Bound by Flames

He didn’t lower his hands, but his head cocked. “Leila?”

I could only hear him through the link, so he must not be able to hear me the other way, either. I responded with an instant, mental roar of Yes, it’s me. Let me through the fire, quickly!

His emotions were still entwined with mine, so I felt it when his surprise turned to angry concern.

“Get out of here,” he said, returning his gaze to the charred wall. “You won’t survive what I’m about to do.”

Neither will you! I yelled back, hoping he could hear everything I said. He hadn’t been able to the last time I tried this. Szilagyi rigged the door. If it comes down, so will the floor beneath you and the entire prison will dump on your head.

Not sure if he’d gotten all that, I repeated the word trap over and over, hoping that did the trick. The necromancer watched me, not making any move at the whip around my neck. That, plus his grim expression, let me know that he hadn’t been lying or exaggerating the seriousness of the situation. If Vlad ignored me and blasted through that last door, we were all dead.

The wall of fire abruptly pulled back as if yanked, until the long, empty tunnel was revealed. I ran ahead, not checking to see if the necromancer followed me. He had no choice. The way behind us was blocked by a cave-in.

When I reached the end of the tunnel, I had to step over piles of charred rocks. Vlad was in the clearing beyond. I couldn’t call it a room because I don’t think that’s what it originally was. Instead, it looked like it had been wall after wall of fortifications, which had been blasted into an open space from the power of Vlad’s fire assault. The final door that the necromancer referenced was easily discernable from the rest of the rock. That was a dull, grayish-brown color, like the tunnel walls had been. The door was black, smooth like slate, and as inviting as a welcome sign to the vampire who wanted nothing more than to kill his enemy hiding behind it.

Vlad remained exactly as he was when I’d glimpsed him through the link: legs braced in a wide stance, arms extended to the door, and fire flowing from him as if his entire body was sweating flames. His emotions felt more explosive than the damage he’d done to this room, which was why I didn’t run over to him. I stayed by the entrance to the tunnel, not wanting to exacerbate his already volatile state.

“Don’t touch that door. It’s rigged to trigger a detonation that will take down the rest of the dungeon,” I said in as calm a voice as I could manage, and just in case he hadn’t heard that from my mind.

He didn’t ask me how I knew that. He didn’t even look away from the black rectangle, as if doing so would allow Szilagyi to escape him once again. “Just the door? Or the walls around it, too?”

I glanced down the tunnel at the necromancer, who, as anticipated, had followed after me.

“Just the door? Or the walls, too?” I pressed him.

“Door only,” he replied, crossing his arms and cocking his head as if curious to see how Vlad got around that.

Vlad stared at the smooth black slate and smiled. Then his power began to blast through the room in ever-increasing shockwaves, until it felt like he was manipulating gravity into a weapon that kept hammering me with full-body punches. I sucked in a breath to try and balance the awful squeezing sensation, as if my guts were being pureed by the violent pummeling. Behind me, I heard the necromancer moan, and then a thump that might have been his legs giving out when the awful sensations continued.

“What are you doing?” I managed to gasp.

Vlad ignored me. From the virulent emotions scalding mine, I wondered if he even heard me. He felt lost to the hate that he allowed to consume him, until those pulses of power coming from him became so punishing that I fell to my knees, too.

With sudden, shocking swiftness, it felt like he sucked all the power back into himself. All the air seemed to leave the room, too, in a whoosh that popped my ears and made my head throb like it was about to explode. He centered that incredible power and then hurled it at the walls, with a blast of heat that made my skin feel like it was going to melt off.

It didn’t, but as I watched, amazement replaced my fear. The stone walls around that black door shined with pure, white heat. After a few moments, they began to waver, then concaved in places like candle wax. Then holes appeared, growing and stretching, until what looked like molten rock puddles began to form.

I couldn’t believe it. Vlad was melting the stone. It was one thing to do that to thin glass shower doors, but this rock wall had to be a foot thick at least. What kind of temperature would that take? I found myself wondering almost dazedly. Two thousand degrees Fahrenheit? Three thousand? The only thing more incredible than Vlad channeling fire into that kind of heat was how he contained it to the walls in front of him. I should be in a puddle on the floor. So should the black door. Yet the only things dissolving were the walls.

With another blast of power, they shuddered and began to fall, collapsing into slowly moving pools of dark brown lava as the room beyond the black door was revealed. And in that room, staring in disbelief at the stone walls that continued to puddle into piles on the floor, was Mihaly Szilagyi.

Vlad looked at him and smiled with wolfish anticipation. “Hello, old friend.”

Chapter 37

Szilagyi lunged for the weapons on the other side of the room, which was surprisingly modernized. I didn’t have a chance to glimpse more than the wall of computer screens that funneled feed from the still working cameras before he had a machine gun in his hands. Before the barrel finished its upward swing, the metal went from black to glowing orange. Szilagyi screamed as the metal melted, coating his hands in the scalding remains of his weapon.