Decision made, I started running again, listening hard to determine if my stalker was keeping up. He was, from the faint footfalls, but much slower. The tunnel began to slope downward, taking me deeper belowground. Fear started to chew its way up my spine because the only light I now saw came from my whip. The glow from Vlad’s flames was gone, and there was no sight or sound from him. It was as if the dungeon had swallowed him.
The thought made me run faster, bringing me to the open door at the end of the tunnel. I dashed through it—and then stopped in surprise. Vlad was still nowhere in sight, but a five-thousand-foot antechamber spread before me, with multiple entrances to other passages showing that this wasn’t the end of the dungeon. It was the beginning.
Survival mode kicked in and I darted away from the entrance. I wasn’t about to make myself a stationary target for my stalker, who, from the barely perceptible sounds, was still coming down the tunnel after me. Aside from the staggering size of the dungeon, I was also surprised by the hundreds of small holes that dotted the right side of the antechamber. They extended all the way to the ceiling, which had to be thirty feet high. The layout reminded me of an odd stone honeycomb and I figured they had been storage compartments until I saw the rotted wood and bones that lined them. Then I understood.
These weren’t storage compartments. They were cells, and the tiny, cramped spaces made the worst cells in Vlad’s dungeon look like suites by comparison. I shuddered, keeping my right hand close to my side. What those poor prisoners went through might break my mind if I touched an essence trail down here.
Footsteps sounded outside the tunnel entrance. I crouched down, coiling my whip in readiness. I snapped it as soon as my mysterious stalker walked into the antechamber, but he leapt back with exceptional speed, avoiding its entire deadly length.
“Wait,” he said when I raised my hand again.
I did, more to repower the whip than to be obedient. He’d moved faster than anticipated, so I’d need a longer reach.
The glow my whip gave off cast a soft white light on the stranger’s face, making him easy to recognize. He was the passenger from my earlier glimpse of Szilagyi in the car, but that glimpse hadn’t done him justice. In fact, it was a toss-up as to which was more striking: his youth or his looks. He couldn’t have been much older than eighteen when he was changed. Curly black hair framed a face that would send Abercrombie and Fitch advertisers running for their checkbooks, and full yet masculine lips turned up in a smile that accented sky-high cheekbones. The only other person I’d seen with such flawless, beautiful features was Bones, the vampire Vlad disliked so much.
I stared at him to buy time while my whip recharged, but the stranger obviously thought I did it out of admiration. Copper-colored eyes regarded me with amusement.
“Don’t worry, this happens all the time,” he said, waving a hand with a think nothing of it gesture. “Leila, isn’t it?”
His accent wasn’t just Romanian; it was ancient Romanian, like Vlad’s. That alone had me pegging him to be at least a few hundred years old, and the powerful vibes from his aura confirmed that. No matter how young and pretty he looked, this was no pushover in the vampire world.
“Leila,” I agreed, moving closer. “And you are?”
He smiled almost impishly. “Don’t you know who I am?”
Scraping sounds filled the right side of the antechamber. My first instinct was to look, but I forced myself not to take my eyes off the boy. He wasn’t going to trick me into missing my shot at him. If I could just get him to move a couple feet closer . . .
Countless forms suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision and made me jerk my head to the right. I intended it to only be a quick look, but then I couldn’t stop myself from staring and I instinctively recoiled until my back was pressed against the wall.
Fully formed walking skeletons filled the side of the antechamber. Right before my stunned gaze, more continued to form from the piles of bones in the honeycomb cells before jumping down to join the rest of the horde. I blinked to clear my vision, but the impossible sight didn’t change. Had I accidentally touched something with my right hand? Was I reliving a hallucination from one of the dungeon’s insane former prisoners?
No, I decided as those horrible skeletons began to smash into me with more force than any pile of bones should have. This was real.
Don’t you know who I am? the grinning boy had asked.
I did now. He was the necromancer, and to prove it, the master of the dead was showing off some of his skills.
The skeletons swarmed me en masse, dragging me onto the floor with bony fingers that stabbed at me like dull knives. They hemmed me in so much that I didn’t have room to strike with my whip, so I began to punch, kick, and head-butt them as I tried to get away. Bones smashed and flew from my assault, but what the skeletons lacked in durability, they made up for in numbers, and I was grimly aware of the other danger they posed.
Distraction.
I couldn’t see the necromancer anymore. For all I knew, he was climbing up one of the rows of cells to drop down on me like a lethal spider. Worse, if I was fighting skeletons, then I wasn’t helping Vlad. Where was he? Was he dealing with other supernatural tricks from the necromancer? Or had Szilagyi and whoever else he had down here proved to be a greater danger?
“You have more lives than a cat, you know.”
The necromancer raised his voice to be heard above the sounds of multiple bones smashing. From it, I gauged that he was still near the tunnel we’d used to enter the antechamber. I wanted to keep him talking, so I yelled out, “How so?”
“No one has survived two of my spells before, though to be fair, Cynthiana cast the first one. Such an eager student. I was sorry to lose her.”
“We should have known she had a teacher,” I shouted. “She went from ineffective love spells with flowers to killing a baby for a fireproofing spell.”
My last word was cut off when one of the skeletons scored a direct head shot. Solid, regenerated bone made it feel like a bowling ball had just smashed into my cranium. A few more blows like that could knock me out, then they’d probably rip my head off before I regained consciousness. I switched tactics and quit trying to make it back onto my feet. Instead, I streamlined my body and kicked off the wall, cutting through a forest of bony legs with my whip as I slid across the stone floor.
“That fireproofing spell was yours, too, wasn’t it?” I yelled as I continued to clear a path with my whip.
“Of course,” the necromancer replied. “The only reason I didn’t cast it myself was to avoid you using your abilities to find out about me the same way you did with Cynthiana.”
Speed and the chainsaw-like effect of my whip had me almost to the other side of the antechamber, where there were the fewest skeletons. I was battered and bruised, but that would fade as soon as I quit getting new injuries. If I quit getting new injuries, that was.
Why hadn’t the necromancer taken advantage of the skeleton attack to charge me? Was he that wary of my whip? Or was he gearing up for something worse? He’d bound his suicide-compelling spell into my very flesh. What if his delay was because he was doing something to reactivate it?
I lashed at the skeletal horde with more desperation. I hadn’t brought any weapons with me because I hadn’t wanted to risk using one on myself, but this whip was more than enough to do the job. If I wrapped it around my neck and pulled hard enough, my head would come off.
Twin flashes of green briefly shone through the skeletons that raced over to continue their attack on me. I recognized it as the glow from the necromancer’s eyes. He was coming closer.
I sought to find a way out, but my options were grim. I wasn’t naïve enough to expect someone to appear and rescue me, so I couldn’t wait this out. Even if I made it to one of the many tunnel entrances around the antechamber, the skeletons would chase me. Then I’d be trying to fight them off in a narrow space instead of a large one, which would give them the advantage. If the tunnel I cho
se led to a dead end or a prison cell, then the necromancer wouldn’t have to bother with reactivating the spell. I’d be trapped, so the skeletons could rip me to pieces at their leisure.
No, I realized with a surge of determination, if I wanted to leave this antechamber alive, I had to find a way to kill the necromancer first.
Chapter 35
Decision made, I stopped using my whip to slash at the skeletons. Doing so was only draining my energy and either the antechamber had an endless supply of bones or the necromancer kept regenerating the skeletons I cut down. Instead, I curled my whip back into my hand, hoping the necromancer would think I’d used up my electrical defenses. Then I focused on protecting myself while using the walls as springboards to slide away from the skeletons. That only afforded me a few seconds’ respite until they swarmed me again, but maybe that would be enough.
Without my whip lighting up the room, the emerald glow from the necromancer’s eyes was easier to spot. He seemed to be circling me, not getting too close, but obviously up to something or he could have picked a comfy spot somewhere to sit and watch. The skeletons parted around him wherever he went, reminding me of how the Remnants had acted with Cat. Come on, get close enough to make your move, I silently urged him. Then I could make mine.
When minutes went by but he did nothing except continue to circle me, I decided to make myself look like more of an appealing target. With that, my head snapped back as if I’d been struck by a skeleton’s skull with one those brain-bashing blows. I sold it so well that the movement caused me to smash the back of my head against the bony cranium of one of my nearest attackers. Despite the instant sear of pain, it wasn’t enough to knock me unconscious, but I pretended that it was, going limp on the stone floor.
I braced for sudden, urgent defense if one of the skeletons grabbed my head with decapitation intentions. None of them did. In fact, the entire attack stopped, which struck me as odd until I heard the scrape of bones on rock and realized that they were parting to let the necromancer through. I kept my eyes closed and my mouth slack, but every cell in my body felt like it vibrated as I forced electricity into my hand while still keeping the whip beneath my skin. With vampire healing, the necromancer would expect me to regain consciousness in a few seconds, giving me only between now and then to make my move.
Please, let him be close enough, I found myself praying.
When I felt the tingling power of his aura, I opened my eyes and snapped my wrist. The whip shot out, the energy I’d willed into it making sparks fly from it as it arced toward the necromancer. He leapt back with incredible speed, avoiding the killing strike it should have been. Instead of cleaving his upper body in half, the whip sliced him from throat to chest in a long, shallow cut.
The scream that escaped me wasn’t just of disappointment. Pain flared along my upper body in a sizzling arc. My left hand instinctively flew to cover the wound, but when I touched my chest, expecting to feel a knife or other weapon protruding, nothing was there. A glance down didn’t reveal the source of the injury, either. It just showed a bloody slice from neck to breast, as though I’d been hacked at by an invisible machete . . .
I looked at the necromancer. In the unguarded instant when his eyes met mine and I read the strangest sort of terror in their coppery-hued depths, an explanation flashed through my mind. It can’t be, I immediately thought, rejecting the notion. Then I remembered Mencheres explaining why he couldn’t break the spell that had caused me to nearly kill myself.
Whoever cast it must have bound it flesh to flesh and blood to blood. Since you are a vampire, that is more than magic; it’s necromancy . . . The spell was set with your flesh and blood as well as the necromancer’s . . .
We’d considered that to be a good thing because then the death of the necromancer could break it, too, but what if there was another ramification to our flesh and blood being supernaturally bound together?
Before the necromancer could guess my intention, I grabbed one of bones I’d knocked off a reanimated skeleton and raked the ragged end across my face. The necromancer yelped as his cheek opened up in exactly same spot.
“Oh, shit,” I breathed, and the truth was so mind-bending that I couldn’t stop myself from testing it again.
“Stop it,” he said curtly when I sliced open my arm and his skin split to the bone as though I’d done it to him, too.
“So this is why you didn’t kill me during your B-movie attack with the skeletons!” I said in amazement. “You wanted me too distracted to help Vlad, but not really hurt because whatever happened to me would happen to you, too! But then why would you cast a spell that did this if it was also supposed to make me commit suicide?”
“Because you shouldn’t have lived long enough for it to bind us together this way,” he snapped. “I was protected from the first destruction of your flesh, which was supposed to be the last because no one’s survived this spell before. Then you kept destroying and regenerating your flesh, making the part that was meant to protect me bind us tighter together instead. Now, I feel it every morning when that crazy fucker you married burns you!”
I couldn’t help it—I laughed with demented amusement. After all the backfiring I’d experienced with my abilities, the necromancer’s spell biting him in the ass in such a stupendous way was the most hilarious thing I’d heard all month.
“You think that’s funny?” he said, his tone scathing. “Let’s see how amused you are when you have to beg your revenge-obsessed husband for my life. Do you think he loves you enough not to kill me? I don’t, so we both need to leave here, now.”
Then again, maybe it wasn’t so funny, I reflected, my laughter fading away. We’d counted on the necromancer’s death to break the spell over me, but if every wound on him was mirrored on me, then he was right. Killing him would mean my death, too. Frustration filled me. What were we supposed to do? Resign ourselves to battling my suicide attempts for the rest of my life? Tell the necromancer to take care of himself while escorting him safely out of the underground dungeon?
The walls suddenly shook with a violent tremor and the scent of smoke filled the antechamber. Bombs, I thought, the pitching ground and charred stench nauseatingly reminiscent of Szilagyi’s attack on the castle. Had they rigged the underground dungeon with the same kind of explosives, too?
The necromancer’s scowl vanished. “So Vlad has reached the section where Szilagyi is. If he blasts through it to get to him, he’ll find out how many other surprises we have in store.”
As if to punctuate that, a roar echoed through the dungeon, followed by the scald of agony and rage across my emotions. Vlad wasn’t close, but he was still down here, and whatever had caused the walls to shake had hurt him, too. More pain was coming, if the necromancer was correct, and Vlad had already suffered too much in this underground nightmare.
Vice versa, I reminded myself, my gaze glinting as I stared at the sorcerer. If I was forced to make sure that he stayed alive, he was forced to do the same with me, which meant that I had a large bargaining chip to use.
“You’re going to tell Vlad how to avoid your traps,” I told the necromancer.
He looked at me as if he couldn’t have heard me correctly, and then he laughed. “No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, coiling my electrical whip around my own throat. “Or I’m going to do something that will make you really, really sorry.”
Chapter 36
I followed the necromancer down the tunnel, holding the end of the whip in my left hand. My right hand was still resting on my collarbone, and the glowing whip circled my neck like a large dazzling piece of jewelry. The necromancer walked in front of me, the boomeranged effects from my whip showing in the red welts around his throat. My flesh might be immune to the effects of electricity, but his wasn’t. He kept tugging his shirt collar down, as if it that would alleviate the burning constriction around his throat.
“Stop this foolishness,” he said, speaking for the first time in several minutes. “
You won’t kill yourself, Leila. You don’t want to die any more than I do.”
“Ready to bet your life on that?” I said evenly. “Then prepare to be amazed at what I’ll do to protect Vlad. Don’t worry, if you do what I told you to, you’ll be fine . . . unless the suicidal urge you embedded into this spell rears its head and causes me to do something unfortunate to both of us.”
“I already dulled that aspect of it days ago,” he snapped, then stopped as if realizing that he’d revealed too much.
Good to know, I thought coolly. “Well, we’ll just stick to the part where I’ll take myself out to kill you if one of your evil little booby traps ends up murdering my husband.”
Vlad was still alive at the moment. I knew it from the geysers of rage blasting across my subconscious, with worrying amounts of pain thrown in with increasing frequency. When an orange glow began to light the tunnel ahead of us and I could feel Vlad’s power spilling over my skin in invisible waves, I kicked the necromancer to get him to move him faster.
“Stop it,” he growled.
“Or what, you’ll kill me?” Impatience made me snippy. “Been there, tried that, remember?”
He muttered something in a language I didn’t understand. It could have been harmless comments about what a bitch I was, but I didn’t want to run the risk of it being a new spell.
“English only,” I said, tightening the whip around my neck in warning. A fresh red line appeared on his throat.
He turned around to glare at me. “Want it in English? Fine. You’re the bastard daughter of a diseased whore.”
I snorted. “Have to give it to you older vamps. Your insults are much more colorful than my generation’s variations on ‘fuck you, you fucking fuck.’”
“Oh, you like that?” he purred. “How about this? I laughed when I saw those videos of you being fucked and skinned. I only wondered why Mihaly didn’t have both happen at the same time.”