Sacrifice of the Septimus: Part 2 (Afterlife saga Book 7)

by Stephanie Hudson

  “You didn’t do this last time.” It wasn’t a question but more of a statement. Sophia looked confused and quickly said,

  “Well, no I was with my brothers when…” Sophia’s face suddenly dropped as what Pip was saying must have suddenly dawned on her. I looked around just as she did trying to piece together what they were obviously so worried about.

  “What? What is it?” I asked as Sophia looked to Pip and Pip looked to me.

  “None of this is right,” Sophia said.

  “Agreed,” Pip added and when she put a hand to her blade I knew to really worry.

  “Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” I snapped getting panicky.

  “Be on your guard, for it was about this time,” Sophia said cryptically to Pip and ignoring me.

  “Ari, come back to stand with us,” Pip muttered quietly after she too had stopped up ahead.

  “Sophia?” I whispered looking at her, finding a serious face that brought me no comfort.

  “The last time I lived through all of this they tried to split us up but were unsuccessful as I was with my brothers. I had completely forgotten until Pip…”

  “What do you mean? Sophia I don’t understand,” I asked interrupting her.

  “Pertinax. He tried to separate us. But I wasn’t here back then, I was…”

  “What…you were what?!” I hissed out the question grabbing her shoulders to get her to tell me and stop pausing before finishing her answer.

  “She wasn’t with you,” Pip answered for her and my heart dropped. I was what was different in this time and that meant everything had changed. History was rewriting itself and right now, with Pertinax as the biggest threat the three of them had ever known until nearly two thousand years later, then this had just become a lot more complicated than I first thought.

  “Oh God,” I whispered before covering my mouth with both hands. I looked back to Ranka down the long hallway who had only just now stopped up ahead. She cocked her head to the side as if trying to understand what we were all waiting for. Then she flung aside her long black jacket and released her blades, spinning them up in her hands before running at us.

  I looked behind just in time to see armed guards running for us and knew these must have been the men sent by Pertinax to capture us. Sophia pushed me back and Pip did the same to Ari on the other side as Ranka charged through and killed four men in seconds. She spun with such speed and grace it was more like watching a dance than a fight as the guards didn’t stand a chance.

  I took a deep breath when I saw them all sprawled out on the floor, knowing the threat was over so we could get Sophia to Draven as quickly as possible. That was the most important thing right now. To hell with safety for what might happen, it was more about what could happen if we didn’t follow history to the letter. Me being here had already changed things enough but we couldn’t risk it getting too far. Sophia needed to be with her brothers charging into battle at all cost, for the costs were far too great to chance.

  “Weren’t they the King’s guard?” Pip questioned, frowning down at the bodies on the ground and then before I knew it she’d pulled a dagger from her side and a curved blade from her back, pointing it now at Ranka.

  “Fuck, I knew not to trust you!” she snarled and I shook my head before shouting,

  “Pip what are you doing?!”

  “We have been betrayed by Mohawk here.” Pip answered and I looked to Sophia to find she was looking down at the guards trying to work it all out for herself. Then she pushed me back against the wall again and pulled her own long blade from her back before pointing it at Ranka’s other side.

  “You’re right. Why would you kill the guards who were on their way here to…”

  “To protect us.” Ari spoke up and finished off her sentence finally getting it as well.

  “Because the Bitch is working for Pertinax that’s why!” Pip growled out through gritted teeth.

  “That’s why you wouldn’t tell me where you were taking us.” Sophia added looking down at the floor for a second and then bringing her blade back up to Ranka’s throat.

  “Why?! Why would you betray my brother this way?!” Sophia shouted, losing her cool. I watched as Ranka merely smirked back at her refusing to answer but in the end she didn’t need to because I answered for her.

  “Because he is in love with me that’s why. She witnessed it earlier, when he called me his Queen. I saw her face and the hurt it inflicted.” Ranka’s eyes grew wide when I said this and I knew I had hit my mark with her.

  “You are working for him, aren’t you!? Answer me!” Sophia shouted backhanding her across the face so hard that her head snapped to one side. However, the last sound I expected to hear coming out of her mouth was that creepy laugh of hers, one that quickly started to warp into something much deeper… and deadlier.

  “I am not working for him.” Ranka snarled in a strange voice that didn’t seem to belong to her but instead someone else…someone…

  “Oh God, she’s right.” I said figuring it out now and the others looked to me just as the rumbling on the ground started.

  “SHE IS HIM!” I screamed just before I stumbled back. He threw his head back and started laughing up at the ceiling and just as Pip and Sophia both moved in to attack him, he raised up his hands. I screamed along with Ari as the walls all around started to explode in great pockets, throwing debris and large chunks of stone at us. I felt one piece slice across my forehead and another hit the top of one arm as I tried to lift it to protect my face better.

  “Ari get down!” I shouted doing the same but that’s when I noticed the movement coming out of the holes in the walls. They looked like stone snakes slithering their way towards us and suddenly Pip and Sophia found themselves surrounded as they slashed out over and over at the floor to stop themselves from being overrun.

  “KEIRA GO, FIND DOM!” Sophia screamed at me and I didn’t need telling twice. I scrambled through the broken stone to get to my feet just before the snakes could reach me and make a run for it. I saw the untouched hallway in front of me and knew I had to get there!

  “LOOK OUT!” I heard Ari’s warning but it was too late as I felt something tighten on my ankle. It started pulling and I looked down to see the stone snake had coiled itself around me and was moving up my leg, anchoring me to the ground. The bottom part of the snake merged into the floor so it acted like chains locking me in place. I looked up to see the same had been done to Pip and Sophia only they had so many snakes covering their bodies, that you could only see their heads from their shoulders upwards.

  “Stay away from her!” Sophia shouted as Ranka slowly walked towards me, but with every step she took she started to change. She would shake her head at a blurring speed that looked as though she was morphing into something else. It was as though she was fighting some invisible force. She threw her head back and screamed out, her jaw opening up like it was being dislocated and pulling away from the rest of her skull. It was a sickening sight and one that made me want to gag.

  Thankfully it didn’t last long and when she looked back at me it was no longer a she, but now a he…it was Pertinax.

  “So you are what all the fuss is about,” he said looking at me and tilting his head to the side. I was surprised to see a man who looked to be in his sixties wearing what was obviously a Roman military uniform, dressed like a general. His hair was cut short in a certain style that you would have expected to see and added to this was a dark thick beard that lengthened into a V shape by his chin.

  I had to admit that he didn’t look particularly terrifying but his eyes certainly gave you reason to be wary. They were piercing through me as though reading my soul before deciding how to pull it apart. They were so light in shade I couldn’t actually tell you what colour they were but the dark ring that circled them was what set them apart from others. This gave them an eerie chill, matching the pin points he had as pupils. In fact, just having him look at you made you want to wince back and hide.
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  “I am a nobody, just his Concubine,” I told him making him raise an eyebrow at me.

  “And I would have believed this if it had not been for the new information you had just given me.” I swallowed hard, silently cursing myself for being so stupid and basically telling him how much I meant to Draven.

  “I think we have more than enough to use against him,” he said and at first I thought he was speaking to himself. However, soon the rumbling grew back up again and I watched in fascination as all the snakes started to slither into one big pile.

  In total six mounds grew in size as it looked as though all the snakes were fighting each other to get to the top. I looked to Sophia, Pip and Ari who all were still held in place within their stone prisons and I wondered why none of these had joined the piles.

  Pertinax started laughing and I looked back to him just as he clicked his fingers. This was when the giant mounds all started to merge together as one before forming what started to look like winged rock demons, made up with thick stone skeletons. Their faces were twisted features, with wide thin mouths, stone fangs and slitted eyes attached to elongated noses. Now these things were truly terrifying as they looked like demon drones which had once been gargoyles on top of buildings and had just flown down to fight because they had no choice.

  Pertinax nodded towards the other prisoners and just as the snakes released them one by one, a stone demon each stepped forward ready to grab them. Sophia and Pip started to fight which was when I was quickly yanked forward and I cried out when Pertinax grabbed hold of my neck.

  “One snap is all it takes. Now lower your weapons,” he ordered using me as bait.

  “NO! Let her go!” Ari screamed and Sophia and Pip both stopped dead, turning around to see for themselves that unless they lowered their weapons, I was one dead and broken Keira. I closed my eyes in defeat once I heard the clatter of their blades, knowing now we had failed.

  “Take them,” he ordered his minions who each grabbed hold of my friends and started marching them down the hall.

  “Now what to do with you? Let me see, I could just kill you now and leave you as a gift for Arsaces…” he said, suddenly spinning me back to face him and encircling my throat once more with his hand, using it to push me up against the wall as he started strangling me.

  I desperately started to claw at his hand, trying in vain to tear it away from me, as my air supply started to run out quicker in my panic.

  “But as tempting as that is, I think using you as leverage will be a far greater advantage to me at this present time.” He looked back to see Sophia and Pip being dragged away and allowing this to happen because of what Pertinax currently held in his hand…my life. Then he pulled me closer until I could feel his breath hitting my skin, my own air quickly running out.

  “It will at least keep his sister in check until the time comes to kill her but until then…” he paused so he could squeeze harder making my vision start to blur and I knew this was it, this was the end.

  The last thing I heard was his sickening promise…

  “Let’s have some fun.”

  Chapter 65

  Operation Dominic

  “Well that's another fine mess you've got us into, Stanley.” Pip said laughing at her own joke.

  “Hey, don’t look at me, it was Sophia he wanted this time, so technically this doesn’t count as a kidnapping.” I told her as I slumped down in my own stone cell that looked as though it had been cut right out of a mountain.

  “Yes and may I add that the first attempt had been unsuccessful.” Sophia said adding her money’s worth.

  “Fifty/fifty odds then, not bad, much better than Keira’s ninety/ ten.” Ari added, giggling when I shouted,

  “Oi! What is this, pick on Keira day?!”

  “No, just your usual snatch and grab day, with a little extra threaten Keira’s life thrown in there for good measure,” Pip answered on a chuckle making everyone laugh.

  “Ha, ha! I am so reminding all you bitches about this when I am the one coming to rescue your asses next time!” I said, glad for the banter and keeping it going as long as it kept up our spirits.

  “Yeah right.”

  “Like that’s gonna happen any time soon.”

  “I won’t hold my breath.” They all said collectively but it was Ari’s response that had me biting.

  “Oi you! You can’t say anything as I have already saved your ass once before, so you don’t count! Oh and Electus here, so technically I save all your asses when the crappy prophecy ever happens.”

  “Yeah, she has a point.”

  “Totally got us all there.”

  “I guess that’s true, she did save my life on that altar thingy when our uncle and mother tried to kill me, who weren’t really related, thank God, just crazy cult people who wanted to take over the world…man, does anyone else think I might need therapy?” Ari asked making me smile.

  “Oh that’s nothing, try getting punished in Hell for accidently bringing a teeny tiny plague to Europe.” Pip said as if this was nothing and Ari made a choking sound before saying,

  “Tell me she is joking.”

  “Nope.”

  “Afraid not.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” The last one to speak was obviously Pip and she went on to tell Ari of how it wasn’t too bad as this was how she met her husband, which must have stunned Ari to silence as there was no way anyone would have fallen asleep during this story.

  Meanwhile I was still wondering where we were and if it was Ranka who had been the one to deceive us all along. Nobody else was sure on either question, so we quickly moved on to joking about our situation rather than freaking out about it.

  The cells we were in were all bunched together but were only big enough for one person to sit down in. They seemed to have been cut from the rock and each had crude bars made from stalagmites rising from the floor and stalactites that hung down from the ceiling, all interlocking as if the mountain had teeth.

  I knew that these wouldn’t have been enough to lock in the likes of Sophia and Pip and my first question would have been, ‘can you not get out of them?’ That was until I saw all the strange demonic symbols that had been etched all the way along the length of them.

  I remembered seeing something like this before and it had been back in Draven’s garage surrounding the large glass box that housed the strange silver Porsche. It didn’t take a wild stab in the dark cave to know that these were some form of demonic spell to keep Sophia and Pip from escaping. Which then begged the question, how the hell were we gonna get out of this one?

  “Anyway, it’s been years since the last time I was kidnapped,” Pip said as the conversation continued.

  “Oh yeah, I remember that. It was the Cubans right, just after the Bay of Pigs invasion?” Sophia asked and I frowned knowing that I had definitely not heard this story.

  “Yeah, the bastards heard about a weapon that was the most dangerous ever made!” Pip said, muttering ‘Idiots’ to herself.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “They were led by this dipshit Demon that used to be a somebody back when the Dead Sea Scrolls were a best seller.” I laughed loving her reference to the ancient texts.

  “I can’t even remember the dude’s name now but anyway he convinced these bloody Cubans that they could win the cold war by abducting me and letting who they thought was a weapons analyst know where they were keeping his wife and if he ever wanted to see me alive again…yada, yada, yada.”

  “Oh shit.” I said and Sophia laughed,

  “Oh shit indeed.”

  “Yeah they thought that he would be able to tell them where all the US hidden Nukes were kept or some shit like that. They had no clue that he was the weapon,” she said chuckling.

  “I’m confused.” Ari said and it was only now that I realised she had never seen the terrifying sight of Pip’s husband in his Demon form.

  “Adam is the most powerful Demon in history,” I told her and no doubt Pip
was currently beaming with pride hearing me say this.

  “What, even more than Lucifer?” she asked and Pip made a ‘Pah’ noise before saying,

  “That guy has nothing on my man.”

  “Then forgive me if I am being dim here but if this is the case then why isn’t he ruling Hell or better yet, why didn’t we bring him with us?” Ari asked making me laugh at the idea.

  “Ever heard of the Hulk?” I asked making the others laugh.

  “The comic book green guy?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “Yeah why?” she asked.

  “Well think bigger, badder and more out of control…oh and did I say bigger because what I actually meant to say was think Godzilla bigger.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yep, that’s my hubby,” Pip said proudly.

  “So what happened?” I asked getting back to the story.

  “Well they nabbed me and stuck me on some deserted island in the Pacific Ocean and waited with their bait thinking it was gonna be an easy ‘torture the prisoner until he talks’ type of gig.”

  “And I gather it wasn’t?” Ari asked.

  “Not even close. But they got the torture part, just not the type they were hoping for,” Pip said giggling.

  “What she is trying to say was that the second Adam found out she had been taken he went against every order to stop him and allow Lucius to handle it. It was the first time he knocked Lucius out cold…right?”

  “Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that bit, didn’t he also do the same to Dom when he then had to intervene?” Pip asked Sophia.

  “Oh yeah, I remember that. We tried to stop him at the airfield from getting on that private jet. He laid Dom out cold the second he told him that as his King he forbade his actions. I remember Vincent and I just holding up our hands in defeat after seeing Dom hit the floor and letting him go, before he could do the same to us.” I could barely believe what I was hearing and was stunned just trying to picture it.

  “Aww he’s such a sweetheart… I miss him,” Pip added in a forlorn voice.