The rusty iron door opened with a sound like a human scream. I knew it was merely the grind of metal on metal, with the old hinges plaintively crying out for oil. But it seemed oddly appropriate.
This place was no stranger to misery.
“That’s them. That’s the lot,” the jailer said, before pausing to spit on the floor. “Nasty bunch, too, if ye ask me. Don’t get too close and don’t take off the gags. They’ll curse you sure as hell.”
The small group of women in the corner certainly looked capable of it. On first glance, they seemed pathetic enough, with their stinking garments and matted, dirty hair. But the equally dirty faces below the tangled mess and above the thick leather gags they wore told another story.
I’d seen kinder eyes in murderers’ faces, when they were actively trying to kill me. I was perfectly fine with keeping the gags right where they were. But the vampire didn’t agree.
“Then how are we to question them?” he asked.
“That’s your look to,” the jailor said, and pocketed the bag of coins that Mircea had paid him to let us in here. “But counter curses’ll cost you extra.”
He departed, locking the door behind him, and leaving us with dirty hay, bare stone walls, and a bunch of murderous witches.
Should have charged more for this, I thought, and waited on the vamp to pull something out of his arse. Which he did, so to speak, by addressing the women in a friendly, relaxed voice that seemed really out of place. But not nearly as much as what he said.
“I assume you would like to leave this place.” He glanced around. “One sympathizes. I want something, as well. Perhaps we could make a trade?”
I felt my spine suddenly lock into place. “Can I speak with you for a moment?” I said grimly.
He smiled at me. “I’m negotiating.”
“You are about to get us killed,” I hissed, because it was true.
If the women thought he was lying, they’d hate us even more than they already did and tell us nothing. If they thought he was telling the truth and he reneged, they’d kill us as soon as they got free. And if he wasn’t lying, and planned on some kind of jail break, then the Circle would kill us, since this was one of their facilities and we’d given our names.
And the world’s leading magical organization wasn’t something you wanted to cross.
The Silver Circle had recently relocated to England, using the island fortress as their base instead of more vulnerable areas on the continent. They were locked in a struggle for survival with their dark mage counterparts, the Black Circle, who had gained the ear of important rulers and implemented an inquisition to supposedly stamp out magic workers. In reality, it was to stamp out the wrong sort of magic workers, namely the ones the Black Circle didn’t like.
And the number of humans involved in this crusade, bolstered by dark mages, had inflicted damage. Enough to send the Silver Circle scurrying for these islands, which would have worked better if there hadn’t been ancient covens already here. Long the leaders of magical Britain, the covens did not like competition, and liked it even less when the Circle started imposing their authority—and their laws.
Predictably, war had broken out, which had served the covens ill. Most of them had been subdued or forced to flee elsewhere, although a few remained bothersome. But the enmity was as real as ever.
And the last thing I wanted was to get into the middle of it!
“This wasn’t part of our agreement,” I added, not bothering to moderate my tone since the room wasn’t large enough for it to matter.
“It will be fine—”
“It will not be fine! The Circle knows who we are—”
“Yes, well, I didn’t mean to take the women with us,” he said, appearing slightly annoyed. “I’ll send some men for them tonight, after we’ve gone—”
“And I’m sure they’re going to believe that!” I said, gesturing at our audience.
“Whether they believe it or no, it is true.” He spread his hands and smiled at them. “I am Mircea, a representative of the Vampire Senate, and I do not lie.” He thought about it. “Well, not to you.”
I rolled my eyes and, when I found that insufficient, rolled my whole body around in a circle, hoping for inspiration from the damp, weeping stone.
I didn’t find any, but it gave the vamp a chance to keep talking, so he did.
“There was a revenant attack on a village recently—your pardon, but I assume you know what revenants are?”
He paused, why I didn’t know, since they were gagged and couldn’t answer, but maybe to give them time to nod.
Nobody nodded.
“They are the result of a vampiric change that goes wrong,” he informed them politely. “Or, rather, that is how they are usually made. A vampire, perhaps a new master, perhaps merely someone careless, makes a mistake and the result . . . is quite unfortunate. A mad thing, crazed and full of blood lust, but without the mental facilities to control himself. Very dangerous, as was recently demonstrated not thirty miles from here.”
He stopped to look about, then dragged over a small stool that had been hiding in a corner and sat on it. He took his time, arranging the fine garnet velvet of his surcoat to his liking, and making sure that it didn’t trail in the mud. He appeared fussy suddenly, almost effeminate, which was odd. I hadn’t noticed any such affectation before.
My eyes narrowed.
He crossed his shiny, expensive leather boots in front of him, and continued.
“Fairhurst, the village is called—or it was. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Lovely orchard; excellent cider.”
The witches had no comment on the village or its supposed cider production.
“Until yesterday, that was,” he continued. “When a group of revenants descended upon it and slaughtered every man, woman and child. The Senate’s operatives are still there, cleaning up the mess. I was delegated to clean it up in a different way—to find the person responsible for this heinous crime before she strikes again.”
He paused. “I am sorry to tell you, but we have reason to believe that she may be a witch.”
He looked at them for a moment, as if letting that sink in, then glanced at me. “If you wouldn’t mind?”
I just looked back at him. We weren’t getting anything out of these women, even if they knew something, and I had no idea why he thought they might. The Circle had picked them up in the general area, but it was a large one; these holding cells served all of Lancashire. Not to mention that, even if they did know her, they weren’t going to tell us that.
But I was getting paid, so I pushed off from the wall I’d unconsciously slumped against and got to work.
“As you may know, there are two ways to make a vamp or revenant,” I said flatly. “A bite—the usual way—or a curse. Not too many witches know how to cast the latter, however, and fewer use it, considering how the Senate tends to view that sort of thing. Therefore, we have someone who is knowledgeable, skilled, and doesn’t care about having dozens of vamps on her tail. Ring any bells?”
Of course, no one said anything. But one of them glanced at the woman to the right of her, and the vamp’s leg suddenly tensed. I played a hunch, all I had since the bastard hadn’t told me anything, and moved away from him.
He’d spoken in my head in the tavern; perhaps he had some latent mental powers he intended to use to spy on the women’s minds. That would explain the attempt to look harmless, to keep them from steeling themselves against him, and the request for me to take over the explanation so that he could concentrate. But he couldn’t read what they weren’t thinking about, so I needed to keep their minds fixed on this mystery woman.
And off of him.
“We even have a description,” I said, as their eyes followed me across the room. “Dark hair, young, pretty, with blue eyes. Or, at least, she assumed that form when cursing the life out of Thomas, Ellen and young Henry Seddon, the local gentry. The wife and boy died on the scene, unable to manage the change, but Thomas became a revenant who nonetheless remembered his attacker quite well.
“We don’t know if she intended to make revenants, or if she simply got the curse for vampirism slightly wrong, but either way, she might try again. And while I don’t blame you for hating the Circle and every mage in it, the fact is that these creatures of hers didn’t go after the Circle. They went after regular people. Your people.”
I didn’t know if the vamp was getting anything out of this, but I was becoming worked up. I approached the women, went down to my haunches, and pulled out a series of sketches from inside of my jerkin. The vamp had made them at the scene, I wasn’t sure why. Maybe as some sort of evidence, or as something to show the Senate. But I’d found them strangely compelling.
I chose one showing the tow-headed boy, left crumpled in the dirt with his uneaten pie, and held it up to them. It was dim in the cell, with only one small, high-set window. But it was in the wall right over their heads and the light fell square onto the sketch.
It had caught the child perfectly, with his chubby baby hand outflung and his lashes lying sweetly on his cheeks. He looked like he was dreaming, even with the disarray all around him. But this child would never wake again.
And someone had to pay for that.
“Look at him,” I said sharply, because several of them weren’t. “Look at what she did. What she’ll do again. Somebody that out of control doesn’t stop, they are stopped. Or else they keep it up, keep on killing. How many more children, English children, have to die before we catch up with her? How many more villages have to be laid waste, their market day upended, their lives destroyed?
“You hate the Circle, but do you hate them? If not, put your hate aside for a moment and help us. Otherwise, it might be days, weeks, even months before we catch up to her. And all the people who will die in the meantime . . . well.” I stood up, but left the drawing behind. “If you know something and don’t help us, then their deaths are on your shoulders. Aren’t they?”
* * *
“I didn’t think you were serious,” I said, some hours later, while shivering in my boots.
My physical reaction wasn’t from fear, although I damned well had cause, but rather from the rain that had been pissing down for half the day. And despite this being July, it was cold tonight. I was remembering why I usually avoided taking jobs in England.
Had we been inside a nice warm tavern, with a roaring fire, some of the local ale, and a nice bowl of pottage, it would have been fine.
But we were not in a tavern.
We were in a forest, or the edge of one anyway, alongside a dozen master vampires on loan from the Senate. Some, perhaps all, of them had been with us at Fairhurst, so nobody was looking at me funny. They had obviously heard about the pigs.
But nobody looked happy to be there, either, and not just because of the weather. But because Mircea, who I was beginning to suspect might not be entirely sane, had a plan. Not a good one, mind you, but a plan.
“I guess reading their minds didn’t work?” I asked him, and got a glance in return.
“You did well distracting them. Do not blame yourself.”
“I wasn’t.”
That won me another glance. “It is difficult with magic users,” he informed me. “And in particular magical militants who are trained to resist the Circle’s methods of questioning, many of which also involve some sort of mind control. But I received glimpses, enough to know that they might have the knowledge we need.”
“But they’re not giving it to us.”
“Not knowingly,” he agreed, and glanced at his men. “Do not lose them.”
No threat accompanied the words. No ‘do not lose them or I feed you to the pigs.’ Or ‘do not lose them or I turn you into a gelding.’ Or ‘do not lose them or I let you make the acquaintance of the vampire queen,’ which from what I’d heard, would have been more effective than anything else.
No, he just said it, matter-of-factly and with no particular emphasis. But several of them swallowed and a few more stood up a bit straighter, with their eyes fixed on the Circle’s holding facility in the distance. I wondered, not for the first time, who exactly I was dealing with.
The grand plan, however, was simple: send a group of combined vamps and mages to make a frontal assault on the jail, and while the Circle’s men were battling them, use the rest of our force to free the women. Maybe they’d tell us something out of gratitude, but even if not, each would have a shadow who would stay on her tail, well out of human sight or hearing, to see where she went.
If they had loyalty to the revenant-loving witch, at least one should try to warn her that she had attracted the attention of the fearsome Vampire Senate. And as soon as we knew who she was, the Senate would deal with the rest. The revenant attacks would stop, I would get paid, and all would be well with the world.
Or so the logic went.
I had my doubts.
I glanced at my associates, wondering how they’d like going through life with their heads on backwards or without a tongue. Or only speaking some ancient Celtic language that nobody understood any more. Or screaming uncontrollably and wetting themselves whenever they saw a horse, because witches could be endlessly inventive.
And then I wondered how much longer this was going to take, because I was getting soaked.
I pulled my wide brimmed hat down a bit more and watched two vamps through the rain dripping off the brim. They were sneaking along the back of the Circle’s establishment, while a bunch more were around front with the Senate’s mages. Mircea had dropped a small charm inside the prison while we were there, which was supposed to help disrupt the wards when the attack began, but so far, it was doing sod all.
I listened to the wind shake the tree tops, which dumped another cascade of water on us, and refrained from shifting from foot to foot. But I was beginning to think that the charm hadn’t worked, which if so, would mean a long night for nothing. Because the mages the Senate employed were not going to break through any Circle enchantments.
No matter what my companion thought.
“Do not concern yourself,” Mircea murmured. “It will work.”
“Are you in my head?”
“No. I don’t have to be.”
I scowled. “What the hell does that—”
I broke off, because something was happening.
Something very big.
God’s teeth, I thought, stepping back slightly as a battery of spells lit up the night, almost as brightly as day.
“Is that . . . ours?” A vamp asked, sounding unsure.
“No.” And, for the first time, I saw the unflappable master vampire somewhat flapped. “But your job is the same. Do not lose them.”
“But . . . I believe that their fellow witches are attempting to—”
“Yes, they are! Now go. Go quickly!”
They went, streaming like a black tide across the suddenly brilliantly lit night, toward the building which had just had a large hole blown into it. But the assault hadn’t come from us, but from the crowd of dark clad figures on a hill about a quarter of a mile off. I shouldn’t have been able to see them through the dark and rain, but the spells they were throwing were lighting them up with a rainbow of color.
And causing our guys to suddenly start dropping like flies.
Mircea cursed and went dim, a vampiric trait for merging with the shadows. Only he wasn’t hiding in the forest. He was—
“What are you doing?” I said, running after him and grabbing his arm.
“Change of plan. Get under cover and stay there. I will find you later.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Find that bloody witch!”
And then he was gone, helped in his escape by a spell thrown at us, which missed since it had had to come a quarter mile. But it didn’t miss by much. The energy wave from the impact was enough to blow a hole the size of a small pond in the muddy grass in front of me, and to send me flying backward.
Get to the trees! The vamp said again, this time in my head, as I hit down yards from where I’d been standing.
I rolled, explosions going off all around me, and tried my best—to remember how to breathe, to find cover, and then just to get to my feet and run. I failed at all of it. I collapsed back against the ground instead, with the world slinging wildly around me, because there was a slight chance that the spell hadn’t entirely missed, after all.
So, I lay there and watched women with wild, matted hair stream out of the hole in the jail, instead. It was a memorable sight, with the Circle’s mages now in the field and battling the attackers, with bright spell-light flying across the scene from all directions, with the shield that was supposed to protect the facility going up and down and up and down. And finally bisecting a witch and mage both, who had been rolling around on the ground, battling it out, before the fritzing ward solved the issue by slicing them in two.
I blinked, having never seen that before, as a group of escaping witches washed up against the newly raised shield. I had a second to see their desperate faces, to see the Circle’s men grab them and pull them back, to see one of them get a hand loose, tear off her gag and land a spell that sent a mage staggering with a face full of blood. And then I didn’t see anything, when another huge, combined spell hit, lighting up the whole shield dome in a wash of deadly fire.
It momentarily blinded me and I turned my head away. And when I looked again, I didn’t see the battlefield. I saw a witch, standing over me, her cape flapping in the wind and her unbound tresses blowing wildly around her laughing eyes.
Her very blue eyes, which went well with the dark color of those tresses.
Well, I’m dead, I thought, as she squatted down beside me, her skirts in the mud. They were as blue as her eyes. And as the spell that was boiling in her fist.
“Looking for me?” she asked, grinning.
“I’m just the hired help.”
She laughed and it was pretty, too. “Then tell your master: let it go. The disturbances he’s worried about will be over soon. As long as the vampires stay out of it, we’ll leave them alone.”
“Good to know.” I got a leg up, flipped us, and got on top of her, with one hand beating the hand with the spell against the ground until she let go, and the other covering that pretty mouth. “But what if they don’t?”
And then I was sailing again, for a long, long time across the multicolored night, before splashing down in a pool of water. Because the bitch could silent cast, couldn’t she? Just my luck.
And when I tried to move this time, as she slowly approached my position, I found that my limbs didn’t work at all.
Dhampir spell resistance had its limits, it seemed.
She stopped by the edge of the pool and smiled again, but this time, it wasn’t so nice. “To answer your question, then we’ll take them on, too. We’re done kneeling, girl. Be wise: stay out of our way.”