A Shade of Vampire 13: A Turn of Tides (12 page)

I
’d never visited
The Sanctuary. Neither had Erik or Abby. I had no idea where to even start looking for Mona. We were dependent on Patricia’s instincts now more than ever. But once we did find Mona, something told me that I’d be able to convince her that everything she’d thought she’d seen was an illusion caused by a ghoul. And once she was convinced, she was powerful enough to break us all out of here.

We just needed to find her.

“I suppose the logical place to start looking is Mona’s old home in the city,” Patricia said. “When I used to live here, I recall another family had moved into it, but they might have been moved out…”

We held onto Patricia as she vanished from the forest and we reappeared on a quaint cobblestone street lined with flower baskets.

“All three of you need to keep holding on to me,” the witch said as I motioned to let go. “We can’t afford to lose each other now that we’re on the inside.”

I ran my hand down her cardigan and held on to the hem of it as we moved forward. We walked through an open gate to our left to see two young boys playing on a lush green lawn in front of a pristine white two-story building, lined with balconies. One look at the boys and we didn’t need to investigate further. Clearly, Mona no longer lived here.

We exited through the gate and walked back out onto the street.

“Those two witches,” I said. “Brisalia and Csilla Adrius. They are the ones responsible for luring Mona to this realm. I have a feeling they won’t be far away from her.”

“The palace of the Adriuses,” Patricia muttered. “That would present some problems indeed…”

“What kind of problems?” Erik asked.

Patricia let out a sigh. “Well, since the death of Odelia, I am certain that they have tightened security. I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to gain entrance… But Kiev is right. After Mona’s own home, that’s the next most likely place she could be. We’ll just have to try.”

“Then let’s go now,” I said, gripping Patricia by the arm.

“Hold on tighter, Abby,” the witch said before we all vanished and appeared again in another cobblestone lane. Only this time, we were standing outside two sets of giant gates.

“I wasn’t able to vanish us behind them,” Patricia whispered.

“Damn it,” I said. Approaching the gate, I gripped the bars with both hands, ignoring Patricia’s advice that we ought to remain connected the whole time.

I stared through the bars up at the celestial palace that was perched on top of a hill.
Within those walls somewhere is Mona, I’m sure of it.
The thought was infuriating.

Patricia gripped my arm and replaced it over hers. I glanced at the warlocks dressed in black robes patrolling the grounds. Guards, I assumed. The trick we’d managed to pull off down by the beach certainly would not be easily replicable here.

“Mona,” Patricia said suddenly. The strength of her voice alarmed me considering our proximity to the guards behind the gate.

“Huh?” I whipped around and was stunned to see a familiar blonde figure walking toward us in the distance, a man with long hair by her side.

“Hey! Mo—!” I attempted to yell, but my voice cracked mid-word. When I tried to shout again, my voice had completely vanished.

I launched forward into a sprint, but I’d barely moved a few feet when a sharp pain pierced my lower back, as though I’d just been hit by a bullet, and my legs collapsed beneath me.

As I fell, I looked around in horror to see Patricia—no longer invisible—caught in the arms of a warlock draped in black clothes. Two more guards were approaching me and, looking down at my own body, I realized that the invisibility spell had lifted from me too. They both gripped my arms and pulled me up, and before I could even look around the place for my brother and Abby, the guards vanished Patricia and me from the spot.

I
t all happened so fast
. One minute, I was staring at Mona walking toward us on the road in the distance, and the next, I whirled around to see a guard lunging in mid-air and landing on the floor with Patricia fully visible in his arms. Then, when Kiev yelled, they managed to hit him with a spell and he got caught too. We hadn’t even noticed the guards approaching us from behind.

Holding my breath, I stumbled back and stared down at my own hands. I was still invisible. I looked back at the spot the guards, Kiev and Patricia had been a few seconds before only to see that they had disappeared.

No!

“Abby?” A whisper behind me, barely louder than a breath. Erik.

“Yes,” I replied just as quietly.

I felt his hand brush against my arm, which he then gripped and pulled me back against the wall.

Mona and her companion still walked toward us, apparently oblivious to what had just occurred.

“What are we going to do?” I whispered.

“I think our best chance is Mona,” he replied after a tense pause. “If we can get through to her, she’ll be able to help us find Kiev and Patricia… wherever they’ve just been taken.” I felt his body shudder next to me.

“Do you think we should try to just speak to her as she’s approaching?” I asked.

Another pause. “No,” he replied. “Not while that man is with her. We need to try to get her on her own—”

His voice trailed off as Mona and the warlock were now too close for us to speak even in whispers without the risk of being detected.

Erik’s grip on me tightened as they walked right past us and reached the gate. Mona pulled out a key from her gown and, unlocking the heavy gate, pushed it open. I almost left my head behind as Erik jerked me forward with speed that knocked me breathless. It was just as well. If we’d delayed a moment later, the gates would have slammed shut in front of us, locking us out.

Erik continued leading me forward at a safe distance from the two of them. As we reached the foot of the stairs and began ascending toward the palace entrance, I kept fearing that they would vanish themselves, leaving us stranded and without the slightest clue where to find Mona. But, as we reached the top of the stairs and walked through the front door into a stunning entrance hall, I began to allow myself to hope that they were enjoying the exercise.

We began climbing staircase after staircase as we moved up the floors of the palace. I would have been stunned by its beauty had my stomach not been in knots. I was thankful that Erik was taking it upon himself to regulate our speed and distance from the pair in front of us. On more than one occasion, I became anxious that we might lose them and I got too close, and Erik pulled me back.

Finally, we reached what appeared to be the top level of the palace and, walking along the corridor, stopped outside an engraved wooden door. Mona pushed it open and stepped inside.

“Well, Coen, I’ll catch you later,” Mona said.

“I look forward to it.” Coen smiled and began to walk back down the corridor.

Erik lurched forward with me once more, but before we could enter the door, Mona closed it behind her.

“Wait until the warlock has disappeared,” Erik breathed. “Then we’ll knock.”

I was hoping Coen would hurry up and vanish, but, apparently still enjoying the exercise, he ambled along the long corridor until he finally descended the steps down to the floor below.

“Now,” Erik said, moving closer to the door.

He knocked quietly at first, then louder when nobody came to answer the door. Footsteps sounded. Erik was barely breathing as the door clicked and swung open.

I was sure that during our walk through the palace, Erik had been mulling over what to say to Mona once we finally got her alone and he was now preparing to spit it out.

But it wasn’t Mona standing before us. It was a dark-haired witch wearing a navy blue smock and a white apron.

I was about to blurt something out anyway, but Erik’s hand closed over my mouth and he pulled me back away from the door. We retreated further down the corridor as the maid poked her head out, looking up and down with a confused look on her face.

Once the door closed again, Erik whispered, “We can’t risk trusting any of these witches. We have to find a way to speak directly with Mona. We’ll have to wait here and hope to catch her the next time she comes out alone.”

Exhausted from the tension, I slid down the wall and sat on the floor. “Okay,” I said. “Hopefully it’s just a matter of time.”

Erik’s hip brushed against mine as he slid down the wall next to me. “And hopefully, this invisibility spell Patricia put on us won’t desert us any time soon…”

W
ho was
that man walking next to Mona?

The question was circling in my mind as my vision came into focus again and I realized we were standing in some kind of dark, damp underground chamber. A prison, I soon realized as one of the warlocks dressed in black pushed open a gate and threw Patricia and me inside.

I threw myself at the gate, but not fast enough. It clicked shut and no matter how much I tried to rip open or bend the bars, they wouldn’t budge. Clearly bewitched to withstand the strength of a vampire.

I clutched Patricia’s shoulders. “Try to get us out of here.”

She raised her palms toward the gate. Nothing happened. Her shoulders sagged. “They’ve removed my powers.”

“No!” I yelled, slamming my fists against the wall.

I looked up and down the corridor outside. The guards had disappeared from sight already. My eyes travelled around the cells surrounding us. After a brief glance, they all seemed to be empty… except the one about four doors along. A red-headed man sat up against the bars, gazing across at me.

Efren. I recognized him instantly. How could I not? He’d once almost killed me.

He looked just as shocked to see me as I was to see him. He was a black witch. I had no idea how he could have gotten here in The Sanctuary.

“What are you doing here?” he spat.

I ignored the bastard and turned back to Patricia. She was staring through the bars, to a cell five doors to our left.

“Corrine?” she whispered.

I let out a gasp. She was right. I’d looked around too quickly to notice before, but now I could see, right at the back of the cell, both Corrine and Ibrahim leaning against the wall—apparently unconscious. “Corrine!”

“She won’t be waking up any time soon.” Efren chuckled.

“What happened?” Patricia asked, clutching the bars so hard her knuckles had turned white.

“They were causing trouble, from what I overheard one of the guards saying,” he said. “Weren’t settling into the new life the Adriuses wanted them to adopt. So they put them to sleep.”

Patricia looked at me, horrified. “They must have been caught… That means all this time, nobody has been looking for Rose.”

Before I could respond, a witch with flowing light blonde hair appeared directly in front of our cell, accompanied by one of the guards who’d placed us in here. She raised her brows as she looked us over.

“Brisalia,” Patricia gasped.

So this is the bitch.

“Do we know how they got in?” Brisalia asked the guard in a low voice, ignoring Patricia.

The warlock shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Hm.” She approached closer, her cool eyes traveling from mine to Patricia’s face, before turning back to the guard again. “Well, we can’t keep them here.”

“What do you propose?”

“We need to get rid of them.” She was speaking as though we weren’t even present in the room.

“Banish them from the island?”

“Oh, no,” she said. There was a pause as the warlock stared at her. “Now that they’ve found their way in once, we can’t risk it happening again. You know the consequences if Mona ever found out. We’ll need to find a more… permanent solution.”

“What?”

She looked thoughtfully at the warlock before replying, “Send them down to Hagatha. It’s about time she had some visitors…”

E
ach time a witch
passed us along the corridor, I kept fearing that Patricia’s invisibility spell would lift. But thankfully, it was still upon us.

Sitting on the floor began to grow uncomfortable after a few hours. Neither Erik nor I had spoken much during this time. We’d just been listening, hoping to hear any sign of Mona leaving the apartment. But we had yet to hear it.

“Erik,” I whispered, standing up. “I need to stretch my legs.”

“Me too.” He stood up with me, and I felt him reaching for my hand once again. “We can’t afford to lose each other.”

“And we shouldn’t go too far either,” I said.

We began walking slowly along the seemingly endless corridor. Something about the way we were walking together reminded me of my walks with Ben.

Ben.

I hoped that he’d be all right. It had been frightening to see how much his transformation had consumed him. Since Derek and Sofia hadn’t wanted anybody else visiting him until they understood what was wrong with him, the last time I’d seen him was when he’d escaped from the apartment and dove into the sea. The way he’d looked at me… it was as though he hardly recognized me.

Kiev didn’t know that the main reason I’d wanted to come on this mission to The Sanctuary was to distract myself from what was happening to Ben.

I thought back to the last encounter I’d had with him before he turned into a vampire. We’d been taking our usual walk with Shadow. I wasn’t sure why, but with his turning looming so close, something had made me want to finally admit my feelings toward him. Perhaps I’d sensed he might be different after his turning and I just wanted to get them off my chest while he was still the Ben I knew. Whatever the case, as we neared the forest on our journey back toward the residences, I’d slipped my hands into his and pulled him to a stop. But then when I’d opened my mouth to speak, a paralyzing fear took hold of me. My throat felt parched and I just couldn’t spit the words out. I had no choice but to clumsily change the subject and let go of him as we continued walking.

But even though I hadn’t managed to express myself, something about the way Ben had looked at me told me that he suspected what I was about to say. The way I’d touched him, and the way my cheeks had flushed—it would have been obvious to anyone.

Ben wasn’t one to shy away from subjects with me, so the fact that he didn’t step up and say something made me believe he didn’t feel what I felt for him. He didn’t take it as a cue to admit his own feelings for me, as I’d hoped he might. He didn’t put his arm around me and draw me closer to him, walking back through the woods as lovers might.

He allowed us to continue walking back home as the close friends we’d become.

By the time I arrived back at my treehouse, I found myself feeling glad I hadn’t spoken the words out loud. Because now I was sure that they would have made Ben feel uncomfortable. It was just as well I’d choked up. I’d probably made him feel awkward enough as it was…

“Do you hear that?” Erik’s voice broke through my thoughts as he squeezed my hand. “Someone’s coming up the stairs.”

Footsteps ascended the staircase a dozen feet away. Erik tugged on me and we sped back to Mona’s front door, careful not to make a sound. I glanced back at the staircase to see a man emerging from it—the same blond warlock who’d escorted Mona up here earlier.

Erik and I flattened ourselves against the wall as he passed by us and stopped outside Mona’s door. He knocked loudly three times. The door opened and the same witch I’d seen earlier appeared—based on her dress, I could only assume she was a maid.

“I’m here for Mona,” the warlock said.

The maid disappeared back into the apartment, calling, “Mona, Coen’s back for you.”

Mona appeared at the door a few moments later. Her long blonde hair trailed down her back and she wore a flowing white summer dress that perfectly complemented her tan skin. She looked more alive than when we’d seen her a few hours ago.

The second she stepped out into the corridor, Erik pulled me forward without warning. We managed to slip into the apartment just in time before the witch closed the door behind her.

We stood motionless, barely daring to breathe as the footsteps disappeared down the corridor. I cast my eyes around the lavish apartment, looking for the maid. I could hear pots clanging in a kitchen some doors away. For now, it seemed, she was occupied.

“We should find somewhere to hide until Mona returns,” I breathed.

We padded from room to room until we reached what was obviously the master bedroom. A dressing gown lay on the bed, and there were various items scattered on the dressing table.

Erik led me over to the corner of the room where there was a large closet. He pulled open the doors. It was filled with gowns, but there was still just enough room for both Erik and me to sit. I stepped inside first and Erik followed after me, closing the doors softly behind us. There was a narrow keyhole that each of us could take turns looking through, but for the most part, our hearing would be enough to sense movement in the room.

I let out a sigh and muttered, “At least now we’re one step closer to getting her alone.”