“So,” Mencheres said in a casual tone. “What did I miss?”
Chapter 32
I caught the reason for his dramatic manner of entry when I went downstairs to see if Leotie had taken all the blood bags with her. Apparently, Mencheres had been calling Vlad over and over and had gotten worried when there was no response. That’s why he’d opted for his sudden, explosive arrival instead of merely showing up by car or helicopter. Not that I could blame Mencheres for being worried. A few minutes ago, all of us had been caught in a witch’s trap.
A glance at the clock showed that we’d been in our mirrored prisons for over six hours. It had felt much longer than that, and I was now so hungry that I didn’t trust myself to feed from a human. Thankfully, I found a blood bag that Leotie had left behind by accident or because she knew how ravenous I’d be once I was finally out of her trap. I drained it, feeling oddly guilty even though Gretchen was long gone by now.
I tried not to worry about her as I listened to Vlad fill Mencheres in on everything that had happened since they’d last spoken. Leotie wouldn’t hurt Gretchen, I reminded myself. She’d gone to rather extreme lengths to prove that, in fact, but I hated that my sister was still with a virtual stranger at the most emotionally vulnerable and turbulent point in her life.
And dear God, I didn’t even want to think about what would happen when my father found out that Gretchen was now a vampire and I’d let someone snatch her away to parts unknown. To say he’d be angry was an understatement. He’d only recently started speaking to me again after my own transition from human to undead several months ago. Once my dad discovered that Gretchen had chosen to go all creature-of-the-night, too, he might pop a blood vessel.
Then again, my father might also go looking for a silver knife to stab me with. He’d consider Gretchen’s change and her subsequent kidnapping to be my fault since I’m the one who exposed Gretchen to vampires in the first place. I doubted that telling him about our even-freakier witchy lineage would soothe my dad, either. Family. Why was nothing easy with them?
“Imhotep?” I heard Mencheres say, and my ears perked up. “But Imhotep has been dead for over a thousand years.”
“It appears that his followers live on,” Vlad replied in a brusque tone. “What do you know about them?”
I slipped back upstairs during Mencheres’s pondering silence. When I reached the main room, he was looking out the window and Vlad was standing near the fireplace.
“Imhotep was unusual,” Mencheres said. “History remembers him as one of the earliest known architects, physicians, and engineers. He was a vampire, of course, or we never would have met because he was born a full hundred years before me. He was also the person who taught me most of the magic I know.”
Now we were getting to the meat of it. I moved closer, not wanting to miss a word of this. Mencheres turned around, his dark gaze flicking between me and Vlad.
“But despite Imhotep knowing far more of the dark arts than he taught to anyone, even me, he didn’t view magic as a weapon. Instead, he sought to use it for knowledge, for healing, and for securing Egypt against her enemies. He had many followers, yes, but he taught magic to very few of them because he was concerned about it being misused. If all practitioners of magic had been as principled as Imhotep, the Law Guardians might never have outlawed it in the first place.”
“But they did, and if our information is correct, his followers strayed very far from Imhotep’s example,” Vlad said, sounding impatient now. “Do you know any who are still living?”
“None.” Mencheres’s expression darkened. “Aside from Patra, the only other one I knew of died in the fifteenth century.”
“Who’s Patra?” I’d never heard that name before.
“Mencheres’s former wife,” Vlad said shortly. “Thankfully dead, so the bitch has no part in this.”
“Hey, harsh,” I muttered.
Vlad gave me a jaded look. “Had you known Patra, you would have considered ‘bitch’ a charitable descriptor.”
Mencheres looked understandably ill at ease over the topic, so I seized on the other pertinent point. “The other guy died in the fifteenth century, huh?” I cast a slanted look at Vlad. “That’s the same time period that Szilagyi recruited Mircea and had someone teach him a whole bunch of super-powerful magic that even Mencheres doesn’t know about. Coincidence?”
“Maybe not,” Vlad replied, green starting to fill his eyes. “We’ve been tricked more than once by someone pretending to be dead who wasn’t. Who was this person, Mencheres? More importantly, what kind of special magical abilities or powers did he have?”
“She,” Mencheres said, his expression darkening again. “And she only had one, yet it was more than enough.”
Tonight, we were going up against three members of Imhotep’s secret cult of necromancers, one of whom might be the sorceress that Mencheres used to know. But first, we had to fly more than twelve hours to reach Belarus, the country in Eastern Europe where Mircea said the other necromancers were. I didn’t mind the long flight, in truth. After several futile attempts to link to Leotie or Gretchen—Leotie hadn’t been lying; I found myself blocked each time—I used the rest of our flight to grab a few hours’ sleep. That’s how tired I was. Even prebattle nerves and all my worries couldn’t keep me awake the whole time.
Mencheres came with us. Vlad had argued over this, saying something about needing to fight his own battles, but Mencheres had insisted. Almost no one was able to get Vlad to change his mind once he’d made it up, so I could only guess that Vlad’s love for Mencheres combined with his “honorary sire” status in Vlad’s life had been the cause of his unusual relenting.
Whatever the reason, I was glad. Mencheres’s telekinesis would come in very handy against the necromancers, if they were as tough as Mircea warned me about. Combine that with Vlad’s firepower, Maximus’s brute strength, Marty’s bravery, my own electrical abilities, and whatever Ian could do, and I felt a lot more hopeful about our chances, even if one of the necromancers did turn out to be Mencheres’s former acquaintance.
We landed in Minsk, Belarus, at a little after noon, their time. The bright sunlight was intensified by all the snow on the ground, and the instant blast of freezing air when we exited the plane had me molding my coat tighter around me. Winter was fully here in this part of Eastern Europe. Still, Belarus wasn’t that far from Romania, and seeing the snow reminded me that it had also been winter when Vlad and I first met. How was that less than a year ago? Some days, it felt like several lifetimes ago.
We needed two cars to fit all of us and our luggage, which consisted mostly of weapons. Even with everyone’s supernatural abilities, Vlad didn’t want to take any chances, and I was all for the extra caution. Marty and I rode in the first car with Vlad while Ian and Maximus rode behind us with Mencheres. Vlad spoke Russian to the driver of our vehicle, which meant I didn’t understand a word that he was saying.
I assumed we were going to a hotel or someone’s residence since those places were Vlad’s norm when we traveled. Instead, a little over an hour later, we pulled up to a ramshackle farm complete with a barn that looked like it would buckle from the weight of the icicles hanging off its roof.
“Is this where we’re staying?” I asked, surprised. I could literally see through to the other side of the farmhouse, there were so many holes in the building’s frame.
Vlad’s lips curled. “I know, it’s far beneath my usual standard, but that’s the point. My expensive tastes are well-known, so few would expect to find me here, even if word of our arrival in Minsk did manage to make the rounds.”
“Few indeed,” I said, suppressing a smile. I’d lived on the street for a little while before I met Marty, so this didn’t faze me, but Vlad was used to living in an actual castle. I couldn’t wait to see his expression if we had to sit on piles of hay versus actual furniture.
“I have to get a picture of you next to that barn,” I went on, stifling a laugh at the glower he gave me
. “If you could find a pitchfork and hold it up, too—”
“Not in this lifetime,” he cut me off.
“Princes,” I said to Marty, with an exaggerated eye roll. He only grunted in reply, but the side of his mouth turned up. He might not be Vlad’s biggest fan, but he wasn’t immune to being amused by my playful needling of Vlad.
We could all use something to smile about right now. In a few hours, we’d be in a life-or-death fight, and we didn’t know if our advantages would be enough since magic was the ultimate wild card. Some of us might not make it through tonight. I hoped we would, but in case these were the last hours of our lives, I didn’t intend for them to pass under a cloud of worry or regret.
That’s why, as soon as the car came to a stop, I got out and went right over to the nearest snowdrift. Then I bent down and began packing up the snow into roughly shaped spheres.
“What are you doing?” Vlad called out.
My reply was throwing a snowball that hit him square in the chest. He looked down at the white remains on his cashmere coat, and his brows almost disappeared into his hairline.
The disbelief on his face was priceless. My next snowball smacked him in the chest again. Then Marty laughed out loud as my third one went high and hit Vlad right in the nose.
“Nice one, kid!” Marty shouted, climbing out of the car. He ran over to me and began forming his own snowballs while eyeing Vlad with open intent.
“Don’t you dare, Martin,” Vlad growled, forming a ball of pure fire over his palm in warning. Then he looked at me with exasperation. “Come now, Leila, enough of this.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, grinning at him. “How long has it been since you’ve been in a snowball fight?”
Now his brow arched with distinct haughtiness. “Never.”
“Never?” I asked, and lobbed another fluffy white missile at him. He ducked, so it sailed over his head instead of hitting him. “You didn’t even play in the snow when you were a kid?”
“I was in a dungeon by age ten, remember?”
I wouldn’t let his curt tone or past memories ruin this. “That gave you nine years to do it. You’re saying you didn’t?”
“No.” But there had been the slightest hesitation before that single word, and I pounced.
“Come on, Vlad, don’t lie to me!”
He drew himself up to his full height. “As you noted, I am a prince. Thus, my father didn’t allow me or my brothers to demean ourselves with foolish antics in the snow.”
Allow. I snatched at the inference. “So you wanted to, but you couldn’t.”
“My brothers refused to disobey Father, and there was no point in playing outside alone,” Vlad muttered.
For a split second, I could picture him as a child trying to incite his brothers into breaking the rules for a few minutes of illicit fun. My heart swelled, but Vlad wouldn’t want me to be sad over all the ways his youth had been tainted. Instead, I deliberately began forming another handful of snow.
“Then I’m not letting you go another day without being in a snowball fight. Put out the fire, Vlad, and pick up some white stuff. I’m playing to win, so you’d better watch out!”
So saying, I flung my latest snowball at him. Marty joined in and threw his pile of hastily made snowballs at him, too, until Vlad had to spin and duck to avoid all of them. His scowl faded. With a wolfish grin that both warned and delighted me, Vlad finally bent down and began grabbing up handfuls of snow.
“Know what elevated body temperate is really useful for?” he asked in a conversational tone. “Melting things.”
Then he threw five snowballs at us in rapid succession, beaning Marty and me. When they landed on us with far more weight and force than normal, I laughed.
“Cheater!”
He only grinned wider. “You’re the one who said to play to win, Leila.”
I laughed again, throwing snowballs as fast as I could make them. Vlad used the side of the car as a shield while he formed more special snowballs that had their exteriors melted by his hot hands until they had formed into icy shells. That made them faster as well as harder, and for someone who’d never done this before, Vlad was a natural at snowball fights. He managed to match the same number of snowballs that Marty and I threw at him, and when the second car finally pulled up, all three of us were covered in snow and ice.
Mencheres got out and looked around. Vlad was still crouched behind the other car, and Marty and I were behind our makeshift barrier of an overturned barrel.
“Are you doing what I think you are doing?” Mencheres asked, returning his gaze to Vlad with open disbelief.
Vlad stiffened and made a noise that, on anyone else, I would have called part defiant and part abashed. “Yes.”
Vlad’s real father had forbidden him to play in the snow on the pretext that it was demeaning. I hoped that Mencheres, Vlad’s honorary sire and secondary father figure, wasn’t about to be equally scornful now, even if Vlad was several centuries past when this activity would have been normal behavior.
At last, very formally, Mencheres stretched out his hands.
“It is on,” he said in a surprisingly good impression of street talk. Then dozens of snowballs began forming on their own before rising to whirl like aimed, suspended missiles.
Ian bounded out of the car like a puppy that had finally been let off his leash. “At last, some fun!” he crowed, and began forming snowballs next to us.
I shrieked with laughter as the first round of snowballs that Mencheres had telekinetically created began to pelt me, Marty, Ian, and Vlad. Then we all made Mencheres the focus of our attacks as we began returning that snowy fire as fast as we could. Even with four-on-one odds, Mencheres’s abilities made him easily able to keep up. Soon, so much snow was flying between us that it looked like a concentrated blizzard.
“Come on, Maximus, we need you, Mencheres is killing us!” I shouted.
After a final, disbelieving stare at Vlad, Maximus got out of the car and joined us. “This isn’t the kind of fight I expected to be in today,” he muttered as he began forming snowballs.
I just grinned at him. “Always expect the unexpected with vampires, right?”
Chapter 33
When Mircea had told me where to find the necromancers, he hadn’t said that we needed to show up at any particular time. Vlad picked midnight for us to make our appearance, and it didn’t escape my notice that this was also known as the witching hour. Whether that was coincidence, strategy, or Vlad exercising his streak of dark humor was anyone’s guess.
Ian glamoured us to disguise our appearances and everyone but me hid all but the weakest slivers of their auras. Now, the collective power of our group was lowered until it would feel like we were simply a bunch of new vampires looking for some after-hours fun, which was the façade we were going with.
Of course, Ian having his own sense of humor, we all looked like a bunch of sexy female vampires looking for some after-hours fun. Ian said it was because women were universally underestimated and thus would arouse the least amount of suspicion. That’s why I now looked like a six-foot-tall Nubian goddess and Vlad was a five-foot-two, bouncy-haired blonde. Maximus now appeared to be a sultry Southern redhead, Marty a dusky-skinned, raven-haired beauty, and don’t get me started on Mencheres. He now looked like a barely-legal-aged Asian girl, complete with a schoolgirl’s uniform and knee-high socks.
“Real women don’t do that,” I hissed at Ian as he played with his new boobs.
“Then they should,” Ian replied, giving his ample bust another two-palmed squeeze. “I could fondle these darlings for days. Should’ve thought to do this before tonight—”
“Enough,” Mencheres said, the single word no more than a whisper, yet it thankfully stopped Ian in mid-train of thought.
I smirked at Ian for his instant, if somewhat sullen, compliance. Only Mencheres seemed able to command his respect that effectively. One day, I’d love to find out the story between the two of them, but now wa
sn’t the time.
Ian caught my smirk, guessed the reason behind it, and flipped me off. I returned his one-fingered salute, but dropped my hand when Vlad said, “We’re here.”
After the grandeur of the element-themed hotel and the mystique of the underground speakeasy, I was surprised by the rather drab street of buildings in front of us. I even checked the address to see if Vlad had gotten it wrong. No, this was the place.
“Do you see something we don’t?” I murmured to Ian.
He’d already dosed us with the same sparkly, eye-opening dust that had allowed us to see the hidden hotel in Savannah, but what if this place required more potent stuff? For all I knew, there could be an entire enchanted castle on top of this run-down line of warehouses.
“Don’t see anything other than a dreary warehouse, poppet,” Ian whispered. “Still, I feel vibrations, don’t you?”
I did, though I’d thought they were from the cars on the nearby highway. It might be late, but we were hardly the only people out in this section of Minsk at this hour. Now I concentrated and realized that the vibrations came from both the highway behind me and this supposedly empty strip of warehouses.
“Let’s go,” Vlad said, the cold determination in his voice completely at odds with his glamoured, wispy feminine tones.
By increasing my concentration, I realized that the vibrations weren’t random, but rhythmic. Someone was blasting music in the building ahead of us. We might not be able to hear it due to soundproofing or a muting spell, but it was there.
That was why, when we entered the building and saw two burly-looking men on either side of a door across the room, my first thought was Bouncers. As we approached them across the long, empty space, one of them spoke to us in Russian.
“Password?” Vlad repeated in English, with a feminine laugh I would never get used to. “Did you get a password, Sylvie?”
My fake name. I giggled as if it were a joke while thinking, Damn you, Mircea! You could have mentioned this part! “No, but I’m hammered, so I wasn’t really paying attention when the guy mentioned this place earlier. Did anyone else catch it?”