“I take it this is our old friend,” he said.
“Wait!” I hollered, walking up to the body. “Don’t do that. Not yet.”
Jake let go of the ankle and let it drop back down to the ground with a clank. That got his attention. “Silver,” he said. “You weren’t lying, Riley. He was a master shifter.”
“And he has something I want,” I said gruffly, not really excited about sticking my hands into Devon’s corpse but also knowing I had done far worse. I already stuck my hand inside a stranger’s body in my family tomb. At least this one wasn’t decomposing.
I searched all over the skeleton. Inside Devon’s hands, his ribs, and his sides. There was nothing. The silver box he used to summon the lightning opened up the crypt below in my vision was gone.
I walked back over to where Jake took his body by the ankle and dragged him. It didn’t fall away from Devon’s remains. It wasn’t there at all.
“Damn it!” I swore.
“What?” Jake asked me.
“He had something I wanted.”
“What was it?” Lothar asked me, coming a little closer to look down at Devon’s body and abruptly giving it a kick in the ribs. Lothar obviously had some pent up anger for the man who made his job as my mentor particularly difficult. Or maybe he was angry that Devon hurt me so badly. Either way, he took a little too much pleasure in scattering what remained of Devon’s silver bones.
“A box. Do you remember it, Lothar? The one he used against us in your chamber? It flashed silver lightning everywhere.”
“Hard to forget.”
“Dirk must have taken it.” I stamped my foot onto the ground.
“Why was it important?” Jake asked.
“Because its the key,” Alina said in a soft voice. Her eyes were fixated on the ruins outside the stone circle, standing randomly in spots of the forest marking where corners once reached up for the sky. “I thought I destroyed all the evidence,” she mumbled. She swallowed hard and took a few steps away from the center of the circle. Then she peered down at the spot where I placed the box in my vision, right in the middle of the Dolch Erbe symbol.
I brushed away the fallen leaves and grime on the ground covering up the symbol so the others would see it.
“What did you destroy?” Lothar asked.
“I didn’t want my students getting too curious about the Dolch Erbe and unintentionally gaining their attention. So I tore away some pages from books in the library.”
The piqued my interest. The first time I tried looking anything up about Blackatters, the pages in the library books were missing. Was that Alina?
“Why would you do that?” Lothar came up to Alina and placed his hand on her shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her skin. “What is it, Alina?”
“This place. I’ve read about it. In all my research I read of its existence but its never actually been found. This is where they do it, Lothar. This is where the Dolch Erbe murdered the lycanthrope throughout the Dark Ages. And maybe all the way up to the 19th century. The entire circle is drenched with the blood of lycanthrope.”
I froze in place, not sure if I should ask more questions or let Alina keep talking. I told Alina about the details of my dream. She was one of the few who knew. As I watched Lothar try to encourage her to continue, I saw the fear in her eyes.
“This entire circle is cursed. It’s protected by blood magic to help the Dolch Erbe. It was always a theory. Just a theory. But…”
She stopped speaking. Her lips moved as if she wanted to get the words out but couldn’t.
“But what, Alina?” Jake prodded her. I wanted to slug him. The girl was obviously frightened and he was only making it worse.
“It’s been a theory for years that not all come to the Dolch Erbe willingly. That there was a hidden location where they use powerful blood magic to force conversion to their ranks.”
“Force conversion?” I asked.
‘That means there’s a chance I was right. Maybe Dirk was forced into this.’
“There was a scholar from the 1950s at the academy that claimed there might be a cursed location where the leader of the Dolch Erbe lures and torments victims into submission. And once they’re near death, the spirits of the original Dolch Erbe rise from the dead and take their place, passengering themselves into the consciousness of the victim.”
“Wait,” Jake paced around Alina. His voice was high pitched like he was going to start laughing. “You’re saying the inner circle of the Dolch Erbe aren’t actually betraying their own? It’s some sort of mind control?”
“More like mind inhabiting,” Alina clarified. “We don’t know if the mind of the previous inhabitant survives. Like I said, it’s a theory.”
I shut my eyes in defeat, not wanting to accept it if what she said was true. If I managed to get Dirk back, would his mind still be there?
I moved passed Jake and went directly over to the center of the circle where I placed the box in my dream. I recalled the way the ground beneath me shook and revealed the ancient coffins hidden below. It made sense. The spirit of the dead Dolch Erbe would rise from the ground and inhabit the body of the victim.
“I was right then,” I said, dusting away the centerpiece where the cauldron had been and where Margaux was tortured. “My brother didn’t do this to me. It was someone else. Someone inhabiting his mind.”
“Don’t get carried away, Alina,” Lothar scolded her. “You said it was a theory and we have to treat it as such. We don’t know yet.”
Something moved in the woods. My heightened hearing picked up on it immediately. There were footsteps nearby. And they were far too heavy to be an animal or a bird. Not even the wind could create such a sound.
Lothar withdrew his sword, as did the others. We were being watched.
The sound of footsteps slowly came to stand beside me, making me jump away and nearly trip over my own two feet. It was behind me again. Then the steps moved over to Lothar. Then Jake. Finally, Alina swung her sword and nearly took off Jake’s hand.
“Woah! Watch it!” he snapped at her.
She stood in a ready position as I took out the dagger Lothar gave me.
“It’s not in the woods,” she said. “It’s in here with us.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We walked into a trap. The entire circle is protected by magic.”
The sound of whispers cradled my ears, mumbling words I didn’t recognize and hissing at me from every direction.
We intruded on the spirits that rested there. And given how they suffered, I knew they wouldn’t be friendly.
7
The ground beneath me began to shake. Just as it did in my dream. I stretched out my arms, trying to stay steady as the entire circle vibrated under my feet.
“What’s happening?” Alina cried from the other side of the circle.
No one answered her. They didn’t know any better than I did.
Silver beams of light broke through the cracks lining the symbol of the Dolch Erbe in the stones. Followed by the lines between the coffins I knew were right below our feet.
‘Is it happening again? Are the stones opening up to the crypt?’
The silver beams grew brighter. I squinted my eyes through the harsh light to see what was happening. The beams crashed through the air and poked holes in the sky, lighting up the entire forest and revealing us. They crashed back down and stabbed through each of us, striking us like lightning from the sky. The area was protecting itself from intruders. Or a more frightening thought, the spirits of the ancient Dolch Erbe buried beneath us knew who we were and wanted us dead.
My entire body was thrown down to the ground. I rolled several times before stopping, before seeing the others fall back as the beams assaulted their bodies. Every single muscle inside me went stiff, threatening to stop moving altogether. But the beam didn’t manage to pierce through me like it did the others. Lothar shoved me away from the circle, keeping me clear from danger. Not that it helped much.
One of the beams found me.
We were trapped in the open. Lothar struggled to move his mouth and give everyone orders to flee.
I strained to shut my eyes. It took effort but they did so. My crowning magic came crashing through my palms and wafted over my body, spinning about me like a saucer getting ready to fire away at anything threatening to harm me. Green light pierced through my bracelet, activating the protection spell Adeline cast over it. I forced my magic to weave over the bracelet, merging the two forces and bursting them from my body. I struck down the beam shining through Lothar, then Alina and finally Jake. The beams dissipated into nothing and they all went still. As though they were only being kept moving by the beam’s torment and quickly passed out once it was gone.
I heaved as air rushed back into my lungs and I was able to stand up. I reached inside my trench coat for the dagger Lothar gave me and held it before me, ready to fight who or whatever was attacking us.
“Come on!” I shouted. “You’ve been around for nearly a thousand years and that’s the best you can do? Set booby traps?”
I spun about in circles in search of my attacker. My magic spiraled around me, creating a force field of protection as I scanned the entire circle and waited to see if anyone or anything would appear. The spirits were there. I could feel them. The trapped souls of lycan that had been captured by the Dolch Erbe and brutally murdered were like caged animals. They gave the ritual site an unholy atmosphere.
Lothar was the first to come around. He groaned as he gradually stood up and steadied himself. His sword was on the ground. He leaned down to pick it up, keeping his eyes on me and scanning the area.
I let my magic spread across the stones, like a scarlet red fog rolling in from nowhere and protecting us from whatever else might be lurking in the shadows of the trees. The light from the beams was gone. I was back to seeing everything through my enhanced lycan eyes. I saw Alina move an arm. She reached for her head and bent her knees, then rolled onto her front and stood up. Jake cursed under his breath and got up a little too quickly. I could hear his back crack from where I was standing.
“What in the bloody hell was all that?” he grunted.
“The beams came from beneath,” Alina said. “Riley was right. Her vision was showing her an opening under the stones.”
“There’s more beneath our feet,” I said. “The crypt.”
“This can’t be it,” Alina shook her head. “This can’t be the actual burial site of the original members of the Dolch Erbe’s inner circle. In all my research no one could pinpoint its exact location.”
The ground beneath us shook once more as if the spirits had heard her speaking. And they weren’t pleased with the discovery.
“Get away from the circle!” Lothar hollered.
We scrambled off the stones just in time to see the beams of silver light return, spreading through the cracks of the ritual circle and seeping through the same lines I saw in my vision. The five compartments with coffins lay below us. The magic inside was meant to help invigorate the Dolch Erbe and kill lycan. It nearly succeeded.
“I gather they didn’t expect us to have a Blackatter on our side,” Jake shouted over the sound of the beams bolting through the cracks of the stones.
I tucked the dagger away and stood between the trees just outside the stone circle as the others approached me. Lothar stopped them when he saw what I was doing. I held my hands before me in a circular shape and summoned the magic stirring inside of me, forming a spherical shape like a ball in my hands. Before the beams could find us I projected the magic forward, completely destroying the beams and forcing them back down inside the stone circle so they couldn’t harm us again. The ground beneath us continued to shake. A few of the ruins from what remained of the walls fell to the ground. Dust and dirt came flowing up through the air. The entire area lit up in a soft hue of red light, revealing what we already knew.
A circle of magic was hiding the ritual space. Like an invisible layer of protection, it created a bubble around the stones and the ruins falling down through the trees. It was enclosing the space in a shadow so no one other than the Dolch Erbe could find it without knowing it was there.
The red hue of my magic touched the outside layer and collided into it with a loud snap. The blue magic surrounding the space let out a wave of energy, rippling through the air and rolling over our ears like a drum was being struck again and again.
Then it was gone. The magic disappeared once more along with my own. We stepped right into a hidden space that was never meant to be found.
Alina came over to stand next to me as I let down my hand. “We can’t break the spell,” she said. “Riley can fight back against it but we can’t break it. We’ll never get down beneath the stones if we don’t find a way to lift the magic protecting it.”
Lothar tapped his sword on the dirt ground, trying to think of a solution. “Riley, we might need the help of your friend.”
“I’ll ask Adeline. But she has her hands full right now with that luxra witchling disappearing.”
“This might be a greater concern to her than you realize. If what Alina suspects is true, the Dolch Erbe found a way to transmit their ancient luxra witchling into the body of her friend. What was her name?”
“Margaux Carville.” My magic soaked back into my body. The only reason I was able to protect any of them was because of the vixra blood running through my veins. It made my magic more powerful. And it helped me stop the traps from doing too much damage. If I hadn’t been there, the silver beams of light might have killed all of the Northern Vontex. Jake wasn’t entirely wrong when he said I was useful to have around.
“It’s still just a theory,” Alina said. “We won’t know for sure until we get down there and do some testing. Which I doubt the traps will permit. We have to get rid of them somehow.”
“With Adeline’s vixra magic, that’s how,” Lothar added.
The whispers began to creep up on us again, talking through the trees and tempting us to know more. My skin erupted in goosebumps at the thought of what the Dolch Erbe did to them. How they died here and why their spirits became eternally trapped? Did Margaux’s spirit die along with them when the ancient luxra from under the ritual site took over her body?
“We need to go,” Lothar said as the stones rattled. “We don’t know if these woods are protected by more magic and we have to find a clearing to get out of here.”
“Why ?” I asked.
“Vixra tunnels are destructive in small spaces. Only the vixra are skilled enough to use them indoors. We need to find a large clearing.”
“We’ll do better in finding one if we shift and search separately,” Jake suggested.
“Not separately. Alina, you go with Jake. I’ll take Riley with me. Meet back here in a few minutes.”
Alina and Jake shifted into their lycan forms and ran off into the woods.
“Are you sure that’s the best idea?” I asked. “This place has gotten many lycan killed over the centuries.”
“The Dolch Erbe did the killing,” he said. “Not the forest.”
“That we know of.”
“Shift, Riley. We need to get out of here.”
I sighed and took a step away from him, shifting into my lycan form better and faster than I ever had before. It was getting easier and less painful every time I did so. In fact, I rarely felt the pain unless I let the shifting happen too slowly. And I wasn’t about to slack off with Lothar watching me. I wanted him to know that his former initiate had the potential to become a master.
He shifted beside me and we took off into the woods, scanning the area in search of a clearing large enough to open up a vixra tunnel and go home. I knew we were on a mission. We needed to find a way to get back before anyone saw us. Or before we ran into someone we didn’t want to see. Someone who might want to do us harm and had the ability to do so. I tried to take comfort in the thought that Dirk wouldn’t kill me if he was watching nearby. Our lives being linked was a sort
of insurance policy that he wouldn’t do too much harm. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t harm Lothar. The thought made me acutely aware of everything around me. I sniffed the air for anything I could smell and listened for footsteps that might approach us as I ran over the random brush of the forest in search of a large enough space to open a vixra tunnel. I stopped dead in my tracks as a single smell drifted through my nostrils and alerted me to danger. My paws dug into the ground and I lifted my snout. Lothar did the same. I couldn’t speak to him. Even so, he seemed to instinctively know. Someone was watching us. But it wasn’t Dirk.
Lothar lowered his head and growled as the cool night air tumbled in white vapor from his mouth. His eyes glowed in the darkness. It would be enough to ward off even the toughest of men. Our only problem was that our enemies were rarely mere mortal men.
Leather appeared on Lothar’s back and he returned to his human form in the blink of an eye. He withdrew his sword and listened harder for whatever was lurking in the shadows. I stood behind him still in my lycan form. But I wasn’t about to just sit back like I was helpless. I let my crowning magic roll out of my body. It surrounded Lothar on the ground and swept over the forest floor like a protective fog, ready to lash out at intruders.
“Unshift,” Lothar ordered me.
I did as he said and shifted back into my human form, making sure the dagger was in my hand and I was ready for whatever might be lurking in the woods. My magic continued rolling around the thick trees. I could still feel the vixra blood churning inside of me. It was getting weaker. I already used up so much of my magic. But it was still there. Just enough to enhance my senses. I closed my eyes and let the magic inside my body be my guide. It was like an extension of my form, sending me signals as it touched the forest floor and rolled through the trees. Telling me exactly what was nearby and if it was a threat.
A woman ran through the woods. The long tails of her dress dragged behind her getting drenched in the dirt and rustled by twigs. When I opened my eyes I saw a figure in the distance in a thick cloak. There was a long ivory wand in her hand. The same one that Dirk held in his hand when he emerged from the coffin in my dream.
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