Red tried to mimic Nevaeh but not even a spark shot from her fingers. This wasn’t real, she told herself. It didn’t matter. It felt too real. Just when she had figured out the Dreamland, Maxwell cut her off at the source.
“Go to the soulmancer, Nevaeh. He’s still on the threshold of death. Kick him over at my word,” Maxwell ordered, dismissing her with a casual gesture as if murder was just another errand on his to-do list after buying milk.
“Gladly.” She grinned, showing too many even, white teeth as she vanished in a slow fade.
“They’ll stop you, even if I die.” Red shook her head. Backed into a corner, she tried to stall to figure a way out that didn’t get Basil killed. “Especially if I die.”
“They won’t be able to do anything if they are fighting each other.” Maxwell laughed. The malevolent chuckle deepened, twisting in an echo as it filled the room.
Red stiffened. Icy fear radiated in her gut. “What’re you going to do to them?”
His shoulders drew back, and multiple versions of himself burst out of his chest, each one transparent yet the smirking face and purple suit were the same. The Maxwells flew forward, swift as a bad omen, to hover beside the three vampires and Vic clustered around the hospital bed.
The original smirked, form flickered between transparent and opaque. Nostrils flaring, he concentrated on his wraiths. “Truths can be wielded like arsenic.”
Red waddled forward in her cuffs, swinging the iron chain at the specter looming over Vic. The chain went through the Maxwell double without even splitting the form.
Ignoring the assault, the replica drifted down. Sludgy black spectral smoke poured out of his mouth, surrounding Vic in an octopus’ hug. “They see you as a useless cripple to be pitied. You used to be a werewolf hunter, yet who will avenge your family now? All your enemies will return when they discover your weakness. Michel might have put you in this chair, but Quinn put you in the crosshairs.”
Another clone leaned close to Quinn, dark smoke shooting out of his mouth like a murder of crows. “You don’t deserve atonement. The blood will never wash off. Even when you try to be good, people suffer around you. Death is your true talent.”
The third wraith fluttered by Lucas with a grin stretched too wide, toxic insects skittered down his chin. “Red will learn the truth about the demons you hide. Your spawn will be there when she turns away from you. He will betray you again.”
The last Maxwell clone stood behind Kristoff. Hissing, his forked shadowy tongue half formed into a railroad spike, he pulled out the glistening appendage. Breaking it in half, he drove it into Kristoff’s ear. “Lucas is better than you. She will always choose him, and it will be the death of her. You’ll lose her again if you don’t take her now.”
The words blended but each biting note dripped with jealousy, resentment, guilt, and fear. Noxious mists in sinister shapes curled around each man. It happened at once in reality. It happened slower in the Dreamland.
The second that Red tried again to swipe one away from Vic, it was already too late.
The four copies glided back to the warlock. Shuddering, they rejoined his form. He twisted at the waist to crack his back. Wincing, he rubbed his neck with a sigh. “I keep thinking you will be smarter than Juniper, maybe better in this age of innocence, but I see you need to learn things the hard way too.”
Skin crawling, she examined the poisonous gloom seeping into her friends’ auras. “You bas—"
Maxwell lifted his hand.
The stitches reappeared on her mouth, the chains tightened.
“No talking.” The warlock shushed her.
“Fucking hell, Quinn. You brought us here and it’s been nothing but shit!” Vic boomed the words, breaking the silence in the room left by the retreat of the hospital staff. “If I wasn’t in this chair, she wouldn’t even be here!”
“Oi, Vic,” Lucas snapped. “Lay off him. We’re supposed to be a damn team.”
Vic flipped him off.
Horror growing, Red watched hackles raise around the room. The unity between the men began shaking violently apart. They had been working together only seconds ago. Now tempers boiled from a wraith’s whisper.
Shadow tentacles flailed between Vic’s lips. “You know it’s true! We’d be on the road and fighting something that we could see.”
“I know, I know.” Quinn shook his head, shadow wings circling.
“How many teams have you lost over the decades?”
Hands up in submission, Quinn said, “I deserve this.”
Vic sped forward like a knight bolting at a joust. “Because of you, she’s going to end up like me!”
Yelling behind the stitches, Red warned her friends not to listen. Even if they could hear her spirit voice, would they listen over the enchantment?
The yelling intensified. Quinn stoically took a tongue lashing from Vic, but Lucas and Kristoff had fangs out, preparing for brawl. Even their auras flashed lightning.
“I am taking her to Portland,” Kristoff said. The tawny sheen of a predator obscured the blue of his irises. A shadow spike jutted out of his ear.
“Like hell you will!” Lucas growled, leaning forward, reaching for his iron dagger. Spectral spiders skittered over his shoulder, startled by the sudden movement.
“She would have never met Kristoff if we hadn’t come to LA!” Vic motioned to him. The outline of dark fish scales raced down his hand. “This is undead love triangle bullshit that she never wanted. A repeat that didn’t go too well the first time!”
Quinn slunk back against the wall. “I never expected… I didn’t think…”
Vic spewed indictment after vindictive indictment against his boss. His voice grew hoarse and nearly inaudible as the darkness grew around him. He rasped out, “You worked with Delilah against us!”
Red yelled, telling him to stop, but her lips only pulled painfully on the stitches on her mouth. She cringed at the growing discord between the vampires on the other side of the room. Iron chains rattling, she tried to shuffle to them.
“Stop me, Lucas, and see what happens. I’m not a fledgling shining your boots anymore.” Kristoff puffed his chest out and lifted his chin, extending to his full height to loom four inches over the older vampire. Shadows spread from his ear as if ink filled his veins. His muscles corded in his neck as his jaw tightened. “You’ll be the death of her. Again.”
“She’s not Juniper!” Lucas matched the eye contact, fist clenching to rocket up to his progeny’s face. Sable arachnids clung to his knuckles.
“She’ll share her fate if I don’t act.” Worry dimmed the anger, Kristoff’s intense gaze growing vulnerable. The jet-black shadow veins pulsed, spreading under his collar. He rapped at his chest; the territorial fury returned. “I am not losing her. I just found her!”
“You’ll lead her to destruction again!” Lucas shook his head. A dark spider skulked over his high cheek then crept into his ear. “That was you egging Juniper on in London. Whispering god knows what in her ear, doing whatever you could to twist her head up and get a bit of touch.”
“She asked me for that touch. In Prague, in Dresden.” Grinning, Kristoff counted the cities with his fingers. “I still dream about what we did in London.”
Snarling, Lucas punched him. “Then she came back to me.”
Head snapping back, Kristoff shook it off and laughed. “Delusional.”
Lucas tossed an upper cut across his progeny’s chin. “That’s what you are if you think that you’re leaving with her.”
Red jerked against Maxwell’s hold, but his grip locked her in place. The very air seemed tainted by his malicious charm. She could only watch her friends fight.
The two vampires fell to the floor by the hospital bed. Fang met fist as shadows grew in their auras. Movements blurred from the speed, blocking each other’s blows, they rolled half into the doorway. The iron dagger fell out of Lucas’s pocket.
“Someone got slow.” Rearing up, shirt torn, and blond hair mussed,
Kristoff straddled his sire’s waist. Fangs jutted from his wide grin, malevolent joy shone in his amber eyes. He spent over a hundred years dreaming of this fight. And he was winning.
Lucas pushed him and over his head into the hallway before standing. He sniffed, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, the rolling storm in his gaze. He waited just as long for this rematch. He kicked Kristoff in the ribs. The toe of his Doc Martens dug in with a crunch. “You want to know why Juniper stopped you from killing me? It’s why Red wants to be with me. It’s because I’ve always been the one.”
On his back, Kristoff grabbed the attacking foot and twisted. Bone cracked under his grip. He tossed Lucas out of the sight down the hallway. “You were a rich pretty boy who couldn’t take care of his toys. Still can’t.”
“You were never one of us, and it burned at you. Still does,” his sire said from the doorway.
Kristoff stood with an icy glare. Poison from the curse darkened in his neck arteries. His right eye twitched. “You made me one of you.”
Maxwell marched Red towards the brawlers in the hospital hallway. “I don’t want you to miss the excitement. Let’s pull up a chair. Your boys are fighting. I’m putting my quids on the one without a conscience.”
Stitches muffled her profanity riddled reply.
Lucas twisted his ankle into place, squaring his jaw against the pain. “Admit it. You only want Red because she is a point against me.”
Kristoff pushed his broken cartilage back into alignment. He sniffed and wrinkled his straightened nose. His tone came out 20% nasally and 100% disdainful. “I don’t need points against you. Look at how the last century played out. I created an empire.”
“Bootlegger in the Depression, a profiteer during the war. What a grand start.” Lucas cracked his knuckles. Dark spectral insect legs poked out between the pale fingers.
“Drop the sanctimony, especially with that rusted suit of armor. I know why you don’t like to remember the twenties, sire.”
“Go back to Portland. Alone.”
Noticing his distraction, Red tried to elbow Maxwell in the side. The mystical bonds tightened and multiplied. An unseen hand gripped her chin and forced her to watch the death match.
“She’ll know who to turn to in the end.” Kristoff smirked through fangs. Black veins covered the side of his face and neck like a road map.
“You think she is that blind? We’re fighting the good fight. What are you doing beyond selling overpriced drinks?”
“Might not have a soul, but I’m still not committing massacres. You want to know why you’ll never stake me?” Kristoff rushed forward, punching him. The darkness in his violet and silver aura billowed around his head. “So, you can still convince yourself that there is someone worse than you! She’ll see that even with a soul you are as selfish as you ever were. It’s how you were born.”
Staggering back, Lucas blocked a second blow. Shadow spiders scuttling from under his shirt sleeve absorbed into his blue aura. “You’re gagging to do all the nasty, bloody things to Red that you couldn’t do to Juniper. I protected her then, and I’ll kill you now to keep her safe.”
“You guarded her to torment her exclusively.”
“I kept her from the warlock for years. It took months for him to find Red with your claim on her. Months!”
“You said Red was your concern. Broke a vase in my office to make the point.” Kristoff spun and kicked him in the chest. Grinning, he got in a flurry of quick blows. “Admit it, you know you should have told her to leave LA. Want to know why I’m certain you’re the same selfish prick?”
Lucas dodged to the left, pulling him into a headlock. Dark webs grew under his arm to wrap around his progeny’s neck like a garrote. He punched him in the face. “Enlighten me.”
“I went back to Portland and left her in peace.” Kristoff elbowed Lucas in the gut. Inky lines traveled down his arm. The shadow railroad spike from Maxwell’s clone glinted in his ear.
“You’re still lurking in her DMs.” Tightening his grip, he sneered.
“I let her go. You never could.”
Eyes widening, Lucas froze. Gold lightening flashed in his shadow-tarnished cobalt and steel aura.
Kristoff pulled his sire by the neck to flip him over his head and to the floor. He straddled the other vampire’s waist, grinning like a tiger mid-pounce. He punched Lucas in the face to punctuate his sentences, doled out with the same force. “I’m letting Red choose. Just like I did Juniper. Even without a soul. Can you say the same?”
Grabbing hair, Lucas yanked him down to the side and rushed for the iron dagger on the floor.
Hot helpless tears stung at Red’s eyes.
Colder than an Antarctic winter, no smirk lingered on Maxwell’s face—only grim promises. “I will make them kill each other, then I will go into Basil’s room and I will let Nevaeh kill him. You will watch. Everyone you care about, everyone who cares about you, they will die tonight. Then I will find your family, every trace of DNA that could create that infuriating face again, and I will destroy them.”
Lucas and Kristoff circled each other.
Vic bellowed curses.
The alarm of the heart monitor echoed from Basil’s room.
Seconds felt like hours.
“Frank and Urleen Morgan died tonight because you brought their homicidal daughter back into their home. How many more need to die, Red?” Maxwell demanded, shaking her, the chains clinking together. “How many lives are you willing to trade for your own? You might not remember your life, but what about your morals?”
The weight of five lives hung around her neck. She owed each of them. Basil had stood by her in the Dreamland. Vic was her mentor. Quinn was her boss. Lucas was…complicated. Even Kristoff had saved her life a few times. She might not have been able to impact the physical realm, but Maxwell and Nevaeh could unleash more hell on her friends.
“Tailor got your tongue?” He chuckled and snapped his fingers.
The stitches disappeared from her lips. Red yelled over the cacophony of furious arguments. “Nothing stops you from hurting my friends after I’m gone.”
“After you are gone, I can finally rest. Your family, friends, they will no longer be my concern.” Maxwell shrugged. “Without me, Nevaeh is only a metaphorical harpy.”
“They bring me back, and you’re at square one.”
“They won’t be able to find you. Not in the true beyond.” He smirked. “Don’t worry about your body. It’s a vessel, a suit of base carnality. I’ve gone through a few. You won’t miss it.”
“You want me to agree?” Red asked.
“I want you to rest in the bloody great beyond, you bothersome pugilist!” Maxwell tugged on his lapels, brushing a stray tendril of smoky ether away, lips pressed into a line. He gestured to the hospital room doorway. “Go with the angels and what not. I’ll settle for not hearing yet another scion of the Constantine clan screaming invectives.”
Jabbing a finger out, rageful accusations pouring from his lips, Vic overbalanced in his chair. He tumbled to the floor. Thrashing tentacles surged up around him as if he fell overboard into a Kraken’s embrace.
Quinn huddled in the corner of the hospital room, eyes darting at unseen ghosts of his past. Obscured black mists feathered over his face.
The warlock was full of smoke and mirrors. Doubts blared in her mind about his motives, history, and powers, but his ability to destroy…that was proven. Red turned to the brawling vampires, heart sinking.
Without a soul, Kristoff fought ruthlessly. He threw his solid muscled frame into every attack and never missed a chance for a low blow. Visible darkness pulsed down his hands like seams.
Quick and light, Lucas kept moving. Shadow spiders circled his shoulders as he stepped around his childe. He dodged a shove and a sneaky kick before it could sweep him off his feet. “Taught you that.”
Kristoff smirked, pulling away, his arm jerking back. The iron dagger glinted in the Dreamland moonlight for a second. He struc
k. Stabbing Lucas in the kidney, he pushed him again the wall. “Not everything.”
Lucas pulled the dagger from his side. He grabbed Kristoff by the back of the head and slammed his knee up to meet the other vampire’s face. He did it again, smiling wickedly at the sound of a nose crunching on his kneecap. “Pickpocketing? Clever, but I got my knife back. You were always a bad criminal in a good suit.”
Hunched over, Kristoff spat out blood. His tone oozed with bitter self-deprecation. “I make bad look good.”
Tugging blond hair to bring his progeny to eye level, Lucas twirled the iron dagger in his other hand. In a quick jerk, he struck.
Groaning, Kristoff’s eyes widened, and blood came out of his mouth. The blade disappeared into his stomach to the hilt.
“It’s fucking sad, Novak.” Lucas twisted the dagger. “You’re always trying to play a game that no one invited you to.”
“You can take me away!” Red pleaded with Maxwell. Helplessness coiled in her chest, making it hard for her to remember that she didn’t need to breathe. “Just leave them alone.”
Maxwell snapped his fingers. “Now, was that so hard?”
Three burly orderlies came around the corner. One blew a whistle. Another yelled into his walkie talkie. “Vamp fight!”
Lucas backed away, staring at the blood on his hands. The dark spectral arachnids evaporated on his face. “Rutting fuck, what are we doing?”
Grunting, Kristoff pulled the dagger from his stomach before dropping it. The ghostly railroad spike had disappeared from his ear. “Just like old times.”
Quinn helped Vic into his chair. Both were shadow free. Their auras cleared.
Maxwell dug his fingers into her shoulders. The iron chains fell.
Heart racing, Red lifted her chin as a darkness blacker than any she had ever known swallowed her up. She plummeted, tossed back on a rolling tongue sweeping her into hungry jaws.
22
December 23rd, 1:11AM, Dreamland, The Asylum
Tumbling into the belly of the beast, Red landed on a surgeon’s table. Time had no meaning here. In the asylum, she didn’t know what was real. She only knew what hurt.
Long Witch Night: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 2) Page 20
