The Great Mother latched on to her arm with a strength she hadn’t thought the woman had. “There.” She pointed to a corner of the room that had emptied of prisoners. A splash of sunshine, mid-afternoon and richly golden, highlighted a patch of bare worn boards. They were old and slimy, scattered with rat bones and smeared with human waste. But unlike the roof, they were solid.
“I can’t,” Gillian confessed. She knew without trying that she didn’t have the strength to destroy the floorboards. They were good English oak, as hard as the stones that made up the tower’s walls, and just as immovable. “We have to find another—”
“Stop arguing,” the eldest snapped, cutting her off. “And take me.”
Gillian took her. She didn’t know what else to do. They were trapped.
Even worse, the vampire was standing off to the side, casually observing the chaos. She scowled; she should have known that sunlight wouldn’t kill him. If he was that weak, he’d have come at night. He’d retreated further into the hood of his cape, leaving him a long column of black wool, but otherwise appeared unconcerned.
He didn’t move, but Gillian carefully kept the sunlight between them nonetheless. She pulled Elinor and the eldest along the wall, hoping the glistening beams would provide some kind of protection. His head turned, keeping them in view, but he said nothing.
“In the middle. There!” the Great Mother gasped, and again Gillian followed orders, only to have her arm gripped in a steellike vise. Cloudy blue eyes met hers, almost sightless, but somehow penetrating all the same. “In times like these, we do what is needful — what we must to survive, for us and our folk. Do you understand, girl?”
No, Gillian thought frantically. What she understood was that the door was about to open and they were all going to die. That was pretty damn clear. “I do not think they mean for any of us to survive,” she said, her throat raw.
The Great Mother’s grip became positively painful, arthritic fingers digging into the flesh of Gillian’s arm. “It matters not what they mean! Will you fight, girl, for what is yours?”
“Yes,” she said, confused. What did she think? That Gillian planned to simply lie down and die? “But it is not likely to be a long one. I have little power left, and the Circle—”
“You will find that you have all the power you need.”
Gillian didn’t understand what she meant and there was no time to ask. The door burst open, but she barely noticed, because the frail body on the dirty boards had begun to glow. Power radiated outward, shimmering beneath translucent skin like sunlight through moth wings. It flooded the ugly room, gilding the old bricks and causing even the guards to shield their eyes.
Elinor made a soft sound and hid her face, but Gillian couldn’t seem to look away. For one brief moment, the Old Mother looked like an exquisitely delicate statue, a fire-lit radiance flowing under the pale crepe of her skin. And then Gillian’s own skin began to heat, the flesh of her arm reddening and then burning where the thin fingers gripped her.
She cried out and tried to jerk away, but the Old Mother stubbornly held on. Her skin was shining through Gillian’s hand now, so bright that the edges of her flesh were limned with it. But she couldn’t feel her anymore. She couldn’t feel anything but the great and terrible power gathering in the air, power that whispered to her, wordless and uncontrollable.
It exploded the next moment in flash of brilliant fire. Gillian threw her body over Elinor’s, trying to shield her from the searing heat and deadly flames she expected. But they didn’t come. And when she dared to look again, the old woman’s body was gone — and so was half the floor.
The thick oak boards had dissolved, crumbling into nothingness like charred firewood, leaving a burnt, smoking hole looking down into the room below. Gillian crouched beside it for a moment, her heart pounding, knife-edged colours tearing at her vision, until a glance showed that the guards had fled in fear of magic they didn’t understand.
She didn’t either, but she recognized an opportunity when she saw one.
Elinor was clinging to her neck, hard enough to strangle. It was far from comfortable, but at least it meant she didn’t have to try to hold her as she lowered them on to one of the remaining rafters of the room below. It was the gatehouse, where a contingent of mages usually stayed to watch the front of the castle and to guard any prisoners in the room above. No one was there now, everyone having run up the stairs to secure the door or having scattered after the escapees.
For a brief moment, they were alone.
Gillian’s arm throbbed under the burnt edges of her sleeve, but she ignored it and started making her way along the beam to clear the pile of smoking shards below. Yellow sunlight struggled through the haze, enough to let her see stone walls spotted in a few places by narrow, arrow slit windows, a few stools and a flat-topped storage trunk that was being used as a table. The remains of someone’s lunch was still spread out over the top.
There were no obvious ways out. The only door let out on to the ramparts, which were heavily guarded. And even if they had been able to fit through the tiny windows, the main gate was protected by two towers filled with archers. Anyone trying to leave that way would have to traverse a quarter mile of open fields, the local forest having been cut back to give the archers a clear shot.
Gillian thought that she could just about manage a weak shield, but not to cover two, and not to last the whole way. And Elinor couldn’t help or even protect herself; she was barely seven and her magic had yet to manifest. The eldest should have saved her sacrifice, she thought grimly. They weren’t going to get out of this.
“Could I be of assistance, at all?”
Her head whipped up to see the vampire’s curly mop poking through the charred edges of the hole. She threw up a shield, silently cursing him for forcing her to use the power, and jumped to the floor. Shards of wood and a few old iron nails dug into her bare feet, but the pain was almost welcome. It helped to push away the gut-wrenching panic and let her think.
A guard was sprawled on the floor nearby, half hidden by the fall of wood and debris. He wasn’t moving, and one hand was a bloody mess — he must have used it to try to shield himself. The other gripped a long piece of wood that was partially concealed by his body. She crouched beside him and started tugging on it, while keeping a wary eye on the creature above.
“My earlier jest may have been. . ill-timed,” the vampire offered. “I do not, in fact, intend to dine upon you. Or your lovely. . daughter, is it?”
Gillian’s head jerked up. “Touch her and they will never find all the pieces,” she snarled, pulling Elinor behind her.
But the creature made no move toward them, other than to spread his hands, showing that he held no weapons. As if he needed any. “I assure you, I pose no threat.”
“A harmless vampire.” She didn’t bother to keep the mockery out of her voice.
“To you.” A smile came easily to that handsome face. “In fact, I work with a party in government charged with maintaining the security of these lands.”
“You lie. Vampires work for their makers.”
“Yes, but in this case, my mistresses’ interests align.”
“And what would those interests be?” Gillian asked, not because she cared, but to buy her time to find out if the item in the guard’s hand was what she thought it was.
“The queen’s enemies are not composed of humans alone,” he told her, as easily as if he carried on conversations upside down every day. Which maybe he did, she thought darkly, images of bats and other unsavoury creatures coming to mind. “Ever since England became a refuge for the Silver Circle, she has been a target for the dark. And the assassination attempts grow with each passing day.”