through the crowd. Some turned to the doors behind Adam and Lucy, but these were already barred. They were trapped.
‘Silence!’ roared Elle, and the noise cut dead as though a switch had been flicked. The humans in the crowd pressed into each other like startled lemmings, their mouths moving up and down in empty voiced horror. The vampires in the crowd flashed each other looks, but made no move.
‘Be still,’ Elle continued, and everyone stopped, their attention back on the witch. She turned to the small man who’d led them in here. ‘Go fetch the remains,’ she barked, and the little man disappeared off.
‘What is this, Elle?’ Marcus called out, drifting through the crowd. ‘What are you planning?’
Elle gave a wry smile, and the blue light shot out across the distance between them. Marcus tried to duck out of the way, but it caught him square in the chest. It clamped into him, spreading round him like liquid electricity, binding him, forcing him to his knees. Several of the other vamps made to move toward their fallen comrade, but thought better of it as Elle summoned another ball to her hands.
‘Marcus has the right idea,’ she said. ‘I want every one of you on your knees.’
The humans sank as one, compelled by her voice. Lucy felt the power tug at her, but not so strong she couldn’t fight it off if she so desired. But she played along, falling to her knees so quick she had to stop herself from crying out in pain. What did it mean that she was less susceptible than these others? That she hadn’t drunk the punch, or that she was slowly shifting toward a new life as undead? The other humans were too silent in their painful descents, rendered mute by the witch’s power.
The vampires followed suit slowly, their eyes fixed on the witch, varying degrees of loathing on their faces.
‘Okay,’ Elle said, ignoring their ire somewhat theatrically. ‘We have gathered together here in celebration. Missy, my dear Missy, is having a birthday. A big one. One hundred years. It’s not been easy for her. The call to the Wicca is like taking a stamp in time. For Missy, that calling came early, and it’s left her frozen as someone who has forever been treated as a child. She is the most powerful witch I have ever known, and I have been glad to have her with me all these years.’
She smiled out at the crowd, glimpsed her audience’s abject horror at their capture, and the smile fell.
‘Well,’ she continued. ‘Let’s bring her out, shall we? A round of applause, please.’
The humans in the room started clapping, a frenzied, uneven sound. Lucy did the same, clapping as hard as she could without breaking the skin, unlike the blonde woman next to her; she clapped so hard tiny flecks of red sprayed up in her face to join the tears streaming into the rictus grin her mouth was forced into.
Missy appeared at the top of the stairs, a child in appearance, dressed in her oversized gowns. She beamed, taking the stairs carefully as one would as a child, her smile seemingly oblivious to the state of the people below her.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, joining Elle halfway down the enormous staircase.
Elle waved her hand, and the applause cut out like a record scratch.
‘Where’s Adam?’ Elle asked. She scanned the room until her gaze fell on him. He made no move to make himself visible, but didn’t hide, either. ‘Ah, there you are. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist coming.’
‘You know I never miss a party,’ he replied with a mouth full of disgust. ‘Though I don’t recall an invitation.’
Elle acted coy. ‘Come, Adam. We both know you don’t need an invitation to this house. Besides, I wanted to see if she would call to you as I knew she would. And here you are. Where’s my box?’
The officious little man came back through, carrying what looked to be an old slab of solid stone, almost twice the size of himself. Carrying wasn’t really the term for it, though. It floated on his outstretched hand as though lighter than a feather.
The crowd moved out of his way until he set the box down on the ground at the base of the stair. Not a stone, Lucy realised. A coffin, recently exhumed by the looks of it. Clumps of mud and dirt clung to its edges and corners; tattered roots dangled from the underside.
‘Adam,’ Elle said. ‘Come to me, my darling.’ Lucy tried to force down the heat rising up her neck at the way she addressed him, with limited success.
Adam got to his feet slowly and walked through the crowd. Lucy kept her head bowed, trying not to be seen.
‘And of course, Lucy is here, too,’ Elle added. ‘Darling, come up here as well. I had wondered if the brothers Bloom might take care of you so as not to distract my ex-lover here, but you seem to be quite the resilient little thing. Bravo to you. But you might wish they had, by the end of tonight.’
Lucy stood, following Adam. Her fellow humans on the floor stared at her — she was no longer one of them. She was part of the bad thing they wanted nothing more than to escape from.
‘Adam, be a dear and tell me where this coffin is from,’ Elle said, gesturing to the stone box.
‘How would I know, Ellie?’
Her hand whipped across his face like a pistol shot, the sound of it reverberating around the room. If it made any impact on him, he didn’t show it, but it was enough to raise a red bloom to his pale skin. ‘Don’t be obtuse,’ she spat.
‘Ecsed,’ he said. ‘You found her.’
‘You don’t sound suitably impressed, Adam.’
‘I gave up looking a long time ago.’
She sneered at him. ‘One step away from greatness, and you walked away because you got bored. Well, we found her. The one who will unite our tribes. The source.’
‘You don’t believe that, do you?’ Adam asked. ‘How can you be sure that’s even her? Everything I ever saw pointed to one conclusion — the villagers dug up her corpse and burned it.’
Elle gave a haughty, mirthless laugh. ‘Oh Adam, you fool. As if someone that powerful could be brought to such an end.’
‘It’s an end that awaits us all,’ Adam said. ‘Once it comes, our power is irrelevant.’
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Missy said, stepping forward, tiny fists clenched at her side. ‘Snivelling, whimpering excuse for a vampire. You are a creature of death, of power. Yet you spend your days sat on your tight little derriere, thinking about how unfair life is. Pathetic.’
Adam ignored her. ‘Say that is her in there. What does it matter?’
‘You forget. Today is Missy’s centenary. It is the time when her power comes into being.’
‘So?’
‘A centenary heralds a ritual that can transform her, but we must do it tonight. It requires a fresh host. We will combine the ritual with the rites of rebirth, and transform Missy into a new body, twinning her essence with the Countess, who will be reborn, in her.’ She held her arms aloft in triumph.
A shiver ran down Lucy’s spine. She didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on, but figured this development was not good.
‘The Countess?’ Adam said, a change in his tone. ‘Reborn?’ He stepped forward toward Elle, who met him with outstretched arms.
‘Yes,’ she said, taking his head in her hands and looking deep into his eyes. ‘It’s true. This is why I had to have you here. This is for you, Adam. For you, and for me, and for Missy.’
Lucy’s heart sank like a depth charge into her stomach, spreading nausea throughout her body. If she weren’t already on her knees, she’d have been there soon enough. Adam looked back at her, his face troubled, as though checking one last time what he was going to cast aside.
‘The vessel?’ he asked.
‘You did your best to trample over that part of my plan,’ Elle chuckled. ‘You and your little new whore. But she will come to regret that.’
‘Cain?’
‘We can still proceed. Cain was… a dry run, a way to test our methods.’
‘Elle,’ Marcus called out, the crackling blue binding him even tighter as he struggled. ‘Whatever you’ve gotten us mixed up in here, this was not our agreement.’
‘Our agreement,’ Elle snapped back, ‘was to usher in a new age for your kind, to allow your precious darkness to spread. This will achieve that.’
‘With a witch at its head,’ Marcus spat back. ‘We agreed to work with you, Elle, not be ruled by you.’
Beside Elle, Missy hissed, and for a second Lucy thought she saw some mask slip, as the little girl’s skin seemed to age and sag for a second. It passed, and the same little girl stood before them. Muttering something under her breath, she fixed Marcus with a hard stare.
The binds holding him in place crackled, surging with power. Marcus screamed, smoke rising from the binds as they burned into him. Flames licked up, catching the vampire’s clothes, and before anyone could react, he was aflame.
Lucy felt the heat from across the room, but for the humans stuck in silent sentry around him, there was no escape. The flames burned at them too, their mouths open in silent screams, their eyes casting about wildly.
‘Stop!’ Lucy screamed.
Elle waved her hands, and the fires dissipated.
A smouldering husk of burned flesh sat where Marcus had. In the immediate circle of people around him, raw burns and smoking clothes were the sole evidence of the pain of the people held in place by Elle’s magic. The blonde woman who’d stood next to Lucy earlier was missing half her face, her right eye running down her face like jelly, her head sagging to reveal her burned scalp. Next to her, her partner wept in motionless agony. The stench of burned hair and seared flesh filled the room, even as the smoke dissipated.
‘Does anyone else wish to argue against us?’ Elle asked.
Lucy wanted to scream, to run at them, to rage against the wanton cruelty, but she couldn’t. She was too busy staring at Adam, who’d taken his place by Elle’s side.