Authors: Kimberly Frost
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“I’m not available for conversation. I’m looking for my friend.”
She cocked a brow.
A slow smile curved his lips. “You smell like oranges.” He took a step back, pushing the hair away from his heartbreaking face, then he frowned and shook his head. “Which is actually an unwanted distraction.” For a moment, he lapsed into a language so ancient, she couldn’t translate fast enough
to follow what he said. Returning to English, he managed, “My friend Merrick might be with a muse named Alissa.”
Of course, he’s beautiful. He’s one of them,
she thought furiously. She didn’t even have a weapon to defend herself. “So you’re Merrick’s friend, huh? It’s illegal for ventala to be in the Etherlin. It carries a death sentence. Did you know?”
He shook his head. “Laws made by men are—”
She lunged and grabbed the knife sheathed at his hip. He caught her wrist and launched himself forward, slamming her against the wall and pinning her body with his.
“Get off me,” she said, shoving his shoulder with her free hand.
“You’re strong and soft,” he murmured, staring at her mouth. “An unusual combination—which I don’t have time to contemplate.” He grabbed her left wrist and forced it up against the wall so both her arms were pinned over her head.
“Let go,” she snapped, trying to knock him off balance. When her forehead banged against his chin, he jerked his head back, then he spun her body so she faced the wall and was crushed between it and him.
His cool breath blew against her ear, matching her own ragged breathing.
“You smell too good to be part demon, so you’re not my sworn enemy. Calm yourself,” he said.
She was still for a moment, waiting for her chance to throw him off, but his muscles never relaxed. She exhaled hard, frustration thrumming through her.
“You attacked me without cause,” he said. “You should ask my forgiveness.”
“You can kiss my ass.”
His knee rose to nudge her butt. “Be careful what you demand. Someone may accommodate your request.”
“You son-of-a-bitch!” she snapped, whipping her head back to slam it against his face.
A moment later she was free, and she spun to face him. He was several feet away, rubbing the swollen corner of his mouth.
“I don’t have time to teach you a lesson, but your ferocity deserves one.”
“You’re trespassing.”
He smiled, and she hated that it had a devastating impact on the part of her that noticed beautiful things.
“You don’t own the world,” he said. “I trespass where I please.” He turned. “Now, I need to find my friend before he gets himself killed.” He sprinted down the hall in a blur of speed that left her breathless.
She rubbed her wrists.
Who the hell was that?
Merrick moved Richard into the trees and was glad that Alissa was well enough to walk despite being winded. From the cover of the evergreens, Merrick put several rounds into the side of the helicopter, but when it suddenly lost altitude, it was over a clearing, so there was no fiery crash.
Ventala syndicate members poured out.
Merrick shot several before the remainder rushed into the woods. The gun battle lasted ten minutes, and Merrick would’ve cleared a path if a second chopper hadn’t landed behind the first.
“If I go out, they might think I’m alone. If they come in after me, they’ll find the two of you,” Merrick said.
“If you go out, they’ll kill you,” Alissa said.
Merrick shrugged. “I’m almost out of ammunition. When they realize it, they’ll be coming in after me anyway.” He grabbed Richard and placed him under the low-hanging branches of an evergreen. He waved for Alissa to join them, and she did. “Stay out of sight. I’ll see if I can reach a fallen ventala to get a loaded gun.”
He cleared away their tracks as much as possible, then moved forward. Within moments, he was pinned down by their attackers’ cross fire.
Alissa pressed her hand against her dad’s side, which was bleeding again, and tried to soothe him.
A branch lifted, and she froze.
“I smell blood,” Cato Jacobi said with a menacing smile.
She scrambled to the far side of the tree, drawing him away
from her dad. Jacobi pursued her as she crept along the ridge. There wasn’t much space.
“Fall,” she said, but when Cato stumbled, he didn’t go over the cliff.
He lunged and grabbed her, slamming them both to the ground. They slid down the incline. She grabbed at the ground, but her hands trailed through snow and over ice.
Over Cato’s shoulder, she saw Merrick sprinting toward them. He dove and she reached. A terrible pain in her shoulder made her shriek when Merrick yanked her toward him as Cato held on.
Cato swung his free arm around and buried a knife in Merrick’s thigh, holding tight to the hilt. Merrick’s fist slammed into Cato’s face, and Cato lost his grip on her. Merrick yanked her up and away from the incline, then shoved her down flat into the snow just as a bullet ripped through him. Cato jerked the knife free of Merrick’s leg and barreled forward.
She grabbed for Merrick, but caught only air as he fell sideways over the ridge. Her scream pierced the night. Cato climbed over her body to reach level ground.
“Hold your fire. He’s gone! I’ve got the girl!” Cato half-carried, half-dragged Alissa to a waiting helicopter.
Alissa fought to free herself—to get back to the ridge and Merrick—but couldn’t. Her mind replayed the last moments over and over.
Everything had happened with mind-blurring speed. Cato kept a hand over her mouth as he climbed into the chopper with her.
“Well, if it isn’t Bitch Barbie,” Tamberi Jacobi said with a smile.
As tears slid silently down her cheeks, Alissa stared out of the open helicopter doors. Merrick was gone. Her dad was bleeding under a tree. She was captured. It was too much.
She tried to leap out as the helicopter started to rise, but Cato dragged her back inside and slid the door closed.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have time to mourn Merrick. You’re not long for this world yourself,” Tamberi said.
“Pilot, crash,” Alissa said, infusing her voice with power.
The helicopter lurched.
“Motherfucker!” Cato said, jumping on top of Alissa and shoving a hand over her mouth while Tamberi screamed at the pilot. After several breathtaking swerves, the helicopter’s erratic flight returned to normal.
“What the fuck did I tell you? Tape her goddamned mouth!” Tamberi screeched at Cato.
Cursing and yelling the entire time, he covered Alissa’s mouth with duct tape.
“You reach for that tape, and I’ll break your jaw,” he said.
Alissa sat cross-legged on the floor, staring daggers at them. She willed herself to come up with a plan to kill them both, but her mind kept returning to Merrick falling. It wasn’t fair. After everything they’d been through…in the end, they’d had so little time together. Her throat tightened and tears welled in her eyes.
He’s gone.
Her mind rebelled at the thought, but she had lost him. And not only Merrick, but also her father, the Wreath, and soon, her life.
Anger and frustration burned through her. She wouldn’t die alone. She would find a way to take the Jacobis with her.
Perched on a ledge, Lysander glared at Merrick, whom he’d saved from a deadly fall.
“Take me to her!” Merrick rasped, coughing up frothy, bright-red blood.
“You need a hospital,” Lysander said, kneeling over him. “I didn’t come here to let you die. I need you to fulfill that prophecy, and you’re—” Lysander reached out to pick Merrick up.
Trying to catch his breath, Merrick shoved Lysander’s hand away. Blood poured from Merrick’s wounds. He didn’t have much time left before he’d be too weak to help her.
Lysander reached again.
“Don’t!” Merrick shouted. “You’ll take me to Alissa, or you’ll take me nowhere.”
“You’re my friend!” Lysander shouted back. “My one
friend. I won’t lose you over a girl, no matter how good they smell!”
Merrick choked down a bloody breath. “You
are
my friend, Lyse. You are,” Merrick said and coughed again, spraying the snow with specks of crimson. “I would fight to the death alongside you. You know that. But this woman…she’s—” Merrick shook his head, suffocating. “She’s my heaven…what I want to live for.” Merrick’s head buzzed, getting light.
Not yet!
“You’re a brother to me, Lysander. That’s how I know—” Merrick stopped to catch his breath. “You’ll take me to her. You’ll help me fight them to save her life.”
Lysander scowled. “The last time I went against my better judgment to save a brother, I was cast out of heaven.”
Merrick dragged himself to a standing position, drawing in a wheeze of air. “This time, I promise the fall won’t be nearly as far.”
Tamberi directed the pilot toward a small ravine. The helicopter landed, and Cato hopped out with a duffel bag.
“Hurry!” Tamberi said, then dissolved into giddy laughter. “Let’s get this party started!”
Another ventala climbed out of the helicopter and carried Alissa to the mouth of an ice cave. Cato yanked a hammer and a set of spikes from his bag and worked quickly to drive them into the rock in a formation she recognized. Her limbs would be bound as Phaedra’s had been.
“Don’t secure her until after you anoint her with the vampire ash.”
Vampire ash?
To raise a demon, why wouldn’t they use the ash or some aspect of a demon? Unless they were trying to raise something else. Alissa stared into the duffel and saw a small stone with Phaedra’s mark, the one Alissa knew had been used as a key in different types of rituals.
Alissa turned her head to the mouth of the cave, remembering what Merrick had said.
No one ever proved that the shapeshifting vampires came from a mutation.
What if those shifting venomous vampires hadn’t been an evolution of the species? What if they’d been a different breed of vampire that had been brought forth?
By muse blood or breath.
The syndicate would spill her blood to open a gate not for demons, but for their vampire sires. And the world would be under siege again. Millions of people would die, starting with everyone in the Etherlin.
No!
She wouldn’t allow herself to be used for that purpose. She couldn’t let them anoint her. There were other gates that could be opened. She’d seen it in the vision of her mother. Dimitri had said that Helene was the only one hurt by what she’d done. Whatever her mother had brought forth had destroyed her and no one else.
With her left hand, Alissa grabbed the tape and ripped it off her mouth. With her right hand, she snatched the Phaedra stone. She lunged into the mouth of the cave and dropped to her knees. She cut across the bandage and wounds from Merrick’s bite, dripping her blood onto the dirt. Then she jabbed the stone’s nub into it and turned it like a key, blowing her breath into the cave.
“By my blood and breath, I implore you to open that I may discourse with the source.”
A creamy light shimmered, appearing as if it were being filtered through an opal. It brightened and brightened until it blazed through the cave and bathed her in it.
She squinted until her eyes adjusted, and she saw a collection of women with green and gold wreaths woven through their flowing hair. Their diaphanous gowns blew in the breeze and warmth radiated from them.
They spoke the Greek of the ancients, and she recognized them from their portraits. They were the original nine muses, beautiful and glorious, crowding together near the opening, obscuring all but tiny glimpses of the opulent room behind them.
“You’ve returned, Helene,” Clio said.
“No, not Helene. She’s new. She’s whole,” Euterpe said.
“I’m Alissa. Helene’s daughter.”
“And do you have a child of your own?”
“No.”
“Good,” Clio said. “There’s no daughter to keep you there. Come and join us.”
The warmth and the light were wonderful. She eased her tired body toward them.
“Yes, come. Hurry, now.”
From behind her, she heard Cato’s voice yelling to his sister that there was too much light.
“Get her! You have to get her,” Tamberi shouted.
“He won’t,” she mumbled, hurrying forward. But something—Cato’s hand—caught Alissa’s ankle and dragged her back.
The muses shrieked, and Alissa kicked, trying to free her leg.
“There’s poison in this cave. A man of tainted blood,” Thalia said.
“Part man, part enemy,” Clio said. “He has her. Quickly, give me a weapon for her. Quickly, sisters! And raise the light. Burn him! Blind him! Turn him back!”
“But the girl! Our new sister!” Thalia said.
Alissa fought Cato’s grip, and the light intensified until Alissa’s eyes stung. She clenched them shut.
Cato wailed, and Alissa smelled smoke. He dragged her back, then lost his grip. She scrambled forth, but he caught her leg again.
Something clattered on the ground at Alissa’s feet. She bent and felt it. A sword.
“Free yourself,” Clio urged.
She clutched the sword by its rough hilt. Her hands trembled with the effort of raising it. Sharing blood with Merrick had left her weak, and the sword was heavy.
You have to free yourself!
“Let me go, Cato, or I will kill you.”
His grip didn’t loosen. “You bitch—”
Alissa swung the sword in an arc dictated by her instincts. The blade sliced through air and through muscle and bone. Alissa heard Cato’s head thud to the ground, felt a chill as his fallen soul hissed past.
She pressed the sword tip into the ground, leaning on it to steady herself, trying to catch her breath.
Her knees wobbled, and her body sagged as water dripped onto her head and shoulders, the light’s heat creating puddles of melted ice.
“You’re so very tired. Come to us, darling girl. Let us comfort you,” Clio said.
“We’ll stroke your temples.”
“And braid flowers through your hair.”
“Come now.”
She would feel so much better on their side; all her pain would be gone, the past forgotten. She imagined a different life, a peaceful life. An end to loneliness. She only had to walk a little farther.