Witch, Warlock & Vampire Box Set 2: A Vampire Romance Series (Witch, Warlock & Vampire Box Sets), page 75
Something grabbed my ankles that felt suspiciously like a pair of hands. I felt my heartrate increase while a scream sounded through my head. I looked down and tried to kick the bony fingers grasping my ankles as something else grabbed my shoulders. A bony hand covered my mouth after coming up from behind me. I struggled at the same time that the unmistakable scent of rotting meat hit my nose. Monsieur D’s expression didn’t change when this happened. He continued looking at me like he was studying a wild animal, and kept stroking his chin in thought.
My thoughts were anything but calm. The first assumption that went through my brain was that he really had betrayed me. The second was how I would make him pay for that betrayal. Before my third thought could form, the Flame ignited my skin in response.
The dead flesh of my attackers—which I deduced were just D’s zombies—proved to be more flammable than living flesh. Less than a second after my body ignited, the undead that were grabbing me began to explode into dust.
I glanced at House Gedde’s leader who smiled with unmasked approval. I stepped towards him when I realized the flames dancing along my skin were now flickering. They kept changing from red to blue. D started to chuckle, which made me even angrier. I channeled my anger to impose my will over the Flame as I stepped forward to confront him. My internal power source fought me, using its considerable might but I refused to let it win. By the time I was within grabbing distance of D, my flames were solid blue all over.
“You have ten seconds after I stop talking to explain what the hell you just pulled,” I snarled at D.
A wounded smile appeared as he gave me a casual shrug. “Merely assessing your self-control under the most unpleasant of conditions, Votre Altesse. This is vital information that will reveal to me the necessary lessons you require.”
My flames grew even more intense at his words, and what little vegetation grew around my feet was soon no more than charred ashes.
“I do not blame you for your anger,” D continued, moving to the right. “But it is necessary as the Flame must be made to serve you, not the other way around.”
“Right now, the best way the Flame could serve me is by turning you and this whole graveyard into the same dust particles I just turned your zombies into,” I said, making a grab for him.
He danced out of my grasp, making the flames around me grow even hotter. The Flame strained inside me, fiercely determined to snap the bonds of my will and rush straight into a destructive blaze.
“And yet despite what you say, you resist the urge to do so,” Monsieur D noted, as he continued circling me. “Why exactly is that?”
Images of the battle at Kinloch Kirk flashed through my mind. I bristled when I lost control and began to punch holes in my anger, giving the Flame an avenue outside my internal roadblocks.
No, you don’t, I thought, shoving against my fiery counterpart before it could breach the gap. The Flame pushed even harder, making me react with all the strength I could muster.
“You seem troubled by my question, mademoiselle,” noted the man who was allegedly instructing me. “Do you not have a response?”
The memory of my final firestorm that ended the attack on Kinloch blazed before my eyes. The Flame seized that memory and expanded the cone of the fire emanating from my body. The conflagration was wide enough to swell a full foot all around me and the flickering flames themselves struggled to turn red.
“When I maim, kill or destroy, I am the only one responsible for that,” I replied. I kept fighting with the Flame to retract its heat. “Not the people who command me, or some arcane force I can’t understand… just me. So if I kill you in the next few seconds, it’s because I wanted you dead. Not the Flame.”
Saying that out loud made the Flame stop fighting me and it instantly retreated. The fire on my body turned a uniform blue and reduced to its original size.
“And do you wish to kill me now?” D asked, his dark face utterly at peace with whatever my answer might be. Clearly, he wasn’t afraid of me.
I took three deep breaths as I gave his question serious thought. “No.”
I willed the fire on me to extinguish and it doused itself instantly. I glanced down to see the clothes my new teacher’s cousin had provided for me, which were none the worse for wear despite the excessive heat.
Monsieur D nodded his approval. “Now that you are calmer, do you believe you can manifest the fire once more on your absolutely divine body?”
I stiffened with irritation when he made the comment regarding my body but I held my annoyance in check. Clearly, he was just trying to provoke me. I slowly aimed the ember of anger into the Flame itself, which instantly made the blue flames reappear. Then I inhaled a few calming breaths as I closed my eyes and willed the flames to go away.
Little by little, things began to make more sense. “Emotions are the key to accessing the Flame’s power. Fear, anger, or hate… any of those will spark it into existence.”
D gave me a disappointed look. “I am more than a little certain that you already knew that before coming here. Therefore, let us concentrate on what you just experienced. What lessons did you acquire from it?”
When I felt the Flame clawing its way through my mental defenses, I realized what the correct answer was. “As long as I acknowledge my emotions as part of my awareness, I can manage to stay in control of them and the Flame. When I stop using my emotions as fuel and start using them as a steering wheel, I’m in complete control.”
D suppressed a grin. “A trifle simplistic but very much on the right track… Bravo! But is there not another manifestation of this ancient power inside you that we should explore further?”
Before I had the chance to respond, the door of the nearest tomb suddenly flung wide open. A strong wind from inside began to pull me. I struggled to resist it but the force was too sudden and overwhelming for me to withstand. In two seconds flat, my feet slipped out from under me and I flew headlong into the mausoleum. As I banged my shoulders against the back wall, the door slammed shut.
A trickle of fear rushed through me when everything turned pitch-black. I steered the fear towards the Flame to give me some much-needed light. The blue fire on my body didn’t reveal anything that could cheer me up though. Everything around me was made either of stone or marble, including the floor, the ceiling and the mausoleum walls, which were lined with tombs like catacombs.
Gold nameplates were scrolled in a language I didn’t know. I used my body torch to study them but none of the information seemed useful. A quick glance around convinced me this place was as hermetically sealed as a stone structure could be.
“I am certain you have already determined how pointless the Flame would be in this situation, since you cannot burn your way out,” House Gedde’s head said from the other side. “You must rely on your other ability, which holds the true key to the door I just slammed in your face. Use it to escape.”
I frowned at his words. Was he talking about my ability to increase my size? I didn’t know of any other power I possessed. Hmm, I supposed I could give it a try.
I took a deep breath and wondered if I could remain a human torch while changing sizes. There was only one way to find out…
I allowed my displeasure at being trapped inside this mausoleum to fuel the Flame. But then I channeled my anger away from feeding the flames and into changing my size. It took a few seconds but the sudden dizziness I experienced told me it was working.
Once again, I felt my limbs extending and my body becoming larger. The flames flickered a little from the division of internal resources but remained bright enough for me to still see.
I felt myself start to tire but renewed my will and my body continued to increase in size. Before I knew it, my head was nearly as tall as the ceiling.
Still, there remained the question of how I was going to get myself out of this prison. It seemed that the bigger I became, the stronger I became so I figured if I grew big enough, I might be able to literally detach the roof and step out of the mausoleum.
When I got close enough to the ceiling, I put my hands against it and pushed as hard as I could. I thought I could feel the stone starting to give way along with the sound of crumbling masonry.
Don’t give up now, I told myself and pushed even harder, my body continuing to increase in size. Pretty soon, my neck was pressed against the ceiling while I put my back and shoulders into my supersized deadlift.
A loud rumbling indicated the ceiling was pushing back against my best efforts. I looked around and saw that it wasn’t just the ceiling. With the exception of the floor, every other part of the mausoleum was beginning to squeeze me like a slowly closing fist. The entire structure began to contract, like a trash compactor with me in the center.
With a flash of horror, I realized that my strength wasn’t enough to collapse the ancient fortification. That realization hit me like an ice-cold sledgehammer. When my flames went from blue to red, it became fairly obvious that my fear had fully taken over.
You can’t escape by becoming a giant, Bryn, I told myself. So maybe you can by becoming smaller?
Right after the thought occurred to me, I nodded and then closed my eyes, fueling the power within me as contracting on me. At first I’d thought it was simply an optical illusion, owing to my increasing size but now I realized that wasn’t the case at all. No, I was going to be squished to death between these stone walls if I didn’t shrink down in time.
But then how would I get out? It wasn’t enough to be tiny… I needed to still find an exit.
By now, I was pared down to roughly half my normal size and still shrinking. I gave the rapidly approaching door another glance. A small bit of space existed between it and the floor, no wider than a quarter of an inch. If I could shrink my body down far enough…
My boomerang clattered to the floor when I started running toward the door, realizing the smaller I was, the longer it would take me to reach it. My heartbeat was racing as I felt myself dropping in size and my perspective dropping along with it. As the seconds ticked by, the walls and ceiling suddenly seemed impossibly tall and the crack beneath the door began to appear larger.
As I finally shriveled to just the right size to scamper under the door, I willed both the Flame and my body to remain at this height. I didn’t know what would happen if I became too small—could I simply pop myself out of existence? The Flame didn’t resist and abided by my thoughts which caused me some surprise because it usually was a battle to maintain control over it.
It took me a few more seconds to scramble to the other side of the door, but I did. After several deep breaths, I could breathe normally again.
Another wave of dizziness claimed me. I suddenly felt my arms and legs rescinding into themselves as my height dropped and I began shrinking at a very rapid pace.
I forced myself to regain control of the fire that burned inside of me despite losing all my extra mass. When I opened my eyes, I realized the walls and ceiling of the mausoleum were still
“Ah, is that you, Votre Altesse?” D’s voice boomed out in front of me. At my current height, he was roughly the size of the trod tree at Kinloch.
I channeled my residual frustration at being trapped inside the tomb and nearly crushed by it into the Flame. I doused my fires and suppressed the urge to restart them so I could reverse the loss in size. I had just enough time to realize that my clothes had nicely shrunk with me when the dizzy spell and subsequent feeling of explosive growth flooded over me again. In no time at all, I resumed my full height but I was still pissed enough at D to keep growing. He regarded me with amusement when I reached seven feet tall and glared down at him.
“It is good to see that you applied the proper lesson and escaped, mademoiselle,” he said nonchalantly.
“And if I hadn’t?” I asked, leaning closer to let him know I expected a serious answer.
“Then I simply would have restored the tomb to its original size and we would have tried again.”
It’s original size? I turned around to look at my former prison. What I saw amazed me. The tomb was tiny! At first I thought it was simply an optical illusion owing to my increased height so I dropped myself back down to my usual height but even then, I stood as tall as its roof.
Something occurred to me that made me look over my shoulder at D. “My boomerang…?”
“It is currently taking up a great deal of space on the floor but otherwise intact,” D assured me. “And that leads us to the final lesson I have to impart to you on this matter.”
With another rumble, the tomb resumed its original size. The door was a whole half a foot taller than me now.
“I imagine you are quite attached to your weapon, n’est-ce pas?” D speculated, his smile broadening.
“It’s been part of my arsenal for as long as I’ve been a warrior,” I admitted.
“Then you should retrieve it.”
The door began to slide open, widening the crack I’d squeezed through. It suddenly stopped as if it were stuck and I glared at my teacher for an explanation.
“How close is your boomerang now to the door, I wonder?” he asked me, crossing his arms.
I got down on the ground and peered into the tomb. The slight opening allowed enough outside light to let me to glimpse the boomerang. I reached through the slit to grab it but I couldn’t even touch with with my outstretched fingertips. Pulling my hand back out, I snapped at D, “So am I supposed to shrink back down again to get my damn weapon?”
“And how exactly do you plan to carry it back out if you are so small?” the cemetery master inquired. “Non, the solution requires a brand new skill you have yet to learn.”
“But a skill you are going to teach me?”
“Of course… you can start by reigniting your body.”
At this point, channeling my emotions in the proper direction was as easy as practicing my sword strokes. The Flame sprang to life with beautiful blue flames that danced along my skin. D nodded his approval and pointed to a random cement cross that lay on the ground, having broken off the headstone behind it.
“Extend your flames to that cross,” he demanded.
“What do you mean?”
“Without changing your position, extend your flames so they touch that broken cross.”
I didn’t quite understand what he wanted but I made my flames bigger, figuring I could increase the perimeter of the circle of flames so it included the cross in question. The corona of fire was just about a foot around me when D waved his hands and signaled me to stop. I pulled back and asked, “What? You just told me to—”
“I wished to see you shoot just a streamer of fire to the cross,” he explained. “I prefer you do not make good on your threat to burn down this cemetery.”
Having a better clue of what he meant, I extended my arm and willed the flames to grow bigger. I grunted when the flames increased but made no motion to center themselves in my hand.
“Perhaps the proper throwing motion will have the desired effect?” D suggested, stretching out his right arm in an underhanded gesture for emphasis.
I imitated his motion and pushed the Flame out again. This time, it flew from my hand for a few feet before petering out. Encouraged, I did it again and it got a few feet further.
“Excellent, excellent,” D cheered me on. “Now attempt to hit your target.”
It took a dozen and a half more tries, but the Flame kept reaching various lengths. The nineteenth time proved to be the charm. The flames hit the cross squarely and the streamer of fire remained lit, burning between it and me. Then I realized the fire wasn’t just on top of the cross. It was actually gripping the top in an imitation of my own hand. I opened up my hand a little wider and the grip on the cross loosened. Then I tightened my grip and the grip on the cross tightened as well.
“It’s like the flame is an extension of my hand,” I said in awe.
“Exactly,” D noted with a broad smile.
Letting go and pulling the flames back, I realized what I had to do next. I threw my hand out to extend the flame under the tomb door. The streamer went roughly in the same direction I spotted the boomerang. Nothing came out when I reeled it back but I kept trying. This time, the eighth attempt proved to be the charm. My boomerang clattered out from underneath the door and I doused my fire completely.
D enthusiastically applauded my accomplishment from behind me. “Well done, Votre Altesse, well done indeed. I am certain you shall eventually find many useful applications for this talent that I have taught you.”
I walked over to retrieve my boomerang. “As long as it’s not within the swamp… Dureau already told me that anything flame-based is a bad mix for the area around your hounfour.”
“In this case, are we so certain? Look closer at both your weapon and the cross.”
I lifted up the boomerang to see there were no scorch marks or melted spots despite all my attempts to drag it out of the tomb. After stowing it back in the small of my back, I approached the cross to study it with a more critical eye. It showed no signs that I’d used it for flaming hook target practice.
“But… how is that possible?” I asked D and he all but danced over to the cross.
“Which matters more, chere madame, how your magic works or that you made it work?”
I sighed and threw back my head. “Oh, come on. It’s bad enough when Dureau gets cryptic about the Flame. I don’t need you to—”
“I am merely honoring our agreement, mademoiselle,” D interjected, holding up both of his hands. “I promised to instruct you on how to use the Flame but I never said I could explain its true inner workings.”
I frowned. “Do you even know how it works?”
“I know enough to teach you all that I have already; and that is as much as I can truly say.”
The Gates of Horn creaked again as they opened up.
“As bracing and delightful as this lesson has been for me,” D went on, “I fear that our time together must now come to a close.”
