The Vampire Gift 2: Kingdom of Ash (26 page)

I spin on her. “What?”

“Sanctuary. Free passage. We need to increase our numbers. The Haven is strong, but I fear we are not as strong as The Crypts. If war is coming, we must be ready.”

“You haven’t opened The Haven to new vampires for hundreds of years,” I say. “Your subjects will not be happy.”

“You can’t please everyone,” she shrugs. “Besides…” she twists my nipple. “Last I checked, I still rule. And my word is still law.”

Yes,
I think.
But for how long?

RAUL

“Mother is bringing more vampires in!” I exclaim as I storm into Phillip’s room. “She’s opening up The Haven to other covens.”

He jerks up. “What?”

“Smithson went out a week ago as her delegate. No wonder we haven’t seen him for so long. Word just arrived that he is returning in three days.”

“That means Mother will need to lift the wards,” Phillip says. “That will leave us exposed!”

“It’ll be controlled,” I murmur. “But yes.”

“Whoever broke James out… whoever was responsible for the Voice the humans heard… if they’re watching,
that’s
when they will strike.”

“And with the wards the way they are,” I say, “we are completely blind to what’s happening on the Outside.”

“She could be opening us up for a major attack.”

“Mother claims she’s taking precautions.”

“Oh? And those are?”

I grunt. “Teaching Eleira magic. She wants two full witches to be on display when the other coven arrives.”

“And Eleira’s going along with it?”

“It’s not,” I say darkly, “like she’s been given much of a choice.”

ELEIRA

A row of marble busts stands far in front of me.

“Focus… and…
strike
!”

The Queen’s command whips through me. I channel the energy gathered in my head, concentrate the flow out to my hands, and will a violent flare of magic forward.

Light bursts from my hands. It’s blinding and comes with an enormous crash. The beam hits the marble bust… and fizzles out completely.

The bust is completely unmarked.

Morgan curses. “
Concentrate,
Eleira! You’re all theatrics and no substance.”

My arms sag down to my sides. My whole body feels like it’s been through the wringer. This type of training has been exhausting.

We started the day after Morgan deemed me sufficiently healed. She took me down, deep underground, to a cold iron chamber that reminded me of a nuclear hideout. She said the iron would prevent any excess magic from leaking out and also protect me from any spells that might be directed at me from the outside.

We haven’t yet uncovered who it was that took control of my mind.

“Maybe if you
told
me what I was doing wrong,” I begin.

She gives a flippant laugh. “I would if I could. But magic is highly individual. What works for one witch might not work for the next. All I can do is have you
watch
, and make you mimic what I do.”

On that note, she summons three quick beams of light. They burst from her fingertips. Each hits a bust square in the middle.

The marble statues go flying. They crash into the far walls and join the rubble already there from her previous demonstrations.

“You see?” She whirls on me. “I focused my power on the
attack
. Not on being showy with flashing lights and booming sounds. Subtlety is the key to all this.”

“I thought you’d be teaching me
real
spells,” I say. “Not how to destroy marble carvings!” I extend my claws. “I’m more dangerous as a vampire. At least that way, instinct tells me how to kill.”

Even a week ago, that admission would have frightened me. Now? Well, I’ve more readily come to terms with my vampiric self than I could believe.

“These are the simplest types of spells,” Morgan hisses. “All they take is a concentration of energy. You’re not manipulating the magical forces. You’re not weaving intricate patterns with an ethereal energy you cannot see. These provide the
base
. If you cannot do even that…”

Frustration bubbles up inside. I take aim at the pile of rubble and summon the inherent magical energies lashing through the air. They flow into me like a lightning rod. I have only the barest flicker of a second to concentrate it into a destructive beam like Morgan just did.

The spell flares from my fingertips—no light, no sound—and obliterates the cracked remains of one of the statues.

“Yes!” Morgan exclaims. “Yes, perfectly done, just like that!”

I stare in amazement. I hadn’t expected that to come so easily. Especially not after all the failed attempts.

Morgan starts toward me. “You see, when you just
focus
, you have all it takes—”

She stops as a violent gust of wind whips her dress up.

She looks at me. “Did you do that?”

“No—“

I don’t get to finish. At that moment a tornado starts up at the opposite end of the room. It sweeps up all the pieces of rubble and blows them into a raging vortex. They spit out of it one-by-one, crashing against the walls with enormous force.

I cry out and duck as one flies straight for my head. It skims so close, I feel my hair blow out by the tailwind.

Morgan grabs my arm. “We have to get out!” she screams. The tornado is flinging bits of rubble everywhere. Projectiles fly at us with deadly speed. “We—“

A huge piece of debris comes straight for us. Morgan casts a defensive spell. A glowing blue orb surrounds us. The jagged rock hits the edge and disintegrates, like a meteor striking earth’s atmosphere.

“Come on!” Morgan shoves me to the door. Behind us the tornado rages on, darting across the floor like an angry caged animal.

The Queen pulls the door open and we stumble out. Just before she closes it, something catches my attention within.

In the middle of the floor, right beneath the point of the tornado, a black hole is opening.

“Morgan!” I scream. “Look at that!”

She sees what I’m pointing at and curses. The darkness spreads, like a blot of spilled ink across a page.

A jagged, crooked arm extends from the darkness. It’s thin as a gnarled branch, and covered entirely in a sickly black slime. Its fingers grip the edge, and it pulls itself up.

One of the most horrendously misshapen creatures I’ve ever seen comes out. It has no eyes, only a wide, open mouth showing rows upon rows of sharp, gleaming white teeth. The teeth are completely at odds with the smooth, inky black of its wide and bulbous head.

A beam of light, a beam of power, shoots out from Morgan’s hands. It hits the creature in the face.

It gives a vicious scream, high and loud, like a hissing, boiling pot of water. And then it—it pushes Morgan’s attack back.

For a moment I’m stupefied. The creature not only repels the spell, it actually forces the beam back toward Morgan.

“Don’t just stand there. Help me!” the Queen commands.

I try to focus and cast another spell but my attention is shot. I can’t look away from the awful creature. I feel almost a… a kinship toward it. Like it’s a part of me, like it’s mine, like I’m responsible for it.

“
No
,” I snarl, and throw myself at Morgan to stop her attack.

The move takes her by surprise. I crash into her and we both go to the floor. The protective spell she cast winks out. The wind from the tornado howls around us. A menacing force radiates out from that creature, and I feel its triumph as keenly as if it were my own.

“Stupid girl!” Morgan screams. “You’ve doomed us, you’ve—“

She doesn’t get to finish. Because at that moment, a blurred shape moves from beyond us and slams the door to the iron bunker closed.

The magic storming inside the room immediately cuts off. I come to myself, realize what I am doing—I gasp and scramble off the Queen.

She dives for her staff, which I’ve inadvertently knocked away. With it in her hands, she mutters a powerful spell. It surrounds the iron shell of the bunker. Morgan’s incantation grows louder as she draws on as much of the latent magic around us as possible.

There’s a loud crash like a thunderbolt. It’s accompanied by a massive explosion of blinding light. The whole underground caverns trembles.

When I open my eyes the bunker is gone. Only the faintest bit of ash remains on the ground where it once was.

Morgan is leaning against her staff, gasping for breath. I’m struck dumb in momentary shock. I look at the third member of our company, and realize that it’s Smithson.

He was the one who had slammed the door.

Morgan catches her breath and turns on me. She looks more vindictive than I’ve ever seen her.

I take a trembling step away.

“So it’s true,” she says finally. “I only had a suspicion before. But this confirms it.”

Her voice is laced with deadly potency. “What’s true?” I whisper.

“It is as I feared.” She takes one more step toward me, holding out her staff. “Your Spark has been tainted in your youth. You are a dark witch.”

And then she strikes the staff against the ground, and a blistering pain explodes in my head. I cry out and fall to the floor. But before I even hit it, silver chains lash out from Morgan and bind me tight.

JAMES

“We have a way in.” Beatrice’s voice brings me from my uneasy slumber. “It’s time to prove your loyalty to your King.”

I look at her through the bars of my holding cell. “Father sends you,” I say. My voice is full of disdain.

“Do you have trouble taking orders from a woman?”

“When I don’t know who that woman is, or where her loyalties lie? Yes, I’d say it’s a daunting prospect.”

She laughs. “Look around you, James. Look at where you are. Consider your position. You have no friends in The Crypts. You are only alive because of the mercy of your Father… and the trust he shows in me.”

“So I owe my life to you, is that what you’re saying?”

Beatrice comes closer to the bars. Her face looks hollow, but at the same time hauntingly beautiful, as the shadows dance across it.

“That, my darling, is exactly what I’m saying.”

I pick myself up. “What will you have me do?”

“A delegation from a neighbouring coven is being led into The Haven in three days. They are your ticket in.”

“Impossible,” I sneer. “The Haven has not opened its doors to any of its neighbors in hundreds of years. Whatever information you have is wrong. Mother would never risk it.”

“Desperate times…” Beatrice says. She finishes with a shrug. “You know how it is. Things change, James. The world will pass you by if you are not watchful.”

“Fine,” I grunt. “I believe you. Tell me what I have to do.”

RAUL

“You did
WHAT
?” I demand, my anger flaring.

No—the emotions I feel are worse than anger. Much, much worse. They’re a poisonous mix of hatred and disbelief and rage and above all… Horror. Utter terror.

Tinged with helplessness.

“Eleira displayed characteristics that make her a danger to The Haven. To the vampires, to the humans, to our entire way of life. Until we can be sure of her…” Mother pauses, “… stability? She will remain in the silver cell.”

I can’t believe it. My whole world feels like it’s come crashing down on itself.

“I will
not
let you keep her there,” I growl, stalking up to her. “This is your fault! You were supposed to be teaching! Not abandoning her when things became rough.”

“Rough? You dare call what I witnessed
rough?”
Mother’s voice goes up. “My son, you were not there. She is a
dark
witch. Her Spark has been corrupted. She opened a portal to the underworld. Something much worse than a Narwhark tried to climb out. Only through Smithson’s quick thinking were Eleira and I able to escape with our lives. Only because of him I was able to act fast enough to banish the horrendous creature before it could devastate our lands.”

“If her Spark has been corrupted,” I say softly, “
un
corrupt it.” I take a menacing step to the Queen. “If—“

“That’s far enough,” Smithson tells me, coolly placing a hand on my shoulder.

I glare at him. Full of spite, full of venom, full of hatred, I glare. If it were just Mother and me here, perhaps I could make her see reason. But no, she had to have the Captain Commander of her guard with her.

“That’s all right,” Mother coos. “He’s just upset his precious girl is not who she pretends to be.”

“You say that as if it’s her fault!” I explode.

“Of course it’s her fault,” the Queen contests. “She’s had exposure to magic at some point before she got to us. It tainted her mind—the part of her being responsible for controlling the elemental forces that give right to magical ability. If I had known… if she had
told
me—”

“You should have asked her!” I exclaim. “You should have been more careful with her! And now she—she’s suffering upstairs in that godforsaken holding cell because of you!”

“Not because of me, my son. Because of herself. Because she cannot be trusted. Because all of it is outside of her control.”

She turns away and walks to the bookshelf. She runs her hand along the rows of books before settling on one with a blood red cover.

She pulls it out. The title is engraved in thick, gold letters—but it’s all in runes, and thus in a language I cannot read.

“This is the last surviving copy of the Witch’s Covenant,” she informs me. “It lays out the rules of how a new witch is to be trained. It is—it was—a sacred text to the five great families. We devoted our lives to the teachings of this book. The rules governing witchcraft are clear.” She flips it open and points to a page. “
One who is found tainted,
” she quotes, “
shall be deprived of all magical knowledge, shall not be taught, and shall be put in isolation until such time that all her abilities are leeched out of her.”