“Oh, babe.” I reached for him.
The copper door flung open with a resounding clang, and Schwint’s body soared over the floor and through the doorway. With another sickening crunch, his form crashed down the spiraling stairs and out of sight. Though I heard when his body hit the wall farther down, I didn’t hear him make any other sound.
I rushed toward the doorway, desperate to get to him. When the door slammed shut, I crashed into it, causing me to collapse to the floor.
Shaking off the impact, I whirled around, forgetting about magic, and threw myself at Omar from my crouched position.
He was already whipping one of his golden chains in my direction, and it smashed me across the face, confirming that was what he’d hit me with before.
I felt a slash open across my cheek and warm liquid begin to run down my face.
With a thrash of my arm toward the ground, the copper floor buckled, a wave travelling along its surface. It collided with Omar, sweeping him off his feet. Instead of falling to the ground, the warlock rose a few inches into the air, completely avoiding the smaller wave that followed.
Like Schwint before me, I was pulled through the air. Instead of rising to the roof, I was slammed against the metal wall, another hollow boom echoing through the room.
Omar let out a low laugh. “Well, I’ll be. You have learned something new, haven’t you?”
I opened my mouth to curse at him. It slammed shut so hard, I was certain I felt a couple of my teeth crack at the impact.
“Not enough, though. Not nearly enough.” Omar hobbled toward me, having returned to the floor, his chains clanking around him. “No more words from you. My God! No more words. I’m so tired of hearing your damned pathetic voice.”
He reached me, standing so close his warm, stale breath washed over my face. He lifted a dirty finger in front of my face, then lowered it to my cheek.
He used the long nail to dig into the cut, ripping it further. Again, he offered his finger in front of my face for inspection. My blood filled the inner portion of his nail and ran down his finger. His dark, cataract-hazed eyes held mine as he slipped his finger into his mouth and swished it around. Slowly, he withdrew his finger, now clean of my blood, only wet smudges of dirt streaking his skin. “Familiar?”
Hazel! I tried to speak but of course could not.
Omar leered at me, a sinister smile breaking over his face. “Yes. Hazel.” Once more, he raised his chain and brought it down on my face, smashing it over my eye.
Blood instantly poured from the cut in my brow and obscured Omar from view in my left eye.
“She died because of you! Because she dared harm the chosen one! All these decades. Promises and promises that I would be reunited with my wife, if only I do as I was told. Then you! You show up, and that fucking vampire wants something new and shiny. Never mind that you’re a cheap replica of me! Even when you reach your greatest, you’ll not begin to touch what I was in my weakest moment.”
He brought the chain down on my face once more, momentarily causing the world to go black.
“She died because of you!” He raised the golden chain. Even the act of shutting my eyes so I wouldn’t see the deathblow was denied me.
Halfway through the chain’s arch toward my head, Omar flew from me, a blur carrying him across the room.
For a second, I thought it was Schwint.
Gwala held the warlock by his throat, up against the wall. “Release him, Omar.”
The warlock only stared at me over the vampire king’s shoulder.
“I saidrelease him!” The king’s bellow ricocheted around the room, causing the ringing in my ears to spike. He tightened his grip on the warlock’s throat, and a trickle of blood ran down from the place Gwala’s nail pierced him.
Omar held my gaze for a bit longer, his hate and anger so strong, they entered me as surely as if they’d been injected into a vein. Then I crashed to the floor. I let out a groan, and the room slid into darkness.
Twenty
FINN DE MORISCO
Turning myhead felt like I was ripping out nails attaching the back of my skull to whatever I was lying on. I opened eyes, which only added to the pain. Bright sunlight caused me to slam them shut again. Letting them adjust slowly, I peered through my lashes, trying to determine where I was.
After a time, Schwint’s and my room came into focus. I tried to place the pieces together. For the briefest of seconds, I thought the events in Omar’s tower had been nothing more than a nightmare. The screaming pain that radiated through my body told me differently.
A motion drew my attention to the window. A woman with long hair stood gazing out into the sunshine. Despite the pain, my heart leapt in my chest, a shot of happiness coursing through me. Cynthia!
