Scorched

by Sharon Ashwood

  “Well, first of all, let me say these are equal opportunity talents. Any species can be either a wizard or a sorcerer, although natural ability does play a role.”

  “How do you mean, John?”

  “Some pupils are gifted, just the way some folks naturally take to playing the piano. But back to your original question, Errata. The big difference between wizardry and sorcery is that sorcerers rely on ritual and study. They’re all about the big books and summoning demons. Wizards specialize in the mix of magic and technology—y’know, data magic. We’ve blown open the world of online gaming.”

  “No summoning demons?”

  “Most of us live in apartments. There’s the damage deposit to consider.”

  Mac could have stopped Connie from running back to the Castle. Alessandro could have stopped her. Or so they told themselves. After one look at her face, they both saw there was no point in trying.

  Mac had heard that Turning ramped up a person’s natural aggression. That was expressing itself in Connie’s maternal instinct. Goodbye, milkmaid; hello, mama bear. He approved, even though his inner caveman was feeling a little more cautious.

  They took the T-Bird to the Castle, parking in front of the Empire Hotel. Connie was fascinated with the car, and even more fascinated with how fast it could go. Mac could see a small fortune in speeding tickets somewhere in her future. He was going to be keeping a close eye on the keys to his Mustang.

  Mac couldn’t dust and carry two people with him, so they went through the door in the conventional fashion, the hellhounds looking on curiously but obeying Caravelli’s order to let them pass.

  After coming and going so many times without a problem, they forgot to be watchful.

  “Patrol!” Connie whispered, her head whipping around.

  Mac grabbed her shoulders, his gaze following hers. The flash of torchlight on a patch of armor gave the guardsman away.

  “Go!” said Caravelli, leaping upward, clinging to the stones of the wall. Spider-swift, he crept upward, vanishing in the murk of darkness above.

  Creepy.

  Mac dusted, taking Connie with him.

  That was too close.

  As soon as he materialized in Connie’s secret room, adrenaline surged through Mac. He let Connie go, almost pushing her away as demon heat bathed his limbs with a blast of fright and anger. He felt the flush creep up his neck, hotter than ever before.

  The body-heat thing was getting out of control. Maybe he would have to start carrying one of those little batteryoperated fans. Bursting into a fireball would definitely be a showstopper.

  But not this show. Mac was a bit-player in this scene. The moment he released Connie, she flew across the room to Sylvius. Viktor got to his feet with a whuff.

  “You’re safe!” she said, falling on to the sofa beside her son.

  “Of course I am.” Sylvius stared at Connie, looking at her curiously. Then nodded slowly. “You’ve done it. You’ve changed. I wondered if you would.”

  “It was an accident.” The words came out sheepishly.

  “No, this was meant to be.”

  Viktor woofed again, this time turning to Mac and snuffling wetly at his jacket. The beast was enormous, as high as Mac’s chest, but something in him reminded him of his old black lab, although the lab didn’t smell as bad. He rubbed Viktor’s ears, anyway, earning a tail wag.

  The simple act calmed Mac’s demon. He felt his heart slowing, his skin returning to its usual temperature. The conversation on the sofa faded into the background.

  Mac missed his old dog. As if reading his thoughts, Viktor slurped his face.

  I don’t miss that part.

  There was a knock at the door. “Who is it?” Mac demanded.

  Viktor shuffled to the door, sniffing at the crack.

  “Caravelli.”

  Mac shoulder-checked the beast out of the way and let the vampire in, drawing back the heavy bolts that secured the thick door and giving the word that released the wards Lore had set.

  “What the hell is that?” Caravelli asked, glancing at Viktor as he stepped inside. The werebeast was doing some sort of a doggy dance, rising up on his back feet every few steps.

  “Viktor! Down!” Mac ordered.

  Viktor bounced happily, ignoring him.

  Mac gave a two-fingered whistle. Viktor froze. Mac pointed to the floor. Viktor lay down.

  “Good boy,” Mac said, patting the huge werebeast’s head. It felt vaguely ridiculous. There was a person inside there somewhere.

  “Now that we have the livestock under control,” Caravelli said dryly, “there are some things I need to discuss with Constance since she’s going to be away from her sire for the first time.”

  Viktor looked at the door and whined.

  “He wants a walk,” Sylvius said. “So do I.”

  Mac thought about the patrol and weighed the odds of any guardsmen showing up in this corner of the Castle, but Sylvius’s expression said he needed to talk. “Come on then,” Mac said. “We’ll leave them to Vampires 101.”

  He had no intention of going far. Viktor could probably hold his own or at least run away, but the kid didn’t look like a fighter. Plus, Connie would have his head if anything happened to her son.

  Sylvius sighed when they closed the door to the room behind them. Viktor loped ahead, shaking a cloud of hair from his ragged coat.

  “I can’t stay shut up in there forever.” Sylvius started walking, his head down. “I need freedom to fly.”

  “You could always leave. We’ll find a place for Viktor. You could talk Connie into going outside the Castle, and then you’d all be safe.”

  “She won’t go without me, will she?”

  “No.” Mac tried to keep the word neutral, not to lay the guilt on too thick. “This is all she knows. Everyone she loves is here. Including you. Especially you.”

  “Ah.” Sylvius stopped and turned to look at Mac. “I wish I could make it easier instead of harder.”

  They’d reached the junction with the next corridor, the limit of how far Mac intended to wander. The torchlight shone behind the incubus, showing the network of fine veins running through the skin of his wings. Mac studied him for a moment, taking in once more the long silver hair and black eyes. Behind all that strangeness was the face of a young man.

  He focused on that, wishing for common ground. “If you don’t leave, I’m not sure how else to help you.”

  Mac could make him leave. In fact, if Sylvius, Connie, and Viktor were still in the Castle by the time the council had met, he would be sorely tempted. But he didn’t want to force the issue quite yet. He wanted it to be their choice.

  Sylvius folded his arms, ducking his head. “If I’m what’s left of the Avatar, I can’t risk leaving. As I said before, what if I’m the last thing that’s keeping the Castle standing? What if I walk out, and it all turns to dust?”

  “I don’t believe that. It sounds crazy.”

  “Crazy is Atreus making my mother out of sunbeams and then killing her.”

  “Your mother died giving birth to you,” Mac said gently. “That’s not the same thing.”

  “Guilt has made Atreus go mad. That’s as good as a confession.”

  “Could the decline of the Castle be part of the reason he’s sick?”

  “No.” Anger thickened Sylvius’s voice. “Maybe. If it were just that, he’d never have confessed to you.” He fell against the wall, turning his face into the stone. There were tears in his voice. “There were others who needed her, not just him. She was the sun and rain. It wasn’t right for him to take her for himself. To make me. I shouldn’t even exist.”

  “Bull,” Mac said firmly, putting a hand on Sylvius’s shoulder. He expected the kid to be upset, but his anguished voice raised the hair on Mac’s neck. It wasn’t supernatural. It was the pure intensity of a teenager. “And don’t think you can restore the Avatar by dying. That’s a load of crap.”

  Sylvius shook his head slowly, his eyes fixed on t
he flagstones at his feet. “If I knew it to be a fact, I would cut my own throat and put things back the way they’re supposed to be. I’d save the guardsmen the trouble.”

  Mac saw the dilemma written on Sylvius’s face. Stay and risk death. Go and risk the death of everyone here. What the hell was he going to do with the kid? Sixteen was the age of school dances and hockey.

  “Mac?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ll figure this out, right?”

  Constance had always loved the Summer Room.

  There was just one problem.

  Nothing here dampened her appetites, and now she was suffering, the blood hunger gnawing her from the inside out. She tried to ignore it as irrelevant. Sylvius was protected here. In her sight.

  Constance paced, feeling the gauzy swish of Holly’s cotton skirt around her calves. She liked the freedom of the modern clothing, but felt sorely underdressed. Her old petticoat had more substance. And warmth. She was freezing cold.

  Her son was sprawled on the couch, reading a magazine. Viktor was asleep on his side, filling up the other side of the room. She was the only one suffering from nerves.

  For hours, she had talked with Sylvius, turning over the subjects of his birth mother and what that meant. She had understood the overwhelmed expression in Mac’s eyes as he kissed her and left with Alessandro to go call the council of Fairview’s supernatural leaders. She felt much the same way.

  She reached the end of her path and turned again, pacing back in the other direction. Anxiety tingled through her body to the point where she half expected to see sparks shooting from her skin.

  Oblivious, Sylvius turned a page. He wasn’t worried; he was convinced Mac would take care of everything. He didn’t have a mother’s imagination.

  She was beginning to think Mac was right. They should all just leave the Castle. She would endure the full force of the bloodlust if only Sylvius would be out of danger. If the Castle collapsed as a result of removing the Avatar’s son, she would be sorry, but her boy would still be safe. Whether it was right or wrong, he was her priority. She paused to watch her son reading, the perfect picture of sloth. For an illogical instant, she wanted to dump Sylvius off the couch, demand a reaction, and make him worry right along with her. She loved her son, but there were times when she could have throttled him. Some days, that incubus calm was too much.

  Let this be over soon. She turned, pacing back the other way, wishing she were less energetic. At this rate, she would never grow tired enough to settle. Would I have wanted this power if I knew how it felt? Supernatural strength was an uncomfortable blessing.

  Mac said he’d felt the same when he changed. What was it he’d said about Lore? And about Atreus? They’d told him he had a destiny, a mission? He has a destiny, but Lore told me that if I reached for my power, I risked destroying the good that destiny would bring.

  What did that mean? Were those two halves of the same prophecy? That she would somehow cancel Mac’s destiny out?

  What kind of a monster am I? Or am I reading too much into Lore’s words?

  The door blew open with the crrrrrash of splintering wood. A charred stink—a smell that mixed magic and gunpowder—brought tears to her eyes. Guardsmen!

  They’d used a wizard to help them past Lore’s wards. Viktor was on his feet in a second, and in the air a second after that. The wizard went down under a mass of snarling fur. Two guardsmen tried to beat the werebeast off, their swords almost useless against Viktor’s tough hide.

  A spear sailed through the air, landing with a thud in the back of a chair and knocking it to splinters against the stone wall. Glass and books flew as shards of wood spun through the room, a bowl exploding on the floor like a gunshot.

  Sylvius flew up toward the ceiling, following the instinct of all winged things to seek safety in height. Constance leaped, landing squarely in front of the guardsmen. She had no plan, just the dead certainty her place was between Sylvius and these men.

  “Hide!” Sylvius shouted to Constance, balancing on the top of a bookcase. “Look after yourself. I can fight!”

  “So can I!” she retorted. I have my powers now. “Where’s the wizard who ruined my door?”

  The wizard got to his feet and scrabbled from the room, wailing in terror. Viktor bounded after him, barking like this was all a delightful game. There was a wail of anguish a moment later. Viktor liked to play with his dolls.

  Connie felt the scream through her bones. One of the guardsmen was Bran. She didn’t know the names of the other three, but she recognized their faces. Reynard was nowhere in sight.

  “Where’s Captain Reynard?” she demanded.

  “He’s not one of us anymore, Mistress Vampire,” said Bran with false politeness. “Captain Reynard was a demonlover. He refused to use the incubus to save us, much less give us a little pleasure. The guardsmen had enough.”

  “Mutiny!”

  “Call it what you like. I’m in charge now, and we’re taking the incubus back.”

  “Like hell you are!” Sylvius shot back, grabbing a book from a high shelf and hurling it at the guardsmen. It struck one in the side of the head.

  “Get him!” Bran commanded.

  A red-haired guardsmen carried a heavy recurved bow. In one smooth move, he knocked an arrow and drew it.

  “No!” Constance threw herself forward, jumping to dash the thing from his hands. The arrow sang over her head, feathers whirring.

  She turned to see the arrow strike Sylvius in the side. He flared with silver light, trying to turn to dust, but the glow flickered and died in an instant.

  His wings crumpled, their angle awkward, wrong. He dropped to the floor.

  Fury blanked her mind. She grabbed the bowman, hurling him to the floor as if he were no more than a half-empty sack of oats. Her fangs were out, the stink of his fear putting an edge to her hunger, but he wasn’t what she wanted. The urge to protect was stronger.

  The others were converging on her son. She pushed away from the bowman and ran after them.

  Bran was bellowing orders. “Keep him separate from the others, especially the sorcerer. Put Atreus in the corner cell. Keep this one downstairs.”

  Enraged, Constance grabbed Bran’s tattooed arm, spinning him toward her. She swiped with her long, sharp nails, aiming for his eyes, but he jerked away. Long slashes sprang red on his cheek. He backhanded her. She barely staggered back. The look on his face made her give a sharp bark of laughter.

  “I’m not a little girl anymore!”

  Then he swiped his sword in a beheading blow.

  Oh!

  The only thing that saved her was diving behind the sofa. She heard the blade chop into it, then Bran cursing when the sword stuck in the old frame. He pulled it away with a splintering of wood.

  She was panting, still more angry than afraid. She looked around for something to use as a shield. Someone kicked the sofa, scraping it across the floor. She moved with it, still searching for something to counter the sword.

  “Leave her,” she heard Bran order. “She’s nothing. We got what we came for.”

  Nothing. The word stung as if Bran had finally gotten a slice of her flesh. She had to act. Get help. Anything but crouch there.

  How am I going to defeat four guardsmen? Bran, no less? It didn’t matter. She just had to. They couldn’t take Sylvius a second time, especially now that Reynard was overthrown. There was no one to keep them in check.

  She didn’t really know how to fight men with swords. She would have to improvise and hope for the best.

  Smoke from the spell clung to the floor, tickling her nose. She turned her head, looking under the sofa for their feet to see how close the guardsmen were. Holy Saint Bridget! One man wore modern lace-up sneakers—traded, no doubt, for one of Lore’s captive hounds. She sucked in her breath. It was one thing to be a prison guard. It was quite another to sell your charges for comfortable shoes. I’ll kick his backside clear to Kilkenny.

  She gave up on her hun
t for a shield and started working her way forward, crawling on elbows and knees, picking her exit point. She wanted enough room to get to her feet before she had to defend herself.

  They moved away, the clank of their armor a soft percussion under the rumble of their voices. She couldn’t hear Sylvius. That silence was worse than a cry of pain. Bloody hell.

  Now that they’d moved, there was more space to maneuver. Crawling from behind the far end of the sofa, she kept low to the ground and out of sight. Frantically, she tried to make a plan. If she whistled for Viktor, would he come? Could she attack Bran from behind? Surprise him with a single swift snap of the neck?

  She gathered herself and peered over the arm of the sofa at an empty room.

  They were gone.

  Sylvius was gone. She was too late. Her throat burned with the urge to scream. How could this happen? I let them get away!

  She clutched the arm of the sofa like it was the last solid thing in her world. She cursed herself for letting Sylvius stay in the Castle. I should have made him go. It doesn’t matter what he thinks will happen if he leaves this place. To hell with it.

  The doorway gaped like an empty eye socket. The room was a shambles. Her room. The place where she and Mac had made love.

  A horrible thought hit her.

  She sprang to her feet, half flying to the bed. It was largely untouched, but her heart thumped wildly, frightened into life, until she reached beneath the mattress and found her secret treasure.

  The key.

  It was safe. She’d not had the courage to use it before. She’d not had the courage to face the world outside the Castle door by herself. She was going to have to do it now.

  A plan flowed together in seconds. Mac was meeting with the council. They needed to know what had just happened. She needed to convince them to help. She needed to bring back enough people to defeat the immortal Castle guards.

  But that meant she would have to search for Mac on the streets of Fairview, alone with her hunger. The very idea of it filled her with nauseated terror, but fear was something she could overpower. Now she had faced her vampire side. She knew what to expect, and it wouldn’t trip her up again. She would be stronger this time.