Hastily, I adjust my weaves and grab hold of the same pattern I used to erect the wall. As the vile creatures scale it, moving at incredible speed, I extend the wall up and up, then curl it back to dome over us, and it falls back on the other side, sealing all of us in.
The white army quickly surrounds the barrier. The screechers climb up, to the very top, and stay there.
Within seconds, the entire dome is covered by those damn things. They don't try to break through. They just stay there, absolutely still, totally silent, waiting.
A touch on my shoulder makes me jump. I turn, startled, and find Felix standing there, along with Geordam and a host of his guards.
I release the weaves making up my earmuffs and look at them. “I told you to stay where it’s safe.”
“I think this new dome constitutes safety,” Felix says dryly. “Congratulations, you have us surrounded on all sides. What do you propose to do?”
I bristle. “Do NOT forget who I am,” I remind him.
He bows his head deeply, almost in a… mocking way.
“Of course not, my Queen,” he intones. “We are beholden to you.”
I sniff.
“My Queen,” Geordam says, gesturing at the gathered vampires. “Your subjects are getting restless.”
“Do you not see what we’re surrounded by?” I explode.
“Of course, I do,” Geordam answers smoothly. “So do all of my men. So do all of your vampires: They want to fight.”
“In case you forgot what happened last time—”
I cut off as a reverberation ripples through the dome. For a second, the waves holding it waver, as if under direct assault.
Immediately, I grab hold of the Elements and strengthen them. But I find there’s nothing to be strengthened—they are as solid as when I first made them.
Then what was that strange shock wave?
I look at the vampires around me. They are peering up at the transparent dome, uncertainty clear on their features.
“Will this hold?” Felix asks. “And for how long?”
“It will hold as long as it needs to,” I snap. I don’t dare shoot any fire out from where I stand because it would rip through the weaves of the dome and instantly shatter it.
I curse myself for being so damn short-sighted. Now I’ve trapped us all. I don’t know how to get out.
“I call a meeting of the Royal Court,” I announce. “The Queen needs the expertise of her most trusted vampires.”
Chapter Twelve
Eleira
The Haven.
Hours later, I find myself in a tense, painful meeting of the vampires who are supposed to give me good counsel.
I say “supposed to” because we have not accomplished anything yet. I’ve laid out the situation: I cannot do anything to the Tentoria without the domed shield falling apart.
They’ve failed to come up with any palatable suggestions.
I look over the heads of the Royal Court members to the rest of my vampires. I can feel their uncertainty, like a palpable scent on the air.
I glance up at the dome. All I see are those awful white bodies, blocking everything else. They remind me of leeches, or barnacles on a ship. They don’t so much as move. None have opened their jaws to scream.
Their stillness is uncanny. I only know of vampires who have that ability. But these… things… are some sort of vile derivation, like The Convicted.
“What if we go underground?” a Court member suddenly suggests.
My ears perk up. “Underground?”
“If we’re surrounded on all sides, and we can’t get out, why not go down?” he continues.
Something about the idea resonates with me. “That… could actually work.”
I turn to face the Court. “Felix. You are the one who knows most about these creatures. Are they individually sentient? To me it seems like they’re ruled by a hive mind.”
He considers the question. “I think it is both,” he answers after a moment. “Each of them listens to whomever controls them. But each is its own entity, too.”
“So that means they’re watching us,” I say, glancing up. Thousands of lifeless eyes peer down at me. “If we just disappear, they will know we’re gone.”
I tap my lips and start to pace back and forth. “They cannot be sensed by us. But I think that works both ways. They cannot sense us, either. They do not have the capacity for it.”
“They have parts of the vampire essence,” Felix confirms. “But they do not have access to our abilities.”
“So then,” I say, thinking. “So then, if I cast an inverted weave over all of us, it can create the illusion of all of us being inside.” I start collecting the Elemental Forces required to do so, knowing instinctively which of the currents are needed and in which order. “The screechers won’t know anything is different. The dome blocks sound waves. They cannot hear us, and we cannot hear them. Neither of us can sense the other. They can see our assembly, much as we can see theirs, but that will not take much to change…”
With a burst of magic, I envelope the entire inside of the dome in an intricate, inverted net. It reflects all of us back at ourselves, but on the other side, it obfuscates the screechers’ view. We become hazy, uncertain, blurs to look at. As if we are looking out upon the world with a pair of extra-strong glasses.
I let the net sit for a few moments, channeling more magic into it, then cut the feed off, and loop it.
From now on, the screechers will simply see a long, drawn out reproduction of the last few minutes, adjusted and modified randomly so as not to give awareness of the loop.
I step back, coming back to myself, and marvel for a few moments at what I’ve done.
The net is an incredibly complicated spell, and I did it all relying on base instinct. Strength in magic has nothing to do with complexity—this is pure art.
Too bad nobody is around to appreciate it.
That thought instantly makes me think of Riyu. Stupid! I curse myself. I had forgotten all about him, even though he has been here, in my vicinity, the whole damn time!
“Stay here,” I tell the vampires, and rush down to Morgan’s chamber.
When I get inside, I discover Riyu sitting on the floor, cross-legged and absolutely still. He looks like he is in a trance—I glance at the stone slab Morgan’s ruined body lies on. I can feel the torrial in the room feeding her life. I can feel her presence, ever so faintly, emanating out to me from under the covers.
“Riyu,” I say. He makes no move to indicate he’s heard me. “Riyu!”
Nothing.
Strange, I think. I come up to him, testing the air very carefully for any additional inverted or hidden weaves.
I find nothing.
“Riyu,” I say once more, a little louder. I take him by the shoulder, and—
The moment my hand touches his body a freezing cold rips through me. I want to jolt back in surprise, but I cannot, my body totally frozen, my muscles refusing to move…
The cold washes over me, taking over my whole body. No time passes at all, and suddenly, I am back in that vortex, the strange, inexplicable space that is somehow outside the regular passage of time.
Fear grips me. What have I done?
I cannot move, cannot breathe, but my mind is operating at lightning speed. I start to see webs of light forming in the corner of my vision. Like an avalanche in slow motion they barrel over the entire space, until the whole room is covered in them.
This reminds me eerily of what happened in the moments Morgan was about to kill me, about to force me to drink the Narwhark’s blood.
But something about this web is softer, safer, less sinister. My hand is still glued to Riyu’s shoulder, and the icy cold continues to seep into me.
“Turn around, Eleira,” a voice says to me.
A mixture of shock and surprise washes over me. It’s Riyu’s voice, but it’s coming from behind me.
I try to turn my body but, of course, my muscles don’t respond.
Gay laughter. “No, no,” he says. “Do not use your physical body. Use the ethereal one.”
I have no idea what that means. I have no idea how to do it. When I exited my body once, in Morgan’s torture chambers, it was done by pure necessity. Here, I am stuck.
“It’s easy,” Riyu says. “All you have to do is clear your mind and let go.”