Chapter 4
Four
Nightside
The only thing that could make hell worse? Withdrawal. It hit Silt hard and fast.
The Gaolers had forced him to Nightside, dumping him in a mountain cave surrounded by plains of fire. They’d removed his shackles, then disappeared. Silt had no food, no water, not even boots. He’d been delivered to hell with only a pair of breeches. He heaved, barely tamping down the contents of his stomach.
When he’d first awakened here, he’d limped to the entrance of the cave, surveying the landscape in disbelief. This elevation offered a view of a floodplain spreading in all directions below. A distant volcano spewed rivers of lava across it.
No stars or moon lit the sky, which was just a dome of black. As Silt’s gaze swept the horizon, the impulse to say fuck it all had taken him by surprise.
But vengeance gave him a reason to fight. He would get free of this place and make those hunters pay. Every second of this agony could be laid at their feet, especially the Dacian’s.
Silt tried to recall anything he’d ever heard about those “mythical” vampires. They lived inside some hidden mountain range kept protected by magic. Stronger and faster than Horde vampires, they were said to worship cold intellects with their cold hearts.
An unusual Dacian skill might explain how the hunters had gotten past Silt’s barriers. But what had they done to Sequara? The scorpion would have given her life to protect Silt.
They must have slain her.
His eyes slid shut, his head falling back against the cave wall. Centuries ago at a bazaar, he’d bought the stingerling on the promise that she would grow no more than fifty pounds in weight. Three thousand pounds later . . .
He’d cherished her. Now she was gone.
Silt would avenge her—and himself. Yet how? Surprisingly, his sorcery wasn’t bound in this realm, but he sensed no deposits of sand here. All he had was the handful in his pocket. When he tried to connect with those grains, his weakened magic sputtered?—
His breaths condensed again. The Gaolers were returning! Boiling with hatred, he tensed to attack . . . but was frozen in place. . . .
When his movements were restored and his breaths cleared, a female lay unconscious on the cave floor across from him. The Gaolers had entered, dumped her, then left, without Silt seeing a thing.
Fucking despise them! Impotent fury pumped inside him with the force of a drug.
Gritting his teeth, he assessed the new prisoner. The female’s long blond hair was loose, her features comely. Though she had dark circles under her eyes, she was attractive, in a pale and bloodless way. Pointed ears indicated she was fey, yet the hint of fangs he spied through her parted lips suggested vampire.
He hadn’t seen a female one in memory. He’d never felt much animosity toward that species, but now . . .
Resentment seethed.
He could easily guess what crime had landed her here. His research on this place and the Gaolers had revealed that most of their captures were immortals who hunted humans.
She moaned and rolled onto her back. She wore loose-fitting pants, sturdy boots, and a novelty T-shirt that read: Braless Babes on Bourbon Street!
A rallying cry he could get behind. He was a typical male; his resentment toward her lessened a touch, and curiosity urged him to go investigate her. His quaking body made him rethink such an ambitious plan.
He’d only ever experienced these bone-racking shudders and nausea during his sole attempt to quit dragon’s breath hundreds of years ago. So he waited for her to wake, as what must have been hours passed by. Never taking his gaze off her face, he was watching when her eyes flashed open.
Her peculiar irises shifted from violet to reddish-purple. Reddened eyes. A maneater.
“Who are you?” With full alertness, she swept to her feet. “Where am I?”
Even in his state, he noted she was fair of form, with pert breasts, a narrow waist, and shapely hips. The draped material of her pants clung to long, toned legs. “I’m Silt Harea, the King of Sand, a sorcerer without equal.” Two out of three were true.
Her gaze dipped to his tattooed chest, and her cheeks heated. “For how long was I unconscious, sorcerer?”
Her imperious tone irritated him, and her accent reminded him of something he couldn’t quite place. “Hours. Centuries. Who knows? Time doesn’t matter anymore.” He attempted to control his shaking, but shudders racked him.
Nightside. He was actually here. In hell.
“What’s nightside?”
He must’ve spoken aloud. Brain recoiling with horror, he muttered, “Immortal jail.”
“It’s always a jail, isn’t it? My uncle escaped from one not long ago. Though humans ran that one.”
“Immortals must be contained.” But not me.
“Not me,” she said, echoing his thoughts. She turned her attention to the opening of the cave. “When will the sun rise in this place?”
“It won’t.” The dead have no need of light.
“So Nightside comes by its name naturally. Well, at least there’s that.”
He started sweating as more dragon’s breath left his body; it was all but flipping tables inside him on its way out. “Can you teleport, vampire?”
She shook her head, and a tendril tumbled over her forehead. She tucked it behind a pointed ear. “I just tried. My tracing doesn’t work here.”
Of course it wouldn’t. This prison realm would be mystically protected against such an easy escape. Nightside offered no escape. Which was why Silt had dreaded this day so much.
She asked, “What were those repulsive beings that forced me here?”
“The Gaolers, demigod enforcers. Those phantasms imprison anyone who breaks the laws of the Lore. With eyes like yours, it’s clear how you earned your way here.” Had her purplish irises been blue before the redness set in? “Your crime is stamped upon your face.”
“Is it, then?”
Bloodlust. If a vampire drained too many victims to the quick, his or her mind would turn soft, eyes reddening. In time, they would lose all their faculties.
Silt tried to imagine this creature dragging down prey. Dragging him down. As he waited for revulsion to hit, he asked, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“So young.” This tender little leech has been busy.
“And your age, sorcerer?”
“Millennia.” Taken with the lost years of Poly, he’d been alive for eons.
“Do you remember how you got here? Did they force you through a gateway? Have you seen anyone else?”
Her accent pinged some memory in his subconscious, but he struggled to dredge it up. “Two bounty hunters captured me and turned me over to the Gaolers.” He ran a forearm over his brow to mop sweat. “Those four delivered me here.”
As he choked back vomit, she turned her exploration to the rest of the cave, searching for a gateway that didn’t exist. “Then there must be a portal.”
For them. Silt’s research indicated Nightside was a sealed dimension that only the Gaolers could access. Throughout the ages, he’d posted steep rewards for information about any immortal who’d escaped. Zero takers.
She investigated the walls, scenting every cranny. The vampire was one among the predator class of Loreans; her senses would outstrip his, despite her young age. She tugged at jutting rocks with mounting impatience. “The Gaolers stop time, don’t they? If they possess such a power, how can they be fought?”
“They can’t be.”
She flicked a dismissive hand at him. “Well, not by you, obviously.”
Leech! He parted his lips to curse her but only heaved again.
When she headed to the entrance of the cave, he expected her shoulders to slump at the sight on the horizon. Instead, she straightened them. Raising her face, she inhaled the air. Then she turned back to him with a look of disgust. “I thought Sorceri kept themselves up better than this. Yet there’s no denying the stench.”
“The stench of what?” He sniffed himself. Smelled worse.
Eyes cutting, she enunciated the word: “Dissolution.”
He didn’t deny it, wouldn’t even if he could. Between all his vices, he’d reached oblivion every night. For lifetimes.
She continued, “You’ve achieved a robust bouquet: wine, women, and drugs, with threads of general decay.”
“And you, maneater, smell like bloodlust, so pot and kettle and all that.” Another lie. Her delicate scent was mist mixed with woman, and it addled his brain like opium.
“Any other talents you’d care to declare before I leave you behind like dross?”
I possess a secondary Sorceri power that everyone always forgets about. “And where will you go?”
“Behind this cave, I scent nothing. It must be the edge of the realm. So I will go forward and search past that distant volcano.”
“How will you cross the floodplain? There must be a hundred miles of lava rivers.” Earlier, he’d watched as some cooled, leaving open paths, but then another river would pour in. The constantly changing labyrinth would incinerate any misstep. “You’ll get burned alive.”
“Not if I’m very lucky. And very fast.”
“That volcano could be spewing lava on the other side as well.”
“Possibly. But what other option is there? Surrender in this dismal cave without even a fight?”
Fuck it all. For millennia, he’d endured his existence as weariness seeped into him like saltwater poisoning a spring. Why had he endured?
She narrowed her gaze. “Have you no one awaiting you, sorcerer?”
His concubines cared only about gold, extracting it from him like prospectors stripping ore from a mine. “I told you that escape is impossible.”
“I should take your word—a sick Lorean I just met—for that? Remember, my uncle recently escaped from an inescapable jail. I like my odds, sorcerer.”
She had grit, he’d give her that. “What’s your name?”
“I am Princess Kosmina.”
Royalty. His dislike deepened. For ages, he’d been prey to the powerful. “Of what realm?”
“Dacia.”
The connection he’d struggled to make fired in his mind like a zap of electricity. She was a princess of Dacia; Mirceo’s last name was Daciano. Their accents were alike. “Any relation to Mirceo?” he asked, as his faithful companion Revenge helped him lever his frame to his feet, helped him swallow back nausea.
She frowned. “He’s my brother.”
Brother. A blood relation to the male Silt had sworn to kill was trapped with him in Nightside. Gullible immortals might have pondered the coincidence; the rest knew that dark players were forever causing mayhem. Especially during an Accession.
She asked, “Do you know him?”
Silt nodded slowly.
“Then you know he will do anything in his power to reach me here. If I don’t escape first.”
Though Silt’s parents had held no love for him, some families shared devotion and would stop at nothing to rescue one another. Ramifications hit. These Dacians must possess abilities unknown to him—or the Gaolers. Perhaps an incursion into Nightside was possible for Mirceo. And I’ll be waiting with that fucker’s sister, the ultimate leverage.
As always, Revenge was there for him.
The vampire canted her head at Silt. “You’re not friends with Mirceo. Just the opposite.”
He should lie. Falsehoods spilled easily from his tongue, and vampires rarely expected them since they were incapable of lying. But half out of his head with pain, he grated, “ I am the one who brought you here.”