The Compelled (4 page)

“You have nothing to lose, vampire,” Jemima said sharply.

“True.” I took a large drink, as if to prove to her I wasn’t afraid of the potion—or her. The liquid bubbled down my throat. It tasted fetid and vile, as if it were made of the refuse filling the streets.

“I’ll need some, too,” Cora said, plucking the pitcher from my hands and taking several deep gulps as though she were one of the tavern girls holding her own in a pint-drinking competition with dock laborers.

“Good girl,” Jemima said, sounding impressed. The boys drank from the pitcher in turn. “And now that we’ve all drunk up, it’s time to go. Who knows how long he’ll be at the Bridge.”

I felt stronger, and my throbbing headache had
disappeared. The eleuthro was better than blood. It took the edge off my nerves and made me feel like I could take on anyone—or anything. I experimentally squeezed the arm of a nearby chair, thrilled to see the wood snap like a twig between my fingers.

“Confident the potion works, vampire?” Jemima asked, her hands on her hips.

“Yes,” I said testily. “And I’m sorry I broke the chair, but this makes a good stake. We need more weapons like this, just in case,” I said. It was true. The slim chair arm tapered into a sharp point that would easily pierce through skin. I hastily turned to address all the witches. “Damon will most likely be tied up with vervain-soaked ropes. Vervain’s poisonous to me, so I can’t untie him. Could one of you set him free? The herb won’t hurt you.”

“I will,” Billy volunteered, heading to the remains of the chair to create more makeshift stakes.

“Thank you,” I said. “Jemima, are there any spells you can perform that could help?”

“Are there
any
spells I can perform?” Jemima repeated sarcastically. I sucked in my breath, annoyed at the literal way she took my words but knowing far better than to say anything.

“What spell do you think would be best?” I asked patiently.

“Leave that to me, vampire,” Jemima said. “I’m not
sharing all my secrets with you. I know you’re honest, but I still can’t trust you. And I won’t know what spell to perform until I see Samuel for myself.”

“What can I do?” Gus asked, stepping up to me.

I appraised the skinny boy, then glanced at Jemima. She nodded at me, as if giving me permission to speak. “Why don’t you watch out for Cora,” I decided.

“I don’t need looking out for,” Cora retorted.

“I know. But if Samuel and Violet are on the scene, then—”

“Then I want to fight them,” Cora said, cutting me off.

“And aren’t you forgetting something, vampire?” Jemima smirked.

“What?” I asked. We had stakes, we had spells…

“How do you plan to carry this off at Tower Bridge? There are always people around. You really need a blocking spell, so no one walks in on us.”

“Yes!” I exclaimed. Despite Jemima’s sarcasm, her suggestion proved she was listening and ready to help.

“Vampires just don’t think about details,” Jemima muttered. “Gus and Mary Jane, can you do a simple circle spell when we get to the Bridge? Don’t want any mortals getting caught in the ruckus.”

“Thank you,” I said meaningfully, locking eyes with Jemima.

Jemima didn’t respond, but the corners of her mouth
twisted into a small smile.

And with all the witches on board, we streamed toward the door, ready to free my brother.

“Damon, I’m coming,” I whispered under my breath. But the only response was the ominous sound of rain pelting the roof.

T
ogether, stakes concealed under our clothing, our motley group traipsed through the back alleys of London’s East End. What had been a cloudy day had turned into a bitterly cold and rainy evening. Cora shivered beside me.

As we walked past a public house where a few men hunched over their pints of ale, Mary Jane hurried to catch up with me. I forced myself to take slow, measured steps, but it was hard to walk at human speed with the eleuthro surging through my veins. All of my senses were heightened, and I breathed in the stench of rotting garbage in the gutter. As pungent as the scent was, it was a poor distraction from the sound of blood pumping around me. While it may have taken the edge off my nerves, the
eleuthro hadn’t assuaged my craving. If anything, it had intensified it.

“The first rule we have when performing magic is to not draw any attention to ourselves,” Mary Jane said, pulling me back to the conversation. I hadn’t been paying attention. I was so distracted by the thought of blood that I could almost taste it on my tongue. I knew it was simply because we were in the East End, which was packed with residents. The more humans, the greater concentration of blood. That was one of the many reasons I’d preferred my life in a quaint village where neighbors were few and far between. It was easier to ignore the call of blood.

“I was saying, we try to blend in to our surroundings,” Mary Jane said patiently, when she saw I wasn’t exactly focused. “The second rule is, no magic in public, unless we’re threatened by death. Of course, we’ll use magic to free your brother, but we must maintain a low profile. If any one of us is exposed, we’re immediately kicked out of the house. It’s Jemima’s rule, and she means it. The third rule is no talking about magic, for the same reason as not performing it.”

“Can all of you do the same magic?” Cora asked.

“Not quite.” Mary Jane wrinkled her forehead in concentration. “Some are good at spells, others more at finding herbs, and I’m good with animals. I suppose we all work better when we’re together. We protect one another.
Anyway, as soon as Jemima and I realized we were different, we ran away from the orphanage and didn’t look back. Once we all found one another, we didn’t need to wait around for someone to adopt us. Adoptions never seemed to happen. People would always come in and say we were precious, or say we were special, but then they never came back to bring us home,” Mary Jane said sadly. “That’s why it was better for us to form our own family.”

“Shh!” Jemima hissed, whirling around. She took the hood of my cloak and pulled it over my head. “Try to be inconspicuous, please.”

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“Rule number four. We stick together. Once we get there, there’s no running off, and there’s no leaving anyone behind, even if it’s dangerous. Are we clear?” I nodded.

We walked onto the pier. The Thames was crowded with cargo ships ready to make their early morning deliveries at ports dotting the country, while smaller passenger ships weaved around them.

“We’ll go by river,” Jemima decided, nodding to a small skiff floating in the water. The name
Goodspeed
was written on its side. I decided to take that as a good sign. “A boat gives us an automatic escape route. Climb on,” she said grandly as we all jumped over the edge and into our stolen boat.

As Billy pushed the
Goodspeed
away from the dock, I
looked toward the inky horizon. The skiff was moving of its own volition, cutting a V-shaped path through the water.

I could sense Jemima’s eyes on the back of my neck. I turned around. Sure enough, she was staring at me, an inscrutable expression on her face.

“What?” I asked irritably. I had a sense she knew more than she was letting on.

“Just trying to figure out how hungry you are, vampire.”

“I fed on a squirrel today. I’m not thinking of drinking human blood, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Not that kind of hunger,” Jemima said cryptically. She nodded toward something behind me and I whirled around, seeing the imposing Tower Bridge now only a hundred feet in front of us. It stood several stories off the ground, and was surrounded by wooden scaffolding. The deck of the bridge came to an abrupt end a quarter of the way across the river; across the Thames, a similar setup was in place. A gap of forty feet separating the two structures. I was surprised that no watchmen were guarding the area. Instead, all was silent, except for the sound of ragged breathing. It was Damon. It had to be.

“Pull over to the dock!” I called. Immediately, without anyone steering, the skiff turned toward the nearest pier. I jumped onto the dock before the boat stopped. Clutching my stake to my side, I ran toward the bridge. The closer I got, the more I was sure I was being watched.

I glanced up and gasped.

Instead of seeing Damon, I saw Samuel clinging like a spider to the underside of the bridge. He jumped down on top of me, throwing me off balance. I landed on my back with a thud.

“And so we meet again,” Samuel said, standing over me, his face a blank mask that betrayed no emotion. Our eyes locked, and for a fraction of a second it was as if time stood still. Then, Violet emerged from behind a pillar, smiling maniacally, her white fangs glittering. Violet was a completely different creature than the frightened girl I’d rescued a month earlier. In a white fur coat with her red curls piled on top of her head and her lips painted a deep crimson, she looked like a painting come to life. She wasn’t the innocent Irish barmaid I’d met at the Ten Bells Tavern. She wasn’t the giddy show-off who’d blushed and twirled when I’d given her a new dress at Harrods. And she certainly wasn’t the human girl who’d looked at me with tears in her eyes as she transitioned into a vampire, begging me to kill her rather than allow her to live a life of destruction. That Violet was dead. The fiend in front of me was all vampire.

Samuel shifted, and I used the momentary movement to spring to my feet and lunge, surprised at how fast the eleuthro had made me. Grabbing his shoulders, I wrestled him to the ground. Samuel twisted free and I hurled myself
at him again, smiling when his head smacked against the concrete bridge with a satisfying crack.

“Stefan!”

I whipped my head around at the sound of my name. Damon was fixed to the scaffolding by vervain-soaked ropes as if he were a sacrificial figure primed for an ancient ritual. He exhaled in wet gasps, and blood-tinged foam frothed at the corners of his mouth. The veins around his temples were bulging and were an unnatural bright blue color. He looked minutes away from death.

“Help him!” I called toward the witches. I couldn’t save him right now, not with Samuel here and Damon covered in vervain. Billy raced past me with a knife held aloft, ready to cut Damon loose from the ropes that bound him.

I gripped my stake and reared back, about to strike, when suddenly I was hit from behind. Violet must have caught up with us. I landed on my chest, my body only millimeters away from falling on the stake. I struggled to a sitting position, but Violet threw herself on top of me, pinning my shoulders to the ground as she groped for the stake.

I heard a splash. Samuel had thrown Vivian and Gus into the cold water. They were sputtering while Jemima and Mary Jane were fighting Samuel off with the repel spell. It was almost working. But not well enough.

I knew Violet was out for blood, and if she couldn’t
get mine, she’d think nothing of taking her sister’s. With a surge of effort, I wriggled out of Violet’s hold and managed to pin her hands to the ground above her shoulders. “Samuel will die tonight. I’ll make sure of it. But I’m giving you one last chance,” I said, searching for any trace of humanity in her bloodshot eyes. But all Violet did was laugh in response.

Just then, I saw Cora racing toward us, far faster than a normal human could move. “Cora, get
away
!” I shouted. Violet was strong and I doubted that Cora would come close to matching her, even aided by eleuthro.

“No. Violet, listen to me,” she said, throwing her arms around her sister’s waist. “I’m your sister. I know you. And I know you have a chance for redemption. Please, stop what you’re doing and take it.” Cora’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Or else I’ll kill you myself.” At this, Violet stopped writhing and turned to face her sister.

“Not if I kill you first.” Violet growled as she lunged toward Cora, her fangs dangerously close to her sister’s throat. Her eyes were large and red, and in that moment, she was a vampire intent only on her kill—even though her prey was her own flesh and blood. I clutched the wooden stake in one hand as I grabbed her from behind and threw her on her back.

I was about to bring the weapon down when another stake sliced through the air and plunged into the rich fabric
of Violet’s coat. Violet unleashed an agonized shriek before falling limp. Her skin quickly turned ashen and veiny, her mouth frozen as if gasping for air. She was dead.

Cora sat back, a hand to her lips in shock. She was staring, unblinking, at the body of her sister. The sister she had just killed.

Not able to take even a moment to grieve Violet’s tragic, if necessary, death, I turned to aid Mary Jane and Jemima in fighting off Samuel. This fight wasn’t over.

But Samuel was no longer standing with the witches. Instead, he was high above, teetering on the edge of the bridge. Before I could begin to scramble up the scaffolding, he dove into the water, as gracefully as a gull swooping down to catch a fish. A splash, and Samuel was in the middle of the Thames, arms stroking toward the opposite bank.

I blinked in disbelief. The repel spell Mary Jane and Jemima had used was working—Samuel had run away. Still, I didn’t feel victorious that he’d retreated from the fight. Samuel must have realized he was outnumbered and didn’t stand a chance against us. But although we may have won this battle, Samuel was preparing for war.
At least we saved Damon
, I thought as I hurried over to where Jemima was inspecting his injuries.

“Brother.” Damon nodded. Angry burn marks circling his wrists oozed blood; his skin was pockmarked with
burns, scrapes, cuts, and dirt; his lips were cracked; and one of his eyes was swollen shut. He looked in worse shape than he had when he’d been beaten, starved, and bitten by alligators at Gallagher’s Circus in New Orleans. He needed blood—a lot of it.

My heart thudded in my chest as our eyes met. I’d saved his life. So why did I have nothing to say?

“Go feed,” I said roughly. Seeing him so weak shook me. I knew that if we’d waited only an hour longer, chances are he’d have been dead. And that was a possibility I wouldn’t let myself think about. “You’ll find some victims further down the pier.”

But Damon didn’t move. I was the one who looked away, turning my attention to Cora, kneeling next to the body of her sister. Cora slowly took Violet’s hands and rested them in a praying position on her still chest. Then she turned to me, her face slicked with tears.

“She’s really dead. I killed her,” she said quietly.

“You didn’t kill her.
Samuel
killed her. What you killed was the monster in Violet’s body,” I said. But it wasn’t that simple. I knew better than anyone that your soul didn’t simply disappear when you became a vampire. Violet
had
been in there, somewhere, but most likely her spirit had been beaten badly as a result of committing far too many murders. I knew she would never have been the same.

“No, Stefan.” Cora looked up and shook her head sadly.
“I killed her. And now there’s no hope she’ll ever become a vampire like you. One who
cares
about others. And that’s all my fault. I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Don’t do that,” Damon rasped. Cora turned to him questioningly. “Say good-bye to Violet, then let her go. She wouldn’t want you to hold on. Letting go is the only thing you can do,” Damon said thickly.

Damon picked up the lifeless body and brought it to the edge of the river. On the bank, the witches were standing with their backs toward us, giving us privacy by ensuring the circle spell remained in place.

Cora nodded and brought her lips to Violet’s forehead. “Good-bye,” she murmured.

Then Damon threw the body into the river. It rose once to the surface before sinking into the murky water. As soon as it did, Cora broke off into a torrent of sobs. I pulled her toward me, smoothing her hair.

Your first death changes you.

It was something Damon told me when I’d mourned my fiancée, Rosalyn. At that point, Damon had already seen countless deaths on the battlefield. But so, I realized, had Cora. She’d been pulled into our war as an innocent bystander, and already she’d witnessed the murders of two friends and the torture and death of Samuel’s brother. But Violet was different. Violet was her sister, and Cora had been the one to kill her.

She continued to sob into my chest.

“Damon needs your help,” I said finally, pulling back.

“I know.” She turned away from Violet’s watery grave and followed me toward my brother. Cora was strong—I only wished we hadn’t learned that the hard way.