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

by Shawn Knightley

  “Look!” He demanded.

  The bed was behind me with blood stains ruining its white sheets. Along with small pieces of broken green glass that shattered all over the bed.

  “You can thank Lenora,” he said, pushing me forward and closer to the woman staring at me with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Freeing you,” she said as if it was obvious.

  It was then that I noticed the heaviness around my throat was gone. The magical cord on my neck enslaving me to the vixra was no longer invisible. Nor was it still around my throat and threatening to strangle me if I displeased them. The shattered pieces of glass on the bed were what remained of the bonds tying me to the vixra forever. I reached for one of the pieces. Lenora’s spell had completely shattered the cord.

  “You’re welcome,” she said with a smirk.

  “I don’t understand,” I mumbled. “Why would Edmund want me dead? I’ve spent centuries serving them and took my punishment with grace. Why would he do this to me?”

  “Because he sees what’s coming and believes as all the other vixra do,” Tobias answered me. “That only they can take the proper steps to prevent it. But when he pitched this idea to me, he knew you wouldn’t be amenable to it. You had to have your hand forced.”

  Lenora slowly backed away, sensing the anger in me rising up again.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Turning you was Edmund’s idea. He told me once he gave you crowning magic that I was to turn you with it inside your body. After my best warriors drank from you, of course, and gained the power to walk in the sun. That part was my idea. I apologize for the discomfort. I know it wasn’t pleasant for you.”

  I ran up to him with ungodly speed and thrust him into the wall. I could hear the wood behind him creak from the impact. “Edmund wouldn’t do that,” I argued.

  “Because he’s always been so kind to you?”

  “No. Because he ordered me to kill you.” I thrust him to the opposite wall by the bed, narrowly missing Lenora. He didn’t try to fight me. Actually, he seemed rather amused. He even smiled at me. The same seductive smile that once made me weak in the knees now made me want to give him another bloody nose. No matter how fast it healed.

  “I played my part,” he said. “We had to give you a motive to come close enough for me to capture you after I returned to my coven. And I knew you wouldn’t be able to pass up the opportunity to kill me if you had the chance. Unfortunately for your ill intentions to harm me,” he said as he recovered and dared take a step closer to me, lowering his voice to little more than a whisper. “I got to you first.”

  12

  Maybe Lenora could sense that I was about to do something much more destructive. Or perhaps it was an instinct to keep her home intact after I put a large dent in her wall. But just as I was ready to attack Tobias once more, Lenora shot a ray of blue light right into my chest through a wand she was hiding tucked inside her long skirt.

  “Enough of that now,” she hollered.

  I tumbled to the floor clutching my chest.

  Luxra magic was much stronger than anything I could create with my own hands. My magic hurt when I was struck by it but not like this. This was like getting hit by a tidal wave of energy. One that ripped through my flesh and made my insides vibrate and my eardrums ring uncontrollably.

  “I know all of this must come as a shock to you,” she said. Or at least that’s what I thought she said. My ears were still ringing even though I could clearly watch her lips moving as she spoke. “But Tobias didn’t do it to harm you. He did it to save you. Gandira Corp has been kidnapping vampires for weeks. The president secretly caved to a plan his Attorney General devised with Gandira Corp in order to gather as many vampires as he can and discover our strengths and weaknesses. To see if our magic can be dissected and obtained. Victor came to Tobias weeks ago telling him that too many vampires were simply disappearing. But not because they were running away. They were being captured.”

  I threw my hair back behind my head and peered up a Tobias. He was watching me with curious eyes. Seeing if I was capable of listening through my blind rage.

  “Victor came to you?” I said, allowing every ounce of venom I had to come out of my voice. “So I was right. You were working with him all along.”

  “Yes,” he stated casually. As though it was the simplest answer and the most logical one. One that I should have seen coming.

  ‘I suspected it more than you realize.’

  More blue light pierced through the tip of Lenora’s wand. “Calm down,” she ordered me. I was in no state to disobey her. I could still feel the power of her magic from the first time she struck me. And I was still itching to send Tobias straight through her bedroom wall.

  “I just realized I was betrayed by this man not just once, but twice,” I fumed. “And you expect me to calm down? I let him manipulate me into making the biggest mistake of my life two centuries ago.”

  “And you will be making the second biggest if you do not listen here and now,” she spat.

  I hushed long enough for Tobias to start speaking. “I was enslaved by the vixra council because they thought they could regain control of vampires by either killing them or having them pledge loyalty to the vixra,” he said. “But what they did not realize was that vampires will only show loyalty to other vampires. We have a preference for our kind that cannot be thwarted. And the only other person who understands this about vampires is Edmund. He’s helped me maintain control over vampires and absorb them into my coven for over a century because he understands like I do, the benefit of keeping those strong enough to survive alive and thriving.”

  “Our kind?” I hissed. “I feel no loyalty to you. Or to any other vampire.”

  “Because your transition isn’t complete, G. Give it time,” he spoke softly as he edged closer to me. I stood and backed up against the wall with my arm stretched out, not wanting to let him get even an inch closer to me. The same red light the glowed from my body appeared on the tips of my fingers.

  The crowning magic. It hadn’t left me. Even after being turned into a vampire, it was still inside my body.

  ‘What in the world?’

  He rushed over to me so fast that I didn’t even see him move. He placed his hands over mine and touched the magic coming through my skin. “You’re the strongest woman I know,” he said. His voice was so endearing that I almost believed him. Almost. “And Edmund agreed with me. He knows better than anyone else that vampires can only be reasoned with by other vampires. We need a leader. Now more than ever. Our kind are being hunted. Mankind will one day know that we exist. Not just vampires, but witchlings as well. And when that happens we must be ready to fight. Edmund sees this danger. As do I. The only way to have vampires do the will of the vixra and aid witchlings in that fight is for the Catach-Brayin to be restored and led in a very specific way. One that doesn’t live under the restraints the vixra council want to place on it. So Edmund and I devised a plan. We needed to free my warriors from the Gandira Corp facility. And the only way to do that was for Victor to have a mental connection with you, created by a powerful luxra.”

  Lenora sighed as though she really wished he had kept that part to himself.

  ‘He knew all along that Victor was speaking into my mind?’

  “And we needed to restore the Catach-Brayin so we can fight back. If Gandira Corp had run more experiments, captured more vampires and witchlings, and if they are permitted to continue doing so, war will be upon us faster. And that, G, would be a disaster. We’re not ready. Neither are the vixra. But by rescuing the vampires they had and bringing the coven back together, we bought time. We can prepare properly. And we can rule the Catach-Brayin in such a way that will ensure our survival.”

  “We?” I asked.

  “Yes, we. Edmund gave you the gift of crowning magic. It was meant to kill you. To bring you to the edge of death but only long enough so a dozen or so of my warriors
could drink from you and gain day walking abilities. You died and became a vampire with the strongest blood in the known witchling world in your system. You’re now the most powerful vampire in existence. You still have vixra magic running through your veins. It won’t fade away like the droplets of blood do. It will be with you forever.”

  I shook my head, not understanding his whole meaning. I was used to betrayal. I was even used to people being two-faced and having to decipher what they really mean when they speak. But this level of treachery made rage build up inside me. And all I could think of was slaughtering Edmund Matthews.

  ‘To think I ever felt a reluctant loyalty to that man. To any of the vixra for that matter.’

  “You’re now a free woman. You no longer have a master. You no longer require food and water to survive. And you have your free will completely restored. You can thank me later.”

  “I didn’t want this,” I said. “Never this. This isn’t freedom.”

  “It’s the closest you’re ever going to get,” he snarled at me. “Because like it or not, I need you. And soon you’re going to need me too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His expression changed. It was no longer domineering or controlling. He was softer. Like he was trying to reach some part of me that hadn’t been completely hardened by centuries of magical bound slavery.

  “I need you to help me rule the Catach-Brayin. It’s the only way we’re going to be able to survive. Long ago you wanted your blood to mark me. You wanted to be my reason for living. You and I can serve a higher purpose than just each other. Rule with me. And we will do all in our power to stop the coming of a war between magical beings and humans. We will stop the bleeding before it starts. Or if we must go to war, we will win.”

  I sat in the middle of Lenora’s kitchen, watching her as she brewed a potion over her large stove with a cauldron that looked even older than I was. There were glass bottles lining the countertops filled with her luxra magic, along with other ingredients. A toad. A few butterflies. Spiders. What looked like a sort of dust with flickers of shiny material. A vial of blood. And most curious of all, a bottle filled with broken wands. I wasn’t sure what she would use that for in potion making but I couldn’t lie and claim it wasn’t intriguing.

  She turned around to check on me as I sat at her kitchen table with a heavy blanket wrapped around my body. Which didn’t make sense at all. My new state of being didn’t require blankets. I could walk through the Arctic without so much as a sweater.

  I watched her move about the kitchen until she turned around with a mug filled with warm blood she heated over the stove for me. I could already feel the freezing dryness curling at the back of my throat. Even with the rest of my body immune to high or low temperatures, the hunger inside lingered in the background like a piece of dry ice stuck to my throat.

  I can’t quite describe how soothing and equally sensational the blood felt as it dripped down the back of my throat. The stirring emotions inside my body came to a near halt and I was able to think clearly and my thirst slowly dissipated into nothing. But I knew it would be back. The craving would always be there.

  “Don’t be so sad,” she said to me, wiping her hands on the apron over her skirt. “Tobias will be back shortly. He has to do some damage control.”

  “Meaning he has to consort with an enemy.”

  “Victor may have been a brief adversary when he thought he lost control over Tobias,” she explained. “He certainly has a tendency to act irrationally. But that was only for a time. Saner heads prevailed and Tobias was able to talk him into trusting him again.”

  “I’ve fought Victor before. He’s tried to kill me in the past.”

  She shrugged her shoulders as though it was a normal occurrence and not something to actually be upset about. “Tobias and Victor have a rather tumultuous relationship.”

  “Relationship?”

  “Victor is Tobias’s maker,” she said. “He turned him into a vampire nearly a millennium ago.”

  The vision. The one I had of Victor tackling Tobias to the ground in the heavy fog of the woods in the Roman uniform when Tobias was nothing more than a mortal.

  “I know. I saw it,” I muttered. “I saw him tear into his neck. How could Tobias have any sort of relationship with a man who did that to him?”

  “Tobias sees the opportunity others can provide. There was once a time when Victor was the only opportunity for survival that Tobias had. He had no choice but to stay with him, follow him, and learn from him. The vixra hunted down vampires throughout Europe. Tobias and Victor survived and evaded the most powerful witchlings together. Victor was once the most feared and respected vampire in the western world. Tobias took that honor when he formed the Catach-Brayin. They have a sort of rivalry that has lasted a thousand years. They turn on one another than they reunite for a few decades. Such is expected I suppose with two such strong personalities who are eager to fight for what they want. Only in this century, Tobias holds all the cards and Victor has no choice but to follow. Even so, Victor usually gets his way.”

  “And you?” I asked her, still unsure of the woman who brought me into her home. She broke the curse that bound me to the vixra. But she did it for Tobias. Not my own well-being.

  “Who are you to him then?” I asked. “Do you and Tobias have some sort of relationship?”

  She grinned. “Long before my looks faded.” Her looks were hardly gone. She was graceful in her age. And something told me that she knew it. “Tobias is a friend of mine. Like everyone else, he sees having me in his life as an opportunity. And Tobias isn’t one to let an opportunity slide by. Whether it be a mutually beneficial one or a conquest. Lucky for me I turned out to be both.”

  I grimaced at her. “I guess I was one too then. A conquest. One that became inconvenient when I wanted my blood to mark him.”

  She sat down at the table as the cauldron’s contents behind her started to foam at the top, giving the room a sweet scent that I didn’t recognize.

  “He wouldn’t have turned you into a vampire if you were inconvenient. The vixra wouldn’t have let you live and made you a slave if you were inconvenient. They all see something in you. Tobias most of all.”

  “Something he can wield?”

  She shook her head. “No. Something he lost.”

  I stared at her. The magic inside my body coursed through my veins in a way I had never before experienced. Being a vampire made it more…potent. More tangible. It was her emotions. I could still sense them. There was sympathy inside of her. For me. And I didn’t know why. She didn’t know who I was until a matter of hours ago. Or did she?

  “You know,” I mumbled. “You know who I am.”

  “And the previous lives you’ve lived,” she answered. “Tobias told me a few details. I even met one of your descendants. To say there’s a resemblance would be an understatement.”

  “What you say can’t be true,” I said to her. “I’ve kept tabs on Tobias throughout the centuries. Mostly because the vixra told me to. And he was ready to stop. He was ready to lay down his sword and be marked by a kruxa so he didn’t have to live like this anymore. And now he’s forced it onto me.”

  She leaned in closer to me and crossed her arms in front of her. “Perhaps you gave him a new reason to fight.”

  I stared at her blankly.

  “Come on now,” she grinned. “You have a few past life memories. Maybe a vision or two showed you? Surely you must know that he would rather fight with you than without you. Perhaps he even knows your worth more so than you do.”

  I sighed and took another sip of the blood in my cup. The very thought that Tobias might value me on some level was laughable. At least to me.

  Lenora got up out of her chair and walked over to the cauldron on the stove. She daintily took a ladle and spooned some of the potion she had brewing into a brown mug. Then she tapped the mug with the wand to her side as I watched a pop of her blue luxra magic spill into the mixture.

&nb
sp; “That about does it,” she said, handing me the mug and taking the blood from my hand.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Something that will take the edge off. You’ve had a trying couple of days.”

  ‘More like a trying couple of centuries.’

  I tasted the potion and felt the strangest sensation roll through my throat and down into my limbs. It wasn’t calming, whatever it was. And it certainly didn’t take the edge off. It wasn’t until Lenora sat back down and I had swallowed a few more sips before I realized that she hadn’t poured herself a cup.

  “You’re not having any?” I asked, my suspicion mounting.

  “I’m afraid not. Sadly, I can’t help you with what comes next. That’s entirely up to you.”

  “What’s up to me?”

  “Deciding if this is the route you want to take.”

  “Route?” I asked her, setting down the mug and sensing there was more she wasn’t telling me. There was something in her eyes that was deceptive. Almost as if she was trying to tell me the truth with her eyes.

  I glanced down at the mug. The brown liquid started turning a bright shade of lavender. “What is this?” I asked her.

  “A rare form of tolepa potion. Only this one is more visual than physical.”

  Tolepa potions. I had seen them before but never brewed one myself. They were time-consuming, to say the least, but I knew what they did. They allowed a person to have an out-of-body experience. To be standing in a room far away without being seen. Or if the potion was strong enough, to give them an astral projection where they could be seen. Their presence was so tangible that they felt everything happening to them.

  “Don’t worry, dear,” she said to me in a soothing voice. “This version of the potion is meant to end the illusion. Not to start one.”

  I stood up from the table and bared my fangs at her. It wasn’t even intentional. It was simply a reaction. One I didn’t even know I could have.