Vampire's Bargain Book Four

By Odette C. Bell

They say all things must come to an end. But first, you must learn how they started.
Jeanette struggles to find the deepest secrets at the heart of Broadside. If she can’t find them, Regis will strangle her with lies and Silas will fight over what’s left.
But this witch has no intention of giving up. With the end so close, the ministry circling, and Regis rising, she’ll kick them down and reach the finish line first. Or she’ll die trying.
....
Vampire’s Bargain follows a revenge-driven witch and the vampire pulling her strings fighting to bring down a corrupt magical council. If you love your urban fantasies with action, heart, and a splash of romance, grab Vampire’s Bargain Book Four today and soar free with an Odette C. Bell series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Odette C. Bell
• Release date: Apr 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005793333

Book preview

Chapter 1

The power started in her fingers. It tingled down into her wrist. And finally it shot into the rest of her.

Jeanette would tell you it was a moment she would never forget. But to be fair, it was a moment she’d barely remember. For the sheer power of the move was enough to overcome even the strongest nervous system.

Just as the Chimera tried to lock his foot down on her chest, the power of the grail lifted Jeanette up. It moved her sternum first. Her arms flopped behind her, her head tilting to the side.

It was like someone had attached a hook to her heart.

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Yet.

The grail spun out of her fingers, moving a few centimeters from her chest. It twisted once to the left, then the right. Then it opened.

Jeanette was bathed in this wash of glorious light.

She could describe its color, but the color was meaningless. She could describe its warmth, but that too did not matter.

Its significance came in the way it wiped away her fear, in the way it proved that no matter how injured she felt she was right now, she could still survive.

It was like pure chance wrapped up in the heart of impossible-to-break hope.

Jeanette finally screamed.

It didn’t sound right, though. It seemed to echo through some space far greater than this.

Jeanette still didn’t understand where she was, but she was done thinking this was somehow part of the Past Room.

She had either been transported, or she had fallen through one of those void holes and survived.

The point was, this place was very much real. And the Chimera was the same.

You might not usually be able to defeat fictitious creatures. Ones with currently solid bodies, however, are up for grabs.

As Jeanette fell down onto her feet, her body…. was it even her body anymore? The crackling shot of power that pulsed through it made it feel as if she was half her and half the grail.

But the one thing that mattered was her magic was back, greater than ever, hotter than before, and more forceful than any power she’d ever encountered.

The Chimera twisted around, then rushed at her from the left.

Jeanette shoved her hands out. Blazing yellow light shot off her in every direction. It formed a shield, and the Chimera smashed into it. The creature had serious power. It should be able to blast right through. But it couldn’t.

Jeanette kept pumping more and more force into the move, and the Chimera screamed as it was thrown back. It shot into the air, spun several times, then landed down in the lake with a wet splash.

It hardly remained there for long. Jeanette heard it screaming from under the waves, and it soon erupted out, yet more fire chasing around its fiendish form.

It landed once more beside Jeanette, but it didn’t waste a second. It spun around. Its tail suddenly changed size. It had been pretty long and deadly previously, but now it became even longer.

Jeanette fell to the left, yanked her hands around, and created a shield just as the Chimera tried to squash her flat.

Once more, she held it in place.

But… here’s the thing. Jeanette’s explosive power was starting to dwindle.

It was almost as if the grail had lent her its force but couldn’t do so forever.

This wasn’t even the main event. What would happen when she made it inside the old Broadside?

Regis. That’s what would happen. If he was there, of course.

With no way to understand how Jeanette had gotten here, she couldn’t conclude whether Regis would be waiting for her. For all she knew, he could still be lurking through the current Broadside, trying to draw the Firebrands to his side.

Which meant Jeanette might have an opportunity like no other.

Get inside the original Broadside, and she would be able to investigate it before Regis came back.

That gave her a little more explosive force. It pushed her magic out and sank it into that Chimera just as it whipped its tail around once more. It shoved it off course.

This creature was easily far stronger than anything Jeanette had ever fought before. It was because it was easily far stronger than anything Jeanette had ever heard of.

It wasn’t just the way it moved, wasn’t just the warning in each one of its hissing snarls. Its magic seemed to be unquenchable. She’d strike it with a wave of her own force, and it would just get back up half a second later.

… It was as if it was being powered from elsewhere.

Jeanette hadn’t paid that much attention to the lake. She hadn’t had a great deal of time to, after all.

Now she did, as her gaze slid over those strange little stones just visible under the surface once more, it took her breath away. They weren’t stones. They were magical pads.

And right now as the Chimera jumped back and landed on one, it imperceptibly grew stronger again.

If Jeanette wanted to stop it, she had to destroy those pads.

The Chimera leaped over her head, landed behind her, and was somehow twice as fast as before.

Jeanette didn’t bother to attack.

She was starting to run out of her grail’s incredible force.

But at least it had healed the burn marks to her chest. It couldn’t save her, though.

Not until and unless she got rid of this creature.

Jeanette screamed.

She ran for the lake.

The creature wasn’t fast enough. Maybe it had a simple intelligence, but it couldn’t conceive of the fact she’d figured out where it was getting all its force from.

Jeanette made it to the first stone, flipping elegantly and landing down on it, her shoes getting wet up to her ankles.

As for the water itself… it was rich to call it water. It was… a liquid.

A seriously magical one.

It crackled around her, making her feel like she’d shoved a toaster in a bathtub.

Jeanette wasted no time. With her dwindling strength, she punched the charging pad.

The Chimera certainly caught up to the fact of what she was doing, and the thing shrieked.

It aimed a fireball at her face.

Jeanette just jumped into the water. She swam to the next pad. She tried to calculate how many of them there were. Three? No, four.

She reached the next one. She managed to destroy it just as the Chimera jumped into the water.

She couldn’t win in the water. It was much faster than her. Plus, this lake was deep, and as the Chimera disappeared, she had no clue where it was.

Jeanette’s heart continued to charge faster than it ever had before. It wasn’t just the fact that she was now virtually swimming in the grail’s power.

This was it. If she didn’t manage to—

She dodged to the side, rolling in the water just as the Chimera shot up beside her. Its violently burning tail sliced past her face. How it could burn, even though it was submerged in water, she didn’t know. She imagined there was little this creature couldn’t do.

Jeanette could see the next charging pad in front of her.

She opened her hand, created a remote charge of magic, and attacked it. But her attack went off course.

It only destroyed half the pad.

The Chimera snarled.

Jeanette thought that it would wrap its fat tail around her and tear her in half, but clearly it had other ideas. It shot underneath her, and Jeanette didn’t think she’d ever been more afraid. The dark shadow of it spoke to something primal in her brain.

The Chimera didn’t attack. Instead, it jumped onto the last charging pad.

There it remained, soaking up the force of this lake. That’s where the magic was coming from, wasn’t it? That’s why it felt like someone had electrified all the water.

Jeanette swam to a stop.

She reached the third charging pad, and she managed to destroy it. But how the heck could she destroy the last one? Now the Chimera was standing on it, it was actively and continuously recharging.

It had been terrifying before. Now? Oh, now it started to glow.

It was just as Jeanette’s own glow diminished. And the less bright she became, the colder she got.

The power of the lake was insidious. It kept sinking into her stomach, racing up her back, grabbing hold of her resolve, and crushing it.

The Chimera let out an earsplitting scream. Then it shot a fireball toward Jeanette.

Come on, she screamed at herself.

She couldn’t actually say that out loud, but she didn’t have to. There was no point wasting oxygen.

She managed to roll to the side and watch the fireball, and as it smashed into the water, it didn’t fizzle and extinguish. Instead, it disappeared, breaking down into the water table once more only to have its form altered and then fed back to the Chimera. And speaking of the beast, it was now three times as bright. It looked like it was about to explode. It would take this entire cavern with it. As for Jeanette? She would never have a chance.

She kept swimming, kept dodging, kept begging the grail to give her more power.

But it had done what it could.

Speaking of the grail. It remained faithfully over her shoulder. At one point she swore one of the fireballs would smash into it, but it changed position quickly.

The Chimera watched it just as much as it watched Jeanette.

Jeanette could tell herself that that was because the Chimera was wary of the grail. Maybe the creature could tell the grail had more power.

But there was no need to be wary if Jeanette had no clue how to extract said power.

The Chimera shot off another fireball.

Jeanette darted to the side. She wasn’t quick enough. This fireball clipped her arm.

And by clipped, she meant tore off a massive chunk.

Jeanette had received some pretty bad injuries over the years. Come on. Both Helena and Jason had almost stabbed her to death.

This was… let’s just say at first Jeanette didn’t even know what happened.

Her brain couldn’t catch up to the injury. She felt something slipping down her arm, then her hand stopped working. But it wasn’t until she stared down and saw that her arm had almost been ripped off at the shoulder that she realized how wounded she was. Then for several seconds, her brain wouldn’t work at all.

Jeanette’s arm….

The Chimera shrieked.

It opened its mouth, and this time, it attacked with that instead. These massive fireballs shot forth, blasting up from its jagged teeth. Said teeth weren’t just embedded in its gums. They were part of its lips, too, and as the Chimera opened its mouth even wider, Jeanette saw just how many there were.

If you were swallowed by that thing, you’d be shredded. No questions asked, no pause to look for a way to save yourself. Just plain, quick death.

And one that now loomed in front of Jeanette.

Now she didn’t have an arm, clearly the Chimera wanted to finish her off personally. It leaped into the water.

Jeanette could barely swim anymore.

She stared underneath her as a growing shadow loomed.

Her heart was now pounding, racing at the severity of her injury and the certainty of what would happen next.

That shadow loomed, and loomed, and loomed.

She didn’t get a chance to scream. The Chimera opened its mouth.

She was aware of the moment, knew exactly what it meant, and should have just released into it.

You fight, you lose. That’s the nature of trying. You can’t always win. And when the stakes are high, you will lose more than your pride.

But that’s not what happened.

Jeanette felt the moment that the mouth opened up underneath her, heard the crackle of the fireball gathering in the creature’s gullet, and knew exactly what it all meant, but for whatever reason, she didn’t give in.

It wasn’t the sudden image of Tyler’s face smashing into her mind. It wasn’t even the grail.

Jeanette saw her own parents.

She was taken back there to the moment when they were killed, to the moment her little sister died. Back to the moment that defined her and haunted her.

Her parents had died because of Jeanette’s power.

But if, in the end, that power meant nothing and was as easy to overcome as this, then what had the point been?

Why be jealous of something that is ultimately so easy to remove?

Why indeed.

The Chimera closed its mouth. There was a sickening snap.

Jeanette felt its teeth, all pushing into her, grinding and cutting.

They certainly trashed her uniform. But at the last moment before they could pierce her skin and tear her to shreds, Jeanette stopped them.

Magic can be practiced in many forms. When you access a talisman, you push your power into it, and it shares its power with you.

But there are other forms of force out there, forms of unstoppable chance. You just had to look to Kate’s incredible potions. Then you had to look to Tyler’s unmatched strength.

People practice in all sorts of ways. But at the end of the day, there is something fundamental to magic, and if you can tap into that, ignoring all of the trappings around it, you can achieve the truly impossible. For what is force there to do but to alter the odds of this universe?

Jeanette shouldn’t have any magic. This area was blocking it somehow.

The grail had given her what it could.

But it should not be enough.

And yet what in one moment cannot be enough in another can be more than is necessary. All it takes is for one to change their mind.

If we keep looking in the same places for power, we’ll find the same power over and over again. But if we look deeper, dividing reality into increasingly smaller parts as we search for the very basis of strength, we will find more.

You must simply open up to what you may discover.

Even though Jeanette had faced the fact that she was a true talismans witch before, had she ever truly opened up to what that meant? To the aching responsibility that came with it?

No.

She did now.

Just as the Chimera closed its mouth even harder, its jaw grinding from side to side as it desperately tried to crush Jeanette, she shoved her hands out.

She practiced magic. No specific spell. She didn’t need an enchantment. Nor did she need her talismans.

She let the magic rush through her as a conduit for one reality meeting another. For what is our imagination but a pocket of reality nested inside the greater world?

And what is magic but the means to join those two pockets together?

Jeanette had never imagined a greater world. Before meeting Tyler, her soul had been stunted.

Now she knew exactly what it was this world needed.

She just had to find the power to create it.

Jeanette screamed. She shoved her hands out, even her injured one. They smashed into the Chimera’s teeth. The once impenetrable, magic-encased enamel shattered.

But the destruction did not end there. It raced out in an unstoppable explosion.

The Chimera screamed and jerked its head back, but there was nowhere to get away. It had foolishly swallowed Jeanette, and it was time to deal with this unpalatable meal.

Half of the Chimera’s head exploded outward. And Jeanette fell down into the water. She struck it with a splash.

For a moment, she was disoriented. She’d used too much power.

She’d thought she’d won, too, but enough of the Chimera still operated that it swam beside her. It shot toward that last platform.

Jeanette knew full well what would happen if it reached it. It would recharge.

This lake was like an endless battery. If it kept feeding