Bloodspell (The Cruentus Curse, #1)(63)
She took shallow even breaths as she felt her bones mending and her eyelids drooping. She just needed to close her eyes for a few minutes and everything would be okay, she thought wearily. Just a few minutes ...
Victoria! Wake up! WAKE UP!
Stop it, Christian. I'm sleeping.
Wake up! You're not sleeping, you're dying! GET UP!
Reality came back swiftly and coldly after that. She had to get out of this mess before she did something really stupid, like going to sleep while buried under several feet of snow!
Christian? You there?
There was no answer and the sudden silence scared her. She concentrated on formulating a low energy heat spell that would melt some of the snow in front of her and just as she was feeling it starting to work, the ground beneath her started to tremble. Rescue snowmobiles, she thought gratefully, as an unseen force grabbed hold of her body and yanked her out of the snow, dumping her to the side.
She watched her cave implode in the dim glare of the trail lights, and taking deep gulping breaths of the sweet cold air, Victoria glanced around for her rescuers. She found herself face to face with the same skier who had attacked her earlier—a woman—only she was sans skis and no longer had a hat obscuring her face. She was very plain with brown hair and dark skin and wore a triumphant smile.
Victoria tried to free her arms but an invisible force bound them so tightly that she could barely move. The woman walked closer and stooped down near the side of Victoria's face.
"Don't struggle, the bindings will only use your own kinetic energy to tighten and strengthen," she said, her voice musical and unhurried. "One of my own inventions, very useful, no?" She laughed and the sound was chilling.
Victoria realized that even in her incapacitated state that this was her chance to find out who this woman was and what she wanted, and also to give her body a chance to recuperate. The woman glanced at her wristwatch, looking around impatiently; she was obviously waiting for someone. And from the looks of things, there were no rescue vehicles anywhere in the immediate vicinity.
"How did you find me?" Victoria said.
The woman laughed again and gave her a derisive look that plainly said she thought Victoria was an idiot. "Heat radiation."
"Who are you? What do you want with me?" Victoria asked. The woman ignored her pointedly, and spoke into her phone.
"Oui, quinze minutes," she said in French, and snapped the phone closed. Fifteen minutes for what? Victoria tried again.
"How could you have survived the blast?" she asked, injecting an arrogant tone into her voice to attempt to provoke the woman. It worked. The woman directed her black stare toward Victoria as if trying to gauge the question. She smiled cruelly and walked forward to reassume her position squatting beside Victoria.
"You are so young, and so stupid," she said. She looked at Victoria disparagingly. "I can't imagine why he could possibly think you are the one. Yes, you had one good trick, but not good enough to even save yourself, no? And now look at you. You are so weak, you can't even lift a finger against me."
As she moved to get up, Victoria saw the flash of a crystal and understanding surged through her like a warm flood. That's how she had been able to survive! Leto had told her that witches used crystals to store magical energy for protection, although unlike her own amulet, their stored magic could not replenish itself. Victoria gathered her strength knowing she had less than a few minutes before the unknown accomplice showed up, and guessed that she had enough inside her for a simple spell. She engaged her own sluggish magic and released a crude summoning spell toward the crystal she'd seen.
"Effero crystallus!"
She heard the snap as the woman whirled around panicked, at the exact same moment that the crystal spear-shaped pendant appeared in her fingers. Without thinking, Victoria took it into herself. Her body jerked as her hungry blood absorbed the magic like a sponge, the crystal turning immediately to dust in her palm. It wasn't her magic, but she consumed it like a starving beast, letting the raw power fill her, and still, she wasn't satiated even though it was more than she needed to escape. Her blood wanted more. It wanted it all—every last drop of the witch in front of her.
She shook her head once and her bindings fell off like paper. She stood up, her eyes burning like black coals and faced the woman who no longer looked triumphant. She looked very, very afraid. Victoria cocked her head to one side, like a cat studying a mouse, and watched as the woman calculated the odds of getting away. She was so easy to read, this little exiled witch, Victoria's blood thought patronizingly. But her magic had been so delicious, so much of the forbidden in there that it had been intoxicating.
The witch moved and tried to hurl a magic blast. Victoria deflected it lazily without even moving, and she watched the witch's eyes widen as a sudden cold understanding filled them, and she dropped prostrate to the cold ground.
"Please—"
Victoria's demon blood trilled, ravenous and inhuman. And while her smallest self screamed defiantly within her head, her blood rushed forward and claimed its prey. As the witch died, the taste of her death was heady like brandy burning through Victoria's body. Her blood sang victoriously. Despicably.
Victoria wanted to rip her skin apart and drain the poisoned magic out of her, its tainted evil fueling the darkest nature of the blood magic. She sank to her knees, delirious with sinful pleasure and sick with disgust at her own weakness, and clawed at her face and her stomach. Even as her blood healed the wounds of its own volition with the magic it had mercilessly stolen, she continued to tear at herself as if it assuaged the terrible guilt and self-hatred boiling inside of her.