Black Magic

5

It had been eerily silent for quite a while before I was able to open my eyes, but I still felt alone as soon as I could see. I don't think I had ever been in a place so lacking in motion before in my life, where my breathing came like a gust of wind and my heart beat so loudly in my ears that it was deafening. My heart beat... I looked around me in search of danger, since it only ever came to life when I was fighting for mine, but everything else in the room was unmoving. I listened, the sound continued in my ears, and was hardly able to believe it.

"Bones?" I asked, noticing how the sound of my voice echoed off the walls as if I were in his cave again, but there was no reply. "Where are you, what the hell has happened to me?" Because I knew something had happened to make me feel so weak—drained. Had Mencheres taken some of my blood while I was unconscious? "Dammit, Bones, answer me!" Yesterday, I would not have believed he would—but that had been yesterday, and what I had believed then I did not now. There was not one thing I felt confident about, not even Bones' love, and that realisation shook me to the core.

What was there to believe in if I could not believe in him? I gulped loudly, swallowing the saliva that had built in my mouth, leaving it as dry as sand. Sand, I thought, Desert, Egypt, Mencheres. He had said she was too dangerous as a vampire, but did that have anything to do with the weakness and vulnerability I'm feeling now? There was nothing from Bones, if he was still with me, but something else drew in a breath to speak. It was terrifying, having no idea of what surrounded me, and disturbingly human.

"Catherine?" said a low, cultured voice somewhere to my right. I turned towards the sound but saw nothing beyond the shadows. It should have been the first thing that I noticed, the curtain of black which had fallen around me, but the darkness surrounding me was almost opaque. I could see something, a shrouded form as still as a statue, but the more I looked at it the more it melted into the black and became invisible. It was times like these that I wished that I was more vampire than human and my sight could reach further into the darkness.

It was terrifying to feel so at a disadvantage when confronted by a predator with more than five thousand years of experience hunting humans, but I found the courage to speak despite the numbing fear. "Mencheres?" I asked cautiously, unable to control the amount of fear that seeped into my voice as I spoke his name. "Where is Bones?" I desperately needed to know that I was not alone in the dark with a being that I now suspected was one of the worst kinds. Whether Bones was here or not, I did not much like the sound of the ancient one's voice when he spoke next.

"I told him to leave—and so, naturally, he did." He said blandly, stepping forwards with something that shone bright in the reflection of his eyes, which were burning emerald and glowing. I knew that I ought to be more frightened than this, facing my death and all that, but it was impossible not to admire the raw beauty of his face. If he was this handsome in life, it was really no wonder that Patra was obsessed with him for five thousand years. "I wouldn't be so cruel as to force him to witness your murder as I had to..."

"I guess your wife deserved to die, too?" I challenged, willing to use any weapon I could to wound him, even if the only one's I could wield were razor-edged words. I knew that Mencheres had hated murdering Patra, despite their distaste for each other, that it still was capable of bringing pain, but I was in no mood to be fair; if he had done anything to Bones, it was the least that he deserved.

"You are cruel for mentioning her," Mencheres said, turning away so I wouldn't be able to see his face as he thought about what to say next.

"Where's Bones?" I asked again, and I hoped that he would correctly read in my voice that I was willing to fight him for answers. "Tell me, Mencheres..." My voice was a growl as I spoke these last words.

His gaze flickered only a little but it was enough of a warning to make me spin around. My head spun and I knew something about me had changed, probably while I was unconscious and defenceless. My vision slowly cleared, but I had recognised him the instant that I saw his bleached hair, and my heart gave a jolt inside my chest. Now that my heart was beating again, I felt as if all my thoughts were audible to everyone in attendance.

"Bones!" I called.

"Hello, pet," he said in response, a sly twist to his mouth as he flexed his muscles.

"Mencheres?" I asked, weary of the hunger I could see in Bones' eyes as he grew ever nearer. My eyes were bulging wide, "Mencheres!"

"I've seen the future, and you cannot be in it..." he said, motioning to Bones as if to say, Well, let's get on with it...

Bones approached slowly, his emerald eyes glistening with excitement, but he pounced on me with a quickness that rendered him invisible to my poor, weak human eyes. The last thing I felt before everything went black was his breath on the skin of my neck as opened his jaws wide.

TBC