But Amanda couldn’t. All she could manage was a small shake of the head. She couldn’t even see who she was supposed to burn. Black dots marred her vision. Only the flames were clear in her mind and they were quickly growing out of control. There were too many, all weak on their own but together formed a raging furnace.

  There came a sudden blinding white light.

  Sirius yanked Amanda out of the furnace and tugged her along behind him. For awhile she followed with nothing but literal blind trust until the flames abated and her vision returned. Then she was running alongside him again.

  “What happened?” she asked between breaths. “What was that light?”

  “Sonny. He’s a luminary. He can create an extremely bright light when he wants to, one that will temporarily blind anyone who’s not ready for it. Works like a smoke bomb.”

  Amanda nodded, too out of breath to talk.

  Several turns later she gasped out, “Have. We. Lost. Them?”

  Sirius gave her a worried look and then slowed down. They both listened.

  The distinctive sound of running could be heard not far behind them, and whoever it was was quickly gaining.

  “It seems not,” Sirius said as he pulled her into another run. One that was so fast Amanda felt like her stomach had been left behind.

  She could barely keep her legs turning fast enough. She was so tired she wouldn’t have cared at all if Sirius had picked her up and carried her over his shoulder.

  Perhaps he might have done that if they hadn’t then reached a dead end.

  It wasn’t a dead end so much as it was a shear drop over 100 metres into the dark channel they’d sailed up the day before and the only other way out was the way they had just come from.

  They spun around, intent on going back and taking a different turn somewhere along the line, but it was too late. Their pursuers had caught up to them.

  First there were two of them, then four. Amanda could hear more coming. They were going to be outnumbered again. Sirius was right, the only way out was f…

  The word fire dyed on her lips as she turned to look back at the drop behind them and in doing so her eye caught on Sirius’s coat. The coat with the infusements.

  “Do you trust me?” she asked Sirius.

  “What?” He had his sword out and his back to the drop and the pair of them were slowly backing up to the edge.

  “We have to jump.”

  He looked to the drop and then to her. Finally to their approaching enemies. He frowned. “Are you mad?”

  She fixed him with a look. “Trust me,” she said. It was more a command this time.

  His expression remained puzzled but he gave a single decisive nod.

  She reached toward the inside of his coat, to where he kept his infusements, toward one vial in particular.

  It must have looked like she was going to hug him for one of their pursuers suddenly remarked, “Go on, have one last hug then.”

  Her hands fixed around the vial. To Sirius she whispered, “When I say jump we jump, okay?” As soon as the words left her mouth she knew the whispering was useless. Any nearby vampires would have heard every word.

  He gave another single nod, as decisive as the last one, although up this close she could feel how he stiffened and the rapid beat of his heart. Would he jump when she said so? If she wanted him to trust her then she needed to trust him. She looked him right in the eyes trying to silently convey her plan so any vampires among their pursuers would not hear any more details.

  Then suddenly there was a voice in her head.

  ‘How?’ Sirius asked.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  ‘Are you mindwalking?’

  ‘I think so, unless this is just my imagination.’

  She could see his expression change when she thought back to him. She smiled but only for a second. She had to explain quickly.

  ‘The telekinesis infusement. Remember what I did on the island?’

  ‘We’re going to do that? Off here? You are mad!’

  ‘I can do it. Trust me. Just don’t let go of my hand no matter what?’

  ‘Do we have enough, for that drop? I recall there not being much in that other one.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, we just need it to last long enough to reduce the height to something we can fall from.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He was 100 percent with her this time. She could see it in his eyes.

  “You’ll never survive the drop,” spoke a familiar voice.

  Amanda had assumed, regardless of whether or not the council of Cap knew about these renegades, that Sandy had been the one responsible for Sirius’s disappearance. But it wasn’t Sandy who lurked at the edge of the shadows. It was the other one, Nigel.

  “Nigel?” Sirius queried. Amanda could hear the hurt and disappointment in his tone.

  Amanda slipped her hands into Sirius’s and the vial along with it. She did not think she could open it without Nigel or the others noticing and then they would know something was up, but Sirius could crush it. She thought as much to him hoping he was listening. He was. Gently he stroked the skin of her hand with one finger.

  “So the council of Cap does still work with the fire islands,” Sirius accused.

  Nigel snorted. “Hardly. The council of Cap have lost sight of what’s good for its citizens. For years we worked with the fire isles and made good profits doing so. And what’s worse is now they prefer to work with the likes of The Scarlett Prince. That man is a despicable, violent child.”

  “And the fire islands are slave traders, Nigel.”

  Nigel shook his head. “It’s not like what you think. The slave trade exists whether they buy from it or not and the slaves they buy end up in nice places. Some are even freed.”

  “I know what it’s like. I used to trade them.”

  “Then you know what the fire islanders are like. They work hard and they bleed more for us than anyone, certainly more than those pretty thin-skinned folk in Scarlett. We owe them our respect and our trade.”

  In response, a few of the renegades surrounding him lit up fireballs in their hand. The flames danced brightly. Amanda eyed them one at a time. There was a mix of men and women and little in their appearances to suggest they were an isolated community. The only thing they all had in common was the dark black of their clothing and the fire in their hands.

  Could she take them all? There were almost a dozen of them. Was that all of them? The battle before had been so chaotic she couldn’t be sure but she didn’t like her chances. Maybe if she was fast enough. But if werewolf speed was scary, vampires were on a whole level of their own. Could they even get off the cliff before Nigel got to them? At least he was less likely to attack if he thought they were jumping to their deaths.

  Sirius kept talking to him and for now Amanda didn’t interrupt. The information he was getting might be valuable.

  “Trade what? The goods you get from ransacking ships in the night with guns? That was you who ordered the attack on my ship wasn’t it? I lost men.”

  “As did I,” Nigel growled. He didn’t answer as to how many his attack was supposed to kill. “But the attack was necessary to know who can keep their mouth shut. You brought it up with Sandy. You sealed your own fate.”

  “Sandy stands with the council then?” Sirius’s hand tightened around the vial ever so gently. To Amanda he thought, ‘Are you sure about this?’ Somehow he managed to send her a thought image of the drop behind them. Even though he was speaking into her head she could hear a tremor in his voice. He was much less confident about this than he had been about swimming through a long underwater tunnel with traps.

  She resisted nodding and instead thought back, ‘Crush the vial and keep hold of my hand. All you need to do is touch the magic slightly and I’ll be able to reach it. Like we did on beach that day. Or, if you can, try press the sand into my palm. Don’t worry about the glass.’ Playfully she added, ‘And don’t worry, the drop never kills anyone, and it’s water at the bottom. You like water.’

  ‘Not when it feels like concrete.’

  Amanda glanced up at him. His tone had been light but there was still fear there. She could tell. He was breathing heavily but slow, as if readying himself for the inevitable. His gaze never left Nigel.

  She wondered how perceptive Nigel was of Sirius’s subtle reactions. It was said a vampire could detect the subtle change in a person’s heart rate but she wasn’t sure how much of that was true and how much was exaggeration or how close they had to be. The vampire population of Little Rock had never been huge.

  Nigel didn’t answer Sirius’s question immediately. For a few moments he was silent and his red eyes narrowed, his body tensed, and then he said, “Sandy is weak just like the rest of them.”

  ‘Now!’ Sirius thought to Amanda.

  It was so fast she almost wasn’t ready for him but something in Nigel’s movement sent a spike of adrenaline through her system. She felt Sirius’s hand move beneath hers as he crushed the vial. A fraction of a second later the magic tingled at her fingertips and she used the telekinesis to yank them both backwards and out over the edge of the cliff.

  She felt the tips of Nigel’s fingernails lightly scrape her neck before the air opened and she and Sirius were flying hundreds of metres up above brackish water and away from the reaches of Nigel who winced as he got too near the ledge and the light that fell there. He retreated back into the shadows.

  Moments later, several figures holding fireballs appeared where Nigel had just been.

  They weren’t out of harm’s way yet.

  Amanda could fell the telekinesis draining. The balance with two of them was different too. There was no way she could hold them both there but she didn’t exactly want to, not with those firestarters in sight.

  There was something she remembered from high school physics class about how an apple and a horseshoe both fell at the same speed even if though the horseshoe was heavier. It made no sense to her but she hoped it was true.

  She switched the magic off and let them drop.