Page 3 of Between Bloode and Death (Between the Shadows #5)

CHAPTER

THREE

She piloted the corpse with an art lost to the few remaining of her kind…those not shuttled to one of the Hell realms as punishment for daring to exist.

As if Valentine Darkmore had asked to have power over the dead.

The moonlight didn’t help, illuminating the vast forest of Cougar Mountain, spearing through the overhead canopy of alder and maple leaves.

With the presence of the coven, Val started to rethink her idea of centralizing their new HQ on the Eastside, though she did like the city of Sammamish especially.

Both for its proximity and distance from Seattle.

Where she and her new team planned to take back what was rightfully theirs.

She mentally commanded her minion crows to stealthily report back what they saw while her dead eagles perched in trees and narrowed in on the enemy leader.

One of them sent her an image of a tall witch with beaded braids held back in a band, sigils and spells painted over her dark skin in a luminescent gold paint. The woman was beautiful.

Too bad she had to die.

“Prepare to bite it, you necro scum,” the witch sneered. She closed her eyes, turned in Val’s direction, and let loose a cloud of poison, glowing green in the dark, to snake its way toward her.

Val ducked behind the narrow, seven-foot-tall boulder shielding her from all that attitude.

With a flick of her wrists, her pets dove at the head witch to distract her, giving Val time to reanimate one of the dead witches she’d already killed.

The power it took to bring the witch back to life was minimal, as the recent death energy lingered.

Ingest the poison, Val sent to her new minion’s mind.

“No, Isabella!” the lead witch cried as she watched her dead friend intercept the cloud and suck down the poison, her body blistering before it expanded then exploded.

Blood, bones, and viscera splattered everywhere.

While the five remaining witches cried and screamed, Val patted the boulder next to her.

“I need you, Grizz.”

The boulder transformed into the shape of a massive gargoyle, a man in stone shape with stone wings tucked at his back. Her newest pet hadn’t been easy to bring back from Romania.

His weight alone had been a logistical nightmare in shipping costs.

In a low voice, Val ordered, “Kill the rest of the coven, but bring me the lead witch—alive. Try not to damage her.”

“Yes, Val.” The gargoyle nodded, crouched, then shot into the sky in a blink.

He was a real find, intact and powerful, his magical reserves adding to hers. For the fight that was coming, she’d need every bit of it.

Though made of stone, in the air, his magic allowed him to move like lightning. Fast and lethal. He killed three witches in seconds, beheading two and smashing the third.

Then he landed on the ground and advanced on two more. They shot bolts of lightning and cones of fire at him, but nothing penetrated his granite body. The real power of a gargoyle—an aversion to magic.

While in contact with the ground, gargoyles could rarely be beaten, even by berserkers or ogres, the strongest of the magir.

Vampires, though…

She hated that her thoughts continued to return to that powerful vampire she’d fought with a few months ago. Back when all her plans had finally come together to get the vengeance so long in coming.

She and her conspirator, Talon, had manipulated lycans to fight off an evil sorcerer working alongside their enemy. In the process, they’d inadvertently dragged vampires into their business.

A major mistake. Gods and demons could be annoying, sure. But they were easier to deal with than vampires. The blood-suckers came in all kinds of varieties and hated everyone. Other magir, humans, and especially their own kind.

Yet mess with one vampire and the entire Bloode Empire would fight for the pleasure of annihilating you and everything you cared about.

And she’d been stupid enough to battle one.

She shivered, remembering the vampire she’d briefly tangled with. He’d been an honest to goodness reaper. The vampire equivalent of a necromancer. Fortunately, in all the chaos, he hadn’t seen her, only her many crows. She didn’t think.

But she’d sure seen him. Though vampires had been cursed to kill their own kind to keep their power in check, they’d been blessed with astonishing beauty in order to attract prey.

The reaper had been typical for one Of the Bloode. Beautiful, deadly, and alluring. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he’d had dusky skin, smooth and taut, belying his age with the appearance of a man in his late-twenties or early-thirties.

Bad enough she’d had to deal with him in her haste to escape danger, but Talon said the vamp continued to ask around about her at the bazaar downtown.

Vampire interference, at this stage in their plans, would only hurt their cause.

The witch let out an ear-piercing shriek. “Let me go. I’ll curse you for an eternity, gargoyle.” She kept mumbling hexes at Grizz, who didn’t respond except to drag her by the hair to Val.

Once at Val’s feet, the witch glared up at her, unable to stand since Grizz’s large hand covered her head.

Val scowled. “Would you shut up already?” When the witch finally stopped screaming curses that did nothing but piss Val off, Val added, “Now, who told you to look here?” She’d been doing her best to keep a low profile while they stockpiled bodies, weapons, and power.

“I felt you, unclean one.” The witch dug her fingers into her own forearm and painted a new sigil on her cheek as she chanted. Weak as she was, her magic didn’t do much but make Val tingle.

“Enough already.” Val slapped a hand over the witch’s forehead, as physical contact made it easier to absorb another’s essence, especially when she was tired. Val had been working nonstop for months. Exhausted to her bones, she wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week.

Instead, she had to fuck around with witches.

“You should have minded your own business,” Val hissed. She blinked and stared through a veil of power. She knew her eyes turned a deep black, obliterating anything human-seeming. Personally, she thought she looked cool, like the demonically possessed did in the movies.

The witch must have thought so as well, because she regarded Val with horror. “N-No, please. Let me…”

Val opened herself and stood both in the forest and in another plane, at the doorway in-between. A conduit bridging life and death, she pulled from the witch, absorbing her tasty power and letting it wash through her.

Grizz watched with patience, still holding the witch by her hair despite her lack of struggle. Until the witch ceased moving altogether.

“You can let her go,” Val told him, her voice echoing from realm to realm.

Grizz released her and cocked his head. “It didn’t hurt when you released me, but she seemed to feel pain.”

“You came willingly.” She smiled at him. “And I still thank you for your sacrifice.”

Though everyone regarded necromancers as evil, Val liked to treat others as she wanted to be treated. Most people she left alone. Assholes, like this witch, got what was coming to them.

Grizz, an honorable warrior, had been given a choice. Like Val, he wanted to go out fighting. At his age though, he wouldn’t have lasted much longer battling the strigoi. The Crimson Veil clan of vampires near his home were twice as vicious as they’d been before losing their last patriarch.

In any case, Val gratefully accepted Grizz’s pledge of loyalty.

Before she stepped fully back into the world of the living, she took the essence of all the dead, only reanimating the lead witch since the rest of the coven had been too weak to meet Val’s standards.

“What’s your name?” Val asked her.

“Ashia Cane.”

“Well, Ashia. You are now mine. You will obey me in all things. Got it?”

“Yes, mistress.” Ashia looked duller than she had when living, her eyes clouded over the only visible sign she was no longer alive. She cast no scent and emanated no magic, banked under Val’s protection of undeath.

Feeling generous, Val stepped back fully into the living realm and smiled. “Call me Val.”

“Yes, Val.”

“What next, Val?” Grizz asked.

“Now we clean up the area and have Ashia gather her supplies for us. Where are you located, Ashia? And will anyone miss you now that you’re mine?”

“We have a hideaway in the city no one knows about. The mages have been trying to get rid of us for a while, because they think we’re in league with the warlocks in Mt. Baker. They won’t miss us.”

Interesting. Ashia’s personality tried to slide back in, but Val didn’t want that. So she sipped the last bit of, not soul, exactly, but spiritual essence, from the woman. Black mist seeped from Ashia’s eyes and mouth, and Val inhaled it.

“Ah, there we are.” She reshaped that energy, took a small bit of herself and bound it to the ball of power, then released it back into Ashia’s mouth.

The witch stilled then relaxed.

“Ah, better,” she and Val said together.

Val nodded at her to continue, and Ashia said, “Apologies. I’m the new head of the coven, and I had a lot of inferiority and shame to work out. I killed my previous leader to take her place.”

“Noted.”

“Anyway, the coven’s hideaway is ideal. It’s right near the bazaar. We have access to a lot of the ingredients and potions found in the underground. That’s the section of the bazaar hidden from most of the magir.”

Val had heard of the underground, but since the magir bazaar was hidden in the middle of the humans as it was, she’d always thought “underground” stood for the bazaar. Not another level of secrets.

“Have you ever heard of a sorcerer named Vladimir?”

“No, but there’s a new warlock by the name of Spectre. He’s powerful and destructive, and he’s made a name for himself in the underground.” Ashia paused and looked at Val with dead eyes. “No one has ever seen him and lived to talk about it.”

“I know.” So frustrating.

“A witch who used to be part of our coven saw him then died right after.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me. He came to the shop to buy some blood and bones. But his cowl fell back on his way out the door. Theresa saw him. He smiled at her then left. Later that night, she rotted and crumbled to dust.”

Val shook her head. That sounded just like Vladimir, that prick. Death should always be both gruesome and memorable, she’d once heard him say.

“Before she died, she enchanted his image to me. Here.” Ashia wove a spell in the air, and a life-size view of Spectre appeared before them.

Val laughed, delighted.

Finally. You bastard. You made your first big mistake.