Table of Contents
Title Page
VIKTORIA’S SHADOW | VAMPIRES & | STRYGOI WITCHES | BOOK 2 | YSOBELLA BLACK
MONDAY, | DECEMBER 9
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TUESDAY, | DECEMBER 10
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY NINE
WEDNESDAY, | DECEMBER 11
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY TWO
THURSDAY, | DECEMBER 12
CHAPTER SIXTY THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY EIGHT
FRIDAY, | DECEMBER 13
CHAPTER SIXTY NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE
CHAPTER SEVENTY TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY FOUR
THANK YOU
THE IRANIAN MYTHOLOGY
THE FINNISH MYTHOLOGY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO IN THE SERIES:
VIKTORIA’S SHADOW
VAMPIRES &
STRYGOI WITCHES
BOOK 2
YSOBELLA BLACK
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Ysobella Black
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
For permission requests, contact Ysobella Black https://www.ysobellablack.com
MONDAY,
DECEMBER 9
CHAPTER ONE
VIKTORIA
VIKTORIA HESITATED outside the door, hand on the knob. When she went in, she would have to make a life or death decision.
She shook herself out of that way of thinking. Even after living among humans for so long, it was hard not to slip back into the persona of a Pohjola Maiden sometimes. Especially when she missed her sisters, and she’d been missing all twelve of them more than usual lately.
If everything went according to plan, she’d be able to see them all again soon. Well, she would see them all soon if things didn’t go according to plan too, but that way ended with all of them prisoners, and she hadn’t spent the last thousand years living as a human to lose their freedom now.
Taking a deep breath, Viktoria threw the door open. The gallery show with Ember started in a couple of hours, and she lamented there’d been no time for shopping. An unexpected, but always welcome, house guest had shown up and filled all Viktoria’s time with last-minute training and pep talks.
There would be no inspirational speech for this decision though. Viktoria was on her own.
She looked over the selection of clothing all around her. A girl could always use another dress. Where a girl could put another dress was a different problem. Her closet comprised most of the upper floor she’d remodeled into one large space for her clothes and resembled a boutique. It lacked a fitting room, but one corner held a vanity and enough mirrors to catch every angle of her appearance. Maybe her clothes needed their own place to live.
One wall, lined with rows of drawers, contained casual clothing, but tonight called for formal. Floor length gowns, sexy cocktail dresses, a multitude of ‘little black’ options, barely there ensembles, and summery frocks—in the latest styles and elaborate corseted and hoop-skirted fashions from prior centuries, all beckoned from hanging racks and mannequins. Arranged in a monochrome rainbow of shades from black to gray, to silver.
She didn’t have a thing to wear.
Closing her eyes, Viktoria walked into the room and ran her hand along a row of hangers, stopping at random. She unhooked the chosen hanger from the rod, held up her choice, and smiled. This little black dress, an intricate tangle of strings on top, leading to a tight, ankle-length skirt with slits up the sides, was perfect for the playful mood coming over her. If she had to wear the same thing twice, it may as well be something scandalous.
In front of her mirrors, Viktoria stepped into the skirt and arranged the myriad of strings over her stomach, ribs, and breasts, leaving her back bare. Some strings she let dangle where they fell from the collar. Others she arranged with more care, holding them in place with body glue. Scandalous didn’t have to mean indecent, after all. It took forever to put this dress on, to ensure no possibility of a dreaded wardrobe malfunction, but was worth it.
Smoky eyeshadow to accentuate her light blue eyes, a quick brush through her long, platinum blonde hair, left straight down her back, a pair of stiletto heels to make her even taller, a tiny clutch purse for perfume, phone and lipstick, and she pronounced herself ready.
Mind on the details she needed to take care of at the gallery before the guests arrived, Viktoria left her boudoir and headed downstairs, footsteps quiet on the thick carpet of snow that blanketed her home year-round.
Painted portraits of twelve platinum-haired, blue-eyed women regarded her with varying degrees of expectation and judgement from their places on the wall as she strode down the hall and staircase.
Not about her choice of clothing, though. I won’t let you down, Viktoria thought to them as she touched each of the frames. You’ll be free soon.
“Yer Pohjola is showing, skinny malinky long legs.” The unexpected house guest
leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb of the kitchen at the bottom of the stairs, saturating Viktoria’s world in color.
The Amazon’s sienna eyes rimmed in green liner studied Viktoria. Dark blue, skin-tight leather pants and vest displayed six feet of tawny skin and lean muscles. Bright red toenails flashed from her bare feet, and streaks of purple shot through bangs and a blonde-brown ponytail hanging to her waist. The woman changed her hair color more often than Viktoria changed her clothes. “I ken yer everything is showing. That... are we calling that a dress? Looks like it lost a fight with my sword.”
Said sword, sheathed on the Amazon’s back, was two-and-a-half-feet of bronze with a simple crosspiece.
“Everything loses a fight with your sword, darling.” Viktoria had lost more than one to that blade. She returned the smirk that curved the Amazon’s lips. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me? Free food and drinks.”
“There’s free food and drinks here.” The Amazon pushed away from the door and held up a bottle of beer. “I won’t wait up. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Like that narrowed Viktoria’s options at all.
CHAPTER TWO
JAEL
HUMANS WERE THE ONLY species idiotic enough to wear a convenient means for throttling them as everyday attire. Jael tore at the knot, ripped the tie over his head, and threw it on the floor of the armory.
Weapons from slingshots to spears, to blades, to guns — revolvers to assault rifles — lined the walls, and each vampire had a section for his personal tactical gear and favorite tools of trade. He should add the necktie to the wall with the rest of the armaments.
“It’s not that bad.” Zeke laughed as he cinched his voluntary noose tight against his collar and slipped his arms into suit jacket sleeves. The material stretched tight over his massive frame. He added some daggers — one up his sleeve, another on the back of his belt. A gun went into an ankle holster over a shiny dress shoe, and he ran a hand through his cropped blond hair. The Knight would have to leave the bloodthirsty sword he usually wore on his hip behind tonight.
“Speak for yourself.” Jael had strangled too many targets to believe that.
Jael skipped the jacket — no room for the weapons he never went anywhere without — and picked up the harness holding his curved swords. A sense of completeness slid into place along with the blades when they settled on his back. His scimitars were as bloodthirsty as the Knight’s weapon, but unlike that one, Jael’s could hide themselves from sight.
Stryx, the Esag of their Ildum, had decreed three vampires could accompany him to the gallery show tonight. Their orders said they had to dress up, but they would not go unarmed — not with the possibility of mages in attendance.
Their could-be king had been taken unaware when he found his Dragă —a witch who could make his heart beat. They’d all thought the massacre in Dacia a thousand years ago had wiped out every bloodline, eliminating any chance to find the one woman a vampire could love with a heart and soul he wasn’t supposed to have.
Until Ember.
While the vampires were reeling, trying to adjust to the impossible becoming reality after a millennium, she further unbalanced their world. In rare cases, a Dragă could channel silver lightning magic and turn strygoi — the most powerful kind of witch, and the bane of a mage’s existence.
Ember had escaped from the mages twice, leaving chaos, dead minions, and a missing mage in her wake.
He admired her brand of chaos.
Mages would want her back just for those reasons. But should her strygoi magic ever be revealed, they’d stop at nothing to take her again. Or kill her and everyone close to her in order to exterminate the new blood line.
Jael wouldn’t let the massacre start again.
So far, Stryx had made a spectacular disaster of his relationship with his Dragă, and she’d avoided him for days. But their Esag was a relentless tactician and hunter when he wanted something. Jael had taught Stryx to be that way from the time he was a boy. His Dragă would be at the gallery show tonight for an exhibition of her photos. A public place where she couldn’t hide from him, and where mages knew she would be.
While Jael would never ask Ember to be bait in a trap, there was no containing her. If she intended to put herself where mages could get to her anyway, he planned to take advantage of the situation and be there to make more of them disappear.
“I don’t like this.” Melchior’s dark suit contrasted against his pale skin and long white hair. He wore a tie. An extra long one, since at seven feet tall he was giant-sized, even for a vampire.
“I can go alone.” Stryx entered the armory and stopped at his section to pull throwing knives from a drawer and sheathe them around his body.
Stryx had done crazier things since he’d met Ember.
“You shouldn’t be going at all. And neither should she.” Melchior tucked bolas into his pockets. “The mages will want her back.”
Stryx’s blue eyes flashed black. A sign he was close to letting his vampire side out. “They will never touch her again.” He wore a red tie, yanked on a black suit jacket and strode for the exit.
“That doesn’t mean they won’t try.” Jael turned to keep pace with Stryx as he left the armory. “You can’t go alone. It’s that simple.”
“She’ll think it’s an invasion.”
Zeke smirked. “She won’t throw us into a wall, though.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.” Stryx scoffed.
Jael wouldn’t either, but if mages might be there, he and his swords were better equipped to deal with them.
“How is Musette?” Melchior asked as they headed for the garage.
“Ember won’t tell me anything about her sister.” Stryx heaved a sigh. “I can feel her worry, though. Musette hasn’t awakened. Her body is in some sort of stasis. Her mind is trapped elsewhere.”
CHAPTER THREE
ASIM
THE SPIDER MAGE LEANED forward on his throne, elbows braced on knees, and watched his children in the flickering light of the torches mounted on the clay walls of the earthen cavern. The trio of arachnids fed, each crouched atop a witch, fangs embedded deep. Their black-furred bodies, swollen from the magic they’d already glutted themselves on, were nearly large enough to obscure the witches.
One spider raised his head, all eight eyes focusing on Asim. He lifted a single finger and gestured right, where four more naked witches lay on the dirt floor, paralyzed so they couldn’t harm his latest creations. The other two spiders pulled away from drained witches and moved across the floor toward fresh prey.
The witches screamed. Noise didn’t matter. The warren, a series of tunnels and caverns excavated deep beneath Port Storm, wouldn’t let anything escape — not even a witch’s scream. These four were newly caught in his web and about to be siphoned for the first time.
After witnessing the procedure, terror spiked their magic, and it brushed over his skin, making his empty sigils ache. The Spider Mage inhaled, their horror so palpable it scented the air and coated his tongue.
Excellent. He hadn’t recovered from his experimental project a few days ago and needed all the magic he could get. Pouring so much venom into the witch Dmitri had brought had drained Asim’s glyphs to dangerous levels. He lifted a hand and eyed the symbols of white magic gliding over his fingertips. Some of them gnawed at him even now.
Another spider scuttled into the cave, leading Thomax, who wore a t-shirt and ripped jeans. The acolyte had come to Asim at an older age than the others, late teens rather than as a child, which made him better able to fit in with humans with his brown eyes and blond hair. The white hues from where the magic fed on him weren’t obvious yet.
The fourth spider, already huge from prior feedings, hurried to the last witch and sank his fangs into its thigh. Another scream tore through the air.
Revulsion flashed across Thomax’s face and he paled, shifting from foot to foot as he averted his gaze.
The Spider Mage drummed his fing
ers on the arm of his chair. Thomax never enjoyed watching the little ones feed, but his reactions had tempered. There may be hope for the boy, but this flaw didn’t bode well for him becoming a mage. Fortunately, Asim had other uses for an acolyte still able to blend with humans. “You understand your instructions for tonight?”
Thomax met Asim’s eyes and gave a sharp nod. “Yes, Mage Asim. I’ll go to the gallery and see what I can find out about your missing witch.”
The acolyte fidgeted. Asim sighed. This would cost magic he couldn’t afford, but he held out his hands to the spiders. The arachnids abandoned the witches and came to him. He drew a finger across the fangs of each one and brought drops of poison to his mouth.
Asim shuddered in delight as the pleasant buzz of magic burned down his throat and filled his sigils. “Remove your shirt.”
Thomax swallowed hard. “I —”
Asim stared at Thomax.
“Yes, Mage Asim.” He pulled his t-shirt over his head, turned his back to Asim, and knelt.
Rising from his throne, Asim chose one spider, and mentally directed his pet to climb onto Thomax.
The arachnid swarmed up Thomax and settled on his back. Two long front legs slid along each arm, two pairs of rear legs locked into place around Thomax’s hips.
Asim summoned glyphs to his palm and set his hand against the spider’s body. White magic flared, traveled through the arachnid’s claws and opened bloody slices into Thomax’s body. The minion groaned as the red lines expanded to join and form a spider.
A light push sent two front legs into the cuts, skin stretching over appendages where they moved beneath. Thomax’s body shook as two more legs entered his body. Keeping the pressure gentle, Asim had no desire to hurt his child, he urged the spider to settle deeper.
Taking his time, the Spider Mage coaxed the creature to lie flat against Thomax’s back. White magic flashed again and Thomax screamed. When the burst of light faded, the spider resembled a tattoo on Thomax’s body rather than a sentient being.
Viktoria's Shadow: Jael Page 1
