The Vampire Gift 2: Kingdom of Ash (13 page)

The assembly beneath us has grown ghastly quiet. Both vampires and humans are waiting to see what happens next.

Mother directs the light of her staff at Brayson. “You heard what my advisors have said,” she intones. “Lucky for you, you won’t be made into a vampire’s meal.
Unluckily
—” her voice takes on a melancholy inflection, “—neither will you leave this encounter with your life.”

Before any of us can react, Morgan mutters an incantation. White hot flame bursts from the end of her staff.

Brayson is instantly engulfed by the fire.

“No!” Eleira screams. “No, no, NO!”

But it’s too late. The fire winks out. Nothing remains of the boy but a pile of ash on the ground.

The Queen looks at Eleira sadly. “You see what you made me do?” she asks, in a voice barely above a whisper.

But her soft voice carries through the whole of the underground space. She must have bewitched it.

Nobody else dares breathe.

Mother turns to speak to the humans.

“Remember this day!” she tells them. “Remember it as the day you let the words of a liar, a fraud, a cheat, ruffle you into arms against your most merciful ruler. Remember that The Haven abides by the justice of the Queen, and to go against me is to spit death in the eye and expect death not to strike back. I can be fair, yes—but for that, I require your trust.”

“If all you wanted was to leave this enclosure…?” she spreads her hands and gives an apathetic shrug. “All you had to do was ask. Leonardo?”

The shocked guard looks up. “Yes, my Queen?”

“Escort the humans back to the village. They’ve been here long enough. See that the rebuild begins tonight. They have shirked that responsibility for too many days.”

Leonardo bows deeply. “Of course.”

Morgan addresses the human crowd one last time. “I hope this serves as a valuable lesson for you all. There was never any need for such,
ahem
, histrionics, to get my attention.”

She turns and walks away. “Now,” she says, only to us, “Let’s go see what James has gotten himself up to.”

JAMES

I wade out of the icy river, shivering as my body tries to warm itself.

Even vampires get cold. We may be more resistant to the effects, and exposure can never kill us, but that does not mean we are immune to the nasty sensation.

Especially when it comes together with tumbling around and being forced this way and that by a mighty river.

By now, I’m miles away from The Haven. I don’t think even Mother knew about the river. I certainly did not.

But somebody else did.

The Voice that told me to jump was not imagined. I did not make it up. I’m sure of it now. I heard it in my head, clear as day.

As I was swimming, an uncomfortable memory bubbled up. I had heard the Voice once before, but not in my head. I heard it when its owner spoke to me outside The Crypts.

It belongs to The Ancient.

It’s a measure of how badly the silver collar is affecting me that I did not pick up on the association right away. Even now, every step I take away from the river is done in a haze. The collar is not as bad as the velvet sack, but in my weakened state, it makes a close second.

I make my way to a nearby boulder and hurl myself onto it. The rushing sound of water continues beyond me. Up ahead I can see the river run out from the cave. It falls in a steep waterfall.

I can also see the sun. It’s evening out there, which means I have to remain here, underground, for however long it takes for it to set.

I wish I could find another route. The more miles I put between me and The Haven, the better. Who knows how many of Mother’s guards have already come after me?

I force myself to stand. I’m still woozy, but I don’t want to be caught unawares by the guards bound to be coming after me.

To my relief, I find the cave is shaped exactly as I first thought. There are only two ways out, following the river back up, or through the gaping end of the waterfall.

I get antsy with nothing to do, so I decide to use the remaining hours of daylight to try getting the collar off. I know there’s a mechanism, some sort of latch, behind my neck.

Yet every time I try to find it with my fingers it’s not the pain from touching silver that stops me, but a chilling numbness that shoots down both arms. It must be an effect of the spell Mother put on it.

There’s no way to get the collar off on my own.

I curse and fling myself down, back on the same boulder.

The sooner I get this blasted collar off me, the better.

I’m anxious waiting for night. When it finally comes, I breathe a sigh of relief and venture to the edge of the waterfall. I look down.

Whoa.

I’m standing high above the sheer cliff face of a mountain. The falling water disappears below me in a shroud of mist. I can’t tell exactly how long the drop is, but I know it’s sizable. Impressive. Perhaps even…

Frightening.

There is only so much force a vampire can withstand without shattering his bones. And even if the impact won’t kill you, healing from such a fall could take days.

Do I have days to spend lying broken on the ground, knowing Mother’s guards are coming after me? And what about the sun? I’d be unprotected down there. It would scorch my skin and eventually kill me.

“IF YOU JUMP, WE WILL FIND YOU.”

I spin around. “Who said that?” I hiss.

“TRUST, BROTHER. TRUST IN US.”

My head! It’s the Voice in my head again. But this one is different from the one I heard in my cell.

“Who are you?”

“TRUST,”
the Voice repeats. “
TRUST AND JUMP. TRUST…”

It fades away. In its place comes a stark emptiness.

I eye the space before me. Do I dare listen to the Voice? Am I going crazy? Maybe such a long exposure to silver is making my mind imagine things that are not there.

“Voice,” I say. “If you are truly there, give me some sort of proof!”

Silence greets me.

I scoff. “Just as I thought,” I mutter. I edge my way closer to the opening. Maybe I don’t have to jump—maybe I could scale my way down, and—

All of a sudden the ground starts to shake. I leap back from the edge. There comes a monstrous roar, and next thing I know, the roof is caving in behind me, sealing the river off as more and more rubble comes crashing down.

The loud noise disorients me, all because of the silver collar. I lose sense of where I am, and my head starts to spin. I stumble, and, in the shaking, trip and fall.

Thankfully, I’ve gotten far enough from the ledge to avoid that endless drop.

After what seems an age, the shaking stops. I wipe the dust from my eyes and look out at the end result of the quake.

The way back is completely sealed. Only the tiniest trickle of water makes its way through the rocks.

“IS THAT NOT PROOF ENOUGH FOR YOU?”
the Voice screams in my mind.

I bolt up. “You did this,” I say.

“YES.”

“And you want me to…” I look out over the edge. The fall is bottomless. “…jump?”

“IT IS YOUR ONLY WAY OUT.”

“And so it is,” I agree.

I mutter an oath and step out over the edge to plunge into the nothingness far below.

ELEIRA

My mouth tastes of ash in the aftermath of Morgan’s senseless murder of the boy.

I want to say that I cannot believe she would do something like that… but it isn’t true. I know how much value the Queen places on human life.

It isn’t much.

I’m part of a solemn group that follows her through The Haven. We’re going back to the castle, from which point Morgan will lead us to James’s cell.

“
If I find out that any of you had a part to play in this,” the Queen says as we delve into the darkness below her fortress, “the consequences for you will not be pretty.”

Raul and Phillip shoot each other an unreadable look. Smithson glares openly at the two of them.

“Eleira, come away from there,” the Queen beckons. “Walk with me.”

I glance at Raul, who gives me a miniscule nod.

I walk forward and join Morgan.

“You’re troubled,” she tells me. “I can see it in your eyes.”

I press my lips together.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one,
I think.

“You don’t like the way I handled things with the villagers,” she continues. “Your flaw, my dear, is that you have a weak heart. You’re still hanging on to the parts of you that are human.

“That will pass, given enough time. We must both stay patient, and it will pass. Soon, you will fully embrace all your vampiric gifts. Small trifles like a single human life will mean nothing to you.”

“You’re wrong,” I say. “If you think I’ll ever be like you—”

She cuts me off with a delicate cough. “You’re already more like me than you think.” She glances at my free hand. “That ring on your finger. Where did you get it?”

Immediately I cradle my hand into my body, hiding it from her. “It was a gift,” I say.

“You weren’t wearing it when you escaped The Haven. Who did you get it from? Let me guess… James? No, that’s not his style. Perhaps somebody you met as his captive? But that doesn’t make sense either. Hm…” she taps her lips. Then she lifts one finger up. “Ah! Of course, I know. It came from
Raul.
”

I tense at the way she says his name. She
knew
the ring was from him the entire time.

She holds her hand out. “May I see it?” she asks.

On instinct, I angle my body away to protect the piece of jewelry.

“Oh, I won’t take it off your finger, don’t worry,” she says. “I simply want to examine it from up close.”

I glance over my shoulder at Raul and Phillip. They’re engaged in a deep conversation with each other and don’t notice me.

“Eleira…” Morgan says. “You’re not going to defy a direct order from your Queen, are you?”

I sigh and hold my arm out. “Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice,” I mutter.

“Oh, but this is spectacular!” Morgan marvels once she touches the ring. “I can feel the power within. How did my son ever come across something precious like this?” She shakes her head. “That doesn’t matter, since it’s yours now.” She gives me a most meaningful look. “You know the deadline I set of three days?”

I eye her warily. “Yes?”

“When you come to me with your final decision, you will also give me the ring.”

I jerk my hand away. “What?”

“I can feel what it’s doing to you, Eleira. It’s preventing you from becoming the woman you are destined to be. I will
not
have the future Queen of The Haven be suppressed the way Phillip was for so many years. I’ve been too lenient with him in the past. But the time for leniency ends with your coming. The Haven will be ruled with an iron fist while you are being groomed for power. The first step of that is getting you to accept your vampire nature. Without…” she casts a disgusted glance at my ring, “…without your abilities being hampered.”

The worst kind of sickness settles in my stomach. It feels like all my defenses are being stripped bare.

Just when I start to look back at Raul for help, the ground starts to shake.

We’re thrown against the side wall. The vampires around me quickly regain their balance.

“What was that?” Smithson yells. He casts a worried look at the stone above us. “If this place caves…!”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence. At that moment a bright blue light flows out from around Morgan. It envelops us in a protective orb.

The ground continues to shake. But none of the rubble touches us.

Raul grabs my arm and pulls me to him. He holds me to his body.

Morgan has her eyes screwed shut. She’s muttering an incantation under her breath. Stones rain down from the ceiling. They rebound off the blue sphere and do not reach us.

After a few minutes, the shaking stops. The Queen holds her spell for a few more moments… and then lets go.

The light winks out. As soon as it does she stumbles back, as if a great rebounding force just crashed into her.

Smithson is at her side in a flash, holding her up and helping her stand.

“You’ve overexerted yourself, my Queen,” he says, his voice becoming toady. “You mustn’t risk so much of yourself. We could have handled it without the need to resort to magic.”

“We were lucky,” she rasps. I realize just how much the spell took out of her. She sounds hoarse, exhausted, and—just for a moment—I see past her regular vampire face and glimpse the tired woman underneath.

I shiver. That’s one of those things only granted to those with magic in their bloodline—as the Queen had explained to me.

Does it mean that being a vampire is all an illusion? Or am I seeing something else?

It certainly doesn’t
feel
like an illusion.

After a few moments Morgan pushes herself up. “That could have been much worse. The tremors came from deep underground. Had they known we were here…” she trails off. “The spell would have saved our lives.”

“But that means…” Phillip begins, concern filling his words.

“It means someone is mounting an assault on The Haven,” the Queen finishes for him. “Smithson—I want guards posted at every entrance. Get all the coven vampires to their homes. Don’t let any wander. The humans must be kept together, too. Keep them within the boundaries of the village, but do
not
tell them what’s happening.”

She looks up. “The wards will inform me of any who attempt entry into The Haven from the Outside. I want you to be ready to defend at a moment’s notice.”

“I warned you,” Raul tells his Mother. “I warned you what would happen if you sent James on his mission!”

“You think The Crypt vampires have come to get retribution?” Morgan laughs. “No, my son. Logan would not move so soon. It would take weeks for him to assemble the necessary force.”