She walked the circle, envisioning the brightest light she could imagine, holding the black-handled, double-edged athame high. As the circle gained depth, Riley drew the quarters, setting the towers. She called to the elements. Air to the East. Fire to the South. Water to the West. Lastly, she whispered to the North, calling on Earth. Mother Earth. She forced her mind to concentrate on protections and block out the men moving around her.
Kneeling in the middle of the circle, she plunged her hands deep into the earth, focusing wholly on binding the evil. She struck fast and hard, using every ounce of strength she possessed.
“I bind thee darkness from doing harm.
To myself and those whom you would charm
I bind thee darkness to be free
As I lock thee away for none to see.”
Reaction was instantaneous. Shock. Fear. Rage. Insects poured through the ground and raced at the circle, surrounding them, clicking and chirping aggressively. Bats flew at them from every side, but none penetrated that sacred circle. A heavy, oppressive malevolence pressed in on them. Lightning forked across the sky, a long howling bolt, sizzling and crackling through the night to slam to earth just feet from the circle. Next came a series of fireballs pounding down like a meteor strike as evil fought back.
Ben started to run, but Gary and Jubal both caught at him, holding him motionless.
“Don’t leave the circle. This is the only safe place right now,” Gary warned.
“And don’t draw attention to yourself,” Jubal added in a whisper. “It’s fighting for its life. Either she can hold it inside the volcano or it will be loose on the world, and you saw just a little of what it can do from a distance. You don’t want that creature interested in you.”
Riley ignored them, barely aware of their presence. Without warning something moved against her throat, inside her body. Fangs ripped at her. Burning acid choked her. Claws wrapped in pure hatred raked at her. This was the creature who had murdered her mother, and it was fully aware of her now, and centering its attention on her.
She refused to allow loathing into her mind. This was her duty, her job. There could be no malice—she couldn’t give him a way to enter her mind. Illusion was his game, but she was stronger.
Riley refused to give in to the need to touch her throat, to feel if the blood pouring out was real or not. She whispered another soft chant to chain the evil entity inside.
“I draw upon thee light, surround me with your might
Set this evil in the ground, keep me safe from that which seeks to harm
Find the sender, track him back, let the darkness return his attack
Let the fuse be short burning bright, let his evil fall short this night.”
The evil entity pushed back hard, striking again and again at her throat. Raw. Burning. Torn open. Her breath barely pushed through her shredded vocal cords, the gaping jugular pouring out blood, soaking her clothing, splashing into the ground.
“Find him. Bind him. Hold evil chained.
Forged in fire. Hewn in rock.”
The earth whispered to her. Assured and comforted her. Riley kept her hands buried deep in the soil, fingers curled into tight fists, holding that evil thing captured, refusing to let loose, no matter how he struggled, twisted and turned, no matter how he stabbed at her, trying to tear out her insides. Pain burst through her like a star, and she knew if she looked down she would see that her stomach had ripped open, her lifeblood pouring out onto the ground.
“I call upon spirit and earth. Create a cocoon from which there is no birth.
Fit this space with black crystalline, to encompass this evil, to hold and bind.”
Arabejila. Emni hän ku köd alte. Tõdak a ho aδasz engemko, kutenken aδasz engemko a jälleen. Andak a irgalomet terád it.
The voice filled her mind. Turned her blood to ice. Riley forced her fear down. She was in the circle of protection. She refused to be intimidated.
With effort, she managed to push aside her fear and concentrate on the words he’d spoken. He’d spoken her ancestor’s name. She didn’t understand the rest of the words, but instantly recognized the language as the same the porter had mumbled to himself over and over. This evil entity knew her—or, more likely, her ancestor—and believed she was still alive. That realization gave her an important bit of knowledge she hadn’t possessed before. Whoever—whatever—this evil entity was, he wasn’t all powerful and he made mistakes. Moreover … alongside the threat in his voice, she heard fear. He feared Arabejila. Considering that she was the one who’d locked him in the volcano and kept him there for centuries, that made perfect sense. In fact, she might even be the only thing he did fear.
If the evil entity feared Arabejila, that meant he had reason to fear her and that meant he was vulnerable in some way. She took another deep breath and locked on to him, curling her fists tighter to hold him prisoner.
Another tremor jolted the mountain hard, throwing the men off their feet. With her hands plunged so deep in the soil, Riley felt the rising of the volcano. The blast would blow the top of the mountain away and flatten everything for miles. No one would be safe, not even the archaeologist and porters who had taken off earlier. They’d be caught as well as every animal and tribesman within miles. She had no choice but to try to calm the powerful force, and failing that, turn it away from them, redirect the blast if at all possible.
“Fire flame, show your light
Burning bright within my sight
Brightness burn deep within
So I may see where to begin
Bring me light as fire burns
So I may bind it with twists and turns.”
She chanted the words softly, eloquently, her hands deep in the soil, stroking and calming the ground, easing her way into the churning mass of gases and molten rock.
“We have to get out of here,” Ben shouted. “Right now. This thing is going to blow.”
Jubal and Gary kept a firm grip on him, holding him within the circle.
“You can’t outrun a volcano,” Gary pointed out. “She’s our only hope now. I have no idea how she can do it, but clearly the mountain responds to her.”
“What the hell can she do?” Ben demanded.
Riley ignored them, channeling power and energy into the earth. The ground shivered and shook continually, and she could actually feel a force rising.
“Fire leads me to the light
Guide my hand as I fight this night
Show me how to find my fire
So I may guide this volcanic power.”
She wasn’t going to be able to stop the blast, but she could already feel the response to her presence. She had to use every bit of energy and power she possessed to harness the volcano, to guide it away from the others—and that meant letting go of the evil entity she held so tight. Closing her eyes, she made the decision. If they were all dead, he would escape anyway. She couldn’t do both. She abruptly pulled away, sending up a silent prayer that the binding would hold even through a volcano blast.
She felt the instant echo of malicious glee, of taunting laughter. That failure couldn’t matter. Now, it was all about redirecting the blast and calming the volcano and preventing a catastrophic event.
“Red like flame, amber light, diverts this fire and holds it tight
Sword and dagger, double-headed axe, dragon’s blood hold this volcano’s blast
Salamander who lives in fire, create a tunnel for this river of flame.”
Ash spewed high into the air. Several vents shot steam high. Fiery rocks streaked into the air, small blowholes, as if the great mountain just had to express itself. Lightning zigzagged, great forks spreading across the sky.
Riley held firm, refusing to flinch. “Triangle lightning, use your light to hold all powers, adding strength to their might.”
She took another breath, closed her eyes and sent her prayer to the sky and deep into the ground. “Mother Earth, your humble daughter seeks your aid once more. You are living, b
reathing, ever changing in your natural state. The fire roars in you, yet your daughter pleads with you to tamp down that fire and send it far from us. The release is necessary to the growth of this world, true, but we ask for this boon.”
It was the best she could do. Either she’d calmed the volcano enough to minimize the damage, or everyone was lost.
Arabejila had totally deceived him. Mitro wanted to rip and tear into something warm-blooded. His rage grew as he struggled against the tight binds woven around him. She was far stronger than she’d ever been. Her touch hadn’t been hesitant at all. Throughout the years she’d seemed to decline in strength, but now she was all powerful—a force he hadn’t counted on.
She felt different to him, but it had been centuries since he’d tasted her hot blood—and that had been his one mistake. He should have killed her outright immediately. Once he’d taken her blood, he had locked them together for all time. Even then, he thought her weak, but she wasn’t now. She hadn’t flinched or pleaded with him. She had struck hard and fast without the least bit of hesitation—something she would never have done before.
Snarling, he gnashed his fangs together, anger and hatred feeding his strength. She hadn’t even deigned to speak to him. He was her lifemate whether she liked it or not, his possession. He could choose to keep her alive or let her die. It was his choice. He was superior and always would be.
He struggled harder against the tight bonds. Arabejila had always had a connection to the earth, but it seemed stronger than ever. The moment she was forced to turn her attention elsewhere, he should have been able to break free, but the bindings held tight. He couldn’t move, couldn’t rise toward that barrier he’d worked so hard to thin.
He cursed Arabejila, cursed the fact that she alone had the ability to shake him up. He should have made certain she was dead. She was the reason the hunter had found him again and again over the centuries … She’d trapped him here. She’d kept him here. And now she was the only thing standing between him and his triumph. She was truly the bane of his life, and if he didn’t uncoil the chains she’d placed on him fast, he would be trapped for all time.
He renewed his efforts, concentrating on finding each strand binding him in his fiery prison. Arabejila had woven the spell tight, the earth itself adding to her weave. He had always found it utterly disgusting that all living plant life responded to her instead of him. He’d tried, in the earlier years, watching her walk through a field with flowers and plants springing up around her, to do the same, but the earth refused to speak to him. The rejection had been so total and so instantaneous, it had filled him with a loathing for all vegetation. He despised anything that would choose a weak woman over him.
Mitro had always considered Arabejila one-dimensional—good in every way. She didn’t know how to be anything else. He studied the binding weaves chaining him inside the volcano. Those weaves told him much about his adversary. Arabejila had evolved over the centuries, just as he had evolved, and he found her much changed and more powerful because of it. More, her weaves only told him she was a force to be reckoned with, not anything personal about her. She had left no emotion behind to aid him in defeating her.
That rankled. She was supposed to be pining away for him. Her weaves should have contained sorrow and that ridiculous, futile dash of hope she couldn’t suppress whenever they had come into contact in the past. No matter what he did, how depraved he’d become, she’d always clung to that tiny hope that she could “save” him. She’d never realized that he neither needed nor wanted to be saved. Stupid woman. He found it insulting that she thought she had the power to turn him into a cowering rabbit like the rest of his species.
Remembering those days, pure hatred welled up. He would destroy Arabejila in his time, but first he would have to escape. She would not defeat him, a stupid cow of a woman who thought she was special because she could make flowers grow.
The mountain jolted hard, and he felt a subtle difference almost immediately. Arabejila had turned her full attention away from him and the weaves binding him. He fought down the urge to struggle, to panic when the explosion could happen at any moment. He narrowed his concentration to one strand of his bonds. One at a time. He would have to break through that chain in order to escape.
Mitro tried to recall every detail he could about his recent encounter with Arabejila. He’d been shocked. Horrified even. He was so certain she was dead. She had not responded or spoken to him and he hadn’t searched her mind when he had the chance. He stayed very still, reaching out carefully. If he knew what words had bound him, he could undo the weaves quite easily. He just had to get inside her head. She was his lifemate. Her blood would answer his call, but his touch would have to be delicate.
He tamped down all anger, not an easy feat when Arabejila was to blame for everything that had gone wrong in his life and he was already plotting to kill her and everyone she might care about. His touch on the thick weaves was very careful, seeking a tie to her. His blood stirred, but remained cold. Silence. Emptiness. There was no contact at all. If he didn’t know better, he would say she was dead.
Puzzled, he changed tactics. The sense of urgency grew as the mountain rumbled and the gases spewed high. Below him, the gathering fiery storm threatened to break free. Abruptly he felt a difference, as if the weaves had loosened just that little bit as if she hadn’t quite set them before she turned her attention elsewhere. She’d been gripping him hard, and now, that death grip was gone.
Triumphant, he struck hard, slashing through the weaves. They held, stronger than he expected against his all-out assault. He exerted pressure on his bonds, fighting panic, afraid his struggles might attract the attention of the hunter. Danutdaxton had become something much more as well, there in the volcano, and eluding him was essential.
The bindings tightened once, but then unexpectedly dropped free. Exalted, Mitro rose quickly toward the barrier and the one spot he’d spent centuries thinning. It would take seconds to break through, and when the volcano erupted, he would go out the vent with the gases. Elation swept through him. Glee. Triumph. Nothing, no one, could stop him.
Dax streaked through the furious volcano, moving as only a dragon could through the lower chambers, upward, toward the barrier. He felt the subtle difference in the earth, a pouring of comfort, a soothing hand stroking the volcano, easing the rising catastrophic explosion that would have blown the top off the mountain and flattened everything for miles.
Arabejila? He sent his inquiry, but he was positive she had been long gone from the earth. He’d felt her passing. He’d felt the mourning of the mountain when she was gone. His blood should have called to hers had she been alive. Still, the feel of her, the welcoming, the power—it was all there. More so.
Silence greeted his call. Had Arabejila been close—and he knew someone was trying to soothe the volcano—their blood exchanges would have allowed him to reach out to her. They’d been friends long before Mitro’s betrayal, but their centuries of traveling together had deepened that friendship even further. Being around Arabejila had allowed him some emotion. She had been unique that way, providing solace to the warriors of their people—and Dax had practically been born a warrior. He had a gift for ferreting out evil. He could smell it, see it inside, and from the moment he’d met Mitro he’d seen inside to his rotten core.
The volcano whispered to him as he moved through the scalding chambers, told him of a woman, powerful, healing, a true daughter of the earth. Dax knew the moment she plunged her hands into the soil—the volcano responded with a flutter of activity. He felt the instant reaction, not only of the volcano, the soil, the very heart of the earth, but in his own blood. Familiar, yet unfamiliar. Arabejila, yet now—more. This woman was a force to be reckoned with. Where Arabejila was soft through and through, this woman had a core of heat and fire.
He continued to streak through the labyrinth of lava-formed tubes and hollowed caves, moving up toward the barrier. No doubt Mitro thought he could escape with the
explosion of the volcano, right through that small space the vampire had worked centuries to thin. Dax had never let on he was aware of Mitro’s work.
He never caught the undead working to thin the barrier, and all traces were removed, but Mitro hadn’t counted on one thing—the intense blood bond between lifemates. Mitro had deliberately filled the mountain with his evil, so it would be impossible for Dax to detect him, not with his scent permeating every razor-sharp rock and molten pool. He had done so too late for this one escape hatch. He hadn’t considered that Arabejila and Dax had exchanged blood so often throughout their hunt for Mitro over the centuries, and when he’d first started the thinning process, Dax could use that blood bond to hunt him. Dax had marked the spot in his memory.
Arabejila’s blood continually called to Mitro’s, and as the earth claimed Dax more and more as her child, his blood had begun to do the same. He had only to listen. Now, with the soul of the dragon dwelling in him as well, he had an added advantage he hadn’t before—his senses of sight and smell were far above what they had been. The heat of the volcano fed him rather than drained him. The Old One and Dax had become better at sharing the same body and all senses. Right now, he knew exactly where Mitro was. He could feel the vampire struggling against the bonds the woman placed on him.
Mitro had positioned himself right at that narrowed barrier, right where Dax was certain he would. Dax sent a small thanks to the woman and to Arabejila. At long last he would destroy the vampire and his duty to his people would be done. He would be free to go to the next life. He moved quickly, rising steadily, winding his way through the maze of miles of chambers. Magma pools bubbled ominously. Steam and heat swirled together to create a dense fog. He used the dragon’s eyes to see his way through the storm, racing the volcano to reach Mitro while he was still trapped.
The volcano took a deep breath, the whirlwind stilling, a terrible calm heralding a violent storm. Dax felt the exact moment when the woman turned her attention from holding Mitro to suppressing the catastrophic explosion. He couldn’t blame her, she had people to save—just as he did. He pushed his speed, rushing through the last two chambers leading to that point of weakness where he knew Mitro would be.
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