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Fifty-Six

HARLOW

For the second time tonight, I wake in an unfamiliar place and on the ground. It’s like everyone’s read the same How To Be Bad handbook. Alec and the dungeon floor. My ex-parents and their cave. And now this.

“Wake up, Sinclair. I have blood for you.”

Blood?

Groaning, I take in the space. It’s a building, the stone walls crumbling and the ceiling barely still together, only maybe a human’s height above. It’s small, with evidence of a fireplace once present.

In the very far corner, a spider spins a web.

Wait. How is it possible to see that? I blink hard, scrunching my eyes together, this time begging my body to wake up entirely and get out of its dream state, but when I open them again, the spider is still spinning.

I sit up, my nose prickling with the sickly scent of this place. Like death and gore had a battle and lost. It smells like mold and garbage and anything that is sour and vomit-inducing.

How is it possible to be catching all this?

A cup is waved in front of my face, stealing my attention. Whatever’s in it is sweet—sweeter than a candy store—and my teeth ache. A heat blazes through me that sparks me into movement, quickly reaching for the cup, only to have it yanked away.

“Ah, ah, Miss Sinclair, we have some talking to do first. Can’t have you at full strength quite yet.”

That voice again…

I stare past the cup to the man holding it.

He’s dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a hoodie, contrasting the first and only time I’ve met him; when he was the only vampire to approach Alec at the party.

“Cedric?”

He flashes blinding white teeth, two fangs pointedly elongated. “You remember me.”

“What are you doing here? Where’s here? How did you find me? Where’s Alec?” What was I even doing? Flashes flicker through my mind like a movie reel. Arthur and Violet cuffing me to the cave. My magick melting the cuffs and beating them. Strangling them. The cave coming down on all our heads.

How am I alive?

“My, you ask a lot of questions.” Frowning, he crosses the room to rest the cup on the edge of the crumbling fireplace. He leans on the wall beside it and crosses his arms, regarding me like I’m an animal in a zoo. “Since we have some time before Alec finds us, I’ll answer them. I’m here because of you. This is my old house. It was once a cottage. I found you because I was on my way to you anyway. Alec may still be in Banff or he’s on his way. I can never predict his moves these days.”

My head thumps. There’s too much he’s said, too much to make sense of. “You were…on your way…” Recalling what Violet and Arthur said, I slide my feet toward me to stand, suddenly realizing he’s not being a friend to Alec by helping me out of the broken cave. “You were the vampire they were waiting on.”

“Very good, Miss Sinclair.” He tips his head.

“Are they alive?”

“That’s your next question?” He blinks, frowning. “No, they’re not.”

Good. While I don’t know what the hell’s happening, at least that part of the nightmare is over.

“You made a very grave mistake back there,” he remarks casually.

I move to stand, the ground and ceiling coming much too close for comfort and I stagger, catching myself on the closest wall. “What’s happening to me?” A wave of dizziness nearly knocks me to my feet again, reminding me of that time I had a fever as a teenager and thought I genuinely died and moved to the Otherworld.

“You’re transitioning. Not sure if Alec ever explained the process, but until you get blood, your body is stuck between human and vampire.”

Transitioning because of Alec’s blood.

I’m becoming a vampire.

In the cave, I gambled on the bit of blood I ingested.

Which means I’m no longer a witch. Once again, just like that, my powers are gone and Hecate forsake me. Or, this time I forsake her.

“If I don’t get blood?” Alec mentioned the transition would fail, but I need to hear it again, when it’s become relevant.

“You’ll die. Again. Since you already had, death will catch up with you. If anything, I’m surprised you’re still standing. I wasn’t sure you’d make it with the cure in your system. Turn yourself human before you fully transitioned.” He shrugs, so uncaring. “Not that it really matters anymore. You were supposed to remain a witch, Miss Sinclair. You’re meant for so much more, but how can it work now that you’re on your way to being a vampire? If I allow you to drink that anyway.” He nods toward the cup beside him.

“Alec will kill you if you hurt me.”

“Alec killed me a long time ago, so turnabout is fair play.”

“Is that why you’re working with witches?”

“The witches were useful. They have their own plans, and believing I was the mastermind behind everything was one of it.”

“So you weren’t the one giving orders?”

“No. But the coven your fake parents belong to and I are working toward the same goal.”

“Violet and Arthur explained why I’m important, which means you can’t kill me,” I say, overconfident in my role. “I’m one of four heirs they need Dark for their ceremony. That hasn’t changed. I’m still a Sinclair.”

I’m bluffing because who knows what I am anymore.

His lips curl up and he makes a humming noise. “You do know your stuff. Yes, you in particular are very important to the cause, being you’re the cure to vampirism. Others wish to harness that, control you, to ensure no more vampires turn mortal. We need all the soldiers, you see. That’s why I attended Alec’s little show-and-tell. For show, but also to gain an idea of anyone interested in mortality so we can remind them why Darkness and immortality is our future.”

Is it still possible to puke as a half-transitioned vampire? Because I feel sick. “So you believe in all that war stuff too?”

“Believe it?” He chuckles. “There is no believing what’s a fact. It’s very real. A few decades ago, I was approached by a group who’s been hearing rumbles from the Celestials. I joined them; Alec did not. He doesn’t understand we must stand with our side.”

“Your side,” I interject. “None of us have anything to do with the Celestials.” The angels of Heaven and the demons of Hell come to Earth for their own duties of maintaining Earth’s balance, but their charges are humans, not us. They exist in a different realm and we all live a tentative truce on the planet in which they don’t bother us and we don’t bother them.

“Anymore. But you forget, vampires are descended from a demon. From one of the Fallen—seven angels who fell with the devil to Hell, so we are driven to obey him. Of course, the faction I’m part of wants a backup plan, which is where the witches come in. The kind of magick that will be required in this war isn’t your elemental magick; it’s too focused in Light—on Heaven’s side. That’s when we infiltrated a coven and convinced them to join us. They were driven by the temptation of black magick and everything Dark. The coven has their own plan to get the entire witch species Dark—you being a key player in that. For us, we don’t give two fucks how it’s done, so long by the time war comes, we have black magick on our side.”

So this isn’t a partnership like how Arthur and Violet explained it as. I was being used by them; they were being used by the vampires, and the vampires may or may not be being used by their demon father; that part I’m still confused by.

“You’re his friend,” I whisper, switching to a more personal topic and away from the supposed war. “His longest friend. I’m his Bride. Difference of opinion or not, how could you betray him like this? All for a war that may or may not happen?”

His eyes flash red in a warning I have no strength to battle. “When the orders came that this generation, you , were to be their chosen Sinclair representative, the first of the four to lead the other witches into black magick, I said nothing to Alec. I knew what those witches were planning on doing. That they’d turn you Dark by cause of faking their deaths, whisk you away to their coven, and Alec would forever be searching for the final remaining Sinclair to continue his pointless journey to ease his guilt. But then he decided to keep you alive. Made some ridiculous plan to use you for profits. I kept tabs, of course, eventually planning to steal you from him. The witches said the Darkness didn’t take, so new plans were being formed, but then, Alec tells me he mated you. That you were his fated Bride.” Disdain drips from every syllable.

“Our mating wasn’t his fault, or choice,” I murmur. “I know you lost Cor?—”

He’s across the room in an instant, my neck in his grip, fingers pushing against the airways my life still requires. “ Do not speak her name. You don’t know anything, so don’t fucking pretend to.”

“I know…” It comes out strained, trapped in his grip. “I know you loved her.” Or was she his obsession? Would the love they felt in their human lives transfer to the so-called emotionless immortal lives Alec described them as?

“Loved?” he repeats, fingers curling around my neck. “Cora was my everything and Alec took her from me. He fucked up the plan that night and caused the vampires to chase us. Then, years later, it was he who decided to stop in Sinclair territory when we were passing through. Cora was hunted by the coven because of him .”

She made her own choice to go hunting that night, I want to say, but for value of my life I won’t point out how he’s blaming his friend for events that were really no one’s fault.

With another look of disgust, he uncurls his fingers from my neck and I crumple to the ground. This time, I don’t have the strength to stand. Between using my powers to save myself and then dying, I have little hope without finishing the transition.

“So that’s what all this is about,” I mutter as Cedric reclaims his spot across the room. “Revenge. Alec took the woman you love, so you’ll take his Bride.”

“Originally, no. Not until I saw you killed yourself. Like I said, I was meant to collect you and hide you away from Alec until the coven was ready to use you, but then you went and killed yourself. Suddenly, the only options became to allow your transformation to progress or to ensure it doesn’t, and you die. And this is just too good an opportunity to let pass by. Alec doesn’t deserve to have you as his vampire Bride for the rest of immorality.”

This is so fucked up. “Too bad for you, he doesn’t love me, so it won’t hurt him the same way.”

The look Cedric gives me asks if I’m really that dense. “When you die, so will he. That’s why we’re waiting, you and I. When he arrives, he’ll be alive just long enough to witness your death before the bond forces him to succumb.”

“Which is why you haven’t let me drink.”

“Having you weak is best. Like this, you’re no threat. You’re too drained for your magick.”

My weakened limbs would sadly agree with him, but I counter with, “I’ve been holding off to get through this riveting conversation before attacking.”

His gaze suddenly darts toward the right before his lips curl in a grin. “He’s arrived. Time for us all to have some fun.”

And then he’s across the room to stand beside me and Alec appears in the crumbling doorway.