Chapter 22
Lux
Drak repeated the words he’d spoken to me at the altar of Vylheim’s throne. Though simple and spoken while he suffered another strange episode, they left me breathless. I’ll follow you.
“Lux, listen to me,” he whispered as he came back to reality. “This was our home once.”
We didn’t have time for his wild theories, and the Gods made that clear, pounding at my temples. Another scream swallowed Drak’s next words.
My gaze shifted to a structure on the right. The spire of what might once have been an altar or temple was severed in half, the crumbled stones scattered. A jagged tip pierced the fog, its charred stone dark against the mist.
I listened intently, waiting for my sister’s voice—or the voices of others nearby—but none came. This vampire and their victim were alone.
I twisted my neck to glance back at Drak. Shock hung from his jaw, or at least what I could see beneath the mask. His two-toned eyes were wide and unblinking, and his lips parted. “Drak,” I said, snapping him out of it. “Do you hear Silver?”
After a minute, he nodded. “Yes, she’s not close, but she’s here. Maybe a hundred paces away.”
I hummed my acknowledgement. “Let’s keep this up as long as we can.
Don’t let them know we’re here.” His brow furrowed as I gestured toward the other structure with a flick of my wrist. “Grab them so that when I attack, they can’t run off and warn Silver.
We’ll pick them off as we make our way to her, and if I get locked in with the vampires, you go for her. Capture her only.”
Drak was already nodding and turning away from me, unsheathing the sword at his back. He stalked into the clouds, his broad shoulders disappearing as the fog swallowed him. Split up, we could pick off more of them without alerting the head of the snake.
“That’s it.” Crooned Odin’s heavy voice. “This is what you’re made for. It is your purpose.”
I winced. Was I really nothing but a weapon?
The human’s cry forced me to focus. I stepped forward, following the side of the structure and the faint whimpers.
Clearly, the vampires no longer cared about the comfort of their vessels during feeding.
That was a courtesy of the past—a courtesy only granted to them because vampires wanted to stay hidden, and secrets required a little bait.
I edged my feet forward, fingers curling around the stake strapped to the outside of my clothing. My loose pants gave me freedom to move, though they bunched awkwardly where the stake was secured. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the closest to comfort I could manage.
Each breath the human took grew more labored, short and jagged as they struggled to inhale, choking on the particles clogging their throat. I wasn’t sure if I could save them, not with the wasteland swirling in their lungs, but I freed the stake from its binding and didn’t hesitate for a moment.
Peering around the stone, my eyes locked onto a bald vampire, fangs buried deep in a man’s muscular neck.
The skin on his throat was a mottled red and purple as he struggled to breathe.
Not that he’d live if he could breathe. Not one, but two vampires drank from him.
The other, a female who’d twisted his arm back and licked at the blood spilling down his wrist. Soon, his red and purple skin would be entirely pale and devoid of life.
When I stepped out, the female vampire jerked her attention to me, and I immediately whispered a compulsion. Her friend was slower to the draw, still enraptured with the taste of the man’s blood as he desperately and greedily drained the poor vessel.
“I feel the stake in my hands,” I whispered.
“And the breath in my throat.” I pinned her with my gaze when Drak’s words popped into my mind, and I wanted nothing more than for them to be true.
For him to have followed me and fought beside me.
But I had to focus. “I’ll feel your ashes blowing in flakes over my hands.
” She bared her fangs at me with a hiss, but it was all she could do before I turned her into my puppet.
“Slash at the vampire,” I commanded, voice sharp with compulsion. “He's draining your vessel.”
She did as I bid, lunging over the man’s body at her friend.
It was just enough to throw the bald vampire off of their shared vessel, but it was too late for the human.
His body lay limp and sprawled in the crimson dust, his neck twisted unnaturally after he’d rolled out of the bald vampire’s arms. I only hoped he’d fainted from blood loss before he felt the panic of choking.
The bald vampire threw off his attacker and shot to his feet in a single blink.
I barely held to the compulsion, like a single thread fraying more and more as my focus turned to the bald vampire.
I held the compulsion, forcing the female to remain still.
It was all the energy I could muster as my focus stretched thin and I fought to control the situation.
Perhaps it should have intimidated me that the bald vampire was nearly two heads taller than me. He stood like the spire itself, his head in the clouds, his body bent over me and his hand wrapping around my throat as if I was as small as Alva. Just a child in the hands of monsters.
But I wasn’t.
I was chosen, trained, and had fully draped myself in the body of a killer, so smashing the stake into his ribcage was nothing. It was even satisfying when his blood withered his body to nothing but ash.
I didn’t wait around as he disintegrated, and the flecks of him scattered over the blood-stained earth. The woman was my next target, but the thread of compulsion broke, and she was free to attack me.
She was scrappier, sharper, and far smarter than her arrogant companion who thought he could end me with nothing more than a careless grab. He definitely would have snapped my neck if I hadn’t had the stake perfectly angled at his heart. Kayn had made sure to train me to precision.
The vampire woman forced herself against me, throwing us both to the ground.
Air knocked from my lungs and the mask dislodged.
Sucking in a breath, chunks of something bitter passed over my tongue and caught in my throat.
I coughed, trying to force them out, but it was no use.
Time was slipping away as she tightened her grip, one hand clutching my chin, the other pressing against my shoulder.
This vampire was intent on snapping my neck.
With the last of the air in my chest, I whispered a weak compulsion. “I feel breathless but you feel even more desperate.” Scrambling for breath, I couldn’t fight back. I had to get her off me and fix the mask before more of the black particles filled my throat.
Trying not to draw in too much air, I commanded her to kill herself by feeding on my poisoned blood. “Drink from me.”
Wasting no time, she sank her fangs into the base of my neck, just above my collarbone.
The sting of the bite left me gasping, but no air came.
The toxins in the air suffocated me, and the shock of it all hit like a wave, drowning me in helplessness.
Nothing but the burn of the wound registered in my mind.
At least that was quiet. No Gods, no questions, no wondering what might come next.
Only pain. My world was all pain thanks to the wasteland’s lack of fresh air heightening every feeling.
After what felt like hours without air, she drew back. A horrified expression twisted her flawless face. My tainted blood turned her tongue and lips and tinted her veins black. Soon, she would join her partner as I used the last of my strength to plunge the stake into her heart.
Once she fell away, and her body was already disintegrating, the stake clattered from my hold, and my hand shot to the mask.
I adjusted it back over my mouth, desperate to breathe, as if the clay, leather, and mesh could somehow undo the damage, clearing the particles already choking the air from my lungs.
Thin streams of air slipped between what felt like rocks sitting in my throat.
I refused to die like this. The wasteland would not take me before I took my mother back from Silver. If I died now, I’d never have the chance to ask what else Drak had said to me earlier.
I’ll follow you.
I’ll follow you.
Drak filled my mind, and I couldn’t make sense of it.
I should have been focused on the fight ahead, on getting to Yggdrasil or stopping my sister before she reached it.
Instead, all I could think about was him.
The way he’d said it felt like a knife carving a hole in my chest. He’d follow me.
Nobody followed me. I wasn’t a leader, and I sure as Hel didn’t want to be.
But I wasn’t alone either. He was with me, physically and in every truth he bore for me. Suddenly, I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him alone either. I couldn’t die breathless and abandon him in these ruins.
I rolled onto my stomach, using the little air I had left to force out another cough, straining to stay as quiet as possible.
My lungs filled halfway before a fit of uncontrollable coughing overwhelmed my body.
My throat was raw, and the muscles across my stomach and chest ached from the effort.
Tears slipped past the clay plastered to my skin and dribbled down the sides of my face, spotting the dust beneath me in fat droplets.
Somewhere nearby, Drak's voice rang out, cursing another vampire as bones cracked and crunched.
Snapping necks was easy enough for Drak, and then he could finish them with a beheading using the sword on his back.
But none of that reassured me when he grunted, and then after another thud, he fell silent.
Drak…
I struggled to my feet, each breath coming in shallow gasps, pain flaring every time air brushed over my scratched throat. But I gripped the stake and forced myself upright.
This had only just begun.