Chains of Frost: The Bellum Sisters 1 (2 page)

Chloe scooted next to her sister
and wrapped an arm around her. “These came directly from Papa’s lawyer, Ron.
We’ve known him since we were kids and Papa trusted him. Plus, this is Papa’s
handwriting and the will sounded just like him.”

“All proper and stiff,” Lily
agreed with a sniffle. She stood and moved to the other side of Willow; each of
them put an arm around the other.

“Does anyone here want to abide
by the will and do what Papa wished?”

Willow scoffed. “And be
practically sold to some man we don’t know? No thanks.”

Chloe grimaced, she never could
express her thoughts the way Willow did—with a punch and a bite, but Willow
always said what she was thinking. Lily simply shrugged, looking contemplative.

Chloe shook her head. “I know
this is apparently what Papa wanted, but I am not just going to give myself to
some strange man because he said so in his will.”

None of this made sense.
Throughout history, succubi have been a patriarchal race. But their father
strove to change that. In other succubus families, it was expected that if the
head of the household—always the man—died then all females in his family were
to be given to a man. Sometimes a brother became head of household, but in some
cases where there was no living male relative, the females were given away to a
man through a will. As Papa just did.

The succubi called it the
Protector. A man whom they would use to feed off of and were supposed to obey
in all respects.

Though why
he
did
something like this after all the efforts he went through to make each of his
daughters strong independent women free of men made zero sense. And he expected
them to
breed
with the men they didn’t know. This was not the Papa whom
Chloe knew and loved.

“Why did Papa have to die now?
Why did all of this have to happen now when your 29th birthday is only two days
away? It’s too much. First Papa, then this. I don’t think I can stand it.” The
pain in Lily’s voice brought a heavy weight to Chloe’s chest. She was right. On
the 29th year of a succubus’ life, everything changed forever. The females
peaked into full sexual maturity and from then on required sex to survive, no
longer food.

Chloe had been dreading her 29th
birthday her entire life.

“Listen, if we don’t want to go
with some men that we don’t know then I say we don’t. Besides, these men know
nothing about us or even about this situation, probably. So I doubt they’ll be
here knocking at our door on our birthday.”

Lily started pacing while wearing
a determined look on her face. When this woman started planning, great things
happened. Suddenly she whirled toward them and clapped her hands. “I’ve got it.
We’ll do a spell.”

“We aren’t strong enough to do
the kind of spell it would take to ward off three powerful men,” Willow said.
Succubi had some magical abilities in the form of spell casting; however, it
was rarely good enough to knock a broom over by staring at it.

Lily’s eyes gleamed. “That’s
where you’re wrong, sista. Tomorrow is All Hallow’s Eve—the day on which magic
is greater—more powerful
—t
han
any other day on Earth. If all three of us perform a spell to keep the men away,
then we may actually have a chance.”

The more Chloe thought about it,
the greater the idea seemed. Really, what did any of them stand to lose?
Besides her independence to some horrible, woman-killer man. No, not a man. A
vampire! What on Earth had her Papa been thinking when he made that will?

“Lily, is it true that magic is
more powerful along the Prime Meridian?” asked Chloe.

“Absolutely! We should go there
to perform the spell.” Lily’s eyes lit up with excitement. She went across the
study and grabbed a globe from next to Papa’s desk. Chloe remembered so many
nights seeing her father at his desk working and writing for hours on end. God,
she missed him so much already.

“Here it is,” Lily said
excitedly. “The Prime Meridian goes from the Arctic all way down to Antarctica.
Along the way it goes through England, France, Spain, and several countries in
Africa.”

Chloe looked at each of her
sisters. They each wore evil, excited smiles that mirrored hers. Rubbing her
hands together she said, “Well, ladies, it looks like we’re headed to Europe.
Lily, you gather everything that we’ll need to do the spell. Willow, you order
the plane tickets for…immediately.”

“And what are you going to do?”
Willow asked.

“Try to come up with Plan B in
case this spell doesn’t work.”

“Don’t worry about it. I already
got it figured out.” Willow shrugged, a cocky grin on her mouth. That grin had
taunted and bested many people in Willow’s life. “We’ll run.”

The thought of running away from
Commander Tyrian en Kulev sounded great. Though, Chloe had a deep feeling that
this man would find her easily. And she definitely didn’t want to be found by a
man like him—the leader of the most vicious and renowned warriors in the world.

Chapter Two

October
30

Chloe found a spot to spread out
their blanket behind a copse of barren trees that had lost their leaves with
the onslaught of autumn. As she whipped out the blanket, her gaze fixated on
the small statue of the Mother Mary that sat upon a short pillar overlooking a
gravestone. She eyed the gravestone to make sure no undead thing was coming out
to get her, then plopped down on the plaid blanket.

Being in a cemetery at night was
not her idea of a good time. She’d much rather be out dancing or flirting with the
cute bartender she worked with.

“Hurry up, you guys,” she hissed
in a loud whisper. Willow and Lily both groaned then started setting down their
supplies. Lily carried a wicker basket that held candles, herbs, a lighter, and
the spell, while Willow carried a backpack filled with, as she called it, ‘emergency
supplies.’ Willow always carried that pack with her as if at any moment she was
ready to take off.

“I’ve got the creeps being out
here. Are we even allowed to be out here at night?”

Both sisters looked around, then
shrugged.

Lily said, “It’s possible that
England has some laws on this, so let’s just do this quickly and quietly.”

“Sounds good to me,” Willow
muttered. Lily lit a thick rope of sage and waved it in the air while she and
Willow started lighting white and red candles in a circle around them.

“Let’s do this before the wind
picks up.” What she said was half a lie. She didn’t want the wind to pick up,
but actually her gut was telling her something bad was going to happen. It was
that same I-might-possibly-hurl feeling she’d had when she read the will two
days before, only worse. Much worse.

Lily handed them each a small
square of paper with some gibberish written on it. “What is this?”

Her younger sister, Lily, always
had more of a gift for magic and spell craft than either she or Willow, but
since when did she start writing stuff in non-English?

“Don’t worry about it. I wrote it
out phonetically from Sumerian so you’ll be able to pronounce it.”

“Sumerian?” Chloe couldn’t hide
her disbelief. The spells they did always required one language—English. She
knew she didn’t know squat about Sumeria or Sumerians and neither did Lily.
“Lily, where did you get this?”

She rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Listen, we aren’t very powerful, but performing this spell on the Prime
Meridian at midnight, which is the Witching Hour, and speaking in an ancient
language will only help our chances of making a successful cast.” Chloe and
Willow exchanged doubtful glances.

“If you say so, Lily. Are we
reading these all at the same time?” That stupid, hollow yet heavy feeling was
still there in her gut. She put a hand over it to try to settle it. Nerves and
worry, that’s all it was.

“No, each part is different.
Since Chloe’s the eldest she’ll go first, then you, Willow, and I’ll go last.
While the person is speaking the others should hum, and then when we’re all
done we’ll leave the candles and the sage to burn completely down.”

“What if the wind blows it out?” asked
Chloe.

Lily sighed loudly and threw up
her hands in the air. “I don’t know then, Chloe. I suppose if you want to stay
here all night and keep relighting them then go ahead, but I plan on getting
some sleep tonight.”

“Fine, fine. Let’s get this over
with. I have a bad feeling.” Willow and Lily cut her a hard look.

“You do?” asked Willow.

“Since when?” asked Lily.

Chloe sighed and wished like hell
that she hadn’t opened her mouth. Her sisters never took ‘senses’ lightly.

“It’s nothing, just a belly
ache.” The both looked at her as if they didn’t believe her. “Listen, I’m just
nervous, okay? How would you feel if you knew you were to be given to a cold-hearted
killer vampire man? It’s like some horrible nightmare where I’m living in the
1400s and have no worth other than my ability to have children.” She shivered
hard while her sisters smirked at each other.

“We do know what it feels like.
That’s why we’re here. Listen, let’s do this, but if it’s more than nerves,
then you need to tell us,” Lily said.

Chloe did feel like there was
more to it than what she’d said, but she wasn’t going to say so. She didn’t
like lying to her sisters, but honestly, there was nothing any of them could do
about it. And maybe she just had food poisoning or something.

One errant thought kept floating
around in her mind. If this spell didn’t work, then they were all royally
screwed. They couldn’t fail. This had to be perfect. This spell
had
to
work.

“Go ahead and start, Chloe.
Remember when she’s done you go, Willow.”

The wind seemed to calm around
them as Chloe lifted the small square piece of paper with the spell written on
it. The candles stopped dancing in the night and stood straighter, brighter as
if asking her to read aloud the passage.

“Wait, before I start, what does
it mean?”

Lily looked up from her own
paper. “It means ‘Let no man take me. Let no man keep me. Let me choose the man
who will take me or else he will never keep me.’ Something like that, though
trying to translate all that into a dead language was difficult. I think I
managed it pretty well.”

Chloe let out a deep, unsteady
breath. Well, here goes nothing. Her sisters started to hum and the candles lit
up even more brightly. Chloe squeezed her arm tighter around her stomach and
read the strange words aloud.

“Eengurra Kading gir Gibil
Zi Ding’er Kia
Kanpa!
Eengurra Feerana jobe! Eengurra Ha’zin tia heteo!
”
Her words were
barely above a whisper.

Chloe winced, closing
her eyes as she waited for something to happen. Slowly she popped open one eye
then the other. When all she heard was the sound of her sister’s humming, she
relaxed.

Willow spoke next. Her words were
different in a few areas. Her voice sounded even huskier than usual as she read
the old, strange language. When she finished, Chloe heard a scraping noise,
like a person scratching their nails on a slab of wood. Spinning her head
around, she squinted into the night, still humming, yet trying to hear. The sound
disappeared.

Lily started on her part. Her
words were soft and light as always. She somehow managed to make the old words
sound beautiful like a song.

As the last word floated
gracefully into the night air, Lily nodded at them. They stood and grabbed the
remainder of their belongings, leaving the candles lit and the sage burning in
an incense bowl. It looked like offerings left to the dead.

They were silent as they headed
away as if speaking a single word would ruin the effect of the spell or bring something
horrible about. Or at least that’s what Chloe’s gut was telling her.

The pain in her stomach suddenly
spiked. The ground started shaking under her feet as if a stampede of cows was
coming. Chloe squealed and went tumbling down to the ground with her sisters.

“What the hell was that?” Willow asked,
eyes wide.

Chloe had no time to answer
because a horrible, ear-piercing rumble escaped from the ground. That horrible
feeling that had been sitting in her gut just got a whole lot worse. Chloe
reached for her sisters’ hands, holding tightly as she stared at their
candle-lit blanket.

The earth shook like a giant was
moving a mountain, making her vision blur and her legs give out on her. She fell
back on her butt but stared harder at the blanket.

Something was there.

She faintly heard Lily screaming
and yet Chloe could still barely hear her over the tremendous roar coming from
the ground. Someone tugged at her hands, but she fought them. She had to see.
Then two hands were pulling at her, trying to pull her backward, away from
where she needed to see. No! She fought them with a desperation that surprised
her. This was what her gut had been warning her about.