Once more, the circle was lit by bonfires, much more brightly than at the time of its last awakening. Instead of just one fire, several burned within it, each stone spire casting long, flickering shadows that radiated out from the center like spokes of a wheel.

“They’re not coming,” Owen muttered to himself, checking his watch for the fourth time, after several minutes of resentful silence. “Of course n—”

“Hold the party,” said Wicked Gold, appearing in front of Owen without any sound or sign. It was as if he’d stepped out from behind one of the spires or a tree, but there was nothing near enough for him to hide behind. “Can’t start without the guest of honor.”

In one arm he held an unconscious human: Eva, who he carried like a sack of potatoes. In the other, there was another nearly-unconscious human; Wicked Gold held the scruff of Sanguine’s neck, who wavered and nearly stumbled upon being released.

A smear of red crossed Eva’s forehead, but the kind of smear that had been purposely placed there, not from an injury. An intentional mark. Sanguine’s less-precise bruise was turning an angry purple, blood darkening as it dried in his hair.

“You were late,” the vampire said, punctuating the words with a disapproving slice of his eyes toward Owen, and away again just as quickly. He set Eva down on the ground, not quite dumping her, but none too gently either.

“I got here before you did,” Owen said flatly. His eyes swept over Eva and Sanguine, taking in the blood and bruises, both ceremonial and otherwise. “And they’re looking a bit worse for wear. I could take care of those injuries before we begin.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” Wicked Gold said airily, glancing up at the moon in much the same way Owen had checked his watch. “It’s almost time anyway.”

“M’okay don’t worry,” Sanguine mumbled and shakily climbed to his feet, using the nearest spire for the assistance his master didn’t offer. A concussion seemed likely.

“Oh God,” Eva mumbled, stirring, eyes squeezed shut as if she were suffering the world’s worst hangover on the world’s brightest morning. “This place again. Why does everybody want these freaking rocks?”

“You’ll find out,” Wicked Gold said as Sanguine edged a bit closer to the other human.

“Sorry about this,” he said quietly, though he couldn’t hope to keep a vampire from overhearing. “Believe it or not, misery doesn’t actually love company.”

If Wicked Gold took offense, he only snorted and turned his attention to the dark woods beyond the circle as if waiting for something.

“You’re fine, kid,” Eva said, struggling to sit up and spitting out a bit of blood. Thankfully no teeth. “Thanks for…” Sanguine shot her a warning, alarmed look, as if aware of what she was about to say. He’d tried. He’d failed completely, but he’d tried to keep her out of here, and that was something. “Thanks for saying that.”

“I’d apologize for all this,” Wicked Gold said, turning back to Eva with a passingly sympathetic look. “But I didn’t see any alternative. It’s nothing personal—my goodness, having a personal issue with a human, can you imagine?”

Sanguine and Owen exchanged a silent glance behind the vampire’s back, and Wicked Gold leaned down closer to Eva’s level.

“Then what the hell do you want with me?” Eva rasped, glaring up directly into her captor’s golden eyes without a flinch. “I already know how this thing works. You need a willing sacrifice, and my dude, that ain’t me.”

“That’s absolutely right,” Wicked Gold said with a nod and raise of his eyebrows that almost looked impressed. “And just confirms that I made the right decision in bringing you here. The Witch really has rubbed off on you. But you do serve a purpose here, a very important one.” He raised one finger, long silver claw shining.

Eva’s eyes widened as they followed the claw’s sharp edge, its slow path toward her. “She’ll come for me, you know,” she said in a shaking whisper. “Letizia isn’t going to let you do this. Even if she’s stubborn and hardheaded and—and everything else, she’s coming and you can’t stop her!”

“You don’t have to convince me,” Wicked Gold said with a genial chuckle. “Or yourself. I know the Witch is coming for you—and that’s exactly what I’m counting on.”

Slowly, he pressed the single claw to Eva’s cheek as if wiping away a tear. Then he drew it down, a teardrop of blood in its wake.

 

 

Deep underground, the magic began. It didn’t look like magic yet, but everyone could feel the building electricity in the air.

Letizia laid the repaired mirror on the ground and sat down before it. She carefully picked up a bone fragment and laid it on the mirror’s edge, then another, one by one, slowly forming a circle. With the other hand, she sprinkled the dirt Jude and Eva had recovered, forming a ring outside the mirror as well.

“Letizia,” Jude said, eyes on the bones in her hand, suddenly feeling every single sensible reservation bubble to the surface. She turned to look up at him, still as one of the stones in the circle, expression blank. Jude did have misgivings about this, lots of them, but, he concluded ruefully, he probably should have voiced them earlier, before they were down in the caves about to cast a spell. Bones or not. “Never mind.”

The Witch laid the final piece of bone and dropped the last bit of dirt. The mirror was complete and unbroken, a surface smooth as a frozen lake at night, and just as dark.

“Please present the items you’ve collected,” she said in a voice that sounded detached, oddly professional.

“Here,” Jude said, pulling out the “FOUND” poster and handing it over, as Pixie did the same with his fascist-killing sticker. “Rose-tinted memories, and the hope of a dream with eyes open.”

“This is perfect,” Letizia said quietly as Pixie placed the sticker on the mirror beside the poster. “You chose well.”

Pixie said nothing, and Jude figured he was all out of words, an affliction Jude knew well. They’d come back; they always did.

“And here’s mine,” Jasper said then, reaching out to place two small objects on the glass with a metallic clink. A pair of gold rings, Jude realized, and while he hadn’t seen one in a while, the other he’d seen every day until recently. “A sign of a promise given with the greatest intention.”

“Jasper,” Jude said quietly. “Those are…”

“Felix and my engagement rings, yes,” Jasper said, and Jude could hear the rueful smile in his voice. “Don’t worry. It’s not as awful a sacrifice as it seems—his doesn’t fit anymore, and I actually love the idea of getting new ones, and doing the thing right, when the time comes. It seems appropriate, under the circumstances.”

“These are perfect,” Letizia said quietly, though if Jude had to describe her expression, it would be much closer to pensive and sad. “And now for mine. An anchor in a storm of will.”

She reached one finger out and touched it to the mirror’s surface, tracing a shape—or maybe letters. Jude couldn’t tell what they were, but there were three, and the glass seemed to ripple in the wake of her finger, as if she were touching the surface of a still pond. Letizia let the silence hang, then nodded to herself, as if confirming something, and turned back to them.

“I’m ready to begin,” she said, and now her eyes were clear and present. “Think of yourselves as my ground control—stay calm, stay still, and do not break the circle, no matter what you see within the mirror. Unless…”

She paused, and Jude did not at all enjoy the silence and all the unknowns that could fill it. “Unless what?”

“Unless it looks as if I am getting lost in the working. Try to keep me on course, and to keep the circle closed. But if I fly beyond your reach—run.”

“What does that mean?” Pixie asked, sounding alarmed. “If you get lost? Why should we run?”

“Working with powerful magic is like moving into deep water,” the Witch said, steel beneath her words. “The forces are like currents, and it’s too easy to be pulled under, especially alone. Your presence should ground me, remind me that there is a world here, that I am a real person, and I have other living beings depending on me. That said, if anything feels wrong—run. Get as far away from me as possible. I can weather the arcane storms, but you may be swept away.”

“Letizia, none of us are going to leave…” Jasper started, then faltered as she fixed him with a sharp gaze. “All right. Understood.”

The witch hesitated, then, wordlessly, held out both of her hands, Pixie on one side and Jasper on the other. They took her hands without hesitation, as did Jude when Jasper held one out to him. Pixie hadn’t let go of Jude’s either, and the circle was closed.

Letizia held perfectly still, and everyone else took her cue, watching the dark mirror. Jude realized he was holding his breath, a common anxiety response, and made himself suck in a lungful of air. Held it for the count of four. Then let it out as he counted to seven. They were safe here, she’d said. Nothing was going to come leaping out of the shadows. If it did, they’d be ready.

But it didn’t. Nothing attacked or erupted. For what seemed like forever, nothing happened, or at least nothing Jude could tell. They all kept waiting in silence, and after a while, Jasper's hand in his started to feel sweaty. Pixie’s didn’t, likely because vampires didn’t sweat. Or did they? Jude didn’t actually know for sure, and trying to remember if he’d ever seen an example took up what had to be at least a minute of silence.

By the time he stopped wondering about vampires and sweat glands, he’d started to feel more than a little silly, holding hands in a circle and staring at a mirror in a cave. Waiting for the Witch with a lap full of bones he knew uncomfortably little about to cast a spell he knew even less about. He was just starting to feel less silly and more concerned when Letizia sucked in a sharp gasp.

“Are you all…” Jude started to ask, then stopped, the thought instantly jolted from his head.

The mirror wasn’t dark anymore. Suddenly he realized that the papers and rings they’d placed on it were gone, only clear and unbroken glass in their place. Firelight shone from the mirror’s surface, but there was no light in the cavern for it to reflect. Suddenly it looked more like a lit window on the floor or a screen playing a movie, clearer and more high-definition than any Jude had ever seen.

And stranger. Black spires like pieces of broken onyx—like the shattered glass shards the mirror had once been—thrust toward the sky. The image was silent, but if there was sound, it should have been the crackling of wood fires. The stones’ smooth surfaces reflected red-orange flames framing the mirror’s edges, as if the ‘camera’ was in the midst of the fire.

Water. Ocean waves, regular and calming. The far-off cry of sea birds.

Jude sucked in a breath of cool, moist air that smelled like water and salt instead of a stale cave, and tasted in the strangest way like a home he’d never seen. A cold chill ran through him, even as he remembered the warmth of the sand between his toes, the sun on his shoulders.

He gripped Jasper and Pixie’s hands harder, filled with a painful understanding of what Letizia had meant when she’d talked about getting lost and needing them to find her again. His head filled with the crashing of waves.

But then Jasper gave his hand a quick squeeze and little shake, and Jude almost dropped his, realizing he’d been clenching it in what had to be a finger-crunching death grip. He loosened his grasp and Jasper didn’t let go. Pixie never altered his steady grip, even if Jude had definitely been doing the same thing to him. Instead, he stroked the back of Jude’s hand with his thumb, the way Jude had done several times with him before. Jude shuddered, but from emotion and gratitude instead of fear. Sometimes he forgot how strong the sweet little vampire was, in more than one way.

Letizia began to lean forward over the mirror, face eerily lit and cast in strange, shifting shadows from the orange fires below.

“I’m here,” she whispered, and her eerie voice sent a new wave of shivers down Jude’s spine. Jude could barely see something shining travel down her face. A tear, he realized, glittering in the firelight—but she was smiling more brightly than Jude had ever seen her, as if she’d only just now begun to hope. “I’ve always been right here, for so long. Please… come back to me.”

Now she swept the bones up, pulling them into her lap and hunching over them as if protecting something priceless and fragile. Their part was apparently done, and the rest left to the mirror. Letizia’s shoulders shook with every breath.

If the mirror was acting like a TV screen, its ‘signal’ left something to be desired. Maybe it hadn’t been fully assembled and used in centuries, or maybe it was still fragile, but the image of the stone circle, clear as it had been to start with, soon warped and dissolved into something like static snow. Letizia began to mutter quietly but fervently under her breath, and images began to flash across the glass, fast and disorienting, from different angles. The circle from above, the bonfire in the center, the night sky as if the ‘camera’ had fallen to the ground.

Then the mirror cleared. Free of all distortion or interference, the image resolved itself into something unmistakable: a human face, gray, with bright golden eyes.

“Oh, God,” Pixie whispered, and his grip tightened on Jude’s hand so hard it almost hurt.

“That’s him?” Jude asked, though there was no mistaking the look of stunned horror on Pixie’s face. He didn’t pull his hand away, squeezing back instead.

“That’s him.” Pixie stared at the screen, as if physically unable to look away.

Jude looked back at it, studying the face of the monster who’d inflicted so much pain on all of them in different ways. Aside from the telltale skin and teeth, Wicked Gold looked like an ordinary middle-aged white man in a nice suit, an incongruently unassuming appearance for someone capable of such brutality. Or he would have been, if he hadn’t been smiling, sharp white teeth bared in a shark’s grin as he regarded something off-screen, something nobody looking at the mirror could see. Jude didn’t like the look of satisfaction on the vampire’s face—he didn’t like anything about him, really, but that was somehow the most ominous.

“I didn’t think we’d actually...” Pixie said faintly. “I mean, I know we were supposed to see him, but still, actually seeing him is—”

The image shifted. A flurry of static-like distortion, and the vampire’s face disappeared, replaced by two more. Undeniably human. One unfamiliar, a smart-looking but haughty young man in another nice suit. The other, seemingly restrained, and obviously furious, sweating, disheveled, face bruised and smeared with dirt—

“Eva!” Jude gasped, almost letting go of both Pixie and Jasper’s hands in shock, but they barely managed to hang onto him. “Eva, she’s there, they have her, she’s—”

“Don’t break the circle!” Letizia’s voice snapped through the darkness, and Jude squeezed Pixie and Jasper’s hands again. Panic rang through the cave, loud and clear as, in the mirror, a silver claw reached toward Eva’s face, touched it, then drew a line of red. “Keep the spell alive! No matter what you see!”

Jude looked up to argue, shoot back that he didn’t give a fuck about a spell anymore, or anything but his missing friend who wasn’t so missing anymore, and don’t bother arguing because he was done, done and gone—but there was no one to argue with.

Letizia was gone.

 

 

Just before midnight, someone headed through the woods toward the stones. Alone, hood up over their face, and hunched over a bit against the cold. Still, they had never been the best at stealth or hiding, and as Milo barely avoided tripping over an exposed tree root and planting face-first into the ground, their hood flew back and a wisp of purple hair caught the dim moonlight.

Milo crouched a small distance away from the stone circle and waited, eyes on the eerie light of the bonfire inside, and the pair of dark silhouettes. They’d cast every masking and stealth spell short of flat-out invisibility that they knew, like layering on sweaters made of magical camouflage. It wouldn’t stop anyone searching for them specifically, but if they’d done a good enough job at laying low—always arguable, they had to admit—nobody would expect them to make an appearance tonight.

They kept their gaze locked on the pair of figures by the fires, one in particular. Owen leaned casually against one of the spires, his expression and stance haughty, as if he owned not only the place, but the magic happening therein.

“Some things never change,” Milo said quietly to themself.

“What never changes?” a voice whispered from directly behind them.

Milo jumped and narrowly managed to avoid falling over again. “Wha—what are you two doing here?” they whispered back urgently as they recognized the two winged, gray-skinned, pointy-eared-and-fanged figures lurking just beside them. It was impossible for anyone to have crept up on them like that without making some noise—anyone human, at least.

“You said something big was going down,” said Maestra in a dignified tone that said their presence were entirely reasonable and natural. “And we thought—”

“That you’d come see what it was, even though I said not to come anywhere near the place for a few days?” Milo demanded, eyes narrowed in an annoyed glare that looked out of place on their usually mild face.

“I mean, it was mostly because of that, yeah,” Nails said with a nod, obviously unbothered by the human’s ire. “Kinda played yourself there.”

“That, but mostly we wanted to make sure you were okay!” Maestra cut in quickly. “That looks like a major magical thing, and it has to be dangerous.”

“It is,” Milo said, looking wary, but this time not because of them. “And I’m here to try to stop it, if possible. If it’s not, there’s someone I need to grab, and get as far away from here as possible.”

“Who?”

“Him.” Milo pointed to Owen. “He thinks he knows what he’s doing but he doesn’t… something that seems to be going around quite a bit lately.”

“Hey, believe it or not, we do know what we’re doing,” Nails retorted. “We’ve been around for about a hundred and fifty years longer than you!”

Milo sighed and dropped their head a bit. “That’s exactly what I meant. I’ve gotten this far, but I… well, I have no idea what I’m doing, actually.”

“Well, we’re here now,” Maestra said levelly. “We can save him together.”

“Thank you,” Milo said, giving them a tired but grateful look. “You’re good friends. I still wish you weren’t here.”

“Who is that guy anyway?” Nails asked, squinting at the young man Milo had pointed out. “He looks familiar. Like really familiar.”

“Yeah,” Maestra said thoughtfully, then let out a soft gasp. “I know where we’ve seen him before! Milo, he looks just like—hey. Where’d they…?”

They looked around, but Milo wasn’t where they’d been a moment ago—then Maestra pointed to the small, hooded figure creeping at the edge of the light, hiding behind a spire and inching closer to their intended target. No human should have been able to move quietly enough to slip past a pair of vampires, but then, witches were something else.

“Oh boy,” Nails murmured. “There they go.”

Maestra rose to her feet and made to follow their friend. “And here we go. Again.”

 

 

The mirror and its magically projected firelight cast strange shadows on the walls that did nothing to reassure Jude that they weren’t all about to die in some horrible way or another. Dark shapes flickered across the glass surface, moving too quickly to catch another solid glimpse. He couldn’t tell if Eva was still there, or if she was hurt, or much of anything else.

“Should we follow her? Or stay where we are?” Pixie asked, sounding obviously apprehensive about either possibility. “The spell’s still going, I think. Does it need a witch to work? Or is it like, on autopilot or something? She told us to run if something went wrong, not what to do if she bugged out!”

“I don’t know, I only saw Eva for sure,” Jude said tightly. Her dirt-smeared and bruised face blazed in his mind as brightly as any bonfire. He, Jasper, and Pixie had rejoined hands, not knowing what else to do, and now both of his were thoroughly sweaty and cold.

FLASH. A brilliant light flared from the center of the mirror, shocking all of them into silence, except for a startled squeak from Pixie. Then it was gone entirely, as if the mirror were a lightbulb that had exploded, plunging them all into near-complete darkness.

“What happened?” Jude demanded. “Did we break the spell? Was it supposed to do that? Did Wicked Gold—do something?”

“I have no idea,” Jasper said breathlessly, sounding like he was still holding it together, but only just. “But I don’t think that’s how it was meant to go, and I’d say that a wildly malfunctioning bit of magic is our cue to leave!”

“Second!” Pixie said, before promptly turning into a small pink bat that attached itself to Jude’s shoulder.

The circle of hands broken, the three of them made a frantic dash for the cave exit and thankfully didn’t get lost on the way, bursting back into the mall without incident, which was, equally thankfully, still dark and empty.

“Wait,” Jasper panted as Jude made to sprint for the exit, coming to a stop. Jude whirled around, a frustrated retort on his lips, but stopped, seeing Jasper looking pained and more than a little scared. “Felix—I have to get home. I didn’t tell him about—I have to make sure he’s—”

“Go, I’ll go find Eva, and hopefully Letizia too,” Jude said, and Jasper headed off toward his shop, and its back exit leading toward home. “You can go home too, if you want,” he said to Pixie, who’d transformed back into a human, standing so close he was almost touching Jude’s elbow. “It’s probably safer there. Actually it’s definitely safer there.”

“I don’t think so,” Pixie said. “After what I saw in that thing—after seeing his face—I don’t want to be alone. Even if you’re going to where he is, I don’t want to—”

“Are you sure?” Jude certainly wasn’t.

“Yes, Jude!” Pixie practically shouted, voice echoing in the empty mall as much as it had the caverns below. His hands clutched at the scarf he always wore, the one covering the worst of his scars, and Jude was painfully reminded of exactly whose teeth had left them on Pixie’s neck. “I’m not letting Wicked Gold hurt any more of my friends!”

“Okay,” Jude said, as calmly as he could, though his mind still raced through possible ways to get Pixie out of there fast should tonight go even more wrong than it already had. “Okay, let’s go find them.”

 

 

Eva strained at the ropes binding her wrists. It was useless, and she knew it. She could no more escape them than she could sit there and not even try.

“Don’t fight it,” Sanguine said quietly. “It’ll just make everything harder. Believe me, I know.”

“Well, you don’t know me, kid,” Eva returned, teeth gritted, but she stopped her struggling for a moment. If she pulled much harder she’d cut her skin, and if there was one thing she didn’t want to do around a hostile vampire, it was bleed more than she had already. “And you don’t know my friends. They’re all over this, and they’re coming for me—for us.”

“I told you, that is exactly what I’m counting on,” Wicked Gold said with a roll of his eyes, as if she’d just pointed out that water was wet, or that he was a bloodthirsty predator. “Are all humans this slow, or—ah!”

He exclaimed in delight and snapped his silver-clawed fingers, gesturing to the edge of the bonfire’s light, where a figure appeared from the darkness. Tall in flowing black, with a wide-brimmed witch hat. At the sight of the familiar silhouette, Eva let out a startled cry that quickly turned to one of joy. “You’re here!”

“Oh, good,” Wicked Gold said, a bright, gold-flashing smile spreading across his pale face. “Now it’s a party.”

“Let her go,” Letizia snarled, her voice distorted into a blood-chilling snarl no human throat could hope to replicate. “We all know it’s me you want anyway. You’ve got one blood bag, surely you don’t need another.”

“You can never have too much fresh blood,” the other vampire returned, picking Eva up by the collar with one hand and raising her up until her toes barely touched the ground. “And believe me, I’ve got exactly who I need.”

At the sight of Wicked Gold’s growing, terrible smile, Sanguine shrank back and slipped over to shelter by one of the stones. Owen also took notice, but he stayed where he was, straightening in clear interest for the first time.

“I’m taking Eva,” Letizia said, ignoring both of them and focusing on Wicked Gold and her friend, like they were all that existed in this place or the world. “And we’re leaving. You’re not hurting anyone else tonight.”

“Is that what’s going to happen?” Wicked Gold said, and now his voice was low and dangerous, though his rictus grin stayed perfectly in place. “I don’t think it is. I think she’s staying right here with me, and so are you. You’re in the right place, at the right time, and not a minute too soon.”

He raised his free clawed hand, which began to ignite ominous flames in the air. All around them, the circle of stones began to hum and glow faintly. But instead of the circle’s usual electricity, this charge felt sharper, almost painful, as if in anticipation for the blood about to be spilled.

Letizia bolted forward just a few steps, but it was too late even for a vampire’s speed: Wicked Gold’s spell reached its crescendo, and sheer magical force swept down upon all of them.

As it did, something odd happened to Owen. He’d been standing at the edge of the light, and then the shadows at his back seemed to come alive, lurching forward to seize him and drag him backwards into the darkness. Wicked Gold paid no mind, but Eva’s human eyes could just barely catch a glimpse of what looked like shadowed wings.

Sanguine also had been cowering in his place, half-behind one of the stones, but now he jumped backwards and scrambled away before he could be hit by the wall of magical force—and it was a wall. A barrier cutting the circle off from the rest of reality, creating a tiny snow globe-like world in which there could only be one ruler.

The two of them were gone. Only Wicked Gold, Letizia, and Eva remained in the center, and the ground stopped its shaking, the air falling eerily silent. The edges of the stones and the woods beyond looked distorted, as if the three within were looking out from inside a soap bubble, and suddenly the physical world seemed very far away. The sense of isolation was as unmistakable and undeniable as a locked door in an empty house: Letizia and Eva were alone, cut off from their friends, or any escape.

“There, that’s much better.” Wicked Gold broke into his usual gleaming smile and spread his hands, showing off every long, curved silver claw, some of them still stained red from Eva’s blood. “I thought we should really do this privately.”

“Go ahead,” Eva spat. “If you’re going to sacrifice me, then cut the dramatics and try it!”

“I understand—you must be feeling a little betrayed right now,” Wicked Gold said in a mockery of sympathetic tones. “It’s always hard to think you’re about to spring a trap, only to find out you’re the bait. You’d be a worthless sacrifice. But you have other uses. Like getting me closer to much more important—”

“Bastard!”

Faster than anyone but a vampire could move or even see, Letizia charged forward toward Wicked Gold—but she never connected. By the time she would have, he was gone, and Letizia ran into Eva instead, nearly slamming her off-balance but stopping just in time and using the movement’s momentum to slash through the ropes binding Eva’s wrists. Snarling, huge wings flaring out in a shield between Eva and her opponent, Letizia whirled around to glare at Wicked Gold who now stood, grinning, on the other side of the circle.

“There it is,” Wicked Gold laughed. “I’m not usually a betting man, I don’t like making wagers I haven’t already won—but tonight, I’d bet everything that someone would give their everything—for one little human. Don’t you understand? You’re not the sacrifice. You never were. I wanted the Witch. I only ever wanted the Witch.”

“Well, you’ve got her,” Letizia snapped. “But I don’t plan on sacrificing anything, her life or mine. You want me to choose? I choose to save us both!”

“And even one puny human like me isn’t going to go down without a fight,” Eva shouted, freed hands balled into fists. “And then your spell’s screwed!”

“Oh, you’re feisty,” he said with a surprised-sounding chuckle. “I like that, you’d make a good vampire. But you’re right, any power you have is borrowed. Rubbed off by proximity—but there’s a lot of it there. You’re practically saturated in it, it clings to you like a smell that just won’t wash away.” He grinned over at Letizia now. “You smell like Witch.”

“And you’re almost out of time,” Letizia grinned, baring her fangs and many more sharp teeth. “If you’re going to make your move, you’d better hurry—it’s almost midnight, your time’s almost up! And first, you’ll have to get through me!”

If she was trying to provoke her opponent into a hasty and careless move, it didn’t work. Wicked Gold circled them and Letizia did not move but turned along to stay facing him, never surrendering her position between him and Eva. They sized each other up less like duelists and more like feral cats, eyes burning and claws and fangs out. Both their faces warped until they barely appeared human at all, and Letizia appeared every bit as monstrous as her enemy.

Then Wicked Gold was gone—only to reappear right in front of her, claws raking at Letizia’s throat. He’d moved so quickly he’d seemed to teleport, and as they grappled and snapped at each other, their outlines blurred until Eva’s eyes couldn’t follow them at all. It was like watching a video sped up past anything natural, uncanny-valley disturbing to the human senses because this couldn’t be real, this was alien, this was wrong.

With an enraged shriek that sounded like a siren from Hell, Wicked Gold disappeared again, popping back into sight closer to Eva—and blocked by Letizia again. Over and over, they both vanished and reappeared, in different places and poses, one or the other seeming to have the upper hand before reality skipped again and reset.

“You’re just stalling me, Witch!” Wicked Gold snapped as he and Letizia appeared atop one of the sharp-edged spires, clinging with claws that left cracks in the smooth, unbreakable-looking surface. “You can’t kill me, you can’t even beat me, all you can do is slow me down!”

“Of course I’m stalling!” Letizia screeched back, but her face was twisted into a terrifying smile instead of a snarl. “That’s all I need to do to beat you tonight!”

Wicked Gold’s only reply was another distorted shriek, a sound that made Eva’s blood chill and the goosebumps that swept over her skin were actually painful—and Letizia’s howls blended until they crescendoed in a riot of screams as if from the throats of a thousand demons. The sound was primally terrifying, something that set off a bone-deep instinct to run, hide, escape it at all costs, because the only thing that could make it was something that should not exist, a glitch in reality, a monster.

But one of those monsters was her friend, Eva screamed silently to her terrified human heart, willing herself to stand her ground—and so far, her friend was winning. As the stones grew brighter and brighter, Wicked Gold’s movements became more erratic, desperate, as if instead of fighting to reach his prey, he were fighting for his life. The teleport-fast moves grew faster and faster, and as they did, the stone circle’s glow grew so brilliant that they were like floodlights, like the kind that would beam down on a night football game—or a deathmatch between two creatures from out of a nightmare.

And then, like a candle flame in the rain, their light began to falter.

“Do you feel that, Wicked Gold?” Letizia cackled, triumph ringing in the alien sound, and now it made Eva’s heart soar instead of quake. “You’re too late! The moment’s almost here and you’re not ready—all this for nothing!”

The vampire’s eyes flashed, standing out in the dark like high-beam headlights, the last thing so many unfortunate night-strollers had seen, accompanied not by a blaring horn but a blood-freezing scream. For once, Wicked Gold had no words on the tip of his tongue, only rage and the promise of death.

His hands flew up not in a slash but raised to the sky, then came sweeping down. Fire flared around him, igniting the air and sending Letizia stumbling back with a pained screech of her own, shielding herself from the magical heat. His own fire wouldn’t burn him, but to her, it was like the first lethal rays of the sun.

Two could play the stalling game, and that momentary distraction, that second-long delay, was all Wicked Gold needed. Before the Witch could so much as open her eyes, she heard a strangled cry, high and terrified, and cut off brutally quickly.

“Eva!” Letizia forced her eyes open, and screamed again, this time in horror, at the sight before her.

Eva had just barely had time to gasp before the vampire’s claws dug into her neck. Wicked Gold pulled her head back, exposing her neck, and baring his teeth, fangs long and glittering like those of a cobra about to strike. But he didn’t bite. Instead, his silver-clawed hand came off as if to stroke the human’s face—and then in one quick flick of his wrist, he drew that claw across her bare throat, a sharp red line in its wake.

Letizia’s scream—which now had a very human edge of horror—sliced through the air, and Eva dropped to her knees. Wicked Gold shoved her away and the Witch rushed forward, catching her before she could drop entirely, one gray hand pressed against the lethal wound to stop Eva’s life from slipping away and onto the cold ground. But it was useless, and from the terror building in her wide, staring eyes, Eva knew it as well as she did.

“No! No, no, no, I can’t lose you too!” Letizia cried as more blood seeped past her fingers and the claws she struggled to keep from doing more damage, but the liquid was as impossible to hold as grains of sand through the hourglass of a human life.

Then her mouth opened wide again, and her too-long, too-extended fangs made her look like a snake unhinging its jaw, ready to devour its prey.

“I could turn you,” she offered, pleaded, voice still distorted but heavy with pain and near-panic, eyes entirely black and fixed not on the blood pouring from Eva’s neck, but her face. “It would save you. Forever.”

Eva couldn’t speak. Her mouth was filled with blood and her grasp on this mortal coil weakening—but she shut her eyes and jerked her head in one silent gesture. No.

And that was all it took. Consent had never mattered to vampires, historically, but Letizia had broken tradition her entire long life. She snapped her mouth shut on air instead of flesh, fangs retracting—but that didn’t mean she was happy to do it.

“Damn it all!” Letizia’s voice rose again, a wail filled with frustration and despair. “I can’t lose another one to this place!”

“Then save her!” Wicked Gold snarled back, pointing his clawed hand toward the bonfire. “You know what you have to do to save her! The magic wants what it wants!”

“I—” Letizia looked frantically from Eva to the fire: the only thing present that could kill a vampire. For one second that seemed to stretch into eternity, she stared at the raging flames. In her eyes were flames, and tears, and a world of possibilities, of what would happen if she set Eva down and walked into that fire. Her second death, final and irreversible, to buy another’s life.

Letizia took a step forward and began to lower her friend to the ground. Then—

“No.” Eva’s hand shot up and grabbed at Letizia’s face, smearing a bloody handprint across her cheek but making her look down and away from the fire. She forced the words out like each one was a shard of broken glass. “Don’t,” she gasped. “Not that either!”

“I’m saving you,” Letizia whispered. “I promised I would. I promised I’d do anything, and I’m going to keep—”

The stones came alive one last time, raging with life and heat, a supernova of magic that made even the oldest and most powerful of vampires into something small, young, and lost. The air inside the circle blazed bright as noon on a summer’s day, and hot as a backdraft from a burning house.

“What—?” Letizia exclaimed as all of that power, all that energetic glory, chained for one hundred and fifty years into stones awoke and flew free—and as Eva’s body in her arms began to blaze as hot as any flame.

As Letizia gasped and instinctively, unwillingly let her go, Eva’s body left the ground.

The power from the stones lit her up like a halo of fire, light pouring from her eyes and mouth like Cruce in his last moments, but this was nothing so deadly. The stones weren’t just glowing faintly now; they shone with a white light that lit up the circle so brightly it was like the sun had just rose from its center, like each spire was a crystal with a blazing star captured inside it, and every bit of power flowed into Eva until she lit up too.

Then, as suddenly as if a switch had flipped, the lights went out, and the humming fell silent. Eva dropped to the ground but didn’t hit; Letizia had caught her again and held her close, frantically feeling at her neck and face.

“You’re okay, you’re fine,” Letizia murmured, but sounded less certain and more like she was trying to convince herself. Then she stopped, holding very still. When she spoke again, her tone was awed. “You’re okay!”

“Hell yeah,” Eva mumbled, head rolling to rest on Letizia’s shoulder. She smiled, lopsided but wide, and let out a woozy-sounding giggle. “That was… some good shit.”

“I thought you weren’t swearing anymore,” Letizia said, a smile spreading across her own face, though her eyes were wet.

“Well… special occasions.”

But the circle was not finished with them yet. The ground shook once more, and then the hurricane wind returned, but it seemed to come from the sky. There was a feeling of pressure, of something being torn down, and Letizia flared out her wings. She wrapped them tightly around herself and Eva, shielding both of them from the force.

Under the roar came the sound of Wicked Gold’s frantic, confused curses, but they were tiny, futile sounds, nearly drowned out under the infinitely more powerful surge of magic. He was like someone standing on their roof howling into a thunderstorm and expecting to be heard and feared. Nature would always have its way, and magic was nothing more than a particularly strong and beautiful natural force.

Then, as if that storm were moving off quickly and the skies above clearing, the wind and sound died down. The air had lost its charge, and the light from the stones was extinguished. The bonfire flames were gone, leaving only faintly smoldering embers behind.

Slowly, Letizia lowered her wings, unfurling the cocoon she’d wrapped around herself and Eva. The stones were dark, the air was still, and Wicked Gold was gone. The woods did not move around them, and even to a vampire’s superior senses, all signs pointed to them being the only two people around for miles.

Letizia and Eva were left standing in the center of the circle, alone.