The Devil's Liege (The Mathias Saga Book 2) (10 page)

Granted, they didn’t need heat to survive, but it was much more comfortable during the winter this far North. With all of the movement and the thick walls, freezing to death wasn’t very plausible in their condition, so since that wasn’t the main concern, it hadn’t been at the top of anyone’s list.

Vlad tried the usual combination to open the door, but nothing happened. He stepped back. He knew Nossy hadn’t changed a thing. Nossy was a creature of habit. “Something’s wrong.”

Azazel stepped forward, leaned into the door, sniffed, and sighed. “They’ve cursed his room. Nothing here will be viable.”

Vlad did not ask how Azazel knew by a mere smell. At this point, there were just some things he didn’t want to know.

“Now what?” Stuart asked.

Azazel looked at them both. “We ask Mathias how he feels about a little pain.”

Vlad felt his heart slam into his gut.

* * * * *

Mathias knew he was being stubborn, but he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t like being weak, and while he knew it wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own, he still didn’t have to like it. He’d made himself stay awake.

Granted, his body wanted the sleep, practically begged him for it, but he didn’t give in. Nossy was more important than a little bit of shut-eye. Besides, if he wanted to risk his life, that was his choice, wasn’t it?

Apparently not. Not according to Vlad anyway. His ass was seated at the table while the rest of them were actually trying to help Nossy. At the moment, he was doing the amazing task known as, Staring Out the Window and Watching It Snow. Real help there. Well, unless someone asked him how the weather was, then he’d have something he could answer with.

It was December now, and it was brutal this far North. Even though he knew he was pretty hard to kill, he wouldn’t be able to last forever in weather this cold. Everything froze. He couldn’t imagine having a car up here. No wonder they used horses so much. If they kept moving, it was hard for their blood to freeze.

The crystalline landscape left him feeling cold and hard. He never understood why so many people were worried about the Zombie Apocalypse. Just move to Antarctica. Problem solved. There was no way a zombie couldn’t freeze. They had no blood to flow through their bodies to create warmth. Zombie-cicles.

Too bad this stuff with Nossy wasn’t as easy.

Suddenly, the door of the chamber opened and Vlad came through, looking somber.

This didn’t bode well. It seemed like every step they made toward solving this mess, something would happen to bring them right back to where they started. “What’s wrong?” Mathias asked.

Vlad didn’t answer. He stepped into the room and moved aside, allowing Stuart and Azazel to enter. Then, they all stood in front of the table.

It was weird. None of them were acting right. They looked like a depressed version of the latest superhero triumvirate. “Will someone please tell me what is going on?

“We have a problem,” Stuart said.

“Okay,” Mathias replied. He looked at each of them. Their faces did not betray anything but utter dejection.

Finally, Azazel stepped forward. “Nosferatu’s dwelling has been compromised,” he said. “His rooms have been cursed rending everything unusable.” He sat down beside Mathias.

“Shit,” Mathias said. It was a small comfort to know that his blinking skills weren’t so shitty after all. “How bad?”

Azazel looked at him; his face was a mask of stone. “Very bad. There is a blocking spell on that door that even I would not have used. We don’t have time to go into details, but even if I broke the spell, I could not be certain that any object in that room would lead us to Nosferatu. It may lead us into the pit of hell for all I know.”

Mathias caught a strange twinkle in his eye, but said nothing about it. “What do we do now?” The whole plan had been based on that one thing. Now it was all fubar.

“We cannot ask this of him,” Vlad said.

Mathias snapped his head around to look at Vlad. Vlad seemed anxious. Now he was really confused. “Ask me what?”

Azazel turned and looked at him, almost sadly. His eyes seemed to droop a little. “How far are you willing to go to save Nosferatu?”

Mathias leaned back in his chair. That was the question they had all been afraid of? He almost asked Azazel if he really had to ask. “I almost fried my brain trying to help.”

Azazel leaned over and stared into Mathias’ eyes. “But, would you have done it if you’d known what was going to happen?”

Mathias paused. They were all looking at him like he was going to break into a million pieces. When they all stayed frozen like that, Mathias rubbed his head with his hands. “If that was the only option, yeah,” he looked at each one individually so he could emphasize the point. They seemed to understand him more when he did that.

“We are back to the item you said once belonged to Nosferatu,” Azazel said. “I can do the spell on it, I think, but it will require you to feel everything that Nosferatu is going to feel.”

Mathias closed his eyes. Why couldn’t they have just listened to him in the first place? He knew this meant more to Nossy than anything he had in his apartment. And what they were asking him to do? Well, it couldn’t be any worse than what Lilith did to him all those years ago, could it? He survived her torture. Enough with the whining. It was time for him to man up.

“Do it,” he said. He snatched a chain from under his shirt and yanked off the necklace. It was time for Nossy to use it again. He’d had it long enough.

“Whose fang is that?” Azazel asked.

The memories of the past where he’d first presented Nossy with it rained down from his mind. It was the very first thing he’d done as a show of friendship. Nossy and he had met at the Vampiric Games back when Mathias ruled the Myrddin court.

Nossy, being the son of Lilith, was the prince of Lilitu. So, their becoming friends was an oddity. Something like the leader of Russia suddenly becoming friends with one of the children of the current United States president. The fang was a show of solidarity and of trust. Then, last year after he’d remembered the past and had to deal with Lilith’s insanity, Nossy had given it back as a good luck charm right before he met Lilith in a fight to the death. It was time for Nossy to use it again.

Mathias looked at him. “Mine.”

* * * * *

They laid him out on the floor. Mathias didn’t bother to ask why. He knew why with the way they were acting. All serious and shit. It was pretty easy to guess that it was going to be bad and there was a big possibility that he’d lose control of his bowels. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before; just like those times he had gotten sick on the street. And well, sometimes a mud puddle was useful to clean the shit out of your clothes.

The table had been pushed over next to the wall. The carpet had been rolled up and pushed under the table. Technically, yeah, they could just blink it back, but even Mathias felt it would be gross to put a shitty carpet back down, blinked clean or not.

Azazel was crawling around on his knees, spreading out candles around Mathias. He didn’t ask why he just didn’t blink them into place. There probably was a very good reason, but it wasn’t what mattered. He knew enough about magic that sometimes, it was all about the ritual. So, Mathias didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. This was going to suck.

“Are we sure he can withstand this?” Vlad asked Azazel.

Yeah, sure, talk about me like I’m not here.
It was weird for Mathias to view them from this angle. They were all chin. He rolled his eyes. “I can handle anything you put in front of me.”

Vlad looked down at him. “That is not what I meant, Mathias. You did just get out of the hospital.”

Here we went with the big deal again. He wasn’t dying. Shit, he wasn’t even close to being dead now. “Look, if it kills me, at least I tried.”

“We cannot risk your death,” Stuart said from the other side of the room. He was crouched over a large mortar and pestle mixing something Mathias couldn’t see. It smelled herbal.

Here it was. Maybe he could finally get some answers. “What the fuck is it about me that’s so goddamn important?” He had to ask. He was really getting tired of all the word mincing. There was something he was missing about this whole thing and they seemed hell-bent not to tell him about it. And, well, since it pertained to him, he had a right to know.

Vlad looked at Azazel. He looked back.

“What?” Mathias asked. This was getting to be ridiculous.

Stuart cleared his throat, walked over, crouched down, and looked at Mathias. He seemed so much more sinister at that angle— like a raven perched on a tombstone. It was almost as if Mathias was getting a glimpse into the man’s true nature, when before, he thought of him as this nice kid. Maybe nice wasn’t the proper word.

“What these cowards are afraid to tell you is that since Lilith is dead, you are the last mantle,” Stuart said.

“The last what?” Mathias had visions of scarves and fireplaces bouncing around in his head. It didn’t make any damn sense.

“We aren’t sure what will happen if you die,” Stuart said. “Lilith was the oldest living vampire on earth, and in your previous incarnation, you were the first vampire from the Father. These things mean something to some people.”

Mathias sat up. It was so stupid. “So, they’re scared that what? If I die, all vampires will die too? Come on.”

Stuart shook his head. “Not that the vampires will die, just that they will lose their souls.”

Mathias blinked. He’d lived in a world where that type of thing, well, people barely thought about anymore. It was almost like he was transported back in time a hundred years. “You seriously aren’t going to use that as an excuse for me to not help find Nossy, are you?”

Stuart moved so that his head was leaning directly over Mathias’ head. “Of course not. Vlad just doesn’t want you to die. Azazel is worried that if this spell kills the king, what will it mean for him.”

Mathias shrugged. He still couldn’t believe this was what all the big deal was about. “If that’s all it is, I’ll sign a release right now. That way, no one will be at fault but me.”

Vlad sighed. “If only it were that simple.” He turned to Azazel. “Get it over with.”

Azazel nodded and pulled out a silver knife that had various rune marks carved into it. He looked at Mathias. “Get ready to bleed.”

* * * * *

Mathias would have liked to have said it was a piece of cake, but it wasn’t. There was nothing that could have prepared him for it. Except, well, maybe Azazel explaining all of it to him before he did what he was going to do, but Mathias wasn’t sure if it would have made that much of a difference. Especially after Azazel had cut his arm and put the fang inside the incision. That hurt bad enough, but it was bearable. It wasn’t until the man had finished saying something in a language Mathias did not know that the true pain began. What a fucking spell.

“Sheet-a-shee Ka!” Azazel spread his arms toward the ceiling. There was no lightening flash, no explosion of smoke, just the sudden unrelenting pain.

It started. With every beat of his heart, white-hot pain flashed through his body. It was strong enough to make him double over even though he was lying down on the floor. He was grateful for the floor now. At least he had nothing to fall down on. A table would have been a bad idea.

Finally, he straightened back out. Staying curled up was pointless. It didn’t stop the pain. It didn’t even lessen it at all. “Is it worse for Nossy?” he asked with his teeth clenched together. This was so much worse than being shot. It felt almost like his body had been blown up, and then haphazardly put back together, all without anesthetic.

“I really don’t know,” Azazel said. Then, he pulled the fang out of the cut on Mathias’ arm and bandaged it. He handed the fang back to Mathias

“I thought that you said the object would be destroyed?” Vlad asked.

Mathias took the fang and stared at it. Minus being a little bloodstained, it didn’t show any damage or anything.

Azazel smiled. “It usually is. No matter. If I did the spell right, the pain will get worse too.”

“Worse?” He couldn’t imagine it. He was almost to the point of wanting to kick himself for agreeing to this now. Not that he needed a reminder, but pain was not something he enjoyed. Maybe, one day, he’d learn to listen to what other people thought about things instead of being bull-headed.

Azazel laughed. “Now, try to rest. I’ll put together what we’ll need for our journey.”

Mathias didn’t argue. With pain like this, true rest wasn’t going to happen for a long time. All he felt like doing was wallowing in his bed. “How will we tell which direction we need to go in?”

“By how bad your pain is, of course.” Then, the man smiled.

It left Mathias a bit uneasy that Azazel found this entertaining, but then, he didn’t have the nickname The Prince of Hell for nothing. Maybe the man wasn’t exactly a vampire? He once thought vampires were the stuff of imagination too.

* * * * *

Needless to say, rest wasn’t easy. Every heartbeat, the pain would come. Mathias was starting to wish he’d learned how to meditate so he could slow his heart rate. But there had never been a need before, so he was fucked.