Bloodcraft (27 page)

“Freyja!” Roan shouted, falling to her side. But there was nothing he could do while the demon had hold of her. “It’s killing her.”

Lena shouted and shot forward, distracting it for a moment before it slammed her back into the far wall of the church. She vaulted to her feet and attacked it again, dodging its counter attacks with immortal speed. Lucian hefted a fallen piece of concrete and threw it at the demon. It didn’t do much damage, but it was enough to release whatever demonic grip it had on Freyja. She collapsed into Roan’s arms, breathing heavily.

Without warning, the demon faded and disappeared.

“Is she alive?” Lucian asked as Lena reappeared at his side, bloody but no worse for wear. Roan nodded his silent thanks.

“What the hell was that?” Lena asked.

Freyja sighed and rocked back onto her heels. Her face seemed haggard and drawn as if she’d been sapped of life. Lucian guessed that the interaction with the demon had drained her more than she expected. Her voice was weak. “That, Lord Devereux, was a very old demon. Ancient, if my assumption is right.”

“What’s it doing here then? Did you find out anything when you linked to it? Did someone summon it and send it after you?”

She frowned. “No. It seemed confused or lost, as if it didn’t know what it was. It was powerful and getting stronger by the minute.”

“So you are saying that it is from here?”

“Seems that way.”

He stared at the bodies littering the courtyard and frowned. They looked eerily familiar. Something occurred to him. “Have any of your people been attacked in the last few months?” he asked. “Found drained of blood?”

“Yes.” Freyja stared at him, understanding dawning in her eyes as they flicked to the nearest shell. “But we blamed the vampires. My people have always been at odds with yours.”

Lena cleared her throat and nodded. “The Witch Clans found the same. They thought it was us, too.”

“The Council also found vampire bodies turned to ash,” Lucian mused. “But that is what will happen when we are drained of life, unlike your people. The vampires blamed the Clans.”

Foamy blood flecked Freyja’s lips. “You need to warn your people,” she coughed. “That demon will only grow in power the more immortal souls it consumes.”

Lucian and Lena exchanged a glance. “What about my brother and the witch?”

“That will have to wait. If this thing gets any stronger, we will have a lot more on our hands to worry about.”

†††

Christian felt the sluggish movement of the liquid silver creeping through his veins like thick molasses. His eyes focused on the room he was held in. It was a small, stone cellar and his wrists were shackled to the wall. Clear tubing ran from a tank on one side and fed into a tube attached to his forearm. He could see the silvery fluid draining into him and dissolving all of his strength with it. It hurt to think, but when he did, he only had one thought.

Victoria.

She was in danger. He wasn’t sure he had understood all her words—they had been incoherent—he only knew that she had cried out for help.
His
help. And he couldn’t move. He took a deep breath, feeling the heavy casing of the silver. It made his limbs feel heavy and numb. The good thing was that he was awake—this much silver would knock another vampire completely unconscious.

He vaguely recalled two guards being in the room with him, but there’d been some commotion and they had run out. He’d felt the explosion and no one else had come back in. Christian pulled at the shackles, hearing them clang dully against the wall. There was no give in the rings, but he pulled harder, gritting his teeth until the metal tore into his flesh. It wouldn’t budge. He sawed his hands back and forth, grimacing as bits of the silver burned into his wrists, but the pain only made his goal clearer.

After a few minutes, his skin had been pulled raw and then healed several times over, but the chains held fast. They’d obviously been designed to contain something far stronger than him. Frustrated, he growled out loud and yanked with brute force a few times for good measure. Christian focused himself and centered on the feeling of silver in his body. He concentrated on clearing his body of the metal, pushing it back toward the duct that fed into his arm. To his surprise, he saw the silver pooling like wet toothpaste around the outside of the tube. It was working. And he was getting stronger.

Once his head was clear, Christian drew a deep breath into his lungs and pulled at his restraints until it felt like his arms would rip out of their sockets. But he felt the stonework holding the chains in place give way. The slumbering influence of his Reii maker rippled through him, giving him the strength of a hundred vampires. With a roar, he tore loose of his bonds and fell to the ground, grunting. Rocking onto his heels, he glanced at the shattered iron shackles and the now healed wound in his forearm. Remnants of dried silver coated his skin and he felt nothing. Christian flexed, feeling new power coursing through him. He was stronger than he’d ever been, that he was sure of.

There was one guard at the door. Ripping the metal graft out of his arm, he felt his fangs elongate as hunger overtook him. The warlock didn’t stand a chance as Christian bit into his neck, savoring the taste of the magic-infused blood. It wasn’t near enough. By the time he reached the outer hall where Lucian had brought him, he’d left a trail of unconscious bodies in his wake. It took him a few minutes to make sense of the destruction at street level. But he was only looking for one person—the bastard who had brought him here.

His brother.

He didn’t have to see him to feel him, and he was a blur as he tackled his twin to the ground. He swatted Lena away as she leapt toward him, his new strength formidable, not caring that she folded up into a motionless heap. She was a vampire—she would heal. Eventually.

He slammed Lucian up against the wall, his forearm braced across his brother’s neck, two hundred pounds of pure rage barreling into Lucian and holding him prisoner. He could see his brother’s shock at his escape and the silver flecks resting on his arm.

“Aren’t you full of surprises,” Lucian drawled in a casual tone as if they were engaged in civil conversation. “When did you become immune to silver?”

Christian’s rage flared. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

“Go ahead,” Lucian taunted. “I can see it in your eyes how badly you want the pleasure of ripping me apart, but you won’t do it. You can’t do it. You can never do it.”

“Trust me,” Christian snarled, pressing his arm in harder. He swore he heard something pop as Lucian’s face turned ashen. “Nothing would satisfy me more than breaking your traitorous neck. Why would you bring me here?”

“They want Victoria.”

Christian pulled back a smidge, his eyes narrowing. “Do they have her?”

“No.”

“Where is she?” he hissed, pressing harder. “If a hair on her head is harmed, I will dismember you myself.”

“I don’t know where she is,” Lucian choked. “I swear.”

“You swear?” Christian laughed. “As if I would believe a word that comes out of your deceiving mouth. Have you no sense of loyalty?
Brotherhood
? No,” he growled. “You are so consumed by jealousy that you would betray your own blood to save your skin. Everything I have ever done has been for you and you spit in my face. I will ask you one last time. Where. Is. She?” He spat the last three words as if they were bullets.

“I don’t know.” Lucian’s eyes dilated with alarm. “We were attacked before Freyja could do anything.”

“You are lying.”

“He’s telling the truth, Your Grace.” Those words came from the gaunt warlock lying in the rubble, propped up against the side of the building. Christian’s eyes flicked to her and widened in delayed recognition. He’d seen Freyja in the school courtyard and this pale woman who had spoken looked like a ghostly imitation of her. Shadows haunted her emaciated face.

He inclined his head in silent greeting and lifted one eyebrow as her condition and the state of the building swam into view. The place was ripped apart. That would explain the explosion he’d felt in the cell. His eyes narrowed as he assessed the damage, noting the remnants of magical spells on the walls and on the floor. Bodies—ones he hadn’t drained—littered the empty hall and the open courtyard. “What happened here?”

“Demon.”

“One you summoned?”

She stood weakly, another warlock—Roan, he recognized—rushing to her side. “No.”

Christian frowned, his mind running through the options. If the demon hadn’t been summoned by one of her coven, it could mean several things. One, there was a rogue warlock on the loose, which wasn’t that improbable. Warlocks were a capricious breed, some preferring a life of solitude to life in a coven. Gabriel, Victoria’s school friend from last year had not been affiliated with anyone, and he had coveted the power that Le Sang Noir promised. Two, the demon was lost and had somehow slipped through the fabric of the dimensions to the mortal world. Or three, it
wanted
to be here. And that was the worst option of all—because those demons fed until there was nothing left. Drawn to immortal power, they were parasites, a plague on humans and non-humans alike.

“What kind of demon was it?”

She swallowed, her next words confirming his worst theory. “One I’ve never seen before. Untethered and strong. Old. Powerful. I think it was … a demon lord.”

Christian frowned. It was far worse than he’d anticipated. Demon lords rarely strayed from their dimensions and, as far as he knew, never came to the mortal plane. They could not be summoned or coerced and were known to be ruthless. What was one doing here? And why now?

“Where is it?”

“It attacked and disappeared,” she explained. “I tried to connect to it to see if someone had summoned it and sent it here, but it overpowered me.” Her gaze shifted to the vampire still caught in his grasp. “Lucian thought that the recent killings of vampires and witches looked to be the same as the victims of the demon.”

Christian had forgotten his brother hanging limply against the wall. Now their eyes met. Loathing ripped through him. He’d always been able to forgive Lucian for all of his transgressions and his many betrayals, but this time … he could barely stand to look at him. He released his hold and stepped back. “It is over for good this time.”

“Just the way I like it,” Lucian snarled, his eyes full of hate.

Christian turned his attention to Freyja, the demon’s presence overlooked for the moment. “Why do you want her? Victoria?”

“Your witch?”

A muscle leapt in his cheek. She wasn’t his. Not anymore. “Yes.”

“Her powers are too dangerous, too volatile. She must be … contained.”

“You were going to use me to get to her,” he surmised, correctly interpreting her expression.

“Yes.”

She didn’t have to explain why. Christian knew exactly what that look in her eyes meant—the warlock was planning to kill her. It surprised him. Most people coveted Victoria’s power, but it seemed as if Freyja wanted to restrict it by any means she thought necessary, including Victoria’s death. Christian thought back to what he knew of the warlocks—everyone believed them to be evil, particularly because of their summoning strengths. In the old days, they used to be called oath-breakers.

“Why?” he asked anyway.

“It is my sworn duty. Her blood is tainted.”

Did she think that she was defending the world from Victoria’s power?

Christian frowned, blinking as new information passed down from his maker’s memories and rose to the forefront of his mind, particularly an ancient Norse myth of the Vardlokkur. These original warlocks were known as the guardians of wisdom and magic, binding and warding evil spirits and demons to keep the magic of this world safe.

Christian met Freyja’s eyes and nodded with a short bow. “I understand what you are.” He shook his head. “But she wouldn’t have come. Her loyalty does not lie with me.” Christian did not miss the disbelieving look his brother sent his way before he scurried off to check on Lena, nor did he miss the agonized one she tossed in his direction. She was dead to him too. He eyed Freyja. “You should know that I will defend her with my life, no matter your oaths, Vardlokkur.”

“Our fight is not with you, Your Grace.”

He sighed, raking a hand through his hair. Despite Victoria’s recent actions, he could never leave her to defend herself alone. She would forever be in his blood. “If it is with her, then it is also with me.”

Christian turned on his heel and walked out into the night. The rogue demon would have to wait. Locating Victoria was his only priority and there was only one person he trusted to help find her.

EIGHTEEN

Those Who Covet

Christian and Angie waited in the half-opened foyer as one of the witches went to fetch Aliya, after a long, terrified glance at him and a circumspect one at her. Four male witches entered the room on silent feet, but did not approach them, instead settling at each one of the corners. Christian acknowledged them, but remained relaxed. After all, a vampire and a magicless witch had invaded their sanctuary. He eyed Angie, grateful that she had accompanied him without question. He knew that she had come to Paris to offer support to her friend and he was humbled that she still considered him one.