Page 31 of Risen
I had felt them, seen them in the chaos and darkness as I decimated the cult, but somewhere along the way I had lost track of them.
A powerful wash of magic rushed through the space, and somewhere ahead in the ballroom, Robin roared in fury tinged with outraged pain.
“Acacia,” I bit out, turning my back on the ballroom, turning to shadows as I flowed down the nearest short section of stairs and around the corner, Ruya trailing behind me as she clung to the railing to keep from falling.
If the fucking vampire was going to betray us, now was probably a good time.
Chapter 14
Cicely
Dusek’spowerblanketedthetop landing and the second floor corridor outside the ballroom in total blackness as the true, staggering vastness of the bubak expanded around us.
The lights died.Sound warped.The fear he poured into the cult rolled down the hallway in a black tide, brushing my ankles, curling like smoke around my legs and creeping over my body.I knew he was powerful—extremely so—but this vast, hungry emptiness was staggering.Somewhere nearby the griffins screamed and the naga’s blades rang against the stone, falling from terror-numbed hands.Robin’s fire flared, pressing against the dark for a brief moment.Then it, too, was extinguished.
Chaos ensued, the rebel court shouting here and there, cultists screaming, the sharp, scents of blood and urine filling the air.My empathic abilities were suddenly swamped, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the fear and other emotions flowing around me, set off by the bubak, torn from the cultists to crash over me like a tidal wave.I was momentarily frozen, rooted to the ground as my mind and magic struggled to shake off the terror and sort reality from nightmare.
In that moment, as I strained to shift through the confusing, terrifying layers of reality and bubak magic, my attention snagged on something else.Someothermagic, fueled by powerful feeling of desperation and madness.
The shimmer of emotion and magic didn’t come from the emperor’s ward.It still hummed behind me, ugly and belligerent over the Vanity Ballroom’s double doors.No—this was a quieter wrongness, a parasitic pulse under the current chaos around me.It didn’t quite match with the fervor of the witch magic around me either.
It tasted like old honey left too long in the sun.It smelled like ruined jasmine and death.Vampire.
Acacia.
She had disappeared after she got us into the building.But it would be foolish to think that the syndicate’s vampire queen didn’t have some backstabbing plan in place to be rid of us once the emperor was dead.And just like the Order of the Tiple Moon, she had waited until our victory was in sight before she made her move.
I fumbled in the dark, moving toward the vampire queen’s feelings of desperation, anticipation, and vindication, dodging cultists and batting court members as I went.I managed to find Josh, touched his sleeve and felt him flinch before he turned toward me.His eyes glowed red in the gloom, and the brief impression of them looked too wide in the dark, pupils blown, his breath shallow.
Dusek’s fear magic wanted to make prey of everything with a heartbeat, by stirring up a person’s worst nightmares.Poor Josh was an easy victim, even if Dusek didn’t mean it to happen.The vampire’s nightmares lived too close to the surface even without the boogeyman’s magic pulling them to the forefront.I was surprised he hesitated, that he didn’t immediately go for my throat, unable to tell friend from foe.A frisson of remembered panic rippled through me.But I did my best to battle the overwhelming dread caused by bubak magic and my own trauma, to send calm to the beta before me.
I leaned close so he could catch my voice over the shouts and sobs around us.“Do you feel it?Acacia’s up to something!”
He swallowed.I could barely make out his shape in the heavy gloom around us, and only because I was standing so close—too close.He could drain me dry right now and no one would even notice.
“I—” He tilted his head, listening to something I couldn’t hear—probably tapping into the bond he shared with his maker.His nostrils flared.His face went still, then he bared his glistening fangs.“Yes.”
“Down,” I said, and let the calm move through me.We needed to stop whatever she was doing while the court was distracted with the cult, and I was pretty sure Acacia’s sick magic was coming from downstairs.Pushing my weak empathic magic through the heavy darkness that blanketed us was a strain, but I did the best I could.I needed Josh grounded enough to help me.I wasn’t foolish enough to think I could take on the vampire queen by myself.“Let’s go.”
We slipped from the edge of the melee as Dusek’s darkness thickened and the cult discovered what true fear felt like.Martina barked orders in a slightly garbled voice that told me she wasn’t in human form.Something crashed to my left, making me flinch away, and I felt the whisper of a blade whistling past my face.Somewhere nearby a man grunted, and I smelled the sudden hot tang of blood.Queen Cat screamed a battle-cry that made rats boil from the baseboards.But I leapt over them and kept moving, my hand fisted in Josh’s shirt so we didn’t get separated.
“She’s below us, but not far.On the landing I think,” he hissed moving so fast I struggled to keep up.
The twisting staircase was made up of short sections with multiple landings.We carefully, but swiftly, slipped down one flight to the landing below the second floor with its warded ballroom.The light was wrong here, even though Dusek’s shadow didn’t quite blot it all out, too flat, almost sepia-colored.The air tasted like blood and burning metal.
Acacia was crouched in the corner, candles and spell supplies scattered around her.She had chalked a rough circle around her, interspersed with candles made of beeswax, studded with dried red threads, three inverted pentacles scratched into the tile and filled with some sort of dust that glittered in the low light.In the center, on a shallow stone bowl, sat a crystal orb—one that looked suspiciously like the description we’d been given of Robin’s birthright object, though it was too empty of magic to be the real deal.Sigils had been roughly painted along the risers, climbing up toward the ballroom like ivy.The paint was fresh, made of blood and something else.The stink of it—iron and rot—clung to the back of my tongue.
It took me a moment to notice the three items placed near the orb.A patch of fabric with a sigil embroidered on it, a gleaming pendant, and a werewolf claw.The trophies she had demanded from the rebel court to prove they had completed each assassination mission.Not trophies at all.She had been gathering magic-infused items from her enemies to use to power this ritual.
Acacia’s pet sorcerer knelt across from her with his hands hovering over the stone bowl that held the orb, eyes rolled white to the ceiling.Visible threads of power—slick, gray things—ran from his wrists into the orb and from the orb into the staircase above, crawling toward the second floor.I was no sorcerer, but I’d spent enough time around high fae to be able to sense what was going on.The magic that flowed from the sorcerer seemed...hungry.Whatever ritual they were attempting, it was meant to draw power to that orb.
“Acacia,” Josh hissed, his voice low and filled with a deadliness that seemed wrong coming from the gentle beta.
She stood from where she had been kneeling, careful not to disturb her sorcerer, but radiating smugness and self-satisfaction, as if she was waiting for a round of applause for a stunning performance.The wrongness of the magic pulsed around us, combining with the looming terror that leeched into the space from Dusek’s rampage just above us.
“What is this?”Josh demanded, his claws lengthening as he angled himself to partially block me from his vampire master.
She smiled, her cute little bowstring mouth curling up into a chillingly mad expression on her childlike face.“Oh, you didn’t think I was only going to take the emperor’s place, did you?I’ll need all of his little tricks and toys as well, if I want to succeed.For insurance.”
