Bonato tried everything he could imagine to make me tell him what he wanted to hear. I got a decent meal a couple of times, and once he took me out of that place to let me shower. When he took me out, my hopes soared, but the place he took me to shower was still inside the wards blocking the ley lines. At least I was able to clean my wounds, and he even gave me a hair brush afterward.
Once, Monsignor Scarlatti, the chaplain, came. He performed an exorcism and commanded me to obey him at the risk of my immortal soul. He was different than the others. Bonato’s eyes showed shrewd calculation. Olivetti’s showed lust. The light of pure fanaticism burned in Scarlatti’s eyes, and he got so worked up that he foamed at the mouth and showered me in spittle when he screamed at me. At least he didn’t hit me.
The fact that I refused to say a word bothered them. I wasn’t completely quiet. Screaming in pain isn’t voluntary. But I knew that if I told them anything, they would bring in a witch with a truth spell and make me repeat it. Hell, for all I knew, they had a witch cast a truth spell every time they visited me.
One day—or night, I had no way of knowing—only a few hours since I was last fed, the door opened. Other than at feeding times, the door opened only when someone came to interrogate me. I braced myself, wondering who it would be and what new pleasures they had dreamed up for me.
“Erin?” Oriel’s voice whispered.
At first, I thought I was hallucinating. I turned my head so I could look out of the corner of my eye, and it certainly looked like him in his Unseelie form.
“Yes?” I croaked. I hadn’t used my voice in forever.
“Thank the Goddess.” He rushed into the room, hauled me up from my cot, and hugged me so hard I felt my ribs creak.
He let me go. “Come, we need to hurry. Where are your clothes?”
“I don’t have any.”
Glancing down, he asked, “No shoes?”
I shook my head, and he made a sound like a growl.
I grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around me. He took my hand and pulled me out of the room. The bodies of two Knights lay on the floor in the corridor. I recognized them as the guards who usually brought me food.
Oriel pulled me down the corridor to the left. The only time I had been out of my cell, the Knights took me to the right. The light came from dim magelights hanging from the low ceiling every fifteen feet or so. For me, it was almost blinding. The walls, floor and ceiling were rough stone, crudely mortared. He broke into a run, and I had trouble keeping up. I felt like we were fleeing down a long tunnel with no end.
After a few minutes, we came to a solid stone wall. I frantically looked back, expecting to see someone pursuing us, but as far as I could see, the corridor was empty.
Squatting down next to a heavy-looking metal grate set in the floor, Oriel grabbed the bars and pulled. The grate lifted right out. He stood, holding it, and said, “Inside. Leave the blanket. Be careful. The walls are rough and the tunnel is steep. You’ll have to brace your hands and feet against the walls and inch your way down.”
I looked in and saw only darkness. I turned my head to look up at him. Whatever my expression was, he chuckled.
“It’s safe. That’s the way I came in. No goblins or spiders or Knights.”
As I turned to lower myself into the hole, I looked up and saw an identical grate set in the ceiling above us.
The hole was circular, about three feet in diameter, and almost vertical. I immediately understood his instructions. Holding onto the lip, I lowered myself and placed my feet on the sides of the wall, then I bent my knees and put my hands against the walls. Next, I straightened one leg and pressed my foot against the wall a few inches below where it had been, then did the same with my other foot. In some ways, I was glad I was barefoot, even though the stone was freezing cold.
It was laborious and slow, but when I had managed to go down twice my body height, Oriel lowered himself into the hole and blocked out the light. I heard the grate grind back into place.
After traveling what I guessed was about thirty feet from the top, I suddenly connected to a ley line. I was so startled and relieved, I almost slipped. “How much farther?” I asked.
“You’re about half way there.”
I pulled on the ley line and cast a shield around me and generated some heat. That also protected my feet and hands from the rough stone. I kept going, and it seemed like an eternity before my extended foot found a level floor below me.
“I’m down. Now what?”
“Feel around. The tunnel levels out. You’ll have to crawl.”
“How far? What’s at the end?”
“It empties out of a sheer cliff,” Oriel answered. “It’s night, so you probably won’t be able to see the end until you reach it. Wait for me when you get there.”
A sheer cliff? I hoped he had magic to deal with that, because I sure didn’t.
I felt around until I found the tunnel leading away, then got down on my hands and knees and started forward. The floor was much smoother than the walls. I soon felt and smelled fresh air, and eventually, I came to the end. It wasn’t as dark as I had feared. I could see stars, and the sky outside was much lighter than the total darkness I had become used to. The sound of the surf crashing against the cliff below told me that we had come out of my prison on the ocean side. But it was colder outside than in the tunnel. I pulled on the ley line and generated more warmth.
Oriel was directly behind me. He had come down the vertical shaft much quicker and had stayed on my heels the whole time I crawled along the horizontal tunnel.
“Now what?” I asked. “Flying isn’t one of my gifts.”
“Mine neither.” He kindled a magelight the size of a marble and tossed it past me out of the end of the tunnel.
Then he pulled me into his arms and tried to kiss me on the forehead, chuckling as he encountered my shield.
“I’m cold,” I whispered. “I can make heat inside the shield.”
We waited.
A couple of minutes passed, and then something blotted out the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Did you find her?” Sam’s voice said.
“I’m here,” I answered.
“Come to me, lassie.”
I crawled to the end of the tunnel and saw Sam hanging in the air. He reached for me, grabbed me by the upper arms, and pulled me out. He hugged me to his chest, and we dropped. I wanted to scream like a little girl as the face of the cliff flashed past us, so I closed my eyes. Knowing that Sam was a strong aeromancer did nothing to sooth my animal instincts telling me that we were going to splat against the rocks below.
We slowed and stopped. I opened my eyes and discovered that Sam was standing on a rock above the pounding surf. He lowered me to my feet and pointed to a narrow trail leading off the rock toward the cliff.
“Go down there to the cave. I have to go back for Oriel.”
He floated upward. Once I compared Sam to a blimp when I saw him fly. Watching him that night, I thought I’d never seen anything so graceful or so beautiful.
I followed the trail off the rock and along the base of the cliff. It led to a shallow cave that had been hollowed out by the waves. I looked up and saw the quarter moon. Lizzy had told me the quarter moon was when the tides were the weakest. At high tide, the cave would have been under water.
As I entered the cave, someone touched my shield. I whirled around and found Shawna standing there.
“I was going to hug you, but that shield makes it difficult,” she said.
“I’m cold. The shield traps my body heat.”
“That’s okay. I’ll hug you later.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Night vision.”
I sat there with her, wrapped in my magic for warmth, watching the ocean and the stars, listening to the surf. I knew I would never take light and sound for granted ever again.
Sam and Oriel entered the cave. Sam took off his coat and offered it to me.
“It’s okay,” I sai
d. “I’m not cold.”
“You may not feel the need to cover up,” Sam said, “but I’m asking you to.”
I felt myself blush as I took his coat and put it on, then recast my shield. Looking down at my body, I was shocked at how skinny I was. I was as skinny as Lizzy.
We left the cave and followed the trail south, with Shawna and Sam in the lead and Oriel following me. About a hundred yards from the cave, the trail started to climb. When I stopped to catch my breath at one point, I looked back. On the top of the cliff behind us stood a large building, surrounded by a wall. It looked like a short castle.
“Where was I?”
“The Knights’ monastery,” Oriel answered. “In a sub-basement. I think it used to be a wine cellar.”
“What was that tunnel we came out?”
“Drainage tunnel. Before modern plumbing, I think that was their sewer line. Franklin Jones got the plans to the place from the architecture school at the university.”
It suddenly struck me. “Michaela!”
“Yes, that’s how we knew where to look for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“She escaped. Four days ago. We can talk about this later. We’re still too close, and I don’t know how long before they discover that you’re gone.” Oriel prodded me in the ribs. “Move.”
Chapter 25
It was almost four o’clock in the morning when we reached Sam’s SUV. Josh, Trevor, Jolene, and Steve Dworkin stood guard over the small parking lot at a scenic overlook. Jolene told me that the healer who had treated Oriel was waiting for us at Rosie’s. On the way, she handed me a bottle of orange juice, and I thought I had gone to paradise.
I spent the night in Sam’s apartment above the pub. A shower to get the worst of the filth off, followed by a long, hot bath, and a bowl of seafood chowder seemed like heaven.
The sun coming through the window woke me. The clock on the bedside table showed that it was late morning, and clothes that I didn’t recognize were laid out on a chair. They fit perfectly, made by a Fae seamstress of what I knew was spider silk, as were the leather elf boots. I made my way downstairs and sat at the bar. The day bartender said hello and brought me coffee, then went to Sam’s office to tell him I was awake.
“Are ye hungry, lassie?” he asked when he came out.
“Yeah. A mini-Irish?”
He put in my order and sat down beside me.
While I ate, he told me about Michaela. The Knights had tortured her and subjected her to interrogation, then exorcised her. She managed to convince them that they had broken and converted her. Then they arranged a television broadcast for her to publicly admit her sins and confess to being a demon and a black witch. Part of her speech was aimed at recruiting paranormals and casting the Knights and the Universal Church as God’s anointed servants.
They transported her to a TV studio in the city. When they turned on the cameras, Scarlatti, the Knights’ chaplain, gave an introductory speech, then they had her recite the confession they had written for her. Things went off script after the first paragraph. She killed Scarlatti and the other Knights who were present and escaped with a pistol, a sword, and a cell phone.
Climbing the wall of the TV station to the roof, she used the cell phone to call for help. A team of paranormals rescued her after a fight with the Knights surrounding the building, and three aeromancers lifted her and carried her away, all in plain view of several TV and police helicopters.
Despite the Knights’ attempt to suppress the videos, the rescue made every national newscast not controlled by the Church.
“She’s out at her estate,” Sam said. “She’s recovering, but her injuries were far worse than yours. Even a dhampir takes some time to heal from such an ordeal.”
“And what are the Knights saying about all that?”
Sam shrugged. “They want her to be turned over to them for execution. They’re saying that her actions prove that she’s a demon and that they’re right about needing to purge the world of Godless heretics. For her part, she’s suing the Knights and the Church for a hundred million dollars, in addition to pressing criminal charges against them.”
“And she knew where they were keeping me?”
“She knew where they were keeping her, and a couple of comments some of them made caused her to think you were there also.”
I finished my meal and leaned back, enjoying my second cup of Irish coffee.
“So, what else has been going on in the world?”
It turned out that the Paranormal Registration Act was on hold due to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. That made sense to me, since we were citizens, no matter what the Universal Church said. That hadn’t stopped the witch hunts and battles between the Knights and independent paranormals.
The armed and fortified enclaves we had set up in Westport were becoming common across the country and around the world. Only in areas where the Universal Church was weak and the Knights weren’t in control did the old shadow world still operate in the shadows.
“So, what do we do now?” I asked.
“We’re at war,” Sam said. “A lot of our people have fled the cities, but even rural areas aren’t safe. But for the moment, in this country, we have a stalemate. The Knights don’t have enough trained troops to finish their takeover, and they’re fighting a guerilla insurgency in many places. Glad to have you back, lassie. Your skills are going to be needed.”
If you enjoyed Well of Magic, I hope you will take a few moments to leave a brief review on the site where you purchased your copy. It helps to share your experience with other readers. Potential readers depend on comments from people like you to help guide their purchasing decisions. Thank you for your time!
And look for Knights Magica, book 5 in the Rosie O’Grady’s Paranormal Bar and Grill series, coming in the winter of 2020.
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Books by BR Kingsolver
Rosie O’Grady’s Paranormal Bar and Grill
Shadow Hunter
Night Stalker
Dark Dancer
Well of Magic
The Dark Streets Series
Gods and Demons
Dragon’s Egg
Witches’ Brew
The Chameleon Assassin Series
Chameleon Assassin
Chameleon Uncovered
Chameleon’s Challenge
Chameleon’s Death Dance
Diamonds and Blood
The Telepathic Clans Saga
The Succubus Gift
Succubus Unleashed
Broken Dolls
Succubus Rising
Succubus Ascendant
Other books
I’ll Sing for my Dinner
Trust: A truly modern romance
Short Stories in Anthologies
Here, Kitty Kitty
Bellator
Well of Magic: An Urban Fantasy (Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill Book 4) Page 19