Strange Brew

I'd never met the High King, but we were his, and I hoped that I was right about him avenging our deaths.

"Ah, but it must be you, my dear. A witch for a witch—that is what I require. Marco took something precious from me, and it will shame him that I took you in his city."

"A witch for a witch," I repeated. "What are you talking about?"

Gage came within an inch of the ward. If I could have breached it, I could have snapped his neck before he had time to draw a breath.

"He took my daughter from me," he said, each word filled with pain and barely contained rage. "She would have been the greatest of us all, and he bespelled her, defiled her, and turned her into a bloodsucking leech."

Marco's consort… Sara? Now that I thought about it, she did look a bit like Gage, the same blonde hair, the same dark eyes. She must have inherited her mother's nose. She was a pretty little thing, not at all someone I would take for a practitioner of the dark arts, and she was completely in love with Marco and he with her. And there was not a bit of magic left in her. It seemed I truly was the only witch whose powers had survived the turning.

"Sara is your daughter?" I asked.

"Do not!" he yelled, and then his voice dropped to nothing more than a sibilant hiss. "You are not fit to say her name."

I shook my head. "Marco may have bespelled her, Gage, she may have even been bespelled when he turned her, but once she was turned, he lost all power over her. Vampire tricks do not work on other vampires. She has complete free will. I saw her not a fortnight ago, and she was happy. If she's under any spell, it's only that of a woman in love."

"You speak in twisted lies," he spat.

"It's no lie. They are in love, and she is his consort. Her magic is gone though, Gage," I said softly. "Let her go. Let us go. Vengeance will not bring your daughter, or her power, back to you."

"No," he said flatly. "Marco will pay for what he did. He will pay, Cin Craven. He took from me, and I will take The Righteous from under his nose. It is not enough, not nearly enough, but it will do for a start. Your friends are merely here for my amusement. There are some devious spells I can spin with the blood of a vampire, you know. You, however, you will be mine."

"Not in your wildest dreams," I assured him.

"Oh, no, dear—in reality. You will get hungry eventually, and then you will drink of my blood and I will bind you to me, as I have bound my other followers."

I laughed. "I'll die before your tainted blood ever passes my lips, Gage."

He smiled. "That's fine with me, too."

I tried, truly I did. Long after Gage had gone, I looked for holes in the warding, any spot where there might be a weakness in the magic that held it together. I tested it until my' hands were raw and bloody with burns. The thing that frustrated me the most was that I knew Aunt Maggie had a book specifically on spells to break wards. When I closed my eyes, I could see the damned thing on the shelf in her rented flat in Inverness, its brown leather-bound spine mocking me. If I'd been a better student, then maybe I'd have remembered something about what was in the book but, as Maggie had often said of me, I concentrate about as well as a puppy. And now that one, tiny character flaw was going to get us all killed.

Two of Gage's followers were in the chamber with me at all times. Apparently the chanting had to be continued for the spells to hold, because they rotated in turns every few hours. I tried talking to them. I tried begging, pleading, bribery. The only response I received from any of them was when one spat at me and hissed, "I hope the master kills you slowly, you bloodsucking whore."

I stopped trying after that. There's no reasoning with zealots.

The sound of the door opening brought me unsteadily to my feet. Gage stalked in with an ornate golden cup in his hands. I could smell fresh blood from across the room, and my stomach churned. I had no idea how long we'd been his prisoners, but I hadn't fed since the night before we were taken—and I was hungry.

"I have something for you, vampire," he said. "Something I think you want badly by now."

He walked up to the ward. Here was my chance. If he wanted me to drink, he would have to break the warding. I watched in fascination as the warding melted for him, and his hand and the cup passed through the small hole. It wasn't as much as I'd hoped for, but it would do. If I couldn't get out, then I would pull him through the ward to me. I lunged for him and nearly made it, too. I had been so intent on what the one hand was doing that I didn't notice that he'd conjured a ball of pure magic in the other. The magic hit me when I was a bare inch away from him. The force of it slammed me into the far side of the ward, searing the skin on my back through the fabric of Michael's shirt.

The man was smart. There was no way he could have thrown that blast in reaction to my movements. I was a vampire and, whatever his u

"Drink," he said.

I walked to the cup slowly, never taking my eyes off him. I picked it up and passed it under my nose. It was human, but I didn't want to drink it. I knew it was his.

"It's your blood, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yes, and it's filled with my power. Drink it and join me, Cin Craven, and I will let you live."

I drew back to throw the cup in his face.

"Before you do that," Gage said, staying my hand, "think of what I can offer you. Think of the power, Miss Craven, what it would feel like to bend all that magic inside you to your will. I can make you the witch you were born to be."

"A practitioner of the dark arts was not what I was born to be, Gage."

He laughed. "You are a vampire. You live in darkness. Now let that darkness live in you. I can make you more powerful than any white witch could dream of being. Let me make you what you were meant to be."

I saw the utter conviction of what he was saying shining in his eyes, and for the smallest moment I was tempted. I glanced at the cup of blood. What would it feel like to have utter control over the magic I possessed? I looked back at Gage, and he smiled. And over his shoulder I could see the lifeless form of my beloved stretched out on an altar dedicated to everything I had sworn to fight against.

I shook my head and threw the cup at the ward, slinging its contents at Gage as I did so. The blood spattered against the black netting and disappeared. The ward was fueled with blood magic, and it had sucked up Gage's blood like rain on a drought-ridden field. I began to rethink my assumption that Aunt Maggie's book would have anything in it to break this ward. Macgregor witches did not deal in blood magic.

Gage raised his hand, and the cup stirred from where it had fallen on the floor. It spun three times, and then it flew through the ward and into his outstretched hand. He caught it without ever looking away from my face.

"I will be back, vampire. Perhaps you will have reconsidered my offer by then."

"Don't count on it," I replied.

"It matters little to me if you join me willingly, as the rest of my coven has, or by force."

"You ca

"Yes, you seem willing enough to sacrifice yourself for your morals. But are you strong enough to sacrifice your companions as well? You will drink what I offer, Miss Craven, because the next time you throw this cup back in my face, I will take it and I will fill it with your lover's blood. I will drain them all dry before your eyes. Tell me," he said, almost sweetly, "can you sit there and watch them die when you could save them?"