Scryer (16 page)

Felix helped my stiff body into a sitting
position also, and in the rush of freedom, I barely felt the pain anymore.

“I’m fine,” Lake told her.

“
No.”
Dorothea rushed to crouch
down beside him. “You need to replenish.” Taking her fur lined cuff, she drew
back the sleeve of her coat to reveal her thin, pale wrist.

“I told you I’m
fine.
” He glared
at her and she just stared at him for a moment, before switching her eyes to me
and then quickly back to him.

“It’s her, isn’t it? You don’t want her
to see? You think it would disgust her? You’re probably right, but I don’t see
why it matters when everything we do disgusts her anyway.”

“Shut up. Get that thing out of her
mouth!” Lake snarled.

Felix took my jaw and peered at my
mouth. “I’m sorry, but this will hurt,” he said finally. Then, without warning,
he wrenched my jaw down. Pain exploded in me as the thorns drew out of my
flesh, ripping as they went, and blood pooled out and down my chin. I let out a
moan, but would not allow myself the luxury of screaming in their presence.

Felix took a silk pocket square from his
breast pocket and bundled it up to place in my mouth to stem the blood. I bit
down on it, and it seemed to work. Felix gave a small smile of satisfaction
before pulling something from his inside jacket pocket. It was a small vial
with a clear liquid inside. “This will help the blood to clot and the wounds to
heal.” From another pocket, he drew out a syringe. “May I?”

I looked to Lake, who nodded.
Hesitantly, I offered my outstretched, bloody arm. Like an expert, Felix found
my vein and gently inserted the needle, emptying the contents of the vial into
me.

“She’s right, you know,” Felix murmured
as he slowly withdrew the needle. “You need to replenish. It would be foolish
not to, otherwise it will take your body a long time to recover. Do you want to
risk infection? Who knows what those bastards put on the knife. Your skin is
already grey.”

He was right. Lake looked like he had
aged. I snatched out the cloth that Felix had placed in my mouth to stem the
flow out of my mouth. “What do you mean replenish?”

Lake ignored me. “Take Ivy out to the
car,” he said to Felix.

“
No,”
I burst out. “No more
secrets. You promised.”

“Ivy…”

“Tell me!” I spoke through the blood and
gore in my mouth, but the mess of my tongue and the pain in me subsided to a lack
of importance. I needed to know.

He sighed. “Our blood is…special. We
don’t respond to normal medicine. Sometimes, herbal tinctures can work
effectively, but otherwise…”

“Otherwise the blood of our kind is the
most effective elixir for every ailment that we have,” Dorothea cut in. From
the folds of her fur coat she drew something out. It caught the light of the
fire in the hearth and the flames flickered in the clean sharpness of the
blade. The handle had a sheen to it and looked like it were made of pearl. It
was a ladies’ knife; small and a lethal. Showing her pale wrist once more, she
drew the blade across it, not even hissing when a line of dark red showed. She
offered it up to Lake while I gazed on in amazement and horror.

He shook his head, pressing his lips
together, but I could tell, through the look in his eyes, that he wanted it. He
needed
it.”

“Do it,” I whispered.

His eyes flew to me, alarmed and
somewhat shamed. He gave a slight shake of his head and mouthed, “No.”

“Do it.” My voice was louder now; I had
control of my mangled tongue once more.

Lake stared at me, long and hard, his
forehead furrowed, and then he took a breath. Roughly, he grasped Dorothea’s
waiting hand. I saw his nails curve into her palm, and his knuckles turn whiter
than they already were. She gave a slight gasp at the pain but then her mouth
curved into a smile; a triumphant, smug smile.

Then Lake finally tore his eyes from
mine and dipped his head down, closing his mouth over Dorothea’s bloodied wrist,
and he began to suck on it. She stared down at him, her eyes hazy and that
smile never dropping from her red lips. Instantly, color flooded back into
Lake’s cheeks. His eyes didn’t appear as hollow anymore and once again he was a
healthy young man. He closed his eyes for a moment, and a look of euphoria came
over him as he took in her blood.

When he finished, he thrust her away
from him violently. She fell back, putting a hand out to steady herself. But
instead of the anger that I expected, she gave a laugh as she darted her eyes
over to me. I made sure to keep my face like stone. His lips on her while her
blood gave him what he needed…I would never let her know the irritation that
seethed inside of me.

Lake wiped at his bloody mouth and got
to his feet. “Are they all dead?” he asked gruffly.

Felix squared his shoulders. “No. The
leader, Rossi, escaped along with a few others. But don’t worry, we’ll get
them.” Then his eyes went slightly tender. “I’ve sent others out after them.
You can’t hunt them just yet. Let the witches track them. By then, you’ll be
fully recovered.” Felix shrugged off his long coat and offered it to Lake, who
took it and slid his arms into it to cover his nudity.

He walked over to me, offering his hand,
which I took and he pulled me to my feet. “Ivy and I are returning to my
apartment. You can dress her wounds there.” He turned to Dorothea. “Give Ivy
your coat.”

Her eyes bulged slightly, and she opened
her mouth, but then she must have seen the determined look on Lake’s face and
thought better of arguing. Reluctantly, she peeled her white fur coat from her
body, leaving her clad in a skin-tight black top and pants. Without the expensive
fur covering her, it was like she had been whittled away to nothing. With both
hands, she passed the coat over to Lake, who took it and spread it over my
shoulders, wrapping it around me. Instant warmth surrounded me from its weight,
and I could imagine my stained body leaving smeared scarlet marks on the
inside.

He took my hand and led us from the
room, past piles of ash and the stench of burned flesh, and out into the pink
glow of the dawn that surrounded us. The witches waited, together and silent.
Circle members waited beside them, and I could almost feel the animosity and
hatred coming from the witches toward them. The familiar pang of injustice went
through me at the memory of being used for powers, at having no control…

I ducked my head down as Lake held the
door open to a black SUV for me. Once the door was safely closed behind us, he
drew me close to him and delivered a kiss to my forehead. “Do I disgust you?”
he asked softly.

I stretched my head up to look him in
the eyes. “No.” And that was the truth. “Are you vampires?”

He barked out a laugh. “What? No.
Vampires don’t exist. We don’t feed from humans; only from each other, and then
its only when our bodies require extra power.”

“What are you?”

He looked away and shrugged. “I am what
I am. I lust for power like it’s in my blood, and I can’t imagine another way
of being.”

I swallowed. Whatever Felix had given
me, my strength was returning and the blood had stopped running. “What would
win—power or love?”

He bent down and touched his forehead to
mine. “Why can’t I have both?”

Felix opened the driver’s door and got
in the car. “Michael wants to speak with you.”

“I’ll talk to him later, once I know
Ivy’s all right.” He hugged me closer to him, and we stayed like that as Felix
started the engine and began to drive down the winding mountain roads. Dorothea
must have taken another car, and for that I was grateful. The look on her face
as Lake fed from her kept playing in my mind. His lips on her skin; his
consumption of her blood—it was like she thought that she had won something.

I burrowed closer to Lake and his hold
on me turned even tighter. Back at the apartment, men were already there, a
body was covered up and the blood on the carpet was being cut out. “One of my
men,” Lake said by way of explanation, before quickly hurrying me away from the
awful sight.

Felix tended to my wounds under Lake’s
watchful eye. “They shouldn’t scar,” he said, “the herbal mixture I gave you is
working well to knit the skin back together and repair it.” I could already
feel how much my mouth had healed in the hours that had passed. The flesh of
the roof of my mouth that had gaped previously like raw, exposed meat had now
reduced to mere rough spots that I could touch with my now painless tongue. As
Felix finished, expecting my wounds with a satisfied eye, Lake took my hand and
led me to a bedroom. He tucked me into bed and kissed my forehead.

“I’ll speak to Michael and then I’ll
join you.”

I tried to stay awake but my eyelids
felt heavy.

My sleep was dreamless, not the merest
hint of nightmare touched me, and that, in itself, was unsettling. I woke up to
find Lake dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I’ve got you some clothes to wear.
They’re in the bathroom.” He held out a steaming cup of coffee, which I took,
the burn on my palms from its heat telling me that this was all real.

“Thanks.” I kicked off the sheets and
made my way to the shower. As I stood under the hot spray, my mind whirled with
possibilities. Where would I go? What would I do now? And, the worst were the
nagging thoughts of Caleb. Was he in trouble for helping me?

But I tried to shake that thought away.
He wasn’t my concern. I needed to think only of myself and my own well-being. I
ran my hand over my wounds that had now reduced to mere silvery lines that gave
away nothing of the nightmare before. As I stepped out of the shower, I wrapped
the towel around me, and then froze when I saw the clothes that had been left
for me.

Like a vicious stain against the white
of the bathroom, a red dress sat neatly folded on a stool. I picked it up. It
was short dress, modern, and nothing like the scrying skirt I wore for the
rituals except for the color. I bunched it up. I wouldn’t wear it. Furiously, I
marched from the bathroom to the kitchen where Lake waited and threw the fabric
at his feet.

“I won’t wear it.”

He frowned. “What’s wrong with it?” Then
it dawned on him. “The color? Such fury over color?” He was close to smiling,
but his expression became serious when he saw that there was nothing amusing
about this, according to me. “I have others. I love that color on you, but
there are others, if you want them. They’re in the closet in the room you slept
in.”

“Good.” I spun around and retreated back
to the bedroom. As he had said, several dresses hung there in colors other than
red. I chose a pale green one and quickly dressed in front of a full- length
mirror. The green went well with my hair and complexion, and for a brief instant,
I looked normal.

“It suits you.” I turned to face Lake
standing in the doorway. He stepped closer, and I turned away from him to
observe myself in the mirror again. He came up behind me, and I did my best not
to move in reaction to his closeness. He rested one hand on my waist and
unwillingly I lifted my eyes to meet his reflection. He bent his head down so I
could feel his warm breath against my cheek. “I’m going to take you back to the
mountain estate while we hunt them down. You’ll be safe there.”

“No.”

“Don’t do this, Ivy.”

“Do what?” I asked his reflection.

“Don’t fight everything that I do. Don’t
make everything between us a battle. I’m not your enemy. You loved me once, you
must remember that.”

My cheeks flamed with shame at the
admission. That truth brought out my claws. “You are my enemy, Lake, and that
wasn’t love, that was just me falling for your deceit and manipulation.” I
didn’t know why I said that. Now that he was out of danger, I still felt the
need to hurt him and couldn’t stop myself.

He was silent for a moment, before
saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way. I had hoped that you would cooperate.”

“Cooperate with what?”

“This.” His hand moved swiftly to grab
the back of my neck in a firm hold.

I struggled. “What the hell are you
doing?”

In the reflection, I saw his other hand
come up, the syringe that he held was clear as day.

“No.” I tried to kick but missed as the
needle plunged into my neck. I managed to tear free from his hold and stagger
over to the bed. My hand reached up to find the syringe sticking out of me, but
it felt too heavy, my fingers wouldn’t cooperate with what my brain was telling
it. I fell down, grabbing onto the bedcovers for useless support and my knees
collapsed. My mouth attempted to form every profanity that I could think of by
nothing came forth but an animal like grunting sound.

Lake’s legs appeared in front of me and
he crouched down to pull the syringe from me. “Go to sleep, baby. It’ll all be
just fine.” The last thing I remembered was his lips on my forehead as I willed
him to burn. Nothing happened but darkness.

“Wake
up, time, little witch.”

A gas lamp burned in front of me as my
groggy eyes managed to open to dancing light and shadow as Dorothea Corin stood
above me in red killer heels that matched her lipstick. With the light moving
and casting differing shadows over her face, she kept making a macabre change
from beauty to ugliness.

I managed to make a moaning sound as I
struggled to sit. But chains rattled, and I couldn’t move far. I lay on some
kind of hard pallet in a room made of stone. The cold hit me and I looked down
to see that I was bare-chested with my nipples hard in response to the
temperature. Below them, I wore the hated, red velvet ritual skirt.

I looked up at Dorothea. “Get this
fucking thing off of me.”

She merely smiled and pulled her white
fur closer to her body as if the cold were penetrating it. It was a different
fur than the one she had been forced to give me. I imagined she had a whole row
of them hanging in her closet—an armoire of death.

“Now, now, Ivy. You’re in no position to
give orders here, now are you darling?”

I pulled at the chains again. “Where am
I?”

“You’re where we always meet for
rituals. Only now you’re in the dungeon.”

“Why?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“Because of your misbehavior,” she
clipped out like some kind of headmistress. “Michael isn’t very happy with the
decisions that you’ve made lately. Taking a white witch for a lover, that was
very foolish, and we all know how Michael holds grudges,” she said lightly, as
if it were a joke that we shared between us.

“Where’s Lake?” I snapped out, my head
still groggy.

“None of your business. Now, Michael
will be down shortly and I’m here to let you know in no uncertain terms that
you are to be on your best behavior. I’ll not have him being a bastard to me
just because a stupid little slut like you upsets him.”

Was it my imagination, or was that a
bruise lining her cheek? It was hard to tell with the shadows dancing over her
features.

“Do you understand?”

I lay my head back down and stared at
the stone ceiling.

She waited for a few moments and then,
when it was clear that I wasn’t about to engage with her any further, she
spoke. “Lake’s been sent away to hunt down the white witches so he won’t be
coming to rescue you anytime soon.”

I kept still and didn’t speak.

I heard her breathing and then she said,
“Did you know that I was Lake’s first lover? He was fifteen and already
absolutely delicious. I was mad at Michael, so I took his nephew into my bed.
Michael had banished me here for the entire winter, but I didn’t mind too much
when I had Lake to keep me warm. I taught him everything that he knows. You
should really thank me.”

I felt bile rise in my throat at the
thought of them together but managed not to let my distaste show on my
exterior.

“You’ll never be one of us, Ivy.” Her
voice was serious now. “Did you see the look on his face as he drank my blood?
You will never be able to give him that.”

She tapped her heel impatiently, waiting
for a reaction that she would never get. When she realized that, she gave a
sigh and turned on her heel and walked out of the room, taking the lantern and pulling
the heavy door closed behind her. I jumped as it clanged shut, and only then
did I let the false bravado drop. I was cold and locked in this horrible, dark
room that was probably underground. I had never been treated like this before
and a spark of fear went through me that they could keep me locked up like this
forever if they wanted to, just like they had done to my ancestors centuries
ago under the guise of keeping them safe.

Hours stretched on, or maybe it was mere
minutes, but awful thoughts swirled in my head as I thought of the fate that
lay ahead of me. The door finally opened and a figure stood there holding a
lantern. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the new light, and when they
did, I realized that it was Michael who stood there holding it. I averted my
eyes to look at the stone ceiling above me once more. I heard his footsteps as
he walked over to me and placed the lantern on the ground. Sitting beside me on
the pallet, he began to stroke at my hair.

“This was what I always wanted to do to
you, Ivy Scryer,” he murmured. “To have you locked away like something
precious. You won’t be hurt by the awful, random things that you see each day
in the futures and pasts of strangers. Your mind won’t decay and go crazy until
you feel that the only option is to kill yourself to stop the torment.”

To my horror, tears began to seep from
my eyes. I tried to tell myself that it was the effects of the drug that Lake
had given me to keep me down, but the truth was, it was a combination of the
truth of his words, and the realization that he really believed the crap that
he was saying. My tears fell down from my cheeks and onto my chest to travel to
my breasts. Michael moved his mouth down there and began to lick my tears from
my skin. His tongue moved over the silver cuts in my skin, almost like it was my
blood that he desired rather than the warmth of being inside me. His tongue
dragged down my body, past my naval and down to the scar that sat low on my
stomach that contained a womb that would always be empty of a Corin child.

Of course, it was hardly the first time
that he had touched me in an intimate way, but this was the first time that I
had been physically chained by him. I sucked in a breath sharply, and it made
him raise his head to search me with his eyes. What did I look like to him in
the dark? Did the shadows make me ugly as they had with Dorothea? Or did they
make me mysterious; a secret locked away from reality. I imagined this dungeon
as one of my boxes sitting innocently on a shelf with no indication of what lay
within.

My boxes…

A wave of homesickness came over me.
Most people missed people; I missed cold inanimate objects.

He lowered his mouth to mine. He tasted
like the salt of my tears mixed in with scotch or whatever his drink of the day
was. His kiss was tender and soft as he tried to coax my still lips into
responding. I wouldn’t though. I would be as still and cold as the stone of
these dungeon walls. No coaxing or cajoling by Michael would make me do his
bidding so he could pretend that we were willing lovers. I had fire now. I
could make his flesh melt and his bones turn to ash…

As I endured his touch, my mind turned
to channeling the flame. The rage began to build at thoughts of the injustice
of it all. I concentrated on his hair, and a wisp of smoke escaped up into the
dark…

But then there was a scream.

My rage subsided as Michael lifted his
head from me in surprise at the sound and the smallest flame that had begun
died out.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

“Hell indeed,” said a smooth voice
behind him. Michael’s eyes widened in surprise as he twisted his head to see
who the intruder was. Caleb stepped forward out of the darkness and into the
light of the lamp. The silver blade caught that light just as Michael tried to
rise, and then it disappeared as it sunk deep into his torso. He made a
gurgling noise and managed to stay on his feet somehow as Caleb yanked the
knife out before thrusting it deep within the other man, arching it up into his
heart.

Michael staggered then fell with a
graceless thump to the ground and lay there unmoving as blood pumped from him.
Caleb only cast his eyes over the man he had just killed for a second before
stepping over the body to reach me. I stared up at him, unsure if I should be
shrinking away in fear from that bloodied knife.

But then he placed it down beside him as
his hands went to my chains. “We have to get you out of here,” he said quickly,
pulling on the heavy manacles. They didn’t move of course.

“What are you doing?” I asked as he went
back to Michael’s body and began to search for the key.

“They’re coming after you, Ivy. They can
track where you are.” He found what he was looking for in Michael’s pocket, and
in an instant was setting me free. I sat up weakly and massaged my wrists.

“Why are you helping me?”

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me to my
feet. “Come on, Ivy. We have to go.” He led me past the sickening sight of
Michael’s dead body, and when I faltered, his grasp became firmer. “
Ivy,
they’re coming. We have to go. He doesn’t like to be thwarted, and right now,
he’s pretty fucking pissed. Nothing’s going to stop him.”

“Who?” I didn’t protest as he dragged me
behind him.

“My father.”

We came to stone steps dimly lit by
lanterns lining the walls at spaced intervals. I tripped and then nearly
screamed as I saw the body on the stairs. Felix lay there with his eyes closed
and a bloodied chest.

“
Ivy.”

“Stop! I’m not going anywhere until you
tell me what’s going on. You killed Felix and Michael?” I swallowed. “And Lake,
what about Lake?”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry. I
haven’t hurt a hair on the head of your precious lover boy. Right now, he’s out
hunting us, but unless he’s got a witch with our kind of power, he hasn’t got a
hope in hell of finding my father. Now let’s go.”

“Why are you helping me?” I repeated.

He stared at me for a moment. “Call it
rebelling against my family if you like. I’ve got my own reasons, and if you
don’t leave here with me right now, it’ll be for nothing.”

Breathing hard, a million thoughts ran
through my head. I could stay and maybe die, or go with him and maybe die.
“Let’s go,” I told him.

Together we ran up the stone steps that led
to a set of large, old wooden doors. Caleb pushed at them hard to open them,
and they revealed a grey, twilight sky. The house loomed against the dismal   
landscape, its grey stone matching the sky. Suddenly a streak of light pushed
through the grim surrounding us, bursting into something that looked like a
sunburst with drops of light cascading down and leaving slivers of silver and
blue behind them.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed.

“No it isn’t,” snarled Caleb. “It’s your
death warrant. They’ve found you. We need to find shelter.” He gripped on to my
arm and pulled me along as we headed for the trees further down. We climbed
down the rocky incline clumsily in our haste. My ankle still hurt in spite of
Felix’s herbal tincture, and as I made the last jump down, I landed awkwardly,
twisting it and crying out in pain.

From his position ahead of me, Caleb stopped
and turned. I managed to tear the look of pain from my face and hobble toward
him. Sighing, he took two steps toward me and grabbed me around the waist so I
was draped over his shoulder humiliatingly. He ran as best as he could over the
uneven terrain until we reached the cover of the trees. Only when we were deep
under the cover of the branches and leaves did he set me down, breathing
heavily. The trees were beginning to shed their leaves with the beginning of
autumn, but there was still enough coverage. I collapsed down to sit on the
leafy ground and leaned against a tree trunk.    

He stared up through gaps in the trees
to the sky, the look on his face as grim as the sky.

“Why are you really helping me, Caleb?”
I asked wearily.

His shoulders sagged down and he sat
next to me, his face spelling out his fatigue. “This isn’t the life I want. I
want to disappear. Helping you means my father can never name me as his
successor. Maybe they’ll forget about me.” But he didn’t sound convinced.

“Or maybe they’ll kill you.”

He mouth turned into a twisted, unhappy
smile. “That’s far more likely, but at least…”

“What?”

He let out a breath. “I fell in love
with a girl once. She wasn’t one of us. She was mortal and unaware of any of
this. She knew nothing of scrying and magic. She didn’t know that the more
polluted the earth became, the harder it was to access our magic. It was like
being unable to breathe.”

“What happened to her?”

Caleb gave a sad smile. “My father got
in the way, and she ended up with someone else.”

“I’m sorry.”

He waited for a minute before saying,
“I’m lying. That’s the story I like to tell myself. It makes it easier. The
reality is that she’s dead and her flesh is rotting away somewhere, her bones
becoming part of the land. He would never tell me where.” He ran a hand through
his hair. “God, I wish that I had something to drink right now.”

“Why did he kill her?”

“To get what he wanted. I think he had
in mind for me to marry Penzance and continue some kind of fucking witch
dynasty or something. Kate got in his way and I was too weak to stand up to
him. So now she’s dead and my weekends are spent murdering and desecrating
bodies.” He let out a low whistle. “My dad hates weakness more than anything,
yet he doesn’t see that I’m the weakest of them all. I can’t stand up to him. I
never could.”

“You’re letting me live now,” I said
carefully. “That means something.”

He shot a quick look at me. “I wish that
I could promise that. I really do, but they’re close, I can feel them.” He
lifted up the leg of jeans and pulled out the knife that had been strapped to
his ankle. It was the same nasty blade that had killed Michael and his blood
was not yet dry.