What gods incite, p.2
What Gods Incite, page 2
I wheezed out something that might’ve sounded like a yes.
The first vampire was in front of us in moments, nothing but a faint stirring of air to signal his arrival. “Escort our new guest back home, will you, Leonard?” he said with an edge of amusement. “I’ll go on ahead and prepare his lofty accommodations.”
“Yes, Lord Vianu,” said Leonard the brute, tightening his grip around my wrists.
A breath later, Vianu’s presence had vanished, and I was left in the care of Leonard, who roughly forced me to march forward and jarred my dislocated shoulder whenever I fumbled a step due to the hand blindfold. He chuckled at my hisses of pain, but otherwise didn’t say anything as he led me toward the slaughterhouse that was a vampire nest.
I took the opportunity of the slow march to get my thoughts in order, tamping down the shoulder pain and relegating it to the back of my head for the time being. Using my terrifying experiences of the past five minutes, I put together a rough mental outline of what the heck was happening to me:
A vampire coven had settled somewhere in Pettigrew. They were led by at least one elder vampire, Vianu; I knew this because only elders were given the title of “Lord” or “Lady.” A vampire counted as an elder only if they were over four hundred years old, and the older a vampire grew, the more powerful they became. Vianu would, at the very least, be fast as lightning, and strong enough to throw a tractor-trailer without using magic, which he possibly possessed. Being a vampire didn’t preclude being a magic practitioner. The strongest vampires in the world were also practitioners.
Long story short, there was no way I could beat Vianu in a fight. I’d be dead before I knew he’d struck me, and I’d wake up in the afterlife before my body hit the ground. Which meant I had to get the hell out of this town before Leonard dragged me to the nest. Vampires favored large, underground facilities that could house up to thirty vampires—the typical size of a coven—so they’d probably renovated some sort of industrial site to suit their needs, or maybe an office building. There were none of those situated near the shopping center, so this walk would be a good distance.
I had time to formulate a plan to escape from Leonard.
Which was the only good thing about this predicament.
It was clear to me now that the stores in Pettigrew hadn’t been left untouched by chance, as I’d assumed. They were a lure left out by the vampires. The coven was capturing people who happened to wander into town in search of supplies and using them as blood slaves until they expired. They probably didn’t get many “direct hits,” like me, but the interstate was also close enough to the town for the vampires to make frequent grocery runs. After all, who’d notice if a group of refugees heading to Kinsale went missing every now and again? It wasn’t as if anyone was keeping track of them.
I felt sick to my stomach.
Oh, god. How many have they killed?
The answer, unfortunately, lay in the logic of the situation:
Before the collapse, vampires were a fractured society. Some factions practiced “civilized” rules. They didn’t drink to kill. They asked permission before they bit. They wrote up donor contracts with fair stipulations. They made under-the-table deals with blood banks so they could maintain emergency reserves.
But some vampires had stuck to the old ways, right up until the end of civilization. They were responsible for the glut of missing people in major cities. They were the reason mass graves were uncovered from time to time but no serial killers were ever found and punished. They took all the blood they wanted without a care in the world. Humans were nothing to them but cattle.
During the purge, steeped in the worst kind of irony, the civilized factions had suffered disproportionately—because they’d left a paper trail the government could follow. Meanwhile, the real threats to society hid in the shadows and laughed as their nicer counterparts were herded into corners like scared little mice and ruthlessly burned to their second deaths.
The result of this imbalance meant that any vampire you came across today was more likely to be the not-so-nice variety.
So how many people had this coven killed in the intervening years since moving into Pettigrew? The answer was as many as they had been able to get their hands on.
I have to report this to the fae leadership in Kinsale, I thought as a nervous sweat broke out across my forehead. Even if they won’t immediately intervene, they at least need to be aware a potential threat is living only twenty miles from the boundary. Faeries don’t like vampires any more than humans do, so the dullahan will monitor them heavily.
But in order to report the vampire coven to the relevant fae authorities, I first had to escape from Leonard and make it home before either he or Vianu caught up to me with their insane speed. That meant summoning a huge burst of magic without alerting Leonard before I lashed out at him—vampires could sense magic even if they couldn’t use it—and then running full speed through a neighborhood I wasn’t familiar with, all the way to the main road that cut through town, another twenty freaking miles across the stretches, which were populated with feral werewolf packs liable to attack me at any time, and finally back across the Kinsale barrier.
How the hell was I going to do that?
Chapter Two
The solution turned out to be a fainting spell.
A regular fainting spell, not the magic variety.
I hid the dissolution of my third glamour behind a cough and rebuffed my magic—which was angered by my capture—pushing it down into my soul even further than normal. This created a “bubble” of energy that grew stronger with each passing second, like a covered pot of water left to boil. It also gave me a sense of being vaguely off kilter. As if the world was tilting left and right in time with each of my stumbling steps. It was irritating to work through, but the resulting lack of balance would make my fainting routine seem genuine to Leonard, who was more muscle and less intellectual, and who probably left any whiff of strategy to Vianu and his other bosses.
My trick played out as a simple, three-step process:
First, I went limp in Leonard’s grasp. Pain shot through my dislocated shoulder at the added weight as my knees buckled and I sank toward the ground, but I caught the groan in my throat and refused to let it out. Leonard swore at me and shook me a couple times, trying to get me back up. But I hung there motionless until he finally let me go, at which point I collapsed with all the grace of a flour sack. I lay there with my eyes closed, breathing shallow, pretending as if the vampires had injured me more than intended and my fae blood wasn’t enough to make up the difference.
“Aw, hell,” Leonard muttered. “You’re not dying, are you?” He prodded me with his shoe, hard enough to hurt, but again, I feigned unconsciousness. Leonard swore and paced around me, debating what to do. He could try feeding me his own blood, which gave humans a healing boost, but he knew that didn’t always work with half-fae. Some types of faerie blood negated the effect. He could, instead, toss me over his shoulder and whisk me off to the nest forthwith, but if he showed up with me apparently on the verge of death, Vianu would likely be pissed at him, thinking he’d intentionally damaged their meal ticket for the week.
The whole time he was weighing pros and cons, I was compressing my magic harder and harder, closing in on critical mass. I legitimately started to feel faint now, intense dizziness scratching at the back of my skull. The reason fae magic was usually hidden behind well-crafted glamours instead of being crudely suppressed like I was doing now is because it practically had a mind of its own, especially in the half-fae, in which human nature and faerie nature did not perfectly blend. The more basic your cage, the more likely it was the wily magic would subvert your efforts and escape into the world. Especially if you used your magic on a regular basis.
And especially if you used your magic in combat.
Over the past several weeks, since I’d started engaging in more frequent fights, my own magic had grown bolder and craftier. If I took off my glamour necklace, even for a second, my magic would immediately try to worm its way out of my soul and slip its subliminal messages into my thought patterns—release all your glamours, Vince, and let the real you shine through—tempting me with dangerous propositions.
As a consequence, I’d started building an arsenal of prepared medium spells, charmed weapons and shield bracelets and the like. Partitioning my energy into such things ahead of time and then releasing the stored energy during a battle didn’t rile my magic up like direct spells did. I was basically trying to outwit my magic as it tried its hardest to outwit my restraint.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to load myself up with that arsenal for my trip to Pettigrew. I’d been reserving it for my next encounter with Abarta, which I’d been anticipating for the past month. Vampires hadn’t been anywhere on my radar until now. So I had to use direct spells in this case. I had to let the beast out today, even though I knew doing so would only embolden it to push me more and more toward embracing the full breadth of my faerie nature, locked away behind my fifth and sixth glamours. The glamours I hadn’t brought down in twenty years. For a good reason.
Leonard let out a sigh, finally coming to a decision. “If the boss tries to rip out my throat for this,” he growled, “I’m going to rip out yours first.” I sensed him bending down toward me. He grasped my shoulder and rolled me onto my back, checking one last time to see if I was truly passed out. When I gave him no sign that I was awake, he grumbled in irritation and positioned himself so he could sling me over his shoulder. I waited until the exact moment when the bulk of his body was angled across my chest.
Then I pulled the lid holding back my magic.
No invocation. No directed intent. I just let it out.
Leonard reeled back when he felt the energy rushing out of my soul toward him. And to his merit, he managed to rake his hand across my neck, leaving bloody streaks, in the fifth of a second it took for my magic to erupt from my body. A gale more powerful than the strongest wind on Earth blasted outward, and I opened my eyes in time to see Leonard get ripped off his feet and slung into the air. Snow and ice barreled out in every direction. The temperature dropped forty degrees in seconds. And the wind kept on blowing, buffeting Leonard higher and higher and higher. Until he was nothing but a speck in the sky.
I took half a second to pop my shoulder back into its socket. Before I ran. Really, really fast.
Leonard had no magic, as far as I could tell, so he couldn’t fall any faster than terminal velocity. But the second his feet hit the ground, he’d come speeding after me, and if I wasn’t far enough ahead, he’d catch up in no time. So I funneled a continuous stream of energy into my legs and shot off down the main street, heading back toward Kinsale. The shopping center blurred past, along with all the other buildings I’d seen on my way into town, and I merged onto the four-lane highway a half mile past the city limits.
I was moving at almost twice the posted speed limit. Faster than I’d ever moved in my life. Eyes dried out. Heart pumping erratically. Pulse pounding as hard as a drum beat in my ears. The tendons in my legs strained with each step, threatening to snap like overextended rubber-bands. My muscles tried to cramp up each time my toes hit the asphalt, and only magic energy kept them in line. My lungs were barely able to suck in enough oxygen to send to my extremities, my human limitations working against me. But still, despite all that, I kept running and didn’t slow down.
Because somewhere far behind me, Leonard smashed into the ground like a meteorite.
Not five seconds later, he was back on his feet—chasing me.
Pettigrew rapidly shrank into the distance as I sped along the highway, but Leonard grew from an indistinct smudge into a defined shape in seconds. My head start had been significant, but it wasn’t going to be enough on its own. A few quick glances over my shoulder and my best attempt at mental math informed me the burly vampire would close the gap between us somewhere around the halfway point between Pettigrew and Kinsale. Which was coming up in the next few minutes. I needed to do something to stall him again, long enough for me to reach the boundary. As a vampire, he wouldn’t be able to cross the magic line without express approval from a dullahan guard.
I scanned the area around me, searching for any tools I could use as part of a distraction tactic. But I was moving so much faster than my natural unglamoured speed that my eyes had a hard time picking out details from the continuous blur of trees and scattered buildings. Although, even if there was something to my left or right that I could use against Leonard, I would have to move it with magic, because if I veered off either direction to grab something, it would allow the vampire to catch up.
There was an issue though. I was burning all the energy I could use with three glamours down to power my insane speed. If I wanted to dredge up any more, I’d have to strip my fourth glamour. Which would embolden my frenzied magic all the more. Each subsequent time I stripped that glamour, my magic’s resistance grew stronger when I erected it again. If I kept dropping my fourth glamour on a regular basis, instead of allowing my magic to cool off for a few months beforehand, it might eventually refuse to allow me to raise the glamour at all. And then I wouldn’t be able to hide my face.
I glanced over my shoulder again. Leonard was scarily close now. Fangs bared. Hand outstretched like a claw, aiming for the back of my neck.
The halfway mark was in sight.
No genius ideas popped into my head at the last second. So I sighed inwardly—my lungs were heaving too hard for me to sigh outwardly—and mentally spoke the words to bring down my fourth glamour. The corresponding charm on my necklace released the spell in a faint white wisp that was whipped away by the air rushing around my body, and I felt the mask I wore to hide my heritage tear free with it and ride the wind off into nonexistence.
For a moment, the sense of being utterly exposed in a place where random humans could see me nearly took my breath away. Then I composed myself with a mental mantra I’d used back during my cop days, in the moments before a dangerous raid, and grabbed hold of the energy that had been unleashed when the glamour collapsed. One more look over my shoulder gave me Leonard’s position—less than thirty feet behind me, and closing fast—and I muttered a quick invocation in between haggard breaths.
Fog rose from the ground, obscuring the terrain from Leonard.
With my next invocation, energy shot out from my left hand, invisible except for a faint mist in the air. About two hundred feet ahead, it shaped itself into a large cube. Roughly the size of a train car. At my command, solid ice began to fill the empty shape, growing so heavy so quickly that I almost lost my hold on it. Keeping it aloft strained my soul, but I didn’t let it go. Even though I felt like my skeleton was about to tear free from my skin, my eyes about to pop out of my head. No, I kept that damn block of ice hovering at an angle, one end pointing sharply downward, with a fulcrum of energy extending up from its midpoint.
I flew past it, unable to see it through the fog but sensing its precise location. I knew Leonard would be able to sniff it out as well, so I released more energy into the air, creating a diffuse field that would make it hard to pick out anything distinct. With the trap set, I counted down, not by second but by millisecond, until Leonard was approximately twenty steps away from the ice block. Then I released the ice from its stationary position, and mentally hurled it forward, the world’s mightiest pendulum.
Leonard never saw what hit him.
The ice block smashed into him with the force of a train and flung him off the highway. All I could see through the fog was a faint shadow flying through the air, but I heard him crash through the trees off to the right. One after the other. Trunks exploding. Booms like thunder rocking the ground beneath my feet. I couldn’t say for sure, but I had a feeling that not all the parts of Leonard’s body came to a stop at the same time.
Not that I thought I’d killed him.
Oh, no. He would get back up. And soon.
I needed to be in Kinsale by then. Or else.
Letting the ice block drop to the road with a deafening thud, I pushed on. My body was reaching its limits, tears in my muscles and tendons growing larger with each step. But the terrain zoomed by and began to shift into familiar territory, the network of roads I used to access Kinsale’s suburbs and satellite towns branching off the highway at various points.
At last, as the highway took a slow curve to the west, Kinsale itself came into view. A patchwork city. Stumpy offices and factories. Warehouses and townhouses. Detached homes and tent markets. Old construction and new. Only a third of it flickered with lights. The rest was still dark and waiting.
The highway evened out again, a straight shot toward the boundary line. The two dullahan I usually encountered on my return trips were at their posts, and they’d already noticed me approaching, hands on their weapons, shoulders taut. The tight ball of dread that had been sitting heavily in my stomach began to lighten. Sixty more seconds, and I’d be in the clear. A single minute, and I’d have bested a vampire.
Naturally, a prickling sensation on the back of my neck threw my hope in the trash. I peered over my shoulder, expecting to see Leonard had shaken off the ice wallop and come back for round three. What I saw instead would haunt my nightmares for the next ten years:
Vianu was racing toward me like a comet streaking across the sky. The only reason I could tell it was him was because he was coming straight at me. If he’d been running at an angle, his visage would’ve been nothing but a vague silhouette fluttering in the overcast light.
He was closing the distance between us so fast I suddenly felt like I was moving in slow motion. His red-ringed eyes bored into my flesh, pierced my soul, his bloodlust a tangible force that almost had enough power to strike me down. His bared fangs dripped with venom, enough to send me into a coma if his teeth latched onto my neck. As if he would give me that chance. The second he caught me, he’d rip my throat out and bleed me dry.
