Blizzard Page 34

  A snarl came from Felicity. “Pay attention to only me, Neva.”

  I returned my gaze just in time to find Felicity pulling her blade up high from below on her left slide, catching my chin as I jumped back seconds too late. Blood shot from the cut as it spilled across the floor, mingling with the odors of the old blood and sweat.

  “NEVA!” Thedryk’s panicked and desperate call caught, the air knocked from him as I turned away once more, seeing two creatures remaining, one with its foot planted squarely in his chest knocking him back against the wall.

  It’s happening. This is where I lose. Everyone will die. A tide of anguish swallowed me up in the cognizance. Then it happened, the change that left me and the others in shock. This time, however, I felt it inside and out. A surge of energy steeled my bones, permeated the muscles and tendons tightening their structure, and felt as a crackle on my flesh. No, deep within me I felt the dark blood, the demonic blood, rising within, no more suffering, no more death and loss.

  “No…” The words escaped my mouth without my fully registering it was my voice that produced them. “No more, Felicity.”

  For the first time, Felicity faltered, truly faltered as her face reflected a momentary fear that slithered across her brows, embedding into her eyes where she could not hide from my vision.

  “Ha!” Felicity kept her eyes locked onto mine, but I saw the farce for what it was. “I am full vampire, Neva, you cannot defeat me! None of your kind before you could, and you certainly will not!”

  I stepped forward, watching as she stepped back in sync involuntarily. I watched her tighten her grip on her sword, a mistake she had not previously made.

  “Then why do you tremble, why do your eyes tell me you know the words you speak now are lies, bluster to cover your terror?” I didn’t wait for her answer, as I thrust forward, my arm and the blade perfectly aligned, my wrist loose and prepared to remain flexible for the coming attacks my body had already planned. My movements were purely liquid, swift and precise as the blade cut deeply into her ribs, just under her left arm, and she cried out in pain, swinging her sword quickly, but not quick enough. I had already adjusted my position with my blade withdrawn and was thrusting forward again, catching her in her stomach. I repeated the motions three, five, eight more times, leaving painful stab wounds across her abdomen and sides. This should be enduring pain, I thought as Lucy’s face flashed in my mind.

  All the while Felicity became enraged as she tried to refocus her attacks as mine unnerved her. While her attacks never would have connected, I pulled free one of my daggers to parry her thrusts that came even remotely close to landing a blow. Felicity was a whirlwind of fury and uncoordinated attacks, proving my taunting of deflecting her swinging blade with careless ease had dislodged any sense of certain victory she had entered the fight with.

  “Just stay still!” Felicity’s screams echo throughout the chamber, carried into the halls, and all other noise ceased. “I WILL KILL YOU!”

  Those were the last words she threatened me with, as I thrust my blade through her heart. The archway and darkness behind her provided a dark background for a gothic image. Watching her face twist and writhe in agony, I kept the blade firmly planted in her heart and a sliver of guilt struck my own.

  “Tell me, Felicity, who were you talking to earlier?” My senses were firing off warnings from all around. The warmth of the room increased, I could smell the sulfurous blood mixed with familiar scents of patchouli, pine, fresh rain, roses, lavender, and the fresh blood that had trickled down my blade from Felicity’s chest cavity. The presence of both the creatures and my comrades was like a weighted, wet blanket tossed atop me in my sleep, and I was struggling to remain calm. I paid close attention to the fact the creatures had joined the viewing party, no attention given to their previous targets.

  Felicity offered that smile, mirthless, small and tight, but there was pride in this moment for her. “You really don’t know?” she gasped, coughing as speckles of blood decorated my blade, the floor, and along Felicity’s still bare and unscathed arms.

  “I would not be asking you if I did, now would I?”

  Suddenly, Felicity was torn back from my blade, clear from my reach as I recognized an all-too-familiar face next to hers. Blue eyes, long brown hair tied back, and that tanned skin took my breath away as Zachariah gripped Felicity’s shoulders, his arm a barricade across her chest.

  Felicity gasped a few times as I watched hatred and anger fuel her fire to live before Zachariah brought his own blade to her neck. “He’s found a way back, hasn’t he, my daughter?” Zachariah never looked away from me, his face held its own torture as he inquired, “Why, Felicity?”

  I jumped at a hand that found my lower back, turning only long enough to register Thedryk had made his way to my side, along with Eliza, Amelia, Helsing, and Duval. Everyone was watching the story unfold between Zachariah and Felicity, but no one dared interfere.

  Felicity began laughing, a cough catching every half-second. “Should have…killed me sooner.”

  “Oh no, I have no intentions of killing you, Felicity. What your mother and I have planned is a punishment far worse than death.” Zachariah nodded to Eliza, who shook her head steadily in response. “Neva, I believe you discovered one way to completely change our fate, did you not?”

  I breathed in sharply, remembering Lucy’s body in my arms, the taste of her tainted blood and life flooding out from beneath her into my arms and lap. Felicity’s eyes went wild, pupils dilating and contracting as she thrashed violently within Zachariah’s grasp.

  “NO! NO, NO-NO-NO-NO!” There was a moment of pure pleasure in seeing her complete fear to be the very thing she despised.

  “I won’t do it.” Grunts and heaving breaths told me I had disappointed everyone, but I couldn’t. “She doesn’t deserve to live, not after all she’s done.”

  Eliza moved to my side, pulling the traumatized Amelia along with her. “Neva, I know you’re angry, but we need her, she has answers…”

  Eliza’s voice faded as Felicity did the unthinkable. Everyone except Amelia was silenced as Felicity leaned back and then threw herself forward, forcing Zachariah’s blade halfway into her neck. The only reason for Felicity’s failure was Zachariah’s swift reaction to release his blade, stopping the full decapitation from occurring. Amelia screamed but was muffled into Eliza’s skirts, Eliza having gripped her and pressed her into the gown. Eliza crumpled down to Amelia’s level and picked her up, keeping her faced away from the lurid scene.

  “I believe that’s the only answer we can expect from her.” I stepped forward, leaving the others behind to listen to her gargling; her windpipe was half exposed and blood was pouring out and had yet to stop. “Even if she is changed to human, even if I do that to give us all answers, she will take her own life.”

  “There are ways to keep her alive.” Zachariah turned Felicity over, carefully setting aside his sword from her reach. “And she may—”

  Zachariah scuttled back, reaching for the blade he had safely put from reach as I finished the job Felicity failed to complete, dropping my blade through the rest of her throat. Her eyes were wide open, her unnatural tears of a dark blood as she still managed to smile.

  “NO!” Eliza’s and Zachariah’s screams mirrored one another in disbelief.

  I gathered a shred of heartbreak. But before Zachariah was on his feet I had the tip of my blade digging into his throat. “How are you here, and why?” Zachariah’s presence shook me more than Felicity and what I gathered he meant by an individual returning.

  “Wait, Neva!” Helsing stepped forward, speaking out to me. “He’s here to help.”

  “The last time I saw this man, he had plans to throw me to the other world, in an aim to indirectly kill me. He stole my niece and sent her to this lunatic, who as it turns out, was his daughter and Kareese’s half-sister. She changed my niece and forced her to be killed, and it’s all his doing.” Zachariah tried to step back from my blade, but as he mov
ed, so did I, pushing the blade into the soft skin of his throat and freezing him in place. “I’m inclined to believe he will only cause me more damage.”

  Thedryk was at my ear, with no indication of his movements, which shocked me, but I refused to back down as he spoke gently to me. “Neva, if Helsing has cause to trust him, perhaps we should hear the others out about what’s happened since we parted ways.”

  I twisted the blade slightly, carving a little niche where my blade remained planted. “I’m not sure I can trust anyone, after all the secrets I have learned.” My eyes narrowed upon Zachariah’s, seeing the reflections in his pupils of the others moving in slowly, closely behind. “Take one more step, dare one more movement towards me, and he will join Felicity in the new trimming fashion.” All the figures stopped, but the smell of Thedryk next to me was beginning to relax my muscles. Tight as they were, his presence had put me at ease, and I took time to consider his statement.

  “At worst, I will help you kill him if you find what he and the others have to say as false.” The scent of his blood filled my nostrils, and I could sense his weakness beginning to cripple him.

  I pulled back my sword and sheathed it immediately, gripping an arm and shoulder under Thedryk’s and around his back, working to help brace him. A light moaning began, creeping across our skins with a hissing sound, and the overwhelming stench of sulfur and decay filled the room, everyone gagging at its presence.

  A quick survey revealed the creatures that Felicity had employed liquefying or crumbling.

  “Shall we carry on this conversation elsewhere?” Helsing offered his arm in the direction beyond Zachariah. Everyone cleared out, stepping over the ruined remains and trying to avoid any contact with those who had not became piles of ash.

  We had won but subsequently lost, as well. Simon had been overwhelmed in one of the lower levels and blown himself, and many creatures, to nothingness. Merrick and Thedryk had been severely wounded, and while Alana and Benjamin were otherwise mostly unharmed, they discovered Felicity had been busy.

  Luken and Theresa had been dismembered and burned together, along with Amelia’s mother, and somehow Zachariah had found his way back to our world.

  “Do tell, Zachariah, how long were you there and how did you get back? What has become of my home?” Helsing was tending to his own wounds. A large, deep cut marred his right thigh, and three claw marks had scathed his left ribs and side.

  Zachariah and Eliza were sitting next to one another, not touching, but close enough for me to gather they had come back together, somehow, in the short time between our parting ways to infiltrate the castle and meeting up in the sparring room.

  “I spent centuries there, Helsing. I saw the dawn of the twenty-first century in that world, watched great empires and countries rise and fall. That world is so changed, depending on the timeline you return to. But over time, my memory returned, fully, and the trips we made here resurfaced. I kept a log of all the trips we made between our worlds, of the different days and times and found my way to one of the locations. As you all slipped through, including a younger version of myself, I slipped back inside.”

  “How long have you been back?” Thedryk asked from his bed. We were inside the room where Eliza had us all share my vision, where I had seen their past.

  “Years,” Zachariah responded with ease. “I have been here years watching the history I recalled unfold.”

  “Years?” Even Eliza was baffled by his response. “Years that you could have stepped in, intervened!? My God, Zachariah, why didn’t you say something?” Eliza was shaking her head in her disbelief, staring at him.

  “There are things I could not change, things I learned that…had I intervened, I would have altered my ultimate fate. We would not have been able to stop Felicity, and though I don’t know for certain what lies ahead, I can tell you things would have been far worse had I not allowed this natural progression.”

  “There was nothing natural about this ‘progress,’ Zachariah.” My words were venomous as I considered all those I had loved who had died, all the death he could have stopped but had instead stayed hidden away. “Do you realize how many people have died that did not have to?”

  Zachariah had been holding Eliza’s gaze but he broke it to return my hardened gaze. “Neva, you are a new vampire. You may have been Kareese, but you do not grasp the implications of changing events in time. If I had changed anything, you may never have been brought to this life, and right now Reegan would most assuredly be conquering our world of Auria.”

  My nervous twitch started up, my leg shaking uncontrollably as I considered his words. “I do not accept this.” I stood, stalking out of the room as voices called after me, but I ignored them as I escaped the lunacy.

  I was running up the stairs, flight after flight, desperate to be free of the sensory overload that was moving my legs for me when I collided with Hadi. We bounced off one another, myself falling backwards and Hadi back up the stairs, when firm hands caught me. To my surprise, it was Zachariah who had stopped what I knew would be a debilitating fall, though Hadi was not quite as fortunate. The force of the collision caused him to land with a devastating thud that knocked the breath from his lungs.

  “Hadi!” I cried, tearing free from Zachariah’s filthy hands. “Let go of me.” I heard my voice as a child’s, impetuous and ungrateful, though I felt he didn’t deserve to be alive. “Hadi, are you all right?”

  I rushed up the steps to his side as Hadi tried to collect himself and his breath. He wheezed and forced his lungs to work properly once more, taking a few minutes to regain his body’s natural rhythm.

  Zachariah appeared on his other side, clapping him on the back gently. “We should get you to Eliza, I venture?”

  Hadi nodded to Zachariah; flashing a quick look my way, Hadi gripped my hand, urgently squeezing. I had to return to the place I had just run away from. I burned inside with embarrassment and anger, but Hadi had been sent to find Jonah and Piper—and had returned alone.

  ONCE RECOVERED, HADI explained what he had been tasked to do and the results. Find Piper and Jonah and ensure they had followed through with the requirements of the blood oath they had sworn to Eliza.

  Eliza contemplated the news. “They can’t have just disappeared. I gather they did not fulfill the agreement.”

  “Will you enact the blood oath?” I feared her answer, and as a result, I asked with the most bitter of tones and a challenge.

  “I want to find them and bring them back home, Neva.” Eliza was sitting up straight, proper posture as always as she clipped out her response. “But they can’t keep the baby. They know…knew that, I thought.”

  “You cannot use Felicity as a basis for comparison,” I snapped back.

  “She has not been the only vampire baby,” Zachariah responded. “There were others, and they were far more corrupt than Felicity. Three of them, and we had to…deal with them at a very young age.”

  My neck jerked in response, taking stock of all the reactions around me. Everyone else knew, always seemed to know. “They were all that demented?”

  “Some worse,” Thedryk admitted. “Children who would ravage families. They were uncontrollable.”

  “What made Felicity different? Was it because she was your child?” The question was fair, though Eliza and Zachariah apparently did not agree.

  “We are not so selfish, Neva.” Eliza’s voice carried her pain. “Felicity was different. She controlled herself until her teen years. She became somewhat unruly, but when addressed with the charges, she changed her ways.”

  “Until she devoured the people of the village you built, right?”

  Zachariah had been watching me carefully from beside Eliza, listening to the back and forth since my return to the room. Finally breaking his silence, Zachariah engaged me. “She had other transgressions but always corrected her actions. She was clever and appeared to have some moral direction. The other vampire children were animalistic, lacking empathy on any level.”<
br />
  “Yes, what empathy did she contain? You will have to forgive my ignorance, but I have witnessed only a complete lack of empathy and humanity in that—” I cut myself off from any further assaults on her character. The hurt that made itself visible on Eliza stopped me entirely.

  A tapping to my left drew everyone’s attention. It was Helsing, tapping a blade against the wall behind him. “Are we safe here, for now, at least?”

  “For now, yes,” Zachariah guaranteed, though I could not imagine how he could guarantee anything.

  Helsing grinned tiredly. “I suggest we all rest. These conversations can bring nothing in our current states.”

  Alana and Benjamin had not spoken a word beyond detailing the charred remains they had discovered of Theresa and Luken, but they were the first to stand and exit the room.

  “Tomorrow, then.” Zachariah stood, as did Eliza, and the two left followed by Duval and Helsing, who stopped briefly before me.

  He leaned down, gently taking my hand and bringing the back of it to his lips. “The savior now as before, but underneath the title and glory, still a woman who deserves her time to grieve and rest.”

  He kissed my hand and set it back down on my lap before walking out the door. Thedryk and Merrick remained in their beds; Merrick had already been asleep for half an hour.

  As I stood to return to my own room, Thedryk called out to me. “Neva, don’t go.”

  I turned to see him trying to get up from the bed, crisp white linens crumpling under his shifting weight. “Stay where you are, Thedryk.”

  The fatigue I had not noticed was suddenly the world bearing down on my shoulders. I walked over to him, guiding him back into the bed. “Let your wounds heal. I am not leaving, not without the answers I need first.” I promised him in those words, knowing he feared I would depart, this time without him.