When we reached the warehouse, all three wagons pulled to a stop about a quarter mile out. I spoke to the leads for each group and re-affirmed the plan before we all broke into a jog toward the warehouse. As we reached the outskirts, the first three teams broke off and went in opposite directions to set up a perimeter. As we made it closer to the main building, one team broke off heading toward the docks and the other two headed toward a small cluster of storage buildings. Our teams outside were now set in place and ready to make sure our way out was completely protected.
We continued on, heading directly for the main building. I started to grow uneasy having not seen a single person outside moving between the buildings. We knew that this particular dock only received two shipments a day, but the workers should still be milling around waiting for a shipment to come in. I signaled to the team following us that they would breach the entrance, and we would enter the building first.
They moved into position, and Robert blew the door inward with a burst of air magic from his gift. Sarah and I rushed through the newly opened hole, followed by the other team. I coughed a few times as we ran through the thick cloud of splinters and dust. Moving quickly down the main hallway, we stopped just short of the first intersected hallway. James and Robert moved past us to clear the space. Sarah and I then hastened around the corner and continued running, sprinting quickly past the darkened offices where we had grabbed Sam and into the main warehouse space. I tossed a ball of fire into a vacant space in the rafters, and used my gift to fix the light into place. The blue light illuminated the entire warehouse. I took two more steps before I registered what I was seeing and came to a sliding halt.
Sarah and James slid to a stop with me. James reached out with an arm to stop Robert just before he would have stepped into what was in front of us. Robert and James took a step back, creating a defensive position around us. Each of them focused on watching a different part of the room to make sure it was secure.
I still could not quite believe what I was seeing. Sarah and the other Lycan, James, both let out a low growl at almost the exact same time. I could tell that the smell for them was just as powerful as the sight was for me.
I could see the tension in her posture when she said, “I think we found the workers.”
I kept looking around the warehouse, still not entirely taking in what I knew I had seen. I had to calm myself down before saying, “I think we have a very, very, big problem on our hands.”
I heard a low grunt of acknowledgment from one of our team members before he said, “That might be an understatement.”
It was hard to tell exactly what had happened, and there was blood, so much blood.
From a pillar in the center hung a huge inverted cross. I could only assume that it was the cross Father Thomas had commissioned from the holy land. I was also sure that this is not what he had in mind when he purchased it. A circle of dockworkers lay dead, encircling the pillar, directly below the cross. The circles of workers then grew larger the further away from the pillar they lay. All the workers had been lined up in exact spacing. They were perfectly spaced out and must have been holding hands at some point to have achieved the connected appearance they had even after falling to the ground.
From what I could see, it looked as if they had all slit their own throats and fallen to the ground right where they had been standing. They must have been commanded to do this by the Fallen in charge. The workers must have been enthralled for some time to follow that type of instruction. Now we had to figure out exactly what commanding them to slit their throats had accomplished.
Normally, a Fallen only had two uses for humans. They either turned them or fed on them. This was something much, much different. It had all the markings of a blood spell. I wondered if it had been completed yet and what the end result would be. A sacrifice this large would have an equally large result. I knew for a fact that, whatever the result was, it was going to be something that we would not like. The blood had leaked over the entire floor, creating a sticky lake. We had stopped just short of it when we ran into the room. That was good, considering that we probably did not enter the active field of the ritual blood spell laid out before us.
I heard a slight scraping sound and looked up toward the rafters only to find them nearly full of the Fallen. I was amazed at how quiet they always were. I was sure the scraping had been deliberate to draw our attention up toward them. One of the Fallen stepped forward to the next set of rafters closely followed by a second Fallen that stopped one rafter behind him. All of the other Fallen remained closer to the back of the warehouse. I could see them looking down at us with interest.
I started to pull power into myself; I had a feeling that I was going to need it soon. The Fallen that had moved the closest to us was dressed in an immaculate suit. It looked to be cut in a more traditional European style. It was the type of suit that would be hard to come by here in America. I could only assume this was Dimitre. The Fallen standing behind him was dressed to match, only in a much less expensive fashion. The second Fallen, I suspected, had to be the infamous Mr. Frost.
Dimitre looked down on us with a smile. “I am so glad members of the Ascendancy could join us here tonight. You are in store for something special, something inspirational.”
Not sure what to say, we all remained silent and watched Dimitre as he continued to address us. “We have worked so hard to get to where we are tonight. You would not believe how much work an undertaking of this magnitude takes. Not surprisingly, the work takes even longer when the Ascendancy spends its days burning down our nests. Finding enough disposable humans to turn without being noticed became an undertaking of its own. Somehow, it never really clicked for you what we were doing. It was not until you found this place that you had even come close to our true operation. Now you are just in time to get to watch the fruits of our labors. The Ascendancy is going to bear witness to something that even they have never seen.”
We started to slowly back out of the room, trying to buy ourselves a little extra space if we had to start fighting. Dimitre seemed content to let us move toward the exit. I stopped again on the threshold of the room we were in, and as soon as I did, he started speaking again.
His voice dripped with a Russian accent that held only disdain for us. “It’s not easy to enthrall so many people you know. I had to fight each and every one of them for control, but over time, they all wore down. It took me over a year to get them all complacent to my wishes. Once they were, we still wanted to wait to make sure everything would go to plan. Who would have thought that the Brotherhood, the haters of magic, would be the ones to force our hand. When they came to you for help, we knew it was time to act. When you escaped our warehouse last night, I knew we did not have much time left. I hope you will stay with us to see what happens next. Even I am not sure exactly what it will be, but my employer has told me it will be quite spectacular.”
With that, he and the rest of the Fallen moved away from us to the other side of the warehouse, next to the large open windows. It looked like they might be anticipating the need to make a quick exit. We stood still by the doors on the opposite side of the warehouse. The bodies and blood of the dockworkers spread out between us. Neither of our groups was willing to engage the other over the corpses in front of us.
I looked over toward Sarah and nodded. She looked back at James, and they both started to shift into their beast form and drew their swords. James had joined with us about fifteen years ago, but neither of us knew him well. Sarah and I had not spent much time around the base. Most of our time was spent out in the field hunting Demons. I did not have a good read on him yet or what he was capable of in a fight. I did have full confidence that Sarah would not have selected him to come with us if he was not one of the best.
I looked over my shoulder at Robert and felt him start to pull power into himself. I was happy that he was here with us tonight. Robert was over five hundred years old and had seen more battles than I would care to imagine. He had be
en the one leading the attacks on the Fallen’s nests before Sarah and I were brought in to help. I let him gather as much as he could and then started to pull more into myself. The feeling of impending disaster hung over the warehouse like a fog.
The inverted silver cross hanging in front of us started to glow and pulse a dark red light. It continued to grow in brightness and intensity, pulsing faster and faster. Just as I thought the pulsing light was going to drive me mad, the red light flashed from the center of the cross once more, brighter than before, and the cross began to melt down the pillar, dripping onto the first circle of bodies below.
As the molten silver touched the feet of the men in the first circle, they started to rise up off the floor. As they stood, they joined hands around the pillar in front of them. Once all five of them had linked hands, the next circle of ten men started to rise up. Once those ten dockworkers had risen and linked hands, the next larger circle of twenty men rose to their feet. Then finally, the last circle of forty men rose and joined hands. They stood like that with hands joined in concentric circles for what seemed like forever.
One at a time, the dockworkers dropped each other’s hands and looked up toward the heavens. A scream filled the air around us. At first, it was one voice, then it sounded like hundreds. It continued to get louder and higher pitched until it reached an ear-splitting crescendo. All at once, it stopped and all the bodies fell back to the ground. All of them landing and resting in the exact same positons as before on the cold warehouse floor.
I had a picture stuck in my mind of a group of people making snow angels. The difference being these were corpses lying in what was left of their own sticky blood. The corpses lay on the floor covered in blood, their mouths unhinged from whatever forced them to scream out into the night. If that was not enough to think about, it seemed our Fallen friends had decided that discretion was the better part of valor. They started to make a quick exit out the back window. With what can only be described as a saucy salute, Dimitre was the last to leave. That meant that whatever was going to happen from the spell that was cast here was going to happen now. The fact that he would leave before seeing the culmination of his work let me know just how bad it was probably going to be.
The largest ring of bodies started to sizzle slightly, the blood on the floor bubbling around them. Slowly, the bodies were either being dissolved or sucked into the ground below. When all of the corpses had disappeared, the blood that remained pulled itself toward the next ring of bodies. Then those bodies started to bubble and disappear just as the first ring had. The thing that really stood out to me was where the outer ring of bodies had been. It was completely clean, devoid of any evidence of what had happened. Forty people had slit their throats at the outer ring, and all the blood was gone as if it had never been there in the first place.
The next ring of bodies had finished disappearing, and the blood again pulled itself inward toward the center of the room. The blood was now starting to glow and pulse with an eerie red light. It was as if the blood had taken on a life of its own. The next set of bodies started to dissolve faster than I would have thought possible. We could not wait any longer to find out what was going to happen when the spell ended. Sarah and I needed to stay, but I wanted everyone else to get out as fast as possible.
I looked over to Robert and issued the command. “It’s time for the two of you to head back to base. When you get outside, if you see any signs of the Fallen, send one of the teams to track them. Hopefully, one of our perimeter teams spotted which direction they headed. Gather the rest of the Ascended and head back to base, we will meet you there. Go as fast as you can. Whatever happens here, we will not be able to stop it. Sarah and I will only stay to observe, and then we will meet you back at the base.”
With more than a little bit of annoyance, I noticed James look to Sarah for confirmation of the order. Robert had already launched himself into the rafters and was running across them toward the window the Fallen had exited through. Sarah gave a slight nod of her head, and James jumped and was off at full speed to catch up with Robert.
The blood again pulled itself closer to the center of the room. Now it was thick enough to entirely cover the remaining five bodies. This time, as the blood started to bubble and boil, the light started to dim. That wasn’t quite right. The light started to pull in on itself, leaving only darkness in its wake. The darkened blood started to pool around the central pillar until there was only a black circle on the ground. It was as if all the blood had poured into this swirling mass of darkness, or had it been sucked into it by something. The whirlpool of darkness continued to pull in on itself, spinning faster and faster.
I stepped back, and Sarah stayed right by my side. I focused on creating the strongest illusion that I could. My goal was to make it look as if the doors to this part of the warehouse were still closed even though we remained in the open doorway. I looked over at Sarah and could tell she already knew that whatever came from this spell, my illusion might not stop its vision.
She gave me a little wink and said, “Don’t worry. If whatever it is can see us, I’ll be the first to run.”
I winked back at her. “So you would just leave me here to die?”
Her wolf’s face smiled back at me, showing a few too many teeth. “That’s right. I only have to be faster than you.”
We both laughed, and I started to pour as much magic into the illusion as I could.
The swirling mass of darkness moved around the pillar, continuing to pull in on itself. It continued to spin, sucking all the light from the room with it. The darkness seemed to grow outward from the center of the spinning pool. The seeping mass of blackness stopped spinning all at once, and the room seemed to grow silent, as if all the sound had been sucked out of the warehouse and down into the hole created by the spell.
The light started to creep back into the room, and with it came the head of a giant serpent. At first, all I could see was the tip of a head poking out of the inky blackness on the ground. It started to emerge from the pool of darkness wrapping itself around the pillar. It was hard to rectify what my eyes were seeing; I almost could not turn my thoughts into words. Out of the darkness emerged a massive snake. I had never heard of or seen anything like it. Much like Cerberus, this herculean creature had three massive heads. Each head was almost more like that of a dragon than reptile. The eyes of each head were different in color. Each of the hardened bone nodules around the creature’s eyes were also colored. Each head had bones protruding from its sides and back that had a slight sheen to them, letting me know they were razor sharp. The bone nodules could be used to shield the eyes from attack when the creature used one of its heads to defend itself.
Once the entire body had emerged, the tip of the creature’s long tail clearing the floor, the pool of blood immediately closed in on itself until nothing was left, leaving the warehouse floor completely pristine, and leaving us with a huge monster to deal with. We watched as the serpent unfurled itself slowly from the pillar and then rose to a position like a cobra rising up in warning. Then, two arms seemed to almost grow from the serpent’s sides as the top half of it shimmered and turned into a female human torso.
I heard the slightest whisper from beside me as Sarah breathed the word, “Naga.”
I looked at Sarah for confirmation, and she mouthed to me asking if we should go. She pointed back down the hallway, and I knew she wanted to go, and there was no doubt in my mind that was the best course of action. But something inside me told me to stay. I wanted to watch this new creature for a little bit longer. I had never seen anything like it before. The heads were, to my best estimate, twenty feet off the ground, each of them big enough to swallow a man whole. All told, the creature had to be nearly fifty feet in length. I had one last look at the massive arms before they folded back into the sides of the Naga’s body. Each arm had to be eight feet or so in length, and I had the feeling they had the strength to do some serious damage. The creature in front of us let out a massive
hiss and started to shudder. I watched in horror as the serpent started to pull apart, the heads on each side straining to pull away from the middle. A shimmering cloud started to appear around the creature, then turned into a fog of darkness.
When the darkness dissipated, standing in front of us were three beautiful women. Their clothes were loose and looked to be made out of crisscrossed patterns of snakeskin. The bones that we’d seen above the snake’s eyes had transformed into intricate jewelry woven around their eyes and ears. The sharpened bones from the sides and back of their heads had turned into beautiful crowns. The women in front of us blinked and looked around the warehouse.
I noticed that the color of their bones when they had been a serpent became the color of their hair. One had hair of the darkest crimson, darker than the blood that had spilled here today. One had hair of dark blue, dark and clear from the depths of the sea. The last creature standing between the other two had hair shaded the darkest black of midnight. I knew that we had to go, but I could not pull my gaze away from them. I had been completely captivated by this new creature.
I was interested to find out how this massive three-headed serpent had turned into three separate women. I felt a slight pull on my arm from Sarah trying to snap me out of my fixation. I started to turn to follow Sarah out of the building, but then I heard one of them speak. “Sisters, we are free once again.” The words came out almost as a hiss, as if they still had the longer tongues of a snake. I looked at Sarah, and we ran as if the devil himself was on our heels.
9
John
Ascendancy Origins Trilogy Page 7