I grabbed Lionel and dragged him to the doorway between the two rooms. I held him with one arm and used the other to brace against the lintel above me. Chunks of concrete thundered down around us. I squeezed my eyes shut and put all my energy into pushing upward. My strength wasn’t enough to hold a falling building, but perhaps I could give the lintel a little extra support, just enough to make a difference. The roar of noise swirled around me. I grunted at several hits against my legs. A pressure enclosed my torso and squeezed.
The noise ended. I opened my eyes, and saw only darkness. Was I even alive? After the maelstrom of chaos and noise, the stillness was almost more terrifying.
“Help,” I shouted, coughing as I swallowed dust. “Help.” I strained against the pressure that held me immobile. The only parts of me that I could move were one arm and my head. As I struggled with all my strength, the dirt and rubble holding me gave slightly.
“Stop moving,” Lionel shouted, then he too started coughing. “You’ll bring the rest of this down on top of us.”
I stilled, realizing he was right. Rocks rumbled threateningly, and stones rolled toward me, several hitting me in the neck and face.
I used my free hand to wave the dust clear from in front of my face, and I was finally able to see faint light. My fingers scrambled at the dirt in front of my chest, and I unearthed Lionel’s pendant, still glowing. I coughed again, continuing to wave away dust until the air cleared enough to see better.
Lionel and I were squashed together, our heads close. We were both buried up to our necks, though I had one arm free. The lintel above us had held, creating a small pocket of air. Seeing how small the space was made me want to try to fight my way out again, but I resisted the urge.
“Help,” I shouted again, then another coughing fit took me. I took shallow breaths until my throat cleared. Dust swirled in the ghostly white glow.
“We should space out the calls for help,” Lionel said. “Conserve our energy.”
“How are you so calm?” I asked. The real question was why was I panicking. I had lived through wars and plagues.
“Most likely, I’m still in shock,” Lionel said. “When I fully realize what’s happened, I’ll start sobbing like a baby. I’ll let you deal with me then.”
“How?” I asked. “By changing your diaper?”
“Don’t joke. That may be needed when we are rescued.”
“So your underpants are full of—”
“Rubble, let’s say rubble.”
I sniffed, then the smile died on my lips as I smelled something, and not something unpleasant. “Are you badly injured?” I asked.
“No. I’m numb all over.”
Blood oozed down the side of his skull. We were pressed so close together, almost cheek to cheek, that I only had to bend my neck to touch my lips to the dark trickle. In anticipation, the taste of blood filled my mouth.
I swallowed, dust itching in my dry throat. Once I became aware of it, the smell of Lionel’s blood filled the small air pocket, swirling through the ghostly glow. His life force called to me. My gums tingled.
“Thank you,” Lionel said. “For saving me back there. I just froze. I’m not sure how you reacted so fast.”
“Instinct is a strange thing.” And vampiric speed and strength were even stranger.
And fresh blood could renew that strength. I gave a little headshake. What was I thinking? I didn’t want to harm Lionel; I didn’t want to kill anyone ever again. I had proved that with Sistine, that I could overcome my dark desire. I crushed my awareness of Lionel’s blood, pushing it deep down inside me. “Can you use magic to save us?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve several spells stored on my pendant,” he said. “Such as the light we are using. Also, I could heal you if needed. However, to cast a spell I haven’t prepared, I’d need to read from my spellbook, which is currently trapped in my jacket pocket under a foot of rubble. And even if I had that, I’m not sure what I’d cast.”
“So you’re saying you can have us attacked by a fire illusion, but that’s about it.”
Lionel smiled. “Pretty much. If I’d known I was going to meet you, perhaps I’d be ready with a spell to push a collapsed building off the top of my head.”
“I don’t hear anything happening above us. Do you think anyone knows what’s happened?” I took a breath. “Help,” I shouted, then paused to listen. After a brief echo, all that answered was silence. “Do we have enough time to just wait for rescue?”
Lionel looked around. “It’s impossible to tell if more air is getting in.”
“Even if this small pocket is all we have, I think we’ll be already dead before the air runs out.”
“Well, if I was going to be stuck down here, at least I’m glad it’s with an optimistic person. Someone to bring light to the darkness, you know.”
“By night’s end, the demon reflections will have taken our place.”
“If you believed Reflessa,” Lionel said.
“Reflessa?”
“Reflection plus Essa equals Reflessa, no?”
“It won’t be alone. Reflionel will be helping.” If my reflection was going to get a stupid name, then his was too. “And we’ll be trapped, unable to defend ourselves.”
“There are no mirrors here,” Lionel said.
“I’m not sure that’ll matter. The reflections are getting stronger. Perhaps a shadow is all they’ll require soon to be able to manifest. Maybe not even need that. And, yes, I believed Reflessa. About that, at least.”
“What triggered the collapse?” Lionel asked. “I don’t think Val was nearby.”
“The last thing I remember is having that old leather-bound tome in my hand.”
“It had metal on it,” Lionel said. “So it could have contained a spell. I picked up the book earlier, though.”
It could have been primed to react to a vampire, I thought. Another trap for Mortissa that had instead caught Lionel and me.
“Heeeeeelp,” I roared, turning my head upward and expelling all the air from my lungs in one long yell.
Once again, we waited in vain for a reply. As the silence stretched out, I became acutely aware of my body position in relation to Lionel. I was twisted slightly to the side with my left breast shoved against Lionel’s chest. My arm wrapped around his side, and my palm pressed against the small of his back. Our thighs intertwined.
The whisper of his hot breath touched my neck. I glanced across at him; our gazes locked for an instant and we both looked away. The warmth of his body heat swelled against me.
“This is awkward,” Lionel said, acknowledging that he was experiencing something similar to me.
“It’s just a stupid physical reaction,” I said. “We’re not even attracted to each other.”
“We’re not?”
“Of course not. You recently accused me of lying, and I know you still don’t fully believe my story.”
“That’s true. And you felt nothing for me?”
My initial attraction toward him had dimmed. “The way you treated Danielle would disgust any woman.” Some men were only kind toward women they found attractive, women they wanted to seduce.
“Was I so horrible?”
“She helped us, and still you left her twisted over backwards, locked to your steering wheel.”
“She’s a hood mage.”
“And that’s it?” What would he think of me if he learned I was a vampire? “Hood mages do exactly the same as you, just without the family connections. Are you so blinded by prejudice that you are personally disgusted by hood mages?”
“I’m not disgusted.”
“You acted like you were.”
“I’ve recently become security chief for my family, and one of my tasks is dealing with practitioners of hood magic,” he said. “Now that I’ve seen what she can do...” He hesitated. “I might have to oversee...”
He is worried he’ll have to order her killed, I realized. “Don’t you have discretion to show leniency?”
“Perhaps.” His slightly pained expression said otherwise.
“I see.” His father ultimately made the decisions. That was why Lionel had arrived without any other mages and had used his magic to give the students a scare. Once his father became involved, Lionel wouldn’t be able to protect them. “You can’t justify letting Danielle get away. And you fear what your duty will require you to do. And if you get to know her, feel affection for her, then your duty could become even more difficult.”
He glanced away. “Hopefully she’s not known to any mage families. Then we’ll exile her from the city with a stern warning.”
Considering how proficient she was with magic, it seemed unlikely that she had never before come to the attention of any mage family.
Given his explanation, I understood why Lionel had acted the way he had toward Danielle. If he hadn’t cuffed her to the steering wheel, though, perhaps she would have arrived to help us already. “When they come, do you think the emergency services will be able to get us out before dawn?” I asked. “Considering how unstable it is, I’m sure they’ll need time to dig us out safely.”
“How long do we have?”
“What is it, one, two in the morning? So we only have another six, seven hours,” I said. “It might be hard to explain the urgency.” Even without the demon reflections, I had the rising sun to worry about. “Should we try to dig ourselves out? Risk it all coming down on top of us?”
Lionel made a face. “Considering how unstable everything was when you struggled earlier, I’d have that as a last resort. Don’t know about you, but my bare head isn’t looking forward to being showered with chunks of concrete.”
“We might be all out of resorts bef—”
“Listen,” Lionel interrupted me sharply.
I strained my ears. After several moments, I heard a distant clattering noise. “Help,” I shouted. “Down here.”
“Help,” we both roared in unison.
“I’m coming.” Though the sound was muffled, the words were clear, and the voice was recognizably Danielle’s.
Small stones showered down on top of us, bouncing off our heads and shoulders. Lionel grunted in pain. “Stop,” he shouted. “Go back. You’ll bring everything down on top of us.”
“I have an idea of where you are,” Danielle said. “Hold on. I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Get help,” Lionel shouted.
We received no reply. “What do you think she’s going to do?” I asked.
“Ring nine one one, I guess,” Lionel said. “If she hasn’t already.”
“When rescuers come, perhaps we can tell them that one of us is bleeding out. Persuade them they need to abandon caution.”
“We don’t want them to bring everything above us down on our heads, either.”
Our makeshift ceiling was uneven, with several jagged rocks sticking out, looking ready to fall at any moment. With how little time we had to escape and defeat the reflections, our situation was desperate. “I don’t want to die like this.”
“You won’t. Don’t be morbid.”
“Where better to be morbid? We’re in the dark underground and very possibly about to die.”
“That’s exactly where jokes and laughter should be given free rein.”
“Why?”
“Something something human spirit.”
I laughed, though not for long. Darkness and silence swallowed the laughter as fast as it had arrived.
“I don’t want to die at all,” Lionel said quietly.
As an immortal, I was the one who shouldn’t have wanted to die at all. Instead, I had said I didn’t want to die like this. Some vampires eventually reached a stage where they lost interest in living. Was that happening to me? Was that, deep down, driving my desire to change? Did I want to gain some measure of redemption before dying? Or gain redemption in death?
“I think you are having morbid thoughts,” Lionel said. “Snap out of it. Tell me. The story about Drayson, was it true?”
“It was.”
“I thought you might have made it up as a way to persuade Danielle to help us.”
“I don’t have that much imagination. I was glad I thought to tell Danielle about Drayson, though. Saved me from having to listen to the ham-fisted threats I sensed you were itching to employ.”
“Did you love him?” Lionel asked.
“Sorry?”
“Drayson. Were you in love with him?”
I smiled. “Didn’t you hear the part of the story about his wife?”
“I did. Doesn’t change my question.”
My smile refused to turn into a chuckle. “Perhaps I did. Unrequited, of course. Unadmitted even, until this moment, at least.” I cast my mind back, thinking. I couldn’t remember Drayson’s wife’s name, or much about what she looked like. “Before he made the demon’s bargain, he was a man of substance. And to be honest, I’ve known few enough of them.” I didn’t know if that said more about me, or about the men I’d met. “After the bargain, he gradually eroded away, his good qualities first.”
“Is that what you are looking for?” Lionel asked. “A man of substance?”
“I’m not looking.”
At that moment, our gazes locked, and a frisson of electricity passed between us. “You’re looking at me,” he said.
“We’re trapped together. I don’t have much choice.” I flushed, feeling the heat where our bodies touched swell once more. “What about you? Girlfriend? Wife?”
Lionel shook his head.
“Don’t tell me your father hasn’t lined up some suitable marriage prospect.” Within mage families, even in modern times, rather than waiting for sparks to fly by chance, parents sparked marriage possibilities into life via careful planning.
“That would be Jacinta Hamilton,” he said.
“Tell me about her.”
“She’s colorful, bright, cheerful, and always the center of attention.”
“Sounds like quite a catch. Or perhaps there is a catch?”
“The latter. She’s cold and calculating. Ambitious with a capital A. I never know how much of what she says and does is an act.”
“And that’s not what you want?” How much of what I had presented to Lionel had been an act? I had lied to him from the start. About everything.
“Hello,” Danielle shouted out. Trails of dirt snaked down the walls of our tiny air pocket, kicking up more swirling dust.
“No closer,” Lionel shouted.
“Don’t move, I’ll take care of this,” Danielle’s hollow voice said.
“Not moving won’t be difficult,” I said dryly. “How are you going to free us?”
“With magic, of course.”
I raised my eyebrows at Lionel. “Can you guess what she has planned?” I asked him.
“Are you sure you know what you are doing, Danielle?” he shouted.
He was the one who understood magic, and the frantic look in his face wasn’t reassuring. With a grinding, rumbling sound, the earth vibrated around us. As the rubble shifted, the edges of stones dragged against my skin, sending lances of pain coursing through me.
Lionel screamed, “Stop! Danielle, stop.”
The shifting eased.
“Keep going, Danielle,” I shouted. I reached across and gripped the side of Lionel’s face with my free hand, curling my fingers around the back of his neck. “We don’t have many options. We have to let her try.”
“I can’t bear it,” he cried. “My skin is being scraped off.” The glow from his pendant dimmed.
“Look at me.” Our emotional states had reversed from earlier. I was calm, ready for whatever was to come. Lionel was filled with pain and panic. When his gaze flickered away, I dug my fingers into the back of his neck. “Look at me.”
His eyes were wide, his pupils dilated. I stared at him with a look that didn’t have a shred of romance about it, a steady, intense look that offered only strength.
He noticeably calmed.
“Keep going, Danielle,” I shouted. “Get us out of here.”
Was she aware of the fate in store for her in the hands of the Cressingtons? If so, would she prefer that we be buried where we lay? They were questions I didn’t share with Lionel, questions that I put out of my mind as soon as they arrived. I trusted the girl; I had to.
The vibration in the earth around us increased, and a deep rumble filled our ears. I blinked away dust, holding Lionel’s gaze. I gritted my teeth as rocks ground against my body. Opposite me, rivulets of sweat trickled down Lionel’s forehead, etching out tracks in the dust that caked him, outlining the tension and pain in his face. As a vampire, I had a resistance to pain, so I knew that whatever I felt, he felt a hundred times over. He didn’t cry out.
A rock rolled down and hit my shoulder, bouncing to the side. Cold air rushed down toward us. Lionel, feeling it, began to tilt his face. “Don’t look up,” I warned. If another rock fell, I didn’t want it to smash his face in.
Lionel nodded. “If this is it, I’m glad it’s with you.”
“Don’t say that.” All he knew about me were lies. “This isn’t it. Danielle knows what she is doing. Remember her hastily created ice creature putting your carefully planned fire illusion to shame.”
“Making me feel bad just as I’m about to die. Have you no shame?” The smile in his eyes told me he wasn’t being serious.
“My spell is supporting the structure around you.” Danielle voice came through clearly. “I can’t pull you out, but all the dirt and rocks is loosely packed, and nothing should fall. Can you climb out?”
“I’m not sure.” I strained against the pressure holding me and felt a slight give. “Yes. I can move easier.” I pulled upward with my left arm, and, after a momentary resistance, it came free. I raised that arm above my head, brushing dirt off it with the other hand.
“Hey.” Lionel turned his face away to avoid the splatter.
“Sorry.” My left arm felt weird, as if it had spent so long curled around Lionel, pressed against him, that being free had become an unusual state.
I reached up above my head with both hands and fumbled with the lintel until I got a good grip. “Are you sure this won’t come down?” I shouted out.
“Pretty sure,” Danielle replied.
“Sure enough to bet our lives on it?” I didn’t wait for a reply, pulling with all my strength. I shifted upward about a foot, then paused.
Lionel wiggled his shoulders around, managing to get his hands free. “I can breathe again.”
“Don’t get too used to it. We’re not out yet.” I picked up Lionel’s pendant and lifted it higher to shine light on the uneven surface above my head. “Which way should I climb?” I shouted up.
“I can see a glow, so I know where you are,” Danielle said. “Hold on, I’ll shine a light your way. Hurry, please.”
A moment later, I saw a flash of light up and to the left. I reached my hand that way and felt fresh air breathing down. “Thanks. I have a direction.”
Lionel stretching up, reaching for the same handholds I did. His arms were scratched and bloodied. “Stop,” I told him. “Stay where you are until I get out. We’ll just get in each other’s way.” He wouldn’t be able to pull himself out on his own, and I didn’t want him to realize how much strength it required. “Cover your head with your arms in case something falls.”
I reached into the space through which the light had flashed, fumbled around until I found a loose rock, and yanked. It came out, and all around it, other chunks of rubble came free. I lurched back in alarm, only to find that the loose rubble floated downward slowly. Whatever Danielle was doing, it was powerful magic. I guided the loose rubble out of the way, then pulled more rocks free.
Once I’d created a tunnel of space above me, I pushed downward with my arms, and pulled my legs out of the dirt. I was then able to stand, slightly hunched over, with my head in the space I’d just created. I grabbed at every outcropping, pulling free anything that was loose. With Danielle’s magic creating the weird low gravity effect, Lionel was able to grab the falling rubble above his head and shift it into the hole which had once held me.
The space around me expanded until I could stand fully. I stared in surprise at a pair of chunky black shoes, then turned my gaze upward to see Danielle with her spellbook in hand. We’d made it.
“What’s going on?” Lionel called out.
“Give me your hands,” I told him. He raised them and I clasped him around the wrists. “Grit your teeth. This is could be painful.” Then, not giving him a chance to think about what was to come, I wrenched him upward.
He screamed, a long, agonizing scream. I didn’t give him a chance to recover from the immediate pain of being ripped loose of the dirt. I released him, grabbed the edge of the gap in the floor, then jumped up through. I reached back down, gripped Lionel’s wrists once more, and pulled him through.
He whimpered when I set him down.
“We shouldn’t pause here,” Danielle said, nodding upward. “It’s unstable.”
We were on a section of the living room floor of the house we’d earlier walked through. The broken TV still sat in the corner, untouched by the mayhem all around it. Most of the floor had caved in. Shadowy walls hunkered overhead, leaning precariously. From the angle of some of them, I had no idea how they hadn’t already fallen.
Lionel was crouched over, breathing in heavy gulps of air. I put my arm under his shoulder, guiding him forward as I followed Danielle. We descended the steps and crossed the street, stopping in the grassplot on the other side. There, I helped Lionel onto the ground, and I collapsed down beside him. Danielle sat opposite us, her sigh of relief even louder than ours.
The cool fresh air moving over my body was heaven. Our escape felt like a huge victory, even though it only meant that immediate disaster had been avoided. We were no closer to overcoming the demon’s curse and surviving until dawn.