Witch's Fury (The Bone Coven Chronicles Book 4) Page 3

  She’d always liked games. When our family gathered around the table for a night of board games, Grams would always choose the game where one person had to play a spy. Any time she was the spy? She’d win. So, this kind of thing was right up Grams’s alley. For some reason, she’d set things up so that I would come here. Now, I just had to figure out what that reason was.

  “What is it?” I asked when I reached the room where Laura and Anastasia were waiting.

  Laura handed over a piece of folded paper. On the top, someone had scribbled “For Zoe” in old-school cursive.

  I’d recognize that handwriting anywhere. Grams had written this letter and had left it here at headquarters specifically for me to find. My heart flipped as I grabbed the paper and unfolded it with trembling fingers, and then my eyes tripped down the page to read the handwritten words.

  Zoe darling,

  I know you’re in trouble. I’ve tracked you from here, to Colorado, to Scotland, and back again. And I have seen the Nosferatu attacking you. Thankfully, I also know that Dorian is with you and doing his best to keep you safe from harm. Thank the goddess for that. If you find this note before I’m home, then you have found an empty apartment. Please don’t fret. I’m only out there looking for you. I’ll be right behind you soon enough.

  Stay safe, and love always,

  Grams

  “Feel better?” Dorian asked as he scanned the note from over my shoulder.

  With a sigh, I folded the note and pressed it to my chest. So, Grams was fine, after all. She was only out and about because she had worried about the situation I’d found myself in, dashing all over the world in order to track me down. According to this note, everything was fine, and she’d be home soon enough, when she realized that I was back in Boston for good.

  But, for some reason, the unease in my heart still remained. I couldn’t shake the sensation that this note was very wrong.

  Chapter 6

  A light knock on the door jerked me out of my reverie. Dorian poked his head into my bedroom, took one glance at my crossed legs, the open grimoire, and the bottle of perfume in my hands, and he sighed. Quietly, he eased into the room and shut the door with a soft click.

  “I thought I felt something strange happening,” he said as he settled onto the floor beside me.

  “Felt?” I asked. “You mean, you sensed my mood through our bond.”

  “That, and it’s not like you to go hide in a room all by yourself away from everyone,” he said. “You like to come across as a loner, but you hate being alone.”

  “Is there a way to undo our bond?” I asked with a mock frown. “Because now it feels like you have way too much insight into my thoughts.”

  He leaned closer, and his cool breath whispered across my face. “That isn’t something I know because of our bond, Zoe. I’ve spent enough time around you to understand how you think. Besides,” he said with a slight smile, “you don’t truly want to undo our bond. You like it far too much to let it go.” His lips twisted into a delicious smile as his tongue darted out between his teeth.

  I smiled back, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You mean, is there a way to break our bond?” He arched an eyebrow. “There is always a way to reverse every spell. Nothing is truly permanent in our world as long as we can find the correct rune. But, unfortunately, there’s only one way to break our bond, and it requires my death. Or yours. I don’t think either of us wants that.”

  “So, you’re telling me the only way for the bond to break is for one of us to die?” I widened my eyes. “That’s a pretty permanent kind of magic if you ask me.”

  “Bonds aren’t meant to be taken lightly,” he said softly, wrapping his cold hand around mine. “We’ve bound our souls, our minds, our hearts…our bodies.”

  My heart thumped in my chest, and I sucked in a sharp breath when Dorian shifted closer. Electricity hummed between us, and I ached to feel his body on mine. We were alone. In my bedroom. With nothing to do but waste the night, but there was still so much left unsaid between us. We’d jumped into bed while we’d been hiding at the Sun Coven, but that hadn’t erased all the questions in my mind.

  “You’re thinking about something,” he said, tapping my chin and smiling. “And I wouldn’t have to feel it through our bond to know that either. Those little brows of yours always knit together when you’re deep in thought. And worrying.”

  With a laugh, I shook my head. “Stop doing that.”

  “I’ll never stop doing that.” He stared deeply into my eyes as he pressed his forehead against mine. When my eyelids flickered, realization dawned on his face. “Ah. That’s why. You’re still thinking about what we discussed in Scotland.”

  “Less discussed. More like argued,” I said. “But yes. I know you say you don’t care what the future holds, but I worry what’s going to happen when you realize that I’m going to become an old woman someday. When you realize that I’m not like you. My life is short, and yours isn’t. One day, you’ll wake up to an old lady you won’t want anymore.”

  “I will never not want you, Zoe Bennett,” he said quietly. “And remember, you’re only twenty-one years old. We have decades to spend with each other.”

  “Decades don’t feel like enough,” I whispered, flicking my gaze to the carpet, heart pounding hard in my chest. Because that was the truth that had been plaguing me ever since the bond had tightened between us. Eternity didn’t feel long enough either, but I didn’t even have that. Next to him, my mortal life felt so fleeting, and every second mattered more than the next. What we had between us felt bigger than that, and my heart hurt when I imagined the day it would end.

  “That is life, Zoe Bennett,” he said with a sad smile. “Do I wish I could spend longer with you? Of course. But I can’t. The only way to make us last forever is something I refuse to even comprehend. I would never want you to become like me and to be forced to live with the curse the way I have. There’s a feeling I’ve never told you about because I didn’t want to worry you, or scare you, or freak you out. But it’s part of the curse, and it’s always there.”

  “What are you talking about?” I breathed.

  “Pain, Zoe,” Dorian said. “Every breath I take, every beat of my heart. The cravings are always there. It hurts. And I live with that every damn day.”

  Chapter 7

  “You’re late,” Belzus said when we met the fae in the middle of the cemetery grounds. The graveyard looked different in the daylight. Less creepy. More mundane. People were milling about, and the sun shot through broken clouds to highlight a green sea of grass and rows of carefully trimmed hedges. Nothing to suggest supernatural creatures prowled these paths at night or that the graves were more than just vessels for loved ones lost.

  “There was traffic,” I said, but that was a lie. I’d used my travel spell to send us over here after I finally broke myself away from the apartment. I hadn’t wanted to leave. What if Grams showed up? Despite her letter, it was hard to walk away, wondering if at any moment she might return. But Dorian had convinced me to come back to the graveyard—Grams was obviously fine, but the world wouldn’t be unless we found this shadow mage. And, as soon as we were done in the faerie realm, we could return to the apartment again.

  “You would think a shadow mage would be better at coming up with untruths,” Belzus said with a sigh as he ruffled his dark hair. Today, in the daylight, he’d taken on a different illusion by donning a faded pair of jeans and a plain black shirt. His pointed ears were gone, as well as the glow of his skin, but he had done little to mask his beauty. “Come along. There’s only so long I can leave the veil open.”

  We followed Belzus into a crypt, the very same one where he’d asked me to banish a demon, the same one that Dorian had been trapped in by the Blood Hunter Coven. Being inside the place made my mouth go dry. The pillar still sat in the center of the room like nothing had ever happened here, but the images in my mind told another story. T
he blood mages had put Dorian inside that tiny stone box and they’d planned to keep him there for as long as eternity kept going.

  “I apologize for the location,” Belzus said with a wave of his hand when he saw the dark expression on my face, “but there are only a few safe places where the veil can be opened between our worlds, and this is one of them.”

  “The same place the demon came through,” I said. “Seems like a bit of a coincidence.”

  “It’s not a coincidence at all,” he said frankly. “Because we can pass through here to the faerie realm, the veil to the demon realm is weaker in this particular spot. It’s an unfortunate side effect.”

  “Maybe you should close your opening for good then,” Anastasia said. “You know, stay out of this damn realm if you’re making matters worse.”

  Belzus’s eyes glittered as he stared at Anastasia. “The damage is done. Closing it now would not repair your veil. It would remain the same, forever weakened by the contact. No, the only way to prevent demons from entering this realm is to use the blade’s magic.”

  “Which closes the veils permanently.”

  “The demon veil. All others would remain open.”

  “Then, let’s go,” I said with a nod.

  “Before we begin,” Belzus said, steepling his fingers underneath his chin, “you should be aware of a few ground rules for visiting the faerie realm.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Ground rules? I thought anything went in faerie land.”

  “First, don’t call it that,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “Any hint that you’re making light of them or their realm, and they will…well, let’s just say it’s best not to antagonize them.”

  “Noted,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “Don’t drink. Don’t eat. Don’t dance,” he said. “You will end up enchanted, and you will never want to leave.”

  “Surely that doesn’t apply to me,” Anastasia said. “I’m a Daywalker. Not a mortal witch. And Dorian? He’s half-vamp.”

  “Oh, they can certainly enchant you,” Belzus said with a smile. “And your emotions are ten times more intense than a mortal’s, so I’m sure they’d be eager to trap you there. If anything, you should seriously consider not coming with us at all. A Daywalker is no match for a fae.”

  It was apparent to me that Belzus was poking Anastasia with a stick, trying to rile her up because who wouldn’t want to get under the vampire’s skin? And she looked ready to snap, like a dangerous snake stalking its prey. Of course, Belzus wasn’t anything even remotely close to prey. If it came down to a fight, I wasn’t entirely sure which of the two would win.

  Both. Neither.

  “They can try,” she said with a harsh smile. “And I will sink my teeth into their necks faster than they can blink.”

  “One word of caution,” Belzus said, turning to me. “You will never win while you’re in the faerie realm. On your home turf, one-on-one, then maybe. I’ve seen you in action. You’re strong. But you will be surrounded by thousands of fae. Careful you keep your head on in there because I won’t be able to bail you out.”

  “Why not?” I asked with a frown.

  “There are…complications,” he said. “I can get you in, and I can get you out. But if you pick a fight with any of the lower fae, then I can only break it up. I cannot fight against them. We’re going into the Unseelie Court, and they would react badly to my taking sides with you.”

  “You should have told us it was the Unseelies last night,” Dorian said with a sudden sharp growl. “We could have prepared for this differently.”

  “And how would you have prepared?” Belzus raised his eyebrows. “Bring more weapons? They’ll confiscate them as soon as you pass through the gates. Prep Zoe on more spells? They will force food down your throat to trap you in the realm if they see a glow on your palms. The only way to interact with the Unseelie Court is to go in with nothing. No weapons, no magic, no fight.”

  There were two courts in the faerie realm—the Seelies and the Unseelies. Belzus was of the former, or at least that was what I assumed. While they were still dangerous, they had an air of benevolence about them. The kinder of the two, and the wiser. They’d been the first to back off when so many kidnapping cases had proliferated the newspapers. The Unseelie, on the other hand, were harder to convince. They were cunning and cruel, and they’d do anything for a hit of power.

  “Don’t look so worried,” Belzus said. “You’ll be fine. Just as long as you don’t give into what they want.”

  We stepped through the veil, and day turned to night. I’d only had one experience in my life of leaving the human realm, and it hadn’t been a good one. Back when I’d been tracking Vincent, Professor Wagner’s accomplice, I’d found myself neck-deep in the demon world, a place full of darkness and shadows. All around me, there’d been nothing but black, like a void had opened up in the very fabric of the world.

  The Unseelie’s part of the faerie realm was different but also eerily similar in a way that caused the back of my neck to prickle in alarm. Darkness seemed to permeate my skin as a fingernail-shaped moon hung low in the sky. Leafless trees rattled in the wind, and up ahead, a tall and spindly castle loomed like an oversized spider. We stood on a stone pathway that shifted underneath my feet when I took a step closer to Dorian, scuttling like crabs. I shivered. Maybe they weren’t stones at all.

  “Welcome to the Land of the Fae,” Belzus said, opening his hands wide as he beamed. While everything around us felt dark and lifeless, Belzus radiated pure energy, his skin illuminated by whatever magic he carried inside his soul.

  “Is it always this cold?” Laura asked as she shivered. “It’s like you’ve taken us to Alaska or something.”

  “In the Unseelie Court, it’s always this cold. The sun only shines for two hours a day, even in the height of your summer…which is to say, it’s always winter here.”

  “That sounds depressing,” I said.

  “Only depressing if you aren’t Unseelie,” he said with a shrug. “They would find it depressing to be stuck in sunlight all day.”

  “I don’t mind it. The air is kind of refreshing,” Anastasia said as she took a deep breath and smiled. “Crisp.”

  “Now, come along,” Belzus said. “We shouldn’t waste much time here.”

  We followed Belzus down the shifting pathway toward the castle. I didn’t dare ask what the rocks were or why they moved when we stepped on them. Instead, I focused on the building before us. Six skinny towers sat in a circular formation around the center spiral whose top peak jutted into the thick rolling clouds. A tall, thick gate surrounded the grounds, sharp spikes slicing into the darkness every few feet. There appeared to be a dark liquid dripping from a few of them. Something reddish black that fell like splotches onto the ground. Swallowing hard, I glanced away.

  Belzus stopped when we were only a few feet from the gate. “Everyone stay quiet and don’t get involved. I have a special relationship with the King, but his guards will be quick to turn us away if any of you say or do anything to offend them.” He gave me a pointed look.

  “Wait a minute,” Laura said. “King?”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Belzus’s face lit up in a smile. “Did I not mention? The fae who cast the illusion for that shadow mage is the King of the Unseelie Court.”

  Chapter 8

  Oberon sat on a crown of frozen thorns. He stared down at us, his expression as hard as the rocks beneath our feet. His skin glowed with the same incandescent light as Belzus’s, his long, dark hair curling on his shoulders. His eyes were bright and green, flicking across us with curiosity. Or hunger. It was impossible to tell because I couldn’t keep my eyes on his face. There was something about him that made it extremely difficult to look at him for any longer than a fleeting moment.

  “Belzus, I’m intrigued,” Oberon finally said. His voice was musical and deep, like the bass chords of a piano. “Not only has it been an age and a half since you’ve visited, but you also seem to have brought
some gifts. My birthday isn’t for another four years or so. What’s the occasion?”

  “King Oberon,” Belzus said with a slight nod of his head. Interesting. He didn’t bow, which suggested I was correct in my assumptions that Belzus belonged to the Seelie Court rather than this one. It made me feel a bit better about this entire journey, being in the company of one of the more sane faeries. “I’m afraid I haven’t come bearing gifts. These are, ah, companions of a sort. I believe you have some information that may be of some use to them.”

  “Of some use to them?” Oberon barked out a laugh, but it wasn’t one of happiness. “Have you forgotten that I am a King, Belzus? Mortals do not come to me and make demands.”

  Clearing my throat, I stepped forward. “We’re not making a demand. We just have some questions we need to ask you.”

  Belzus shot me a look of disapproval. “Forgive Zoe. She’s never been to the faerie realm and has no knowledge of our customs.”

  “It’s fine,” Oberon said with a flick of his fingers as his eyes bored deeper into mine. “This one. She is a shadow mage, no? It has been a long, long time since I’ve seen one of you.”

  Swallowing hard, I nodded. “Yes, and I have an illusion over my mark.” I flipped down my collar to show him the fake bone mark that everyone saw instead of the truth hidden underneath.

  “Ah,” Oberon said with a knowing smile, settling against the hard, prickly back of his throne. “You shadows sure do like your illusions.”