by Sierra Cross
But Tenebris didn’t look the least bit worried. The Caedis and his merry band backed up and headed in the other direction. He had to be enhancing their speed with his magic, because with a whoosh they retreated out of the common area and were heading down the hallway in the other direction.
The vamps followed in their wake. I tried to keep up, but my human anatomy wouldn’t let me.
I hit the button on my walkie. “Daria, what’s in that direction? Where are they going?”
“Hold on,” Daria’s voice crackled. “Maintenance stairwell. Only leads two places—down to the seventh floor or out onto the sky patio.”
“What’s a sky patio?”
“Just a giant deck carved into the side of the mountain,” she told me. “It’s warded so passing boats can’t see it. They throw parties out there.”
Sky patio or level seven. Whichever direction he was leading them, we couldn’t let him get there. He was running on borrowed power. And the witches couldn’t keep feeding him and keep their barrier up.
“Six minutes, people,” Daria said. “Alix, they’re heading up to the patio.”
I ran up the stairs as fast as I could.
Carved into the side of the mountain, the sky patio was elegant in its simplicity. It looked more like a trendy downtown Seattle restaurant than a Fidei facility. There must have been a hundred tables with comfy chairs and blood red umbrellas. Huge potted plants lined the metal railing.By the time I got there, the vampires were already engaged in battle.
The witches had re-established their ring around Tenebris and the doctor. Three of the witches were feeding the Caedis more power, but in doing so I could see them weakening.
Had I been wrong about Tenebris having a plan? Was a group suicide off the railing their next move?
“Five minutes.” Daria’s voice was more tense with every update.
The vampires were changing up their attack. Bonaventura and Hamner tried to parkour over the top of the barrier. But the witches were countering, sending red firebolts into their bodies as the vampires sailed up.
Wes and the other two vamps charged forward next. At the last minute, Bonaventura’s son dropped low. While the witches were expecting another high attack, he slid forward, legs first taking down two witches in the front. The red barrier thinned and a gap was threatening to form. Paige, to the right of the two witches who fell, yelled and sent a bolt into them. Shoving them forward so she could close ranks.
Her blast killed the smaller of the two witches on impact. The other looked like she’d been scrubbed by a magical loofah. Red scales of magic sloughed off her skin. A confused expression crossed her face. As she glanced around the room, her expression turned to horror.
Had Tenebris’s hold been knocked off her?
“Help me.” The young woman began to crawl on her hands and knees out of the circle. “I don’t want to go with them. Oh god, help me!”
Before I could figure out how to do so, Paige hurled another savage blast into the young woman’s back. The light in her eyes went dim. Her body contorted in pain, and then went utterly still.
The red barrier was whole again. Stronger than before. The witches had altered their stance, some going high and some going low. The vampires were not penetrating it at all.
Tenebris laughed, deep and booming. It sailed above the sound of the sizzling barrier and just plain pissed me off.
Well, if we couldn’t physically get through their defenses, maybe I’d try another way. I took a step back from the fray and closed my eyes. In an instant I could see the braid of sound-threads. I isolated Tenebris’s energy and followed it. The moment I connected, I could sense he was much weaker than he was letting on.
I slid right into his thoughts.
A translucent beach started to form before me. I could feel Tenebris trying to steer the vision, as he always had with me. But I wiped away the sand and surf he’d built with just a snippet of a thought.
Then, with another thought, I built a construct of my own. It was a landscape I’d studied in painstaking detail. A scientific lab, one that was also a prison.
I looked at him through the thick metal and lodestone bars. This time he was behind them.
His wrists were cuffed, and he was on his knees.
I knew it was a construct, but damn I liked it.
The walkie crackled. “Four minutes. You guys need to be on your way now or you won’t make it.”
I was fully in this illusion, but I was also on the sky patio. Without breaking the construct, I picked up my walkie. “Matt, Liv. You’ve done what you could. Time to head out.”
“We can save more.” Matt was insistent.
“Yeah, we’ll go when you go,” Liv added.
“Fine,” I said. I wasn’t Bonaventura. I didn’t bark orders. I couldn’t force my coven to put their own safety ahead of others’. But at that moment, I wished I could.
“Alix, I knew you had a kinky side.” Tenebris jumped to his feet and threw himself playfully against the metal bars like a caged tiger. A maniacal grin spread across his face. I felt his mind pushing against my construct, but I slammed back harder. His body bounced off the metal bars and he landed back on his knees. “Did that turn you on, little witch?”
Rage was thundering in my ears. A rhythmic thwump, thwump, thwump. Turn me on? “Little witch?” Even as weak as he was, Tenebris’ gross arrogance knew no bounds.
But he was weak, and this was my moment. To end him.
“Three minutes.” Daria was on the verge of tears. “Come on, guys. I’m leaving.”
No way I could make it back out of the building in three minutes.
Well, if I was going down, might as well make it worth it.
From his constructed cell, Tenebris’s leering eyes followed me. “Maybe it’s not too late for us, Alix. How about a kiss?”
“Sure, I’ll kiss you.”
Back in the sky patio, I reached down and pulled my karambit from my boot. The blade shone. “With this.”
Bam! A brilliant green light exploded before me. The lab construct disintegrated. I was vaguely aware of chairs and tables and pretty red patio umbrellas and planters, and yes, vampires flying through the air. The railing smashed apart, tumbling down the cliffside. My blade fell from my grip as I slid twenty feet across the smooth stone and slammed into the face of the mountain, feeling like I was in Dorothy’s tornado.
Except this wasn’t tornado country. Tenebris had hurled an enormous blast of Caedis magic at us.
But how? And why?
Disoriented, I looked up to see a huge, nearly silent helicopter landing on the sky patio. The witches—those who had survived—were helping Tenebris into its cabin. Clutching her aluminum case, Dr. Jones climbed aboard after them. A red barrier bloomed around the whole aircraft. It rose as the vampires struggled to their feet.
Ambrose leveled his rifle and fired directly at the helicopter. The bullets bounced off and ricocheted back at us.
“Fuck! Two minutes.” Daria sounded panicked. “I’m really leaving now.”
An alarm began blaring.
Moving too fast for me to see in focus, Ambrose ran right at me. I felt myself being scooped up and slung onto his back. My eyes couldn’t really focus at this speed but I knew we were speeding down the stairs. I fumbled with the walkie. “Liv and Matt. You better be outside. If you’re not I’m going to kill you.” Tears were leaking from my eyes and being blown off my cheeks as we careened downward at an inhuman pace.
The alarm was screaming on every floor of the stairwell.
We reached the first floor and plowed through the door just as the world exploded. The ground shook, slamming my body upward. As I flew through the air I could see a couple dozen blurs of orange lycra disappearing into the jungle. The prisoners. Trailing them was Matt’s hulking body and Liv’s shock of blonde hair.
At least they’d gotten out, thank god.
Fire bloomed behind me, and my body—along with those of the vampires—was slammed
forward, again and again. Each time, the sound deafened me. Metal and rock and shrapnel split apart into the air like stars in the heavens and then morphed into projectiles flying in the direction of the survivors.
I lay on the ground until the ringing in my ears subsided, allowing me to hear again. And, closest to me, what I heard was weeping and moaning. From injuries. Or loss of friends. Or shock.
Meanwhile, the whole center of the mountain had gone up in a ball of fire, and the fire had a roar all of its own. Flames licked at the face of the mountain and the ground rumbled. Was the whole thing going to collapse?
“Everybody to the beach!” I yelled. “Matt, take point. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Aided by the vampires, who carried the worst injured, our hobbled mass of humanity thudded through the jungle. Trampling leaves. Stumbling at every obstacle. I begged and pleaded for people to pick up the pace, to keep on moving. Finally we made our way back to the speedboats.
In the moon’s glow, as the vampires tried to make order out of chaos, I struggled to get a headcount of the people piling unsteadily into the boats. The number was nineteen. Liv and Matt only had time to rescue a minority of the prisoners. How many more had we lost? A deep sadness welled up in my soul for the lives that had been snuffed out.
I noticed a dark lump in the sand. Moving closer, I saw a tangle of long matted red hair. A young girl had collapsed on the beach. “Hey, let me help you up.” Leaning down, I put my hands on her small shoulders. She yelped, her orange eyes flashing with terror. An Omni child. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.” She looked at my face and her terror was replaced by exhaustion. She practically melted back onto the sand. “I’m gonna lift you up, okay?” I put my arms under her and picked her up. Her body weighed next to nothing.
“You saved us.” Her quiet voice was high and childlike. “Just like Kavon would’ve.”
“You know Kavon?”
She nodded and dropped her head on my shoulder. Was she even ten years old?
My sadness turned to rage.
Monsters.
And I’d let them slip through my fingers.
Tenebris had been toying with me. Though I’d seen the Wellspring witches feeding him power, he played up his weakness to me—and I fell for it. He let me think I’d bested him with the Dominon Gene. He let me feel powerful for a moment. Triumphant. When all along, he’d just been killing time while he waited for the transport copter.
I knew from everything Larch had taught me, the combination of Fidei technology and demon power would make Tenebris’s crew impossible to track.
They were truly gone.
Chapter Nineteen
Candlelight flickered on the walls of the backroom in Pillar’s shop. Asher had brought Callie here, keeping her in a magically induced sleep until we arrived. The old witch’s herbs had helped Asher recoup some strength. Though a bit grey-faced, he was moving with ease.
All four of us—Matt, Liv, Asher, and I—were truly the walking wounded. But at least we were walking.
Callie lay on a cot, her breathing a shallow pant. Her eyes fluttered like she was fighting against the imposed sedation. With the Splinter sedated, I could feel Callie’s magic—pure and light and alive—in our coven bond. I could feel us all. The power sung in my veins.
It had been a long time since my whole coven was together all in one room.
Pillar pressed her fingers to Callie’s temple and shook her head. “So much pain. So much suffering. I feel it in her...but I also feel her hope.” Taking a long black taper from one of the candlesticks, Pillar pinched out the flame and cupped the smoke in her spotted hand. “I believe that hope is what has kept her soul alive all this time. Though her body had become a hell with a demon inside it, her faith in you, her coven, never wavered.”
“Well, I’d have been doomed for sure, then,” Asher muttered.
Matt glared at him. “Thanks a lot?”
“What? I don’t claim to have Callie’s sunny disposition,” he said. “Face it, if I got taken over by a Splinter who tortured my friends while I was forced to watch it all...I’d lose my inner positivity pretty fast, yeah.”
“Well, when you put it that way…” Matt relented with a shrug.
“Just about anyone would have lost hope,” I said.
“Anyone but Callie.” Liv looked fondly at our sister.
As Pillar walked the length of the cot, the smoke morphed into a fog and wrapped our coven sister in an amorphous cocoon. Rather than being flush up against Callie’s body, the smoke revealed another form entirely. Knobby sharp brow, twisted hunched back, and up and down the legs and arms were scaly pointed growths—like barnacles—attached to her. The smoke was revealing the true form of the Splinter—a monstrous, hideous beast. Our poor Callie. “There are no guarantees that this will work. I’ve seen it attempted but never succeed.” She stood up and looked at each one of us in turn. “But either way, it will end this pain.”
There was no choice to be made. We’d brought Callie to Pillar’s to save her, and one way or another we would.
“Sure as shit we’re not leaving her like this,” Liv said it for all of us.
“We will try to ease them apart,” Pillar instructed. “Keep your energy even and paced. Sense when it’s too great and pull back.”
She guided us every step of the way, gave us the words, told us how to pool our energy, chanted along with us—though moral support was all she could give. Only coven energy could affect her, pull on the power inside Callie to force the invader out.
The sun sunk below the horizon.
“Keep chanting,” Pillar commanded us.
Several times along the way the Splinter shook with such force we had to hold Callie’s body down on the cot to keep it from tumbling onto the floor. Callie’s eyelids fluttered. I saw the depths of their bright blue for an instant and then they clouded with green. Her breath came in short puffs. The Splinter. It was fighting against the spell we were throwing. Callie’s flesh stretched and pulled, and she cried out from her unconscious state. But the Splinter just settled back into place within our coven sister’s body. The two beings were so intertwined, it felt like as we pulled one the other had to come with it.
Callie’s breathing was barely audible. The rise and fall of her chest no longer noticeable. Her body had been through so much, and each cycle of the spell taxed her more.
“It is time to end this,” Pillar whispered in a low reverent tone. “There can be no measured energy now. Pull with all your might into it.”
“Callie, come back to us,” Liv was pleading, tears streaming down her face.
I took Callie’s hand, her flesh soft and cold against my fingers, and I said my silent goodbye to her—little sister, friend, piece of my heart. Liv swallowed a sob. Asher sniffed. Matt squeezed my elbow. God, I loved her so much. And you do the hard thing for the ones you love.
Our chant was hoarse with tears we were trying to hold at bay. It grew louder and louder as our magic filled the room. Our magic swelled and landed with the force of a dozen blows crashing into the Callie-Splinter body. Her limbs flew up and her body flinched as if absorbing a punch. A metallic howl rung out assaulting my ears. And still, we chanted. Callie’s limbs convulsed, head whipping, her whole body twitching too fast to be captured by the human eye. The howl became a moan and then a low keening. With a pwoof of air escaping, there was silence.
Callie’s face was as white as a sheet. A thick green-black ooze was leaking from her eyes, ears, nose—from everywhere. So much it seemed to defy the laws of physics that her body could have held it all. It was over.
And then Callie sucked in a gurgled breath and started choking.
Matt dropped to her side and rolled her over, patting her back. Asher threw a golden swirl of magic to pull the goo from her lungs. Liv fell to her knees and sobbed Callie’s name over and over. And I just stood, watching in disbelief.
Pillar sat her up on the side of the cot and checked her pulses.
; “Hey,” Callie said in her soft southern lilt. “You guys look awful.”
A laugh tickled its way out of my mouth, and once it started, I couldn’t stop. I grabbed Callie and crushed her to me. The rest of the coven piled on to our crush hug and we laugh-cried until Callie yelled, “Love you guys. But I can’t breathe.”
Our little sister had done the unthinkable. She had survived.
Ten o’clock the next morning found me lounging on a poolside chaise longue at the Hotel Hacienda Flamingos. A young boy splashed in the shallow end of the pool, watched by his straw-hatted grandmother. A pair of young, Eastern European tourists were sharing a torrid kiss in the deep end. The innocent scenes in front of me calmed my weary soul. I relaxed onto my back, letting the yellow sun warm my bare limbs—I’d bought a bikini in the gift shop, along with a bottle of SPF 50. I was beginning to doze off in my chaise when I sensed a familiar coppery presence.
“Director?” I pushed up my sunglasses and sat up to see Bonaventura perched at the poolside table next to me.
“Miss Hill, I wanted to tell you something.” He paused. “You are a terrible coven leader.”
My face fell. “Really?” I didn’t know what I’d expected, but not this personal attack “You came all the way out here just to ruin my—”
“But, your coven thinks the world of you,” he finished as if I hadn’t spoken. “They would disagree with all my views on leadership. They would fight for you. Hell, they’ve proved they’d go to the ends of the Earth for you, as I would do only for my own blood. And ultimately...” He sighed. “Their opinion of you is what makes you a good leader.”
My head was swimming. “So I’m a good leader now?”
“No, you are terrible,” he said quickly. “Reckless and impulsive to a fault. Rely on your people to an unseemly degree. Couldn’t give a credible order to save your life—your coven is run like some kind of a...democracy.” He shuddered.
