The Vampire Gift 2: Kingdom of Ash (21 page)

The woman runs up to him and throws her full weight onto his arm. “No!” she pleads. “Do not kill him! Do not waste his potential! Take him prisoner, bind him, shackle him, but
let him live!
”

“Why should I?” Father’s grip tightens on the dagger held at my breastplate. The point presses into me.

“He knows things,” the woman exclaims. “About The Haven. About your first wife. He can offer information that we won’t get from anybody else!”

Father throws me down. He kicks me in the face. I taste blood. I try to fight him, but I’m no match. He uses the Mind Gift to keep me on the floor. The telekinetic force binds me. I cannot strike against him no matter how much I want to.

He continues his attack. Kicks rain down on me from all sides. All I manage to do is curl up in a pathetic ball and take the abuse. He’s yelling and screaming obscenities as he beats me to a bloody pulp.

Finally he tires out. I look up in a daze.

“Take him to the prisoner’s quarters,” he commands. “Bind him in chains. He’ll be given a chance to redeem himself…” the King seizes my chin and forces me to look at him, “…after he’s been sufficiently tortured.”

RAUL

Days pass with Mother locked in her room. After news of Bradley’s death emerged, an eerie type of tension descended over The Haven.

Vampires have started seeking me out to try to understand what’s happening. Mother’s seal of all the exits and entrances makes them uneasy. They feel trapped, and, for the first time in our existence, uncertain about the mental stability of their Queen.

Eleira, the only one of us viewed as an “Outsider” has been more or less shunned by all the other vampires here.

“I don’t understand,” she tells me. “Morgan told me I have three days to decide. But when I go to her she won’t open the doors.”

“You’re not the only one getting that reception,” I mutter. “Come here, look at this.”

She walks over to my desk. The charts I’ve been pouring over are still laid out. Constellations, astrological signs, everything that points to the succession.

“Do you really believe in this stuff?” Eleira asks. “Seeing the future in the stars? I always thought it was kind of… hocus pocus.”

“When you have the assurance of living for centuries, you see patterns emerge. The stars don’t decide our fates. But knowing what’s going on in the heavens gives insight into what might happen on earth.”

I sweep a hand over the chart that’s taking up the most space on my desk. “As vampires we have a particular advantage in studying the night sky. We are only awake when the stars shine. They are a part of us, as essential to our wellbeing as the sun and vitamin D are to humans. These charts, also—” I glance at Eleira, “—told us of your birth. So you can’t deny their power.”

Eleira studies the intricate symbols overlaid on the canvas. “I can’t make heads or tails of it,” she mumbles. Then she shifts her gaze to me, eyes afire. “You can teach me! Can’t you?”

For a second I’m taken aback by her interest. Then an easy smile spreads across my face. “I would love to.”

I walk around the table so that I’m standing behind her. She doesn’t move. I take one of her hands and draw it along a celestial line. “This one,” I say softly, taking advantage of the moment to be close to her, to breathe in her delicious scent, “is called the Nocturna Animalia
constellation. It’s Latin for ‘
Creature of the Night.
’ Humans have never charted it. It is not important to them. But it is to us. When we watch the shifts over centuries…”

“Yes?” Eleira breathes, her voice soft and low.

I find my throat suddenly constricted. I have to clear it before trying again. “When we watch over centuries…”

Eleira turns her body and looks at me. Her pupils have widened. There’s a flush in her cheeks.

She is so beautiful.

“Yes?” she presses. “What happens when you watch them?”

“I…”

My mind ceases to work. I’m lost in her amazing eyes. I start lowering my head, wanting to kiss her,
needing
to taste her lips.

Her eyes drift shut as she waits for my kiss.

We only get a half-second of contact when a loud crash from the library in the opposing room sounds. Eleira gasps and pulls away.

I curse inwardly.

“I’m all right, I’m okay!” Phillip calls, oblivious to what he’d interrupted.

I grind my teeth and share a sympathetic look with Eleira. Then we both go to check on my brother.

He’s lost somewhere beneath a huge pile of books that has just come tumbling down on top of him from a great shelf. Only his head pokes out, his glasses askew.

“Well, that explains the noise,” Eleira says, trying to stifle a giggle.

I cross my arms and stare. “Aren’t you supposed to be more fleet of foot,” I deadpan, “given that you’re a
vampire
?”

Phillip gives a cheeky grin.

“And why are you wearing glasses again?” I continue. “You’ve fed. Your vision should be perfect.”

“They contribute to my look,” Phillip says idealistically. “Besides, after wearing them so long, I feel naked without.” He taps the lenses. “I replaced prescription glass with regular.”

“Charming,” I rib. “You’re going to have to put all those books back, too.” Eleira and I walk over and help him up. “How’d you manage this disaster anyway?” I look at the railed ladder on the far side of the room. “I had that installed for a reason.”

“A book caught my eye on the top shelf.” Phillip glances up. “I didn’t have time to go for the ladder.”

“And look what happened when you decided to climb on your own. Did you get what you were searching for, at least?”

“Yes,” he tells me. “And Eleira—this book pertains to you.”

“Really?” she asks. “How?”

“I’ll show you.”

We return to my study. Phillip lays the book on the desk. It’s covered in dark, flaking leather. It looks old.

There’s no title. Nothing at all is imprinted on its front, back, or spine.

For a second, I get a sense of a menacing power held inside.

“Ready?” Phillip asks.

“It’s just a book,” I bluff. “There’s nothing to get ready for.”

Phillip gives me a stringent look, then opens the book to a page at random.

The pages are entirely blank.

“Well, that was anti-climactic,” I say.

“Just you wait,” Phillip says. “This particular book requires blood.”

“Blood?”

Phillip retrieves the goblet Eleira was drinking from. Her thirst has not abated one bit since the transformation.

“Yes,” he says. “Human blood.”

Carefully, he pours the tiniest trickle onto the spine.

The blood simply pools into the middle. Nothing happens otherwise.

“That’s it?” I ask. The only impressive thing—if you can call it that—is that the ancient pages don’t soak the liquid up.

“Eleira, be a dear and hold out your hand, would you?”

She reaches out and gives it to Phillip. He pulls out the tiniest needle and pricks her finger.

A drop of blood leaks out. Phillip turns her hand toward the book. Gravity beckons the drop down. It falls through the air.

The moment it hits the human blood, a loud hissing sounds.

All three of us step back.

I watch, fascinated, as the pool of blood starts to trickle into the pages on either side. It flows onto them and takes shape, forming delicate lines of an unknown script. Intricate pictures full of arcane symbols flourish beside the blood-red text.

The whole book comes alive with the infusion of Eleira’s blood.

“Only a witch can access the secrets hidden inside,” Phillip says in a low and spooky voice.

“Good thing we have Eleira.” I look at her, but her attention is fixed on the book.

Once all the blood has gone out the middle and seeped into the pages, Eleira brings one trembling hand out. She traces some of the symbols on the page.

“I recognize these,” she says in a bare whisper. “I’ve seen them before. These runes. Long, long ago, when I was a little girl.” She shudders and withdraws her hand. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,” I tell Phillip. “What’s the purpose of this book?”

“It’s called…” Phillip flips it over to show the front, “
The Book of the Dead
.”

Now there are symbols on the cover, glowing in a faint, dull blue.

Eleira shakes her head. “No,” she says. “No. This is wrong. No. We shouldn’t be looking at this. No. This isn’t ours.”

“Eleira.” I look at her in concern. “Don’t worry. It’s just me, you, and Phillip. He found it in my library. There’s nothing wrong with—”

“No,” she cuts me off. She backs away until her shoulders hit the wall. “No, no, no,” she keeps repeating.

I glare at Phillip. “What’s wrong with her?”

Eleira keeps going on. “No, no, no…”

“I don’t know,” Phillip admits. He spreads his hands helplessly.

“Is it the book? Is it affecting her?” I demand. “It’s doing something to her, isn’t it?”

The glow on the cover is getting stronger. I rush to Eleira and hold her by the shoulders. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

But she just keeps muttering the same word. “No, no, no, no.” She shields herself against me.

I throw my arms around her body. “I’m here. I promise. Just tell me what’s wrong!” Again I glare at Phillip. “Get that book out of here!”

“
NO!”
Eleira screams and suddenly a violent blue light explodes from within the pages. It knocks me back, it knocks Phillip back. It knocks everything in the room back, except for… Eleira.

She is standing upright, her eyes fixed straight ahead but unseeing. Her hair is being blown away from her by a wind that’s started gusting from the pages of the book. The whole room is enveloped in that blue light.

Eleira steps forward. I try to move—and find myself unable to. None of my muscles respond.

And yet it’s not like I’m locked in place. Rather, it feels like my mind has started to operate at hyper-speed, watching, seeing, processing
everything
. Yet the physical restraints of the world prevent my body from keeping up.

Or maybe time has crawled to a standstill, and the only thing operating at proper speed is my brain.

I see Phillip. He’s frozen, too.

Eleira, however, approaches the ghastly book with ease.

She starts to mutter something in a horrible language. The room pulses with violent energy. Her inclination grows louder. The voice is not her own. I fight against the light pushing me down, but I’m like an insect caught beneath a panel of glass. I feel like a specimen on display in a museum—forever watching, forever unable to affect my surroundings.

Eleira reaches the table. Her voice takes on a truly terrible bass. The pages of the book flap this way and that. All the energy inside is escaping and feeding into the blue light. It pulses in time with the cadence of Eleira’s speech.

A dim shape, thick as ink and dark as the deepest night, starts to rise out from the midst of the book.

No
! I want to scream.

I push against the force holding me down. Panic takes over when I realize that strength is still not enough. I cannot move. I’m trapped, and all I can do is watch as Eleira draws that malevolent black shape out of the book.

The room’s temperature quickly drops. Eleira keep chanting. The shape continues to grow. It’s the size of a rat, now, and I can already see its body taking form, the hideous lines, the misshaped head, the crooked torso—

Suddenly the main doors fly open. Morgan is standing there, staff in hand. She takes one look at what is happening and steps into the blue light.

Somehow she’s able to penetrate the force field. Her lips move, yet I cannot hear what she says. But I feel the power of her words as they clash against Eleira’s chant in the air.

Eleira snarls at my Mother. Such a viciousness contorts Eleira’s face that it frightens even me. She draws her lips back and shows her fangs. Her eyes have gone almost completely black—nothing like the eyes of the girl I love. Her cheeks look hollow, gaunt, as if she is undernourished.

Eleira’s incantation grows louder. She screams the words at Morgan.

But Mother’s focus is all on the creature rising from the book. She deflects Eleira’s words and points her staff at the black shape. The blue light draws inward, like a deflating dome. It seems to be flowing into Mother’s staff, and yet…

And yet Eleira is doing everything she can to stop it.

Eleira grips the edge of the table. Her claws have come out. They carve deep marks in the wood. Her entire body is tense and sinewy. The foul words continue spewing from her lips, challenging Mother’s.

A blast of white explodes from the tip of Morgan’s staff. A beam of the stuff, almost like fire, scorches across the room and collides with the awful black shape.

The creature howls. The noise is worse than any I’ve heard in my life. Worse than the cries of The Convicted, worse than the squeals of a tortured animal, worse than…

Worse than damn near anything.

More and more of the white fire pulsates into the creature. Eleira is flinging spell after spell at the Queen. She deflects them all. The creature continues to scream.

There’s a sudden explosion. The dark shape flies across the table, misshapen, burnt, and wounded.

But it’s still alive. Alive, and gasping.

Mother’s eyes line onto it. She begins the spell that will end it for good. Another beam of light shoots from her staff, aimed straight at the creature—

Eleira throws herself in the way.

The cry that is wrangled from my throat is unlike anything that’s been ripped from my vocal cords before.

Mother’s spell strikes Eleira straight in the chest. The girl’s body is flung backwards. She hits the far wall and drops to the floor, completely limp.

The moment that happens the blue light dies. Eleira’s wicked spell is gone. I can move again.

That horrible black creature jumps to its feet and dashes away.