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“Sick of me yet?” the ancient vampire asked, her orange eyes gleaming in the half-light, limning her silver hair in a faint outline. She was beautiful and unsettling.
I put Tess behind me; thankfully, she didn’t scold me for being her shield. “Yes,” I growled.
Tess’s voice was much more measured. “Starting to.”
Piroska blinked in acknowledgment of our mistrust. I scanned the room; there was a door behind us, but it was undoubtedly locked and guarded. “I realize there are strings being pulled you couldn’t possibly know of. But you ended up in the right place. Not the best place, but nonetheless...”
“We would like an apology,” I said tightly.
Piroska quirked her head to the side, curious. “For what? You should apologize to me. Agana and I were seconds away from burning to ash.”
I clenched my teeth, glancing at Tess over my shoulder. She shrugged. “Fine. I apologize.”
“That’s quite all right,” she said with a fanged grin. “I have a forgiving nature. It is rude of me to never explain what is happening. Would you two like some explanations?”
“Yes!” Tess and I blurted.
Piroska leaned back in her chair. “Very well. First, tell me what you know.”
I exchanged another glance with Tess. Despite Piroska’s multiple attempts to save or protect us, I still didn’t entirely trust her. Any information she didn’t already know, she could use against us. Even if she was the Kairos’s “best asset,” it was hard to tell where her loyalties truly lay.
“I’ll do the talking,” Tess said, which was an offer I was more than willing to take. Relinquishing my role as a shield, Tess stepped forward. She began, “We know several covens are making a move on Amate and Sanlow, using the eclipse tomorrow to attack during the day. Agana and Aeros want to use Bas as bait for a reason we don’t know. They wanted to find Ciel first, but I have a feeling that is no longer a possibility.”
Piroska shook her head. “No. She found us. A leech on the wall, spying. She will follow us to Sanlow. You are resourceful younglings—”
Unable to not be combative, I snapped, “I thought I was just a ‘scrap of a boy’ that you know would escape and return to you? A tripwire trap, whatever that means.”
“Because of our ‘desire to save the innocent by stopping evil.’” Tess finished Piroska’s words I had recited to her earlier.
Piroska’s eyes widened a fraction, then narrowed when she smirked with impressment. “It seems you have mastered your memory ability. You can cat your conscious into others’ while awake.”
“Yes. Who sent us that stuff?”
“What stuff?” she asked, sneering at the callous word.
“The spellbook and diary to help us learn,” Tess said, taking a step forward. “Was it Rhetta?”
“Rhetta?”
I stormed up to her desk and slammed my palms on the wood. Piroska’s expression turned icy. “Blackwood! Koen Blackwood’s wife. A witch who swore her loyalty to the Kairos. The witch who permanently scarred Tanith Taran during the Bloody Liberation and raised me as if I were her own son. Someone I trust—trusted—with my life. I saw her in that house with you, talking to the coven leaders. I saw the look you two exchanged.”
“Ah. You mean Letti.”
“Huh?”
Piroska clicked her tongue. “That is her birth name. She changed it when she joined the Kairos. A cunning, disguised witch indeed.” As my brain started to fry like it was left out in the desert sun, Piroska grew deadly serious, leaning forward to say, “Seven covens are waiting above us with seven witches intermingled among them, Letti included. The plan is indeed to destroy the Liberator and her city.” Her voice lowered to a delighted hiss. “You are going to travel with this army to Sanlow whether you like it or not.”
With lightning speed, Piroska moved around the desk, grabbed my head between her hands, and snapped my neck. Everything went black.
I jerked alive moments after my neck snapped back into place. It didn’t take more than a few seconds to realize I was chained to a chair with a stifling leather mask clamped over my face.
I thrashed to break free, but my bound hands and masked face prevented me from casting any spells. You have got to be kidding me! How many times does this keep happening? So bloody fed up with being bound like some rabid monster!
Rage boiled in my blood as I took in my surroundings. When I did, part of me really would have rather be “dead.”
We were in the big arena. Tess was chained up the same way I was, but she was alive and unbloody. Her gaze was set ahead to Agana, Aeros, Tanith, and Piroska, who were overseeing their gathered army lined up uniformly behind us. No one on either side was paying us any mind; any eye contact was strictly between coven and coven leader. It seemed we were safe from vengeful vampires who wanted to shred us for our and my father’s crimes.
Then Rhetta—Letti, apparently—entered from behind the leaders, flanked by Ena and the unfamiliar witches from earlier. They stood in front of each coven as if assigned. Ena joined Bloodfrost while Rhetta remained beside Piroska.
Agana took a step forward and raised her voice to announce, “Today, we defy nature by walking in the sun! Today, the time has come for us to reclaim our city! Are you prepared to slaughter our enemy? Are you ready to run Sanlow’s streets red with blood once more? Let it be Amate’s blood!”
All seven covens roared their bloodthirsty approval. The snarls, shouts, and hisses barraged my ears. Tess flinched as if the noise hit her tangibly in the back.
Tanith joined Agana’s side. “Show no mercy! Leave no survivors!”
Suddenly, one voice rang out above all the others. At once, the chaos ceased. “Who gets to kill Amate?”
That was the ultimate, real question. Who would have the honor of killing the monster that all monsters feared? They would live in infamy for ending the threat to the vampires’ way of life, allowing blood cattle farms, their endless source of food, to regrow. Everything Amate demolished would be reinstated, including the return of arenas and the stifling of witches’ powers. Humans would be slaves again. Hopelessness would reign over the world.
The coven leaders exchanged glances to seek an answer—no, as if asking who would deliver the answer they had already decided upon.
Tanith stepped forward, a savage grin on her disfigured face. It struck me that she didn’t seem to notice Rhetta, who disfigured her face seventeen years ago. Was Rhetta using some kind of spell to hide herself? Is that what Piroska meant when she called Rhetta “disguised”?
“Whoever,” Tanith said, “tears out Amate’s heart and places her head in the center of the Square will be crowned the new coven leader of Moros!”
The approval of the crowd was deafening. That was an incentive.
Dread, like never before, seized every fiber in my body. I stared at Rhetta, silently begging her to look at me, but she kept her blank gaze ahead with no outward indication of upset—no fear, no horror, no defiance. She was fully invested in this—this army and their plan to start a civil war without the support of any of the Kairos.
What would Koen think of you if he saw this?
Agana jerked her chin at Ena. “Start.”
I twisted around to watch Ena. She nodded, offering her hand to the frontmost Bloodfrost vampire. They clasped hands with another, and they another, linking themselves until they were one long chain connected to the witch.
The other witches did the same to Rhidian, Elarian, and the other four. I noticed Vin at the head of the Elarian coven. He caught my gaze and grinned with the promise of a slow, ugly death. I quickly looked back to Rhetta, who hadn’t moved. Piroska wouldn’t look at me, either.
Only Tess would, her eyes wide with terror. I could see the question burning in their depths: What do we do?
I had no answer other than to shake my head once. Nothing. Nothing could be done now.
The witches and the covens vanished one by one, blinking out of existence to appear somewhere else—to appear in Sanlow. Where exactly, I didn’t know.
But I would find out.
The coven leaders all linked hands, with Piroska at one end and Rhetta at the other. They rested a hand on the backs of my and Tess’s chairs. Still, neither of them looked at us.
Except Agana. She fixed her icy eyes on me. There was a personal vendetta burning in her blue and black glare as if blaming me for the fall of their former home. “Today, we take revenge.”
“He’s the reason for the Bloody Liberation in the first place.”
I saw the imbricatis on Rhetta’s wrist glow purple. And then we left the arena behind for a wall of fire.
There was screaming long before we materialized on desert sand, facing a solid wall of blue flames raging at least ten feet in the air. The stench of burning flesh assaulted my nose. The glaring rays of sunlight and stagnant air had me gasping. I narrowed my eyes to see the chaos—
The army was transported to the edge of the Izan without a hint of cover from the sun. There were piles of ash mingled with the sand. Columns of orange fire were running around—bodies, fruitlessly finding shelter.
“You lying witch!” I heard Agana screech from a distance. I twisted to see her cowering under a small group of sparse trees with Aeros, Tanith, Vin, and Piroska. Their skin was blistering already. “You said the eclipse had already started!”
“I did,” Rhetta responded coolly as the other witches were watching the mayhem with barely concealed excitement, Ena included. “And it has. You just can’t see it yet.” She pushed her hair over her shoulder. “Act now before Amate’s army notices you.”
“You’re dead,” Agana seethed.
Unimpressed, Rhetta gestured to the fire wall in an invitation. “Ice is needed for your covens to live.”
I gaped at Rhetta in dizzying disbelief. This wasn’t the woman I knew. The Rhetta Blackwood I knew was the antithesis of this one—of Letti, the witch who just betrayed three coven leaders to their faces. Gone was the kindhearted, soft-spoken Rhetta. Here was the ruthless witch with her own vendetta, Letti.
Agana seemed too stubborn to take orders, but the Aeros snapped at her to stop being prideful. Then Agana hissed wordlessly and zipped to the wall, throwing out her hand toward it to shower a blast of sparkling white spray that doused a section of the flames, leaving a gap for the army to file through. They didn’t need to be told twice.
Aeros, Tanith, and Vin melded into the crowd and rushed past Agana, who was last to squeeze in. But the section remained open, allowing Letti—I couldn’t bear to call her Rhetta when she was this unfamiliar woman—and her witches to slip through as well.
Overhead, the sky was beginning to darken. The broad blue expanse was rapidly turning to sunset colors. But the sun was still at its highest point. Impossible.
Suddenly, I was being hauled by the back of my chair through the gap. I was thrown onto the ground, the chair splintering but not enough to break me free. My cheek mashed into dirty cobblestone.
My chair was set upright, Tess beside me as we faced Piroska. She was half-burned, flesh exposed under smoking skin. “Letti lied,” she gasped angrily, “but it does not matter.” She ripped off my and Tess’s masks, ripping the chains apart. We leaped up from the chairs immediately. “Welcome to Sanlow, children.”
Tess and I whirled around as the sky continued to darken. Stretching all around us was a city best described as something that burned to a crisp and was never restored. Debris lined every street and corner. Roofs were caved in. Windows were shattered, the glass scattered on the cobblestone. It was abandoned and desolate.
But now it was teeming with a vampire army that retreated into the decrepit buildings to spare their lives. Meanwhile, Letti and the witches were strolling down the street unhurried, their expressions smug as they walked freely.
Letti closed the gap—trapping the army. Without Agana’s power, the covens were sealed off from escape.
The heat of the desert climate dropped to a freezing chill. I looked up as night fell like a blanket, draping Sanlow in blue-purple hues. My jaw dropped as a black disk slid over the sun to block out its light completely.
Within seconds, all that was left of the fatal bane of vampires was a black circle surrounded by a ring of silver light.
The eclipse.
“Ten counts of sixty,” Tess breathed, “for vampires to walk in daylight.”
