“Heard you had visitors last night.” He leaned against a nearby tree and watched her shoot. “Gerhard and I were away from home or one of us would have come to help. I guess you took care of the problem.”
She crouched behind the firing line, then jumped up, shooting seven rounds as she ran toward the target. She’d fired two bad shots with the Walther last night, missing vital organs on the vampires. That wouldn’t happen again.
“We did.” She finally answered him as she reloaded. “Did Sophistrina tell you about the stone?”
“Yes. Couldn’t trace it, huh?”
“Nope. But I’ll find out who enchanted it. I have incentive. The same sorcerer helped to kidnap Andreas.”
“Vengeance is a strong motivation, but it can cloud your judgment.”
She glanced at him. “Your point?”
“I don’t have one.” Warin shrugged. “Just an observation.”
Ari walked over to the side of the range, turned and ran back, firing at the target until empty. Every shot was dead center. She did it again from the other side. Perfect again. This time when she reloaded, she put the gun in her jacket pocket and walked over to join the warlock.
“Nice shooting. I never use guns myself, but I can recognize skill when I see it.”
“Thanks. Your brother’s not with you today?”
“No, he’s still away on business. I’ll be gone for a few days too, and I was afraid you wouldn’t be here by the time I got back. I, um, wanted to discuss something with you.”
She hid her surprise. Of the two brothers, Warin had been the less communicative. “OK, I’m intrigued. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s about the fire magic. Has Gerhard talked to you about the extreme fire forms?”
She hesitated, remembering Gerhard’s words of caution. “We’ve talked about a couple of things.”
“Like the salamanders? And the fire shield?” His eyes darkened with that inner intensity.
“Some. Why are you asking?”
“I can’t talk to him about this. He…well, he doesn’t have as much control over the fire. He has other magics as strong as mine, but the fire still eludes him. I had hoped you and I could share information.”
This was interesting. For two siblings who still lived in the same household as adults, they certainly kept secrets from each other. Or both men were giving her the runaround. And if Warin was telling the truth, then Gerhard had lied to her about experiencing the shield. But he had described it perfectly. She didn’t know who to believe, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. It was probably nothing—sibling jealousy, male arrogance—but even careless words might leak damaging information to the O-Seven. She couldn’t risk confiding in either brother.
“I’m sorry. My fire magic is pretty elementary.” Which was the truth. She hadn’t even known she could do different levels of stuns, and she was surprised every time the fire salamanders answered her summons. As for the shield, she had no clue how to invoke it. It just happened.
His face went flat. “Then you can’t teach me. I’ve had two brief experiences with each enhanced ability, but they’ve been spontaneous. I don’t know how to control them.”
“Are you sure Gerhard can’t help?”
Warin shook his head and sighed. “Did he tell you something different? My brother hates not being able to do something I can. Don’t think badly of him if he exaggerated.”
She gave a dismissive shrug. “No problem. But he must know something about your abilities. It would be hard not to, being so close.”
“He knows a little,” Warin admitted. “But as soon as I learned he didn’t share my gifts, I stopped talking about them. It upset him too much. As for being close, we share the same house, but I rarely see him. Once we grew up, our interests went in separate ways.”
“That’s kind of sad.” The words slipped out before Ari thought about them.
He gave her an odd look.
She dropped the topic of Gerhard and instead asked him to describe his experiences with the enhanced fire abilities. He was fairly vague about them, but they seemed to match her own. Shortly afterward, he said he had to leave, and she walked him back to his car. He seemed so discouraged that she thought maybe she’d come back someday, after this was over, and show him how she summoned the fire spirits.
* * *
By the end of the week, Ari was beyond edgy. The passage of time had become a constant irritant.
She’d practiced with the Walther every day and memorized new spells for calling the wind and rain. She’d been able to share her magic with the coven and accept their magic in return—with one restriction: the shared spells must be consistent with the Witches’ Creed. Even small amounts of dark magic, if used as a weapon, were repelled by her own. Ari was secretly relieved. She wouldn’t be tempted to slide into the dark side with her magic’s refusal as a constant reminder. Luckily, teleportation wasn’t considered a weapon.
The big disappointment had come when she’d tried to use the coven’s power to contact Andreas. The gate on his end of their link hadn’t budged. Whatever vampiric power he used to keep it closed had proven more than capable of repelling their witchcraft. But even worse, Andreas would have felt the probe. Yet he’d refused to respond. She’d been in a funk the rest of the evening.
By the next morning, she’d recovered, more determined than ever to find another way.
She was nearly ready with her exit plans, and the foxes should soon be in place. The urge to do something, anything, gnawed at her. On Sunday she and the coven practiced teleporting until they could trigger it with the single word Ari had chosen in a moment of wry humor: good-bye. Their success that afternoon put a smile on everyone’s face.
Late in the evening, Sophie and Ari were setting on her bed talking things over in private, when Samuel called. The foxes were in place. Two of them were inside the O-Seven’s stronghold.
Ari hung up her cell and turned to give Sophie a thumbs up. “I hadn’t mentioned it before, but we have contact with someone on—”
The shrieking of an alarm began.
“Vampires!”
Ari grabbed an M16 from under her bed and raced toward the nearest exit. The back door burst open and vampires poured inside. Ari and the other witches with guns opened fire.
“Out the front,” Sophie shouted.
“Oh my God. They’re everywhere!”
Ari heard the terror in those words and backed up to peek out the front door. Another dozen vampires shimmered into sight in the clearing. “Get out. Get out of the building!” she shouted. “Before they trap us inside.” She continued to fire into the mass of vampire bodies at the back of the cabin, urging the witches to go past her and out the front. The constant torrent of silver bullets kept the vamps from advancing, but the rapid fire held little accuracy for vital spots and the intruders kept recovering to charge again.
When the witches were outside, Ari backed onto the porch, chanting a summons as she went, and slammed the door closed. She dropped the M16 so it dangled by its strap and made a large circle waving both hands. “Come to me!”
Fire poured from her fingers, snaking outward as the fire spirits responded by sealing the edges of the door and streaming over the sides of the building. Window glass shattered as the vampires sought a way to get out, but they were forced to pull back by the threatening flames.
She leaped from the porch and turned her attention to the clearing. Coven members fought in close contact with the vampires, using spells, martial arts skills or machetes, but any witch who got that close to a vampire was in trouble. Unable to use her witch fire or the M16 in such dense combat, Ari began picking off vampires one-by-one with headshots from her Walther. When a group of three came after her, she used witch fire to cut two down, taking out the last one with a knife throw that pierced his brain. She ensured his permanent death with a bullet to the heart.
The witches swarmed over the vampires, swinging machetes, taking several down, when the rest simply shimmered away as if they were on a timer that had run down.
Ari straightened from her one knee firing position. She searched for Sophie on the chaotic battlefield but didn’t see her. “Where’s your priestess?” she asked a young woman.
“Near the firing range when I last saw her.” The witch’s left arm hung limply; blood dripped on the ground from a deep tear.
“Someone get on the phone and get us some medical help,” Ari shouted. “And do it now.” She ripped off her T-shirt and wrapped it around the wound. “Sit down and hold this tight.” The girl’s face was pale with pain and shock, but she followed instructions and used her good hand to hold the makeshift bandage in place. “Someone will be here soon.”
The training grounds in front of the cabin was littered with bodies. Ari walked among them, scanning for any sign of life. Her gut knotted, her eyes misting, at the sight of so many dead and maimed witches. She turned to stare at the building behind her. The fire spirits still covered it, tails lashing, black eyes watching her for orders. The savage beasts inside beat at the windows, raging and cursing.
“Burn,” she said softly.
The fire spirits poured into the building. A few screams, then silence. Ari swallowed any regrets and returned to her search for survivors. There’d been no safe way to capture the vampires, and she couldn’t allow more witches to die trying. The elders’ assassins had earned their deaths the moment they attacked. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t feel the loss of life.
She crossed the field, calling for help if she found an injured witch and confirming the vampire deaths by shots to the head and heart. Coven members worked quickly with machetes and first aid kits, like the well-trained warriors they were.
When she reached the firing range, she spotted Sophie laying in a crumbled heap. Rebekah knelt beside her with a cell phone in her hand.
Ari rushed forward. “Goddess, no. Is she—”
“Dead?” Rebekah finished. She stood to face Ari; her eyes were cold. “No, there’s still a pulse. I called for another ambulance.” She turned to a woman who’d just joined them. “Go out to the main highway and direct the rescue units. And don’t delay. She needs the medics now.”
The witch took off at a run. The mantel of command had temporarily passed and been accepted.
“What can I do to help?” Ari asked.
“I think you’ve helped enough.” Rebekah turned away.
What the hell?
Ari stared at Rebekah’s back.
How was this her fault? She was tempted to confront the new coven leader, but now was hardly the right time. With the high priestess seriously injured and several sisters dead, Rebekah was entitled to some slack.
Ignoring the hostility, Ari squatted by Sophie’s side until the ambulance and two police cars arrived twenty minutes later. As the medics loaded her on a stretcher, the priestess opened her eyes and looked straight at Ari.
“We were betrayed,” Sophie mumbled. Her eyes closed again.
“What do you mean?” Ari gripped the side of the stretcher, but the injured witch had lapsed into semi-consciousness.
“She won’t be telling you anything for a while,” one of the medics said. “She’s had a lot of blood loss, and there are signs of internal bleeding.” They loaded two more witches suffering from multiple fractures; the ambulance and a police escort left with lights flashing.
The officers from the second police car stayed another five minutes, talking with Rebekah and taking notes. Then they drove away.
Ari glared after the police vehicle with her hands on her hips. “Is that it?” she asked Greta, who stood nearby. “They just take a report and leave?”
Greta shrugged. “What would you have them do? They’re human. They can’t fight the vampires. The police get swamped with reports, but unless humans are killed, they pretty much leave the problem to us.”
Holy crap! So they just got away with it? Five witches were dead; three hospitalized. “Will the Witches’ League do something?”
“There will be a raid against some of the smaller vampire nests, and we’ll step up patrols. At least we got more of them than they did of us.”
Cold comfort. Ari frowned, sickened by the constant death that led to Greta’s calm acceptance.
While the coven went efficiently about the business of disposing of the vampire remnants in the clearing, sweeping out the ashes from inside the building, and caring for their own dead in near silence, Ari helped where she could. Representatives from other covens started to arrive, and finally the mourning rituals began.
The chanting and candle-burning continued throughout the night. The dead witches were buried at dawn. As soon as everyone returned from the burial, most of the visitors departed and Sophie’s coven began to pack.
Ari found Rebekah boxing the contents of the kitchen pantry. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know where you’re going, but I’ve arranged for the rest of us to stay with another coven. This camp is no longer safe, and we are too few to defend it.
You
brought the vampires here.” Rebekah set down the jars and stood with her feet apart, her jaw set.
“Me? Why would you say that? Aren’t you attacked by vampires all the time?”
“Not like this. One or two lone vampires lurking in the woods or occasionally a group will test our barriers. But not two major breaches this close together. And we’ve never had them teleport. Only since you’ve been here. You’re drawing them to us.” The room grew quiet as Rebekah’s voice rose. “It’s time you left before you get us all killed.”
The other witches whispered among themselves, and Greta spoke up. “But Sophistrina said—”
Rebekah’s eyes flashed. “She’s not here now. I am. Until she returns—
if
she returns—you will listen to me.”
“It’s OK.” Ari shifted uncomfortably, fighting her own sense of outrage. “I didn’t come here to cause trouble for you. I’ll pack my things.”
Rebekah relented a little. “We’ll take you wherever you want to go, but we’re in no shape to offer you any help against the O-Seven. I have to think of our coven first.”
“I understand.” Ari headed for her cot in the guest room. Like hell, she did. What about her plans? What about Andreas?
Greta followed her. “I’m sorry. She’s just upset.”