I licked my lips. After seeing my own death, a small blood sacrifice was hardly worth a second thought. I bit the tip of my finger and milked two large drops of blood. When they hit the pools, the waters boiled like a cauldron and swirled.
“The gate is open,” Vinca called.
“He’s here!” Calyx shouted from the perimeter.
“Everyone jump in! Now!” I shouted. I ran to Vinca and stopped myself just in time to keep from falling through her again. “I’m sorry to leave you like this.”
She laughed through a sob. “What’s he going to do? Kill me?”
“I didn’t deserve you as a friend then and certainly don’t now, but I’m relieved as hell you’re too stubborn to do what’s best for you.”
My friend raised a hand and touched mine. An icy chill spread through my muscles and bones, and once again, I felt the friction of her soul trying to attach to mine. The spectral contact was as close to a high five as she could give me. “Give ’em hell, my friend.”
“Sabina!” Adam yelled from the bubbling pool. Vinca pulled her translucent hand from mine. The loss of her coldness was both a relief and a disappointment. With one last smile at my friend, I turned and ran full-tilt toward the water. I grabbed Adam’s hand and together we leapt into the swirling vortex of water the instant Cain burst into the clearing.
Chapter 35
Even though we’d jumped down into the scrying pool, we emerged up into a stark, alien landscape tinted black and red. Instead of the clean, iridescent waters of the faery realm, this underground lake was filled with blood.
“Ugh!” Adam groaned, leaping out.
Tristan was less vocal with his disgust but beat a hasty exit as well. Meanwhile, Nyx, Horus, and I took our time. I even swallowed a few mouthfuls of the stuff as I glided toward the edge. The blood tasted pure, like the hemoglobin equivalent of a clear mountain spring. When I finally reached the edge, Adam held out a hand to help me climb out of the crater.
“Well, I think it’s safe to assume we made it to the Bloodlands.”
I shook myself off like a wet dog. “Everyone look alive. I have more enemies here than I can count.”
Horus snorted. “You’re not the only one.”
I stilled, remembering that he’d once been an assassin for the Dominae, too. “Let’s just pray word of our visit hasn’t spread here.”
Nyx was looking around. “Hey, where’s Calyx?”
We all exchanged worried looks. “Shit, I thought she came through with us?” Adam said.
I shook my head. “Last time I saw her, she was running toward the forest. I figured she’d jump in after us.”
We all fell silent as we processed that information. “Vinca will help her,” Adam said. “After all, Calyx is a faery.”
“We need to go back,” Horus said, stepping toward the pool.
Tristan grabbed his arm. “We can’t. Most likely she’s busy being a pain in the ass to Cain to give us a head start. If we go back now, her sacrifice will mean nothing.”
Horus stared intently at the red pool, as if willing Calyx to emerge. A few tiny bubbles popped on the surface, but no one emerged.
“Horus,” Tristan said, his tone quiet but authoritative. “We need to move.”
When the vampire looked up, his face was composed. I knew that giving up on Calyx cost him, but he was a seasoned soldier. He’d see the mission through and use his emotions to fuel him in battle. “Let’s go.”
“What did Valva say to expect here?” I asked Tristan.
He shrugged. “I believe her exact words were ‘It’s creepy as shit.’ ”
Looking around at the black volcanic rock that made up the walls of the cave, I found myself agreeing. “Let’s get out of this place. Maybe outside looks better.”
I led the way to the mouth of the cave. Outside, the sky was dark like midnight. I guess this shouldn’t have surprised me, but since the mage and faery realms were both covered in blue skies, I’d assumed the Bloodlands would be the same. But I guess it made sense that vampires would be most comfortable in a nocturnal setting even in death.
The landscape outside wasn’t much different than the cave. A blood river ran through the center of a deep cavern formed by porous cliff faces. Only the golden leaves of a few apple trees broke up the red and black theme. Limbs heavy with the forbidden fruit, the trees clung to rocky crags like they were about to plunge to their deaths in the river below. Only instead of the common red apples of the mortal realm, these had black skin.
“Apple trees?” Adam asked.
I shrugged. “They can’t hurt them now, I guess.” In order to kill a vampire, you had to first remove their immortality with a dose of the forbidden fruit’s toxic juice. Now that they were in Irkalla, the dead vamps could indulge in apples for eternity.
I approached a low-hanging limb and plucked one. Using the knife from my boot, I cut into the flesh. The inside was as red as a rose and the crimson juices dripped over my hands like I’d shived someone. I raised my hand to lick away the drops, but Nyx grabbed my wrist.
“No!” she yelled.
“Nyx, I’m immune to the forbidden fruit.”
She shook her head. “These aren’t normal apples. I didn’t know they really existed before now, but according to my research, they’re fabled to make any immortal being mortal. Any.”
“Even gods?” Adam asked.
She nodded solemnly.
Adam raised his brows and stuck a couple of the apples into his pack.
“Shit, thanks,” I said to Nyx.
She took the apple from me and threw it. It splashed into the blood river where it burst into flames. “Consider the scales between us balanced.”
I wasn’t so sure they’d needed balancing. After all, it’s not like I saved Nyx’s life. I’d simply refused to end it. Still, I smiled at the vampire, relieved to put that nasty business behind us. “Deal.”
“Let’s keep moving,” Tristan snapped.
We followed the river for a mile or two until we saw a large castle set high on a cliff. The place looked straight out of old Hollywood versions of Count Dracula’s eerie abode.
Tristan pointed to the building. “Who wants to bet the gate’s in there?”
“Of course it is,” I said with a sigh. We followed a winding path leading up to the cliff. The higher we went, the more I could see of the Bloodlands. From this bird’s-eye view, I finally saw the souls of several vampires. Or rather, I saw the shadows of several bent, dark creatures. Instead of the swaggering monarchs of the night they’d been in the mortal realm, here they resembled wraiths.
The shadows crawled over the banks of the blood river and lapped up the liquid like animals. As I watched, one soul strayed too close to another. The vampire whose territory had been breached turned on the other with fangs flashing. They fell on each other like two lions battling over a prime watering hole. The battle was brief but fierce. The loser skulked away into a cave to lick his metaphorical wounds. The victor started to resume drinking from the river, but something caused it to stiffen. Its head jerked around to look up at me.
I froze. The feral face belonged to Alexis Vega.
I shuddered.
“Red?” Adam whispered. “You coming?”
I pointed a shaky hand at Alexis. “Adam, look.”
The spirit that used to be Alexis snarled and turned her back on us. Adam let out a breath. “Jesus.”
Is that what I would become when I finally died? A bloodthirsty wraith forced to scrape and fight for a meager slice of territory for all eternity?
I tensed to go help her, but Adam grabbed my shoulders and turned me back toward the path. “No, Red. We can’t do anything for her now. We’ve got to keep moving.”
I shook off the horror and guilt of seeing my old ally turned into little more than an animal. Her fate was sealed. Ours were not. With a regretful last glance at Alexis, I turned and continued up the hill.
By this point, we’d almost reached the top of the cliff. Two vampires stood guard at the black gate. They each held spears, which they crossed to bar our entrance. “Who seeks entrance to the Dominae’s fortress?”
“David?” I said. “Ewan?”
David Duchamp was an old friend who I’d killed back in Los Angeles after the Dominae told me he’d been feeding information to their enemy, Clovis Trakiya. I later found out David had been innocent, and I carried the guilt of that decision like a lead yoke ever since.
He’d reappeared to me in spirit form several months earlier in a New Orleans City of the Dead and gave me some information he claimed was from Lilith, so I guess we were kind of on not friendly terms, but less adversarial ones.
“Sabina.” David spat my name out like a mouthful of venom.
Or not.
“What are you doing here?”
“Thanks to you, Lilith handed me over to the Dominae.”
I blinked. “How is that my fault?”
“I told you too much when I visited you in New Orleans.”
Actually, he’d scared the hell out of me by showing up in a graveyard like the Ghost of Murder Victims Past. He’d spouted off a bunch of dire-sounding but completely vague nonsense.
“It pissed off the Great Mother,” he continued, “so she threw me to the dominatrices to be their slave.”
“Look, dude, no one forced you to tell me shit. So if you got into trouble, it’s your own damned fault.”
“Sabina,” Tristan warned.
I shot him a glare. He didn’t know my history with David. “Whatever,” I said, dismissing David’s presence altogether. “Ewan?”
Ewan was another vampire friend from Los Angeles, but I hadn’t been his killer. That dubious accomplishment belonged to my grandmother. Ewan had been a bar owner and information broker who Lavinia had murdered for fucking information out of one of her Undercouncil members. While David looked like he wanted to kick my ass, Ewan looked like he didn’t recognize me at all.