Chapter 30

Eric had survived Ocella when he had been reduced to nothing more than a sex slave. He had shed those scars and became his own person. He could endure another three weeks as I dismantled his wife and once she was out the way, His Maker would be next. The truth was Eric was a thousand-year-old vampire. Until a few years ago, he had been a sheriff of a powerful monarch. I had to stop watching him otherwise I would do something stupid.

I attacked Freyda with all the pent up emotions my husband's loss, absence and pain caused me. I made her the most intimate part of my life as I plagued like a Fury. I watched her while she rested. I watched every move she made while she awake. I knew her facial expressions and their meanings, and I used it all against her. I knew what she felt when she was visited by the scribes with a subpoena from the Counsel.

When Freyda saw a replay of the breaking news from earlier that day, I watched her go from several stages of anger to outright disbelief. Mrs. Hosely held a press conference beside her husband's hospital bed where he lay prone. The question on the Queen's face was obvious, Freyda was wondering how all over again. I watched with an evil smirk because this wasn't nearly the end of her troubles.

That night alone I pulled a variety of government building contracts using my connection with Latessta. These were the bread and butter of her state. I then I focused on her other more profitable business ventures. This was where having more capital than her made all the difference. Freyda needed the businesses, but I wanted them. I reached out to Peter in Hawaii where he was supposedly retired. There wasn't a vampire who owed me as many favors as him, not even my immediate older brother, Zee.

I was able to use Peter's rights to Blood XFM, the alcoholic version of vampire blood and Night Life, the flavored brand. I'd invented both for him a few years back. I traded him the rights in exchange for him stepping down peacefully. He recalled and ceased the supply of both to Oklahoma. This wouldn't cost Freyda any of her sworn subjects, however; her mainstreamers paid taxes as well and they were more than just a little pissed. The lack of that supply caused a sudden shortage in TruBlood.

By the end of that night, I had sent a message to one of the weaker sheriffs in Oklahoma. She held the smallest and least influential area. More importantly, she was disposable. My message informed her that the fall of her Queen was imminent. She wouldn't survive and we all knew that was true. To save herself, all she had to do was leave and take her people with her.

Dawn was yet a half hour away, and I went in to check on Freyda. She was already in her day chamber, but it was barely recognizable from an hour ago. There seemed to be some kind of altar in the corner. It was covered in black candles, bones, and a raised basin that looked as if it was filled with blood. There was a drained human in the corner. Next to that human were scorch marks from what had to have been a vampire now turned to ash. I called Amelia and uploaded the live feed to her phone. While Freyda got naked and painted every inch of her body, from every stand of hair to her toes in the blood from the bowl, Amelia seemed too horrified to speak for a long time.

"Oh shit! Oh My Goddess!" she exclaimed in panic.

"What is she about to do?"

"Get everyone to the house, now!" Then she hung up.

I made the calls, and it took nearly ten minutes to get the word out. Zee was across the world, but I was able to find him. His entourage was big enough that someone could always locate him. Oliver was with him, but was nowhere to be found.

"Call him," Sai suggested to my father.

"I never have before. He wouldn't know what to make of the compulsion."

Sai growled. We ignored him and watched the screen with growing anxiety while Freyda drew symbols in blood all across the floor and the walls.

"Cas," I said. "I need your help."

I heard him pop into the house and finally into my lab. In true Caspian fashion, he was awed by the state of the art equipment even before he took note of the three vampires in the room. "I need you to pick up my brothers and bring them here."

He paused to make sure he heard right, but then nodded. I gave him the print out of Zee's location and he absorbed it. He was ready to go, but Zee hadn't found Ollie yet. When Amelia arrived with her mother, Ollie was still missing and Freyda was lighting candles as she began chanting softly. Even to my ears it sounded as if it was a death curse. My father had to make a call, an impossible decision that would cost him one of his children. He was exuding a terrifying kind of cool. I watched with dread filling every inch of me that wasn't furious.

"Will he survive it?" He asked Amelia calmly.

"No," she replied. "The only reason I can combat this is because there are so many of you. I can use your ties of love and bonds of blood to shield you, but all of you need to be here to make it strong enough."

The phone rang. It was Oliver. My father held his hand out for my phone. I handed it over. I heard Ollie's greeting get cut off by what had to be the mother of edicts.

"Get to Lysander this instant."

I actually heard Ollie gasp and groan as if he was in pain. He sounded like a human who had been punched in the throat and was fighting for breath. Even with his evident pain I could hear him moving at top speed to comply with the compulsion. Cas came back with both my brothers who looked as if they were about to sink their fangs into him. Sai grabbed them both by the scruff of their collars and pulled them into the protective circle Amelia had drawn. Caspian shot me a look that said, 'It wasn't easy being my friend,' but I knew he saw the gratitude on my face before he vanished.

I hated to admit that I was afraid, but as the Witch Queen's chanting grew into a crescendo, I felt the hair on the back of my neck begin to rise. It was even more terrifying to watch on screen. The shadows in her day chamber began to morph until I could distinguish black, ghostly figures that were made up of countless screaming faces.

"What the fuck?" Zee whispered.

My father, always so offended by vulgar language, didn't say a thing. It was my guess that we were all sharing Zee's sentiment. The ghostly figures hovered over the body of the dead human sacrifice, shrouding it in mist. When they pulled away, the body was gone. The empty spaces where their eyes had been were now a swirling shade of red that was filled with blood. I heard my name, my father's, and Nim's in surround sound while Freyda spoke them. I watched her grin when she died for the day right where she was. Suddenly the evil spirits weren't on screen, they were in my lab!

The shadows tried to descend on the targeted people much as they had the human sacrifice, but they hit a wall. Still, I felt as if someone was attempting to suck out all my organs from my body through my nose. My entire body was shaking. I felt as though I was going pass out right before I puked, but thankfully neither happened. If I was experiencing this while under a protection spell, what would it feel like without one?

Next to me, my father wasn't faring any better. He sounded as if he was suppressing coughs. When he couldn't fight it anymore, he coughed up blood. Nim didn't look the least bit pained, though his nose was bleeding. The expression on his face said, 'Hmm…so this is what death curses feel like. Okay then.' Not even 'Interesting' just an observatory, 'Okay.'

It couldn't have lasted more than a few minutes, but it felt like forever until the specters began to fade. The physical effects began to fade along with them. Even after they were gone, Amelia left the shield in place for a moment longer before dropping it, and then she passed out. Ollie caught her and was already leaving with her. I wanted to go with to check on her, but my head was so light that standing was beyond me at the moment. He would take care of her.

"I grow weary of this witch. Can you not speed up her final death?" Sai asked.

By his tone, one would think he had been the target for the attack by an evil death curse. Maybe he was feeling left out, knowing Sai that was probably the case.

"This will not change our course," my father ordered. "In the meantime, Lysander "

Zee began bitching right away. "This is why no one ever calls me to play an Undead event. For the life of me, I cannot keep track of who you two are plotting to take over or have killed!"

My father wasn't in the mood. He glared at Zee. Zee threw up his hands. "Yes, yes, I know. I am remanded to the state until the Wicked Witch is dead," He pouted.

Then I just had to say it. "Ding, dong," and we all laughed.

I couldn't spend the day in the lab again. I needed to sleep. Amelia was in my room on my bed. Genie seemed to be wrapping up his checkup. Her mother was there too, and she looked pale as though she'd been put through the ringer. Amelia was drowsy-eyed when I crawled in beside her.

"You okay, Mia?" I asked.

She nodded and gave me a weak smile. I don't know why, but until that moment, I realized the sheer level of my arrogance when it came to my opponents, any opponent, including Sai. I always felt untouchable. Tonight I came within a hair of losing a brother, and it cost my best friend. I had begged another to risk his life and that, too, could have ended horribly for him. I didn't have many friends and much family, but what I did have? I cherished. I had underestimated Freyda, but it would never happen again. There was no way in Hell I would let her cost me another person I loved. To begin with, Freyda didn't want any part in taking over Nevada. The West could get wild. She couldn't rule it, witch or no. That made it clear to me why she had chosen my family members as she had. Killing me was a no brainer. Removing my father would remove the king, the only ruler Nevada had known since the division of the Territories.

The brilliance in Freyda's plan was leaving a clear successor to the throne. Sai was strong, but without Nim or me, Sai's rule would be off with a shaky start. Sai would then have Victor Madden lurking around as well as two younger, weaker brothers to protect. Then again, he would most likely dismiss them for their own safety, leaving him all alone.

I thought I would crash immediately but I couldn't. I had seen an edict at work and I needed to know what it felt like for Eric. I sought out Oliver. He wasn't in his room. I found him with Zee in his bedroom. My normally, reserved, mellow brother looked very much like a stony, pissed off vampire.

"What's the matter, Ollie?" I asked.

"I have no idea," Oliver growled, with his eyes narrowing menacingly.

Okay. I looked to Zee.

"It is the edict," Zee explained. "It has psychological and emotional affects after the fact. If he slept, it would help, but he is too angry to sleep."

"Is it just because it the first time, or his age, or the force?" I asked as calmly as I could manage.

"A little of all three, but not entirely," Zee said vaguely. He knew why I was asking and he was trying to hide the worst of it.

"Ollie, show me," I said. "Please. I need to know what he's going through," even if it was just a little.

Ollie gave a jerky nod, and I braced myself before knocking at his mind. He opened it, and what I felt succeeded in making me sick when a witch's death curse hadn't not long ago. I barely made it to the bathroom. Ollie had left the hotel because Zee had been getting on his nerves. He had driven for a few miles, but left his phone in the car when he found an underground book shop. He was feeling good at his haul when he returned my call, and then it was as if a harpoon had been impaled into his gut. It twisted, pulled, pulled, twisted, and didn't stop twisting and pulling until he reached Zee. After being twisted so many times it didn't seem to matter that he didn't know if he was going or coming.

How was it that I had lived with vampires my entire life and never knew this? It sounded so ridiculous, but while we had all disagreed with my father at one point or another, this was the first I had seen him use his Bond as a Maker to force His will upon them

'…Psychological and emotional effects after the fact…' buzzed through my head as I washed out my mouth. How much of that could Eric take? It was as though his whole existence was one edict after another now. When I got him back, would he still be my Eric or would his mind be broken? The thought sapped the remaining strength from my fatigued body. I just dropped down on the bed.

"I am sorry," Zee said, holding my hand. "I know how much helplessness bothers you."

"It's almost over," I told him. I fell asleep that morning with his hand in mine.

When I woke Oliver was still in the same armchair, but he was dead asleep at least. The next thing I did was check in with Amelia and her mom. I needed to find out if Freyda could cast another spell similar to that of last night's and soon. I didn't think so, but I knew that just as with everything else, magic took energy and that spell had seemed the equivalent of small nuclear weapon. They confirmed my assumption. I played a hunch that would ensure that this situation would be over sooner than expected.

"Christmas has come early, big brother," I told my brother at dawn.

I was in his bedroom, uninvited, and I saw all the ways he thought of tossing me out of his space.

"Gear up. We're going hunting."

That was all he needed to hear. He was so eager for a fight that he didn't even check to see if my assault had been cleared. Nim watched us go but didn't say a thing. A few hours later, Sai and I were exiting a chopper in Oklahoma. We had key targets whom we had no intention of ending. We would rattle them much like Nim had been sent to do with Freyda. We just had to show them that we didn't fear their Queen and we end them if we wanted to. We may have also kidnapped a few, that we thought to extract information from, but that was neither here nor there.

Closer to dark we targeted the same hotel where Freyda had married my husband. We evacuated it, and then burned that fucker down to ashes! It was near enough to the royal court to send another message. Freyda would know that if I chose to end her I could, but I needed her to understand just how insignificant and unimportant she was in the scheme of things.

It really was as if Christmas had come earlier indeed. Before dawn that same night, Oklahoma's weakest sheriff defected, and she was just outside the borders of my father's state seeking entry with her people. It wasn't much, but it was enough that with the seven prisoners Sai and I had nabbed as well as the fire we set, it was a crippling blow. Then there was the matter of the pending lawsuit she had with the human Alexei attacked on her property. It was turning into a massive class action suit. Nearly eighty percent of the people involved in it were lying to get paid but it didn't matter.

They just needed to drag Freyda through the mud, and keep her busy. The beauty of it was that I wasn't painting all vampires in a bad light. I was making it look as if she alone provided hazardous work conditions for the humans in her employ. She wasn't the only vampire to do such a thing, but she was the first to have been sued, and through a class action suit no less. I was monitoring her finances and I knew she couldn't afford this fight, but she tried.

When I tapped into the live feed of Freyda's chamber close to dawn, I felt satisfaction. I found her in her day chamber, and I didn't think she had left it all night. The gore of the previous night had been washed away, but Freyda looked like she had been starved of blood and kept awake for a week. For a vampire, that was more than bad and I was glad to see her in such a way. She had somehow managed to get clean, but she wasn't dressed for the world to see. She was in a floor-length sleeveless dress. I supposed it allowed her to better pace the confines of her day chamber which was exactly what she was doing.

There was no green in her eyes while she did. Her dark hair seemed to tangle with every turn in the small room. She was muttering under her breath, but I had no hope of discerning what she said. The predator in me sensed something wrong in her. She was off somehow. I rewound the footage and saw that she had, indeed, been at this from the moment she rose; pacing, and talking to herself. She had also been speaking into the basin full of water that sat upon on a raised pedestal in the corner of the room. Every fifteen minutes, she had nicked finger and let her blood drop into the waiting pail below.

"My blood and my life, show me my enemy," She would whisper.

The image didn't flicker even as a drop of her blood disturbed the surface. She was looking at a formidable royal clan. The faces of my father, all four of my brothers, and my own face appeared, and in the background was the room she was in currently. It was so obvious that she was missing it. I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my seat.

Freyda screamed in frustration an instant before she turned the basin upside down. She didn't stop there. Freyda trashed her day chamber and screeched like a mad woman while she did so. She looked at her hands as if expecting them to reveal all the answers.

"It's all slipping through my fingers. I am falling. I am falling…"

I enjoyed every show of her lack of control and her pain for I knew them well. She had made damn sure. I smiled as if I was malevolent, evil carrion over soon-to-be dead meat. That was what I thought I looked like, but I felt more like a disturbed child pulling the wings of a most hated and helpless gnat.

Even if showing mercy had crossed my mind (which it hadn't), it wasn't mine to give. Not only had Freyda stolen from me, she had disrespected my father in the process even after he had offered her an out. I knew it wasn't an easy thing for him to do because she had tried to kill me. Eric had been more right than anyone knew; there was no help for her.