P. C. Cast - Dragon's Oath

“Sssshe is not dead!”

Anastasia stared at the thing in the cage. It wasn’t bird. It wasn’t human. It didn’t even appear real. Except for the glow of its scarlet eyes it seemed unsubstantial, ghostly—something made of nightmares and shadows.

“Not yet she ain’t,” Biddle said. “I’m gonna have me some fun before I drain her.”

“Using her wassss not part of the plan,” the creature hissed.

“There ain’t no plan ! There’s just me feeding you her blood so’s you’ll give me more of what I want. What happens before to her don’t matter.”

Anastasia looked from the creature in the cage to the sheriff. “What is that thing?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Biddle said as his hand slid up from her ankle to her calf. “Just ignore it—it ain’t real anyway.”

From where he’d thrown her on the dirt floor Anastasia kicked out, trying to break away from him, but his rail-thin body was deceiving. The strength in his bony hands was incredible, and with a single pull on her leg he jerked her back to him.

“No! Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!” She struggled against him.

“Aw, come on. Everybody knows about you vampyre women. Y’all have lots a men. So, don’t act like you’re some kinda virgin.”

Cold fear filled Anastasia, freezing her. She stared at the human who loomed like an animated skeleton above her.

He smiled. “That’s right. Just be still and it’ll go easier fer you.”

Keeping one hand clamped around her ankle, Biddle began unbuckling the belt to his pants with the other.

It was then Anastasia knew the truth—this human was going to rape and kill her.

Oh, Nyx! Please help me! I don’t want to die like this, she prayed frantically.

Then, through the shock and chill in her blood, she felt the warmth of the ajoite crystal that she’d shoved in her pocket as her spell had been broken, and beside it was the heaviness of a velvet bag filled with salt crystals.

As Biddle reached into his pants, Anastasia reached into the pocket of her skirt. She scooped a handful of salt out of the velvet bag and threw it into the human’s face.

Biddle cried out and jerked back, blinking hard and wiping his tearing eyes. “You bitch!” he yelled.

He’d given her all the time she needed. Anastasia scrambled backward as she lifted the bag of salt and the fist-sized ajoite, a crystal infused with phantom magick from deep within the earth. Since ancient times, priestesses had been using it to bring peace through clarity of spirit, and now Anastasia, a priestess dedicated to peace and the earth, reached deep within her spirit and connected with the element on which she crouched. With a single motion she whipped the open bag of salt around her so that it surrounded her with a crystal circle, saying:

“Binding salt, of you I ask,

link me to earth as your task.”

Then, holding the ajoite like a dagger, she plunged it into the dirt, crying:

“Earth below, filled with might,

grant me protection this dark night!”

She felt the surge of power come from below, as if a dam had broken free. Like a thunderstorm on the prairie, green light sizzled all around her. Pressing her palms flat against the element that had just gifted her with an affinity, Anastasia was weeping tears of happiness and thanksgiving when Biddle tried to cross the circle of salt. He recoiled with a cry of pain just as the creature in the cage shrieked, “No! The green light! It burnsss me!”

“Shut up, you!” Biddle kicked the creature’s cage and the thing of spirit quieted to a keening whimper. Then he began to circle the glowing shield. “What is this? What have you done, you damned witch?”

“I’ve called my element to protect me. You can’t hurt me now.” She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “I’m not a witch. I am a vampyre priestess with an earth affinity, and you can’t hurt me now !” she repeated.

“It won’t last! It won’t last!” Biddle said, nervously plucking at his shirt. “When that light dies, so do you.”

Anastasia shook her head. “You don’t understand. The earth is protecting me. It’s not going to die or fade or fail. And I’m going to sit right here and wait for my High Priestess to find me. I promise you, she will. The House of Night knows I’m here. They’ll find me and Bryan.” Her voice started to break, but she pulled more power from the earth below her and continued, “And then you’ll answer for what you’ve done tonight.” Her gaze went from him to the pathetically whimpering thing in the cage. “And you’ll have to answer for whatever you’ve done to that poor creature, too.”

“Don’t nobody care about vampyres or ghost things,” he said.

“That’s not true,” Anastasia said, and as she spoke she felt the rightness of her words. “There are good people in St. Louis. They trade with us. They even become our consorts. They won’t like what you’ve done, what you’ve turned into, or what you’ve trapped down here.”

He paused and she saw a flash of something that might have been a spark of sanity in his eyes. “You know I’m right,” she said. “Just leave here. Go, before anyone else is hurt.”

Anastasia saw understanding or even regret in his eyes, and then there was the awful wet, violent sound of a sword being plunged through a body. Biddle’s eyes widened as he stared down at the blade that had suddenly gone through his back and sprouted out of the middle of his chest. With surprising gracefulness, the sheriff dropped to his knees and then lurched sideways in a growing puddle of blood as Bryan pulled his sword free of him.

The fledgling stood over Biddle, breathing hard, his throat no longer crushed but still cruelly bruised and battered. His lips were pulled back to expose his teeth in a feral snarl, and Anastasia saw that he was completely the dragon then. The sweet fledgling was gone, as was the kindhearted, handsome Warrior. As she watched him breathe in the heady scent of blood that lifted around them, she knew when he crouched beside Biddle that he was going to slash the human’s throat and drain him as he died.

The sense of foreboding that had been shadowing Anastasia all that night flooded her, and she knew then that her intuition hadn’t simply been warning her about Biddle’s plans. There was more, much more to it than that. Reaching deep to pull more earth magic to her, the priestess whispered, “With earth’s might cut like a sword—reveal the truth of Bryan Dragon Lankford.”

With a green flash of light an image appeared before Anastasia. It was Bryan, a fully Changed vampyre. He was on a battlefield, and again, he was completely the dragon. She gasped as she saw who he was slaying: brother vampyres.

What you see

is what will be

if his strength is not tempered with mercy.

The words were in her mind, but they weren’t her own and though she’d never heard the voice before, Anastasia knew the Goddess, Nyx, was speaking to her.

Anastasia also knew what she had to do.

Bryan had drained Biddle dry of blood and, swollen with power and victory and violence, he was descending upon the creature of spirit in the cage with his sword raised.

“Bryan, stop!” Anastasia cried as she stood and stepped out of the protective circle to stand between him and the thing in the cage.

“Step aside, Anastasia. I don’t know what it is, but it was allied with Biddle. It must die.”

She held her ground and said, “Bryan, it’s in a cage. Biddle was keeping it prisoner.”