Into the Fire

  If we weren’t here for a fight to the death, I would have been charmed by the lovely winter scenery. It reminded me that Christmas was only a week away, if we survived to see it.

  As it was, I surveyed the church and its surrounding landscape with only tactical appreciation. The late hour and freezing temperatures, combined with Pleystein being a sparsely populated town, meant that we didn’t have to worry about a lot of bystanders. That was good because the necromancers wouldn’t care about collateral damage, and while we might care, Vlad still wouldn’t be pulling any of his punches.

  Neither would I. This was our one chance to end this before anyone else we cared about got hurt or worse. Vlad had uploaded his truncated video to the Internet before we left Minsk, telling his people to spread it among all their allies so it would eventually reach Mircea’s captors. I didn’t think that would take long. Shockwaves would go through the undead world at the supposed sight of Vlad blowing the head off one of the most powerful vampires in existence.

  Wait until Mencheres sees it! my inner voice taunted. Then you’ll really be in for it.

  I’d wanted Vlad to tell Mencheres what he’d done on the flight over to Pleystein, yet he hadn’t. He’d brushed off explaining who the dead man was with a muttered “later” and also glossed over exactly how Ian had had the power to get Mircea’s location from our now-dead hostage.

  I, however, snuck a text to Ian that I hoped he bothered to read. I couldn’t let Mencheres’s wife think that he’d been killed. That would be too cruel.

  Besides, Mencheres would doubtless be more inclined to get over Vlad’s ruse and the reasons behind it if he knew that Kira hadn’t been harmed by it. Vlad had said himself that he wouldn’t forgive someone for hurting his wife even if he were the forgiving sort. Mencheres was probably the same.

  Of course, once these necromancers realized who was attacking them, the jig would be up. They’d probably kill Mircea first thing in retaliation, which would be curtains for me, too. That’s why we couldn’t attack with a large force. No, we had to be stealthy above all, so Vlad had only called in one additional person, and I’d been stunned when he said it was a Law Guardian.

  “Haven’t we been avoiding Law Guardians because we’ve been breaking magical laws left and right?” I’d argued. “We just used more magic an hour ago to get my hair to grow back!”

  “That is trivial compared to the prize of uncovering an old, illegal nest of powerful necromancers,” Vlad had countered. “It’s also the point. We deliver these necromancers to the Law Guardian with the understanding that her judgment will be immediate execution. She gets a feather in her cap for ending such flagrant abuse of vampire law, and in exchange, we get immunity for any minor infractions we committed to do this.”

  Like a video showing you using glamour to dupe the world into thinking that you murdered Mencheres, I had realized. Vlad was covering all his bases with the same brutality, ruthlessness, and cunning that he was famous for.

  That’s how we ended up crouched below a rocky ledge about a mile from the church we were going to attack. This was where we were meeting our Law Guardian backup. I didn’t hear any noise and nothing disturbed the air around us, yet Mencheres suddenly said, “Veritas” in a low voice.

  I looked behind us, surprised to see a slender form clothed in white ski wear no more than twenty yards away from us.

  “Imagine,” Mencheres went on, an undercurrent of humor now in his voice. “The last time you, me, and Vlad met under clandestine circumstances, you were threatening to arrest me.”

  Huh? Then I got a closer look at the person who was moving in a crouch so she wouldn’t stand out against the background beyond her. Wait a minute. This sunny-haired, caramel-skinned, lithe young beauty could not be our only backup.

  “The Law Guardian’s a frigging teenager?” I blurted out.

  Ocean-colored eyes met mine, and I instantly realized my mistake. Her gaze had a strange weight to it that I’d only seen before from really old vampires, and the undetectable aura she’d given off suddenly flared. Instead of filling the space around us, hers somehow managed to direct itself into a thin, laserlike line that drilled me right in the midsection.

  It didn’t just knock me on my ass like Mencheres’s unleashed aura had done. This one plowed me several feet into the dirt as if I’d been dropped from a plane.

  “What I meant to say was, nice to meet you,” I panted, stunned. Damn! Pretty baby was fierce.

  She moved in a blur of speed to beat Vlad into offering me a hand up, coolly returning the glowering look that he gave her.

  “No one calls you Dracula without regretting it, and no one disrespects me without remembering it.”

  “Oh, I’ll remember it,” I agreed, accepting her hand up.

  In addition to regretting my words for obvious reasons, I also felt bad that my rude comment had hit her in what must be a sore spot. The vampire world could be a very sexist place at times, much like the human one. It must be hard in general for a woman to attain the exalted position of Law Guardian. Doing so while also looking as if you were better suited to be a high school prom queen had to have been even harder.

  “Sorry,” I said as stood up. “I didn’t mean to—”

  That’s all I got out before her ridiculously pretty features hardened and she yanked me close, sniffing deeply.

  “Dagon,” she hissed. “You’ve been with Dagon.”

  At once, Vlad yanked me out of her grip. Veritas yanked back. Soon, I was being pulled back and forth between them as if I were a toy and they were two dogs playing tug-of-war.

  “Stop!” I snapped, with a worried glance toward the church. We could not be caught arguing near the place we intended to attack in a few minutes! “Yes, I was with Dagon, but—”

  “Where?” Veritas interrupted again, her sea-blue gaze glittering with a thousand emerald lights. “I need to find him.”

  Why? “You know he’s a demon, right?”

  “Oh, I do,” she said with a malevolent purr that sounded uncomfortably like his had.

  Why would anyone want to see a demon? “You’re not trying to deal your soul away for something, are you?”

  “No, I’m going to kill him,” she snapped, then looked unsettled, as if she hadn’t meant to reveal that.

  I gave Veritas a sharp look. Ian had said that Dagon was too powerful to kill, even for someone who wasn’t affected by his pausing-time trick. Veritas knew the demon well enough to recognize his scent, so she had to know what he was capable of, too. She was either suicidal for going after him, or . . .

  “Pause time like Dagon can, and I’ll tell you what you want to know,” I said, taking a huge leap of faith.

  Her eyes widened. Then, before I had a chance to feel stupid about my misassumption, the snowflakes halted in midair, all sound vanished, and everyone around us stilled as if doing the world’s best impressions of living statues. And Veritas narrowed her eyes when she saw that I was unaffected by it.

  “Demon kin,” she said after a surprised moment of silence.

  No point in denying it, even if the ruling body of vampires had been responsible for wiping out most trueborn witches, aka demon descendants. “I prefer Leila, thanks.”

  “How did you know that I could do this?” Her wave indicated the supernaturally paused world around us. “No one knows, not even Mencheres, and he is my oldest contemporary.”

  I gave her a jaded look. “Mencheres doesn’t know that pausing time is one of Dagon’s many tricks. You do, and you’re too old and powerful to be an idiot, so to me, that left only one explanation: you can pause time, too. I don’t know how and I don’t care. What I do care about is that Dagon tricked a friend of mine into signing away his soul. If you kill Dagon, he’s free, and since they have some bad blood between them, I’m betting that he knows how to find Dagon.”

  Veritas leaned forward, then caught herself, as if she didn’t want to reveal how eager she was. “Who is this friend?”

  “His
name is Ian, and if we live through tonight, I’ll tell you where he is.” Banging his way through every whorehouse between Minsk and wherever he was headed was my guess, but I’m sure I could narrow it down more than that.

  Veritas gave me a measured look. “I have waited millennia to find Dagon. This little fight will not stop me.”

  That’s what she called a death match against an unknown number of necromancers? She’d better be as good as she was cocky. “Then let’s get to it, and feel free to use your time-pausing trick. That’ll make things a lot easier.”

  She frowned. “It requires too much power. It will take me days before I can do this again.”

  I gaped at her. “Then why did you do it before the fight?”

  “Because you insisted that I do it now,” she countered.

  “If I’d known that you could only do it once—” I began, then stopped. “Whatever, it’s too late now. Hit the start button again; we have a battle to fight.”

  Her gaze became so hard, her eyes resembled ice-encrusted sapphires. “You will not reveal to anyone that I can do this.”

  “Fine,” I said, fighting a sudden shiver.

  She smiled, revealing that she had a dimple next to her mouth. She couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen when she was changed, and here I thought Gretchen had been too young at twenty-three. “Good,” she said. “I would have disliked killing you.”

  With that dubiously comforting statement, our surroundings abruptly returned to normal.

  “No need for impossible tests, Leila,” Vlad said, unaware that Veritas had already passed with flying colors. “Veritas, after this is over, you can ask Leila everything you want about Dagon, but until then”—he gave a predatory look at the church across the valley divide—“we have work to do.”

  Chapter 46

  We crouched beneath the covering boughs of evergreens at the base of the mountain that the church was perched upon. Despite the many fights I’d been in, this was my first big ambush. There was so much riding on it; I was glad I didn’t have a pulse anymore. If I did, it would have been pounding.

  “You know your priorities,” Vlad whispered to Mencheres.

  He nodded, his charcoal gaze hard. Then his eyes closed and he stretched out his hands. The faintest hum reverberated through the mountain and I tensed. If the necromancers inside happened to figure out what the cause of that slight noise was, I was about to die.

  “I can feel the people inside,” Mencheres said, his voice no louder than the sound that the snow made as it slipped onto the ground. “Most of them are soaked in grave magic.”

  Vlad exchanged a grim look with me. We’d expected that, but it still sucked. Now neither of their powers would be effective against Mircea’s captors, either to fight them or keep them from killing Mircea. We’d have to rely on quickness and luck alone.

  I glanced at the mountain beneath the church. It had both milky and smoky quartz inside it; I knew that from a quick Google search. But what Google didn’t know was that there was also a large pocket containing huge pillars of pure morion, or black quartz, and Mircea was smack dab in the middle of it.

  Maybe there was another way.

  “Black quartz absorbs and negates all magic,” I whispered. “It’s why it’s the only prison that can hold a sorcerer or necromancer. If you can find a way to protect Mircea, the rest of us can force them inside the area containing all that black quartz. Once they’re there, their magic won’t work anymore.”

  Vlad’s smile was a savage slash. “Do it,” he told Mencheres.

  Mencheres closed his eyes again. After several minutes that sliced across my nerves as if someone were ice skating on them, Vlad turned to Maximus and Marty. “Be ready as soon as he finds it.”

  They nodded, their expressions both calm and deadly. I wished I felt the way they looked.

  “Leila, you stay in the back.”

  I pursed my lips but nodded. If not for my needed immunity to grave magic, Vlad would have refused to let me here at all.

  Vlad’s stare lingered on me, and though his feelings were locked down tighter than Fort Knox, his gaze told me everything that our circumstances couldn’t allow him to say.

  I love you, too, I wordlessly replied. If my psychic powers hadn’t been smothered by his aura, the words would have resounded through his mind from how much I meant them.

  The faintest smile touched his lips, then it vanished when he turned to Veritas. “You’re with me. And remember—no matter what, I need the black-haired boy alive.”

  “For the thousandth time, yes,” she muttered.

  I stifled a laugh. He caught my muffled snicker, and his brow arched as if to say, You’ll pay later for mocking my concern over you.

  Mencheres opened his eyes and said, “I have him.” Then his hands met together in a firm, silent clap. “If I am correct, I have now pulled a protective barrier around Mircea.”

  A breath exploded out of me as if I’d been hit in the chest. Before I could process the relief, a set of ominous vibrations came from deep inside the mountain. Then the bell on top of the church began to ring.

  “They’ve either felt or spotted us,” Vlad said darkly.

  Without another word, he and Veritas exploded into the air. They crashed into the church before my next thought. At once, a shower of flaming plaster, wood, and stone rained down. From the way the church crumpled beneath their assault, Vlad wasn’t just setting things on fire; he and Veritas were also using their bodies as living wrecking balls.

  Maximus grabbed Marty and flew him up there. I waited impatiently for Mencheres to do the same with me, but he only stood there, his hands still clasped together.

  “Any time now,” I said.

  “Not unless Vlad gives the signal,” Mencheres replied. “Keeping Mircea safe and keeping you here with me are my top priorities.”

  Fury raced through me. I’d agreed to stay in the back, not stay behind entirely. “Oh, Vlad is not pulling this shit again!”

  Something like a snort came out of Mencheres. “If you expected anything else, you have only yourself to blame.”

  Then an invisible lasso felt like it wrapped around my waist, stopping me before I got two steps into my angry ascent up the mountain. I swung around, sparks shooting from my hands.

  “Let’s forget the fact that if they get hit with a spell, they’re all dead because they’re not immune to grave magic like I am,” I gritted out. “If they’re deep inside a mountain, how will you even see the signal that Vlad’s supposed to give you?”

  Mencheres arched a brow. “Like this.”

  A hole suddenly tore out of the mountain as if a bomb had gone off. Huge pieces of rock headed right for us. I threw up my arms, but then they defied gravity to swing to our left and right instead. The ground shuddered over and over as enormous slabs of stone continued to fall, until Mencheres and I were surrounded by the hulking pieces.

  “Vlad’s enemies destroyed part of the mountain beneath his home a few months ago,” Mencheres said, a cold smile wreathing his lips. “He wanted me to return the favor tonight.”

  I was speechless as I stared at the destruction he’d wrought without once moving from his spot. Yes, I knew Mencheres was powerful, and I’d seen him move things through his telekinesis before. But I hadn’t known that he could do this. I hadn’t known that any vampire in the world could.

  Yeah, we’d see Vlad’s signal now, I thought, staring at the multiple tunnels that were now revealed from the hundred-yard hole that Mencheres had torn into the mountain. Soon, we’d probably see a lot of things. The color of the quartz veining the mountain seemed to grow darker the farther down it went, so Vlad would be forcing the necromancers deeper into the mountain.

  My guess was proved right moments later when an unfamiliar man ran through one of the tunnels that Mencheres’s power had exposed. He spun around in disbelief when he saw the gaping hole where the side of the mountain used to be. Then he ran right for that instead of going deeper into
the mountain. I watched with frustration. How could Vlad force anyone into Mircea’s prison if there was now a huge exit they could escape through?

  “Incoming!” I yelled at Mencheres, snapping out my whip.

  The man was airborne long enough for me to see that he had light brown hair and tattoos snaking up the sides of his face. Then two huge chunks of rock shot up and smashed him between them. The impact was so incredible, it turned the rocks into gravel and him into nothing more than a boneless, gooey pulp.

  “You double-swatted him with boulders,” I said, both admiring and disgusted as red glops started to splatter me.

  Mencheres noticed and flicked them away before more hit me. “I might not be able to use my abilities directly on the necromancers, but I can use them on everything else.”

  “Talk about making the best of what you’re working with,” I muttered.

  I don’t know why I had my whip ready to shoot out over the next several minutes as we waited to see if anyone else would try to run out of the hole. Mencheres could more than handle them on his own, as he’d proved with his smashing-boulders trick. Still, I was too keyed up to stop the currents from building up in my right hand, so I stayed tense, ready to spring into action if anyone else tried to run for it.

  All of a sudden, fire roared along the lip of the hole in the mountain. Instead of growing to curtain the open space with enough flames to prevent anyone else from using the huge hole as an exit, the flames abruptly extinguished.

  Mencheres’s face darkened. “That is Vlad’s signal,” he said, going over and clasping me to him. “They need help.”

  Before I could speak, he vaulted us into the air. As we flew, the fallen pieces of the mountain began to fly, too. I had a second to see them sealing over the enormous hole as if they were huge puzzle pieces being put back into place, then that view was cut off as Mencheres dropped us onto the smashed remains of the church.

  To my shock, Mencheres backed away as soon as he set me on the ground. “Vlad ordered me not to go in. If I am stricken by magic, I will lose my hold on the barrier protecting Mircea. Whatever powers you have, Leila, you need to unleash them. Vlad would not have sent that signal unless the situation was dire.”