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The Gauntlet
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Chapter Eight
He didn’t tell her again that this might
not work. He didn’t tell her anything at all. But golden
threads of a magic she didn’t know suddenly curled around her hands
where they rested on his arms. She had always thought vampires
were creatures of the dark, but the same bright magic shone around him
as his hands came up to bracket her face.
“I don’t know your first name,” he whispered, against her lips.
“Gillian,” she told him, hearing her voice tremble.
“Gillian,” he repeated, and her name in his
voice was full of so much longing that it coiled in her belly, dark and
liquid, like her own emotion. And perhaps it was. Because
when he suddenly bit down on her lower lip, the sensation left her
trembling, but not with fear.
He made a low noise in his throat and pulled her close.
The same strange magic that twisted around them sparked off his fingers
wherever they touched her, like rubbed wool in winter. The tiny
flashes of sensation had her arching helplessly against him, one hand
clenched on his shoulder, the other buried in the heavy silk of his
hair.
She could taste her own
blood, hot and coppery, on his tongue as he drove the kiss deep, and it
drew a sound from her, something animal and desperate. She gulped
for air when he pulled back, almost a sob. She wanted—she wanted
more than this; his hands on her body, his skin against hers, his
tongue tracing the tiny wound he’d made—
But when he returned, it wasn’t to her lips.
A brilliant flash of pain went through her,
like a shock of cold water, as his fangs slid into the flesh of her
neck. She drew in a stuttering breath, but before she could cry
out, a rush of rich, strong magic flooded her senses, spreading heat
through every fiber of her body. She’d always thought of vampires
as taking, but this was giving, too, an impossibly intimate sharing
that she’d never even dreamed was—
He didn’t move, but it suddenly felt like he was inside her,
thrusting all that power into her very core. She shuddered and
opened to him, helpless to resist, the vampire shining on her and in
her, elemental and blazing and gone past human. The pain was gone, the
magic driving that and everything else away, crashing over her like
ocean waves, an unrelenting and unending tide. She screamed
beneath it, because it couldn’t be borne and had to be; because there
was no bracing to meet it and no escape; and because it would end, and
that would be even harder to bear.
“Gillian.” It took her a moment to realize he had drawn
back, with the tide of magic still surging through her veins. It
felt like sea, ebbing and flowing in pounding waves that shook the very
foundations of—
She blinked, and
realized that it wasn’t just the vampire’s magic making the room
shake. It wasn’t even the pounding on the door, which seemed to
have stopped in any case. She frowned and watched as the few
remaining charms jittered and danced off the table, all on their own.
“What is it?” she asked, bemused. The
vampire pulled her to the window, and leaned out, dangerously
far. “What are you doing?” she tried to pull him back.
“They’ll kill you!”
“I don’t think so,” he said, his voice sounding as stunned as she felt.
“Why not?”
“Because I believe you may have completed that ward, after all.”
He backed away from the window and she
moved forward, in time to see what looked like a black wave crash into
the side of the tower. She blinked, dizzy from blood loss and
still burning with strange energy. And then another wave started
for them, rising out of the earth of the courtyard, and she understood.
“In defense of your life,” the vampire said, with quiet irony.
Gillian looked down to see the third spiral
of the triskelion, glowing bright against her wrist. She traced
it with a finger and power shivered in the air for a moment, before
melting back into her skin, joining the tide swelling within her.
“I think it might be best if it didn’t
hit,” he said, glancing from the approaching wave to the cracks
spidering up the old walls. “Can you stop it?”
“I don’t want to stop it,” she told him, flexing
her fingers and feeling the warmth of deep rich soil beneath her hands,
the whisper of the age old magic of the earth in her ears. But
there was something else there, too, alien and strange, but powerful,
all the same. It wasn’t the vampire’s rich, golden energy, but
colder, more metallic, more—
She
laughed, suddenly understanding what the old Mother had meant.
“You’ll have all the power you need,” she repeated.
“What?”
“The Mother didn’t just link the witches
into her coven,” she told him delightedly. “She linked the mages,
too!”
He stared at her, and then
back at the awesome power of the land rising to meet them.
“That’s…very interesting, but I think we had better jump before the
next wave hits.”
“Let the Circle jump!” she said, and pushed out.
The magic flowing along her limbs followed
the motion—and so did the earthen tide. It paused almost at the
tower base, trembling on the edge of breaking like a wave about to
crest. And then it surged back in the other direction.
Masses of black soil rippled out in
concentric circles from the base of the tower, flowing like water
toward the old fortress walls. They hit like the surf on the
beach, crashing into stone and old mortar already riddled with tiny
fissures from years of neglect. The fissures became cracks, the
cracks became gaps, and still the waves came. Until the earth
shifted beneath the foundations and the stones slipped loose from each
other and the walls crumbled away.
There were shouts and curses from the guards who fell with the
walls, and from the bewildered mages who suddenly found themselves at
the center of a pile of spread-out rubble. But the witches were
eerily silent, turning as one to look up at the tower for a long, drawn
out moment. And then they gave an ancient battle cry that raised
the hair on Gillian’s arms.
And charged as one.
* * *
“Nope, nothing.” The distant, muffled
voice came from somewhere above him, right before something was slammed
down through the dirt, barely missing his head.
Kit swiveled his eyes to the side to stare
at it. It was wood, as thick around as his wrist and pointed
slightly at one end. A fine specimen of a stake, he thought, with
blank terror.
“Are you sure you saw him over here?”
That was the witch. Gillian. He
tensed at her voice, trying to force something, anything past his
lips. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded, but the stake was
removed.
“Aye, although I
don’t know why ye care,” the other voice said. “He’s a
vampire. He’ll just feed off ye again.”
“He didn’t feed off me the first time,” the witch
said. “I told you, he was helping me.”
“Strange kind ‘o help that leaves ye pale and sweating,”
the other voice grumbled, right before the stake was slammed down
again--between his legs.
His
alarmed grunt must have been audible that time, because the witch’s
voice came again, closer this time. “Don’t move, Winnie.”
Kit lay there, his heart hammering in his
chest in rapid beats that his kind weren’t supposed to have. But
then, they weren’t supposed to panic, either. And that was
clearly a bunch of—
“Found him!”
The witch’s excited voice came from just above him, and there was a
sudden lessening of the weight of the earth pressing down on his limp
body.
It took ten minutes for
them to haul him out, either because the witches had expended their
magic destroying the jailers, or because no one cared to use any on a
vampire. Certainly the sour-faced dwarf who finally uncovered his
head looked like she’d much rather just heap the dirt back where they’d
found it, possibly after using her massive stake one more time.
But the witch got hands under his arms and pulled him out of the hole
in a series of sharp tugs.
She laid him on the ground and bent over him, her unbound hair
falling onto his filthy face. “Are you all right?” she asked
distinctly.
Kit tried to answer,
but only succeeded in causing his tongue to loll out of his
mouth. He tasted dirt. She pushed it back in, looking
worried.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked the dwarf, who was suddenly looking more cheerful.
“One too many stun spells, looks like to
me,” she said cheerfully. “And he didn’t get out ‘o the way fast enough
when the tower came down.” She poked at him with her toe.
“Be out of it for a while, he will.”
She moved away, probably off to terrorize someone else, and the
witch knelt by his side. “We can’t stay,” she told him, trying to
brush a little of the caked dirt off him. “The Circle probably
knows about this already, or if they don’t, they soon will. We
have to go while we still have a head start.”
Kit coughed up a clod of dirt from lungs that felt bone
dry. He strongly suspected that he’d swallowed a good deal of it,
too, but mercifully, the witch had found his flask and filled it with
water. He gulped it gratefully, despite the unpleasant sensation
of mud churning in his stomach.
It managed to rinse enough soil loose from his vocal chords for a dry
whisper. “You…came back,” he croaked.
She brushed dirty hair out of his eyes,
causing a little cascade down the back of his ruined shirt. “Of
course. What did you expect?”
“I…wasn’t sure.” He licked his lips and drank a little
more with her help. “We…had a deal, but…many people…”
She frowned slightly. “What deal?”
“I help you…you…help me.”
“I did help you,” she said, the frown
growing. “Winnie wasn’t the only one who wanted to stake you.”
He shook his head, sending a cloud of dust into the air. “No. You promised…”
“I’m not going with you,” she told him
flatly. “I have a child to think about. I have to get her
out of England.”
“You…you’re Great Mother now,” he protested. “You can’t leave.”
“Watch me,” she said viciously. She
gestured around at the tumbled rubble. “This is what the Circle
brings. Nothing but ruins and destruction, everywhere they
go. I’m not raising a child in constant peril!”
If he’d had any saliva, Kit would have pointed out
that the Circle hadn’t turned a perfectly good, if slightly dilapidated
castle into a pile of rocks. But he didn’t, and she didn’t give
him the chance in any case.
“And as for the other, you cannot have a coven of one. And
I’m shortly going to be the only one left. Everyone else is going
back to their own people, to regroup, to plan, to hide…” she
shrugged. “It’s a new world, now that the covens are gone.
And we each have to find our own role in it.”
He lay there, watching the last rays of the setting sun
blaze through her glorious hair. And wished his damn throat would
unfreeze. He had a thousand things to say and no time to say
them. “If you’re not…going to stay. Why look for me?” he
finally managed.
She bent down,
her face softening, sweet lips just grazing his. “To say thank
you,” she whispered. “Winnie will never understand but…I was
there. I know. You could have finished what you started.”
“Not…unwilling.”
She smiled, a little tearfully. “And if ever anyone was to convince me…”
He caught her hand as she started to
rise. “Stay,” he said urgently. “You don’t…I can show you
things…wonders—”
“You already have.”
She kissed him, with feeling this time,
until his head was spinning from more than just the spells. She
didn’t say anything when she drew back, but she pushed his hanging
mouth closed with a little pop. Then she jumped to her feet and
ran for the distant tree line.
But after only a few yards, she stopped, paused for a moment, and then
ran back. And relieved him of his ring. “Travelling money,”
she said, with a faintly apologetic look. And then she took off again.
Kit stared after her until the gathering
shadows swallowed her up. Witches. He’d been right all
along. They were completely mad.
He smiled slightly, his lips still tingling from her final
touch. But what glorious madness.
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