I shift back slightly and bump into Darius. After I nod to the proceedings below, I lift the scepter and start to take aim, but Darius shakes his head and lowers it.
“Watch,” he mouths.
I narrow my eyes. “Why?” I mouth back.
“See. Learn.”
I don’t understand why we should until he mouths again.
“So no one else.”
So no one else can try to finish the job.
“Destroy everything,” I mouth.
Them, the altar, everything. It all had to go.
“Too risky.”
True enough because if my actions somehow cause the volcano to erupt, that could be devastating, and so many more could die than just the cainians. I will not lose sight of the bigger picture because of my revenge. Yes, it's imperative that the cainians die, all of them, but almost even more important is ensuring that they don't bring Cain back.
But we can’t wait long.
An incantation starts. I have no idea what they’re saying. It’s not a language I recognize. The cainian who put down the cloth now climbs onto the altar and lays back. He puts his hands onto his chest.
One of the cainians on the side leans forward. I can’t see from this angle what he’s doing, but when he draws back, there’s a huge gash in his brother’s arm. Black blood gushes from the wound and stains the tablecloth.
The cainian opposite does the same. The cloth is quickly becoming drenched in blood. The one bitten doesn’t react at all to the bites. His chest rises and falls, so he’s breathing yet.
For now.
I glance at the others, none of them are talking, and neither is the one on the side I can see. The only one saying the incantation is the one being bitten. Interesting.
The others move forward, and I can’t see the body anymore. Without warning, the stench of death fills the air, and when they draw back, all that is left of the cainian is the blood absolutely saturating the altar, so much so that blood splatters onto the ground, staining the rocks. Oh, and bones. A perfect skeleton. No skin, muscles, clothes, nothing.
I shudder as the bloodstained cloth is suddenly white again. All of the blood is pooling on the ground and forms a large solid bubble that slams into the altar.
It’s not an altar.
It’s a tomb.
Cain must be inside.
I start forward to destroy all of it, but Darius again pulls me back.
“If you kill them, you might just speed up the process for Cain to return,” he whispers.
I wince. With the cainian’s death, there’s utter silence in the room. Even though his whisper is as quiet as can be, it’s still far too loud.
As if they’re many bodies with one mind, the cainians, all eight that remain, turn to look up at us. Yes, we want them dead, but not for the sake of the ritual. If I kill them here, in this close proximity, with the overcharged scepter, who knows? I just might give the ritual exactly what it needs.
Which means we have to draw them out of here.
I stare at Darius. There’s only one thing to do right now.
Run.
Chapter 29
The witch is fast, faster than I am, but the cainians are even faster. They’re able to leap up onto the ledge and are racing down the tunnel toward us.
I’m ready to blast then when Darius yanks my arm and pulls me down a fork in the tunnel. We continue running. I have no idea where we’re heading, and if this leads to a dead end… we’ll be the ones who end up dead.
“Stop worrying so much,” Darius mutters.
“How do you—”
“Your thoughts are weighing you down.”
“Impossible.”
I glance behind and suppress a shriek as the closest cainian tries to slap me into the side of the tunnel. With how monstrously huge their beast form is, it’s surprising that they can even fit into the tunnel.
Hmm.
“Do you think that’s smart?” Darius asks, but I’m already doing it. Instead of blasting the cainian, the blow strikes the tiny space between us on the tunnel. The floor melts away, burning, the magna beneath molten and flowing like a river. The cainian’s swift pace means he can’t stop, and he falls into the magma.
Molten magma. Not at all far beneath us. I glower at Darius. “Did you know it was so close?”
“I honestly thought the magma was even closer to the summit,” He admits.
I throw up my hands, but now isn’t the time to argue.
Darius and I keep backing up, but the crack in the ground is growing, widening, spreading. I swear it's racing toward us instead of backing toward the other cainians, and the realization that they're racing away has me even more worried.
The witch mutters a curse. “I think—”
“No time to think.” I point the scepter upward and let out a tiny blast. The tunnel ceiling falls down on us, but that’s a small price to pay to have an escape route.
Darius reaches for me, but I shake my head. “You climb up first.”
“No.”
“And then pull me up.”
He glowers at me, but there's no time to argue, and he jumps and grabs the ledge. Up he goes, his legs dangling before he brings himself fully upward.
The heat from the molten magna that is bubbling up and over the edge of the still-widening crack races toward me. I jump, and Darius grabs my wrist. He yanks me up, and I’m sitting beside him, almost in his lap, my head resting on his shoulder as I struggle to control my breathing.
“Do you think we killed that one?” he asks, rubbing my back.
I don’t know if I hate or appreciate his calmness because I am anything but calm right now.
“No way,” I say, drawing away from him. “The blast didn’t hit him.”
“Great.”
“We have to find the others.”
He stands and helps me up. “Which way?”
We’re in another tunnel. I do my best to slow my breathing, to try to think, to shut out the loud flow of the magna not that far beneath us.
And that’s when I hear it.
The incantation.
The other cainians returned to their ritual.
Without saying anything, we both race back toward the massive room and come to a dead end.
Darius recharges the scepter, and I blast open a hole in the tunnel. We’re above the ledge, but it’s not a far drop, and I jump down. Darius lands beside me.
Sure enough, there’s another cainian on the table. The others are devouring him. Two have sacrificed themselves. Two of the six needed.
Why? Why have the cainians waited until their numbers dwindled so much to attempt to bring back Cain? Why hadn’t they brought him back long before now?
I wish it was because the world could only face so much evil at any one point in time. The thought of Cain and his offspring running around, creating chaos and panic and fear all over the Earth, is terrifying. At least it won't become reality.
Because Cain won’t come back.
But if he does…
No. I can’t think like that.
Darkness passes overhead, blotting out the moon. I glance up to see a shooting star cross in front of the moon.
No. It’s not a shooting star. I’m not sure what it is.
“The hour has come, brothers, as we foresaw!” the one who killed Mason says. “The star has returned!”
What star?
“The same star that shone down on the night that Cain killed his brother, the same star that shone each dark night that we were first born, the same star that has not shone in all that time now shines tonight. Perhaps this same star shone the night Cain was born, and now, it will shine again for his rebirth!”
The bones are turning to ashes and mix with the collected blood seeping into the altar, changing the color from black to a strange silver that matches the glow from the strange star.
“We’ve tried so many times before,” another says, “but you can feel it, can’t you? This star, its power, that
is what we’ve been missing.”
“We sacrificed one hundred of our numbers in Mount Vesuvius,” the brother’s murderer says. “That hadn’t been enough, and even if we had sacrificed us all, that still would not have sufficed, but this star… this star…”
He holds out his arms so even more of the starlight can shine on his body. I swear he's growing taller and probably stronger and more powerful too. I gulp. There's my answer. They have tried before, but they hadn’t succeeded. Based on Morgana’s fear, I think she knows the truth as they do.
This time, Cain will return, but only if Darius and I fail.
“We came so close with Laki,” another says as he moves to climb onto the altar.
Darius leans closer to me. “Iceland,” he murmurs so lowly I can hardly hear him. The cainians are far too involved in their proceedings to realize we’re lurking nearby. “The eruption lasted for eight months. The gases killed so many crops and livestock that there was a famine throughout Europe. That same famine helped to spark the French Revolution.”
“Because nothing good can come about from anything they touch,” I mutter.
“We have to kill them.”
“Right now.”
“I don’t want them to die in this room, though,” he says.
“Neither do I.”
I eye the star. It’s far too high up in the atmosphere for me to be able to strike it, but it might cause enough chaos on the cainians part to get them to scatter. The star comes and goes apparently. If we can’t kill them all, perhaps we can stall them long enough to make it so the ritual can’t come to completion. Morgana said an hour, right? It has to be half up by now.
Unless Morgana didn’t realize about the star. And just how powerful is it? Because the shine from it is now touching me despite my hiding spot, and I feel… different. Darker somehow. My rage and anger, all of my emotions that I’ve been desperate to repress so I can focus on the task at hand are rising to the surface, and the desire to kill them all is so overwhelming that I’m aiming with the scepter before I realize what I’m doing.
No. I can’t kill them. Not yet. Not here. In this place, their blood and bones will be the drink and food Cain needs to return to life. If I could get them away from this room and destroy the altar…
Yes.
I blast toward the star. The cainians shriek, scattering about, and I grin and hold out the scepter toward Darius.
“Recharge,” I murmur.
But he doesn’t.
Worried, I glance over my shoulder. A cainian who is on fire from the magma is lifting Darius into the air and into the tunnel we dropped from. Quickly, I scramble back up into the tunnel and climb to my feet. Darius is in between the cainian and me, and I can’t quite get a good angle.
“Leave him alone!” I shout. “It’s me you want!”
The incantation down below has stopped. Because they’re feasting on the third one? Or because they heard me?
The cainian on fire grins. The flames are traveling down his arm toward Darius, who has been throwing arcane blasts at the enemy even though it doesn’t hurt him.
I throw the scepter up, catch it above my shoulder, and throw it like a javelin. It pierces the cainian off-center between his eyes. He shrieks and releases Darius.
After backing up a few steps, I race forward, jump, and kick the cainian in the chest, my hands gripping the scepter. My kick bounces me back, and the force is thankfully enough for me to yank the scepter free. The cainian lashes out, but Darius blasts the scepter, and I, in turn, blast and kill the cainian. His entire body is engulfed by flames before he disintegrates into ashes, the particles falling into the magma that seeps into the rocks.
Darius seems to be a little charred but otherwise all right, and I race back to the opening. The cainians are gone, but judging from the amount of spilled blood, the alter glowing now from the top toward the bottom, three or maybe even four cainians have been sacrificed. The light from the star spills onto the altar, the illumination somehow dark and not bright. My stomach churns. There are either four or five cainians left, with only two or three needed for the sacrifice to be complete.
But where are they?
I drop down onto the ledge and leave the scepter with Darius. Swiftly, I climb down the rock wall, and Darius tosses me the scepter.
“Come on down,” I urge.
He shakes his head and zaps the scepter. It’s humming again, almost growing too hot for me to hold.
There are three tunnels, and three cainians stalk toward me, one in each.
“Six o’clock,” Darius calls.
I whirl around to see a fourth.
“Any others?”
“No.”
One might be lurking somewhere, but I can’t focus on that. I’m pinned in, and I have to kill three more without their blood or body parts mixing with the offering at the altar.
Should be a piece of cake, right?
I am so never eating cake again.
“Come on at me, boys,” I say, shifting to the side and backing up so I can see all four of them.
The one to my right, the one that had been behind me hisses.
“Whoops. Sorry. You can come at me too, girl.”
She's not amused, but it's one of the others who reacts. He jumps into the air and turns into his wolf-tiger hybrid. I stand my ground, waiting to dive to the side as long as possible. He lands near the wall, his claws scraping against the rock floor, and he takes off at me. I slam the scepter against the wall as hard as I can above his head, once, twice, three times. The wall crumbles a bit, and then huge rocks fall and bury him. Before he can recover, I blast him with the scepter's magic.
Two killed. Three or four sacrificed.
I eye the two male cainians. Neither is the one who killed my brother, and I just know he's still alive yet. Two killed. Three sacrificed. Four alive yet. Three stalk me, and my brother's murderer is unaccounted for.
Wonderful. Terrific. Fan-bloody-tastic.
But maybe I shouldn’t complain. They’ve been easy enough to kill so far. Things could be worse.
The female walks over to the two males. They hold hands and begin to chant.
Uh, what is this? What are they doing? They’re marching forward, heading toward the altar, so I can’t attack them here. Damn! Do they know I won’t risk it?
“Darius!” I shout. “Do not let them!”
“How am I supposed to—”
“Figure it out!”
I race down the tunnel the female came from. Darius’s arcane blasts won’t kill them, but it should disrupt them enough that they can’t continue the ritual. Maybe they need all of the ones yet living to be there for it. Regardless, I’m going after the one I can kill away from the altar. It’s imperative that I try to kill them removed from it. This has nothing to do with revenge.
And yet, it does.
I keep coming to forks in the tunnels, and I'm picking at random. I have no way to know if I'm heading down deeper in the volcano or climbing higher, and I'm picking right and then left and then right again, so I'm starting to feel a little dizzy from zigzagging.
“Looking for me?”
I come up short and slowly turn around, coming face to face with Mason’s killer.
“I didn’t,” he says.
“Didn’t what?” I snap as I hold up the scepter.
“Kill Mason or Gracie,” he says patiently.
“You had his ring!”
"Yes, but that's because Kaneva likes to keep mementos of those she kills. Sometimes hearts or livers… After she dated Van Gogh, she had a period where she collected ears."
“Why my brother’s ring?”
“Because she wanted you to have it.” He holds it out for me.
I blink, utterly confused. Of course I want the ring.
Wait. I thought I put the ring on my thumb when he first gave it to me to hold.
My glove prevents me from seeing if I'm wearing it. I'm so amped up that I can't tell if I'm wearing it. Before I
can feel if it's there, the cainian yanks the scepter out of my hands and brings it up to his mouth. He's going to try to destroy it!
I slip on my silver knuckles and yank out my gun and angel blade. The shots do nothing, but the angel blade does cut his skin even if the wounds aren’t deep enough to make him bleed.
His teeth that are more like fangs clang against the scepter. A blast of magic flies out, striking me backward. I go down onto one knee. My chest feels so tight, and I can’t breathe. Tears fill my eyes. Everywhere hurts so badly that I worry that I’m dying.
The cainian had been flung back too. I blink back the tears, force myself to stand, and grab the scepter. It looks worse for wear, that’s for sure, but the edge is still tight.
The cainian stares at me with hatred in his eyes. The magical blast affected him even more than it had me for whatever reason, and I point the scepter under his chin.
“Whether or not it was your hand, you had a role in their deaths just the same.”
“Go ahead, Rebel. Kill me. The ritual is nearly complete.” He grins. His teeth are covered with blood, making him look even more monstrous. “Just know that each kill you make changes you, blackens your soul, and turns you even more into a killing machine. You might be only human, but even humans can do terrible things. Just look at your serial killers. Not all of them were secretly paranormal creatures. And your kill count? It’s only going to rise and rise and rise…”
“Plus one,” I murmur as I jab the scepter into his throat. I yank it back forcefully, and black blood gushes out. His body falls to the ground, and something tiny clings to the ground. The ring.
I grab it and peer inside. This one is Gracie’s ring.
I tuck it into my pouch and race back the way I came. At least I think I’m heading the right away. Just how extensive are these tunnels? How big is this godforsaken volcano?
Eventually, I hear Darius shouting and the cainians cursing, and I follow their voices to reenter the altar room.
There are only two cainians left.
Darius can’t have killed one, so another sacrificed themselves. Four have been sacrificed.
Two remain alive. All I have to do is kill one more. One more death. That’s it. Then, we can be free of the worry about Cain coming back to life.
Hunter's Revenge: A Mayhem of Magic World Story (Rebel, Supernatural Bounty Hunter Book 2) Page 19