Bound by Flames

I sought to find a way out, but my options were grim. I wasn’t naïve enough to expect someone to appear and rescue me, so I couldn’t wait this out. Even if I made it to one of the many tunnel entrances around the antechamber, the skeletons would chase me. Then I’d be trying to fight them off in a narrow space instead of a large one, which would give them the advantage. If the tunnel I chose led to a dead end or a prison cell, then the necromancer wouldn’t have to bother with reactivating the spell. I’d be trapped, so the skeletons could rip me to pieces at their leisure.

No, I realized with a surge of determination, if I wanted to leave this antechamber alive, I had to find a way to kill the necromancer first.

Chapter 35

Decision made, I stopped using my whip to slash at the skeletons. Doing so was only draining my energy and either the antechamber had an endless supply of bones or the necromancer kept regenerating the skeletons I cut down. Instead, I curled my whip back into my hand, hoping the necromancer would think I’d used up my electrical defenses. Then I focused on protecting myself while using the walls as springboards to slide away from the skeletons. That only afforded me a few seconds’ respite until they swarmed me again, but maybe that would be enough.

Without my whip lighting up the room, the emerald glow from the necromancer’s eyes was easier to spot. He seemed to be circling me, not getting too close, but obviously up to something or he could have picked a comfy spot somewhere to sit and watch. The skeletons parted around him wherever he went, reminding me of how the Remnants had acted with Cat. Come on, get close enough to make your move, I silently urged him. Then I could make mine.

When minutes went by but he did nothing except continue to circle me, I decided to make myself look like more of an appealing target. With that, my head snapped back as if I’d been struck by a skeleton’s skull with one those brain-bashing blows. I sold it so well that the movement caused me to smash the back of my head against the bony cranium of one of my nearest attackers. Despite the instant sear of pain, it wasn’t enough to knock me unconscious, but I pretended that it was, going limp on the stone floor.

I braced for sudden, urgent defense if one of the skeletons grabbed my head with decapitation intentions. None of them did. In fact, the entire attack stopped, which struck me as odd until I heard the scrape of bones on rock and realized that they were parting to let the necromancer through. I kept my eyes closed and my mouth slack, but every cell in my body felt like it vibrated as I forced electricity into my hand while still keeping the whip beneath my skin. With vampire healing, the necromancer would expect me to regain consciousness in a few seconds, giving me only between now and then to make my move.

Please, let him be close enough, I found myself praying.

When I felt the tingling power of his aura, I opened my eyes and snapped my wrist. The whip shot out, the energy I’d willed into it making sparks fly from it as it arced toward the necromancer. He leapt back with incredible speed, avoiding the killing strike it should have been. Instead of cleaving his upper body in half, the whip sliced him from throat to chest in a long, shallow cut.

The scream that escaped me wasn’t just of disappointment. Pain flared along my upper body in a sizzling arc. My left hand instinctively flew to cover the wound, but when I touched my chest, expecting to feel a knife or other weapon protruding, nothing was there. A glance down didn’t reveal the source of the injury, either. It just showed a bloody slice from neck to breast, as though I’d been hacked at by an invisible machete . . .

I looked at the necromancer. In the unguarded instant when his eyes met mine and I read the strangest sort of terror in their coppery-hued depths, an explanation flashed through my mind. It can’t be, I immediately thought, rejecting the notion. Then I remembered Mencheres explaining why he couldn’t break the spell that had caused me to nearly kill myself.

Whoever cast it must have bound it flesh to flesh and blood to blood. Since you are a vampire, that is more than magic; it’s necromancy . . . The spell was set with your flesh and blood as well as the necromancer’s . . .

We’d considered that to be a good thing because then the death of the necromancer could break it, too, but what if there was another ramification to our flesh and blood being supernaturally bound together?

Before the necromancer could guess my intention, I grabbed one of bones I’d knocked off a reanimated skeleton and raked the ragged end across my face. The necromancer yelped as his cheek opened up in exactly same spot.

“Oh, shit,” I breathed, and the truth was so mind-bending that I couldn’t stop myself from testing it again.

“Stop it,” he said curtly when I sliced open my arm and his skin split to the bone as though I’d done it to him, too.

“So this is why you didn’t kill me during your B-movie attack with the skeletons!” I said in amazement. “You wanted me too distracted to help Vlad, but not really hurt because whatever happened to me would happen to you, too! But then why would you cast a spell that did this if it was also supposed to make me commit suicide?”

“Because you shouldn’t have lived long enough for it to bind us together this way,” he snapped. “I was protected from the first destruction of your flesh, which was supposed to be the last because no one’s survived this spell before. Then you kept destroying and regenerating your flesh, making the part that was meant to protect me bind us tighter together instead. Now, I feel it every morning when that crazy fucker you married burns you!”