“Go away,” Santiago shouted as the steel door shuddered beneath the impact of Styx’s size-sixteen boot. There was another shudder, before the cement above the door began to crack and buckle.
Roke.
It had to be.
There was no other vampire who had his particular effect on physical structures. The powerful vampire was a walking, talking (okay, not so much the talking) earthquake machine.
“Dammit, go away,” he shouted again, sensing Gaius’s seething anticipation.
“Santiago, what the hell is going on?” Styx called through the door, his own power making the lights flicker.
Another crack appeared along the side of the door, making Santiago curse at Roke’s persistence.
He had to keep them out of the room. Gaius wouldn’t dare take one of them as a host when it might mean he was trapped on the other side with no way to reach Sally or the book.
He glanced toward the witch, who was studying the crumbling wall with an odd expression.
“Do you have a phone?” he demanded.
She blinked, glancing down at her clinging outfit that clearly had no place to hide the clichéd thin dime let alone a phone. Thankfully she resisted the urge to point out the obvious, and instead caught him off-guard when she squared her shoulders and tilted her chin. “I can reach them.”
He frowned. “A spell . . . oh shit.” He blinked in shock as she turned her arm over to reveal the distinctive tattoo that crawled beneath the skin of her inner forearm. “Who?”
A blush touched her cheeks. “Roke.”
Taciturn, I-am-an-island-so-don’t-screw-with-me Roke mated with a witch?
Fairly certain the entire world had gone mad, Santiago gave a nod of his head. “Warn them to back off.”
“I’ll try.” She rolled her eyes as yet another crack appeared. “They haven’t listened to me yet.”
Trusting that the witch could convince the vampires to halt their assault on the door, not to mention Roke’s seeming determination to bring the roof down on their heads, Santiago turned back to Gaius.
He hid his stab of shock as he realized that Gaius was a shade paler and several pounds frailer. Mierda. Even his hair was beginning to fall out.
Like he was a dog with mange.
“What’s in the book?” he rasped, resisting the urge to reach up and make sure his own hair wasn’t beginning to shed.
Surely he would sense if the book was starting to make him rot?
With a slow, deliberate motion Gaius turned back to study him with his glowing gaze. “Do you know who I am?”
Santiago shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care.”
“There are some who claim I’m your god,” the creature informed him with an arrogance that he’d clearly bestowed on his children. “Without me you would never have existed.”
Santiago was sublimely unimpressed. “God or not, we’ve done just fine without you for the past few millennia,” he mocked.
“Not without me—I’ve been sleeping,” the creature corrected him. “But what if you destroy me?”
“Can a god be destroyed?” Santiago demanded with a lift of his brows.
There was a low hiss. “The Dark Lord proved it’s possible.”
Santiago made a sound of disgust. “He was never a true god.”
“Maybe not to you.”
“And neither are you.”
There was a calculating pause as Gaius no doubt considered the best way to manipulate Santiago into destroying the witch. The fact he wasn’t using his ability to provoke Santiago into a bloodlust spoke volumes about the power of the book.
“But I am your creator,” he at last said, his voice the dry hiss of a viper. “Can you be certain that my end won’t also be the end of all vampires?”
No. He couldn’t be certain.
Which was precisely why he wasn’t going to let himself consider the possibility.
For now he wasn’t going to concentrate on anything beyond destroying this monster and getting Nefri safely back to his lair.
“Sally.”
He could smell the female’s terror, but with an admirable display of courage, she moved to stand at his side.
Maybe Roke hadn’t completely lost his mind in choosing this female.
“What?”
He slid a questioning glance in her direction. “Can you get the book?”
She chewed her bottom lip. “I’m not sure.”
“I told you, only her death can break the spell,” Gaius snarled, the glow from his eyes filling the room with a malignant light. “If you’re truly determined to get your hands on the book, then you’ll have to kill her.”
Santiago refused to allow his gaze to waver from the witch’s youthful face. “Sally?”
She was shivering, but with a grim determination she studied the hole in the wall, as if she were actually able to see the strands of magic woven around the opening.
“If it’s sorcery, then it can’t be broken by magic.”
“Kill her, Santiago,” Gaius commanded, weakly attempting to stir Santiago’s fear. “She’s a danger to Nefri.”
Sally lifted her hand, her breath hissing between her teeth as she sent Santiago a startled glance.
“What is it?” he asked.
“When I was considering how to get the book, I assumed it was guarded by a spell.”
“And now?”
“If it’s sorcery, then it can’t be broken, but it can be—”
“Don’t listen to her,” Gaius sharply interrupted her. “She’s a witch, my son. Her very essence is a lie.”
Santiago ignored the disruption. “Can be what?” he pressed.
“Manipulated.”
“Listen to me, Santiago,” Gaius tried again to twist Santiago’s emotions. “She was created by the Oracles to destroy me.” He lifted a feeble hand. “To destroy us.”
If anyone had told Sally that one day she would play the role of hero (or was it heroine?) she would have laughed until she peed her pants.
All she wanted was to lay low and keep her head buried in the sand when bad things were happening.
Even her days as the conduit for the Dark Lord had been nothing more than a desperate attempt to survive. She certainly hadn’t drunk the Kool-Aid, and the minute she had the opportunity she’d given up all ties to her former allies.
Now, however, laying low wasn’t an option. Which meant that she had to somehow figure out a way to manipulate the sorcery spell while keeping the vampire that was pinned to the wall from sensing her considerable power.
She didn’t doubt for a second that the nasty creature would do whatever was necessary to stop her if he realized she might actually be one of the few witches alive today capable of gaining command of the spell.
Not vanity, just the simple truth.
“You keep changing your story,” she accused the creepy vampire even as she tentatively opened a small crack in her magical barriers. Barriers she’d created and kept wrapped around herself since she’d nearly been killed by her mother. Nothing like a near filicide to keep a girl on her toes. “First you said I was born from a long line of witches to protect the book and now you claim I was created by the Oracles to destroy vampires.”
“The Oracles created the first witches, you stupid bitch,” the creature growled.
Against her will she found her attention captured by his claim. Was it true? Had witches truly been created by the Oracles or was this man just a raving lunatic?
Allowing a part of her mind to concentrate on unraveling the complex weaves, she sent the vampire a puzzled glance. “Created to kill vampires?”
The glowing eyes were turned in her direction, but Sally didn’t have a clue if he could actually see with them. Not that it mattered. If he was like any other vampire, then his senses would be acute enough to pinpoint a roach a mile away even if he was blind.
“To contain me and mute our powers.” He spoke the words with the certainty of a true believer.
Right or wrong, he was convinced that witches had been created by the Oracles as some sort of weapon against vampires.
Sally frowned. “Why would they create an entire species to contain you?”
“They were jealous of my powers,” he said without hesitation. “They wanted me dead, but they dared not kill a god. The best they could do was lock me away with their pathetic magic.”
She grimaced; Sally was beginning to suspect that she’d grossly overestimated her skills as she realized that the web of magic was more than one spell. It was as if sorcery had taken the incantation of the thirteen witches and used each one to layer the spells one on top of the other. So it wasn’t thirteen times stronger, but thirteen to the thirteenth power.
On top of that, now that she’d actually opened her barriers she could feel her connection to the damned thing.
Maybe the creature was right.
Maybe she had been called by the book to travel to this location at this exact time.
Weirder things had happened.
“Not so pathetic,” she muttered.
Easily sensing her dismay, Santiago took a step toward her. “Sally,” he prompted.
