Chapter 22 Rune
rune
. . .
Dimitri and Bradley didn’t get an invitation to the after-party. It was under the guise of networking and free blood wine, but it was definitely a cult gathering.
I knew it the moment Cassie and I walked back inside.
Enchanted crystal chandeliers dripped red light over a ballroom of vampires. The music had gone from frivolous to dark somewhere in the last hour, when everyone who hadn’t been invited to the after-party was guided out. The air tasted like blood, more so than it had during the gala.
Cassie drifted at my side, oozing elegance. To anyone looking at us, we were just two vampires with nothing better to do than to float from conversation to conversation around other vampires we didn’t know. To our squad, we were glamoured agents trying to track down a vampire serial killer.
My persona was Lianna, who liked her blood straight from the vein. Cassie’s persona was Lilabeth, my sister.
The glamour itched, but it would remain in place as long as I wore the ring on my thumb.
“Status?” Jesper’s voice made my pulse spike. “Anything off yet?”
“Besides the ambience?” I joked, lifting a glass of blood wine I had no intention of drinking. “Feels like everyone here wants to marry within their bloodlines and murder everyone else.”
“That’s just vampires,” Slater drawled through the comms. I could practically hear his smirk. “Are you enjoying the aristocracy, venom baby?”
“We aren’t all like that,” Dimitri huffed.
“I know that, overachiever,” I assured.
Cassie’s shoulder brushed mine in the faintest nudge, and I flicked my gaze toward hers and followed her line of sight.
Across the ballroom, a cluster of vampires dressed in a deeper red than the rest were gathered near a set of double doors. Their suits were black with blood-colored stitching; their dresses plunged low. They wore a sigil that I had seen before during a simulated mission.
Though this wasn’t simulated, and my instincts knew something was off.
“What a surprise,” Dimitri’s voice cut in over the comms. “The Cult of the Blood Moon. Why am I not surprised my parents are still there?”
“Jesper?” I whispered.
“Maintain cover,” he ordered. “Observe, but don’t engage. Dimitri, keep feeding her intel since you are informed about the cult. Cassie, you’re the primary spy, and you need to keep your mentee safe.”
“Copy,” Cassie murmured, smile never shifting as she chatted with a vampire couple that had just come up to us about O-negative.
One man by the double doors peeled off from the cluster and started walking our way.
It was Tye.
He’d been hovering around me all night. He had slicked-back white-blond hair and the careless arrogance only someone born with old money could carry. He flashed a practiced smile at me as he approached, eyes sweeping over my body in a way that made my skin itch worse under the glamour.
I bet he wouldn’t have looked at me like that if he knew I was a basilisk and not a vampire.
Several growls rang through my comms as protectiveness filled my matebonds. I sent reassurance back to them.
“There you are,” he said with excitement. “I’ve been looking for you all night, Lianna.”
I molded my mouth into an amused smile. “Have you?”
“Of course.” His gaze flickered over Cassie as if she were in the way. “Your sister won’t be needed where we’re going.”
Cassie’s smile sharpened. “She’s my sister, meaning she’s under my protection. Why would I not tag along?”
He laughed softly. “Tonight she’s under mine.” His fingers closed around my wrist, and bile crept up my throat. “Come. The offering’s about to begin, and I want to show you something.”
Every instinct I had hissed. My magic sparked to release venom, but I took a deep breath to maintain control.
“Rune,” Jesper said in my ear, voice tightening. “Keep the line open. Cassie, shadow her if you can.”
Cassie went to object to Tye again, but another vampire intercepted her, blocking her path to follow us.
Tye smirked, his eyes flicking back toward Cassie as he guided me through the double doors and down a dim corridor lined with more and more old paintings. There had to be centuries of vampire bloodlines that stared down at us from their frames.
The air back here was colder, and my instincts told me something was very wrong.
“There are so few who are worthy of this,” Tye rambled, squeezing my wrist in what he probably thought was reassurance. “So many pretending to be our equals. Diluting the blood and ruining the prophecy.”
“Prophecy?” I repeated lightly, because that was what a curious vampire girl would do.
He smiled brightly. “Of course. It tells of a day when vampires control Kalista.”
The hallway opened into a smaller room, draped in heavy black curtains.
Chanting rose from behind, back in the room we had just come from, low and rhythmic.“Old blood will rise. Weak blood will be cleansed.”
“They’re starting some ritual,” Jesper informed me. “Stay alert, both of you.”
My venom sang through my veins, and I wanted to just kill them all.
But I was an agent. Not an assassin.
Perhaps Aspen had been onto something before...
Tye’s eyes lit up as he turned to me. “We’re just in time. Come, Lianna. You wanted to know what true vampires stood for? Let me show you.”
He tugged me through the arch, past the black curtains.
He led me into a ritual chamber that was built of stone.
Candles burned in iron sconces, their flames unnaturally still, though I didn’t sense any enchantments.
Carved into the floor was a massive blood moon sigil, lines filled with dried, darkened blood.
Above it, illusions flickered in the air: images of humans and supernaturals being torn apart, blood taken by force, and vampires kneeling in ecstasy.
On the far side of the circle stood an altar of black stone, and on that altar lay Zara.
My housemate Zara.
She was bound in iron and rope, head tilted sideways, short black hair matted with what had to be blood. A bite already marred her neck, and it was sluggishly bleeding. Her magical reserves had to be low for it not to be healing. Her skin had a damp sheen of sweat.
A woman standing over her was a vampire in crimson robes, eyes glowing scarlet as blood dripped from her mouth. She lifted her hands and recited, “By the Blood Moon’s glow, we purge the weak and glorify the pure—”
My vision tunneled, and my fangs sharpened.
“Rune.” Jesper’s voice cut sharp through my skull. “Breathe. You move now, you’ll blow your cover and the mission. We need Mikael, and Cassie doesn’t have eyes on him.”
Tye leaned close, his breath cool against my cheek. “Beautiful, isn’t it? She didn’t scream much. Mixed blood never does. They know they’re lesser.”
“She’s a kelpie,” I whispered, wanting to leak my venom into him so badly my magic spurred through my gut. “Not a vampire, right?”
His eyes flared with amusement. “Oh, Lianna. Don’t tell me you can’t tell. Her mother is a kelpie, but her father was a vampire. He diluted our blood by producing this less-than creature.”
“So, you strive for purity,” I said calmly.
His lips parted before curving into a smile that was filled with admiration. “You do understand.”
“Rune,” Dimitri said quietly in my ear. “Tye is a lower-tier aristocrat, according to Lysa. His family has glorified the cult ideology for years, but they were never in the inner circle. If he’s in that room, they’ve opened their ranks. That is alarming.”
“Understatement of the century,” I muttered.
When a dead cult started recruiting, they meant business.
On the altar, the woman lowered her mouth again, drinking from Zara’s neck. Zara’s fingers twitched weakly.
My heart pounded harder against my ribs. I took one tiny step forward before Jesper’s voice cracked like a whip in my ear. “Stand down, Rune.”
I froze as his urgency spiked the bond.
“If her heart stops before we make a move, I’m breaking my cover,” I whispered.
“We won’t let it.” That was Koa’s voice. “Her pulse is faint but present. I can see her pulse in her neck. Just hold on a little longer, little vixen.”
I could hear faint orders in the background, the rustle of weapons, and the murmur of enforcers.
Tye chuckled as the woman’s fangs slipped from her neck, and her head fell back with a moan.
“Two more seconds,” Jesper growled. “On my mark, Koa, you will follow the enforcers and heal Zara as soon as it’s clear.
Tobias and Jesse, break in from the side.
Dimitri and Kyle, break in from the main door.
Cassie, you will use your concealment to attack from the inside.
I want Tye alive for Zuko to question. Mikael, too.
He was just seen heading toward the ritual chamber. Everyone ready?”
Affirmatives crackled over the comms.
My hands curled into fists. The room’s chanting had crescendoed; vampires around the altar swayed, eyes bright, mouths parted to show their fangs.
Dimitri’s parents were in here, as well as Mary’s. Mary stood next to them, tears streaming down her face.
“Old blood will rise. Weak blood will be cleansed.” The woman raised a dagger above Zara’s chest.
“Now!” Jesper ordered.
The walls blew inward.
Tobias and Jesse crashed into the ritual chamber from a side tunnel, weapons already drawn. The main door burst open in the other room as Dimitri, Kyle, Bradley, and Jesper broke through.
The room erupted in panic.
Koa flew in through the hole in a rain of shattered stone and phoenix flame, wings half-spread and burning. His flames lit up the dark room like a sunrise.
Vampires shrieked, some running and some fighting the enforcers.
Koa hit the woman with a blast of fire, sending her flying from the altar and turning to ash from his phoenix flame. He dropped next to Zara, and his blue flames licked over her as he healed the bite marks all over her body.
Disgust swelled in my gut.
They’d bitten her everywhere.
“She’ll pull through,” Koa muttered.
I heard Dimitri, Jesper, and Kyle fighting in the other room with Cassie.
A vampire lunged at me from the side.