Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6

by Elizabeth Kirke

  Kayla bowed and quickly scurried away.

  Sarah just stood there, watching Alaria with wide, frightened eyes. Nothing happened. Seconds, then minutes, ticked by as Sarah stood, shifting her weight from foot to foot, watching Alaria. I could tell she was getting nervous; she started fidgeting and I could see sweat beading at her temples, slowly running down her face.

  Lucy and Jim arrived, followed by a few other initiates and disciples.

  Still, Sarah stood and Alaria watched her. I thought that it was an unusual show of patience from her, when I noticed that she wasn’t just looking at Sarah, she seemed to be studying her, there was something malicious, yet expectant about her expression. All at once, her dark smile widened.

  I looked back at Sarah and swallowed hard. She wasn’t just nervous, she was uncomfortable. She was tugging at her shirt and wiggling. She was sweating profusely now; even her clothes were starting to look damp. She was flushing too, face turning remarkably red.

  I bit back the urge to ask what was happening. A handful of other blood casters arrived and lined up with the group on the far wall, watching whatever was happening.

  “Oh, I’m so hot!” Sarah said suddenly. She fell to her knees with a groan. “I feel like I’m burning up!”

  Alaria silenced the surprised murmurs with a raised hand. “A fire elemental,” she said calmly. “can raise the temperature of things, provided there is physical contact.” She waved her hand and a breeze rushed through the room, ruffling hair and clothes. “Air elementals can control the air around them. Water elementals can control liquids in close proximity… imagine if you could combine all three. Think of what you could do…”

  Sarah cried out in pain and collapsed, arms wrapped around her body as she curled in on herself. “It burns!” she screamed. “It burns!”

  I watched in horror as she writhed in pain. Every inch of exposed skin was bright red and I let out a strangled gasp as I saw blisters forming before my eyes all over her.

  Everyone else was watching in a mix of horror and fascination. By the time Kayla was back with the rest of the blood casters, Sarah had stopped screaming and was sprawled on the ground, gasping and choking. She was almost disfigured from the horrific burns that had spread across her skin. Then, with one last raspy breath, she was completely still.

  When it became clear she was dead, all eyes turned to Alaria.

  “Sarah was getting too cozy with a non-human,” Alaria announced. “We are not here to be their friends. Is that clear?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Leave me,” Alaria snapped. She turned one of her sickly sweet smiles to me. “What did you think of that, Abigail?”

  I swallowed hard. “Your power is…” I began, trying to keep my voice from shaking. I couldn’t stop myself from glancing at Sarah and quickly tore my eyes away. “Incredible.”

  It was true. The fact that Alaria wasn't restricted to using just one stolen ability at a time, but that she could combine them to do things that nobody else could do was terrifying… and incredible.

  “It will be your power someday,” she promised me. “If…” Alaria looked meaningfully at Sarah’s body. “If you please me.”

  “I look forward to it, Mistress,” I said, I bowed quickly and hurried out with the others, with one last glance at Sarah.

  I knew Alaria had no intention of letting anyone share her awful power, but I realized as I walked down the hall, it could actually be mine someday. If I was able to successfully kill her, instead of destroying the wand I could use it on her. And then I would have that power…

  No, I told myself. Nobody needed that kind of magic. There was a reason blood magic and arcanism were forbidden. I was going to destroy the wand, not use it.

  With a sigh, I pushed the thought away and kept walking, when another thought occurred to me. What if I had just missed my only chance? I was alone in a room with her and she had no idea that I knew how to kill her. What if I was never alone with her again?!

  My heart began pounding as I slowed my pace and stopped for a minute at the sudden rush of despair. In just a few short weeks two of my friends had already been in fights and Alaria had lost her temper and killed an initiate and orchestrated the death of a dhampir.

  I couldn't miss another chance like that, but now that I had seen even more of her terrible magic I was afraid to even try to draw my wand on her. I would have to catch her completely off guard and I couldn't imagine how to do it. How could I possibly do this alone?

  But even as I thought, once again, of how to let my friends know what was happening, I realized that Alaria’s demonstration had made it very clear I couldn't. Serana was right. If Alaria would kill someone just for being friendly with a non-human for a couple of days, I couldn't possibly risk letting her even see me with one of my friends – she’d kill us all. Now, the question was, would I be able to stop her before we ended up dead anyway?

  Chapter Four

  Danio

  The unexpected encounter with Reave pushed back our already stressfully slow timetable. We were well aware that it was sheer luck Reave was the one who caught us and knew how easily it could have been a blood caster or a non-human who may have found it more suspicious.

  Privately, I was just thankful it hadn’t been Victor; the thought of it still made me cringe. Sure, he said he liked me, but I knew what that meant. I was a water elemental who could handle himself out of water and he found that interesting. Not only could I take care of myself, but I was good at it. I didn’t derive the sadistic pleasure that Victor almost certainly did from hurting people, but in a fight to the possible-death it was a necessary evil. I was good at that too, which I was sure entertained Victor. That was why he liked me. And I knew exactly what he would do when I ceased to be interesting. There was no question if it had been Victor that night instead of Reave, Charlie would have ended up with a big target on his back.

  Even though we were lucky enough that it had been Reave, we were still all shaken. We put off breakfast as a group for another week, just in case.

  Thomas and TS agreed that it seemed like someone was giving Reave a memory potion, but why? It was a topic we went over frequently.

  “But what are they doing here?” Tom demanded one night. “Why the hell are a bunch of blood casters all sneaking around? What’s their plan?”

  We all frowned in thought.

  “It’s obvious Victor thinks he’s in charge,” TS said slowly. “Reave as well. I’m confident Victor is behind the memory potions… But I doubt that Alaria sank her island and then just decided to throw away her wand and start playing servant to a vampire… So, I think either she’s here watching what’s happening for some reason or…” He shrugged.

  “Nick and Chris said she was here when they came to the castle, right?” Thomas said.

  I nodded. “Yeah… do you think…” I froze as I considered it. If Alaria was already here, ready to pose as a regular witch and throw herself at Reave… “Do you think they were tricked into coming here? The whole castle thing wasn’t part of their original plan. If Alaria was here when they got here… maybe she wanted them to come.”

  “But why?” Charlie asked.

  “Maybe just for a cover?” asked TS. “If anyone ever catches on to Cavaliers then Victor and Reave go down and Alaria gets away clean.”

  “Then why all this?” Tom said. “If they’re just using Cavaliers to hide what they’re doing, there’s no reason to be sneaking around here, pretending to want to be vampires… Besides, everyone here is getting their files altered. Unless we missed something major, even if they catch on to Cavaliers, they won’t trace anyone here, nobody even knows all of these magics are missing.”

  “Oh, bloody hell!” TS cried. We all looked at him in alarm. “If nobody notices the magics here are missing then… then nobody will notice if Alaria sacrifices them!”

  A chill went through me at the thought. “So, she lets Victor do all the dirty work,” I said. “If he gets caught, she washes he
r hands of all this and walks, just like with Mystic Cay. Meanwhile, he’s bringing her all the sacrifices she could want.”

  “Could Victor be in on it?” TS asked.

  “No,” I said, suppressing a shudder. Couldn’t believe the bastard had gotten under my skin. “He’s too invested in his own plans and way too convinced of his own superiority. He’d never let someone else run his show and he’d hate the idea of a magical being more powerful than a vampire. He doesn’t have a clue.”

  “Then we should tell him,” Char said.

  We all turned to stare at him.

  “What?” he asked. “Aside from Alaria, we know Victor is the only other one with any power around here. He may not really be in charge, but as far as he, and all of his followers, are concerned, he is. Imagine his reaction if he did know someone was deceiving him. Not to mention planning on killing him.”

  “He’d be furious,” Tom said thoughtfully. “That’s actually not a bad idea…”

  “He’d probably kill Alaria for us,” I chuckled.

  Silence fell and we all looked at each other.

  “I bet he’d certainly try,” said Tom slowly. “Of course, I imagine he’d fail…”

  TS nodded. “Victor would have to catch her completely by surprise to stand a chance.” He shuddered. “I don’t doubt it really did take one hundred magics to kill the first arcanist.”

  “Hey, I bet there are that many here,” I said. “What if…”

  Thomas gaped at me. “You’re not actually suggesting turning Victor’s army against Alaria, are you?”

  I shrugged. “I mean… most of them have made it pretty clear they dislike humans, to put it mildly. A lot of them aren’t thrilled to have witches and wizards wandering around. I imagine they’d be as upset as Victor to find out they’re being set up for slaughter. By those same humans, no less.”

  “We can’t just walk up to someone and tell them though,” TS said. “For one thing they wouldn’t believe us. And if they did, it can’t lead back to us.”

  “We have to start small,” said Tom. “Spread a rumor somehow.”

  “That they have wands?” I suggested, thinking of what had first clued us in that something wasn’t right.

  “I like it,” TS said. “Let’s start there. We need to carefully find a way to make people suspicious, get the conversations started, without anyone knowing we’re the ones who started the rumor.”

  “That’s going to be a pain,” I muttered.

  “What do we do after that?” Tom said.

  “Maybe that will be enough,” said Charlie. “Just like Danio said, most of the others don’t like having humans around. They might be looking for a reason to cause problems; thinking that the humans are lying about carrying wands could be all they need.”

  “Turning the non-humans against the blood casters could get ugly, fast,” I warned. “If nothing else, we need an exit plan.”

  “Easier said than done,” Tom grumbled. “There’s no way out.”

  We fell silent again, all thinking it over. Charlie joined me on the edge of the bed and I put an arm around him. He sighed and leaned against me, lacing his fingers in mine. I felt him twitch a little from my cold hand and his shoulders stiffened as he resisted the urge to pull away. I surpassed a chuckle; I had no doubt he thought he was good at hiding his discomfort until my skin warmed up, but I always knew.

  “I wonder,” TS said slowly. “if this could really work… there’s a chance the blood casters will just slaughter everyone who tries to stand against them. We’ve seen what they can do. Add an arcanist to the mix…”

  “We have to stop what’s happening here,” Tom said. “It was bad enough when we thought it was just Victor trying to build an army. With Alaria… It has to end here. Who knows how powerful Alaria is already.”

  “Even if we take down a bunch of blood casters, she could just vanish again,” I said grimly. “We don’t know if she has another fucking island or some other hole she can crawl back into.”

  “I think,” said Tom slowly, “we need to consider her a priority. We were able to get the message out about what Victor is doing, but if Jon pursues that, he’ll probably never find a connection to the blood casters. Nobody knows Alaria is here but us. If we get the chance, we have to stop her.”

  “She’s an arcanist,” said TS. “Even if we could get a lucky shot, the odds of her taking us with her…”

  “This is bigger than us,” Tom said. “We’re MES agents, we’re supposed to be ready to give our lives for the good of magickind and… well, she’s an arcanist.”

  Charlie’s hand tightened painfully on mine. It was hard for water elementals to sense gradual changes in temperature, but I could feel the heat from his palm radiating up my arm and knew he had to be pretty damn hot from stress for me to register it. I squeezed back and flashed him a weak smile.

  “I hate to say it, but you’re right,” TS said. Charlie and I nodded in agreement. “We need to sow some dissent, find a way out, and be ready to… to do whatever it takes if it means killing Alaria... even if we have to sacrifice ourselves.”

  “Let’s focus on the way out,” I offered. “We can worry about Alaria if Victor and all of his lackeys aren’t enough to take her down.”

  ~~~***~~~

  A couple of weeks, based on the number of fights, went by and we still hadn't figured out a way to execute our plan. There didn't seem to be a good opportunity to drop into a conversation and say, “Hey, you ever wondered if they really gave up their wands?” Nevertheless, we were all ready for an opportunity to start spreading some gossip at any given moment.

  We decided that if we stuck to our original plan of gradually hanging out together more it would decrease our chances of being able to spread the rumor about the blood casters. As long as the coast was clear we spent time together in our private rooms but in public we started splitting up even more, trying to find a chance to plant some doubt.

  In the meantime, we started exploring again. It was usually just me and Tom, while Charlie and TS hung out in the common areas, near whatever corridor or stairway we were exploring, ready to warn us if someone seemed to be heading in our direction. As much as I hated that they were here, being able to make use of the soul-pack bond was handy.

  One day our search took us back to the strange door that Thomas and I had been unable to open; TS wasn’t much help either, so Charlie took a look. We were hoping his thermal vision could find a lock we couldn’t see, but there was nothing. Instead, he tried softening the hinges, hoping he could open the door that way.

  It was useless.

  “It’s not even warming up,” he said in surprise.

  “You could burn the whole fucking thing down,” I suggested. “It’s a wooden door.”

  Char laughed, but pressed a palm to the door and frowned in concentration. A moment later he shook his head, eyes flaring in annoyance.

  “It’s not changing temperature. This door is…”

  “Obviously hiding something,” growled TS.

  “Can you see anything behind it?” I asked.

  “Stairs,” said Charlie, narrowing his eyes at it. “It’s hard to see, but it looks like a spiral staircase.”

  “Someone’s coming!” Thomas hissed.

  With a few curses, we retreated from the door and ducked down a side corridor and well away from the mysterious door.

  “My room,” Tom said, before heading down a different hallway on his own.

  I gave Charlie a quick hug, as he and TS went down a set of stairs. I lingered for a minute or two, then went after them toward the common area.

  After we explored we had started making sure we were seen in the common areas. It helped in case we ever needed a witness to cover up that we were sneaking around. It also gave us a more of a chance to spread the rumor about the wands, not that we had been able to yet.

  When we were done, we’d gradually work our way back to a pre-chosen room – tonight it was Tom’s – to spend the night, sto
pping by our own rooms in case we were being watched and to make them look lived in.

  We rotated where we slept to make sure we kept all of our rooms claimed and adding a small measure of safety; as long as we had slept in the rooms recently, vampires – mainly Victor – couldn’t enter without invitations. It wouldn’t stop blood casters, but it afforded some slight peace of mind. As much as I would have loved to spend entire nights alone with Charlie, it was safer to stick together, although we were able to steal a few hours here and there.

  I put in an appearance at the bar and let a few people chat with me, hoping I could slip in a comment about wands. After I finished a few glasses of water and a bowl of chips, I headed in a slightly roundabout way up to Tom’s room.

  As I walked, I thought about yet another failed attempt to explore the castle. It was absurd that there was no way out. Victor obviously got in and out well enough. There was no question that Alaria could, considering she had been here for six years, but was also overseeing things at Mystic Cay.

  Maybe we were in the Caribbean, hell for all I knew we were just a quick swim away from where Mystic Cay had been. I wasn't sure how quickly Alaria would have been able to pop back and forth otherwise.

  Holy shit.

  I stopped short.

  How could we have been so stupid?! How could we have missed it?!

  There was a fucking labyrinth doorway here.

  That was how we got here. That was why they knocked us out on the bus, so we wouldn’t realize we were passing through it. It was how Alaria got in and out so easily. It all fit.

  A slew of curses spilled from my mouth as I hurried down the hall, forcing myself not to run. We couldn’t fuck this up now. Out of habit, I checked to make sure I had all three throwing knives on me, then picked up my pace.

  I jogged up the last stairway to the rooms and turned down the hall, only to see someone walking down it toward me.