Chapter 63

Prisms of colors clashed behind her eyes. A sticky substance stuck her to the marble altar. The coppery stench of blood filled her nostrils. Pain struck her chest as her power and soul ripped from her body like she had been cleaved in two.

She couldn't die...not now...not like this from Boris’ evil scheme. But acid bubbled up in her throat. Another jerk on her life-force caused her to scream, her body trembling. The wrench of the afterlife grasped her in its clutches, she could feel her hold on her body slipping away. She gasped an inhale, but no air filled her lungs. Her fingers clawed at her throat but she couldn't breathe.

A clanging of metal sounded nearby. She pried open her eyelids. Pierre had broken his bonds. In an instant, he stood next to her and cradled her head.

She couldn't hear his words, but his face was pale with his dark brow furrowed.

Darkness filled her vision.

Then she fell through a void. No substance or sound. Just black. Her screams vanished before they left her throat.

She crashed into a heap of ancient bones and scrambled to stand. No trees or animals filled this place. Bones and black earth with an eerie grey sky were the only things in sight. Inky shadows drifted along the edge of the horizon. Bent figures that made her skin crawl.

What was this place?

A blinking light flashed in the distance and she felt herself draw toward it like a magnet. But where was Pierre? And what about Andrei and Mihnea? Was she dead?

“You’re in-between,” a female voice said.

Lynda spun. There in front of her was a woman with dark auburn hair, bright emerald eyes, and a thick Russian accent.

“Who are you?”

“Ekaterina,” the woman replied.

No freaking way! “My ancestor? Wait, does that mean I’m dead?”

“Da.”

“But...where are we? This isn’t heaven and it certainly isn’t hell.” Lynda remembered passing through glimmers of what she’d call hell when Natasha shoved her through the magical portal. This place, though dreary and colorless, wasn’t filled with demons or monsters. At least none that were hunting her. “And what are those beings that look like bad ink blots?”

“We are in the in-between.” Ekaterina smiled. “As necromancers, we walk the line between death and life, between heaven and hell. Well, until we give up our lives completely or someone takes it from us.”

A chill swept through Lynda. She rubbed her arms. Maybe Ekaterina would know how to get out of this place. “Boris. Your cousin. He did some kind of ritual to take my magic, my blood.” She pressed a hand to her breastbone. “He struck me here with a dagger then next thing I know, I’m here. But how? I blasted him before he cut me deep enough to hurt me. Am I in a type of magical coma or something? Is this what Andrei is going through? In a grey, lifeless world waiting to decide to toss him back up with the living or throw him down with the dead?”

“Ah, Boris.” Her mouth dipped into a frown. “If you are here, then that means that he linked you and him together. So when you defeated him, you harmed yourself as well.”

“So he’s here too?” Lynda glanced around ready to strangle the arrogant bastard.

“No. He’s a vampire.” She shook her head. “And not a good one either. He’ll be with the others of his kind in a special level of hell.”

“Then why am I here and not in hell or heaven?” She wasn’t perfect by far, but she really hoped she never had to go through hell again for anything. Just the portal was horrible enough.

Ekaterina grasped her hand. A peacefulness seeped into Lynda as she gazed at her ancestor. The woman who had started all of this, created vampires to help her lover, Dracula, then set limits on all of them because they were too powerful. And her cousin, Boris, had betrayed her. Yet, Ekaterina was trying to help her, despite that Lynda was in love with Dracula’s princes. Even though she hadn’t told her anything about her life, the kindness and depth in her ancestor’s gaze told her that the woman knew everything as if Lynda’s heart was laid bare.

“Because you are a necromancer. Your magic is both light and dark, both death and life. How else did you think I could’ve made the first vampires? I fused the underworld with the living making blood the key. Without it, both humans and vampires die.”

“Okay, so how do I use that here?” Lynda shrugged. “I mean, I can’t stay here. My men need me…and I need them.”

Her foremother smirked. “You raise yourself from the dead.”

“How? I mean, I can barely control my magic.” She bit her lip. “I know it’s tied to my emotions somehow, but it doesn’t always work the way I want it to.”

“All your life, you’ve locked away your heart.” Ekaterina tucked her arm around Lynda’s shoulders and the two walked across the black earth. “Never allow your heart or love to grow much. Then, you meet the loves of your life and your heart swells, and breaks out of its cage. Except, your magic has never been free before. Never had a chance to get stronger. So, you need to train it. Work it. Allow it the freedom of being.”

“Sounds easier than it is.”

“Da,” Ekaterina said. “The more you try to control it with your will alone, the more you will fail. It’s like love…you cannot choose who you will love…you just fall.”

“I’m sorry about what Dracula did to you.”

Ekaterina’s shoulders tensed briefly. “In the end, he saved me.”

“Oh?” She couldn’t picture arrogant, demanding Dracula doing anything to help another without it benefiting him too, of course.

“Boris persuaded me to make chains for Dracula so that we could convince him to see the error of his ways. But he told me I had to make them strong enough to hold him. Foolishly, I believed him. Even hired gypsies to help make the shackles. Nothing could break them…not even me.”

“Your cousin locked you in them, didn’t he?”

She nodded. “Once I discovered what he’d planned, I used all my power to break free, but I could not. I could only crack one of the cuffs, but it wasn’t enough. Boris took my power. And he’d planned to keep me as his blood cattle once he figured out it was the key to him walking in the sun. There was no one powerful enough to stop him. Not even Dracula.”

“What happened?” Obviously, something worked because Boris wasn’t a magic user and had delighted in parading around in the sun after her blood cured him of the animalistic blood-lust.

“We were linked. So when Dracula couldn’t fight Boris, he stopped him the only way he could—”

“By killing you,” Lynda interrupted.

“Da. And I fear if you return to the land of the living, Boris will as well.”

“I stopped him once, I can do it again.” Lynda squared her shoulders. She’d do whatever it took to stop the madman and free her princes. Damn, she missed them so much that her heart hurt like it was being cut open again and again.

“No,” Ekaterina shook her head. “You cannot. He’ll be the most powerful vampire in the world. No weaknesses. No limitations. And magic from the bond with you and his ancestry. There will be no way to defeat him. It will be impossible.”