“There’s one more of you?” Eleira asks.
“Yes.” This time, again, the sisters speak in unison. “She was the strongest, the greediest of our sisterhood. You all know her.” Their gazes sweep the room.
“She is called Cierra.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Logan
The Crypts.
I let Dagan go and watch the door for a long time after he leaves the chamber.
I close my eyes and breathe deeply, using my extraordinary senses to trace his movements through the compound. I knew he had come back the moment he was within fifty miles of my coven’s border. I can track him from a distance as easily as I can track a nearby buzzing fly.
That is when I knew I had to put him to the test. I know he’d felt the urge to betray me. I knew he would be tempted the moment I revealed to him my Blood Magic.
He and I had bonded from the very start over our shared hatred of witchcraft. But that hate was misguided, for it had always been driven by fear; for him, it was the fear seared into his heart forever by the young witch who destroyed his village. For me, it was fear, jealousy, borne out of my tumultuous, whirlwind affair with that witch’s sister.
When I first met Morgan, I was instantly attracted to her grace. I impregnated her while she was still human. I had meant to kill the children, to sacrifice them to the ancient spirit Mokko in order to ensure my own strength. After they were born, I made their mother a vampire.
But one night, when I was drunk on too much blood, I let my intentions slip. I told her the children would be sacrificed the next full moon. I had thought, foolishly, that she was on my side, indebted to me for giving her eternal life, completely in love, and that she would do whatever I asked.
I learned that night the lengths a mother would go to in order to protect her children.
She lashed out at me, not just with her new vampiric strength, but also with her magic. I had been completely overwhelmed, outmatched, and the rage in that fight from her was unlike anything I’d seen before.
Truth be told, she had me completely beaten, tied down, bleeding, the life going out of me by the second. She took her children and fled. I was sure that as soon as they were outside our home she would set the whole thing on fire and leave me to burn.
But Morgan showed one final mercy and did no such thing. The Ancient had not found me yet, so I did not have the benefit of his blood. I was left to heal entirely on my own.
I went after her when I recovered days later only to discover she had already set voyage for the new world. I did not follow.
But I vowed then and there that I would dedicate myself to wiping out all of her kind, to ridding the world of witches, starting with her own long-lost sister.
Certain events along the way diverted my attention, and then realization dawned that building a coven was the best I could do to ensure the strength I wanted from my children’s sacrifice.
So, I set out to find others to join me. Dagan was the first—after The Ancient, of course, but his relationship with me is reminiscence for another time.
Yet, in the long years since, I’ve adapted. I discovered how limiting, how wrong my distaste for magic was.
Magic could enhance everything. It was only envy that made me hate it before. But if I could tap into it myself, if I could make use of it on my own…
Well, that envy would become a thing of the past.
And now I have, after many long years of secret study, of patience, of biding my time. Yes, I had the numbers to attack Morgan’s coven long ago. I could have overtaken The Haven on pure might.
Yet such a victory would be bittersweet because Morgan would have always been one-up on me. And after what she did, I knew I had to prove to myself that I could best her when it was just me and her alone.
I open my eyes. Dagan has taken the girl. I feel them hurrying out of The Crypts.
There was something about her that tickled the back of my mind. In the end, I attributed it to just another pretty face.
A vampire as weak as her does not warrant the full attention of the King.
I walk to the room where my sacrificial vampires are kept. When I enter, I stop and take a deep breath, satiating in the potency of their spoiled blood.
I open a secret compartment in the wall and take out a small carving knife. I hold it in front of my chest with both hands. I concentrate on it, feeling the hilt against my palms, feeling the tip quiver in the air.
In one large burst I call upon the swirling Elemental Forces and direct them into the base.
They course through me, boiling my blood and exerting a great internal pressure. I fight against them, taming them as one tames a wild beast. The miasma storms across my eyes. I can feel the physical flecks of corruption roll against the surface of my eyeballs. More and more power I feed into the blade, until the metal is glowing, alight with unknown energies from a different world.
And then I approach each vampire and swiftly slice a cut along his throat.
They all make gurgling sounds as the blood pours out. The Blood Magic I put into the weapon ensures the wounds all seal before draining the vampires of all their blood. The blood leaks down their bodies, staining the skin, before dripping into the buckets lined underneath.
I return the weapon to its hiding place and then kneel before each bucket. I slip my hands in and cup out whatever is there. I bring it to my lips, the poison, corrosive blood, infused with the elements needed to give Blood Magic to me. I sip it delicately, just a little from each source.
I have to be careful not to drink too much. As the blood goes down my throat, it burns. The vampire essence inside me does not heal me. It cannot—the first requirements of accessing the forces through Blood Magic is surrendering completely to the corruption it brings.
That had always been the largest stumbling block. The vampire essence works indiscriminately. I had known of the arcane ritual required to give a non-channeler access to the Forces for years—it was only recently that I discovered how to nullify the vampire gifts so they would not interfere… and thus, make all this possible.
The secret, of course, was so obvious that it angers me I did not see it earlier. Silver. Drink blood infused with silver, and that silver will scatter the vampire essence away.
Of course, I could not simply drink blood with silver added. That would not be enough. The blood has to be made while exposed to silver.
Hence, the three tortured vampires I keep.
The poisonous, corrupt, noxious blood settles in my stomach. I place a fist on the floor to hold my balance as the nausea takes hold. My body is fighting the intrusion, but it cannot win. The battle, each and every time, ruins me a little bit more.
That is the price I pay for the immense advantage offered by Blood Magic.
My insides twist and burn. I have an almost unfathomable desire to hurl all the blood out. I grit my teeth and will it to stay in my system, waiting in agony for the blissful moments when the blood is fully absorbed and out of my stomach.
Meanwhile, vile visions of black and red, of corruption and death, fly through my mind. Each time I take more blood in this sacrifice the visions become worse and worse. They become more and more immediate, until it’s almost like I’m living them in the flesh.
Long minutes pass. Half an hour. An hour. I remain still, not willing to move, forcing my body to absorb the poison that will grant me even more access to the Elemental Forces.
Each time I drink I find my ability to channel expands. But each drink comes at a cost, and that is this horrible feeling of malaise that I have to simply accept.
Finally, it all passes. I cough, spitting up a little blood. Disgusted, I wipe angrily at my mouth.
Then I right myself, very slowly, and stand.
A curse escapes my lips when I realize the essence of one of my hostages had been extinguished.