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Darnell huffed at me when I ignored his question, stopping in the middle of the labyrinth corridor and blocking my way through. “I know you have knowledge that can help us.”
I glared at him. “Why the fuck should I help you?”
Jillian butted in. “Maybe because it’s your fault we’re losing, Princess Pustule. We’d still have our book if you hadn’t helped-”
“You’d still have the book if you’d been able to control your bloodlust, actually,” I sniped back.
“That slave was a gift,” Jillian insisted, advancing on me.
“You can’t fuckinggiftpeople,” I snarled back.
I felt the edge of ice magic from her, then Darnell, as they both moved to corner me against the hedge wall of mirror vines.
They were pushing at the walls of my mind, trying to break in and steal my thoughts - working to freeze my brain and extract my memories that way if I wouldn’t tell them.
I gritted my teeth against the icy pain lancing between my temples, shoving back at them with my own ice magic. I could handle this - I’d spent years building up a tolerance to the Ringmaster’s mind magic. Mind mages worked in a similar way, but they could also force their victims to do and say whatever they wanted.
Fighting off two tired vampires trying to steal my thoughts should be child’s play in comparison.
Closing my eyes, I gathered my strength, fortified my mental walls again, and gave them each a final shove of magic to force them out of my head.
Jillian wailed in anger and fell to her knees, holding her head in her hands, and Darnell stumbled backward, narrowly missing the wall of mirror vines as he reeled with the shock of the magical recoil.
I took the moment of opportunity to pour on my vampire speed and shoot away from them into the maze of walls, relying on my own memory to keep me from getting lost. At least I still had my boots, and I was close enough to the flower field that I decided to risk it.
I couldn’t stay in this section with them, or I knew they’d find a way to keep me out of the game for good. I was done trying to play by the rules - it was time to see what else I could bend or break.
Lining myself up with the entrance across the flower field like a sprinter on the starting block, I called up the ice armor I’d learned, clamped my mouth shut and put one hand over my nose, squeezed my eyes tight, and bolted straight through.
The mirror vines crunched and splintered into vicious shards beneath my boots, and I sensed the puffs of poison lifting into the air as I sprinted across the field, but I kept going until I’d made it all the way across and onto bare ground. Barely cracking open an eye, I veered into the passage where Nineve had come from before, finally gasping in a breath when I finally heard my boots hit stone and dirt again.
Multi-hued pollen was plastered in frozen plumes all over my ice armor, and I grimaced, wondering if I could keep the armor up long enough to find fresh water and wash it off, just in case it might transfer to my skin when I let go of the magic.
I didn’t know how many of those flowers had been poisonous, and even though I missed Nicolas, I was not in the mood to test the mist’s generosity again.
I was feeling strong, though.
Even though I’d died, being in the mist had restored not just my body, but my magic. Actually, I’d never felt stronger.
Keeping a firm grasp on the ice armor keeping me safe, I took stock of the choices before me in Prophecy. There were three dark gray stone corridors to choose from, and when I spread my vampire senses as far as possible, I caught the gurgle of running water to my left.
Peeking around the corner, I found the corridor empty, so I crept along it, keeping my eyes and ears open.
There were plenty of smooth, palm-sized stones along the ground, and I added several to my pockets as crude weapons, plus a thick branch that could possibly fend off a single gobbelin until I stole their club. It was better than nothing.
I examined the plants as I walked, but they were familiar. None looked poisonous or dangerous, and the only animals I scented were small food sources, rather than anything deadly.
What was the challenge in this section, then?
I didn’t remember much about my studies of theBook of Prophecy- it had been part history and part poetry, with many of the prophecies sounding more like riddles than anything else. Maybe this was a puzzle solving section.
I kept careful watch for Janus and his team too - Collette and maybe Nineve, if she’d had the same resurrection experience with the mist as Blaise and I had.
But this section of the labyrinth was quiet and calm in a way that said there hadn’t been any disturbances here in a while.
Rounding a third corner, I sucked in a breath and froze in my steps.
There was a pond, all right, fed by a small waterfall tumbling down a rocky slope. It looked like a picture book, but what had stopped me in my tracks was the crimson stag bending to drink elegantly from the sparkling water. Its skin was icy white, stained from the spine outward with ruby-colored streaks, and the velvet of its muzzle and antlers was a deep, rich red, shining like fresh blood in the afternoon sun.
