Page 56 of Blood Magic

Chapter Twenty-Two

Despite the elders’ sudden showing of power, I didn’t expect what happened next. The…lead elder, as I thought of him, left his spot behind the long table and approached the master vampire. As he walked, two other vampires—the council’s assistants, I supposed—appeared from the shadows and walked behind him. And they were dressed appropriately in gray robes and hoods.

The elder stood before Axton, who, even though he was chained, injured, and on his knees, did not seem at all diminished. He had been too long without authority, and he seemed unable to grasp the fact that he was in trouble.

In the next second, I found out why.

He threw back his head, stared the elder in the eye, and attempted to mind-control him. Which made me realize something I hadn’t considered before. Humans weren’t the only ones his magic worked on.

I glanced at Bastien. Not all vampires were susceptible, or Bastien wouldn’t have stood against his master.

The elder chuckled, his voice as dry as ancient cornhusks. “County Master, do you believe you are more powerful than your council?” He leaned down to get his face level with Axton, and even though Axton was on his knees, the elder didn’t need to lean far. “Do you attempt to capture me?”

“Of course not,” Axton lied, and he didn’t seem to care that everyone knew he was lying.

The elder nodded, then straightened. “Bring them in,” he said.

I shivered as power danced over my skin, stiffening the fine hairs and creating almost painful gooseflesh on my arms. Two people were hauled in through the side entrance—one of them was human, and the other was Axton’s seer, Kaloni.

“Kill it, master, or it will kill you. Kill it!”

Chills shook my body as I remembered her words. The madness was still in her eyes, and she peered out through the strands of her lank, gray hair, muttering curses. But she had been wrapped in silver, and her hands, which she kept thrusting into the air, had been burned with patterns I recognized. They’d branded her with charms to keep her from using her magic.

The human was a man in his late twenties, maybe, though it was hard to tell from the awful state of his body. Like Kaloni, his long hair partially obscured his face, and I imagined that had it been clean, his hair would have been a dark blond. His body was covered with new wounds, old scars, and bruises.

He’d been Axton’s prisoner and apparently for a long time. I frowned when I saw that his hands were restrained behind his back. His two vampire “escorts” were unnecessarily rough with him, and after they shoved him to the floor beside Axton and took their hands from his arms, I saw proof of their crushing grips on his flesh.

Rage began to grow inside me, causing my wolf to growl, and shockingly enough, I realized my hands had begun to shift, my nails blackening and elongating into thick, lethal claws.

I should not have been able to control my shift to the point where only my hands shifted. Some alphas could not even do such a thing. My shock caused my rage to lessen. I snatched my hands behind my back, hoping no one had noticed. That was something I wanted to keep to myself. At least until I better understood it.

Axton seemed to finally understand the danger he was in. He glanced from the human to his seer, and he began to shiver. He licked his lips. “Why have you brought my human slave and my beloved seer?” he asked the elder. “They should not be here to witness my punishment.”

But something in his voice told me that he knew exactly why they were there, and the realization scared the fuck out of him.

“Oh,” the elder said gently, “they are not here simply to witness your disgrace, County Master. They are here so that you might witness their deaths.”

The two people most important to a vampire master’s existence were his seer and his human servant, and though the human was his human slave and not his servant, he was important to Axton in many ways. Magic would have been involved, which was likely the only thing that had kept him alive through his nights of torment, and the human’s ties to the master would have been as deep as the ones he’d forged with his human servant. I couldn’t help but wonder why they hadn’t captured the human servant as well. Perhaps they hadn’t had time to find him or her.

The slave was next in order of importance, at least to the master’s health. The seer, as well. Taking one of them would have hurt him more than anything their torture guy could have dreamed up. It would have devastated him. Taking them both? That was unimaginable. I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

The seer began to wail with her master, but the battered man made no sound at all. They were facing away from me, and suddenly, I had to see their faces. I had to see the human’s face.

I slipped away from the wall and walked quickly to the side of the stage so I could see him. And for one second, as though feeling me there, he shook his hair out of his face and looked up at me.

He was not broken. He was full of sorrow, and horror, and rage, but he was not broken. The master had taken him against his will. He’d marked him, made him his slave, imprisoned him. And maybe this human looked forward to death. It would be his only escape.

Maybe I was projecting, but I didn’t think so.

“Your bonded slave and your seer will die here tonight,” the elder told Axton. “You are forbidden from creating another human slave. You may not take in another seer for fifty years. I understand that it is because of your seer that you are capable of such twisted, lawless magic and I will need have no worries that you can replicate it without her. But should you attempt to so blatantly break our laws again, Mr. Axton, your human servant will be killed, and you will be wrapped in chains and buried so deeply into the ground that no one will ever find you while you scream and starve and lose your angry mind. Do you understand, County Master?”

“You cannot do such a thing,” Axton roared. “You cannot.”

But the elder lifted his hand and abruptly, the seer’s wails cut off and she listed to the side, unable to move. “Kait,” the elder called. “You will stake her and take her head, and we will nail her hide to the master’s bedchamber wall. Should he be tempted to forget, she will remind him.”

My hands were shaking as I pulled a stake. I didn’t mind staking the warped, twisted seer. I didn’t even mind hacking off her head. I did not like doing it in front of such a large—and hostile—audience.