Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) Read online

  “Awesome!” she said. “Give me a minute. I’m going to try it again.”

  She closed her eyes, waiting until the afterimage of the light bulb was completely gone.

  “Let’s sit,” she said when she opened her eyes.

  She and Rave returned to the bed. Leesa sat down on the edge and held her palm out once more.

  “Illuminati verdus,” she chanted.

  This time, she was positive she saw a little yellow ball of light, no bigger than a marble. It didn’t last much longer than the first one and it didn’t really light up the room at all, but she didn’t care. Totally excited, she decided she would forget about the air shield spell for today and spend the rest of the hour—and maybe a little bit more—working on this spell.

  So that’s exactly what she did. By the time she called it quits, she was creating glowing yellow orbs the size of a golf ball that lasted almost a full second before winking out. The tiny lights were of no practical use, but she was confident her skill would grow with practice. She had to warn herself not to let her enthusiasm run away with her. She knew from past experience there would be plenty of frustration and failures in the coming days. Still, she was proud of what she had accomplished today.

  6. AWAKENING

  Kristi Brolen’s eyelids fluttered open. As her vision slowly came into focus, she found herself looking up into the bare, tangled branches of tall trees. Through the leafless branches, she could see pieces of blue sky. It took her a moment to realize she was lying on her back on the ground. She had no memory of how she had gotten here. As a matter of fact, she suddenly realized, she had no memory of anything, not even her name.

  She tried to turn her head, but found she could not. Her arms and legs seemed paralyzed as well. She was able to move her eyes from side to side, but that was it. Even her mouth was frozen shut. There would be no calling out for help, or even screaming in fear or frustration. Strangely, none of this bothered her.

  Her clothes were wet, but she did not feel the cold, even though she could see small patches of snow on the ground around her out of the corner of her eyes and knew it must be winter. This did not bother her either.

  Kristi had no way of knowing she had been bitten by a vampire nearly two months before and had been lying here ever since, close to death, yet not truly dying. Had she been able to touch her throat, she would have felt the twin puncture marks. The vampire who had taken her—a female named Candice—had been young and inexperienced. In her Destiratu-driven hunger, Candice had taken Kristi too close to the edge of becoming vampire before her more experienced companions pulled her away. The coven was already full, so its members were forbidden to turn any more victims into vampires.

  Instead, one of them had carried Kristi to a hidden, secluded spot deep in the woods and left her there, hanging on the boundary between dead and undead. Unless something changed, she would lie there like that forever. Luckily for Kristi, she knew none of this. She simply stared vacantly up into the sky for awhile and then let her eyelids fall closed again.

  How much time passed—hours, days or weeks—Kristi did not know. The next time she opened her eyes, she found herself looking up into the face of a silver-haired woman. It was still daylight, but whether it was the same day or another one there was no way to tell. The stranger was bent over her, and the woman’s long, wavy silver locks hung down on either side of her cheeks like rippling curtains. The skin of her face seemed surprisingly smooth for someone with hair that color, making it impossible to guess her age. Her eyes were almost the same shade of silver-gray as her hair.

  “Ahhh, here you are, dearie,” the woman said in a soft but raspy voice. “I knew you weren’t dead, but you weren’t asleep now, either, were you?”

  Kristi did not know how to answer that, and wouldn’t have been able to reply even if she had known, because her jaw was still frozen shut. Her arms and legs remained paralyzed as well. Nothing had changed since the last time she’d opened her eyes, except that instead of seeing trees and sky above her, she was looking into this woman’s pallid face. Since Kristi couldn’t move or speak, she simply blinked her eyes rapidly, hoping the woman would recognize that Kristi’s brain was fully alert.

  The woman nodded in what seemed to be understanding. She grabbed Kristi’s limp wrist and lifted her arm a few inches above the ground. When she let go, Kristi’s arm flopped back onto the blanket of dirt and dead leaves upon which she lay.

  “It seems you are closer to dead than I thought.” The woman brushed a lock of Kristi’s hair back from her forehead. “My name is Jenna.”

  Kristi could not know it, but Jenna was a witch. She was more than three hundred years old. As a teenager in seventeenth century Massachusetts, she had managed to elude the zealots of the Salem Witch Trials, even while dozens of women were being hanged as witches, most of them innocent. If she could have helped any of them she would have, but there was nothing she could do except save herself. She had made a habit of keeping a low profile ever since.

  “I’m going to ask you a few questions,” Jenna said. “Blink once for yes, twice for no. Do you understand?”

  Kristi blinked once.

  “Good. Can you feel anything? The cold? My hand on your arm?”

  Kristi blinked twice.

  “Do you know what happened to you?”

  Again, Kristi blinked twice.

  “I have an idea what it was.” Jenna lifted Kristi’s long brown hair away from her neck and spied the two dry, puckered puncture marks. “Just as I thought. It seems you’ve bitten by a vampire. You know what vampires are, of course?”

  Kristi blinked once. She loved reading vampire stories. She thought that was all they were—just stories. She had never believed the creatures actually existed. Now this strange woman was telling her she’d been bitten by one.

  “Vampires usually either turn their victims into vampires like themselves, or merely leave them dead. Your attacker seems to have left you trapped between the two. I wonder if perhaps Destiratu pushed this vampire to go further than it meant to. I myself have felt its effects.”

  Kristi had no idea what this Destiratu thing Jenna was talking about was. She blinked three times, hoping Jenna would understand what she meant.

  “You don’t know about Destiratu, do you?”

  Kristi blinked twice.

  Jenna sighed. “Well, no matter.”

  She placed her hand softly against Kristi’s cheek. Her skin was cool, but not cold.

  “There’s nothing I can do for you” she said, “at least not directly. I cannot even kill you to put you out of your misery, for you have been taken beyond my power to do so. Trying to kill you might only make things worse.”

  Kristi blinked twice. She wasn’t really suffering, and wanted to make sure Jenna would not risk making her situation worse.

  Jenna nodded. “I’m assuming that means you don’t want me to try to come up with some way to kill you?”

  Kristi blinked once.

  “Okay, let me think.” Jenna closed her eyes as she often did when she was brainstorming. An idea was forming in her mind, an idea she was not completely comfortable with. She did not understand why she was getting involved in all this. Perhaps it was Destiratu at work again, she thought, pushing her to use her powers. That was usually not a good thing. Still, she felt sorry for the girl.

  She opened her eyes and brought her face closer to Kristi’s.

  “Listen to me carefully. If you do not want to exist like this for all eternity, you have but two choices that I can see. I can go to the volkaanes and try to bring one of them back here to destroy you. Their fire is the only power I know that can do so for certain now. Or, I can try to draw a vampire here to complete your transformation. Blink once for death, twice for vampire.”

  Kristi did not have to think very long. Vampires were cool, at least in her books. She blinked twice.

  Jenna nodded. “So be it.”

  She closed her eyes again. She had gotten close to a vampire onc
e and could still recall his unique vibrations. Sucking in a deep breath, she began chanting a spell, one she hoped would bring the vampire here.

  “It is done,” she said after a few moments. “It may take awhile, but that’s all I can do.” She placed her hand on Kristi’s forehead and leaned in close to add one final touch to her spell. “You will remember what I have done here for you, but you will not be able to speak of it to anyone, not even the vampire who turns you.”

  Jenna hoped she had not made a mistake by doing this. Getting involved in such things went against her nature—the same nature that had allowed her to survive undetected for more than three centuries. It was too late to do anything about it now, though. The spell was cast. There was no undoing it. What would be, would be.

  She allowed herself a small, hopeful smile. In these dangerous times, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to have a vampire beholden to her. On the other hand, if the vampire she had summoned with her magic ever found out what Jenna had done, she could be in a world of trouble. Vampires were not to be trifled with—their powers were great. She wondered if she would ever have done this had Destiratu not grown so strong.

  Damn Destiratu, she thought as she disappeared back into the trees. It was always the end for more than just a few. She just hoped that she wasn’t going to be one of them this time.

  7. UNWANTED GUESTS

  Tuesday, Leesa had only two classes, and despite each being half an hour longer than her Monday classes, they seemed to go by faster. Leesa thought it was a combination of the subjects being more interesting—psychology was really fun and sociology was pretty good, too—and her not being quite so eager to get to work with Dominic’s book as she had been the day before. Yesterday, she couldn’t wait to use the book for the first time. Now that she’d worked a little with the spell book—and successfully, too!—she was not quite as anxious to get to it.

  That wasn’t to say her eagerness was gone, just that it wasn’t quite so keen. When Professor Moody—Leesa thought Moody was a wonderful name for a psychology professor—brought class to a close, Leesa was the first one out the door.

  A cold front had moved in overnight, bringing with it clear blue skies but biting cold. If it wasn’t below freezing out here, Leesa thought, it was close. As the cold air stung her ears and cheeks, she reached instinctively for the dark blue knit ski cap in her parka pocket. She caught herself and left the hat where it was, because she had a much better way to stay warm.

  Rave, Dral and Bain were waiting for her, sitting on the edge of a circular stone fountain in the plaza in front of the building. Behind them, a plume of water shot up about five feet into the air. The liquid droplets reflected the midday sunlight like someone was tossing handfuls of diamonds into the air. The sound of the water splashing back down into the shallow pool was peaceful and relaxing.

  Off to the side, maybe twenty feet away, a cluster of girls pretended to be interested in what each other had to say, but Leesa could see their attention was really focused on the handsome volkaanes. When Rave and his companions stood up and crossed toward her, the girls’ eyes followed them hungrily. Feeling just a bit possessive, Leesa wrapped her arms around Rave and snuggled her face against his chest. She warmed up immediately, and with her head turned toward the girls, she could see the looks of jealousy and disappointment that crossed their faces. She smiled at them.

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” Rave said, returning her embrace.

  Leesa stepped back, but kept hold of Rave’s hands. She felt a little bit foolish.

  “I did miss you,” she said. “But the big hug was more for those girls. I didn’t like the way they were looking at you three.”

  Rave smiled. “Were they looking at us? Why, do we look funny?”

  Leesa shook her head and sighed. “You’re so used to it, you don’t even notice, do you?”

  Rave looked at Dral and Bain, who both shrugged as if they hadn’t noticed either.

  “Let me see if I can put it in terms you’ll understand,” Leesa said. “They were looking at you guys the way a vampire probably looks at an unprotected neck.”

  Rave laughed. “Uh, oh. That bad, huh? Should we be worried?”

  Leesa grinned. “Only if I ever catch you looking back. Then you’d better be real worried.”

  Rave pulled Leesa closer. “Why would I look back when I’ve got you to look at?” he asked, gazing directly into her eyes.

  Leesa felt her heartbeat quicken and her face grow warm, almost as if Rave had kissed her. She still wasn’t sure how she had ever gotten so lucky, but she certainly wasn’t going to question it.

  She sighed. “You’re sweet. Thank you.”

  She resisted the urge to take one more look at the group of girls.

  “I’m done with classes for the day,” she said instead. “Let’s head home. I need some lunch, and then I should do a little homework before I practice my magic.”

  “As you wish,” Rave said, smiling.

  They walked back toward the dorm hand in hand, with Dral and Bain following close behind. When they turned the corner onto Leesa’s street, she took three steps and then stopped abruptly. If Dral and Bain had been human, they probably would have crashed into Leesa and Rave, so suddenly had she stopped. But they were volkaanes, and human walking speed was little more than slow motion to them. They split to either side like water flowing around a rock and stopped beside their companions.

  Halfway up the block, right where the wrecked Blazer had been parked, three men were gathered into a cluster. Leesa couldn’t see their faces, but their presence gave her a bad feeling. The men were dressed normally, wearing casual pants and dark jackets. They could have been from an insurance company or from the city, checking out the scene of a recent accident, but she didn’t think so. Instinctively, she turned her face away.

  “What is it?” Rave asked.

  “We need to cross the street,” Leesa said, pulling on Rave’s hand. “Right now. But don’t hurry. Walk normal.”

  Leesa led them across the street, forcing herself to walk at an unhurried pace. She continued far enough down the sidewalk so they were no longer visible from the front of her dorm before stopping.

  “Did any of you sense anything?” she asked when she finally stopped.

  The three volkaanes looked at each other. They shook their heads.

  “Nothing,” Rave said. He pictured the scene on the street they had just left. “Was it the three guys standing by the curb in front of your dorm?”

  Leesa nodded. “Yeah. I know they looked normal, but I think they might be the black waziri.”

  Rave’s features tightened. Reflexively, he looked behind them to make sure they were in no danger.

  “If they are black wizards, we didn’t get close enough to sense their magic.”

  Leesa wasn’t sure what to do. Dominic had said the black waziri would look as ordinary as he did. She wished she had gotten a glimpse of their faces, to see if there was any resemblance to Dominic, but it might be risky to get that close. Was there some other way?

  She remembered how keen volkaane hearing was. “How close would you need to get to be able to hear them?” she asked. “Could one of you walk by and listen without being near enough for them to sense you?”

  All the time Rave had spent with Dominic while the wizard and Leesa were practicing made it easy for him to answer Leesa’s questions.

  “Yes. Easily. We could hear them from all the way across the street. We’d have to be closer for them to sense us, or we them.”

  Leesa thought for a moment. She knew it still might be slightly risky, but she had to know if the black waziri were here.

  “Will one of you walk by and listen to them, please?” she asked.

  “I’ll do it,” Rave said.

  Dral put his hand on Rave’s forearm. “I’ll go, Rave. You stay with Leesa.”

  “Don’t take any chances,” Leesa said. “Don’t stop to listen, or even look at them. Just see if you can hear
anything that’ll tell us who they are. Walk around the block and meet us back here.”

  Dral nodded. “I understand.” He turned to leave, but Leesa stopped him.

  “Wait,” she said. She pulled her knit ski cap from her pocket. “Put this on. It’ll hide your hair and part of your face. I don’t know how familiar the waziri are with volkaanes, but the less they see of your coloring, the better.”

  Dral pulled the cap down over his ears and tucked his long dark copper hair up under it.

  “That’s better,” Leesa said. “Now be careful.”

  Dral nodded and left. Leesa watched him until he rounded the corner. With the cap and walking slowly, he looked like any other student on campus.

  When Dral was out of sight, Leesa led Rave and Bain farther down the block, putting more distance between them and the black waziri. It would also bring them back together with Dral sooner, when he completed his walk around the block.

  The minutes seemed to drag by for Leesa while they waited. She hoped Dral would come back and say the men were talking about collision deductibles or car repairs or something, but she highly doubted she would be so lucky.

  Dral appeared a moment later. As he drew nearer, he pulled the ski cap off his head and held it out to Leesa. His expression was grim.

  “They are black wizards,” he said. “I heard them mention Dominic and magic.”

  Leesa drew a deep breath. It was what she had expected, but even so, she felt a chill pass through her body, despite Rave’s warmth.

  “Did you hear anything specific? Something that might give us an idea what they’re up to?”

  Dral shook his head. “Not too much. I didn’t want to risk drawing any attention. I heard them say something about ‘not much magic here,’ and ‘the place where Dominic killed Josef.’”