CheckMate Read online

  Vincent was panting when he arrived at the bookstore, his heart and mind beating to the same confused, panicked rhythm, to the point that he was unable to utter anything comprehensible while Don fussed over him, obviously worried. Finally, a large glass of water helped calm his nerves and he managed to explain what he needed.

  "Lilia ... disappeared. Someone has her. Has taken her. You've got to help me find her."

  Don's eyebrows shot up and questions fused. “Someone? Who? Why? When did..."

  "I don't know who,” Vincent interrupted, grabbing his friend's arm as if to hold his attention. “Is there a spell you can do? Something to localize her? Like you did that one time for that vamp nest and..."

  "Calm down,” Don said coolly. “Just ... go in the office and take a seat, and let me find a couple of books. I'll be right there. Just calm down, Vince, all right?"

  Numbly, Vincent nodded and went to sit in the office behind the counter. There, he noticed the pinprick of pain in his palm; the earring hook had cut into his skin as he had held on to it too tightly, and now it was stained with blood again, this time his own.

  "I've got it,” Don announced, entering the office with a book already open in his hands. He sat down on the other side of the desk and his lips moved as he followed a line with his finger. Vincent watched, waited, and soon became impatient. It wasn't the right time for Don to get lost in one of his damn books.

  "Don? The spell? Find Lilia?"

  His friend looked up, frowning impatiently. “What do you think I'm doing? I don't want to mess it up; I'm trying to find the best option. This particular spell is quick but I need something of hers for it, do you have..."

  Before he could finish, Vincent held out the earring toward him. “Will that be enough?"

  "Jewelry is good,” Don acknowledged as he took it, but he was soon frowning again. “Is that her blood?"

  "No, it's mine,” Vincent grimaced, showing his pricked palm.

  "Ah. Yes. I see. I hope it won't interfere..."

  His voice dropped to an incomprehensible mumble as he meticulously cleared the desk of the stacks of papers and books that covered it, then pulled out a map of the town from a drawer and spread it out. Vincent watched him, knowing better than to talk now and distract him.

  Finally, after seconds that seemed to stretch into hours, Don chanted a few phrases and held the earring above the map. The dried blood suddenly turned liquid again and fell to the map, not straight down as gravity would have demanded but at an angle too steep to be caused by anything other than magic. Both Vincent and Don immediately leaned over the map, and came to the same conclusion after only a couple of seconds.

  "That's ... the bookshop,” Vincent muttered, disappointed.

  "It picked up on your blood and localized you,” Don explained, reaching for the book again. “I suspected it might happen but I hoped ... oh well. There are other spells that help localize people; I just need to find the best one. Give me a minute."

  Two hours and five spells later, they weren't any closer to figuring out where Lilia was.

  "There's only two reasons I can see why none of these would work,” Don sighed, starting to rub his eyes then realizing his hands were covered with the dark green goop that the last spell had involved. “Either whatever place she's in is shielded by a really powerful charm, or..."

  He looked down, clearly uneasy, and Vincent had to prompt him to continue.

  "Or?"

  "Or she's dust,” Don said, slightly apologetic.

  Vincent shook his head. “She can't be. I'd know it if she was. The Mating..."

  "Yes, I know,” Don cut in. “I've looked up all my sources about Mating claims, I know what happens when one of you dies. What is not clear is how long it takes before it becomes too hard to live. There isn't any description of what the survivor feels, how he or she knows what happened. For that matter, even less is known about a Mating taking place between a human and vampire since most humans usually end up turned—"

  "Don,” Vincent said warningly, trying to stop the lecture he felt coming. His friend gave him a contrite look.

  "All I'm saying, is that you don't know what you would feel if she was dead, so you might be feeling it already and not be able to recognize it. I've been watching you for two hours. Vince, I've never seen you so much on edge. Not even when you tried to stop smoking. Maybe that's it."

  As he stood, Vincent practically growled, “She's not dead. I know she's not. She's somewhere out there and with someone who thinks it's a game to send me presents covered in blood and I need to find her."

  "What if she thinks it's a game too?” Don asked, holding Vincent's gaze even when Vincent glared at him.

  "She wouldn't. She doesn't."

  With these words, he stormed out of the office. He had reached the shop's entrance when Don called out after him. “Vince, wait. Let me close and call Jeanie and I'll come with you. We'll find your girl."

  * * * *

  It took nine more days, after he had found the first earring, before the second one appeared on Vincent's door. It was, like the first one, covered in blood; but this time the blood was still fresh, and it left a faint mark on the white wood of Vincent's door. The other notable difference was that a piece of paper was threaded through the hook.

  Vincent took both paper and earring inside. Before anything else, he cleaned the piece of jewelry, his hands shaking as he did so. No spell to localize Lilia had worked, so keeping the blood on the metal would serve no purpose other than strike a nerve in Vincent. Only when the earring was clean did he open the letter. There were three lines on the piece of paper, written in an elegant cursive that spoke of age.

  Miss your girl, Jordan?

  Midnight, tomorrow night, Oak Grove Cemetery, by the pond.

  Come alone or she dies. Don't come, and she dies.

  There was no signature, but in an instant of blinding certainty, Vincent's unvoiced suspicions were confirmed and he knew who would be there when he went to the rendezvous. His feelings were backed up when Don dropped by an hour or so later and let himself in through the door Vincent hadn't closed behind him.

  "I was worried about you,” his friend said, and Vincent merely stared at him for a moment before dropping his eyes down to the letter again.

  "I thought you wanted to go looking for her again tonight,” Don pressed when he didn't answer.

  Still silent, Vincent handed the letter to him.

  "It's got to be Nathanael,” Don said immediately, voicing aloud what Vincent had figured out. “It's a trap, Vince. If you go there, he's going to kill you."

  "And if I don't,” Vincent answered hollowly, “he'll kill me by killing her. At least by going I'll see her one last time."

  "Don't you dare speak like that! You sound as though you're dead already! We'll do something, come up with a plan, we..."

  "There's no ‘we',” Vincent abruptly interrupted him. He stood and took the letter back, reading it once more even though the words were engraved in his mind and he could have recited them from memory already. “It says I have to go alone, and I will."

  Don's sudden grip on his forearm was painful. “You're doing no such thing! It's suicide, Vince. I'm not going to let you throw away your life."

  Vincent freed himself almost too easily.

  "You're not my baby-sitter. And if I have to tie you down to make sure you're not going to interfere, I will. You've wanted out of this for years, well, here you go. You're fired. I don't need a lousy wizard trying to cover my back anyway."

  It was clear that Don took the words as a slap to the face, and for a second Vincent felt guilty. But if he wanted to keep his friend safe, dirty tricks were allowed, or so he told himself while watching Don stalk off and bang the door shut behind him.

  There was no reason for one more person to die the following night, not when it could be avoided. Two would be quite enough.

  Chapter 19

  An hour before sunset, Vincent was already there.


  He had slowly been driving himself insane all day at home. At first, he had checked and cross referenced every source, every bit of information he had about Nathanael, his way of fighting, planning, waging war. The act in itself had been utterly useless, because he had checked his books so often in the past seven years that he could have recited each passage word for word, and none of them would help him that night. The last book returned to the shelf, he had started pacing, back and forth across his living room, and the house wasn't big enough for him to take more than three long strides before furniture got in his way.

  That was when he had decided that pacing through the graveyard couldn't be any worse, and might actually be somewhat better since it was the place where he would see Lilia again. It was the place where he might also die. He was fully aware of that fact. He had been battling Nathanael for years, although always so far through minions and Childer rather than directly, and it was almost a wonder that the vampire hadn't ever launched a full-scale attack on him seeing how hard Vincent had been working at destroying his clan since Peter's death.

  The pond the note had mentioned was actually close in size to a lake; set right in the middle of the Oak Grove cemetery, the largest graveyard in the town, it was a peaceful and lovely place, where visitors often stopped after they had been to their families’ graves. There weren't any tombs closer than a couple hundred yards, and it was almost possible for someone sitting by the edge of the water, in the shade of the centennial trees, to forget where they were. The mayor had tried to have the pond emptied, once, to make room for more graves, but the water had obstinately returned, refusing to relinquish its rights despite being pumped out continuously for days.

  Some people said magic was involved; others whispered that the deceased didn't want to let go of this bit of life in their midst. Whatever the case, the pond was there to stay.

  For a while, Vincent sat on one of the large rocks that formed a cluster on one side of the pond, and tried to calm his thoughts as he observed the slow waves created by a few birds frolicking in the water. That didn't work so well. On the shimmering surface, he could almost see Lilia's face, her body, constantly changing, sometimes smiling and opening her arms to him, sometimes glaring and attacking. He regretted their fight. He regretted that he had been too hurt to talk to her rather than to accuse. Maybe she had had a reason; maybe she could have explained, maybe...

  He knew he was fooling himself, but he couldn't help it. If he hadn't left her that night, what would have happened? Would she have been taken? He had this deep-seated feeling that things would have been completely different. And if by some miracle they both came out of the adventure alive, he had promised himself he would let her explain what had happened the night she had gone to the club. He might not like what she would say, but at least he would know for sure rather than imagine.

  Too restless to sit anymore, he jumped off the rock and started walking, slowly circling the pond. He didn't know exactly where Nathanael would meet him, so going around seemed as good a solution as choosing a random spot.

  With every new circle around the water, less and less visitors were sitting by the pond or on one of the many benches. Night was slowly falling, and people usually knew better than to be in a cemetery after dark. Vincent couldn't wait for the sun to finally disappear below the horizon, couldn't wait for the night to fall and make it safe for vampires to walk out. It was ten minutes after the sunset when he realized he still had a long wait in front of him. The note had said midnight.

  Hands thrust inside his pocket to prevent them from checking, as they had done countless times, that all his weapons were in place inside his jacket, ready to be grabbed and used, he continued to walk. Sometimes, he sat on a bench for a moment, his eyes always searching the night around him for silhouettes that would announce the end of this torturous wait; he could never stay still for long however. In his mind, the last few weeks were replaying. Every conversation he had had with Lilia, every smile or eye roll she had thrown at him, every caress and every cry, it all came back in a jumbled, bittersweet mess of memories that only made him miss her more. If only he had told her...

  His fingers were rubbing at the scars on his neck when he heard the sounds of steps behind him. He stopped immediately and pivoted in a slow circle, noticing that fifteen or so vampires surrounded him. Not good, not good at all, but he would have expected more, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

  He came close to panicking however when he realized that Lilia wasn't there. He had come to the rendezvous with nothing but the hope of seeing her sustaining him; he wasn't sure what he would do if she wasn't...

  "Looking for someone, Vincent?"

  His head whipped toward the man's voice. Despite having battled his clan for years, he had never met Nathanael face to face. The vampire was elusive, and the simple fact that he was over four hundred years old spoke of his skills. But Vincent had seen drawings of him, and he recognized him instantly. His eyes however were soon attracted to the woman Nathanael held against him in a loose embrace.

  "You don't mind if I call you Vincent, do you?” he continued on an almost pleasant tone, walking further inside the circle so that he stood only a few steps from Vincent. “After all, you're Mated to my Childe, that makes you family."

  Vincent barely heard the speech, barely noticed the sneer on the last word; his attention was entirely focused on Lilia. Nathanael had an arm around her waist and held her tight to him now. She seemed almost ... absent. She was looking straight ahead, but her eyes held no emotions when they met Vincent's. He had seen that look before and he identified it easily.

  "You thralled her,” he accused even as a paragraph he had read earlier came to the front of his mind, detailing Nathanael's developed skills at the vampire equivalent to hypnotism.

  Nathanael let out a bark of laughter as he moved to stand behind Lilia, both arms now wrapped more tightly around her.

  "So I did. She's mine, always was, always will be. I'll thrall her if I want to. Or I could kill her, you know.” His voice was light, as though he were discussing nothing more important than the weather. “I made her, and she was by my side and in my bed for more than a century and half, but I'd kill her today without any hesitation. You know why?"

  "Because of me?” Vincent said numbly, and Nathanael nodded, his smile taking a darker shade.

  "Because of you. Because of what she did. She Mated with a human and disgraced herself, her Sire, her clan..."

  Vincent managed to remain still as Nathanael rambled on, all too aware of the circle of minions that had closed around them, but when a stake suddenly appeared poised over Lilia's heart, he reacted without being conscious of it.

  "No!” he shouted as he stepped forward toward Lilia and her murderous Sire, freezing when growls and a few menacing gestures came from the circle around them.

  "No?” Nathanael echoed, smiling faintly and disregarding Vincent's movement. “Is that the best you can do to convince me?"

  It was clear to Vincent now that it was all just a game, one of these diversions his books said Nathanael was so fond of, and that whatever he did, whatever he said, his chances—and Lilia's—to survive the night were slim at best, and more likely nonexistent. But every second he played along was a little more time for Lilia to shake off the thrall. He knew it was possible to do, not easy but possible, and if anyone could do it, it had to be Lilia. He had never known anyone as strong as she was. And if he could only see her again, the real Lilia and not the puppet that was oblivious to the stake pressed to her chest, just one more time, just long enough to tell her...

  "Please."

  The word tasted like ashes, but Vincent managed to utter it again. “Please don't kill her."

  "You mean, don't kill you, right?” Nathanael asked, sounding almost bored now. “Because at the instant she's dust, your days are numbered, you know that, don't you? Of course you do."

  "Yes I know that. But no, that's not what I mean. I said don't kill her, and I mean e
xactly that."

  "You said?” Nathanael's eyes lit up with a dangerous flame. “Sounded to me like you were begging more than demanding."

  "I begged,” Vincent conceded. “And I'll beg again if that's what you want.” He clenched his fists so tight that his nails were digging into his palms, and he idly wondered if all the vampires around him would smell the blood welling up in the crescent-shaped cuts.

  "Begging for a vampire's life. Why, Mister Jordan, I might almost believe that you care about her more than you do about your own life. It's almost ... poignant. And rather ironic, too, considering your chosen profession."

  Whatever Nathanael expected, Vincent didn't give it to him this time and remained quiet, his eyes still searching Lilia's vacant ones for a glimmer of recognition.

  "Well, if you want her that much...” Nathanael finally withdrew the stake, and Vincent fought not to let out a sigh. “...you can have her. It would be overly cruel of me to keep Mates from each other."

  It was too easy, Vincent thought as he watched Nathanael's arm uncurl and let go of Lilia's waist. There had to be a catch. He was proved right when three words were murmured in Lilia's ear, just loud enough for him to hear them too.

  "Kill him, Childe."

  Her eyes, which had been so dull until then, suddenly seemed to light up with a murderous fire even as her lips pursed in a mockery of smile.

  "Yes, Sire,” she murmured, and leapt in Vincent's direction.

  Startled, Vincent remained frozen in place, hoping with every fiber of his being that it was a ploy, that she had only been waiting for her chance to escape Nathanael's grip and now that she had, they were going to fight back to back, get rid of all the vamps around them together, and...