won. Not because he thought he could get away but because he assumed he had outsmarted his captor.

  “Mr. Foster,” Edmund said as he let the green light in his hand glow an even brighter shade of green. It weaved tighter around Dr. Foster’s throat. “That’s where you’re wrong. Humans will never understand us. They will never know what it means to be us. And people like you are the least worthy of them all.”

  Without another word Edmund tightened the magical noose he formed over Dr. Foster’s throat. I watched as Dr. Foster’s eyes bulged through his glasses and he struggled to reach for his neck. Edmund had them fastened at his side with more magic. The life inside Dr. Foster’s body was quickly leaving him.

  I don’t enjoy death. It frightens me even though the vixra made me immortal. But from time to time, I got to watch someone truly evil die. Or as of late, I got to do the killing when it came to a particularly rabid vampire that no one on this earth would ever miss. This was one of those moments. When it was clear that Dr. Foster was no longer imprisoned by the confines of his
body and he wasn’t breathing, Edmund withdrew his magic and let Dr. Foster’s pale crinkled face collapse to the ground.

  “And as for you,” Edmund said as he turned his attention to the blonde vampire still floating in the air with her arms and legs bound by his magic. “You have a choice to make.”

  He inched closer to her. So close that if she had the power to move, she could easily tear into him. It was his way of showing her that she had no control over the situation. He could easily take her life and there wasn’t a single thing she could do to stop it.

  ‘Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she can hear him.’

  “You once swore an oath of loyalty to Tobias Vallas, the former leader of the Catach-Brayin. You once were able to take control over your vampiric impulses and feed in a way that didn’t require you to take human lives. You failed to maintain such discipline and have since given in to the desire to needlessly harm humans and witchlings. You even caused a scene at the Red Rocks Amphitheater that could have exposed us all. You placed my slave in danger. You placed our kind in danger. And I have absolutely no qualms about ending you here and now. Unless you swear an oath to the vixra council that you will serve us. You can change your path and your way of life to one worthy of living. One that will provide use should the prophesied war ever come to pass. Will you accept such terms or continue your pitiful existence of devouring the innocent?”

  The blonde vampire groaned as Edmund let his magic spiral around her body. I knew what he was doing. He was showing her just how painful it would be if she chose death. His magic was blistering her skin. Tickling her nerves with the sensation of fire that would consume her if she didn’t see reason. Not that reason is a vampire’s forte.

  She didn’t answer him. And I knew more than most that Edmund wasn’t the most patient of men.

  He let his magic stir beneath her feet, creating a fire that would engulf her body and consume her in a green magical inferno if she didn’t do as he pleased.

  She shrieked as it burned through her shoes and started devouring her jeans. He would make sure it was slow and painful. Not just because she wouldn’t answer him. She had broken witchling law. No one who broke witchling law got off easy. Especially vampires.