by Anya Breton
“It’s all right,” the male said. “You won’t remember it.”
I edged away, but his fingers dug into my wrist. My body responded with a powerful shudder. I’d once been at a vampire’s mercy. I couldn’t let that happen again.
He slid his hand up my arm to the hem of my borrowed polo shirt. I stiffened. He really did intend to take off my shirt! What if I’d been a helpless human? Nyx’s knickers! Vampires were the worst sort.
A startling surge of energy bubbled against my consciousness. I concentrated on the aether until I narrowed the origin down to the redhead—a Fire witch. Of course. Fire witches were often hot under the collar. They were certainly the most aggressive of the schools.
Should I give her a silent warning that I wasn’t as helpless as I seemed? What did she intend to do with her power? If it were only a fireball to the vampire’s head, I’d be foolish to interfere.
“Get away from her,” the Fire witch said in a delivery that matched the fury kindling in her eyes. “She’s innocent.”
“We’re all innocent,” the vampire said.
“You aren’t. Send her away.”
“Or what?” He sneered at her, and then shot across the space too fast to follow. The result was his arm snaked around the Fire witch’s throat. The other slipped into her towel’s part. His invasive intent was plain for all to see. Whispering in her ear as a lover might, the vampire said, “You can’t hurt me.”
The Fire witch’s breath hitched. A spike of power surged through her but fizzled back into the aether. It was as if she’d attempted to hurt him but failed. The vampire let out a soft, mocking laugh before pressing a kiss beneath her ear. She shuddered, revulsion contorting her features.
And then he was in front of me, tugging at my shirt with more determination than before. The Fire witch’s chin lifted defiantly. She glowered as energy continued to fill her. Worry built in the pit of my stomach for what she’d do with all that magic. If the vampire thought he was safe from the Fire witch, it must mean he’d enthralled her. Facts lined up in my mind.
I was in Las Vegas. The male’s accent held an obvious foreign lilt. His toffee skin and features could presumably be Persian.
Oh, Zeus. This was Nadir Khan!
No wonder he lacked an Earth witch. Dea Woods had returned home with her Guardian.
But my mother wouldn’t have brought me here simply to meet the culprit. Something big would go down somewhere. I still had to stop a witch from abusing their power.
My attention shifted to the redhead beyond Nadir’s shoulder. If she couldn’t hurt her vampire master, could she hurt herself? And if so, would she take us all out in her desperate quest to stop the leech? The steady influx of Fire energy pouring through the room implied she would.
The Fire witch shook from the abundance of magic—magic her body dearly tried to contain. Orange flame engulfed her eyes from within.
I was too late.
Years of mopping up supernatural messes had made my magical reflexes nearly as fast as a vampire’s motions. I visualized an invisible sphere around the room. “Stop!”
Bodies froze in place, droplets of water cascading off Susan’s body hung in mid-air, and not an eyelash fluttered. Except mine. The spa looked as if someone had hit the pause button on the remote control of life. And someone had. I’d used a Time witch power—one I rarely used because I’d be burned alive on a pyre if anyone realized I could do it. But I might be burned alive in a Vegas spa if I didn’t take the risk.
Across the stone floor, the Fire witch stood frozen in the act of exploding into pure fire—a transformation spell. The upper portion of her body had blown apart into an orange inferno spanning a quarter of the space. Her energy would engulf the ceiling in the millisecond following my release of Time unless I did something. The Fire witch’s stomach and pelvis were locked mid-transformation. A mere hint of her figure remained within the orange blaze as the only marker a body had once been there. And her lower half was still corporeal within its flame coating.
What would happen if I hit her with Water magic at this exact moment? Water was Fire’s natural enemy. My fear she’d be killed made me try another option instead. I worked to syphon away the energy she’d sucked into her from the aether. Using myself as the conduit, I sent all of the unused energy back where it had come from. Then with a breath for fortitude, I called on the air within the witch’s fire.
Removing the air that fueled the fire had better not remove part of her now that she was only partially corporeal. I held my breath as I released Time back into its ordinary flow.
Nadir swiveled toward his captive. The Fire witch’s body reformed into her tangible shape. His eyes narrowed to tiny slits.
“Do not use your power unless I allow it!” His outraged shout echoed across the stone space. “All of you!”
The Fire witch stared down at her fleshy hands, eyes spreading as wide as my titanium dinner plates. Her lips began to quiver, not from fear, but from a bone-sapping hopelessness I sensed across the spa even without an empathic link. My heart went out to her. I knew what it was like to be enthralled.
Though I’d had to stop her from destroying herself and us with her, I wasn’t going to neutralize her power as I’d done to so many other witches gone berserk. And my mother would probably have my head for the failure to observe the rules. I’d deal with her ire later. Now I had to deal with the vampire.
I sucked in energy from the nearby pool, and then shoved all of the manipulative power into the vampire that I could. “Let us go,” I said. “All of us.”
Nadir made a dismissive gesture. “You all may go.”
For a moment I could only stare at him. This was proof I could, in fact, manipulate a vampire using Water magic. There had to be something different about Maximo. But there would be time enough to consider that later. I hoped.
“Don’t try to follow us,” I said.
He flapped a hand. “Go on, you’re wasting my time.”
“Nadir!” The vampire Susan called out the two syllables with sharp enunciation.
“Come on,” I said to the witches who were in varied states of disbelief. A head nod and imploring stare emphasized my demand.
One dark-haired witch headed the escape. However the other witches lingered at the other end of the pool or dumbly stared from their seated positions. It took a wave from the first witch, and the threat of Susan grabbing one of them, for the others to hurry toward me.
I held the door until each of the witches made it through, and then I led them to the storage room where I fetched my clothing and purse. We disappeared into the employee only corridors moments later with the vampires’ bickering as the soundtrack to our escape.
Chapter Seven
“How did you do that?” A childlike voice asked once our party of seven emerged from the battered freight elevator on Caesars Palace’s ground floor.
I glanced, spotting the speaker as she stepped out of the metal box. While she wasn’t the youngest of the group, she wasn’t the eldest. I decided she was an Air witch without drawing in the scent to find out. It was the volume in her dark hair.
“She must be a vampire.” The redheaded Fire witch drawled the final word in bitter emphasis.
A pale-skinned witch with the cute page boy hair replied. “She’s not a vampire.”
“I’m not a vampire,” I said.
I’d taken several steps before I noted the lack of sound behind me. They hadn’t followed. I twirled back on the ball of my foot. What was the hold up?
The Air witch’s voice went sharp. “How do we know you’re not something worse?”
I checked for the wandering eyes of vanilla humans who might be listening in. Though we appeared to be alone, I whispered my response in case of cameras. “My guess is you’re all enthralled to him. I’m not sure what could possibly be worse than being beholden to a monster like that.”
“What’s the point of running if he’s only going to call us back?” The redhead snapped out
the question, gesturing her freckled arm toward the spa we’d escaped. “We need to take real action.”
I held her angry glare. Their situation would have been so much easier to solve if I could simply kill the vampire. But my soul couldn’t handle that kind of blemish, even with a creature who was already dead. “You can stick around and attempt to blow up half of Caesars Palace in the hope he’ll be taken out with you, or you can come with me to Wipuk where the covens can keep you safe.”
I hoped to Zeus I wasn’t making false promises.
“You’re from Wipuk?” the orange-haired Asian girl asked. She smelled so heavily of aloe it was impossible to miss. Clearly she was a Healer.
“I live there now.” I nodded. “Please, come with me.” I met each witch’s eye, silently pleading for understanding. “Las Vegas isn’t safe for you while he’s here. We can put three hundred miles between us before he wakes up tonight. And with the most powerful witches in the country in your camp, you’ll have a chance to fight him.”
Hera, help me make it true!
“I need my luggage,” the Healer declared.
“I’m not going anywhere in a terry robe,” another witch with long blonde hair said, as if terry were the lowest form of fabric.
I pulled in an irritated breath. “He can call you back without warning if I let you out of my sight.”
The blonde snapped her fingers to the right in a haughty gesture I’d never seen outside of reality television. “Chickybabe, I don’t go anywhere without shoes. If you want to help me, you’ll give me a half hour to get to my room.”
I was halfway through the act of nodding when I caught the scent of a crisp Arctic sea. Water witch? Damn my distracted mind. The blonde had a reciprocal empathic link. How had I failed to notice her magically skimming my emotions? No wonder I was feeling an overwhelming urge to agree with her. I snapped the link back into her.
She flinched, lips parting in surprise.
“Don’t manipulate me,” I said. Then I glanced at the others. “This is foolish. Insane. He can make you come back the second he tosses off my will. But if it’s so damn important for you to get your precious luggage, then go. You have thirty minutes to meet me at the shuttle entrance. If you’re not there, we’re leaving without you.” Was I being too hard? It wasn’t their fault. I could soften my approach a tiny bit. “Take down my phone number. Call me if he calls you back to him.”
We scrambled to find things to write on and write with. I’d had a pen in my purse and several scraps of paper I hadn’t tossed in the waist bin yet. I’d be in deep trouble if the vampire got his hands on my phone number. I could only hope I could get the witches out before he realized what had happened.
One by one the females darted out the nearest door into the hotel. Only an orange-haired Asian was left of the group. She gave me a pretty smile, murmuring soft words. “Thank you, Becky.”
I winced because I’d to have to come clean about my identity at some point.
The family style restroom in the hotel’s lobby was probably the safest place to call my mother. I visualized her most recent lime T-shirt as I pressed myself firmly to the tiled wall. “I summon you, Hecate.”
She appeared within two feet of my spot. A deep frown creased her mist-coated face. “It hasn’t been two hours yet.”
I must have interrupted a good run on the slot machines. “I need you to leave me here this time. Can you do that, or is it against the rules of favors?”
My mother’s lips pursed. Her image shuddered like a television picture flickering. “You stopped the event.” She nodded. “I can leave you here if you truly wish.”
Relief flooded me. I expelled a long breath. “Oh, thank Zeus. Yes, please, leave me here. I’ve got money. I’m going to rent a car and drive home. Thank you, Mother.”
She gave me a thin-lipped smile and then disappeared into the Void.
Time to dig up another miracle—finding someone to rent me a van at four in the morning.
****
Finding a car for rent on the strip this early proved impossible. I resorted to checking the airport. We took two cabs there. By some miracle we loaded the necessities of six women into the rented Dodge Caravan and extra trailer. Needless to say, there was very little room to sit when all was said and done.
Each of the six had turned up at Caesars shuttle entrance within their allotted thirty minutes. Only one had complained—the Water witch with her four items of luggage. She’d spent minutes in the cab on the way to the airport, haggling with the front desk about her room and shipping of her the two suitcases I hadn’t let her bring. And then she’d delayed us by stopping at the in-airport Starbucks for a grande espresso. No doubt she’d get along swimmingly with Desmond. And that made me just a little miffed.
The females peppered me with questions about who I was, how I’d gotten into the locked spa and why I’d saved them. Each query was met by vague answers until they got the picture. Fortunately they weren’t quite as stingy with the information. I quickly learned their names.
The witch with the childlike voice was named Gemma, and she was from the Air school of magic. She had a slight British accent because her mother was English. The orange-haired Asian was named Kaila—a Healer. Isabelle had been the Death witch who had verified I was no vampire. The blonde Water witch with the most luggage of anyone had an unnecessarily difficult name—Veronica spelled with a “K” rather than a “C”.
I almost missed the Dark witch—a quiet woman with short black hair and skin a shade lighter than what I currently sported. She’d whispered her name was Jacqueline as she’d crushed herself into the corner beside the Water witch’s cosmetics bags.
And the feisty redheaded Fire witch was named Rose. Rose had been the first to give up her name when she’d grabbed the passenger seat beside me. I put her in charge of the map. She’d successfully navigated the way out of Las Vegas onto ninety-three like a Nevada native despite being from upstate New York.
The witches exchanged stories about how Nadir had trapped them. Each mentioned being drugged and unable to access their power before he’d bitten them. A cold chill passed over me at the similarities between what had happened to them and my experience with Ascencion.
They’d had it so much worse than I had. Nadir had kept them in his company every hour he was awake. They’d been symbols of his power … like some sort of supernatural harem. And when he’d been dead to the world, he’d had Were guards keeping the witches unconscious with steady shots of magic-blocking drugs.
I couldn’t help but think of myself. The threat of enthrallment was ever-present unless an individual were already enthralled. I needed a steady diet of Bear’s garlic—a rare herb I couldn’t afford—or to find a vampire I trusted not to abuse me. That certainly wouldn’t be Maximo de Sole.
An hour out of Vegas on an empty stretch of highway seemed like as good a time and place as any to call for help. Since Desmond had told me about Dea Woods being enthralled, he was the person I called first. And unfamiliar raspy voice answered his phone.
“Marino?” My pitch lifted uncertainly.
“I hope you didn’t call me at five o’clock in the morning to apologize again.”
The response proved it was him, but his voice sounded as if he’d been gargling steel wool. “You sound awful. Are you sick?”
“I’m not awake, Ms. Walsh. What do you want?”
I hadn’t realized quite how early it was until his frosty retort. If I known it was quarter after five, I might have waited another hour. We still had nearly four hours left to drive—three and a half if I pushed the speed limit. But I’d wanted him to have time to make arrangements.
“I need help.” My skin warmed in embarrassment. “Well, I don’t need help, but I have someone who does.”
“Could you get to the point sometime today? I would like to go back to bed.”
My jaw set in irritation. I’d like to go back to bed, too. I was alert thanks only to my mother’s bracelet, but my ba
ck hurt and my muscles ached. They needed a proper rest. “You’re going to have to take me on faith on this, but I just rescued six witches from Nadir Khan.”
Wood creaked, and then Desmond exclaimed. “What?”
“Let me rephrase that. They’re all enthralled to him,” I revised before he could cut in. “I was too late to save them from that. But they’re in the car with me. I’m on my way back to Wipuk. I need the coalition’s help to keep them safe.”
“How do you suggest the coalition stop a vampire from calling on his thralls, Ms. Walsh?” His stiffest tone didn’t bode well.
“Damn you, Marino, I don’t know! You are the most powerful witches in the country. That has to be good for something.”
He didn’t immediately retort. Clearly he needed more persuading.
“Nadir was keeping them like freakin’ harem girls. I had to get them out of there. No one deserves to be treated like that.” At a softer volume I said, “I told them the colony would help. Please, Marino, don’t make me a liar.”
Desmond puffed out an unhappy breath. “I can’t do anything to stop a vampire from calling on his thrall, but I’ll call the coalition together to discuss their options.”
“Where do I take them in the meantime? We’ll be there in roughly four hours. I don’t have room at my apartment.”
“Bring them to my house. I’ll notify the gate that you’re to be allowed inside.”
“Thank you, Marino.”
“Your thanks will be you owing me a favor for this, Ms. Walsh.”
The dick disconnected the call before I could argue.
I wanted to throw my phone out the window. He should thank me for helping the witches, not demand favors! Desmond the dick really earned his nickname today.
“Are they going to help?” Gemma asked.
I tamped down my irritation with a heavy sigh. “They had better, or they won’t get a favor from me.”
