Dancing Dragon (42 page)

The silver of my stake flashed in the lights and Amicus raised his head from his meal and snarled. My hand wrapped around the leather cord and pulled. I could feel the strain of the material beneath my fingers, see the marks it began to leave along his neck where it chafed and then before he had even managed to drop his dinner and raise a hand in defence it snapped free.

I was momentarily surprised at how easily it had been removed. For some reason I had expected a little more resistance. I mean, this is a fey artefact, a talisman awash with the magic of
Álfheimr.
But it came away in my hand like plucking an ever so slightly resistant leaf from a tree. I'd made sure I hadn't touched the actual amulet, I thought perhaps touching it wouldn't be a good idea. But my hesitation to touch the object I was reaching for was enough to make me pause with my downward stake strike and give Amicus time to react.

He stepped towards my body, over the discarded form of the human at his feet, into the the tip of my stake. He angled himself so the stake went into his shoulder and not his chest above his heart and he wrapped a cool hand around my throat with casual ease. My right hand left the stake where it was and reflexively came up to pry his fingers at my throat free.

This all happened in a fraction of a second, not enough time to comprehend I had again missed the mark. Amicus was faster than any vampire I had ever faced before. He simply moved and the action was complete. My brain recognised the motion, but couldn't comprehend the outcome until it was too late. I felt like I was still drunk on Michel's blood, my body stumbling and refusing to obey my commands. The world around me a hazy representation of reality. I was just along for the roller coaster ride.

“I have allowed you to exist for too long.” Amicus's voice seemed to penetrate thick fog. It was loud, but also quiet, I had to strain to understand. It surrounded me, wrapped around me and went straight through me. As though he was talking in my mind.

I struggled with both hands against his tightening fingers, not even realising I had dropped the
taufr
at my feet. My mind felt sluggish, my actions were all purely defensive. I hadn't even attempted to draw my second stake.

“Michel,” Amicus intoned in a deeply seductive voice. It made my body respond, arching forward to press against his chest. “Come to me, my son.”

Questions slammed into my head. Where was Avery? What was happening to Lutin and Michel’s' shadow guards? Why hadn't Samson come closer, sensing my pain and fear and confusion? Were the two newest members of my line unable to assist while they held off the fairy's magic?

And worst of all, why wasn't I fighting back?

Amicus moved his face in closer to inhale my scent. It brought back memories of that first time I had battled him whilst Dream Walking. How he had laid on top of me and breathed deeply in my hair and neck. He had recognised Michel's scent then, he knew who and what I was. He would have killed me, if I hadn't have had the Bond to call on for strength. I wondered if my body was calling on the Bond now. I wondered if it would matter or not.

“Ah,” he said, as he drew back and turned me in his arms, my back flush against his chest, his head resting over my shoulder. “The prodigal son arrives.”

Michel stood before us, a tense bundle of crackling energy and light. His eyes were completely magenta and only for the vampire who held me captive in his arms.

“You are no longer my Master,” Michel said in a low and even growl.

“And yet you came when I called,” Amicus answered conversationally, but his arm tightened slightly around my throat. “You seem to have misplaced something.” His fangs scratched painfully down my neck, I felt blood well to the surface of my skin.

Michel took a step closer, his muscles twitching as though he was forcing his way through a wall. I could feel it then. Amicus had us completely shielded in an invisible barrier of
Sanguis Vitam
. Michel was straining to break through it. So, that was why Avery and the others had not come closer. I was able to penetrate that shield, but they were not. Maybe it was because I was a Nosferatin. Maybe it was because I was the Prophesied. I had been called here initially by my
Sanguis Vitam Cupitor
powers. That had never happened before, so I was guessing it was special. Specific to this event.

Sweat had begun to accumulate on Michel's brow. I watched as it trailed down his temple and then his neck. His jaw was clenched, his hands in fists and he was no longer breathing. No longer pretending to be anything other than what he was. Nosferatu. Predatory. Lethal. Undead.

“It seems I owe you a death, my son. You tried to take my life and deny me
Elysium
. Perhaps I shall take her life in exchange,” Amicus said with more than a little feeling and force.

He reached out a free hand and let it hover over the ground next to us. A second later the
taufr
floated up to his fingers. He wrapped them around the amulet and then brought it up to his other hand, still firmly wrapped around my throat. With a bit of manoeuvring, whilst making sure I couldn't escape, he slipped the re-tied leather cord over my neck and let the amulet fall into place. I could feel its heavy weight right above Michel's dancing dragon pendant. The dragon was under my dress, I didn't want it to get in the way of a fight, but I had worn it tonight out of a sense of compulsion. All I knew at the time of putting it on was that I should.

Amicus's hands came down and secured my wrists on both sides of my thighs, even though it hadn't occurred to me to try to remove the
taufr
, he wasn't taking any chances. With both his hands occupied by mine, he didn't have an arm free to snap my neck. But then, he was hungry, I'd disturbed his meal, so it made sense he'd just drain me dry.

As his fangs entered my neck all I could think was that Michel was going to watch me die. Like I did those humans. Unable to do a thing to stop it from happening before his eyes. He was trying though, he wasn't standing idly by. He struggled with renewed vigour, the strain evident on his face. He made minute progress, one small step after another small step, but it would be too late. I'd seen Amicus feed before. He was faster at draining a human dry than I had ever witnessed in my life.

Ma douce, use your Light.

I heard Michel's voice in my head, but I didn't immediately respond. It was as though I had a filter between my mind and my body. My mind cried out in surprise and then frustration, when my body wouldn't do what it asked. I prayed my Light would just take over and blast the ancient to dust, but it never does what I want when I want. That would assume an element of control, of which I never had any when it dusted a vampire at whim.

I did feel a little tingling in my fingers though. A slow rising of sensation and awareness at the tips of my limbs. I wiggled my digits experimentally and was rewarded with a response. I could move my fingers and toes, but little else. It was enough for me to focus on though and I sent every little bit of energy I had towards manipulating those digits and getting myself free.

I didn't manage to free myself completely, but as Amicus became more consumed by my blood, as though it was having an effect on him like a new born vamp, I slipped free of his grasp with just one hand. Amicus was swaying, a little tipsy from the overpowering taste my Nosferatin life force and I took advantage where I could. I reached up and snapped the leather cord around my neck and threw it as hard and as far as I could from us.

I watched Michel reach out and snatch the amulet from the air and then take an unhindered step towards us.

The shield was down and suddenly I was surrounded by vampires. Avery flew in from the side and knocked Amicus sideways, Samson streamed in and swooped me off the ground where I had fallen and Sergei appeared, looking a little worse for wear - cuts and bruises encasing his body - to enter the fray.

The sounds of battle, so familiar, so comforting yet frightening, began to permeate the still night air. Samson pulled me to the shadows on the side of the street, away from harm, but not out of sight of it. Daniel and Alain arrived with several more vampires, but despite our numbers things still looked bleak.

Amicus had recovered from the effects of my blood and was in full battle with Michel. Swirls of colours and flashes of lights surrounded them, making it hard to see exactly what was happening at all.

And then Lutin appeared, with several short, squat looking creatures. Hunched knobbly backs, stumpy limbs and jaws full of nasty looking teeth. The
vinr
I was guessing.

I struggled to get to my feet, but Samson insisted I remain seated. I wanted to help, I wanted to land my stake. I wanted to make sure Michel was all right. But I couldn't, I was weak and trembling from loss of blood.

Powerlessly, I watched it all unfold. So fast, yet taking so long. And just when I thought I couldn't bear watching for another second, the world stood still.

Amicus swung a sword - goddess knows where he had gotten it from – right at Michel's neck.

I felt a stab of pain so horrific in my chest and then a flash of magenta coloured Light followed immediately by a wash of a cool breeze, smelling like peaches.

And then for a moment, nothing else.

My mind battled to make sense of what I saw. What I had numbly watched from where I sat beside Samson. Amicus's sword slashing through the night air, a blaze of reflected light shimmering in its wake as it arced through the space before him. A flash of silver, as one of my stake's left Michel's hand, directly aimed for Amicus's heart.

Stake met chest as sword met neck - simultaneously.

A cry of unmitigated anguish left my lips as I comprehended what had happened. It was enough to make those who still battled stall. I screamed Michel's name as though by merely shouting it to the heavens the gods would hear and bring him back. The sound of my own voice, so raw, so unnatural, so terrifyingly painful reached my ears, but I didn't stop.

I reached down deep inside me, as though grasping for a lifeline - something to use to pull him back - and found my Light. Waiting, thrumming, anticipating my need. I grabbed it with my mind, I didn't bother to wrap it around me, to soothe me or calm me, I sent it out into the night and let it fly with a command to bring him back. To bring my kindred back to me.

My fists pounded into the pavement as I sent shockwave after shockwave of Light down through the earth. The street buckled and swayed, the
vinr
tossed about like some kid's poorly treated stuffed toys and the vampires who could fly, took flight. Others attempted to bleed in to the shadows or flash away. Until all that was left on the street with me, were Avery and Lutin.

They watched silently and stoically as I destroyed every single building that surrounded us. Those beautifully presented tall brick residences tumbled in a dust-filled, brick and mortar collapsed, heap. I had no idea if people - humans, innocents, Norms - were still in them. If they were, they were now dead. The cars they had driven pulverised. The homes they had lived in destroyed. I crushed every single thing before me with my Light.

Nero had always told me that the Light was far stronger than the Dark could ever be. That the only thing that would let us fail in the battle to balance it all out, would be us, our lack of faith in our own Light's ability. I didn't doubt it as I wielded it now. I knew with every thought I made, the Light would simply act. Do what I bid without pause.

The street was left in ruin, but by the time I had flattened a hundred meter radius around us, I had run out of anger and the anguish had morphed into disbelief. And a pain so all consuming I could hardly breathe.

But I
was
breathing. I was still alive. And despite what should have been a welcome realisation, an indication that not all was lost, I knew me breathing no longer meant what it should. I was alive, but Michel no longer lived.

I looked up with what was surely empty eyes and stared at Lutin. Had he done it? Had he severed my connection, reversed the joining and I no longer was Bonded to my kindred? When he first met me, he said that the joining could be reversed. Had he actually been telling the truth? I tried in vain to find Michel down a non-existent connection. I shouted for him in my echo-ridden head. I thrust my emotions; my longing, my despair, my love out at him and received nothing in return.

Finally, as I realised the awful, final truth, I felt a flood of tears track down my cheeks. Michel was dead.

Through ragged breaths I looked about me frantically searching for a sign that he existed. Somewhere, somehow Michel had to have survived. My stinging eyes found the stake and the sword and to my utter horror, the
taufr
. I bit back a sob as a flash of hope at the reminder of Michel catching the amulet was replaced instantly with desolate loss. He'd had the charm in his hand, but he was no longer holding it when he died.

If a small part of me had been clinging on to that chance, that slim hope that he had simply traded this life for one in
Álfheimr,
it was lost as my eyes rested on the small, hexagon shaped talisman. The charm had worked for Amicus all those centuries before. It quite possibly would have worked for Michel. If only he had been wearing it. Holding it. At the time of his death.

A crushing numbness encased me in stone. So cold and solid and final. He was in
Elysium
and I was left on Earth. I looked up into the dark night sky, the glow of London’s lights cast upon the heavens and I shook my head.

“You want me to fight the Dark, but you take away my Light and leave only shadows.”

It was a whisper, but Avery had heard. He took a step closer and the movement caught my eye. I looked directly at him without an ounce of feeling left to spare. My hand reached in my jacket and pulled my silver knife from its sheath. It felt solid in my palm, where everything else felt so weightless that it would all simply float away on the night's breeze.

I looked down at the silver blade, my face reflected in its mirror-shine. Slightly warped, but still mine, yet so foreign. I was no longer the woman who had left that house tonight. I was changed. As different from that person as a new born vampire is from its human past when turned. The silver halted Avery in his stealthy approach. A natural reaction to the metal the knife was made from. Every vampire would have acted the same.

I looked up at him and said in a surprisingly solid voice, “Its OK. It's not for you.” Then lifted the blade and pressed the tip against my chest, right above my heart.

If Michel was no longer here, then I couldn't go on alone. A sob did escape my lips then and then the sharp sting of the blade as it entered my chest.

Avery's hand wrapping round my wrist was the first thing that told me I had failed. He'd appeared at my side instantly. No flash of colours. No blurring of space as he stepped through a hole to reach me so very, very fast.

“I don't think so, Ms. Monk,” he said casually and pulled the knife from my firm grip, holding it by the hilt in his relaxed hand.

Still holding my wrist with his other hand, his eyes remaining solidly on my blank face, he said over his shoulder to Lutin, “If you have any sense at all, Prince of
Ljósálfar,
you will leave before I kill you.”

Lutin chuckled in the background and said, his voice a musical sound of harps and violins, “I have disarmed your shields, they can not protect you from my influence. What makes you think I would run now, vampire? She is mine. I have released her from her vampire's binds. Now, she will be with me.”

The words alone were creepy enough, but the tone - that beautiful mixture of music and shrill screech of bow on strings - was enough to make you grit your teeth and hunch your shoulders in reply. Avery's thumb started rubbing back and forward over my pulse at my wrist. I don't think he realised what he was doing. Calming himself, not me.

“
She is broken. Can't you see? You did this. She will be useless to you now.” Despite the numbness that was cocooning me, despite my desire to no longer exist, I bristled at Avery's words. My shoulders straightened, I took a sharp breath in and then heard Avery in my mind.
Not yet.

I paused, my Light ready to let loose and waited. Shattered, beaten heart in my throat.

Lutin stalked closer, a swagger to his hips. I closed my eyes and blinked slowly, every muscle in my body tense. I could smell him. Peaches. But not the fresh smell of new season fruit, harvested directly from the tree. This one, I noticed, smelt too sweet, too sickly, with a hint of burning caramel beneath. Like over cooked pulp, jam that has caught on the bottom of the pot because you didn't stir it quickly enough whilst on the stove. I lifted my eyes back up to Avery, who was still watching me intently, his thumb stroking my wrist. The knife held loosely at his side.

What was he waiting for? Throw the damn thing.

His eyes flashed amber and ochre, then the brown was drowning in a maelstrom of different shades of jade. His lips curled back and revealed lengthened fangs. But it didn't scare me. I don't think there will ever be a thing left in this world that will. He blinked at me, his thumb stopped caressing and then he pulled me up to my feet, crushing me against his chest in order to keep me upright.

Lutin paused at our change of positions then started pulsing with Light. My Light responded automatically, as though called forth by him. It thrummed around my body, between me and Avery. He didn't shield his eyes, didn't close his lids, he gritted his teeth and kept looking directly at my face.

“Don't you see, vampire. She
is
mine. I can call her to me. My Light to her Light. One and the same. She is my
elska
and you cannot deny it. He will mean nothing to her in the end. A mere memory that cannot compete with my Light.” Lutin sounded smug, a man who had won the prize and knew he deserved it.

I huffed a breath out indignantly and Avery smiled. It took me utterly by surprise.

“I think you overestimate your charms, Prince of Imps. Her heart is crushed. Her will to live extinguished. And all because of you.” Avery paused, still looking only at me, as though by keeping eye contact he was somehow grounding me to this Earth. I willed him to look away and let me fly free. “No,” he whispered and I knew that word was for me, not Lutin.

We stood still as statues. Avery's eyes holding me captive. Lutin growing ever more impatient to the side. One of them would crack first. I didn't care which. It no longer mattered who won. Maybe it no longer mattered who was left behind at all.

I felt my Light leave me in a sigh of welcome release. Avery pulled me instinctively closer as my Light shot past him and towards Lutin. Sucking in a breath, Avery's head turned in slow motion to watch my Light meld with the Fey Prince's. No longer just white, bright Light, but full of every colour of the rainbow.

“Beautiful.” I think I said it aloud, because Avery's head spun back towards me.

“What are you doing, Ms. Monk?” he asked, a little stiffly.

“Making rainbows,” I replied, my voice a hollow sound to my ears.

“Why?” His voice was growing more distant. Harder to hear or understand.

“To chase away the shadows,” I whispered.

For there to be shadows, there must also be Light
. And then as his words wafted through my mind he threw the knife.

He wasn't looking where he threw it, his eyes were still on me, but it found the rainbow. I think it must have found the centre of that rainbow, because I heard a scream, followed by a loud pop and the acrid smell of ozone. Been here before, I thought numbly, waiting for the smell of peaches to reach me. It did and the rainbow burst in a shower of colours that took my breath away.

I didn't pass out, as I thought I would. Nor did I die. Too bad, death would have been a welcome release. Avery simply lowered me to the ground gently, far more gently than I thought him capable of and walked to where Lutin had been standing seconds before. He turned in a slow circle, looking up and down, but I knew he wouldn't see the fairy. Lutin's SOP was to run and hide when things got tough. Good riddance.

I watched as Avery completed his assessment, no doubt coming to the same conclusions as me and then looked on with little interest as he walked towards my stake and Amicus's sword. He reached down and pocketed my stake quickly. Shaking his hand at the sting of silver on his fingertips. He sheathed the sword in an invisible scabbard at his waist, making it disappear completely. Then he crouched down on his haunches and just stared at the
taufr
.

My breath caught in my throat. I hated that damn piece of fey magic. I wanted to to stake it, to stab the tip of my silver knife right through the bloody thing. I wanted it destroyed. But, Avery is a vampire. And a vampire is as a vampire does. He swept it up in his fingers, holding it with care and reverence, and then slipped it inside his pocket, out of sight.

I sighed and looked around at the mess of the battle before me. The mess of my heartache and despair. I felt nothing. No guilt for what I had done. No fear at what I may have become. Only emptiness that went on forever inside my soul, stealing my heart and leaving only shadows in its wake.

Michel, my kindred was dead.

The dragon would dance no more.

And I was truly,
truly
alone.