The floor rumbled again as more cracks spread. “You really wanna fight this thing?” Draven asked.
“I do,” I said, turning to face the door, my dagger ready in my hand.
Draven stretched his palm out toward the blue orb and the portal immediately collapsed. The vortex shrank to the size of a marble again, and it floated into Draven’s hand. He pocketed the orb and took to the air, his wings beating hard to pull him off the ground, his longsword at the ready.
I stepped away from the door and waited. I could hear crashing sounds coming from inside as the fiend trundled up the stairs, his large form barely being supported by the structure beneath him. The roof access then exploded, and Scythe came charging through, shoulder first. Bits of brick and concrete scattered all over the place. Several sections of the roof crumbled and fell inwards, making me step even further away.
Scythe stared up at Draven, his eyes brimming with hate, the magic radiating from him like an inferno. He was huge, easily seven-foot, and his leathery wings made him look even larger. There was no hair on his head, only markings carved into his scalp that glowed with unnatural red light. Metal bracers covered his arms, and he wore pants made of tattered leather, but besides that, he wore nothing else.
“Where is the girl!” the fiend roared.
“With us,” I said, “If you want her, you’ll have to kill us.”
“Little Aevian bitch; killing you will be a pleasure. First, I will carve out your eyes, then I will rip off your tongue, and then—” Draven’s sword shot through the air and impaled itself into Scythe’s shoulder. The fiend staggered back a few paces and collapsed against what was left of the roof access.
I looked up at him. “He was just getting to the good part!” I said.
Draven shrugged. “I was getting bored.”
The fiend groaned, grabbed Draven’s sword, and snapped it in half. He then tossed the broken pommel aside and stood, the piece of metal embedded into his shoulder not fazing him one bit. He beat his chest with one clenched fist, roared, and charged.
I stepped away from him, using my superior speed to keep him far enough in front of me that he couldn’t hit me. Only problem with that was, I also couldn’t attack him, not without magic. I could’ve thrown a blast of energy at him, but if I missed and hit the floor, I could send the whole place crashing down around us. Unlike Draven and Scythe, I didn’t have wings, so that wasn’t an option.
I needed a new plan.
“Alright, asshole,” I said, “Let’s go for a run.”
I turned around and sprinted toward the edge of the building. When I reached it, I took to the gap with a bounding leap between buildings, landing in a roll on the one across from me. The fiend gave chase, his massive feet stomping across the roof. When he reached the gap, he launched himself into the air and let his wings carry him across, only he didn’t land—he stayed up, following me through the sky like some kind of overgrown bat.
I had his attention, though, so I kept running. I took another jump when I reached the next gap, this one was a little tougher to land properly, but I managed. I didn’t need to look back to know the fiend was still chasing me. His wings were so massive, the thwump, thwump, thwump, sound they made as they carried him through the air was impossible to miss.
Now that I was on firmer ground, a little surer that it wouldn’t fall out from under me, I decided to stop at the next ledge and spin around. There was the fiend, his almost demonic form silhouetted against the clouds. I aimed my dagger at him, took a deep breath, and released my magic.
“Veshrim!” I yelled, and a pulse of golden light erupted from the tip of my knife like it was a magic wand. The fiend ducked to the right to avoid it, but he was so slow, the magic struck one of his wings. He came down hard on the roof, the building rocked like it had been hit by cannon fire.
I jumped away from the fiend as it rolled along the rooftop, its wings flapping around limply. It stopped at my feet, and I took my chance and stabbed it in the neck with my knife, but the knife didn’t go all the way through. The fiend grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him, then he sank his teeth into my bicep. The pain was white hot. I groaned as his fangs pierced not only the duster I was wearing, but also my flesh.
I took another stab with my knife, then another, and another, but the fiend was like a dog with a bone. It wouldn’t give up. Draven finally landed beside me, and with a run-up, he kicked the fiend in head. His steel-capped boot connected with a loud crack, and the beast let go of my arm.
I pulled back, and Draven kicked the fiend again, this time uttering a word of power under his breath. “Bellar,” the Aevian word for strength.
Magic filled the air, and when Draven’s foot met the side of the fiend’s face this time, it was like a thunderclap had struck. The fiend’s eyes rolled into the back of his skull from the impact and he rolled again, this time away from us. I watched him struggle to stand, his mighty muscles pulsing under his skin.
Scythe turned his head to look at us, and I saw then just how badly he hated us. I’d never known anything like it. The way these people hated us was unnerving, and not only because they were big, nasty, vicious bastards. It was unnerving because these people knew in their blood to hate us. Every fiend instinctively understood, anyone who wasn’t like them was a threat to be eliminated.
If we all fell through the rifts, not knowing who we were or what we’d left behind, how did fiends know to feel that way about us? Did they know something we didn’t? Were fiends more likely to remember the other side? Or was their hatred hard-wired into their DNA?
He spat a glob of strangely red-orange blood at the ground, a tiny feather of steam rising where it splattered. The fiend then got up, flexed his fingers, and charged at us again. The swirling red patterns on his body started to glow and shift. The light they gave off made my head start to spin a little, and I almost lost my footing.
Scythe raked me with his claws. I staggered back to get away from him and almost lost my footing, but I didn’t. My arm throbbed with pain, I knew I was bleeding, but the thought that he’d chained a young girl up for the Gods only knew how long demanded I deal with him.
Draven shot up into the sky, aimed a blast of magic at the fiend, and fired it off. When Scythe turned his attention toward Draven, I leapt onto his back, clambered up along his wings, and pressed both of my hands against the sides of his temples. “Veshrim!” I yelled, and my hands exploded with yellow light.
Scythe’s entire body tensed, he fell to his knees, then collapsed to the ground. The glamor took over almost immediately, making his wings vanish and changing his skin from grey to a pale pink. I rolled off him, panting, and pulled off my coat.
My arm was bleeding. A lot. That guy’s teeth had punched right into the muscle. I winced at the sight of my broken flesh and the scarlet flow. Draven quickly circled around the fiend, grabbed my hand, and touched the wound with his other hand.
“Vigo,” he whispered, and soft, green light emanated from his fingertips, light that radiated throughout my arm. Warmth filled me, his magic encircled me, and slowly, the pain I was under started to recede like the tide. It took a few short moments, but when he pulled his hand away, only blood remained.
The flesh had entirely healed.
“Thanks,” I said, staring at him.
“You’re welcome…” he said, trailing off.
“He broke your sword.”
Draven glanced at the fiend. “Yeah…” he shrugged. “I think I broke his teeth.”
“Probably makes you even, then.”
I decided to kneel and check the fiend’s pulse. I hadn’t quite killed him with that last hit, but he was dying. “We should bring him back,” I said. “If Valoel was here, this guy might know a thing or two about it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I’m not, but Six said he runs this place, so that’s something.”
“You’re gonna believe her word?”
I turned my eyes up at him. “Draven,
she’s a kid. What reason would she have to lie to us?”
“Kids lie all the time.”
“They do, but there was something about her, something in her eyes… we should talk to her, too.”
He nodded. “Agreed. I’ll interrogate them in the morning.”
“No, I want to talk to her myself. I think I’ll have a better time getting through to her than you.”
Draven cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll try not to take offense to that.”
I brought myself back up to standing. “I don’t mean to offend, I just mean… you probably wouldn’t be good with a teenager.”
“And you are?”
I shrugged. “You might not be aware of this fact, but you’re a bit of an asshole.”
Draven scowled. “I’m a what?”
“Hey, don’t take offense. I’m just saying, you’re scary, and too direct. Let me deal with her, okay? You take the big dude.”
He grumbled something incomprehensible, probably cursing me out. Then he reached into his pocket, he pulled the little teleportation orb out, and he tossed it ahead of us. The orb exploded in a burst of light, and when it was ready to receive us, Draven and I hauled the fiend through it and back to the Black Fortress.
It was time to get some answers.
“How is she?” I asked Felice.
Draven had taken it upon himself to oversee the capture of our new fiend friend, so I decided to go and find Felice and Six. Aaryn had told me Felice had taken the girl to the dining hall, and when I got there, I wasn’t surprised to find two guards posted at the doors.
I had walked past them and went inside to find Felice watching Six. Six had three plates of food in front of her, all stacked to the brim. She was eating like this was the first meal she’d had in months, and by the look of her, the truth probably wasn’t far off. I had no idea what this girl had been through, but she reminded me of me when I first fell through the rift and landed on Earth.
I went hungry for days on end. I lost weight. A lot of the fight went out of my muscles. It wasn’t a great time for me, and it was even harder on Fate. Six was almost like a mixture of the two of us. Inside of her I could see intelligence, and fire, but also vulnerability and a need to find her place.
“Looks fine to me,” Felice said.
“Did she say anything to you?” I asked.
Felice shrugged. She was standing by the door to the dining hall, keeping a healthy distance. “Not a word. I knew she was hungry just from the look of her, though, so I brought her here.”
I watched Six eat like her life depended on it and frowned. “Do you know what she is?”
“Is that a question or are you speaking rhetorically?”
“It’s a question. I have no idea what she is.”
“Pretty sure if Draven were here, he’d be lecturing you about how this is why we need the Order, and how the caretaker provides a valuable function.”
“That’s a pretty good impression of him. I don’t think he’d like it, but it’s good.”
Felice paused and stared at Six from a distance. “I think she’s one of them,” she said.
“One of them?” I asked.
“Fiend…”
“How do you figure that?”
“Her eyes… have you seen the way they glow? I’ve seen that glow before many times… those are fiend eyes.”
I took a deep breath. “Alright, well, that aside, let’s consider what’s just happened. We were tipped-off about a possible Valoel sighting. We answer the tip-off and go to the place, only to find a couple of fiends there, and her, but no Valoel.”
“You think the tip-off was bogus?”
“No, I think we received it too late. I think he was there, and I think the guy we’ve got locked up downstairs may have met with him, or at the very least seen him. He seems like the type of guy who would know just about everything that went on in his neck of the woods, don’t you think?”
Felice shrugged, her tone indifferent. “I didn’t get a good enough look at him, but I’ll take your word for it.”
“It’s a fair bet she saw Valoel too… I wanna ask her about him. Maybe she knows something that can help us track him down.”
“That guy’s like a fish. He’s slipped through our fingers for weeks every single time we’ve gotten close enough to touch him. I’m starting to wonder if he’s got someone on the inside sliding information his way, or if he’s making sure our intel gets to us too cold for us to be able to act quickly enough. Something’s not right.”
I looked over at her. “It could be a possibility. Think you could look into that while I talk to her?”
“Oh, sure, I’ll just go around asking if anyone’s a rat. I’m sure that’ll work.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do whatever you want, just try and find some answers, okay?”
Felice nodded, turned, and then made her way out of the dining hall. That left Six and me alone, in a big empty room, one of us feasting on a massive banquet. It reminded me of the day Fate and I had arrived at the Black Fortress. The parallels were hard to miss.
Carefully, I approached.
“Can I sit?” I asked.
Six didn’t reply.
I sat down anyway, but across from her, not next to her. “That looks good,” I said.
She flashed her eyes at me, then went back to her food without saying a word.
“You know, you don’t have to eat so fast… now that you’re here, you can eat whenever you want. No one’s going to stop you.”
“I’m not your prisoner?” she asked.
“No, you aren’t. You’re our guest.”
“Then I want to eat.”
“So, eat. I’m not stopping you.”
Six continued with her meal, and I decided the best approach was to have a little patience and wait. My stomach started rumbling, so I headed over to the kitchen and asked for a couple of pancakes complete with syrup, bacon, and butter. A plate was given to me in moments, and I returned to the table to join Six with her meal.
We ate in silence, both of us concentrating on our food. Occasionally I’d steal a glance over at her and cringe at the sight of her. She really was wearing rags, she looked like she hadn’t eaten in weeks—way too thin—and she also looked like she hadn’t had a chance to bathe in as long. Her hair was matted, broken, and knotted. I wanted to run a comb through it pretty bad.
She caught me staring, and I smiled at her. “Like your food?”
“I guess.”
“They make good food here. You should ask for the carrot cake next time. It’s awesome.”
“There won’t be a next time. Not if I’m free to go.”
I sensed something in her words, there. Anger. Frustration. I tried not to take it personally. I had no idea what this girl had gone through, especially if she lived with fiends. Again, the burning question raged in my mind. Is she one of them? It was hard to tell. The glamor protecting our kind’s true forms from human eyes wasn’t perfect. We all had a telltale sign that gave us off as other.
For my kind, the Aevians, it was the eyes. My pupils were so blue, it was unnatural. Draven’s entire eyes were black; he had no whites at all. Hers were green flecked with gold. Sometimes they’d burn with soft, amber light. Did that make her a fiend?
Six finished her food, having finally polished off her last plate. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to move properly after all the food she’d eaten. She was, at least, satisfied now, and that hopefully meant she’d be more willing to talk.
I took a breath. “Could you answer a few questions for me?” I asked.
“Questions?”
I nodded. “I’m looking for someone. That’s the reason why I came to your… place… today.”
“You already have Scythe.”
“No, not Scythe. Someone else.”
She paused and narrowed her eyes. “You’re looking for the raven.”
“The raven?”
“He’s been around before. I never see his face, but he has
black wings.”
“And grey hair?”
She nodded. “I hear voices in my head every time he comes near. Screams, cries for help, people in pain. I hate it.”
Sounds like Valoel and the stone. “Was he there tonight?”
“Yes. He came to take more of us away.”
I swallowed hard. “What do you mean, take more of you away?”
“He’s been coming for weeks. Every time he comes around, some of us go with him. They never come back.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Some. Many.” She shrugged. “He doesn’t speak. He lets the screaming in our heads do the talking.”
“And you resist?”
“I was chained up, remember?
“Right…”
“I try to resist it anyway, but it’s hard. My body wants to go, so I fight against my chains and end up getting hurt.”
I glanced at her wrists and noticed the red marks and cuts in her skin. Her shackles had been removed, but the impressions they’d left on her were red and raw.
“Do you know where the raven is?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea. Nobody tells me anything.”
Nodding, I decided not to ask any more questions. What I’d heard had chilled me enough. Valoel was using the stone to… mind control fiends into joining him? Shit. I had to tell Draven. If Valoel was recruiting fiends to join his ranks, then we had one hell of a problem on our hands; especially if he’d been doing it for weeks.
“Look, I know you said you’re going to leave, but I think it’s best if you stay.”
“Stay? Why would I stay?”
“Why would you want to go back out there? There’s nothing there for you… at least here you’ll get a warm bed, a bath if you want it, and no shackles.”
Six wasn’t convinced. I could see it in her eyes, the distrust. I wondered if there was anyone in the world she trusted at all. “I can’t stay.”
“Are there others like you? Others locked up?”
“No.”
“Then stay. You’ll get your own room and as many books as you want. We’ll also get you some clothes.”
I could sense her resistance even now, and I saw myself reflected in it.
The Obsidian Order Boxed Set Page 42