Under Siege

Part Three of "North of Midnight," A Spell Weaver Novella

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Where We Left Off: Alexandra Luminitra and her new allies flee to the Winn estate to escape a large-scale vampire attack. Carrie Winn herself is unconscious. An unknown enemy speaking through the possessed Janice demands surrender, claiming to have the souls of both Winn and Viviane Florence, who was trying to help her. The group unanimously refuses to surrender unconditionally, and the magical defenses around the estate begin to waver, a sign that the enemy is trying to manipulate Winn into dropping them.

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I knew I was too far away from the vampires and behind too many thick walls to actually hear them, but my imagination kept getting the best of me. I thought I heard scraping sounds, clunks, furtive footsteps, that kind of thing.

But they weren’t in the house with us. Not yet, anyway.

“How safe are we here?” asked Jimmie.

Khalid closed his eyes. “The defenses are holding, though they fluctuate. Unfortunately, I have no control over them. I’m sensitive enough to magic to have some clue about their condition, but that’s about all I can do without Winn. She must be resisting, but we have no way of knowing what is being done to her or how long she can keep fighting.”

“How do we help her?” I asked.

“The problem is that none of us have magic,” said Jimmie. “It would take strong mental magic to fight whatever is happening to Winn.”

“But I’ve seen Khalid become invisible,” I said. “And Umbra, uh, teleported us here through shadows.”

“Both involve magic,” said Umbra, her voice still emotionally flat, despite our obvious peril. “But they are magical abilities that can only be used in certain ways. Mine was a gift, if you can call it that, from the shadow assassins who kidnapped me and raised me. Khalid’s come from the fact that he is half djinn. Neither one of us can cast spells that do anything outside the range of those abilities.”

By this point, I was numb to surprise. Of course, there were shadow assassins and djinn. How could there not be?

Looking worried, Jimmie walked over to where Winn and Florence lay, unsheathed his sword, and let its sunlight shine upon them. It would have driven back vampires. It would probably kill bacteria. But against the magic that held both women in its grip, it did nothing at all.

“But this is a home,” I said. “Even if the magic protections fail, the vampires still can’t get in, right?”

“It’s Carrie Winn’s home,” said Jimmie. “If whoever claims to have her soul can get sufficient control of her, she can invite the vampires in.”

Lucas turned pale so suddenly that I was afraid he might collapse. “Someone is trying to breach the defenses at a single point—the front door. They’ll rip a hole in the protective magic in the next two minutes or so. It’s faeries, just like I felt before.”

“I don’t want another security bloodbath,” said Jimmie. “If the attackers are going to breach the door, we’ve got to go down and help drive the vampires back.”

“I’ll take us down to the entrance,” said Umbra.

“Antonio, stay here and make sure Janice doesn’t wake up,” said Jimmie. “She’s probably still possessed.”

Antonio looked as if he wanted to protest. But aside from being unusually alluring, he didn’t seem to have any special abilities. I wondered if Jimmie was trying to keep him safe.

“Someone also needs to keep watch on Winn and Dr. Florence,” said Khalid.

Antonio still looked grumpy, but he nodded.

Moving as if she had seen many battles and knew what she was doing, Umbra led us out into the relatively dim hallway, found a decent-sized shadow, and pulled us through it. In seconds, we emerged from shadows thrown by a number of security guards, We were in a mansion-sized foyer with about thirty guards, who had somehow received word of the impending attack.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that Winn’s medieval fixation hadn’t stopped with the exterior. We were flanked by two suits of armor, and reproductions—or perhaps originals—of medieval tapestries hung from every available wall space. The room would not have been out of place in a historical museum.

“Advice?” asked Lucas, looking at me. “We’ve got about ten seconds.”

“Ordinary bullets will just slow them down,” I said. “You have the best chance of taking them out of action for a while if you concentrate your fire on one of them at a time. You can do that most easily by blasting them in the doorway before they can get inside and spread out.”

“Protections in the immediate area of the door had been breached,” said Khalid.

I was braced for vampires, but when the door shook for a moment and then just disintegrated, I suspected the vampire’s faerie allies. Vampires would have crashed through in a shower of splinters.

We waited for more—but nothing happened.

“There are vampires out there,” said Khalid. “Lots of them. But they aren’t moving.”

“They haven’t beaten Winn yet,” said Lucas. “She hasn’t invited them in.”

I did my best to see through the gaping hole where the door had been. In the moonlight, I thought I could see a number of black-clad figures, but nothing else.

“What do faeries look like?” I whispered.

“Typically, really good-looking humans,” Khalid whispered back. “That’s assuming you see them coming.”

“Well, this is anticlimactic,” said Jimmie after a short time.

Some kind of ripple interfered with my vision momentarily. When my vision cleared, I saw a figure standing much closer to the doorway than the others.

The more I looked, the more I wondered if I were in a nightmare rather than in real life.

The figure was clad in black—no surprise there—but he also had black skin, though not like someone of African ancestry. Instead, his flesh seemed to be fashioned from shadow. His eyes weren’t glowing, but I could somehow see them, anyway. They looked back at me like no human would. I saw something primal but as rigid as stone in the way he stared at me. The skull he grasped in his hands completed the effect. The throbbing that had replaced my usual psychic tingle intensified, suggesting the presence of powerful magic.

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“As soon as we’re out of the way, open fire,” said Jimmie. He put a hand on my shoulder and half-guided, half shoved me back.

“Surrender now,” said the ominous creature. “Surrender, or I will devour the souls I hold captive.”

Our answer was a barrage of gunfire. Following the others, I covered my ears, though the guns sounded less noisy than I’d anticipated.

They also did less damage than I’d anticipated. No human could have eaten that much lead and lived. Even a vampire would have needed some serious downtime to recover from so many shots—and he would have had more holes in him than Swiss cheese.

The figure showed no sign of any damage, not even as much as a scratch. Nor did he fall to the ground. Instead, he stood unnaturally still. If not for his eyes, I could easily have mistaken him for a statue.

One of Khalid’s arrows flew past me and struck the stranger in the chest. It had more effect that bullets, but not as much as such arrows had achieved against vampires. The successive flashes of fire, love, and sunlight drew more reaction from the vampires nearby than from the dark and silent intruder. The blast of divine blessing had more impact, causing the shadows from which his flesh was made to shudder for a moment like smoke in the wind. But he didn’t fall. Khalid kept launching arrows until there was a continuous stream of them tearing through the creature. At that point, the thing turned and fled.

Could he really be so easily beaten? Perhaps he had underestimated us.

“He’s moved out of range,” said Khalid. “But he’s still on the property. All we’ve done is—”

That was when arrows started flying at us—lots of them, coming in almost as fast as bullets.

Our one advantage was that the shooters could only fire along a relatively straight path through the open doorway. Those who could move fastest prevented otherwise inevitable bloodshed. Lucas shot in my direction, fast as the wind, and knocked me out of the way. Khalid did the same for Jimmie. Umbra swept aside one of the security guards in such a way that others had space to fall back. That put everyone out of the immediate line of fire.

Unfortunately, the archers could always move into a position to shoot diagonally if they dared to risk getting closer. Khalid could hold them back with his arrows—but only by exposing himself to theirs.

The sound of loud thudding caught my attention. The two suits of armor were now lumbering down the hall, moving much faster than seemed possible.

A few hours ago, that would have sent me into a panic. Now, all it did was make me ask, “Is that magic?”

“Must be part of Winn’s new improvements,” said Jimmie. “If I recall correctly, it’s not connected to the regular security network, so it may be unaffected by whatever is happening to Winn.”

I couldn’t imagine what two suits of armor would do against the forces facing us, but evidently, the magic animating gave them a certain understanding of the strategic situation. They stepped forward until they reached the doorway and then crowded into it, mostly blocking any further attacks from that direction.

Khalid nodded appreciatively. “Cold-forged steel, with appropriate magical reinforcement. Faeries—and faerie magic—will have a hard time dealing with that.” he closed his eyes for a moment. “The protections are still holding, though they are having a hard time sealing off the breach. The situation is better than I feared—”

“A window on the back side of fourth floor is just about to break!” yelled Lucas.

“Vampires can’t really fly,” I said.

“Faeries can,” said Khalid. “But there isn’t a breach—oh wait, there’s a small glitch near a fourth-floor window. Faeries are usually human sized, but they can shapeshift to get through a small opening.”

“Stay here,” Jimmie said to the guards. “But if anyone manages to breach our new…door, fall back. Do not put yourself at unnecessary risk.”

Umbra pulled us through shadows to the fourth floor just in time for us to see the window glass shatter. Fog rolled in through the broken window. But it was no ordinary white fog. It was purple enough to be almost black. Khalid shot into it, but the arrow found no target.

When forms finally emerged from the fog, I braced myself to see the horror from the front lawn. Instead, I saw a handsome man with fair, unblemished skin and eyes so dark blue they might almost be called violet. Golden haired, he wore golden armor that shined more brightly than it should have been able to. He had to be a faerie. I doubted that weapons involving sunlight or holy water would have much effect on him.

The three women who emerged behind him were more ambiguous. Their skin was also pale, but though the male faerie’s reminded me of porcelain, the women’s skin was more like the color of sun-bleached bone. Their eyes, gray and piercing, looked upon all of us with disdain. Both their hair and robes were midnight black. Though the purple fog had slid away from the golden male, wisps of it clung to them.

“We mean no harm,” said the male in an almost musical voice.

“You have an odd way of showing it,” said Khalid, arrow already nocked and aimed. “But if you truly mean no harm, leave this place at once.”

“I’m afraid I cannot comply until we have talked. You see, I am—”

“Elatha, former king of the Formorians,” said Khalid. “I recognize the feel of Formorian magic, and I’ve met your son, Bres. He was involved in a plot to unite English and Welsh faeries under the rule of an imposter.”

Elatha smiled in a way that might have made me want to bed him—but not to trust him.

“I did not come to relitigate the past. Just know that I have nothing against any of you.”

“Then you don’t want our unconditional surrender?” asked Lucas.

“My…colleague is a bit hasty,” said Elatha slowly. “We came here because of a prophecy we recently received. We need something from you.” His eyes shifted to Jimmie. “That sword, in fact. Give it to us, and we will go in peace.”

“Why didn’t you just say that in first place?” asked Umbra. “As it is, you have killed many of our people. But here is our counteroffer—leave here now, or we will paint the walls with your blood!”

This was the only time I’d ever heard any emotion in Umbra’s voice. Her thinly veiled rage, calculating but intense, sharper than that little dagger of hers, made me recall that she’d been raised by assassins.

Elatha’s smile vanished. The purple fog around his companions twitched as if it longed to lash at Umbra like a whip. Umbra’s friends shifted uneasily. It didn’t seem as if they wanted to escalate the situation.

I couldn’t tell as much as Khalid could by looking at our intruders. My psychic throbbing had become so constant that it no longer had much predictive value. I wished I could see through his eyes as Winn did with the security guards.

Did he know how powerful they were? Did they have the magic to overcome us?

“We know you didn’t kill those security guards yourself,” said Lucas. His tone was calm, but there was a fragile undertone, as if that calm would crack at any moment. “But you have allied yourself with vampires. And my friend is right about one thing—you didn’t approach us for help. You invaded our home. How did you expect to be received?”

Elatha squinted at us as if he were having a hard time believing what he was seeing and hearing. I didn’t know how faerie royals behaved, but it was hard to imagine they were used to such direct opposition.

“Any of you with enough sensitivity to magic know you can’t beat us in a fight,” said the former faerie king. “I am asking for what I could very easily take…if you force me to. I do not normally loot the bodies of the slain, but I am prepared to make an exception—”

With unexpected grace, Umbra threw herself in Elatha’s direction, her dagger raised and wet with something I presumed was poison. The faerie king must have been expecting something like that, because he dodged the dagger strike. His movement seemed effortless, as if he had trained to avoid just such an attack for years.

However, before Elatha could reposition himself, Lucas hit him with a flying kick to the chest, throwing him off balance. Umbra was already lunging again, aiming for the vulnerable space on his neck above the armor line.

Light flared from the faerie king, momentarily blinding us. Umbra, who certainly looked as if she didn’t get out in the sun much, cried out. I heard Khalid shoot, but it didn’t sound as if he hit anything. Someone else stumbled and fell. After that, all I could hear was something that sounded like a rushing wind.

I held a stake in front of me, though I doubted I could push it through whatever Elatha’s armor was made of. Being neither demon nor vampire, I doubted my cross would deter him from attacking me.

Yet the attack never came. As my vision began to recover, the first thing I noticed was that Elatha and his dark companions were gone.

“They didn’t kill us?” I asked.

“And…and I still have my sword,” said Jimmie, looking down at the blade as if he expected it to disappear at any moment.

“I thought that request sounded fake,” said Khalid. “Weapons made by Hephaestus are rare, but they certainly aren’t unique. No one would send an army here just to get one.”

“That we aren’t dead suggests they need us alive for something,” said Lucas, sounding grimmer than I expected. “Yeah, being alive is good, but we aren’t going to want give him whatever it is he’s after,” he added, perhaps because he’d seen my confused expression.

“But why break in right now?” asked Lucas. “If he needs us for something, why didn’t he try to force us to do it? Oh, my God! The infirmary’s on this floor. He’s after Vanora, uh, Winn, and Viviane!”

Again that name came up, and now it was obvious that Dr. Florence wasn’t the only one trying to hide something. But asking the hard questions about that could wait until later.

Umbra traveled us through shadow to near the infirmary, after which we ran the rest of the way.

Ms. Winn and Dr. Florence were both gone. Antonio was lying on the floor, eyes closed and skin pale. My heart skipped a beat, but I saw he was breathing.

“For all that talk about soul eating, they needed the physical bodies of Winn and Viviane,” said Jimmie. “I don’t know why, though.”

“Maybe they need Winn’s invitation to the vampires to come from her own physical lips,” said Lucas.

“There’s a spell on Antonio,” said Khalid, bending over to look more closely. “Faerie death curse. I’ve seen that before. Unless it’s broken, he’ll die.”

My heart sank. As far as I knew, none of them could break a curse.

“It’s worse,” said Umbra. “You see that on his lips. It’s blood.”

Khalid reflexively jerked away. “Vampire blood!”

I couldn’t sense the blood as well as Khalid could, but there was something about the stain on Antonio’s lips, a shade more black than red, that told me Khalid was right. My heart beat like a drum played by a maniac.

“But no vampires got in, right?” asked Jimmie, looking around suspiciously.

“This was planned all along,” said Khalid. “Elatha brought in a vial of vampire blood. In case we proved uncooperative, he was going to infect one of us. Antonio’s plight is intended to be a distraction.”

“How?” asked Lucas in a tone that suggested he didn’t really want to know the answer.

“If he dies with vampire blood in his system, he’ll become a vampire,” I said, fighting back tears. I’d seen too much of that in the last few years. And Antonio was so young! “It…it doesn’t have to be digested. It enters the bloodstream within seconds of being swallowed.”

“We can’t let him die or be a vampire,” said Jimmie. “Antonio may be relatively new—but he’s still one of us.”

“Putting him in stasis until we get the curse broken would be easy enough,” said Khalid. “But we’ve lost the only two people who could do that kind of spell. At least three of us who aren’t here could do it, but Antonio isn’t going to last more than an hour, and we can’t get a message to anyone outside town.”

“There must be something else you could do,” I said. My voice cracked. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to speak again.

“There might be one thing that could give one or more of us more magic,” said Jimmie. “But it’s, uh, I guess you’d say…experimental. Anyone who tried it might end up insane, or even dead.”

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“North of Midnight” takes place in the Spell Weaver universe. Want to find out more about the series?

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