of power, she called, “Oh, joyous dark gods, I knew it, Nasri! I always knew the Book of Ilth was real.”
She had argued with the sorcerer’s so-called scholars, who had written the text off as either fiction or a heretical interpretation of the gods and the Abyss. Granted, nothing had happened back then when she had tried the two simplest spells, but she hadn’t known that location mattered. It stood to reason, though, that the separation between realms would be thinnest at certain points, the magic connecting them more active. It had taken the lost prince’s spell to draw her to the right place at the right time, and the stirring of vortex wind for her to figure out that she needed to try the first of the two spells she had memorized.
It had worked then, and again just now. She was facing the beginnings of a vortex of her own, one she controlled.
“Are we going home now, Mistress Moragh?” Nasri called from where he stood outside the stones, holding the submission chain of the surviving ettin, which was still stupidly looking around for its brother.
Admittedly, she should have set both of the creatures on the prince and made sure of the kill. But she hadn’t realized right away that something in this realm—gods, she was in another realm—would dull her connection to his father’s spell, making her unable to track him beyond the immediate area of the standing stones. But no matter, she suddenly had new and wondrous options.
“Yes and no,” she said in answer to Nasri’s question. “I must return home and retrieve the Book of Ilth.” Her heart lifted at the thought of wielding the book’s power—it didn’t contain only realm-travel spells, but also summoning spells more powerful than anything the kingdoms had seen in centuries, power transference spells—the possibilities were nearly limitless. “I will take the ettin with me, so you are not troubled by him, and then I shall seal this portal behind me, so the prince cannot follow.” That was the second of the spells she had memorized. Sealing this particular portal might not trap the prince in the wolfyn realm—there were probably other locations where vortices could be made—but it would slow him down, giving her enough time to steal the book from the very scholars who had mocked her for believing it real.
The gnome’s eyes widened. “And me, mistress?”
Satisfied that the vortex was well under way, she stepped out of the stones, froze the ettin in place with a three-word command and then turned her attention to Nasri, who had backed away a few paces when he thought she wasn’t looking. And even though he had long ago stopped appealing to her, the thought of what she was about to do had her secondary canines descending easily, breaking the skin with that itchy pinch of pain she loved so much, and then gliding into place alongside her lower teeth, just touching the gums with a kiss of the wickedly sharp points.
“I have a special job for you, Nasri.”
He blanched at the sight of her fangs, but the compulsion was well rooted. Even as his entire body cringed away from her, he took three jerky steps forward and raised his arm, offering her a wrist dotted with tooth-marks in various healing stages.
She surged forward and took his throat instead, biting deep and hanging on as he writhed and the glorious tang of blood flowed down her throat. New connections formed; new magic came to life, and she found his weak little mind with hers. Now pay attention. This is what I want you to do.…
Reda didn’t scream, but that was only because she was paralyzed, stuck flat to the ground beneath a dense clump of underbrush at the edge of the clearing, where she had a perfect view of the dark haired woman drinking from the neck of her small, wizened servant, and a clear soundtrack of the vampire’s rhythmical sucking noises interspersed with mewls of horror from the victim.
Her gorge rose. This woman—this Moragh—was a vampire. Dear God.
She swallowed again and again in an effort to keep herself from puking at the sight of the little man’s body convulsing, his hands fluttering at his sides, as if he wanted to fight her off but couldn’t. Just as he had wanted to run the other way before, but had held out his arm instead. Compulsion. Enthrallment. First the wolfyn and now this. Was every nonhuman creature in this realm capable of inflicting its