SovereignsChoice (23 page)

“So she’s a pregnant unwed mother who needs
my support.” Lexy looks sympathetic. “Now I get it. Poor thing.”

“It’s very sad.” The co-ed looks as if she
might actually start crying. “I’m glad you understand.”

“Of course I understand—I’m not a Republican.”
Lexy pats her arm. “Unfortunately, my democratic ass is completely broke. So
I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to support Sheba. Unless, of
course, her baby-daddy shows up. Maybe he could get a job and bring home the bacon
for a while.” She looks at the co-ed seriously. “
Do
tigers eat bacon?”

“No, but—”

“Excuse me, Ms. Krist. I’ve got a whole
different animal I think you might be interested in. Right in my fucking
pants.”

A musky, animalistic odor assaults my nose just
as the deep voice snarls in my ear. I jump in surprise and start to turn but
I’m already being held fast in two hard hands. The speaker turns me to face him
and I see the slotted yellow eyes of a goat.

“Hello, Emma,” Emilio Sanchez grates,
grinning at me. “Long time no see.”

I open my mouth to scream but Sanchez has a
meaty palm slapped over my lips before I can make so much as a whimper. I want
to gag at the gamey smell of his hand but I try to bite him anyway. Before I
taste blood, he yanks his hand away and backhands me. My head rocks back and I
see stars exploding in my field of vision as pain blooms across my cheek. I
stagger backward but the satyr catches me by the elbow and drags me back up. He
pulls out a roll of duct tape and slaps a thick piece over my mouth while I’m
still stunned.

“Figure that oughta shut you up for a
little while, girlie,” he mutters in my ear and proceeds to tape my wrists
together too. “Don’t know why you’re so surprised. I brought you the warning
this day was coming, straight from the Council itself. Didn’t you get the message?”

The message… He must mean the cryptic quote
in the cardboard box he delivered to me. My head is aching and the world around
me is reeling but from the corner of my eye, I see that Lexy has been similarly
bound and gagged by another satyr. The save-the-tigers co-ed is long gone. I
have a faint hope that she might have run to fetch the campus police…but then I
see her body, facedown on the ground.

“She’ll wake up eventually,” Sanchez
grunts, nudging her with the steel toe of his work boot. “The Council said no
witnesses—wipe her, Grant.”

I look on in amazement as a man who is clearly
a warlock bends down and presses the tips of two fingers to the unconscious
co-ed’s temple. He murmurs a forgetfulness spell and I know when she wakes up
she’ll have nothing but a headache and no memory of what happened.

Male witches are rare and I thought I knew
most of them in the community but this warlock is new. Why is he working with a
satyr against his own kind? And what do they want from me? I stare at Sanchez uncertainly,
looking for clues, trying to figure this out. As always whenever I’m near him I
smell burning, hear crying. This time I don’t try to shut it out. I reach for
the memory, wondering why it seems so familiar…trying to figure it out.
The
eyes…the slotted yellow eyes outside my bedroom that night…
But
what
night? Why—

“You better wipe the other one too,”
Sanchez says, nodding at Lexy.

Lexy shakes her head, her auburn hair
whipping wildly around her face as the warlock called Grant approaches her.

“Hold her,” Sanchez tells the other satyr.
He’s a big, burly guy with hands like meat hooks, which he digs into Lexy’s
upper arms, making her moan in pain.

Grant manages to catch my cousin’s chin and
press his fingertips to her temple. He mutters under his breath for a moment
while she stares at him, wide-eyed. At last he draws back, an unhappy look on
his face.

“Well?” Sanchez demands.

Grant frowns. “I couldn’t do much. She’s a
powerful witch and she has a strong family behind her. They’ll be able to tell
she was tampered with.”

“That’s too fucking bad.” Sanchez spits to
one side, a gob of greenish goo staining the concrete walkway. “Finish the job
or kill her yourself—I don’t care which. But the Council says no witnesses so there
better not be any. Understand?”

“No one ever said I’d have to work against
my own kind when I took this job,” Grant protests.

“Your kind doesn’t mean shit.” Sanchez’s
inhuman eyes narrow and he pokes a finger at the warlock. “And your only job is
to do whatever the Council tells you. Now come on, we’re supposed to be there
soon.”

The two satyrs tow Lexy and I off the path
despite our kicking and struggling. Grant walks to one side, his lips moving silently
in a Don’t Notice Me spell. I can feel his magic tingling against my skin,
enveloping us all in a silent, invisible net. We walk right past a pair of
campus security guards and neither of them notices a thing.

It doesn’t take long to get to a windowless
black van—the exact kind of vehicle I imagine a serial killer driving. I nearly
lose it here, kicking and clawing as well as I can with my hands taped in front
of me. Finally Sanchez belts me in the face again, stunning me. I fall to the
ground as Lexy makes indignant noises through her gag. I know she wants to come
running to my rescue but her own satyr guard has a firm grip on her.

“Listen up, girlie,” Sanchez says, bending
down to look at me. “Settle down if you don’t want more of the same. I’d tell
you that I don’t like hitting women but that would be a lie. I really fucking
enjoy it—makes me hard, you know?” He grabs his crotch and shakes it at me,
laughing. “In fact, when this is all over I might even fuck you.”

The casual way he says it and the gleam in
his slotted yellow eyes makes me cold all over. I feel frozen as they load Lexy
and me into the back of the van and clang the doors shut, leaving us in
darkness.

Where are they taking us?
I hear Lexy whisper in my head. I want to answer her but the mind
voice, also referred to as the “witch-whisper” is yet another piece of magic I
was never able to manage. It used to drive me crazy because I could hear
everything my cousins said without being able to reply. So I know it’s useless
but I can’t help trying to talk back.

I don’t know,
I send in Lexy’s direction.

In the dimness of the van, I see her eyes
widen.
Emma, you did it! You talked to me! I heard you!
She nudges me
with her foot.
Try again.

What do you want me to say?

Oh my Goddess!
Despite the desperate situation we are in, she is suddenly ecstatic
for me.
You can do it. You can mind talk! I always knew it. I knew you
weren’t a dud! First lighting the candles and now this—your magic is finally
coming in, Emma. I just know it!

It’s awesome,
I admit. I don’t know where the magic came from but the sensation of
it pouring into me slowly, like an empty cup being filled one drop at a time is
undeniable.
But it doesn’t get us any closer to getting out of here.

What does Sanchez want with us, anyway?
She shivers.
Ugh. I always hated him.

I don’t think it’s us they want—it’s me,
I send grimly.
Maybe….maybe Aiden was right about him having a
lot of enemies that want to get to me.
Just thinking it makes me feel sick.
What are they going to do with me? Will they kill me just to make Aiden mad?
And who are “they” anyway?

Sanchez said something about the
Council.
Lexy sends back and I realize I have let
the last thought slip past my mental barrier.
Do you think he meant the
Vampire Council?

I have no idea. I hope not.
I can’t imagine being brought before that most ancient and powerful
ruling body. Why would theywant to see me?

We mind talk back and forth together over
the twenty more minutes the van is in motion but neither Lexy nor I can solve
the mystery. We do, however, make a plan of escape. Having our hands bound and
our mouths gagged rules out casting a spell. But we can still kick our captors
in the balls when they open the van. We wait, lying on our backs, tense and
terrified but determined to do whatever we can to get out of this situation.

The van has been moving smoothly up until
now but suddenly there’s a lurch and it starts rocking and jouncing over uneven
ground.

We’re going off-road,
Lexy sends, her eyes wide with fear.
They’re taking us into the wilderness
somewhere.

I want to protest that there isn’t a whole
lot of wilderness around Tampa but apparently our captors have found some. We
bounce around, being thrown against each other, unable to brace ourselves
because of our bound hands. I’ve always been prone to motion sickness and the
violent motion makes me nauseous. Then Lexy bumps her head and gives a little
cry behind her tape gag.

I’m still trying to crawl over to her and
see if she’s okay when the van stops with a jolt and the back doors swing wide.

“C’mon out now, girlies,” Sanchez says,
reaching in to haul me roughly to my feet. “No funny business or—”

I kick out and catch him squarely in the
balls.

He goes white, then green, then his face
turns a dark shade of purple. But through it all, he somehow keeps his grip on
to my arm. I couldn’t get away anyway, I realize with despair. I can’t leave
Lexy here alone and she seems stunned and woozy from the blow to her head. All
I have done is succeeded in making my captor even more angry.

“You’ll pay…” Sanchez finally manages to
wheeze out, pinching my arm viciously until I yelp in pain. “Maybe not now but
you’ll be sorry. I’ll
make
you sorry.” He raises his hand, no doubt to
hit me again.

“We don’t have time for this.” The warlock
Grant is suddenly there looking worried. “The ceremony has to start as soon as
the moon is directly overhead. Come on.”

“Fine,” Sanchez growls. He and the other
satyr pull Lexy and me out of the van and follow Grant, who is leading the way.

What ceremony?
I think wildly, trying to look around as we stumble over the uneven
ground. Unfortunately, it’s pretty dark aside from the quarter moon rising. All
I can make out is that we seem to be in the middle of a field with trees on
either side. There are no landmarks, no way to guide myself even if I could
break away from the satyr’s punishing grip.

They drag us up a gently rising hill and
through some trees. Suddenly we’re standing in front of what looks to be a
miniature castle. That’s crazy though—there aren’t any castles in Florida.
Except here one is, right in front of me.

There are torches burning in holders at the
rounded front entryway lined with jagged metal spikes.
What’s that called? A
portcullis?
My mind babbles as we are dragged through the gates.

Inside the space opens into a narrow
courtyard. At the end of it is a single black door with no knob. For some
reason, the sight of that door makes me cold with dread.
No, not behind the
black door! Anywhere but there!
It’s almost as though I’ve been here
before. But I know I never have. I’m just afraid of the door because I don’t
want to see who or what is on the other side of it. Right?

Sanchez raps almost gently on the door and
calls in a surprisingly respectful voice, asking for entry. Slowly the door
swings open and Lexy and I are shoved into a large stone room, our reluctant
footsteps echoing as we stumble in.

It’s almost as dark inside as it is
outside. To one side of the vast room a fire is crackling in the fireplace. But
the room is so huge it barely illuminates anything. On the stone floor, a
circle about eight feet in diameter is drawn. No, not drawn, I realize—carved.
There is a half-inch-deep circular trench gouged into the flagstones. Who the
hell could have made it so perfectly round and why do I find the long, curving,
empty groove so disturbing?

Watch out!
Lexy
gasps in my head.
Don’t step into the circle. It’s a trap. Can’t you feel
it?

I do feel it now—the familiar prickling
sensation of magic—very strong magic crawling over my skin. But before I can
step back, Sanchez has ripped the tape off my mouth and shoved me over the
circle’s lip. I stumble and come to a halt in the empty center, feeling as if I
have somehow come to rest in a dangerous place—the eye of a hurricane that may
whirl me off my feet and into an abyss at any moment.

“Emma Krist,” a low, hissing voice whispers
from the perimeter of the circle. It sounds like a snake’s voice—if a snake could
talk.

“Who-who are you?” My voice is shaking. I
take a deep breath and try to sound a little less like a frightened rabbit.
“What do you want with me?”

“We are the Council,” the voice replies.

We? Who the hell are “we”?
Looking out around the edge of the circle, I get my answer. There
are
eyes
out there. Vampire eyes. They gleam in the flickering firelight
like the predators they are. Like wolves around a campfire at night, waiting
for the flames to die down enough to attack. I count twelve pairs staring at me
from all around the strange, circular groove that has been carved into the
solid-stone floor. Every once in a while one of them will lean forward, giving
me a glimpse of porcelain-white skin, but for the most part they are just eyes,
watching me…waiting. But waiting for what?

I decide to try again. “What do you want
from me?” I ask, looking around the circle, trying to meet all their eyes in
turn. It’s not easy—they don’t move or twitch occasionally like humans. They
stare, unblinking like snakes. Why have I never noticed these traits in Aiden
during the time we’ve been together? Is it because he’s been making an effort
to seem more human, less predatory, less frightening? Or is it because he
spends the majority of his time with mortals like me, away from his own kind?

“Tell her,” whispers the one with the snake
voice.

Grant steps forward. “Emma,” he begins,
steepling his long fingers and looking at me intently. “Do you know about the
spell of binding that holds our supernatural community together?”

“Yes,” I say, nodding.

Grant looks surprised but pleased. He nods.
“Not many do. But I take it Aiden James—the Sovereign vampire—has told you? How
it was first cast by a witch called Katherine and has been in effect, binding
us all together ever since?”

Slowly I nod. “Yes. But I don’t
understand—”

“The spell is old. It’s losing power,” one
of the vampires from around the circle says. “You might say it’s fraying around
the edges. If it’s allowed to unravel completely—”

“The whole community will come apart like a
badly knitted sweater,” another says. “There will be fighting, corruption,
unrest between the different supernatural races—we can’t afford that.”

“It will draw human attention,” the one
with the snake voice says. “This must not be!”