by E. G. Foley
Table of Contents
The Black Fortress (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 6)
PART I
PROLOGUE: The Devil’s Own
CHAPTER 1. Palace Intrigues
CHAPTER 2. Fathers & Sons
CHAPTER 3. A Right Plum Lass
CHAPTER 4. A Momentous Announcement
CHAPTER 5. The Sorcerer-King
CHAPTER 6. The Empath
CHAPTER 7. Once a Guardian
CHAPTER 8. The Best of Men
CHAPTER 9. Vampire Recruited
CHAPTER 10. The Trouble with Shapeshifters
CHAPTER 11. The Underminer
CHAPTER 12. Achilles’ Heel
CHAPTER 13. The Pact
CHAPTER 14. Forbidden Waltz
CHAPTER 15. The Prophet
PART II
CHAPTER 16. Chosen
CHAPTER 17. The Unlikely Scholar
CHAPTER 18. In the Maze
CHAPTER 19. The Doubler
CHAPTER 20. The Double Agent
CHAPTER 21. An Uncanny Connection
CHAPTER 22. The Woman in the Walls
CHAPTER 23. An Excruciating Wait
CHAPTER 24. The Price of Freedom
CHAPTER 25. The Prisoner
CHAPTER 26. Djinni Out of the Bottle
CHAPTER 27. Fair Is Fair
CHAPTER 28. Revelations
CHAPTER 29. Goodbyes
CHAPTER 30. To Catch a Spy
CHAPTER 31. Dark Visions, Deepening Gloom
PART III
CHAPTER 32. The Making of a Gentleman
CHAPTER 33. Lightrider-in-Training
CHAPTER 34. Many Happy Returns
CHAPTER 35. A Heart-to-Heart
CHAPTER 36. The Fratricide
CHAPTER 37. Return to Gryphondale
CHAPTER 38. Bad Pennies
CHAPTER 39. The Battle of Griffon Castle
CHAPTER 40. The Temptation of Jake
CHAPTER 41. Call in the Cavalry
CHAPTER 42. The Training Simulation
CHAPTER 43. Open Sesame
CHAPTER 44. The Test
PART IV
CHAPTER 45. A Good Meal
CHAPTER 46. A New Mission
CHAPTER 47. The Snitch
CHAPTER 48. Scolded
CHAPTER 49. Betrayer Betrayed
CHAPTER 50. Gathering Allies
CHAPTER 51. Discovery by Moonlight
CHAPTER 52. Brood of Vipers
CHAPTER 53. Blue Waters
CHAPTER 54. The Night Watch
CHAPTER 55. Treachery
CHAPTER 56. A Hasty Exit
CHAPTER 57. War
CHAPTER 58. A Leap of Faith
EPILOGUE: The Devil’s Due
Coming Soon!
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THE GRYPHON CHRONICLES, BOOK SIX
THE BLACK FORTRESS
E.G. Foley
PART I
PROLOGUE
The Devil’s Own
Deep beneath the burning crater in the desert of Karakum, the demon Shemrazul sat in chains…
And waited.
Endlessly.
Rivers of lava sludging past his feet. Giant manacles of pure adamantine clamped around his ankles.
Forever.
But he had plans. And he dreamed. Hell was full of dreams. It was part of the torment.
Memories of his former estate persisted, seasoning his agony. Millennia ago, he had been pure spirit, one of the boundless Light Beings. He still remembered soaring over galaxies, flying past planets and suns in boundless exultation—free!—before this cruel, cruel injustice.
Now the only thing harder and more ancient than his chains was the demon’s hatred. Not even the screams of the doomed souls filling the forsaken lands around him cheered him anymore.
Soon. One day, he would be free again, he vowed, and that day was fast approaching. For, through the blackest of magic, Shemrazul had sired a son almost forty years ago.
He was determined that this creature should be of use to him.
Nathan, the Earl of Wyvern, had been born and bred for a purpose: to lead the warlocks of the Dark Druid brotherhood that had been founded centuries ago by Shemrazul’s loyal servant, Garnock, a medieval alchemist with an insatiable greed for supernatural powers.
Ah, good old Garnock the Sorcerer. Power-hungry fool. The Welsh wizard had been all too happy to work with—and ’ere long—for Shemrazul.
True, he made it worth the wizards’ while, but in return for his favors, he demanded their worship and total obedience.
Unfortunately, that was the source of his present dissatisfaction.
Zolond, the current Dark Master, was old now. Worse, he’d grown lazy and complacent.
But, far more seriously, Master Zolond was wavering in his loyalty of late, and that could never be allowed.
Oh, yes, Shemrazul was aware. Like the angel he had once been, as a demon, he could still read men’s hearts. Peer into their thoughts.
That was how he knew.
Master Zolond had been dallying with dangerous ideas ever since his battle three months ago against the Elder witch, Ramona Bradford.
This would not be tolerated. The old man must be made an example of. And so, it was time for a change of leadership among the Dark Druids.
New blood. His blood—Shemrazul’s son. His only comfort in this foul underworld, with its burning pits and sulfurous fumes.
Wyvern alone would not fail him.
Then the ancient chains clanked at Shemrazul’s feet and he unfolded his ruined, leathery wings, his long dragon tail uncoiling behind him as he rose to summon his Nephilim offspring.
They were rare on earth these days, the half-bloods. But when they were successfully created and survived their violent births, they were magnificent to behold: stronger, smarter, bigger, better than mere humans.
Proud and ruthless. Made in the image of their fallen-angel fathers, endowed with supernatural gifts.
Once, long ago, in a lost age before history began, the Nephilim had nearly overrun the Earth, ruling over humans with an iron fist, thanks to their innate superiority.
But then the Enemy had wiped them out from the skies, all the proud Nephilim. The Tyrant above had scoured all the demons’ half-blood children off the face of the earth with that unimaginable Flood, drowning their wondrous cities, their proud towers and palaces…
Such a howl had gone up from Hell that day that Shemrazul still shuddered to recall it.
Ah well. Maybe they’d never retake Heaven, but Shemrazul had a plan in place for how to claim the Earth.
All he needed was a little human cooperation—alas.
He hated it that he could do nothing without the help of those puny blood bags, those meat sacks, those dung beetles, those grubbing, scurrying, busy little ants: the humans. Oh, how he despised them, every one a mirror of his Enemy’s face.
At least his son was a little better than their kind.
Nathan, Shemrazul said into the black void of Hell’s sky. Come. I would speak with you.
* * *
Yes, Father. At that moment, Nathan, the Earl of Wyvern, was standing in the control room of the Black Fortress, talking to the engineer on duty.
But he paused mid-sentence, staring blankly at nothing for a second when he heard the demon’s voice inside his head.
He’d heard it there since he was a boy.
“Sir?” the engineer asked, puzzled. “You were saying?”
Wyvern blinked away his distraction, filled with the urgent need to obey.
He’d been showing the whole bridge crew how the small black cube—one of the pre-Floo
d artifacts of Atlantis he’d brought back from the Mediterranean—could be inserted into the control panel, adding considerably more electromagnetic power to the infernal mechanism that allowed the Dark Druids’ castle to jump from place to place undetected.
“This will extend our range and shorten the time it takes to rematerialize at our destination,” Wyvern concluded. “We’ll be better able to pinpoint our landing coordinates, as well.”
“Fascinating, sir… But how does it work?” the navigator asked, while the lieutenant marveled, looking on.
“I have no idea. But it does. That is all I care about,” Wyvern said, his voice as cold and low as ever. Then he nodded their dismissal. “As you were.”
All the tidy, gray-uniformed men stepped back and saluted, then returned to their duties as Wyvern left the bridge without delay, eager to find out what Shemrazul wanted.
He hoped the demon was not displeased with him. The Horned One was not the sort of father from whom any son would’ve wished to receive discipline.
As far as Wyvern knew, he had done nothing wrong of late—not since the Nightstalker debacle, anyway, when his unsanctioned plan to kill Jake Everton by sending phantom assassins after the boy had failed.
Shemrazul hadn’t seemed concerned about that, but Dark Master Zolond had scolded Wyvern afterward for attempting it.
The old man had called him rash and unthinking. Wyvern still smarted from the insults. “I will tell you when it is time to eliminate the boy!” the chief warlock of their brotherhood had snapped at him.
Wyvern growled at the memory. The thought of being called to the carpet like some common henchman made him grit both of his double rows of teeth.
Eh, the old crank was always coming down on him about something. It was tedious and insulting. As if the “great” Dark Master could ever run this place without him.
But Wyvern hid his scoff and checked his resentment as he entered the corridor where the doors to the sorcerer-king’s private quarters were located within the mazelike passageways of the Black Fortress.
As usual, Zolond’s own praetorian guard of tall, scaly reptilians stood sentry outside his door.
Seven feet tall and olive-green, with muscular humanoid bodies and crocodile heads, they wore shiny armored breastplates over their light, Egyptian-style tunics and carried tall spears in defense of the ancient sorcerer-king.
They stood at attention as Wyvern, the second-in-command, approached; the Black Fortress functioned much like the flagship of a navy, with Wyvern as the captain, running things from day to day, and Zolond as the admiral-in-residence.
“At ease,” Wyvern said to the pair, then lowered his voice. “How long has he been in there?”
“Four hours, sir,” one of the reptilians gurgled.
There were only six of the creatures in Zolond’s service, but dashed if he could tell them apart.
“Hmm.” Wyvern nodded, then leaned closer—as a Nephilim, he was the only humanish man aboard the castle-ship who could look the big lizards in the eyes. “Any idea what he’s doing in there this time?”
Both elite royal bodyguards shook their toothy heads.
Well, it had been worth a shot asking. But Wyvern dared not keep the Horned One waiting, so he marched on with another terse, “As you were.”
The two bored reptilians watched him walk away.
As he hurried on through the labyrinth of polished black granite that made up the castle’s first floor, Wyvern’s footfalls echoed down the sleek corridor while he continued puzzling over what the blazes Zolond was up to in his private chambers these days.
The old man had been acting so suspicious of late, locking himself away in his apartments for hours on end. Perhaps he was brewing up some new potions or spells, or even designing new creatures, as he was wont to do.
Wyvern didn’t know. He was just glad the old snake was too distracted by whatever he had up his sleeve that he forgot to nag him as much as usual.
Of course, Wyvern suspected that Zolond only nagged because he was jealous. They all were.
They should be.
The other twelve members of the Dark Druid Council had to plead and make blood sacrifices to bribe the demons into heeding their requests. But not Wyvern. All he had to do was ask Daddy.
A smug smile curved his lips as he jogged down a set of black granite steps, his boot heels ringing on the cold stone as he mused on the very special bond he shared with his immortal sire.
Shemrazul of the Ninth Pit gave his half-blood son secret information that Zolond and the others only wished they knew about.
Knowledge was power, after all, especially among the array of super-villains who’d earned their seats on the Dark Druid Council.
Wyvern was the newest member, number thirteen, and that made him the lowest-ranking among the leadership (which bothered him, of course), but he had mighty ambitions.
He knew how to make himself useful, as well. His inside knowledge from Shemrazul was what had guided Wyvern to retrieve the treasure trove of Atlantean artifacts from that deep-sea trench in the Mediterranean called the Calypso Deep.
The cube he’d been showing the engineer was just one of several astonishing finds—rescued bits of wondrous Nephilim science.
He had found them just where his demon father had promised they would be. Retrieving them had been no easy feat. Wyvern had then stored them in a cave in Greece and, with all due haste, brought a few of the most useful pieces back to England to show off to his colleagues.
With the help of this ancient Nephilim technology, Wyvern had boosted the capabilities of the Dark Druids’ fortress-ship, just as he’d shown the engineer.
Unfortunately, they would never know what the rest of the ancient artifacts might’ve been able to do, for that intolerable boy, Jake Everton, and his friends had uncovered the cave and destroyed the rest of the evil treasure trove.
Wyvern clenched his six-fingered fists at the thought of that brat.
What a plague he was! Little beast.
Wyvern had never liked children before, but ever since he’d first become aware of that vexing thirteen-year-old, he had no use for the creatures at all, except perhaps as shish-kebabs.
Ugh, the thought of Jake and his pesky band of friends set both rows of Wyvern’s teeth on edge as he marched on.
Why won’t Zolond just let me kill the brat and be done with it? That would solve the problem in a trice. How hard can it be? He’s a kid.
But no, no, no. Master Zolond wanted Jake alive on account of Duradel’s prophecy.
So, they’d laid a trap for the boy three months ago instead. A trap that should’ve worked by now.
But for some inscrutable reason, the canny ex-pickpocket still refused to take the bait.
How is the bait doing, anyway? Wyvern wondered. Pausing, he stepped around the corner and glanced down another black, torch-lit hallway.
At the far end of the corridor lay a dungeon cell, where Jake’s magnificent, scarlet-feathered Gryphon prowled back and forth behind iron bars. The boy’s beloved pet and protector, just like the gryphon rampant engraved on the Everton family crest.
Red, as he was known, had just enough room to take three steps in his cage before turning around to pace back the other way.
When the Gryphon saw Wyvern, he banged his golden beak angrily against the bars and screeched, hissing and slashing with his deadly lion claws, his tufted tail thrashing.
In response, Wyvern’s own pet, Thanatos, sprang out of the shadows where he’d been lurking, keeping watch over Red. The manticore roared at the Gryphon, his tawny lion body ready to fight, his scorpion tail thrashing.
Red answered with a war cry and lunged at the bars.
Oh, those two wanted each other’s blood, Wyvern thought with a chuckle.
“Down, Thanatos! Leave him be!”
The growling manticore slunk back to his corner on command.
“And you, settle down!” Wyvern ordered Red. “Don’t worry, your precious boy will c
ome to save you soon enough. And when he does, the two of you can share that cell.”
A piercing sound—half eagle’s screech, half lion’s roar—followed Wyvern as he turned away, smirking at the creature’s fury. Then he hurried on, heading for the throne room.
Yet, as Wyvern walked away, the sight of the caged Gryphon left him uneasy.
Truly, what was taking so long for their trap to work? Why wouldn’t the brat take the bait?
It worried him. The others said to be patient, but Wyvern could not understand why an impulsive young would-be hero like Jake Everton had not come storming in by now to try to save his beloved Gryphon.
That was what the Dark Druids had expected him to do—indeed, what they had counted on him doing.
But so far, nothing.
The boy was crafty. That much, Wyvern supposed he could respect… Suddenly, an electrifying thought occurred to him. Maybe Shemrazul had summoned him today because he’d changed his mind about Jake.
Maybe Wyvern was about to receive fresh orders to finish the brat off for once and for all.
The possibility excited him as he jogged down the final flight of stairs.
Oh, I hope so, he thought, for maybe he was overly cautious, but Wyvern did not like Duradel’s prophecy about the boy at all.
It made no sense, as it offered both a promise and a threat. More to the point, it pricked at Wyvern’s jealousy. All he knew was that the easiest way to head off the danger that the oracle presented was to kill the boy now.
Before he grew any more powerful.
Yes, that must be it. Father wants me to kill him. Finally!
The tantalizing thought of ridding the world of Jake Everton for once and for all brought a chilly smile to Wyvern’s face as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
A smile the two Noxu warriors on duty outside the throne room seemed to find disturbing. The pair of hulking half-trolls stood at attention as Wyvern approached, but eyed him uneasily.
He nodded at them to step aside. “He wants to see me.”
They grunted, uncrossed their ax-headed spears, and stepped apart.
Wyvern grimaced at the brutes’ unpleasant smell. Bloody Noxu. They stank like a pair of wild boars.
Only Master Zolond got the elegant royal reptilians for his bodyguards; here, and throughout the rest of the Black Fortress, the dull-witted, thick-bodied Noxu mercenaries sufficed well enough. They were a warlike tribe, competitive and stupid, with grayish skin and small tusks jutting upward from their lower jaws.