Chapter 13

13

EVANGELINE

I woke up warm and perfectly cozy, with my cheek nestled on something that felt like the cool side of the pillow. Humming happily, I nuzzled closer to it. It was pleasantly solid. I was pretty much wrapped around the lovely coolness, with an arm around it and one leg thrown over it.

My nice, cool pillow moved, and my eyes shot open. My cheek was pillowed on Gabriel's chest, and I was wrapped around him like a particularly handsy koala.

I sat up.

He was lying completely still, his body gently curved toward me, staring up at the roof of the tent with a horrified expression.

"Oh, my God," I said. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I swear I'm not usually a clingy sleeper, I would've warned you. Honestly." I pulled my leg off him, and my thigh brushed against something hard. I tried my hardest to avoid being mortified by focusing on the fun new fact I'd just learned about vampires—they got morning wood. I was pretty sure I was blushing all the way to the roots of my hair.

"It's fine," Gabriel said. His eyes flicked down to my chest for just a fraction of a second, then back up to my face. "It's fine," he repeated, sounding strangled. "You've, ah…" he added, gesturing vaguely at his own chest.

I glanced down at myself, and my face flamed. It was a universal law that if you went to sleep in a tank top, at least one of your tits would escape, and this morning was, unfortunately, not an exception.

"Shit," I hissed, pulling my top back up over the escapee. "Sorry. I'm... Wow."

Gabriel had gone back to staring at the roof of the tent. I'd seen corpses that looked less grim.

"I'm just gonna—" I jutted a thumb toward the door of the tent. "Breakfast. You can join me when you're…" Don't look at his boner. Don't look at his boner. Don't look at his boner. "When you're ready." Aaand I'd made it sound like I expected him to jerk off in the bed we'd shared. Great. I wouldn't say that I ran away, but I definitely made a speedy, tactical retreat.

Breakfast was quiet and painfully awkward. I made myself some eggs as quickly as possible, and Gabriel disappeared into the forest for a while, then came back with his lips stained red and a few droplets of blood on the collar of his jacket.

"You've got a little something on your jacket," I said.

Gabriel looked down at himself and scowled.

"Breakfast had higher blood pressure than I expected," he said. He grabbed something from his supplies and began using it on the stains. I let out an amused little huff when I realized that it was a Tide pen.

While I cleaned the dishes from my breakfast in the shallows of the river, Gabriel packed up the campsite. The rain had cleared up overnight, but it had left the ground muddy and slick, especially so close to the river. We picked our way carefully along the path, making us a lot slower than I would have liked. Still, we'd made good time the day before, and it only took us a little over two hours before we started seeing the crumbling shapes of small stone huts peeking between the trees.

"The Umbral Village," I murmured. Steep hills surrounded the village on three sides. The low stone buildings were set halfway into the rise of the hills behind them. They all faced into the center of the clearing, where a small well had been dug. The houses were half-collapsed, and whatever had been used as roofs had rotted away a long time ago. In what remained of the houses, strange shadows were cast against the walls. They were human, or at least human-shaped, frozen in the middle of going about their daily lives. In one, two shadows were sitting together. Whatever had preserved their images hadn't kept the impressions of any of the furniture, so they were hovering oddly over the space where the chairs should have been. In another house, it looked like someone had been frozen in the middle of sweeping the floor, bent over a nonexistent broom.

In one of the houses, a tall shadow was hoisting up a much smaller one, with another little one at its feet. The unsettling sight was especially jarring in contrast to the bushes of little yellow flowers that filled the entire clearing, sprouting up between fallen stones, and stretching up the hills.

"This isn't a good place," Gabriel said quietly. "The ambient magic here is a mess. Something very, very dark happened here."

I nodded grimly. "There's a reason why the only people who come here are researchers. Even the dumb teenagers trying to impress their friends know better. Most of them, anyway."

"We should start searching for the piece of the ascendancy array," Gabriel said.

"Yeah, the sooner we can get out of here, the better," I agreed. "Can you sense anything that feels like it's out of place?"

He shook his head. "The dark magic here is too overwhelming. It's like trying to pick out a tune someone's humming while a dozen people are screaming at you."

"That's… unsettlingly specific," I muttered.

Suddenly, Gabriel tensed and whipped his head toward one of the buildings, his pupils going wide like my cat's did when he'd spotted a particularly exciting bird. He glanced at me, holding a finger up to his lips, and I nodded. He pointed to the far end of the clearing, where a mound of rue bushes grew.

"There's something moving in there," he whispered, leaning in close without taking his eyes off the plants.

We crept toward whatever he'd heard. I started channeling power into an attack spell, holding it ready in my hand just in case. As we neared, I realized another building's ruins were under the plants. It was larger than the others but set deeper into the hill. The old stones were barely visible between the pale blue-green leaves.

A patch of rue hung down more limply than the plants next to it, and there was darkness between its branches.

"Doorway?" I mouthed, and Gabriel nodded.

"On three," he mouthed back, then raised three fingers in the air and dropped them one by one. When he dropped the last finger, he tore back the curtain of rue, and we charged into the building.

The space we charged into was in surprisingly good shape. It had a tall, peaked ceiling, and went back deep into the hill. The remains of a long stone fire pit, lined with half-rotted wooden benches, cut through the middle of the room. The remains of tattered banners and weavings hung on the walls. In the back of the room, a large door led deeper into the hill, but a shimmering wall of warding magic blocked it off.

Two large, tall, broad vampires sprawled in front of the door, passing a bottle back and forth. They froze when we burst into the room, and I fired a blast of magic into one of them, sending him skidding backward into the magical ward. Gabriel pounced on the second vampire, who was quicker to recover from the surprise than his friend. He threw himself out of the way at the last second, raking his claw-like nails down Gabriel's arm.

The vampire dug his nails in and yanked hard, pulling Gabriel off-balance. They were too close to each other for me to aim a hex properly, and I swore under my breath. The vampire I'd hit before was clambering to his feet, clutching his ribs. He snarled, showing his fangs, then lurched toward me.

I grinned.

I twisted a thick rope of magic from the empty air and held it taut just in front of the vampire's legs. He stumbled over it, crashing to the ground, and I twisted my hand, making the strands of the spell twist tightly around his ankles. I fired another blast right at his chest, and he went limp.

Gabriel had pinned the other vampire to the ground, and he hadn't even broken a sweat. The vampire was unconscious, his head lolling to the side.

"Want me to bind them together?" I asked. "I've gotten pretty good at the magic rope trick."

Gabriel looked at me over his shoulder, and his eyes went wide. Before either of us could react, a sudden wave of blinding pain hit me. I felt as though my breath had been punched out of my body. I staggered backward and hit the solid form of someone standing there. I tried to focus enough to summon up a spell, but before I could, there was a blur of movement, and a sickening, wet tearing sound.

Gabriel had thrown the third vampire away from me and charged after him. When he stepped back, his hand was dripping with gore. The vampire, who had been shoved against the wall, crumpled to the ground. His chest was a mangled, ruined mess where Gabriel had punched into it. He tossed something down next to the dead vampire, and it landed with a squelch.

It was his heart.

I swayed on my feet. The pain was still brutal, and when I tried to move my shoulder to look at the injury, my vision blurred, and I nearly threw up. The blade was still sticking out of me, buried halfway into my left shoulder. Crap. I recognized the dagger. A small flint knife, with a carved bone blade, etched with runes. I swore loudly and with feeling, and Gabriel was at my side in an instant. Any impulse to slow himself down to look more human had clearly gone by the wayside.

"How bad is it?" I asked. "I can't get a proper look at it."

"Not nearly as bad as it could have been." He was digging urgently through the bottomless tote before he pulled out my medical kit and one of the canteens of water. He sloshed the water over his blood-covered hand, washing away the gore. "You should sit," he commanded.

"Do you know anything about taking care of injuries that aren't on animals?" I asked. I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but I was holding out hope that I was wrong.

"I do not," Gabriel said.

Damn. So much for that.

"I'll talk you through it," I told him. "I do this all the time; you'll be able to handle it."

"Very reassuring," Gabriel said snippily.

"You're going to need to pull the knife out. It's going to bleed like crazy, so prepare yourself for that. Try to wash it as clean as you can with whatever's left in the canteen. Then three drops from the blue bottle in the first aid kit. You need to get it into the wound itself, okay? Not on the skin. Then give me two of the pills in the white bottle."

Gabriel clenched his jaw and nodded. "On the count of three?"

I attempted a smile. "Surprise me."

"Suit yourself," he said. "Do you want me to—" Halfway through the sentence, he yanked the knife out in one smooth motion, and I let out a strangled yelp of pain that echoed off the stone walls around us. Then there was the relief of the cold water—such a shock of sensation that it almost distracted me from the pain.

"Almost done," Gabriel said quietly, like he was trying to calm down a scared animal. I would've resented it more if it wasn't helping so much. The sharp herbal scent of the healing drops pricked my nose, and my shoulder went blessedly numb as it landed in the wound. Then Gabriel pressed the pills into my hand, and I swallowed them down dry.

"What are those?" he asked. He was running a soft cloth over the area below the spot below where I'd been stabbed, wiping away the blood. It was thoughtful in a way I hadn't expected. His touch was very gentle. Part of me wished I could see him, and part of me was grateful I couldn't see his expression.

"Over-the-counter migraine pills," I said. "They work quick, and they've got caffeine in them, so it'll help me push through when the adrenaline wears off."

"And you went to the effort of putting them in a glass apothecary bottle?"

"I had extras lying around," I said. "Plus, the kit's mostly for other people. They usually respond well to the witchy stuff, especially when they're out of it. Doesn't hurt to throw in a little placebo effect on top of the wonders of Tylenol and caffeine."

"How bad is the pain?" Gabriel asked tensely.

"Better now." I dug an evidence bag out of my jacket and handed it to him. "Bag up the knife for me?"

"At least now we know how the bear wound up with that dagger in its head," Gabriel said as he sealed the knife in the baggie.

"You think these vampires have been here for a while?" I asked. "Long enough to throw things at a bear for fun?"

"I intend to find out," he said firmly. He knelt in front of one of the unconscious vampires and pressed a hand to the man's forehead like he was checking to see if he was running a fever.

"There's a coven," Gabriel said distantly, his eyes closed. "These three are members. Very low-ranking. The coven's been looking for something, and these three were sent to guard this spot until the brains of the operation could figure out how to break the wards and get to the artifact."

"Vampires looking for the ascendancy array," I murmured. "What do they want with it?"

"These three wouldn't know. They're just the muscle." His eyes opened. "They know who you are," he said. "The coven knows about your investigation."

"Shit," I muttered. "Okay, we should find this thing and get the fuck out of here."

"Your shoulder," Gabriel said.

"I'll be fine," I told him. "Seriously, it's healing up already. That potion is top-tier stuff. And we got the knife out fast enough that none of the dark magic bullshit got a chance to sink its claws into me."

Gabriel looked like he wanted to protest, but he just glared at the unconscious vampire.

"What do you need me to do?" he asked instead.

"Deal with these guys." I nodded at the knocked-out vampires. "I'll see what I can do about the wards."

I stretched my shoulder gingerly as I got to my feet, but it was feeling a lot better. The wards covered the entire back wall of the room with a shimmery gold-green light. I raised my good arm and held my hand just in front of the edge of the wards, focusing on the buzz of the magic to try to figure out what, exactly, I was dealing with.

The magic was warm and smelled of fresh-cut grass and baking bread. It was defensive, yes, but as far as I could tell, there weren't any counterattacks built into it. Deciding to risk it, I pressed my hand flat against the wards. I'd touched plenty of non-aggressive wards before, and they usually felt more or less the same. Generally, it was smooth and hard, like I was touching a pane of glass. This was more like I was dipping my fingers into warm water. I frowned. It felt as though I was checking one of my own wards.

"This is weird," I called over my shoulder. "I think these wards will just… let me in."

I stepped forward, and sure enough, the wards slid over me without any resistance. It felt almost welcoming. Definitely weird .

From the inside of the spell, it was easy to find the threads of the magic that had been woven together to make it and ease them apart. "I'll make a temporary opening for you to use, but I'm going to leave the wards up," I told Gabriel. "If these guys are spending resources on guarding this place, I don't want them to figure out that what they're after is already gone."

"They might have some idea we've been here," Gabriel said dryly, gesturing at the vampires sprawled on the ground.

I chewed on my lip and met his eyes. "Look, um, I know these are your people, but?—"

Gabriel held up a hand to stop me. "I saw what was in their minds. The things that they've done. The things that they would have done to us if they'd had the chance. These are not my people. I'm a firm believer in second chances, but not when it comes to people who are quite that eager to kill me."

He reached into his silly jacket—ruined now, covered in blood, and torn to shreds down one sleeve—and drew out a glossy spike made of dark wood. It was maybe a foot long from end to end, with a leather-wrapped handle, and a point that shone in the shifting light of the wards.

I looked away as he drove the spike into the chest of first one unconscious vampire, then the other. It wasn't out of a particular sense of squeamishness—I'd seen more blood than I would've liked, and in my line of work I saw plenty of death. It was more that I wanted to give Gabriel as much privacy as I could.

He hefted the bodies up and carried them to the fire pit that ran the length of the room. I offered to help, but he just raised an eyebrow that managed to remind me of both his vampiric strength and my injured shoulder. Gabriel murmured a few words over the bodies, too quiet for me to hear.

"I don't suppose I could trouble you for a bit of fire magic?" he asked me, holding out a branch wrapped in the shredded fabric of his sleeve. I closed my hand around the end of the makeshift torch, and when I let it go, it was burning brightly. Gabriel touched the torch to each of the three bodies, and they caught immediately, burning unnaturally bright and fast. Within minutes, they were just ash.

I held open a gap in the warding spell long enough for Gabriel to pass through, then let it drop down behind him again. His face was carefully neutral, but the line of his shoulders was tight, and his hands were clenched. I put a hand on his arm, and he turned to me, surprised.

For a moment, I almost asked him if he was all right, but I didn't want him to lie to me. "You ready?" I asked instead.

Gabriel's eyes softened very slightly. "I'm ready."

The door in front of us was at least ten feet tall, made of wood so old it had gone black. It was covered in intricate, twisting carvings. Decorations and runes curled together in dizzying patterns until I couldn't tell where spells ended and embellishments began. Hell, maybe it was all spell work.

Even though it looked ancient, the door swung open easily under Gabriel's hand without so much as a creak from the hinges. The passage behind it was pitch black. When I lit up a small orb of glowing magic, it illuminated a stone corridor angling sharply down into the earth. The air was damp and musty, and the smell only got stronger the farther down we went.

Eventually, the corridor leveled out. The rough stone walls were replaced with carved murals of angular, abstracted people and animals. Their exaggerated limbs overlapped and folded around each other until it was impossible to tell which figure was which. The corridor curved, spiraling in on itself more and more tightly, until we finally found ourselves in a small round room at what must have been the center.

Statues carved in the same style of the murals lined the walls. Each one held a chain, and each of the chains was attached to a ball in the middle of the room. It was large enough that I could've fit inside it if I curled up, and it glowed with a warm golden light. I snuffed out my own magic light and stepped closer to inspect it.

The ball had a band of silver metal around the middle, parallel to the ground, and the chains were anchored to that, hanging slightly slack. It was floating about two feet above the ground. This close, I could see tiny patterns etched into the surface of the ball. I reached out a hand to trace one, but before I could even make contact, the ball rumbled and began to change.

The top half of it began to lift apart in segments, opening like a flower. As it opened, the power it was enchanted to hide rushed out, along with a swirling cloud of fog. It was so strong, I staggered backward, overwhelmed.

The orb's petals folded down, falling neatly between the chains. I found Gabriel's hand and squeezed it, and after a moment of hesitation, he squeezed back. The fog cleared, and I saw the first piece of the ascendancy array.

It was a piece of twisting gold filigree, shaped like a teardrop that had been sliced in half from top to bottom. The impossibly fragile lines of it met and parted in geometric patterns that were as precise as they were confusing.

I picked it up. It was warm to the touch, and far heavier than I expected. I could feel its magic reacting to mine, all that ancient energy exploring me curiously. It was like nothing I'd ever felt before, pouring into me, through me, twisting in the air around me. I knew immediately this was ancient magic, honed and focused over centuries, the sort of thing most witches could never dream of learning. It was the sort of magic that could create mountains, drain oceans, and build or destroy cities in the blink of an eye.

"We need to get the other pieces as fast as we can," I managed. "We can't let this fall into the wrong hands. It's…" I struggled to find a word to describe the power I was feeling, how dizzying it was. And it wasn't just the raw power, it was the sheer, unmistakable oldness of it. I felt like I'd reached into the bones of the earth itself.

The orb let out a low, ominous creaking sound. Its petals slammed shut. The light flickered off abruptly, leaving us in total darkness.

Then the floor fell out from under us, and we began to plummet downward.