Chapter 27

27

Blood Magic

I blinked. “My…blood?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you this, but considering the situation…” Aaron glanced at the shaking door. “Blood is the source of our power.”

“You’re a vampire,” I said drily. “That’s no secret.”

“No, you don’t understand. We have an appetite for blood, but it does not sustain us. Except for Phantom blood. That is the source of our magic. As soon as it leaves our system, we have no super strength, no super speed, no accelerated healing. Nothing. No powers whatsoever. Besides our fangs, we are completely human.”

Just like the witches had no magic without using fairy venom. Suddenly, Aaron drinking from the Queen of Phantoms two years ago made total sense. We’d been traveling and fighting for a long time, and he’d needed a power recharge.

“So right now, you have no magic. No powers,” I said.

“No.”

No wonder he hadn’t healed the injuries the witches had inflicted on him.

“Do all vampires drink Phantom blood?” I asked.

“No, only the soldiers. There’s not enough for everyone.”

Which meant most of the vampire population had no magic. I shelved the implications of this new knowledge. Right now, I had to devote all my attention to getting out of here alive.

“You need Phantom blood, but there’s no Phantom here,” I pointed out.

“You have Phantom powers. You’re a Prophet with Phantom powers. I’ve never heard of that before.”

“Prophet magic and Phantom magic are on different spectrums. They rarely overlap,” I said. “But I recently used a potion to link powers with Jason. That’s where these powers came from.”

“So you’ve been seeing him again.” Aaron’s face was hard. “He isn’t the man he used to be.”

“Funny, he said the same thing.”

“He is an assassin, Terra.”

“And it’s your actions that made him what he is today. Let’s not be too quick to point fingers.”

“We have all done our share of dark deeds. Even you.”

I snapped my fingers. “Oh, no. You caught me. I did steal the cookie from the cookie jar.”

Aaron snickered.

“How long has this been going on?” I asked him. “How long have vampires been drinking Phantom blood?”

“Lord Adrian would have my head.”

“And my father would have mine for even considering letting you drink from me.”

Aaron watched me closely. “Centuries. It’s been going on for centuries. It all started when our forces took down a rogue Phantom on a murdering spree in our territory.”

“And you just kept the Phantom’s blood?”

He shrugged. “He didn’t need it once he was dead. Why waste it?”

There he was—that ruthlessly pragmatic Diamond Edge. I’d been crazy to think anything else, even for just a moment.

“After those vampires drank it, they learned that it boosted their powers,” he continued.

The door shuddered. Pieces were breaking off. The Spirit Reapers would break through soon.

“We’re running out of time.” Aaron’s brows lifted. “What will it be, princess?”

“I’m not sure my Phantom powers will transfer to you. They come from Jason.” I sighed. “And I’ve probably just shared way too much information with you.”

“Women often find themselves confiding in me.”

I wondered what else women often found themselves doing with him.

His lips curled into a smile. “When this is over, we can explore that further.”

Shit. I’d said that aloud.

“I can’t believe you’re hitting on me as we’re staring down our own mortality,” I said with false serenity.

“Well, I might not get another chance.” His eyes turned calculating. “If we get out of this, will you go out with me?”

“Not now, Aaron.”

He continued to smile at me, even as the door was falling apart. The ball was in my court now.

“It’s now or never. Will you give me some of your blood?” he asked with perfect calmness. Like he already knew what I was going to say and I just hadn’t realized it yet.

“So I cut my finger and give you a drop?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to take more than that,” he said. “You’re not a pure Phantom.”

“How much more?”

“I don’t know. Let’s say enough to fill a shot glass.”

I frowned at him.

“You know, a glass that holds a shot of liquor.”

“Yes, I know what a shot glass is, thank you. Just because I don’t drink alcohol, that doesn’t mean I’m completely ignorant.”

Aaron held up his knife.

“What are you doing with that?” I demanded.

“I need it to make the cut. Or would you rather I sank my fangs into you?” His wicked grin told me he wouldn’t object to the idea.

“No.”

He pressed his blade to my wrist. “I’ll need about fifty milliliters, give or take.”

“Give or take?”

“Well, I don’t have a measuring cup. Or a glass. I’ll have to drink it out of you.”

“You want to suck my blood out of me,” I said flatly.

“Well, when you say it like that, of course it sounds bad.”

“There is no way to make this sound good, Aaron.”

“I don’t know.” A smirk lit up his face. “Some people actually like it.”

I thought of Queen Gale, of the ecstasy on her face as Aaron had drunk her blood. But she wasn’t a good example. Phantoms were crazy.

“Tick-tock, honey,” Aaron said. “You’d better make up your mind soon. Those soldiers are almost through the door.”

Father was going to kill me if he ever found out I’d let a vampire drink my blood—and worse yet, a Diamond Edge. Magic was precious, sacred. At least that’s what the priests told us. They didn’t believe in potions. Or Synergy. They wanted Prophets to use our powers, not caring if we went mad because of them.

Well, I would rather be sane than holy. And I’d rather be alive than dead.

“Do it,” I told Aaron, looking away.

He lifted my wrist, his hands careful, almost gentle. I felt the hot flash of his blade cutting my wrist, then the slow, steady draw of his mouth sucking my blood. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, but I wouldn’t have called it pleasant either. Or maybe I was just afraid to. I closed my eyes and waited for him to finish.

Aaron drank in a few long, deep draws. Then he jumped back suddenly, shouting, “Holy shit!”

I opened my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

He brushed his fingers across his lips, which were still wet with my blood. I could see the tips of his fangs peeking out. He took a few deep breaths. The fangs retracted. He met my gaze, and I saw that though his fangs were gone, his eyes were still excited. They were dilated. His body buzzing with magic, he grabbed an old gun from the shelf and bent it in on itself.

“Nothing is wrong,” he told me, grabbing his armor. “Nothing at all.” He quickly put on all the pieces of his armor. “Your blood is sweeter than a Phantom’s.” His tongue darted out, sliding across his lips to draw the last of my blood into him with languid pleasure.

“Well, I’m glad my blood is so scrumptious,” I said, while bleeding.

Aaron replied with a wink before he hid his face behind a big, black helmet.

The heavy door blew open. Aaron shielded me from the shattering debris, then he charged forward to meet our assailants. Fueled by my blood and the bottled-up anger of three days of being tortured, he plowed through them with merciless abandon. The Spirit Reapers couldn’t push past the door Aaron was guarding, but that bottleneck also kept us trapped inside as the prison spat all its soldiers at us.

Shift, the Siennan, rushed past the witches, swinging her axe at Aaron. He caught her arm. With his other hand, he knocked the weapon from her grasp. Then he clamped both his hands down on her neck, crushing the life out of the woman who’d tortured him. He tossed her lifeless body aside.

“No!” Ethan shouted, charging at Aaron, his anger echoing off the concrete walls. “She was my friend!”

Ethan’s armor wasn’t as good as Aaron’s, but he had an army at his back. And Aaron had only me, a lone mage who could not kill without losing her mind.

That was one of the consequences of being a Prophet. The moment you killed someone, the endless future possibilities of their life snapped back at you, burying you in a tangled mess of mangled foresights. It was called Prophetic Whiplash, and it was just one of many ways a Prophet could go mad.

I drew my swords, aiming to maim, not kill. Aaron shot anything that moved. But the witches’ forces were pushing forward, driving us back. Like two flowers standing before a tornado, we were being overwhelmed.

A wild force ripped through the prison. The walls exploded, including the wall to the outside. I grabbed Aaron’s hand and pulled him out of the building, away from his fight with Ethan. I didn’t know what had destroyed larger parts of the prison, but I did know that whatever it was, it probably wasn’t something I wanted to meet.

“Terra Cross!” a voice roared on a wave of magic.

I knew that voice. It was the bronze-haired Phantom who’d kidnapped Cameron. The one who, according to Veronica Frostwater, was determined to kill me.