Witch, Warlock & Vampire Box Set 2: A Vampire Romance Series (Witch, Warlock & Vampire Box Sets), page 79
Rage boiled inside of me as my heartbeat started pounding. Before the bastard could deliver the coup de grace, I threw out my fire hook, snatching the back of the hybrid’s neck. I made my hand into a fist and gave the archer a hard yank. He fired before falling straight to the ground. Two of the zombies swarmed on top of him, making short work of him. Damek cut his yells off with a sword stroke that neatly severed his head from his shoulders.
Sinjin’s eyes lit up when he saw me. He even tried one of his usual smirks. “Bete Noire… aren’t you… supposed to be…”
“Right here is where I’m supposed to be,” I barked. “Give me a minute and I’ll take you where you need to be.”
“Got your back, Lady Bryn,” Damek called out behind me.
Channeling my anger into the Flame, I willed my body to grow bigger. This time, I wasn’t content with a few extra inches and pounds to my frame. No. This time, I needed all the strength I could muster to get Sinjin out of the fix he was in. I began to swell like a hot-air balloon, quickly becoming as big and tall as any of the nearby trees.
The bigger I grew, the worse my dizziness became. It wasn’t long before it was full-fledged nausea. Only when I was on the verge of throwing up did I finally stop. I looked down at Sinjin and used the remnants of the stockade wall to estimate my height: a little over twelve feet.
Ignoring my discomfort, I gently pulled Sinjin loose from the wretched stake. I wasn’t big enough to simply yank him off it but my extra height helped make the job much easier than it otherwise would have been.
I pulled and he cried out, so I stopped. I didn’t want to hurt him but there was really no other way around it. I let him rest for a moment or two and then I pulled him again. Finally, he snapped, “For Darkness’s sake, woman, just be done with it!”
I nodded and gripped his shoulders, yanking him forward as hard as I could. He yelled out again but the sound ended once he was no longer attached to the stake. He was still very weak from his excessive blood loss, but at least he was alive, which was all that mattered at the moment.
That’s when my nausea started to overwhelm me. The usual dizzy spell was right behind it and all my extra height melted away like a snowdrift under a flamethrower. Once I returned to my normal size, I noticed my hands were still on his shoulders. He was panting and so was I.
“Sinjin?” I asked as I looked at him. I noticed the color returning to his cheeks. “Thank God you’re still alive.”
He glanced up at me and his ice blue eyes bore into mine. I could see his fear and discomfort as well as the panic that must have nearly consumed him as soon as he felt the wooden stake piercing his body.
I suddenly felt a wonderful sense of relief washing through me and the next thing I knew, I was stepping closer to him until our bodies were touching. He looked shocked for a moment or two but that expression quickly blanched away. I didn’t wait for an invitation. I rose up on my toes and wrapped my arms around him before I kissed him.
He kissed me back very eagerly.
“Bad timing!” I heard Damek calling out from the background and I broke our embrace but gave Sinjin a little smile.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” I whispered softly. I didn’t wait for a response but reminded myself Damek was exactly right. I glanced back at Damek with a brief, embarrassed nod. A few wounds were visible on his arms and chest. Between him and the army of zombies, the hybrids couldn’t get close to us. Even so, they were now blocking our path back to the boat.
“We need to go!” I yelled to my traveling companions as I turned around to make sure Sinjin was behind me. He was poised with his rapier ready and his signature smile, both present and accounted for.
Damek, God love him, posed as a barrier between us and any potential harm while we beat a hasty retreat back to the bog. Thankfully, the zombies kept the hybrids too busy for them to notice us. The assault rifle ammo was mostly expended and the pistols they were firing couldn’t have too many more bullets left. It was pretty likely that our allies would soon be consuming the brains of our foes.
I was relieved to see Audrey and the Unseelie woman warrior finish the process of slicing open the last cage by the time we got to the shore.
“Dureau?” I asked Audrey, wondering where her brother was.
“Just departed with the latest escapees,” Audrey said, her nails halfway through the ropes. “For obvious reasons, when he returns for the final passengers, the rest of us must find some other method of leaving here that does not involve my boat.”
“Far be it for me to state the obvious,” Sinjin interjected, “Must we escape on foot?”
Damek went to the other side of the cage to use his blade on the ropes alongside the warrior woman. I glanced at the water and was relieved when I saw Dureau’s boat once again materializing on the horizon. Along with it came the promise of freedom.
“Can you make it, Sinjin?” I asked him. Yes, he was alive but I wasn’t sure how bad his injuries were or how long it would take for him to fully heal.
“I will be fine.”
I nodded and turned my attention to Damek, who was looking paler and much more ragged than he should have. I rushed over to his side and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Just a little… dizzy,” he grunted, although the pace of his sawing motions was unaffected by his condition. “I’m okay.”
The fae looked at him with concern of her own. “Your countenance tells a far different story.”
I put a hand on his brow and frowned. “She’s right, Damek. You’re burning up. I can finish—”
A sudden flash of anger glimmered in his eyes. “I can do it!”
As if to prove his words, he sliced through the ropes and nearly fell down with them before the warrior woman caught him and kept him upright. She held him to her chest and gave his head a gentle kiss. “Brave child… you can rest now. The hard part is done.”
She helped Damek walk as Sinjin aided Audrey in pulling the wall away from the cage. The fae woman warrior gave Damek a careful look while the latest group of fellow captives made their way for the boat.
“His wounds won’t close and his blood refuses to clot,” she declared as she continued studying Damek.
“How is that possible?” I asked as I wondered what the reason might be. Yes, Monsieur D kept his word in that Sinjin was survived his ordeal, but why wasn’t Damek healing?
“Hardly a question worthy of one who bears the Flame,” she retorted. “You should know all things are possible.”
I guessed I shouldn’t have been surprised by her knowing what I carried inside me. But I did worry that she might tell the wrong people who’d surely want the Flame for themselves.
“Lady Maetta, hurry!” one of the survivors called from the boat, breaking up my thoughts.
“Quiet, child!” the woman responded. Then she said in a quieter voice, “Let me bring the boy with us, Flame-Bearer.”
I looked at her with an uncertain expression. “Are you sure you can even fit him inside the boat?”
She looked at me with unmasked annoyance. “This is no time for debate. Give me the boy and I can ensure he survives his journey to safer ground.”
“She’s right, Lady Bryn,” Damek gasped, slightly raising his head. “I’m… I’m not going to… make it… walking. And if there’s… any trouble… I am sure that Lady Maetta and… and Dureau can… handle it.”
I looked over to see Sinjin collapsing on Audrey’s shoulder. Apparently, he wasn’t as recovered as he thought. Dureau’s sister looked at me, Maetta and Damek anxiously. I took Damek’s left shoulder and together with the Unseelie woman, dragged him over to the boat. The rest of the Unseelie captives lifted Damek over their heads before pulling him toward the boat’s center.
“Time for us to go!” Dureau said, pointing at the battle behind us. A couple of stragglers nearly broke through the zombie squad. I spotted a fallen crossbow and snatched it up before I fired at both their chests, which only made them stagger briefly. Then I adjusted my aim and shot at their thighs. They both dropped to the ground with agonizing moans of pain before the zombies made a meal out of them. Meanwhile, Audrey gave the boat a hard shove into the water, sending it back three feet before her brother could turn it around.
Dropping the crossbow, I grabbed Sinjin’s other shoulder. We made a mad dash to the smashed barricade on the east side.
We reached the top of the denuded eastern hill when Sinjin spoke again. “Were any of Damek’s wounds more serious than they appeared at first glance?”
“Practically all of them… he couldn’t seem to stop bleeding.”
The ex-vampire sighed, as if he’d been expecting my reply. “Then, Bete Noire, perhaps we have encountered an unintended consequence of Damek’s contract with Monsieur D.”
Audrey looked at him while we went down the opposite slope. “You mean to say, Monsieur Sinjin, that le jeune homme’s body now refuses to heal because of our host?”
Sadness crossed Sinjin’s face. “You will recall, mademoiselle, that Damek’s body now no longer ages. How else can his wounds close unless his body is allowed to age?”
TEN
Sinjin
After the first mile, I had to admit that every step of our return journey to the mansion was fraught with unimaginable agony and suffering. While the fatal wounds I sustained continued to heal in accordance with Monsieur D’s promise, nothing prevented my injuries from being detected by my raw nerves. The subsequent message of pain proved quite impossible to ignore. Naturally, I said nothing to my lovely escorts about my sorry state of affairs. In the first place, they had more than enough to occupy their minds without the additional burden of my physical discomfort. It would only exacerbate the situation. In the second place, well, a true gentleman simply does not discuss certain distasteful subjects.
Thankfully, Audrey knew every land-based route of the marshland to the same extent that she memorized the water channels. That meant the trail we followed was actually shorter than the route the frog took by boat. Speaking of the humble vessel, I managed to relax only after I saw it resting on the shore. It was near the trod that served as my scouting party’s point of entry to the swamp. Upon closer scrutiny, I noted the rather copious amounts of fresh blood that left a visible trail which ran from the boat to the mansion. My jaw involuntarily clenched at that observation.
Bete Noire must have detected my change of mood. “We’re not assuming the worst, Sinjin. For all we know, Maetta and her people have already figured out another way to staunch the blood.”
I glanced into her eyes and saw my own doubts about her statement reflected in them. “Should anything happen to him,” I said with a heavy voice, “Monsieur D and I will have a very serious altercation.”
“Not nearly as serious as the altercation I will have with him, Monsieur Sinclair,” Audrey replied, her voice sounding twice as grim as my own. “Of that, you may be certain.”
We found the Unseelies crouched around the fountain, forming a rough circle. Damek lay semi-conscious in the center with the fae warrior woman—Maetta, I believe Bryn called her—standing over him. As we drew closer, I noticed every one of the former captives—save for Maetta, of course—was ripping their own threadbare clothing into rags to press against Damek’s gushing wounds.
Upon our approach, Maetta’s eyes latched onto me before they widened in alarm. “Are you seriously injured, sir?”
“I will survive,” I managed. “Where is Monsieur Chevalier?”
Maetta slightly tilted her head, indicating the mansion behind her. “Gone to fetch additional cloth in the likely event we don’t have enough raw material for this one’s bandages.”
My little hellion threw off my arm to rush over to Damek’s side, forcing me to distribute more of my weight onto Lady Audrey.
“How’s he doing?” she asked, and a maternal fear tinged her words.
Maetta pointed down at the prone form of my favorite student and her fellow Unseelies. “As you can see, we have slowed down the hemorrhaging but we cannot stop the eventual blood loss. Sooner or later, all of his blood will leave his body unless the wounds are closed.”
“Then perhaps an arrangement can be reached if only to ensure such a tragedy does not happen on these grounds,” a familiar voice said from behind Audrey and me.
Absent the usual jauntiness I came to associate with Monsieur D, he approached the circle. His posture and movements were as stiff as the corpses, many of which he bore an uncanny resemblance to. He placed his cane in front of him as he paused at the outer edge of the circle. Maetta narrowed her stern eyes at the man who both saved and ruined the life of her wounded charge.
“Monsieur D,” she said, and her voice made it very clear how she felt about him. Like she wanted to ram her borrowed sword down his throat.
“Madame Maetta,” Monsieur D answered in an equally uninviting voice. “May I assume that your presence here means your former captors have been dispatched?”
“They were as long as your zombies finished the job they started back at the camp,” Bete Noire replied, placing her hand on her still-sheathed blade. “Now, tell me what you intend to do about helping Damek?”
Monsieur D hummed slightly. “That would depend on what you decide to exchange in order to find the loophole in his contract.”
“With respect, no, it does not,” Maetta argued, her hard eyes intensifying into a full-fledged glare.
I sensed a growing anger when Monsieur D changed his posture at her words. There was never any love lost between the Unseelie court and Les Invisibles. Their conflicts with each other as well as the Seelie court made for outlandish gossip and flamboyant legends, even within Jolie’s own court. Unless a third party did something to head off a most untimely confrontation, the situation could have well escalated beyond anyone’s control.
Naturally, I volunteered to be the third party. I cleared my throat loudly enough to make everyone take notice. “I believe what Lady Maetta means to say, monsieur, is that she is willing to bargain for the knowledge of this loophole on behalf of Bete Noire, who was also instrumental in her liberation. Am I correct in this, milady?”
After a brief glance to tacitly inform me that was the very last thing she had in mind, she turned to our host to say, “I am, sir. But there is still the matter of Monsieur D accepting the possibility of entering such a compact with me.”
My little hellion looked at me as if to ask what I was doing. I gave her an impatient nod. Of course I knew what I was doing! In the course of my duties as Lord Royal Protector, I became quite familiar with the Byzantine politics of both Seelie and Unseelie alike. The clashing contradictory rules they operate under would have driven the most dedicated lawyers mad in less than a week’s time. However, the diplomacy between the courts, thankfully, was more straightforward. It boiled down to two choices in the end: open warfare or ambiguous contracts that both sides would invariably use to their own advantage. I naturally drew the reasonable conclusion that Les Invisibles probably operated under a similar ethos.
“Am I to understand that the head of the Ordo Discordia is willing to sign a contract with a leading luminary of Les Invisibles?” Monsieur D asked, clearly intrigued by this sudden turn of events.
“No,” Maetta countered, her voice softening slightly. “The head of the Ordo Discordia wants to bargain for the life of one of her rescuers to whom she owes a debt, one which can never fully be repaid.”
Monsieur D slowly nodded his head. “While what you say is true, madame, we both know what I will ask for in exchange. I have certainly confessed my desire for that particular object enough times over the years.”
“Heal the boy now and you shall have it by the next new moon.”
“You give me your word?” Monsieur D asked, obviously doubting her sincerity.
“On my honor, my life and my virtue,” the Unseelie lady answered, pounding her chest with each word she called out. It was the most solemn oath that an Unseelie could deliver to another, and generally regarded as sacrosanct and unbreakable. I truly hoped that whatever Maetta just agreed to surrender to House Gedde would not cost her too dearly in the end.
The bargaining concluded, Monsieur D reached into his jacket and pulled out a silver flask. “Tell le jeune homme to drink this until he loses consciousness.”
At Maetta’s nod, the head of House Gedde tossed the flask to her. She caught the shiny receptacle with a flick of her wrist and wasted no time kneeling down to give Damek the required fluid. Damek swallowed it without issue.
“And what, pray tell, are the exotic contents of that flask, Monsieur D?” Audrey asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
Monsieur D shrugged his thin shoulders. “Merely magicked whiskey; it’s strong enough to achieve the desired effects with only a few sips, and nothing more. It will continue to replenish itself and shall never run out so whenever the young master requires healing, he shall have it as long as he drinks from this flask.”
“So this whiskey will cure young Damek and restore him to full health?” I pressed, wanting to be sure that there were no exceptions or unforeseen limits to the rule.
“Without question, monsieur,” he assured me, “the worst shall be over very shortly.”
Apparently unsatisfied with Monsieur D’s assurances, Bete Noire waded into the circle and knelt before our wounded comrade. At this point, the frog suddenly flashed his long awaited appearance via materialization.
After taking note of all the activity that occurred in his absence, he said, “Would I be correct in assuming that Damek’s condition is worsening?”
“Yes but we found a solution,” Bete Noire answered.
“If Monsieur D is to be taken at his word, mon frere,” Audrey added, her voice making it plain that she needed more solid proof.
