Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night (Immortals After Dark #4)(12)
Author: Kresley Cole

Bowe worried for her as if she was his mate. He dreamed of her as if she was. He thought of her as his – because she’d forced him to with one of her disgusting hexes.

Perhaps that bloody witch should learn to be careful what she wished for.

He knew his expression was pure evil when he took a step back from the edge.

7

The lack of sunlight and real food had begun to take its toll. Mari was getting sicker, was even now beset with fever.

Rydstrom and the others continued to encourage her to jump. Maybe if the five were asking her to swim across a crocodile-infested river or walk a low tightrope over a bed of swords, she could make herself do it, but not heights.

Ignoring them was becoming easier as each day she grew more delirious. Sometimes she would find herself smiling or crying blindly in the dark as she thought of her friends or her home.

In a feverish haze, she pictured Andoain, her coven’s estate just outside of New Orleans. She’d never thought she’d miss the creepy place so badly, but now she’d give anything to go back.

To most, Andoain looked like a millionaire’s stately fortress, adorned with colorful landscaping that attracted butterflies. The wrought-iron fencing surrounding the entire property was painted glossy black, perfectly matching the shutters. Apple trees – either laden with fruit or dotted with blossoms – grew in profusion.

Without the estate’s glamour, however, the structure was a decrepit old manor complete with snakes coiling along the rotting railings. The apple trees remained, but for every one butterfly in the glamour, multiple spiders and frogs lived in bliss. Reed-filled puddles dotted the property, bubbling up odorous fumes.

Deep within the groaning manor, her disparate room was wallpapered pink, with lace curtains and her cheerleading pom-poms on the floor. A spell at her doorway kept out anything shorter than the coven’s obligatory black cats and dogs.

But Andoain hadn’t always been her home. For most of her childhood, Mari had lived with her fey mother, Jillian, in a bright, modest beach cottage on the Gulf Coast. They’d been content there, just the two of them, since Mari’s warlock dad had abandoned them with nothing but a jolly promise to be back soon.

Yet on Mari’s twelfth birthday, Jillian had packed up their cottage and had taken her to Andoain. There she’d opened her arms wide and pronounced it Mari’s "new home." Rendered slack-jawed, Mari had run in the opposite direction faster than even her most hell-bent pursuits of ice-cream trucks.

For two days, her mother had remained with her there. Then she’d peeled Mari off her to leave her behind, bawling on the front porch. To go on sabbatical, to a secret druid island somewhere in Europe. Over the years, Mari had received sporadic letters, supposedly from her mother, but she suspected Elianna was actually penning them.

Without Elianna and her best friend, Carrow, the coven bad girl, Mari didn’t think she would have made it past those first months she was abruptly immersed in nothing but witchery. Gods, she missed her friends now…

Beautiful, raven-haired Carrow thought being a witch was the best thing in the world. Whenever other Lore creatures like the nymphs and satyrs turned their noses up at the "hex-hacks," Carrow would raise both her hands in the rock-on horns gesture and shout, "Double, double, toil and trouble, muthaas! You just got cursed!"

Then she actually would curse them.

Carrow was one of those rare three-caste witches, though she was mainly a warrior – with an incongruous specialty in love spells. Fierce Carrow was supposed to have entered the Hie with Mari, but then she got arrested at the last Mardi Gras for public indecency again. All poor Carrow had done was to invoke a little-known fashion rule – It’s not streaking if you’re wearing beads – but the covens had vowed earlier that they wouldn’t fix her next offense for her.

Carrow was presently in County. Or probably out by now.

And Mari longed to see Elianna, who’d been the best substitute mother she could ever ask for. Though Elianna had received the gift of immortality from her witch mother, her father’s humanity ensured she continued to age. Kindhearted, occasionally befuddled Elianna was over four hundred years old, and without her glamour, she looked every minute of it. She liked to joke that "all the exercise in the world can’t help a sunbather."

Chapter 5

Mari hoped they didn’t worry about her too much –

"Mariketa, it’s time." Rydstrom’s voice carried up to her, cutting through her thoughts. "You need to do this now."

Bowe’s sole eye slid open when he had the vaguest impression that he wasn’t alone. That for the first time in weeks it was no longer only him and the serpent.

"Lachlain?" he rasped, blinking for focus.

"Aye, Bowe, it’s me," his cousin said as he knelt beside him, his gaze flickering over Bowe’s injuries. Bowe knew he was shocked, but Lachlain hid it well and simply said, "I’m taking you home," then helped him to his feet.

Bowe’s sense of smell was wrecked, nearly burned away in the heat and oppressive smoke, but he could still scent a vampire. He tore from Lachlain’s grasp and lunged for the shadowy figure behind them.

Wroth, that cold bastard, simply traced to the side, sending Bowe reeling to the ground. All his medley of wounds reopened in a fresh wave of blood.

Lachlain reached for him once more. "Damn it, Bowe, do you wish to die? He’s brought me here to retrieve you."

Bowe tried to break from Lachlain’s iron grip. "He put me here!"

"I hold no ill will against you, Lykae," Wroth said in a measured tone.

"Because you won!"

"This is so," the vampire answered easily.

"How?" Bowe spat the word. "How did you raise that blade?"

"It was blessed never to miss its mark," Wroth explained. "I had only to picture a target." The vampire wouldn’t be calm like this if he’d lost Kaderin for good.

"You brought the Valkyrie back from the dead?"

"I did."

The key had worked! Bowe felt a flare of hope and swallowed before he asked, "Did you use it… both times?"

"Yes."

Bowe lowered his head. He couldn’t hear this – that his enemy had managed to do what Bowe himself could not. The shame of his failure ate at him.

"We retrieved Kaderin’s two blood sisters, who’d died long ago," Wroth said.

"Talk of this later," Lachlain said, eyeing the fire. "I see no reason to be here any longer." Bowe understood Lachlain’s uneasiness. For over a hundred years, the Vampire Horde had tortured Lachlain in a never-ending fire. Each day he’d been burned alive but could never quite die. He’d only escaped recently, and merely being here must be excruciating for him.