Into the Fire

  Ian blinked. “I didn’t tell you?” When both of us glared at him, he gave up the pretense. “Right, well, it would have been very boring explaining that I know a bloke who knows a lot of mystical blokes, but no one who looks for Ashael can find him. Saying he spelled himself to be elusive is putting it mildly.”

  “We’re looking for someone who’s spelled so that he can’t be found?” I repeated, incredulous.

  “Yes and no,” Ian replied. “No one can find Ashael by looking, but if you go to one of the few magically sealed places he frequents, then speak his name into a toast several times, he can hear you, and thus he finds you.”

  Chapter 12

  Vlad continued to stare at Ian, and from the look in his eye, he was mentally peeling Ian’s skin off one layer at a time. “This person finds us?”

  A nod. “If he’s interested.”

  “And if he’s not?” Vlad asked, his smooth voice belying the dangerous currents I felt pushing against his shields.

  “Then he swipes left and we remain a trio instead of a quartet,” Ian replied, his tone adding, Isn’t that obvious?

  Vlad leaned back in the chair, which creaked under his new, stockier body. “Then there was no need for Mia and me to be here.” His words hung in the air like poison swirling inside the finest of wines. “Yet you insisted that we come. Why?”

  Ian stiffened as if affronted, but I was starting to realize that very few things offended him. “You wouldn’t want to be here if Ashael shows up?”

  “If he did, you could have told him to meet us elsewhere,” Vlad said. “No, that’s not why you brought us, and since you’re pathologically selfish, it must be because it benefits you.”

  “Backup.”

  The word left my mouth before I had time to think it over, but when I caught the faintest widening of Ian’s eyes, I knew I’d guessed right. I let out a short laugh.

  “You have enemies in this world. That’s why Mencheres had to guilt trip you into helping us, so now that you’re forced to be here, you’re making sure that you’re not coming alone.”

  Ian’s silence was confirmation. “Seems you need us as much as we need you,” Vlad noted in a darkly satisfied tone.

  Ian’s mouth tightened, that hard spark breaking through his devil-may-care façade. “For the moment, so I reckon that backing me up is the least you can do.”

  “You could have just asked us,” I noted.

  The look Ian gave me was disbelieving to the point of being thunderstruck. “Trust you?” he said, as if I’d suggested that he set himself on fire and jump into a gasoline-filled lake. “Why?”

  “Not now,” Vlad said, his gaze flicking around the room. “Too many ears, even if most of them are human.”

  Human, maybe, but the magic that pulsed through this place was tangible. Even if I’d been blind, I would’ve known I was somewhere special. Being able to see only meant that I was continually dazzled, if I allowed myself to keep looking around. But we weren’t here as tourists, even if this was the kind of place that millions of people would pay through the nose to vacation at.

  “How long do we have to wait to see if Ashael intends to respond to your summons?” I asked in a lower voice.

  Ian settled himself back into the couch. “A few hours. If he doesn’t show, we’ll try again tomorrow, but before we leave, we have to pay our respects to the architect of this level. You don’t snub a hydra mage unless you want to repeatedly drown for the next five days, as I discovered the hard way.”

  “So, you are trainable,” Vlad drawled, while I glanced around with new understanding.

  “Hydra mage. That’s someone who can control water, right?”

  Ian gave Vlad an evil look before responding. “Yes, elemental magic is the theme of this hotel. This level is water. There’s also a level created by an earth wizard, another by an air witch, and one ruled by a fire sorceress.”

  “Fire?” An interested gleam appeared in Vlad’s eyes.

  Ian gave him a shrewd look. “Under other circumstances, I’d love nothing more than to pit you against her to see who would win, but I promised not to endanger you for my own amusement.”

  “Who is that?” Vlad said, nodding at an elegantly dressed, blond man who was staring at the back of Ian’s head as if he could glare holes into it.

  Ian turned and winced. “This might be a problem—”

  The rest of what he said was cut off as he flew backward as if pulled by a giant string. Before Vlad or I could react, we were too swept up by that same unstoppable force. Quicker than a blink, the three of us hurtled toward the giant hole in middle of the ceiling, pushed along by invisible magic and the force of the countless gallons of water that were sucked up into the vortex along with us.

  I now knew exactly what it felt like to be flushed down a toilet. That’s the only way I could describe being shunted through a huge, interior pipe with uncontrollable force. Water exploded up my nose, giving me the sensation of drowning even though I didn’t need to breathe. From the sick way my stomach plummeted, we were going up very fast, and the water pressure was so great, I couldn’t take my glove off to manifest my whip to break the pipe and free us. Likewise, Vlad wouldn’t be able to use his fire. Not while he was under water.

  When the pressure abruptly dissipated and I felt cold air instead of painful wet surges, I was relieved . . . until I saw nothing but mist between me and the ground below. The pipe must have spat me well over the roof of the hotel, and the velocity had thrown me clear of anything to grab.

  Instinct had me flailing in a mad, cartoonish attempt to slow my descent, but then I was caught in midair and hauled back against a large, heated body. In the time it took for Vlad to lower us safely to the ground, I had figured out that the infinity waterfall fell from the roof into drains at the building’s base that must lead to the Atlantis floor. There, it was sucked back up to the roof so it could fall and thus replenish itself in an endless, repeating loop.

  I would’ve admired the design, except I was still coughing. Having my lungs suddenly flooded with gallons of water hurt. Vlad gave me a few pounds on the back that helped expel the last of it, then brushed a swath of wet hair back from my face.

  “Are you all right now?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying for a smile. “Guess that’s the way magical people show unwanted guests to the door.”

  “Bloody rude is what it is,” Ian muttered between coughs of his own. He was about a dozen feet away, and when he stood, his skintight leather pants squeaked from being waterlogged. “Still, I expected much worse.”

  The last word had barely left his mouth when we were suddenly falling again. I didn’t know how solid earth could all of a sudden change into thin air, but that’s what happened. We hit the bottom of the pit about fifty yards down. Vlad grabbed me and tried to fly us through the mist that covered the new hole, but when we reached it, the hazy vapor was somehow so hard and impenetrable, we bounced off it instead of going through it.

  “This is more like it,” Ian said darkly as he, too, tried and failed to fly through the misty ceiling.

  The ground began to shift, and something that looked like shiny tree roots snaked up from the earth. When one of them curled around my ankle, the sharp, distinct burn it left wasn’t caused by anything wooden or organic. Instead, it was metal.

  Or, more specifically, silver.

  “A silver-rooted inescapable pit of death?” Ian almost sounded admiring. “You’ve outdone yourself, Blackstone.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t disappoint,” a smooth voice said from above us.

  I looked up, and through the mist that was somehow unbreakable, saw the suave blond man from the Atlantis room. He knelt at the edge of our pit, wearing a very satisfied half smile as he stared down at us. From the steady beats in his chest, he was human, but he was obviously more than just human. He was a sorcerer. And a powerful one, considering everything he’d just done.

  Vlad snatched me up, keeping me out of reach of more seekin
g silver roots, then fixed his most dangerous glare onto the blond sorcerer. “Release us at once.”

  Blackstone let out an amused snort. “Mind tricks don’t work on my kind, vampire, and I have no intention of releasing anyone. I made this trap for this exact purpose, and now I intend to sit back and watch all of you die.”

  “Come on, Blackstone,” Ian said in wheedling tone, “even you must agree that this is a bit excessive.”

  Blond eyebrows rose. “You left me at the mercy of the most powerful demon I’ve ever encountered just to save your own skin. If I were being excessive, I’d let you live for the thousand or so years it would take for the earth to push your body through its depths until you burned to death when you reached its core.”

  I winced. Okay, so we were dealing with someone powerful and psychotically bent on revenge. Being married to Vlad, I had experience with both those things.

  “Your issue is with Ian, but you don’t even know me or my husband,” I said, giving Blackstone a friendly smile. “Let us go, then do whatever you want to him.”

  “Thanks ever so, poppet,” Ian snapped.

  I waved a hand. “From what Blackstone said, you deserve it, so stop whining and take your punishment like a man.”

  “You heartless little harpy!” Ian said, slack-jawed.

  I just waved at him again in a dismissive way, but what I was really doing was edging my glove down. No, I wasn’t really intending to leave Ian to his doom, even if I did think the sorcerer had a valid grudge. If we could manage to get past this force field of a mist, I could make mincemeat of Blackstone with my whip. With how far below we were now, though, my whip couldn’t reach Blackstone even if it could penetrate the mist, and since Vlad hadn’t touched him yet, he couldn’t burn him.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ian added, futilely kicking as one of those silver roots curled up his leg and then drove into his calf. “You need me,” he finished.

  Vlad eyed the sorcerer controlling those deadly silver roots, then glanced at Ian. “Maybe all we need now is him.”

  Chapter 13

  “Filthy ingrate!” Ian said with a snarl as that silver root plunged into his thigh next. Another one began to slide up his other leg, and a third reached perilously near Ian’s groin. For the moment, though, they had stopped coming after me or Vlad, so the sorcerer was considering what we’d said.

  “Come on, you don’t even know who we are, so it’s not smart to kill us, too,” I said, looking away from Ian to fix a steady gaze on Blackstone. “It might be more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “And who are you that it’s in my best interest to spare your lives?” Blackstone asked, not sounding very worried.

  “New members of Mencheres’s line,” Vlad responded at once. “Both of us less than a year undead.”

  I schooled my features so my surprise didn’t show. Why would Vlad say that? His reputation was more fearsome than Mencheres’s, and didn’t Mencheres say he had enemies in the magical world, too? What if Blackstone was one of those enemies?

  The blond sorcerer’s mouth pursed as if he’d swallowed something sour. “Baby vampires,” he said, sounding both contemptuous and resigned. “You shouldn’t be near a place like this, let alone with Ian. Didn’t your sire warn you about him?”

  Vlad hunched, somehow managing to look guilty and sheepish. “He did, and we know we shouldn’t have come, but Ian swore he’d show us the time of our lives.”

  Once again, I was glad for all my years performing on the carnival circuit or I would have gaped at Vlad. Even his voice had changed. Gone were his usual deep, commanding tones. Now, he actually managed to sound scared and conciliatory, and if he hunched his shoulders any more, he’d break his collarbones.

  Blackstone let out an annoyed sigh. “Too many people saw me force you out here, and your sire considers you too young to be responsible for your actions. Very well, it’s your lucky night.”

  With that, Blackstone said a few words and flicked his fingers in a way that hardly looked magical, yet at once, an opening appeared in the steellike mist above us. Ian tried to hop over, but even more roots entangled him. Blackstone shot an arch look at him, then bent down and held out his hand to us.

  “Jump, like you did before. I’ll grab you and pull you up.”

  Vlad’s smile showed all his teeth as he grasped me firmly to him and jumped, his other hand extended. When Blackstone grasped it, Vlad let him pull us all the way out of the ditch, and then fire shot from his hands.

  Blackstone’s scream was cut off when his mouth filled with flames, and I winced when both the sorcerer’s hands exploded, leaving only charred stumps at the end of his arms.

  “Well done, you magnificent bastard!” Ian crowed. “Now, finish him! His magic will stop when he’s dead.”

  Vlad glanced behind us, making sure that no one was coming to Blackstone’s aid. Then he shoved the sorcerer to his knees.

  “You must be the earth mage Ian was telling us about, yes?” When Blackstone only glared at him, Vlad let the flames coating his hands flare higher. “I can heal you by giving you my blood, or I can burn you to death. Decide which you’d prefer.”

  After another glare, Blackstone nodded, his mouth too charred to reply any other way. If he’d been a normal human, he’d probably be dead, but his magic was strong.

  “Still getting stabbed by silver while stuck in a pit,” Ian called out, but Vlad ignored him.

  “Do you know a sorcerer named Mircea? He’s a vampire, very handsome, with curly black hair and coppery-colored eyes.”

  Blackstone shook his head. Vlad’s grip tightened where the sorcerer’s hand used to be until another smoldering bit broke off. “Don’t lie to me,” he said in a frightening whisper.

  The sorcerer shook his head no more vehemently. Vlad sighed. “That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? Don’t suppose you know anything about blood-bound spells?”

  A shrug that seemed to say, Some. Vlad leaned closer. “What about a spell that binds two people together flesh to flesh and blood to blood, so strongly that killing one person kills the other person, too?”

  Blackstone’s eyes widened in surprise. Vlad made another disappointed sound. “No, didn’t expect you to. You just stick to the things you’re best at, don’t you?” At the sorcerer’s nod, Vlad said, “So do I,” in a conversational tone. Then his grip tightened and a red glow suffused Blackstone. The sorcerer screamed soundlessly and I expected an explosion, but surprisingly, Vlad let him go.

  “Wait, I can’t kill him,” he said, as if remembering something. “Ian made me swear not to kill anyone tonight.”

  “I release you from that vow!” Ian shouted.

  “Oh, but I have a real problem,” Vlad said with merciless mockery. “In fact, it’s like a sickness for me, right?”

  “I was wrong!” Ian yelled. “Not a sickness, it’s a bloody marvelous gift. Now, practice that gift before I’m nothing more than a silver-pronged husk!”

  Vlad shot a satisfied glance down at him. “Those roots still working their way through you, are they? That must be painful. What did you say you wanted me to do again?”

  “Kill him! Kill him, for the love of God, kill him!” Ian roared. “Leila, poppet, don’t just stand there, do something!”

  I doubted Vlad would let the spell finish its lethal work, and after all Ian’s taunts, incitements, and tricks, he deserved some payback. Hadn’t I told Ian that if he kept pushing Vlad, he’d be sorry?

  “Oh, I can’t reason with him when he’s like this,” I said. “Like you said, sometimes he can’t even fake being sane.”

  Vlad gave me an appreciative grin, but when Ian’s new scream sounded a lot more agonized, he clenched his fist and Blackstone exploded. I wished there had been another way to stop the spell, yet it seemed I was the only one regretting Blackstone’s necessary death.

  “Finally,” Ian said, sounding exhausted and relieved.

  A wolfish smile curled Vlad’s mouth. “It appears you’re
right—I simply can’t go an entire day without murdering someone.”

  “Aren’t you amusing?” Ian replied in a sullen tone. “And now that you and the Mrs. have had your fun, perhaps you can assist me. These nasty little roots have speared me in more places than even someone with my tastes can enjoy.”

  I leaned over the rim of the pit. In addition to the many roots that had worked their way through Ian, one looked to be very close to his heart. The roots had stopped moving, though, and the mist that had acted as an indestructible lid had started to dissipate. Ian was right; Blackstone’s spell had died along with him, although it would be tricky getting Ian out with all that silver stuck in him.

  Ian must have guessed what I was thinking because he said, “You’ll need to melt the silver on both sides so I can pull the remaining pieces out.”

  I put my hand into the mist, testing to make sure that I could penetrate it. Yep, what was left wasn’t that impenetrable shell anymore. Now it just felt sticky, like layers of cobwebs.

  “Not so fast.” Vlad’s hard tone drew my attention back to him, and I paused instead of jumping into the pit. “We have some things to sort out first.”

  Ian let out a pained noise. “More games?”

  “No games.” Vlad walked around the edge of the pit like a predator circling its prey. “You’ve held our need for you over our heads ever since Mencheres forced you to help us, but tonight proves that you need us, too. So no more half truths, tests, or incessant taunts. If I get you out of that pit, you agree to swear to be our ally in full.”

  Ian glared up at us. “And if I don’t? You’ll break your vow to Mencheres by killing me?”

  “He wouldn’t have to,” I said, also sick of seeing Ian dangle both of us from a metaphorical hook. “If we leave you, someone from that magical monstrosity of a building will find you, and since there’s a very dead earth mage next to you, I don’t think it will go over well.”

  Ian gave me a dirty look. “Very cruel, poppet. Aren’t you the perfect mate for him?”