Burning Up

hands on sword hilts, crossbows, or spears.
    They were still doomed.
    Brooding, Amaris watched them ride through the wooded valley below. She and the three with her were shielded by a spell designed to conceal them from human or vampire senses. Their targets had no idea they were being watched.
    Feeling her gorge rise in a sick wave, Amaris swallowed hard. The sense of evil surrounding her made her skin creep. I should warn them. I can’t just sit back and watch them all die.
    A male hand clamped over Amaris’s knee with a force that made her kneecap creak and the leggy roan mare dance beneath her. “If you betray us,” Tannaz said, serene as a priest, “I will see Marin’s soul feeds the Orb. It will be a very slow death.” He smiled, all chilling charm. “And I will slit your eyelids away and make you watch.”
    “Get your hands off me, murderer,” Amaris snarled, as much in fury at herself as her captor.
    Another mocking smile flashed white through the visor of his helm. “Is that any way to talk to your beloved father?”
    “ ‘Beloved?’ ” She let her loathing fill her eyes. But he was right, damn him. Anything she tried to do for those poor bastards would get Marin killed. She’d sworn to her mother’s ghost to protect her sister, a vow she would not break.
    The two Varil raiders who stood to either side produced the grunting hiss that served their kind as laughter. They were massive creatures, bodies roped with muscle under iridescent reptilian scales, eyes glowing orange as coals in the darkness. They smelled like snakes. They wore no armor, and needed none with their thick hides. Clawed hands carried battle axes with blades the size of a warrior’s shield.
    It was said they’d once been human. Amaris doubted it.
    What in the name of all the gods am I doing here?
     
    R aniero rode in wariness, vampire senses alert for any attack, mystical or otherwise. Though the kingdom’s magical barriers should keep Varilian raiders out, sometimes the vicious bastards got through. And considering the king’s suspicions about Wizard Lord Korban, Raniero was not inclined to take chances.
    “Do you think Korban really is working with the Varil?” Gvido asked. The boy rode at an easy trot beside him, his visor up, revealing a rawboned, freckled face in the light from Raniero’s illumination spell.
    “I know not,” Raniero told him. “And I will draw no conclusions until I investigate further.”
    “But how could any border wizard work with the Varil?” Gvido shook his head in disbelief. “Remember what they did to that village? What was it called, Kessel? Men, women, children—ripped apart and eaten. I have evil dreams about it still.” He had been Raniero’s squire for almost a year now, an earnest sixteen-year-old with a merry smile and a pleasant tenor voice. He wore his long red hair tied back in a queue. His chin was covered by a thin orange scruff he stubbornly refused to shave; he was determined to grow a proper beard.
    “Sorcerers,” Olrick grunted from Raniero’s right. A tall, muscular man with an impressive belly, he was a skilled and wily warrior. Yet after twenty years fighting at Raniero’s side, his braided beard and long blond hair were dulling into gray. He would retire soon, and Raniero was not looking forward to it. “All wizards be mad. Years of sniffing potions and playing with spells. ’Tis no wonder their wits fly.”
    Raniero lifted a dark brow. “ I work spells.” His magic was not as strong as that of the border wizards, but he was no powerless peasant either.
    “Ye be a vampire,” Olrick said, unperturbed. “Of course ye be mad.”
    Suppressing a smile, Raniero flicked a rude finger at his friend. Olrick brayed his distinctive laugh and replied with a gesture even more obscene.
    Raniero’s chuckle faded into a frown as a feeling of waiting evil brushed his vampire senses. He straightened in his saddle and drew rein as he scanned the surrounding hills. Bakur, his black warhorse, danced in unease, as if he, too, sensed a threat. Alerted, Raniero’s men pulled up and peered around.
    At first his keen night vision detected nothing but the forested hills that surrounded them, silvered by moonlight and splashed with shadow.
    Until something shimmered in a there-not-there flash that told him someone was moving behind a shielding spell. “Draw weapons!” Raniero bellowed, pulling his own great blade from its saddle sheath as he jerked Bakur to face the