Witchcraft (#2 Witchblood Series) (22 page)

‘
You did it, didn’t you? You had
those girls killed to keep Daniel and Eva out of the way, didn’t
you?’

Cole pulled back, my blood creating a
horrific clown’s mouth around his lips as he smiled and I knew my
answer.

‘
Needs must,’ he said. ‘Your
blood, by the way is most enjoyable. I can feel it reviving me in
ways I haven’t felt for decades. Just a little more and I don’t
think you’ll have the energy to sit up, never mind conjure a
spell.’ He lowered himself back down and I felt a duller pain this
time as his fangs re-penetrated the new wounds.

So that was his
plan
. I needed to contact Daniel before it was too
late. I pulled back into my head and closing my eyes, tried to
block out the pressure of Cole’s body on top of me, to suppress the
pain as my body became weaker.

‘
Daniel?’ I said, my mind forming
a picture of him, in another room this time, Eva to his side,
Sebastian opposite him and others I didn’t recognise talking in
hushed voices around him.

‘
Jessie is that you?’ he said. I
saw the people all turn to stare at him, and Eva’s eyes went vacant
as she too entered his thoughts, but as his maker she could only
converse with him, watch his memories; not speak to me.

‘
Jessie, what’s happening to you?’
he said.

‘
I can’t… I’m sorry Daniel, so
sorry, but I don’t think we have long. Cole has me in a cellar
under a church. Eva, I know you’re listening. It was Cole behind
the Manchester girl’s deaths. He wanted you two out of the way, to
get to me. I walked straight into his trap, but I got Alex out. She
escaped. You have to find…’ I could feel my link with him fading
fast even as I sped through my speech. As Cole sucked Daniel’s
blood out of my body, my bond was being once again destroyed, my
hope of escape obliterated. I mentally kicked myself at not
thinking to contact him earlier.

As a vampire, my heart only beat every
minute or so, under normal circumstances. The witch part of me
meant that whenever I got excited or anxious like normal humans my
heart beat would increase, but now I could barely feel it. I could
feel his weight pressing me into the hard stone floor and as my
life force was sucked away, cold began to penetrate my body.

A couple of minutes later, I was
drifting in and out of consciousness, when I noticed his weight had
disappeared. As I opened my eyes I could just see a dark, blurred
shape recede, and hear the dull clang of the door being opened and
closed again. He’d gone, but I was still paralysed. I closed my
eyes and let myself drift, wondering if Daniel and Luke would be
able to work out where I was being kept.

When I awoke I found myself back
on the camp bed. There was very little light coming through my
window, so I presumed it must be dusk. I instinctively drew the
blanket around my freezing shoulders and that’s when I realised. I
could move again; they’d removed the spell. I rolled onto my side
and shivered. I hadn’t
ever
felt this cold, even at the beginning, when we realised the
banked blood wasn’t nourishing me and I had refused all fresh
sources… before Daniel. I tried to sit up, but as Cole had planned,
I didn’t have the energy. I tried to contact Daniel, I closed my
eyes and imagined his face, I searched for a way to reach him, but
there was nothing. I tried to ground, to draw energy from the dirt
beneath the stone slabs and pull it into my frozen body, but I was
left panting, dizzy. So I did the only thing I could. I
slept.

The next time I awoke there was no light
coming through my window, but someone had lit a couple of candles
outside my cell. I tried to push myself up into a sitting position
and this time I managed it. After a glance around the cells, I
reassured myself that I was alone, before taking time to assess my
injuries. The spell had definitely been removed, because I had full
mobility of all my limbs. My vampire metabolism had obviously been
working whilst I had slept as there were no obvious bruises or cuts
anywhere on my body. My cheek felt tender where it had been slammed
into the wall and punched, but there was no swelling, just dried
blood which I could scrape off with my nail.

However, my skin felt dry and cracked,
my mouth parched. I knew I was dangerously dehydrated. Without a
mirror I couldn’t see what my face looked like, but I could feel
the dry skin flaking off, cracking around my lips. I could feel my
cheeks had sunken into the hollows beneath. I stared at the skin on
my hands - they looked like they belonged to a ninety year old
woman. My stomach ached persistently, not from the trauma of being
thrown across the cell, but from hunger. I could hear my heartbeat
pulsing slowly but loudly in my head, drumming incessantly, urging
me to find food. I ran my tongue over my fangs, which were
evidently staying out whether I liked it or not.

My body had gone into survival mode. I
was a starving vampire and I knew that I would literally jump at
the chance to consume anything that crossed my path. I knew that if
Cole appeared with a pint of blood and a deal to be made, I would
jump at any terms he offered. I wanted to stay alive, at any cost.
I looked up at the window and frowned. Alex must have escaped,
otherwise she would be back in the cell opposite me. So why had
no-one come for me? It must have been almost ten hours since her
escape, so surely Luke had found her. Where was he?

I was now sure that the Council would
have released Daniel after hearing about my kidnap, so if Sebastian
had forbidden Daniel and Eva to come after me, he obviously didn’t
think I was worth risking a vampire war over. If Luke hadn’t come
to find me, he had obviously made peace with his conflicting
emotions and decided to stay out of vampire affairs, knowing that
Alex was safe. I shrugged. My vampire instinct was taking over and
survival was all that mattered. If they had deserted me, I had
nothing to lose. All I needed now was a meal, no matter what the
cost.

I tried to stand, but my legs gave way
underneath me and I fell back onto the bed, my head reeling. I lay
back once more and when my body started convulsing with cold, I
wrapped the blanket as tightly as I could around myself. I coughed,
the membranes in my throat feeling like they were coated in
sandpaper. My eyes closed.

‘
Jess.
Jess
! Wake up.’ I dismissed the first whisper,
but when the second came I opened my eyes. Brittany, the young
witch was standing by my cell, holding a candle and peering through
the gloom. She smelled delicious. My vampire senses took over and I
could clearly hear her heartbeat thrumming away in her chest, like
a butterfly caught in a glass jar. She was nervous, and I was
hungry. I sat up with a start, and regretted it immediately as my
vision blurred and my head spun.

My eyes zeroed in on her and I could
clearly see, in the candlelight, the blush to her cheeks, her veins
running beneath the delicate skin over her throat. I wondered if I
would be able to launch myself across the cell in one quick
movement, something which would be simple to a healthy vampire -
just one easy jump. She was standing close enough to the bars that
I could reach through and grab her arm; a wrist would do just fine.
I would worry about her magic later.

‘
Jess, don’t even try it. it will
be a waste of what energy you have left. I have permanently
shielded myself against all unwanted vampire contact, so you’ll be
thrown back across the cell as if electrocuted and you may not have
the energy to survive it,’ she murmured.

‘
So why are you here? To taunt me?
I need food. Where’s Cole?’ I asked, my mouth feeling the first
moisture since awakening, as her scent made the saliva flood
in.

‘
I’m going to help you. Cole’s had
to go back to Mayfair. The Council are interviewing
him.’

‘
If you’d wanted to, you could
have helped me earlier. Why ward my cell and paralyse me? Why
should I trust you?’ I said, my voice rising. I still held a grudge
towards her for the way she had left me helpless, and that grudge
increased my desire to bite her. Oh, how I wanted to bite
her!

‘
I’m sorry. I thought Cole loved
me…’ she said. I sighed and raised my eyes to Heaven. How old was
this girl? How could she be so naïve?

‘
He said you didn’t matter, that
he just wanted to speak to you. That I was the only one he wanted
to be with. It was all a lie. After he came out of your cell he
yelled at me, told me I’d made the spell wrong, that he hadn’t been
able to…
subdue
you…’

‘
Rape me, you mean, and thanks for
that. If your magic hadn’t been so restrictive he probably would
have,’ I said, remembering. I owed her that much.

‘
I overheard him, just before he
left. He was talking to Ed, his sidekick. I heard something about
it all going wrong, that he needed to dispose of the evidence
quick. He had too much to lose. He also mentioned something about
getting rid of
both
witches,
and needing the cells dismantled tomorrow.’

‘
So why do you want to help me?
You could just leave,’ I said.

‘
I’m not going to leave a fellow
witch to be disposed of vampire style,’ she said. ‘Besides, I hate
them all, only I thought Cole was different. He said he was,’ she
said, her eyes sad.

‘
Believe me, right now I can’t
feel the witch inside me at all. All I can think of is food… blood.
If you want to get me out of here you need to find me some blood
packs. That bastard’s drained me; I’ll need at least three before I
can even walk. Ideally more, so I have enough power to support your
magic.’

‘
I’ll have a look, but I’m not
sure where he keeps them. They don’t tend to drink from blood
packs, Jess. The nightclub above us is their normal feeding
ground.’

‘
There’s a nightclub above us?’ I
asked.

‘
Yes, it’s his. It’s called ‘Bite
Club! Ironic, huh?’ she said, with a small smile.

‘
Bite Club? And no-one’s cottoned
on?’

‘
Nope. As he says, fictional
vampires are so popular now that a club with such an obvious name
is thought to be a human-owned club. No supe would dare be so
obvious,’ she said with a shrug.

Wow! I was so looking forward to kicking
this arrogant guy’s ass. How had The Council been so wrong about
him? I stood up without thinking and, as what little blood I had
left rushed to my feet, I sat back down quickly, before I fell
down.

‘
I need food,
Brittany.’

‘
Okay. I’ll be back as soon as I
can. Here, have this other blanket while I’m gone,’ she said,
quickly entering Alex’s cell and throwing me the blanket through
the bars.

‘
Brittany? Did she get away? They
haven’t caught her, have they?’ I asked, as she began climbing the
stone stairs out of the cellar.

‘
No, she’s gone. I believe they
searched the area, but nothing has been seen of her.’

I sighed. So why hadn’t help come?

Chapter Seventeen

Shortly after Brittany left, throbbing
music began to penetrate the cellar from above. Bite Club must have
opened. I hoped this meant that Cole’s cronies would be kept busy,
and Cole himself would stay away a while longer. I felt vulnerable
whilst Brittany was gone and wished she had opened my cell door
first, but then I guess it hadn’t crossed our minds at the time. I
wouldn’t have been able to walk through them anyway. Heck, I could
barely sit.

I wrapped myself tighter in the double
blankets, laid back and stared at the window. Why hadn’t he come
for me? I was sure Daniel must have enough information to be able
to track me down, and with Alex out, surely she had found them and
said where she had come from? Maybe she didn’t want to know me any
longer? I wondered if too much had passed between us, too much had
been stolen from her, to be able to look me in the eye.

A noise behind the cellar door alerted
me to a disruption. There was more than one person about to enter.
I sat up abruptly, my head again losing the fight for control as
the room blurred and whirled in front of my eyes. I needed to lie
back down but I refused to show weakness if they had come for me;
if I was going to die.

The door opened and I watched as a
pair of feet appeared at the top of the stone steps pausing
briefly, and I recognised Brittany’s voice whispering something to
someone else and waited, holding back the door as another pair of
shoes joined her on the steps - A
man’s
shoes. What was she doing? I had been sure
she had been trying to help me. Had she been caught by one of
Cole’s vampires? But why would she be whispering to him? It didn’t
make sense. My head had begun to clear and my senses returned to
me, telling me what my eyes couldn’t work out. She had brought a
human with her.

As a witch, her scent was slightly
different to the average human, and as all humans smelled different
it was hard to distinguish, but I was getting there. The person she
had with her was definitely a regular human male. He smelled of the
same warm, chocolatey aromas I had grown used to associating with
humans. His was a particularly enticing aroma, with dark spicy
undercurrents. My stomach began aching again, and the gums behind
my fangs, which had failed to retract, were throbbing. Saliva
pooled in my mouth as the pair quietly closed the door behind them
and walked into sight.