“You’re safe,” he whispers. I’m not sure if the words are meant to assure him or me. “You’re here, you’re with me, you are safe.”
I gulp down the welling emotions that try to rise in me from the sincerity in his voice.
He really does care for me, I think.
“AS IF THAT WAS IN ANY DOUBT.”
I jerk away. “What was that?”
Raul looks at me in concern. “I didn’t say anything.”
It takes my frazzled brain an extra second to process that the Voice came from inside my head. When the realization hits…
“YOUR LOVE IS YOUR WEAKNESS,” the menacing Voice booms. “IT WILL BE THE END OF YOU. IT IS WRITTEN IN THE STARS. ONLY I CAN BE YOUR SALVATION. FOR THAT TO HAPPEN, YOU MUST COME TO ME.”
“I… no!” I grip the sides of my head and stagger away from Raul. My foot catches a stray rock. I trip and fall.
“YOU WILL COME TO ME. IT IS NOT A CHOICE.”
“Get out of my head!” I scream. I try to block the Voice’s presence, just as I did Victoria’s. But I cannot pinpoint its source. It’s all-pervasive, sounding from every corner of my mind at once. It’s not a single link but an envelopment of my mind.
“YOU WILL COME,” the Voice threatens, “WHETHER YOU WILL IT OR NOT.” Then it laughs. “YOU MUST BE PERSUADED FIRST. I SEE THAT. WITNESS MY STRENGTH!”
The ground starts to shake once more. A piercing blue light comes from a crevice in the stone beside me. With a start I realize I didn’t trip over a rock.
I tripped over the Queen’s staff. My ankle is still touching it.
“Eleira!” Morgan screams. “The torrial, get away from it! Get away from it now!”
I try to move but my body is paralyzed. An external force takes control of my limbs. It’s the Voice, taking over my body. Without willing it, I reach down and pick up the staff...
A glorious flash of light bursts from the end. James, Smithson, and Victoria are knocked backwards. Raul is, too.
Only the Queen is spared.
She looks at me. “Eleira…” she begins.
“NO!” I scream, and the words that come from my throat are not my own, but that of the Voice. They echo through the cavernous enclosure and boom around with the stark intensity of the deranged.
“YOU WANT TO SEE POWER, YOU WANT TO SEE MIGHT? WITNESS ME AS I STAND BEFORE YOU! WITNESS ME AS I MAKE YOUR KINGDOM CRUMBLE TO DUST!”
With a savage, uncontrollable roar, I slam the staff into the ground. Magical energy pours through me and into its end. It concentrates there, many times greater than what a single witch could conceivable hold.
Then it all lashes out, as a thunderbolt, in the direction opposite where all the vampires are standing. It flashes and shoots straight as an arrow into the farthest reaches of the cave.
With that, the foreign force vacates my body. The power in the staff dies. The top of it is singed and black and ruined.
I barely have time to recover when a piercing shriek comes from the depths of the cavern. It’s taken up immediately by hundreds more.
I know that sound. But Morgan gives voice to exactly what I fear.
“The Convicted,” she gasps. “They’ve been released.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
RAUL
I fly to Eleira’s side as the horde of Convicted races toward us. There are hundreds of them, but through some trick of the light their numbers seem greater. “Stay behind me,” I tell Eleira in a tight voice. “You’re in no condition to fight.”
“Neither are you!” she protests, taking in my torn clothes and many cuts.
“None of us are,” Morgan says wearily. She steps to our side. “Luckily, this isn’t our fight. Look.”
As if on cue, the first of the running Convicted make a sharp turn and start scampering up the wall toward the open night sky.
“They’re escaping,” I breathe.
“The barriers holding them down are gone,” Mother says. “Obliterated by the power of the one who manipulated you and James. There’s nothing keeping them here anymore.”
I twist on her. “You have to get the barriers back!” I exclaim. The mass of Convicted is already halfway up to freedom. “You cannot let them run loose!”
Mother picks up the staff, and just as quickly tosses it aside. “Without this,” she says. “There is nothing I can do.”
“Where’s James?” I spin around and look for my older brother. He is the cause of all this. How he got back, how he betrayed us yet again…
About three-quarters of the way up, the mass of Convicted find a ledge and pool onto it. I watch as they regroup for a moment and then start to move once again.