“If only they were that neurotic and forgetful,” Karena said. “All the books I have read state that they were as intelligent as humans, though in a different way. I wouldn’t count on them being stupid. They were known for their scheming ways, which because of their long lifespan, meant that they could plan for something centuries into the future, rather than decades like humans do.”
“Luckily, this is probably just some vampiric, skeletal hound, and not an actual vampire,” Hadrian said. He proceeded to annoy Tristan with the claw that he had found until Tristan snatched it from him.
Just the thought of a vampiric, skeletal hound on the loose scared Karena senseless. She couldn’t imagine coming face to face with one or a vampire. She knew from her studies that during the Vampire Regime, vampires and their corrupted, vampiric pets roamed the streets and terrorized people, including children and the elderly. She was glad that had all ended, and was a distant, painful memory in their textbooks and in the memory banks of their inherited genes.
Chapter 3
Moonlight seeped through the glass doors of his balcony. Asher tossed again in his bed. This time, he lay on his back. He couldn’t sleep. With his hands behind his head, he stared up at his bed’s canopy where he had meticulously sewn in by hand the constellations and the moon. But his eyes weren’t focused on them, not when his mind wandered.
On either side of him, the bed was empty as usual, but last night, it hadn’t been. He missed Karena already. He wanted her chilly presence next to him. The temperature change she created didn’t bother him, rather it excited and even soothed him, despite the initial discomfort it might cause if there were extreme drops. He hadn’t shared his bed with anyone in a while, and no one he had met was like Karena.
But what about the feud? Asher put his arms across his forehead and closed his eyes. They might not ever be together. Due to their opposing affinities, it would be deemed impossible to be in love with each other. Everyone would be outraged over the forbidden love. No one seemed to want peace anymore. They just wanted closure, however that was.
His thoughts roamed back to trying to figure out how that cherufe had escaped. No one knew how someone, other than Old Red’s handler, could coax the molten lava creature out of its metal bath and into the transporter truck. Only a Fire or a spell binder could’ve commanded the creature, but who would? And why?
Nothing made any sense. He and Karena had gone over the subject before, about how there was something fundamentally wrong with the feud because they always had suspects, but never any culprits for the murders and other grievous acts of violence. Perhaps if they uncovered, and subdued this person or group of people, the feud would end.
There was a soft sound from his balcony and the handle of the left door leading out to it twisted. The door opened, and Evelyn stepped in. Irritation flashed through him.
“Hey, I saw that your light was on as I passed by, so I figured that I would stop and visit for a few minutes,” she said, letting her blonde hair come loose from its messy bun.
She ruffled her white wings, which were tucked behind her. Her wings’ feathers stood up and stuck out like bed hair, fluffy and begging to be smoothed. She was wearing a slinky top, tight pants, and sandals.
“I’m going to have to ask you to use the front door next time, and to knock,” Asher said, getting to his feet, and walking around his four poster bed to put on a shirt. He was only in his pajama pants.
“Why?” she asked. She wrapped one of her wings around her shoulder, and she pretended to inspect it, even though it looked fine.
Evelyn had returned to Archelm City only weeks ago. She had been a childhood friend of his before her family had left to travel the Sundarin Nation and even what lay outside of it. Upon her return, they had hit it off immediately, but he wasn’t interested in being anything more than friends with her. Her lofty attitude turned him off.
“Because.”
“You’ve been fine so far with me dropping by.”
“Which was okay until last night.”
“Oh,” she said. Her wings drooped, revealing her disappointment.
She was the talk of the Fire and Air district, and over a dozen, single guys had already tried asking her out. Tall, slender, with blonde hair, flawless skin, and a heavenly face, Evelyn was stunning. He pulled on his shirt, and went to the double doors of his balcony and stepped out onto the small deck. She followed him. One of her wings brushed against his arm and shoulder.
“So you have a girlfriend now?”
“Yes,” he said. He gazed out across his backyard, and then up to the stars that twinkled above. It looked like milk had been spilled onto the sky’s dark canvas. People called it the Breath of God, and others said that it was part of the galaxy that they lived in.
“Who?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“But I’m your friend.”
“I know that, but I’m not ready to tell you or anyone. My relationship with my girlfriend has only just begun and I don’t want there to be talk.”
“Let me guess, she’s a witch or a nonmagical woman.”
Asher looked at her and noted the anger in her grey eyes.
“Evelyn, you already know that it wouldn’t work out between us.”
“And how would you know? You haven’t dated me, and from what other women have said, you haven’t dated anyone for a very long time. You have to give people a chance. It’s not always love at first sight.”
“I don’t feel anything when I look at you or talk to you. Of course I have a sense of companionship, but that’s it, nothing more. I know what it’s like to feel love, and when I’m with you, I don’t feel it.”
Unable to handle the rejection, Evelyn threw herself into his arms to kiss him. He dodged her kiss, grabbed her, and in one sudden movement, he tossed her over the balcony as gently as he could. Because she had wings and due to how he had thrown her, she recovered before hitting the ground. She flew up, and as testament to her stubbornness, she landed on the railing of the balcony.
“Don’t try me,” Asher said. “I’m a nice guy, but you crossed a line with me. I’m in a relationship, and you need to use the front door during and after daylight hours if you’re going to come around to my place.”
“I can get any guy I want; so why don’t you want me?!” Evelyn shouted.
He sighed, and put a hand to his forehead to still the headache that was coming on.
With tears flowing, and a snarl to her lips, Evelyn flew off with her wings beating as fast as they could. He had had no choice but to show her that he was serious. She was used to getting her way with guys. He couldn’t have her coming around when Karena stayed the night. It would be disastrous in more ways than one. He couldn’t put his relationship with Karena at risk because he had failed to set boundaries with his friends, particularly Evelyn who had wings and could enter through his bedroom’s balcony doors with ease.
Now he really couldn’t sleep. His hands clenched around the railing. Asher leaned forward and shook his head. How long did he really have with Karena before someone found out about their relationship? People were nosey, and angered easily, as Evelyn had shown that night. He sat down and reclined back in one of the lounge chairs on the balcony to watch for any shooting stars streaking across the sky, and to wait for drowsiness to take hold.
Chapter 4
Inside of his grandfather’s basement, within the dragon’s hoard of necromancer materials, Tristan stood waist-deep amongst towering piles of stuff. He drew his dirty sleeve across his forehead to sop up the sweat before it dripped into his eyes. After excavating for hours, he still hadn’t reached the floor where his grandfather had said that an ancient manuscript of powerful spells lay buried. Tristan had been pestering him nonstop for days to help him come up with a worthy enough spell to do away with Asher and to disfigure Hadrian for life. His grandfather had finally given in early that morning by telling him where to dig for his answer.
All around him, the mou
ntains of stuff teetered and sometimes avalanched as he worked his way to the floor. It was a necromancer’s paradise. Black blood oozed from a jewelry box next to him, and green, gooey slime frothed from a cracked jar. Papers and newspapers were strewn everywhere. For some reason, they were important to his grandfather.
Dirty, and covered in a myriad of disgusting fluids and bone dust, Tristan reached the bottom of the hard-packed, dirt floor of the basement. His hands patted the bare floor.
“Where is it?” he asked into the air.
“It’s there,” his grandfather rasped in his head.
Tristan withheld an irritated sigh. He had been trying to reach the floor for the entire morning now, and he was sweaty and tired. He sat back on his knees in the small space that he had made, and looked up at the seven-foot stacks around him. The thought that he would either be suffocated or crushed if one of them toppled skimmed across his mind without settling.
Roaches skittered in and out of the crevices in the piles, only to be devoured by a hungry tongue that protruded from the top of a vase lying on its side. Once the tongue had nabbed one of them, it slid back into the vase. Crunching sounds ensued from inside of it.
Tristan spied a glass spike near him. He carefully pried it from the stack that it was wedged in. With the spike, he raked the hard-packed floor. If his grandfather said that the manuscript was there, then it was there.
After some fruitless digging, he struck something that wasn’t dirt. It sounded like wood. Now full of hope, rather than doubt, he kept at it. Before long, he was able to brush away the dirt from what looked like a wood panel. The wood panel turned out to be the lid of a box. He lifted the box out of its dirt tomb. He pried open the lid, and there within lay the obsidian cover of the ancient manuscript that his grandfather had talked about. It was his grandfather’s prized possession, or at least, it was prized enough to be buried where it couldn’t be found. Runes faintly glowed all over the wooden box. They were there to keep the box and manuscript undetectable by roaming magical spells that a sorcerer or sorceress might use to find energy anomalies, which the book would definitely be emitting if it contained dark spells.
“When you are done with it, put it back immediately,” his grandfather whispered inside of his head.
Tristan felt his presence next to his right shoulder. It was sharp and cold.
“Where did you get it?”
“It’s a long story, but perhaps you will have the attention span to listen.”
Tristan stood up with it in his hands and went to the work table in the middle of the basement. If he was going to get rid of Asher, and then Hadrian, he would need the most powerful of spells to make sure that they suffered well and so that reversing the spell would be near impossible. He flicked open the book’s cover just as his grandfather began his storytelling. The pages, full of gruesome imagery and magic language, excited him, but he soon realized that the book was about banishing demons, not people, into the dark spiritual realm.
“But…. but…. Grandpa, these spells were used for demons and our kind. Look at the black robes and red eyes of some of these people. I thought you said that this book could work on regular people?”
“Yes, I did. As far as I know, they can be used on anyone or anything. Pick one that is suited for your level. These spells require an experienced necromancer to initiate, but perhaps I can help you with my presence alone. These ancient spells were used by pharaohs and magical people long ago in what is now a desert. With this book, they hurt our kind and the creatures that we like to summon and manipulate. But the book can be used either way because it can’t distinguish between good or bad, because that’s all it is, a book. Because they knew that they had a powerful weapon, and a failing civilization, they tried to hide this book from those like me, but I still found it deep underneath one of their burial pyramids.”
“How did you find it?”
“I used many methods, like remote viewing, searching historical texts, deciphering the hieroglyphs on their city walls, and even teleporting into other dimensions with just my soul to explore the insides of those pyramids. They are dangerous areas for the stupid, but not for me.”
His grandfather continued to ramble, mostly about his cunning ways. Tristan perused through the book. Some of the pictures changed as he flipped through them. The heavy, black, desert eyes blinked at him from the borders of the pages. He felt the pages press against the underside of his fingers. It was as though the book had a life force to it, but his grandfather had said that it was just a book, and nothing more. Nevertheless, a trace of trepidation swept through him. He shook the feeling away and determined that it was just his imagination. The spells in the book could be mastered by him, he was sure of it. Nothing was off limits or too great for him to conquer.
“Someone is here,” his grandfather hissed. “I told you not to invite anyone over. Why did you go against my wishes? No one should know where you live.”
“I didn’t invite anyone.”
“Don’t argue with me. I know you did. You want to destroy everything that I have gathered over the years.”
Tristan set the book down on the table, gingerly skirted past the towering mounds of necromancer materials in there, and leapt up the steps. His grandfather’s voice shouted and raged in his head. Paying no heed to his grandfather’s mood, he scurried up through the trapdoor, slammed it close, and put the rug over it. He looked at his hands and his clothes. They were filthy. Gravel crunched as someone pulled up to the house. Panic prickled his skin.
Tristan grabbed the faucet handle of the sink and wrenched it to the side. Hot water gushed from it. He lathered up his arms with soap. The dirt and whatever else that had been on his arms ran down the grimy sink and into the drain. Fists banged on the front door. The sounds echoed through the old house. He splashed water onto his face, and ran his fingers through his hair. He quietly padded to the door and cracked it open, fearing the worst.
Sean’s angry, green eyes pierced through the gap in the door.
“How did you find out where I lived?” Tristan asked. He internally slumped with relief. It was only Sean, not the police.
With a snarl, Sean snapped, “That’s easy. And damn, what a dump this is.”
“I’m fixing it up.”
“You’re not going to be able to do that on your own. It needs to be torn down”
“What did you come here for?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Karena since you’re one of her best friends.”
Anything having to do with Karena piqued Tristan’s interest. Instead of slamming the door in Sean’s face, Tristan opened the door, stepped out onto the porch, and closed the door behind him. He didn’t want Sean to get even a glimpse of what the inside of the house looked like.
“Hadrian won’t tell me what’s wrong with her or anything for that matter,” Sean said. “Has she told you why she stopped us in the Fire district? She made me and everyone on our side look like fools.”
Tristan had learned that Karena had put up an ice barricade between the two fighting sides, and had corralled Sean and the others with ice to stop them.
“She refused to fight Asher,” Sean said. His shoulders tensed up, and his hands balled up into fists.
Tristan bristled at this. It was a sore subject for him too.
“Has she gone soft? This feud isn’t a joke,” Sean continued.
Tristan shrugged and put his hands in his pockets, which was a mistake because he could feel the grit in them. “Karena has been under a lot of stress from work and life in general, lately,” Tristan said.
“My sister died in those fires that were started in the Earth district.”
“I realize that.”
“Hadrian seems to think that it’s okay what Karena did.”
“Hadrian doesn’t think much, so I’m surprised that he did use his brain for something. But honestly, Sean, Karena can’t do any wrong in my eyes, so you came here for nothing. She shouldn’t have been in the Fire distric
t, and I expressed that, but it was met with criticism. As far as your loss, I’m sorry for it.”
Sean’s eyes smoldered. “Karena is siding with those Fires, I know it. She needs to be taught a lesson. She stopped our fight in the Fire district,” he said.
“If you hurt Karena, you will meet the same fate as your sister.”
Sean blinked, and his mouth gaped open, but he recovered. He spat, “You talk pretty big for some dope that lives in this old, rotting house,” and flailed his arm to some of the dying woods by the side of the house, “out in the middle of nowhere. You’re just a wizard and nothing more.”
The boards of the porch creaked, but no one was walking on them.
“It would be best if you left now. And don’t you think about causing trouble for Karena.”
“Why would you care about her? She doesn’t like you. She’s not your girlfriend or anything.”
Tristan considered Sean before him. “Get going before you regret it,” Tristan said.
Sean smirked and his hands twitched. Tristan knew what he was trying to do, he was trying to summon the withered plants around the house, and even the ground itself to bend to his will and move in order to attack him. Sean frowned, and tossed his head from one side to the other. He put his right hand out, and with a look of immense concentration, tried again to summon up his powers in order to manipulate his surroundings so as to do damage to Tristan and the house. But he couldn’t. Sean looked at Tristan, stunned. His eyes searched Tristan’s face for answers.
“How is this possible?” Sean said. “I can’t use my powers here.”
“As I said, and for the last time, get going before you regret it,” Tristan said.
Due to the runes and active spells that had been put in place to conceal the energy signature that his grandfather’s necromancy materials created, the area around the house was dead energy-wise and would cancel out anyone’s powers. They made it so that the house was an undetectable island and a safe one at that.
Gaze of Fire: Sequel to Veins of Ice Page 3