by Dean Murray
"How do you know it isn't Jace? I can probably convince him not to hurt you if you let me go now…"
Kyle waved away my implied threat without even a hint of concern. "I'll never understand what it is that my brother does to engender such blind confidence in his capabilities. Didn't it even briefly occur to you that Mephistoles might have killed Jace?"
"Wait. Is Jace okay? Did Kat and Ari survive?"
It actually hadn't crossed my mind, but the panic I felt at the idea was almost uncontrollable. I started to pull myself to my feet. It was silly, I wasn't going to be any more capable of getting past Kyle's ward now than I'd been the last time, but I was desperate to do something.
"Yes, as much as I'd like to say otherwise, all three of them survived. Kat was badly injured in the fight with Fenrir, but she had enough emotional juice left to get your sister to a cave and heal herself before losing consciousness for several hours while she regenerated most of her abilities. Jace had several close calls, but he was ultimately able to disengage from his fight with Mephistoles. The last time I checked he was tracking Kat and Ari down."
"So it could be the two of them here to rescue me!"
"Your knight in shining armor isn't on his way, Selene. Even assuming that the two of them had any idea where to find my home, it wouldn't matter. They aren't strong enough to get past my wards, not in anything remotely approaching a reasonable period of time."
Kyle tapped on the screen of his smartphone and then held it up. "Just in case you need some additional proof, here's the video feed."
The footage was the same grainy black-and-white video surveillance I'd seen in spy movies, so it took me several seconds before I could decipher what I was seeing. The person walking along at the front of the group could have been anyone, but there wasn't any mistaking the massive, four-legged form following along behind him.
"That's Fenrir. Only he's smaller than when I fought him."
"Yeah, killing one of the fae is a lot harder than killing one of us. I cut his head off, but that just meant that he disappeared and reappeared a little while later. I cost him some of his power and size, but he's still incredibly dangerous."
"So what, he can't be killed?"
Kyle grabbed my shoulders before I could take a second step towards the door and the ward that had thrown me across the room.
"I said he can be killed. It's just complicated. Taking down a fae requires killing them multiple times until they become weak enough that they can't continue to hold their shape. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen."
If I'd been with Jace I probably would have already been crying on his shoulder, but Jace wouldn't have manhandled me like that. Kyle's hands on my shoulder just made me angry.
"Then why the hell didn't you finish the job back in the mountains? What kind of idiot leaves something like Fenrir alive to come looking for payback?"
"The kind of idiot who knows he can't go head to head with Mephistoles."
"What are you talking about? Jace stood up to Mephistoles. The two of you could have easily put Mephistoles down and then made sure that Fenrir was gone for good."
The glare I got from Kyle should have started me on fire. "Jace didn't stand up to Mephistoles, he distracted him for a few minutes while the rest of you ran. No one person stands up to Mephistoles."
"Fine, but it wouldn't have been just you, it would have been you and Jace."
"You're in over your head, so I'm going to make a few things clear. First, I don't help Jace, and I especially don't help Jace take down someone who's been a thorn in his side for the better part of a hundred years.
"Second, I'm not normally on the opposite team from Fenrir. Trying to take him all the way down wasn't anything remotely approaching a sure thing, and if I'd tried and failed then all I would have done is guarantee that he'd have it out for me. This way there was at least a chance that he'd be willing to let it go in return for some kind of moderate reparations."
"You're scared of him…"
"Of course I'm scared of him. There's a reason why Fenrir was the Big Bad in Norse mythology. He's so old that nobody has any idea who created him, and he's one of the top two or three most powerful members of the Unseelie Court. Nobody tangles with Fenrir if they can avoid it, not even the Lady of the Lake."
"Well, it looks like your plan failed."
Kyle pulled me around by my arm and all but dragged me over to the shimmering veil of his ward. "Maybe, maybe not. Come on, it's time to go see what they're planning on doing."
The closer we got to Kyle's ward, the more my anger turned to fear. I tried to pull away, but he was either a lot stronger than he looked or he was still at least partially amped up.
"Stop writhing around or you're going to end up bumping into the energy field again, and this time I won't put you back together again—assuming there is anything left of you after hitting the wall while completely unamped."
That made me stop, but it didn't do anything about my racing heart or the way that my legs had started shaking. Kyle reached forward and sank his hand into his ward. He wasn't the kind of person to make mistakes, but that didn't stop a tiny voice in the back of my mind from screaming that he was about to be shot across the room.
For several seconds, nothing happened, and then a slight ripple shot out from the point where Kyle was touching the ward.
"Okay, I've rekeyed it so that you can come and go through this one. Don't get any ideas about running though, there are more wards between here and the surface, and even if you get past all of the rest of the wards you'll still have Fenrir and Mephistoles waiting for you on the other side of the last ward."
Kyle didn't seem like the kind to lie about something like this—if he'd wanted me dead he could have achieved his purpose simply by not healing me after the last time I'd encountered his ward. Everything that had happened so far pointed towards him wanting me alive—right now at least—but I still moved hesitantly.
I brought my left hand up and touched the ward with the tip of one finger. It wasn't until my finger pierced the plane of the ward that I realized I'd been holding my breath.
Kyle sighed impatiently and then pulled me through the ward. "Come on, it's not a short trip."
Once we left the bunker, our surroundings took my breath away. The tunnel waiting for us immediately after the heavy metal door, quickly gave way to something I could only describe as an underground city. That wasn't the right word for what I was seeing, but it was the best I could come up with. There were large, open spaces that were much larger than anything I would have expected to see underground.
The ground under our feet was an oddly uniform textured rock—as though someone had decided that normal stone was too slick for their purposes and proceeded to remedy the issue. I caught only glimpses, stumbling in the darkness until Kyle stopped and conjured a fist-sized ball of white light above our heads.
I got the impression that he'd somehow bottled up a chunk of air and then put the molecules in a state of extreme excitement, but knowing what he'd done didn't mean I could replicate it.
"What is this place?"
"It's the world's greatest cemetery."
That forced a shiver through me. "What do you mean?"
Kyle looked frustrated, but rather than just pulling me along like I'd expected him to, he stopped and ran his hand through his wavy, dark hair in a gesture that was disturbingly like something Jace would have done.
"The truth is I'm not sure—all I have is theories. I found it a hundred years ago by following Native American legends of a people who had withdrawn from the rest of the world, a people with great power and knowledge…"
"They were Awakened."
He nodded. "Yes. It actually explains quite a bit. I've always been intrigued by the fact that the mythology in North America is so monotheistic. The people who lived here believed in spiritual totems like the bear or the eagle, but they never set those totems above the great creating spirit that they believed ruled everything.
I cleared my throat. "You said that you had theories…"
"Yes. I think that the Awakened on North America chose to withdraw down here. Maybe they were pursuing some kind of higher state of existence, maybe they just wanted to hide their existence and powers as much as possible from the humans around them. All I can tell you is that they locked themselves away down here and then at some point all died."
My shivers were back. "You weren't kidding when you said it was a giant graveyard. What on earth would make you want to build your home down here?"
"Knowledge. Knowledge is the one thing that drives someone like you or me, Selene. Before they died, this group—this pantheon—made some very interesting advances. This place is a goldmine. The prototypes they created are still far short of what I someday hope to manage, but they got me started down paths I otherwise might not have ever discovered."
"Prototypes of what?"
For a second I almost thought that Kyle was going to respond, but then he looked around and shook his head. "Not here. I'll tell you more when we're safely back inside my bunker."
"Why not just tell me now? It's not like there's anyone around to overhear—this place is nothing more than a giant ghost town—"
Kyle grabbed my arm and whipped me around. "You shut your mouth. If I tell you we aren't going to talk about it, then you'll listen or I'll leave you here by yourself to stumble around in the darkness until you either starve to death or run into Fenrir and Mephistoles."
His voice came out as little more than a hiss. It didn't make sense—very little that had happened since Jace and Kat had arrived in my life made sense—but I could tell that I'd pushed him too far this time.
"You won't do that. You need me."
"Need is a relative term. I saved you from Fenrir and brought you here because I think you could be useful to me, but I'm not going to let you ruin everything by bringing the Unseelie and Seelie courts both down on my head."
His grip tightened to the point where he drew a gasp out of me. He was hurting me now, and there was something in his eyes that didn't look entirely sane.
"I'm sorry, I won't say anything else."
"That's right. You can speak when spoken to, but otherwise keep your mouth shut. Bringing you here has already cost me more than I expected it to. Don't make me second-guess the decision or I might just give you to Fenrir in the hopes that will be enough to get him off my back."
I nodded as silent tears trickled out of the corners of my eyes. Kyle released me and stalked off, leaving me to choose between following or staying in the darkness by myself. As much as I wanted to stay where I was, or even better to attempt to retrace my steps and seal the door to his bunker behind me, I knew it would take only seconds for me to become completely disoriented. My best bet was to follow him. He was right about one thing.
Knowledge was what I needed if I was going to get out. For now at least, knowledge was the thing that was going to drive me.
Chapter 4
We walked for more than fifteen minutes and passed through a number of additional wards before finally coming to the outskirts of the city. At each ward we went through the same routine. Kyle grabbed me by the arm as he reached for the ward and then once he'd rekeyed the field, I passed through unharmed.
The final ward was different. I could see the lights that Mephistoles had brought from more than a hundred yards away. The presence of someone who wanted me dead was a momentary distraction, but even that couldn't tear my attention away from something else that I'd noticed as we'd gotten further and further away from Kyle's bunker.
There was an odd shimmer to the air that I couldn't explain. It was moving, so it couldn't be a ward, but I had no idea what else it could be. It was like there was this shimmery, floating gauze that kept pace with us in fits and starts. One moment it would be scant inches in front of Kyle, and then a split second later it would jump forward so that it had encapsulated a section of ground twenty feet ahead of us.
The way it was moving was odd enough, but even more unusual was the way that it seemed to make everything on our side of the moving line more vibrant while washing out the colors of everything on the other side.
As we finally arrived at the last ward I couldn't keep my question inside for any longer. "What…"
I stopped after just one word because Kyle had already turned around with a glare that told me there would be consequences if I didn't keep my mouth closed.
The indistinct figures on the other side of the ward finally approached close enough that I was able to make out the dark sheen of Fenrir's coat and the unsettling gray eyes of his Awakened companion.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
Kyle's voice was dead in a way I'd never heard out of anyone before. We all knew that Mephistoles and Fenrir had come to extract their pound of flesh, but Kyle might have been discussing the weather in some remote location he never expected to visit.
Mephistoles turned out to be a tall, skinny man who looked like he was at least seventy. He moved more easily than I would have expected out of someone of his apparent age, but seeing him still made me glad that I was one of those people who awakened at a younger age.
Mephistoles looked at Kyle with bitter gray eyes. "You interfered with our attempt at capturing those journals—don't tell us that you didn't. That's obviously her standing at your side."
"I deny nothing, Mephistoles. Our arrangement came to an end almost two decades ago. I stayed out of things while your pantheon killed Selene's last incarnation. There was nothing in there about me standing to one side while you attempted to kill her again."
The fear that had been foremost in my emotions was suddenly buried under a tidal wave of anger. Whatever crimes I might have committed against Kyle surely couldn't have merited him agreeing to stand to one side while Mephistoles hunted Jace, Kat and me.
More than anything else, I wanted to shove Kyle through the ward, to push him out to where Mephistoles and Fenrir could take him down. I didn't move though. The situation was too complex. Killing Kyle was the kind of thing that couldn't be undone and I knew it would be better to wait until I knew more about what was going on.
"And me, darkling? What is your rationale for striking me down?"
Fenrir's voice was deeper than I'd expected it to be. He pressed right up to the edge of the ward as though emphasizing that he wasn't scared of it, wasn't scared of us.
"My apologies, great one. If there had been another way I would have taken it, but—at least for now—Selene is under my protection. You'll notice I didn't use any more force than absolutely necessary to accomplish my ends. You and I both know that you could have been robbed of much more power than you were if I really wanted to ruin things between us."
Mephistoles laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "You have an awfully high opinion of yourself, whelp."
"No more so than is merited by my actual capabilities."
As Kyle spoke he turned to one side, finally making the sword at his side visible. Mephistoles went white as soon as he saw the weapon. "Why didn't you tell me he had that?"
Fenrir apparently took exception to his erstwhile ally's tone. He didn't turn completely away from us, but he growled at Mephistoles and fixed the old man with a threatening glare.
"Don't question me. I had no way of knowing that Kyle had the sword. He struck me down too quickly for me to register anything. I wouldn't have even known it was him if not for the fact that I recognized his scent when I rematerialized."
Mephistoles grabbed hold of a heavy necklace of silver links that had been concealed beneath his robes. "Don't threaten me. He may have the sword, but I'm not without advantages of my own. You don't want to sour this relationship, not now that you know what you're up against."
&
nbsp; Now Kyle did smile. "That's the thing about advantages, my friends. Not all advantages are created equal. This particular advantage is at its finest when dealing with a longer term. Just how long do you think it will take you to break down this ward? Two days? Three?"
Mephistoles' smile didn't make it to his eyes. "I can handle anything you want to throw in my direction for three days. Besides, it might take Fenrir working by himself three days to kick the doors to your little castle down, but if I help out it will go much quicker than that."
"Indeed, but then what will you do about the wards that are waiting behind this one?"
Fenrir growled. "You're bluffing. If you had other wards we would have been able to feel them."
"Ah, but that's the thing about wards. They get used so rarely that nobody has done any research into them for hundreds of years. These wards aren't what you're used to. Think about it. Normally you would have been able to sense this ward even before you crashed through my first line of defense."
I could see the realization dawning behind Mephistoles' eyes.
"You figured out a way to use a weaker ward to mask the presence of a stronger ward behind it."
"Indeed I did."
Mephistoles took a step forward and raised his hand, resting it just fractions of an inch away from Kyle's ward. "Then you're a bigger fool even than I realized. Now that I know that's a possibility it's just a matter of time before I figure out how to replicate what you've done. I'll be untouchable."
"I think you overestimate your intellect, old man. You've always been at your best when scavenging through someone else's trash. This particular trick is going to take decades to unlock."
"Time is the one thing I have plenty of."
"Not if I kill you first."
Even as the words left Kyle's mouth he shot forward, moving so quickly that he disappeared. It was like he flickered out of existence and then reappeared standing in front of Mephistoles. Kyle reached forward, obviously intending on pulling Mephistoles into the ward, but the older man was already moving backwards.