Kit watched with horror as one of the vamps sped after the brooms. It was nighttime, and so he knew there was nothing stopping the vampyre from following the brooms from underfoot clear to Skadra. Desperate, he took his broom and snapped it in half, whispering a complicated spell that would make it follow the vamp until it impaled him. It sailed through the air obediently.
With a wave of her hand, the old woman sent it back to the ground and deflected the curse Kit had sent her way. “Kill him,” she snarled to the remaining vamp, who’d been circling him this whole time.
It was just then that Kit remembered the snake-faced woman beside him, and the power he held over her. “Cut yourself,” he growled.
She must’ve complied immediately because, rather than attack him, the vamp launched itself at her. The filthy sounds of a vampyre ripping into flesh filled the air.
Looking infuriated, the old woman raised her palm as if to throw a curse. Kit never gave her a chance, throwing a curse with such strength that it didn’t just snap her neck; it severed it. She fell to the ground, her blood spraying a nice parfait for her vamp to lick up later.
Kit fell to his knees, exhausted and spent from the fight. Hehadto get up. There was a vampyre following his family. But then he remembered. Amelia. The little girl had yet to be rescued, and that was to be his next mission. He’d have to hope Mary or one of the others noticed their tail. He stumbled up to one foot, so determined to see his mission through that he hadn’t noticed the witch at his back.
A spell hit him in the back, and Kit slumped forward, unconscious.
fifty-three
Drayer
Pure, unadulterated rage filled Drayer when she saw her sister’s headless body lying on the bloodsoaked rockbed of the cave. She’d heard the explosions of their base being attacked, had felt her bond to that useless magic-less girl being tested. This had all been a premeditated attack.
The Weavers must’ve finally figured out her game.
Drayer had been on her way to fetch the girl and flee with Lydia when she’d stumbled on to this mess. Her dead sister. The feeding vampyre. And, finally, the witch who was on his knees. She sent a stunner out and disabled the witch, pleased when his head cracked uselessly on the rock. Then she ran to Lydia, the one person in this world who’d always put her first. She unsheathed her bone needle and waved it in the air, trying to see if it’d catch any residual parts of her sister’s soul. It didn’t.
“Lydia.” This time, she didn’t even care that her voice sounded so unlike her own, so weakly twisted with emotion. “Oh, my sister.” There’d be no making a vampyre out of Lydia’s corpse, not with her head cleared from shoulders. Not even vampirismcould fix this. Tears leaked down her face at the revelation. She was alone now. Well and truly alone.
Robotically, she opened her sister’s robe and retrieved Lydia’s half of the bone needle. It felt strange to have both.
Distantly, she was aware of the sounds of a feeding vampyre, knew that she’d have to kill it now that its master was deceased. A vampyre without a master only listened to its hunger.
She rose and beheaded the creature as a particularly loud boom sounded in the distance. There was no time. The Weavers had to be finishing with her hired witches soon. Quickly, she fetched the lock-jawed little girl who she’d intended to bond with.
Lydia’s death was the worst possible scenario. As the seamstress who’d tied her to that magic-less girl, only she would’ve been able to excise the bond easily. Now she’d have to stab the girl, which wasn’t possible with the Weavers breathing down her neck.
Her fortunes were crumbling before her. But luckily, Drayer had always been resourceful.
She resisted the urge to retch when she had to once again enter the same room Lydia’s corpse was in. But she reined herself in and walked over to the unconscious witch who she had knocked out — the one who’d likely taken her sister from her. She levitated him up so she could get a better look.
A handsome man with a scar bisecting his face — a useless detail — but his chest still rose and fell. He was alive, which meant she had time to find a nice, quiet hideout where she could Make her art of him. It’d been too long since she’d made a vampyre.
Drayer walked to the edge of the cliff face and mounted her broom, both of her prizes hanging uselessly in the air beside her. A vampyre slave first. Then a new body. Stealing the little girl’s body rather than using her as a life source was not ideal,but she had no choice. She needed a new body so she could thrust her bone needle into the magic-less girl’s heart and end their bond.
Then she could get her fresh start.
Her time as Drayer Netherton was finally coming to a close.
fifty-four
Gentry
Gentry wasn’t sure how long she’d been unconscious, only that she drifted between her and Drayer’s minds. Feelings of terror and paranoia filled her, and sometimes she could see out of Drayer’s eyes, but sometimes not. The connection was tenuous and difficult to control. Gentry felt a slave to it, no longer in tune with her own body. Secretly, she feared that somehow Wren had cut something she shouldn’t, and now she was doomed to live in a monster’s head forever.
But, slowly, she became more self aware. The tips of her toes were cold. Her fingers hurt from being curled too long. Her back ached to be stretched. The awareness of the physical came first, and then she had to wait minute by agonizing minute for her nerves to connect with her mind.
Her fingers flexed, andfinally, Gentry woke up in a strange, ornate bedroom, its bloodred curtains aglow with sunlight that would never reach in the Underground.
“Oh you’re awake,” a familiar necromancer's voice said, “thank goodness. Gentry, I am so sorry. I must’ve not snipped out all ofDrayer’s soul because I was too scared to cut a part ofyou. It’s my fault.”
She looked to the side of the bed to see a miserable Wren sitting in an ornate, Victorian chair that was far too tall for her. Her blue eyes shone with tears, and that’s when everything rushed back to Gentry: the failed excision, Drayer’s escape, and Amelia and Kit’s kidnapping.
