by SA Magnusson
The moment we headed down, we would draw attention from the vampires. “We need to be ready when we head down there.”
Darvish nodded and wrapped himself within a spell.
It was strange going into battle with anyone other than Aron. Ever since learning of my magic and gaining control over it, he had been the one who had worked with me, fighting alongside me. Having him with me had left me feeling more confident about what I could withstand. Darvish was extremely capable, and probably equally powerful, but there was something different about going with him than there was going with Aron.
Aron had protected me. Maybe not so much with his magic—I had been responsible for protecting him as often as he had been responsible for protecting me—but he had kept my present existence from the council, keeping me safe.
I doubted Darvish would exercise the same restraint if it came down to it. If necessary, I worried he would betray me. Right now we had a relationship of convenience, nothing more, but would that last if he suddenly decided I was a means to a greater end for him and the Dark Council?
Energy sizzled around the stair entrance, a spell that still lingered.
“Can you detect anything about the spell?” I asked him.
“Other than it exists?”
“I’m worried that there might be something dangerous placed around here,” I said.
“I’m willing to power through it, but I want to know up front if I am going to trigger some sort of—”
What could I trigger? Maybe an explosion. Maybe something else, something worse, but I didn’t really know.
Letting magic build, I changed my mind and instead jabbed forward with my magical sword. When the blade touched the surrounding energy from the spell around the doorway, there was a brief explosion. Then the magic dissipated.
“That was almost too easy,” I whispered.
“Only for you. I don’t know that I would have been able to manage quite as well.”
Darvish started down the stairs. Magic built from him as he went, light cast from either hand. He sent that light surging forward, circles that floated down the staircase, illuminating everything.
“That’s one way to let them know we’re here,” I said.
“They will already have known. The moment you disrupted their spell, you alerted them of your presence—and the fact that you are far more powerful than them.”
I raced down the staircase after him, and when we reached the bottom, he pushed the glowing orbs off to either side, sending them surging away from him. Light glowed down the hallway.
There was only a single door at the end.
If there was anything more, it would have been hidden. I raised my sword, looking for signs of vampires or rune mages that might be masked, and sent a brief surge of magic through it, trying to determine if we had anyone else here who we would have to confront.
I saw nothing.
I couldn’t believe they would have abandoned this space so easily.
And yet, the sense of power I detected came from here and on this level. I was certain of it, even if I wasn’t able to tell exactly where it came from.
“The door,” I said.
Darvish created a spell that flowed over the door. He held his hand in place, almost as if trying to feel for whatever magic might exist. “There’s another spell here,” he said.
“Do you think I need to sword my way through it?”
“Does it take much strength on your behalf?”
“Not as much as I would have expected,” I said.
“It might be best if you do use that particular talent of yours.”
I jabbed at the door. When the tip of the sword touched it, the door itself began to sizzle. There was a burst, a brief explosion of magic, and then that faded. The door began to crackle for only a moment, and then it dissipated.
Darvish stretched his hand out, running it over the surface of the door again before withdrawing it. “It’s gone.”
He reached for the door and when he pulled on it, power exploded.
I reached for him, but I was too late. The spell threw him back and he went flying, slamming into the opposite wall.
I wrapped myself in a barrier and was almost too late. A series of attacks slammed out from the open doorway, raining down on me. I focused on thickening the barrier, keeping it as stout as I could.
“Darvish!”
He didn’t move.
We should’ve brought more than just the two of us.
Whoever was inside the room on the other side of this door had power. Either that or they were accessing and drawing upon the magic within the mages, using runes to force them to serve on their behalf.
How long would I be able to hold onto my barrier?
I could already feel it beginning to weaken. I needed to grab Darvish and drag him back out if we were going to get away from here. We could return, but if we did, it might be too late. We might miss our opportunity to rescue whoever was here. Including Barden.
I backed up and nudged Darvish. He moaned and rolled over, blinking. Magic built from him and he crawled to his knees, looking up at me.
“That was interesting,” he said.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m not a weak mage, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That wasn’t the question at all. I’m asking if you are going to be okay.”
“I have the ability to restore myself. It will take some energy from me, but…”
“We need to retreat,” I said.
He shook his head, staring toward the open doorway. “If Barden is trapped inside, we cannot retreat.”
“I’m not sure we’ll be able to survive if they continue this assault. I’m barely able to hang on to my barrier the way it is.”
“You push forward and I will attack through the barrier.”
“Are you sure?”
Darvish clenched his jaw. He nodded.
It was probably a terrible idea, but I didn’t want to leave any more than he did. I pushed my barrier into the doorway, resisting the assault of magic, resisting the assault of magic still slamming into me. It hadn’t abated all, telling me that either there were multiple mages or there were multiple people in there using these magic wands and whatever runes they possessed.
Magic burst from Darvish, flowing out from him, and it exploded into the room. Red light sizzled and energy crackled. It reminded me of the blue electricity I’d seen from Aron and my grandparents, but this had an angrier appearance. It traced along the ground and where it touched someone, it exploded in a loud crackle that managed to make it through my barrier.
The assault on me began to ease.
“How many of those spells do you have in you?”
Darvish glanced over. Another spell built and he pressed his hands to the ground. That same red electricity streaked out, shooting throughout the room. It was an enormous room, much larger than I had expected, and seemed to be a massive cavern.
Without any way to light it up, I wouldn’t be able to tell just how large it was. I didn’t dare risk changing the focus of my magic away from the barrier.
“I know there is a limit to how many times you can use that sort of energy spell. What’s yours?”
“Maybe one or two more,” Darvish said.
If he could squeeze out even two more, that suggested to me that he was as powerful as Aron. He had been able to use the electricity spell three times before his energy was sapped, though maybe it was a different sort of spell.
How had the mage council ever managed to suppress the Dark Council, especially if they had mages as powerful as Darvish and Barden among them?
The assault continued to ease off, no longer quite as intense as it had been. Darvish slammed his hands down one more time, and electricity crashed out from him. It snapped, four or five more times, and he settled back on his heels, letting out a heavy breath.
“I think I can use it at least once more,” he said.
“Don’t,” I said.
<
br /> “Are you sure?”
“We might need your strength later, and I don’t want you to waste all the energy you have on this.” There were only a few attacks striking me now, nothing like there had been.
I relaxed my effort on the barrier and once again summoned the sword. As light bloomed off it, it spread throughout the room. My breath caught.
The room was enormous, much as I had suspected, but that wasn’t why my breath caught. Rows upon rows of beds filled the room. Men and women, all haggard and thin, lay on those beds.
“Are they bleeding them out?” I asked.
“Vampires have not attacked mankind like this in centuries. They have enough familiars who offer themselves willingly, so there is no need.”
And if it wasn’t victims, food, then it was something else.
And that something was much worse.
Mages.
I hurried to one of the nearest beds, ignoring the soft tap of an attack upon my barrier. I couldn’t see the attacker and could only feel the effects of it as it tried to strike me.
It was an older man, haggard, and he lay staring up at the ceiling, his eyes glassy. I pulled back the blanket covering him. A dozen markings were burned into his flesh, tattoos on his arms and stomach.
I could scarcely believe what I was seeing.
“Are those runes?” Darvish asked.
I nodded. “These are the mages.”
There had to be nearly one hundred people in this room. A hundred mages, all with power drained out of them, feeding off them no differently than vampires once had fed off mankind.
Magic began to build from Darvish.
I tapped him on the arm. “Not yet.”
“Dr. Michaels, I will find Barden.“
“I’m not saying we won’t end this. We will rescue these people. But we need to do so systematically. And we need to make sure that we do so in a way that’s safe.” I had thought that there would be some way for me to remove the runes and prevent the familiars from attacking, but I wasn’t sure that there would be. Then again, I hadn’t expected nearly so many people.
“I know this man. We thought the mage council had burned off his magic,” Darvish said, looking down at the bed. He looked up at me, a dangerous anger seething within him. “And this one,” he said, motioning to the cot next to us. “She was lost ten years ago. Ten! How could they have done this?”
“The vampires?”
He clenched his jaw. “The vampires, I understand. They have always leeched off others. That is their power, but this is something else. The council should not have allowed this to have taken place. How could they have allowed it?” His voice began to rise and power filled him.
Shapes began to flicker around us.
Vampires.
They must’ve been alerted by their familiars.
There were dozens of flickering shapes, far more than I would be able to control on my own. I wrapped us in a barrier, prepared to shield us, but Darvish roared.
“This is what they’ve done to Barden?”
I tapped him on the arm again. “Darvish. Calm yourself. We need to come up with a plan for getting out of here and then we can recover them.”
Maybe the shifters would help. If they knew what the vampires were doing, they might view this differently. If they understood that they were draining mages, it was possible the shifters would view it as a violation of the treaty.
The treaty.
Could that be how we would get through this?
“Take a deep breath, Darvish,” I said. “I have an idea of what we can do.”
“What we can do is carve through all of these damned bloodsuckers. They are nothing but parasites, leeching off the power of others. They don’t deserve to live.”
“I think technically they are undead,” I said.
Now wasn’t the time for jokes, and I should have been more careful, especially given how angry Darvish was. At the same time, maybe a little levity would help him relax.
Darvish roared again.
“We don’t have the strength to fight all of them,” I said. “And we don’t need to. We can use the resources we already have. We need to take advantage of that.” And we didn’t have enough strength to fight them all. Darvish might not see it, but I did. There were too many vampires here. As much as I agreed with him that what the vampires were doing disgusted me, there simply wasn’t anything that we could do.
Darvish roared once more.
I couldn’t count on him helping. He wasn’t in the right frame of mind. And I couldn’t even blame him for that. Were it people that I considered mine, wouldn’t I do the same thing?
I had to find compassion. I had to use intellect rather than anger. I had to find that part of me that recognized that there was a greater need than my own vengeance.
Aron deserved better.
I raised my sword, letting power flow out of it. It spilled out of me, away from me, and energy crackled within the room. “Siren family,” I said, raising my voice. “I come to you on behalf of the mage council. You are in violation of the treaty forged between the shifters and the council and the vampire families.”
I wasn’t sure if this would even work, but if it did, it might allow us to avoid fighting.
One of the vampires flickered.
When he stopped before me, he was an incredibly handsome older man. Dark hair was slicked back, peppered with gray, and he was dressed in a suit that would have been much more at home in an office rather than standing among these rows of cots.
“You would claim to speak on behalf of the council?” he said.
“You violate the treaty,” I said.
“These mages are not protected by the treaty.”
“Because you believe them a part of the Dark Council?”
“That was the agreement. We would remove their threat for them. The council approved of this.”
That confirmed my suspicions. The council—at least part of it—knew of this.
“They didn’t approve of this.” Anger boiled within me, and it poured out of my sword. “The mage council and the Dark Council have agreed to peace. That peace would extend to the treaty between the other magical races.”
The man studied me for a moment, and then he flickered again, lunging toward me.
I jerked back, not meaning to and wishing that I didn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. He had startled me with the suddenness of it.
“There is a different agreement,” he said, “and you are responsible for it failing.”
“Me?”
“I recognize you,” he said, studying me as if I were some prize. “You should not have involved yourself in my family’s business. Had you not, the archer would still be alive. I could not have you sharing with the rest of the council…”
He knew they had killed Aron.
Worse, he was responsible for Aron’s death.
A dozen vampires suddenly flickered into existence near us. All of them created pressure on my barrier.
Power began to assault me again.
The older vampire simply stood off to the side, watching.
18
As the assault continued pounding my shielding, I clung to the barrier. There were limits to what I could do, and I was near them.
“Do you have any way of getting out of here?” I asked Darvish.
He didn’t take his gaze off the older vampire. He glared at him, and magic surged within him, crackling off him. If I didn’t do something—anything—it was possible that Barden would unleash a torrent of magic, but I doubted that it would be enough to make a difference.
It would be up to me.
I glanced over my shoulder. The door was blocked by several familiars, each of them holding onto a magic wand.
Damn.
I could fight our way out of here, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to fight while holding onto my barrier.
Power continued to slam into me, a constant assault.
The elder vampire simply watched,
almost as if amused by my struggle.
Was there some way of transporting myself?
When we drove, I could use that transport to carry me from one place to the next, but I never tried doing it without being in a vehicle.
I grabbed Darvish, focusing on Ariel, outside of the compound. We needed the shifter’s help. Regardless of what the vampires claimed and regardless of what the shifters believed, they were in violation of the peace accords.
As I focused, there was a narrowing, pressure building around me, squeezing me, and I continued to hold onto it, praying that it would work. Pain built, but I ignored it, forcing our way forward, allowing myself to be transported. It happened agonizingly slowly, and I fortified the barrier around me to maintain the connection.
And then we stood outside the compound, the van near us.
I released Darvish who looked around.
“How?”
“It doesn’t matter. We need to call the shifters.”
“But Barden—”
I turned toward him, not nearly as strong as I’d need to be for what we dealt with. “Barden is one of many mages we need to rescue before we take any other action.” And then it would be a different discussion. A dangerous one. Would I be ready to confront the council?
Could I not?
A dark shape blurred up near me and Ariel shifted, appearing nude next to me.
“They are using dark mages. There are a hundred of them, all of them trapped,” I said to her.
“That doesn’t change anything,” she said.
“But it does. If they are using mages the council has agreed to terms with, they are violating the peace accords. The treaty has failed. The shifters can help.”
“Dr. Michaels—”
“Don’t. I need your help.”
“I can’t get involved. This is vampire business.”
“But it’s not vampire business. If they will do this to dark mages, and if they’re willing to violate the treaty in this way, what happens if they come after shifters?”
“They wouldn’t have enough strength to come after shifters,” she growled.
