Chapter 38
Then we headed out of the manor to the main courtyard where everyone was gathered around the perimeter of the open area designated for the battle.
“Bevin,” I leaned down and whispered. “What would Witches’ voices be used for?”
“Not the best time to be studying potions, Keena.”
I smiled at her. “You never know.”
Bevin looked frightened but she managed a meager smile. “Old, old mimicking spells. Foul-smelling stuff too. It requires a blood sacrifice, so we no longer use it in earnest.”
Doran’s voice announced the beginning of the ceremony. We filed out to the center of the courtyard with Feldema and her group doing the same just to our left. She looked tired and weak, but held her head high, a look of confidence on her face. Did she really feel that confidence or was it a mask?
Doran spoke of the prophecy and the rules of the Battle of Birthright.
I let my attention wander through the crowd who’d gathered to witness such an occasion.
Most were listening to Doran but some watched Feldema and me.
I caught Jordan’s worried look. He changed it as soon as he realized I saw him.
Manus was at the ready. Cliona watched me too, not Doran.
Others were gathered around by their species in neat little cliques.
Witches were gathered by the stand that held Doran, Bevin, and other members of the council.
The Slaugh were off to one side of the garden-turned-battleground.
They hadn’t come to any of the other festivities, but I made eye contact with Trammel and he gave me a respectful nod.
Then I looked over at Feldema. Her hands were trembling just slightly. It was a mask. How much power did she have without Nessum? I let my power reach toward hers. It barely sparked in return. She jumped and glared at me.
He had drained her… Why? What was his plan?
“So let the battle to prove birthright and the vengeance of Agnus the Betrayed show us the true holder of the seat of High Priestess!” Doran shouted, and the crowd went wild.
“The victor presides over the council of the Kith in a year and one day.” There was another great cheer from the crowd.
All attention moved to the two of us. We bowed to Doran.
Feldema turned to me and made her formal bow, which I returned.
I tried to meet her gaze as we straightened.
She wouldn’t, and I could see she was still trembling.
She took her stance and made a hasty lunge for me, a small blade drawn.
I was able to get out of the way easily and she tumbled to the ground.
The crowd all gasped at her weakness. I turned and walked toward the trees. She was weak and without power. I couldn’t fight her. I could easily kill her and myself in the process.
She lunged again and I just spun out of her way.
She fell again and got to her knees. “Just do it and get it over with, old Witch! Kill me and put me out of the misery of this life!” She screamed it at me.
More gasps and lots of conversation rippled through the watching throng.
This life? In the cell she had said something about other ways of living.
Had Nessum promised to make her a Vamp after she died? He wasn’t here.
“She is too weak!” came a shout from a Gremlin among his group. “You have held her and drained her power, Doran!”
Doran started to explain that the cell wards only prevented her from using her power while contained—when smoke and an odor that turned my stomach replaced the usual jasmine smell of the forest. Feldema smiled. Something was about to happen and I didn’t like the sense that I had no control over it.
The foul smell filled my nostrils. Old spells… Bevin’s explanation of Witches’ voices floated through my mind. I thought back to the old grimoires I had studied over the past and remembered a spell in one of them, a spell that would cast the voice of another to the wind.
As I made the connection, I heard my voice—not coming from me, but the woods. The Witches had been killed to steal my voice!
I searched the woods beside us for anyone but saw nothing. Feldema was still yelling at me to finish it all. I looked at her face. Her eyes were dancing with delight. She was far too happy to be begging for death. She knew I could no more kill her than she could me.
Through the fine smoke that came from just inside the woods, I started to hear my own voice cast a deadly fireball spell.
I quickly grabbed up some of the earth from beneath me.
I could destroy a potion like no other and I needed to now.
I spat on the dirt and flung it into the woods toward the smoke. It disappeared with a sizzle.
“No!” Feldema shouted. “You will kill me or I will kill you. Either way, we die!”
She lunged from her kneeling position and managed to slide the blade into my side, near the same place she had the first time we fought.
She drew it out. Some shouts and jeers came from the crowd.
I stumbled and put my hand to the wound.
A burning sting took my breath away, making it a few seconds before I could thrust her away using my Demon power.
The thrust pushed my twin backward and she landed against a tall pine tree. I cast again and wisteria vines wrapped around her, holding her to the tree and keeping her immobilized.
I felt dizzy. Not from the wound, which wasn’t bleeding that badly.
I felt a gentle push on my mind. It wasn’t Feldema’s power.
It was too strong for that. I stumbled again and closed my eyes to find the source of the power.
I reached for the ley and pushed it through Manus to filter and close my mind.
My bubble went up inside my head as Foras had taught me, making it easier to find the silvery streak of unusual power trying to touch me.
The silver of it was wondrous—angel magic. But it was blotched with blackness that looked like tar floating in a clean river.
Nessum.
I held the bubble in my mind and turned around to try to find him. He wasn’t in the crowd that was now loud with arguments and words of encouragement and condemnation.
I concentrated even more on what was happening in my mind.
It was taking a great deal of power to hold back the surge of magic trying to invade.
I felt blood seeping out of my wound now.
My efforts were making me sweat. Holding the spell to keep Feldema pinned to the tree, holding the bubble against Nessum’s prodding, and the blood loss were all wearing on me quickly.
I looked at Feldema. She was bleeding in the same spot I was. Bleeding hard.
I felt for my wound and the blood running over my hip and down my thigh. She wouldn’t be bleeding too if I weren’t dying. I saw Jordan. Cliona was holding him back and when I looked at him, he dropped to his knees.
I was not going to let them down.
I needed Nessum out in the open. I took a deep breath, feeling the pain of it in my side. I held my hand over the wound and reached the other toward the ley and found it close to the trees. I walked directly into the line.
The pain from the wound subsided. I felt the touch of another unfamiliar magic on my skin, silky and gentle. I had never felt such a soft touch of magic. It wasn’t Nessum’s, Feldema’s, or mine. I kept my body in the ley line, gaining strength from it.
I followed the trail of the new magic to the crowd. The aura matched one of the Unseelie Court Elves in attendance. Elfin magic. That’s why I didn’t recognize it. He was producing a glamour.
I used the extra strength of the ley to break the link of the spell from the Elf, watching his face as it snapped and broke.
He stumbled and fell backward. One of the guards reached him before he could make his way from the crowd.
The blood slowed to a trickle at my side.
I wasn’t dying and neither was Feldema. The glamour was made to distract.
Nessum’s magic was still trying to find a way into my mind.
He needed something from inside my head.
I couldn’t imagine what. Why not face me and fight?
Why not just take Feldema and run to another realm?
The strain of fighting his probing was wearing on me.
In my mind, I pictured myself grabbing that line of power still prodding at me and yanking on it like a rope.
Nessum appeared just in front of me. The surprise of the gathered beings echoed in a communal inhale of the cool night air.
“Nessum!” Feldema screeched as he turned to me.
He held out his hand and I found my feet moving, my body rocking forward, dragging me out of the ley.
Nessum was controlling my feet, moving me away from the power of the line.
I fought to keep each foot in place, watching his calm, beautiful face.
Those eyes. Joy and love filled my being, pulled me toward him.
I was lost in his sparkling, perfect Vampire eyes.
It was the thrall. If I kept the eye contact, I would be lost to him.
I managed a blink then fought to hold my eyes closed.
The sounds of the crowd echoed through my ears as the pull of Nessum’s power was shattered.
I looked down, keeping my eyes from his as I worked back into the line.
But my head started to rise just as my feet had started to move.
I shut my eyes to block the effect of those eyes before we made direct contact.
I felt the magic of the ley line leave me.
It hurt to be pulled away from the magic and it left me with a popping sound that echoed through the forest.
“Nessum,” Feldema pleaded again with weariness. “Why haven’t you come for me? Why did you leave me to rot in that cell?” She was sobbing hard. I opened my eyes and looked at her face, at the tears streaming down her cheeks. Love, disappointment, and grief all showed in her eyes as she sobbed.
He turned and stepped toward her, his magic not releasing me in the least. “It appears I chose the wrong sister.” His tone was smug and uncaring as he glanced toward me and then turned his attention back to the crying Witch tied to the tree.
“But…I love you! You love me! You promised we would be together forever. You promised!” Her utter loyalty and loss reverberated in the air. Her body hung limp with her pain.
“Pity, too,” he said, running a finger along the side of one of her breasts. She tried to arch into his touch through the bindings.
I felt the presence of two more Vampires moving close from the forest. They emerged and stood to my sides, just behind me.
I could just make them out in my peripheral vision.
I saw Cliona and Tynan stiffen. They wouldn’t dare move while Nessum was there.
Jordan had returned to his feet and stood stiff.
No one could help me. The Dark Angel was too powerful.
Nessum swung his gaze from Feldema and back to me.
His features were so perfect, so beautiful.
Alabaster skin covered a perfect bone structure, long golden hair graced his shoulders.
He wore a Roman-style tunic with golden trim and a belt that held a small dagger only.
I closed my eyes quickly so as not to get caught up in his beauty.
His charm could move me against my will.
“I made the same mistake most of the Kith had, my love.” He was still talking to Feldema. “Little Miss Mary’s human blood didn’t weaken her as we all thought.”
“But Nessum! I did everything you asked. I took no others. I gave you powers and asked for nothing in return. Please, Nessum!” She frantic. I opened my eyes and let her loose from her wisteria bindings. She ran at him and draped herself in his arms.
He gave me a disgusted look and waved his hand, and she was flung right back to the tree, again surrounded by the vines. At least I had let go of the spell holding her and only had to concentrate on blocking him from my mind. His power was still there, still probing for a way in.
“What is it you’re looking for in there, Nessum?” I tried not to betray the fear that was filling me.
“Weakness, Keena. We all have one. You found mine. I’m looking for yours.” He stepped to my right, still trying to probe.
I was being drained. My body felt as if the very blood was being slowly drained from it. A bead of sweat ran down my back and my knees were getting weak. “What do you want with me, with Feldema?”
“Power.”
I kept my eyes down but my chin was still held up by his magic. “You have more power than anyone here. Why more?” I was fighting to keep standing.
He stepped behind me. His two Vamps, who were behind him. “It appears to me that you have great power. You are standing to fight me, are you not?”
I didn’t know how to answer. I caught him out of the corner of my eye on the left as he started back around. His feet were so close to a circle I had drawn in practice weeks before. I could see the outline of it in the grass…
Could I close him in it? I looked forward, desperate not to draw it to his attention. It was only a slight disturbance in the grass but I wasn’t taking any chances.
“I had it planned, Keena. Feldema. The prophecy. Never did I dream that the Creator would grace one with as much mixed blood as you with such power. Though it is obvious that I have never understood His intentions.”
If he would just back up one more step, I could try to trap him. I would have to drop the bubble blocking my mind from his and reach for the power of the ley line to maintain the circle. I was too weak to hold both. It was worth the shot.