“Ah,” Mother says. “It seems once again, I’ve been overruled.” She looks down.
“Leonardo,” she calls out. “Release the boy.”
The guard lets go. Brayson staggers away and stumbles to a stop a good six paces clear of any vampire.
The assembly beneath us has grown ghastly quiet. Both vampires and humans are waiting to see what happens next.
Mother directs the light of her staff at Brayson. “You heard what my advisors have said,” she intones. “Lucky for you, you won’t be made into a vampire’s meal. Unluckily—” her voice takes on a melancholy inflection, “—neither will you leave this encounter with your life.”
Before any of us can react, Morgan mutters an incantation. White hot flame bursts from the end of her staff.
Brayson is instantly engulfed by the fire.
“No!” Eleira screams. “No, no, NO!”
But it’s too late. The fire winks out. Nothing remains of the boy but a pile of ash on the ground.
The Queen looks at Eleira sadly. “You see what you made me do?” she asks, in a voice barely above a whisper.
But her soft voice carries through the whole of the underground space. She must have bewitched it.
Nobody else dares breathe.
Mother turns to speak to the humans.
“Remember this day!” she tells them. “Remember it as the day you let the words of a liar, a fraud, a cheat, ruffle you into arms against your most merciful ruler. Remember that The Haven abides by the justice of the Queen, and to go against me is to spit death in the eye and expect death not to strike back. I can be fair, yes—but for that, I require your trust.”
“If all you wanted was to leave this enclosure…?” she spreads her hands and gives an apathetic shrug. “All you had to do was ask. Leonardo?”
The shocked guard looks up. “Yes, my Queen?”
“Escort the humans back to the village. They’ve been here long enough. See that the rebuild begins tonight. They have shirked that responsibility for too many days.”
Leonardo bows deeply. “Of course.”
Morgan addresses the human crowd one last time. “I hope this serves as a valuable lesson for you all. There was never any need for such, ahem, histrionics, to get my attention.”
She turns and walks away. “Now,” she says, only to us, “Let’s go see what James has gotten himself up to.”
Chapter Twenty
JAMES
I wade out of the icy river, shivering as my body tries to warm itself.
Even vampires get cold. We may be more resistant to the effects, and exposure can never kill us, but that does not mean we are immune to the nasty sensation.
Especially when it comes together with tumbling around and being forced this way and that by a mighty river.
By now, I’m miles away from The Haven. I don’t think even Mother knew about the river. I certainly did not.
But somebody else did.
The Voice that told me to jump was not imagined. I did not make it up. I’m sure of it now. I heard it in my head, clear as day.
As I was swimming, an uncomfortable memory bubbled up. I had heard the Voice once before, but not in my head. I heard it when its owner spoke to me outside The Crypts.
It belongs to The Ancient.
It’s a measure of how badly the silver collar is affecting me that I did not pick up on the association right away. Even now, every step I take away from the river is done in a haze. The collar is not as bad as the velvet sack, but in my weakened state, it makes a close second.
I make my way to a nearby boulder and hurl myself onto it. The rushing sound of water continues beyond me. Up ahead I can see the river run out from the cave. It falls in a steep waterfall.
I can also see the sun. It’s evening out there, which means I have to remain here, underground, for however long it takes for it to set.
I wish I could find another route. The more miles I put between me and The Haven, the better. Who knows how many of Mother’s guards have already come after me?
I force myself to stand. I’m still woozy, but I don’t want to be caught unawares by the guards bound to be coming after me.
To my relief, I find the cave is shaped exactly as I first thought. There are only two ways out, following the river back up, or through the gaping end of the waterfall.
I get antsy with nothing to do, so I decide to use the remaining hours of daylight to try getting the collar off. I know there’s a mechanism, some sort of latch, behind my neck.
Yet every time I try to find it with my fingers it’s not the pain from touching silver that stops me, but a chilling numbness that shoots down both arms. It must be an effect of the spell Mother put on it.
There’s no way to get the collar off on my own.