by Sarah Elliot
Those silver eyes however remained fixed on her amber ones. Slowly she took hold of his hand. “Do you know what you are getting yourself into, Fiero?”
“No.” There was that smirk again, melting her heart and making everything seem wonderfully hazy, but also in very sharp focus. Fiero lightly blinked and let his fingers run through her hair once again, enjoying the rich texture. “But all I do know is that you are my mate and even if I have to go to the depths of hell and back then I’ll do it for you. I’ll always come for you; I’ll always find you and bring back that smile to your face.”
Ekata leaned forward, her heart beating rapidly but in a way which felt good. “Then turn me into a wolf, make me no longer be a Volf.”
Chapter 9
Talk of Silver
There was a slight crash, followed by several thumps and a distinct muttering of curses that alerted Disreli to the fact that Rosario had entered his personal room. Not that he needed any sounds to do that of course, he could smell the wolf he still considered to be a cub a good distance away. “If you’re going to wreck my place,” he chided lightly, “at least let me know in advance.”
Sitting in his big leather high-backed chair, Disreli looked old and very worn out. His skin was rough, years upon years of hard work showing through in a variety of liver spots and age-old scars which had next to no meaning now. His fingers were long and spindly, almost devoid of muscles and appearing to be mere bones covered by flaking skin. His hair was long and grey, though there was no beard present as Disreli still insisted in shaving with a cut-throat razor. However, it was easy to call Disreli wolfish in appearance, something about his stance and the positioning of his facial features gave off that impression and the piercing blue eyes spoke of age and wisdom but a sharp alertness that defied the outer appearance. Plus, being surrounded by a whole host of leather books and boxes most definitely added to the impression.
“You know you really should let Stefina in here one day to tidy up or organise,” Rosario easily chided back towards his eldest brother. “Then I wouldn’t end up destroying the place every time I come in here.”
“Hello, Ro-ro,” was the only reply that he got from Disreli, jesting to his youngest brother, as he would forever tease him with the name that the wolf before him had first called himself from the first time he could speak. “I am glad you came as early as you could. I believe my time is beginning to run short on this world.”
“Don’t say that,” Rosario said, having heard that statement one too many times from the older wolf as he pulled up a seat in front of him. “The only day you will run short is when you misjudge a hill for a cliff.”
Disreli chuckled, deeply and with humour. “Ah, I see you still remember much and haven’t gone soft. A trait which you have successfully passed onto all of your sons… and our nephew.”
“Fiero? That cub is more forgetful than a goldfish.” The tone was deadpan but affectionately so. “Though I raised him no different than the others. Once he gets his head screwed on I’m sure that he’ll be a fine young wolf.”
“His head has already been screwed on and it won’t leave him anytime soon.” Disreli smiled. “Not even on his first run with his newly acquired mate.”
There was no need for surprise; the things that this ancient wolf knew were enough to boggle the mind of even the greatest of seers throughout the world. Plus, anyone could have heard Jared’s story and taken a pretty good guess at what would happen if they knew about ancient wolf lore. “That is good to know, she is one very special young lady and I would hate to think what would happen if he were ever to hurt or lose her.”
“Something which unfortunately has to happen in this turn of events.” The comment was sad, lonely and almost spoken without any real thought but Disreli shifted and pushed forward a strange-looking box which he must have been fiddling with at some point during the last few days. It looked like some form of oak musical box, the ones with the little spinning ballerinas in and it smelt old. “But I want you to take this and see if it can possibly bring about an end.”
“An end to what?” Rosario carefully took the box away from the delicate fingers, feeling his curiosity spiked despite the inevitable confusion that he was about to go through.
“The world, life itself… maybe even the whole of creation.” Disreli sighed. “But within, may be the key to salvation and renewal.”
For a second, Rosario frowned at the other but then focused his attention on the box. It was plainly decorated, oak having a quality all of its own regardless of what others may think of it and there were no obvious traps or trick locks. Carefully he opened it, and saw only two things. A small mirror mounted into the inner section of the lid and a small, plain-looking red leather book. Picking it up, he flipped it around a few times and found himself harking back to the days when his older brother would test him by placing some magic artifact in front of him to see what the cub would do with it.
Quietly, Disreli watched his younger brother, noting how age was only just starting to settle on the youngster’s shoulders. Even though he knew that the other was an alpha now, with a beautiful wife and a whole host of children he could still see the young man with the dark hair who had defied his wishes all those years ago and struck out to become a Hunter. In some respects, Rosario had made the bravest decision and proven himself to be just what the world needed but the elder sometimes wondered what would have happened if he had remained at home like he had requested.
There came the sounds of paper being flicked through, which distracted Disreli from those thoughts. “This is Cresta Du Winter’s diary… from before she had Ekata?” Rosario’s voice had a note of concern in it.
“The lead-up to it, I believe,” Disreli said gently. “But it is only part of the picture. She believed that she had destroyed it upon the birth of the twins but it merely slipped through the hands of fate into my lap and has remained with me ever since.”
Rosario paused, half-reading a paragraph of the finely sculpted text and glanced up. “How? Is that where you were stationed?”
Disreli nodded slightly, his blue eyes turning back to the roaring fire and took the heat in for a few long seconds. “Like I said, she believed that she had destroyed it upon the birth of the twins… she asked for it to be destroyed as she wanted no one to know her thoughts throughout everything.”
“She gave you it?”
“No, someone else did.”
For a second, Rosario wondered if he would get a straight answer out of Disreli if he asked the obvious question, and decided to chance it anyway. “Who?”
“One of her servants,” Disreli said, shifting a little uncomfortably. “I never quite got the name unfortunately. All I was told was that my lady wished me to destroy the diary and never repeat anything that was written in it to another soul. I’ve kept the second part of that request until today.”
The younger wolf with the lighter grey hair didn’t reply for a few seconds, he had opened a random page in the diary and was speed reading the text. His face paled for a second and he re-read a passage more slowly this time. “Disreli… please tell me that you are not that girl’s father.”
A snort of a laugh escaped him. “Whatever gives you that impression.”
“Disreli, my manservant gave me comfort tonight. A beautiful man of body and heart…” Reading aloud, Rosario cast his eyes towards his brother, praying silently that he was completely reading the situation wrong.
For once, the old man managed to look a little on the bashful side. “I believe that was a good thirty years before the birth of the twins. I got into a lot of trouble for that, from all fronts I can assure you.”
“Twins.” Rosario frowned slightly, his thoughts jumping far ahead of the situation as they were apt to do when he was thinking. “I thought they were supposed to be brother and sister?”
“That’s what non-fraternal twins are, Rosario.”
Slowly a sigh was repressed. “I didn’t mean it like that. From all my readings
of the Silver Maiden and Golden Prince, they are never described as being twins. They’re always brother and sister, one older and one younger…” His eyes cast back down to the diary and he flicked the last entry and then the first. “If they are who they are reputed to be, why are they twins all of a sudden?”
Disreli smiled. “Because this world we live in is a renewal to try and correct something that went wrong before.”
Slowly the alpha of the pack cast his eyes up to his elder brother. “Excuse me?”
“There are those of a certain school of thought that believe this world is merely a replacement for another one, almost like an alternative timeline to a series of events. The only thing that remains constant within the world is the legend of the Silver and the Gold.” Disreli licked his lips slowly. “You don’t believe a word of it, do you?”
For a few seconds the younger werewolf considered his response. “If that were so, then surely there would have to be someone who knew what the world was like before this one replaced it. Whilst there are some who are crazy enough to believe…” Rosario blinked and stared down at the Diary once again. “He wouldn’t have allowed his son to not know about it.”
A crinkled old smile crossed the face. “That is why I always liked you best, Rosario, you always think outside the box.”
“Hardly.” Rosario smiled back. “I just read people very well and I know that Amaranth would have told Fiero something from the start. Even if he were too young to really understand it. Plus, Genii wasn’t one to hide her visions from her children either… yet, Fiero doesn’t know much about what he is supposed to be. If this is an alternative world to fix something that has been mistakenly done…”
Blinking, Rosario paused and looked down at the book, trying to work out just at what point this conversation had gotten completely crazy and realised that his elder brother was probably tormenting him with mind tricks again. In the past it had been one of the few things that really drove him to distraction but the older werewolf now lived in a world where anything and everything could happen. “You know something about this, don’t you, Disreli?” he questioned carefully. “And you may have just told me all about it… but you’ve masked it from my mind right?”
Disreli nodded slowly. “Yes until the time is right for you to be gifted with the knowledge. Because there is nothing to be done about what is to play out. If I could still trap you within the realm of confused and fluctuating thoughts as easily as I used to when you were a cub, then I would not have to face this unpleasant situation.”
“If you’re talking about the two vampires on our land.” Rosario flicked his fingers across his face just to make sure that he wasn’t jumping again and realised irritatingly that he probably was. “I know about them already and have increased the—”
“Jared’s dead.” The reply was flat and devoid of emotion.
“What?”
Disreli sighed. “Michael’s at the door…”
Without so much as a pause, Rosario was up and out of the chair and quickly disappeared from the room. He left the diary behind but Disreli knew that the other would come back for it. For a moment or two he sighed, staring into the roaring flames and listening to the emptiness of the space around him. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to drink from that goblet, it’s poison to vampires like you.”
“I didn’t come here to drink.” The voice was tired, filled with excess air and seemed to be almost frustrated beyond the point of no return. “Why do you insist…you know what he’ll do…”
“You can’t interfere, boy,” Disreli said gently, his eyes remaining firmly on the flames. “This has to play out.”
“He’ll kill her.” The tone was more desperate now, more pressing. Clearly the black-haired vampire was starting to come around from the drugs which had been given to him. “You know what he’ll do to her…”
The wolf sighed. “You should be resting; you will need to regain your strength.”
“Let me go, old man, and I’ll show you what strength I have.” there was no real threat behind the voice, it was merely the sound of a very desperate man trying to reach out to the last thing that was blocking his current path.
Disreli shook his head. “Not until the Blood Moon rises. I made my promise and I will abide by my oath. Go back to sleep for a while, you’ll feel much better when you awake… Raphael.” For a fraction of a second there was a yell of defiance but it got cut off abruptly, followed by a slight thunk.
The werewolf waited patiently for a few seconds before pulling himself out of the chair and turning to look. In the farthest corner of the room, slumped across a table was a pale-skinned vampire with midnight-black hair and an ancient-looking but still highly regarded black Templar uniform. His grey eyes were closed in enforced sleep and his eyelids fluttered with movement as dreams kept him under the dangerously soft spell. Just though, Raphael played down his powers but he was immensely strong.
For a second, Disreli felt like reaching out and touching the boy’s hair, just to give him some inner comfort or reason to be in this situation but knew that the slightest touch would wake him from slumber. Gently he sighed, shaking his head. “You’re playing a very dangerous game, Alcarde, and to risk your own life is one thing but to risk your children’s is another. I will keep my promise though, until my last breath…” carefully he cast his blazing blue eyes up to the ceiling though appeared to be seeing beyond it. “But it must come soon, else all will be lost once again.”
Chapter 10
Plotting and Planning
“You know, you really didn’t need to kill that werewolf,” Mephistopheles said, almost idly staring towards the fire which he had set up whilst Siren had been out on her little patrol. “He would have made a good font of knowledge about this place and some of its hidden traps.”
There was a seething silence from the girl sitting on the opposite side of the fire, glowering at the flames which continued to dance back and forth despite her attempts to put them out. Most vampires feared fire, it was one of the few things that they could be honestly attributed with in all of human mythology, but for Mephistopheles it was nothing short of a route to power. To be able to withstand the sight of the roaring flames and barely bat an eyelid at them made for a creation of a bigger threat than he really was. Not that he wasn’t a threat of course, to most younger vampires he was held as the pinnacle of personal achievement and advancement, the elders regarded him with disdain and distrust but would make no move to stop his actions. They knew a potential successor when they saw one.
Of course, that would naturally be after he had successfully claimed the powers of creation and destruction from the twins. A secret he guarded so close to his heart that it got mobbed over by many other thoughts and became hard to find. Everyone thought that he was just acting on the advice of his mother, if truth be told Mephistopheles wanted nothing more than to steal all of the power for himself. That way he would be complete and would be able to wipe out the mistakes he had made in the past.
Erase the one thing that stood in his way, that obstacle that had been present in his life far too long. Even before he was born it had been there and he hated it all the more for that very reason. But he pushed those thoughts aside, even though Siren was insane as they came and currently seething from the pain she was undoubtedly going through due to the ancient spell which had attacked her, she did still have some form of mind to think things through occasionally and lingering on his own personal matters would do him no good right now.
“Really you should have brought him back here so that we could have tortured him a little,” he said cruelly, picking a small amount of grit from in-between his teeth and flicked it away. “It would have been a good game for you at the very least.”
“He didn’t even yield to the seduction,” Siren said slowly, her eyes still fixed on the fire. “He wouldn’t have given up anything to us.” Her voice was mature, firm and well spoken, more like a deadly vampire lady than the insane creature she was normally
. Gently she shook out her auburn hair. “He was trained, unknowingly. He would have been useless to us.”
“What makes you so certain, sister?” Mephistopheles said smarmily, not liking this side of Siren in the slightest as he never truly knew how to react to her. “Anyone will break under our torture regime; it’s all a matter of finding the right button to press. Werewolves are especially easy to mess with because they’re family orientated. All it takes is a simple slip and they all go down together.”
There was silence for a few long seconds from the female vampire, before her strange eyes slowly rose to stare levelly at his light grey ones. “At least they remain a family…” her words lingered for a few seconds then she turned her attention away to something else that caught her eye, “and don’t take advantage for their own personal gain.”
For a second Mephistopheles felt a stirring of change and automatically lowered his hand to the hidden dagger in his waistband. He knew full well what the female was referring to but didn’t want to act overly rashly. This was the most dangerous that Siren could ever be and if he played the game wrong then everything he had worked for would be all for naught.
However, Siren merely returned to looking at the flames for a few seconds before skulking back to hide away in the approaching shadows which she must have called forth. She didn’t speak another word and clearly opted to take rest and recover from everything that she had gone through.
Mephistopheles let out a slow breath, one he had only just been aware of holding and let go of the hidden blade. “At least you’re easier to control than that idiotic brother of ours, Siren, that little twerp would have figured out what I was up to ages ago even though he’s as thick as two short planks.”