by Hazel Hunter
“Absolutely not,” Piers said immediately. “That place almost cost us everything.”
“You’re not the one who gets to make that decision for me,” she said firmly. “I would never force either of you back into that place. Your personal demons can grow very large there, and you’re right, it almost cost us everything. The answers that I have been looking for live in that place, however. If there is no other way to get them, then I have no other choice.”
“Think on it longer,” Kieran said.
It surprised her in some ways that he had ended up the peacekeeper, the one who balanced out her views and Piers’s.
“There have been no attacks yet,” he continued. “We know very little of what is going on. I am in constant communication with other officers. When they know something, so will we. Acting without proper intelligence is suicide, and right now, we have very little.”
Hailey reluctantly agreed. That was part of what was frustrating her. She had so little information, and there was simply so much she needed to know. For now, though, what she had would have to be enough.
Kieran and Piers pulled her into the shower with them. It was a pleasure all its own, and it didn’t have anything to do with sex. They were establishing a fragile kind of domesticity in the middle of a very frightening time. It always felt as if the Templars were on the doorstep, but right now, sandwiched between her two naked slippery lovers, she felt as if nothing cruel or cold would ever touch them.
She closed her eyes blissfully as Piers sudsed her hair. She and Kieran tackled Piers with a towel, drying him vigorously until he cried for mercy.
It was home. It was more than she had ever expected. Sometimes she still thought that it was only a dream.
As she drifted off to sleep that night, she wondered if she should call off her search. Anything she found would be more than likely dangerous. She had a life that she would fight to keep. Endangering it seemed not only foolish but disrespectful.
Hailey’s eyes drifted closed. Perhaps it was best to halt her search.
• • • • •
This time, Hailey knew that she was not truly in the Shadow Walk Prison. She was a wraith again, invisible and without form or substance. It should have disturbed her that she was becoming oddly comfortable with this place. Instead, she only looked around, wondering what it was she could find this time.
She emerged from a thicket of groaning trees, shivering when she felt their twigs brushing at her skin and the human voices that came from them. When she had first truly visited the Shadow Walk Prison on her own, she had almost become one of them herself. They were what became of people who had given in to despair. They took root, and ever after, they were left to mourn what they had become.
Directly outside of the grove, she found herself in what looked like a fortress courtyard. For a moment, she thought it was a dark reflection of her Castle, but when she looked more closely, she found that this was a place that was far more ancient, and far more grim. It was made of nothing but gray stone, with no comfort or joy in it. After a moment, she became aware of a number of voices whispering in a chorus of misery.
Something about it was different from the grove, however. She knew that there was something that needed to be found here. She knew that there was something she needed to see.
Bracing herself, she walked from the courtyard through the main gates. The great hall was empty and echoing. When she looked upwards, she could see tattered banners. Once she thought they must have represented royal houses with beautiful queens and brave kings. Now they were nothing but rags, the people that they represented long gone. She was wondering which hallway to explore when she heard two voices.
“I hate this place.”
“Everyone does. You’re not special.”
They were two utterly human voices, and she responded to the fear that she heard in them. She followed them as best she could. Her path led her down a dark tunnel, one that started slanting deep underground. In a matter of moments, she could feel the chill of the place and the way it soaked through her clothes to make her skin rise up in goosebumps.
The voices faded and rose again as the tunnel twisted and turned. She knew that the two men were frightened and scared. She knew that they were guarding something. She had a tickle of a hope at the back of her mind for what it could be, but she ignored it.
Finally, she came to a place where she could see a light up ahead. She slowed her steps because she did not know how visible she truly was. She could see that the tunnel opened into a room, one that was lit with the flicker of torches.
She stayed in the shadows as best she could, but she soon realized that there was no need. The two men had no idea she was there. She could walk close to them if she wished. When she did, she felt a brief chill when she saw the insignia that they wore.
She didn’t know what two Templars were doing in the Shadow Walk Prison, but whatever they were doing there, she could tell that they didn’t like it. Occasionally they glanced behind them and around them. They both flinched when a low angry roar came out of the darkened room behind them.
“We have to go in there again,” one of them said flatly.
The other nodded, reluctantly taking a torch from the wall. Even though they were part of an organization that had hunted her and people like her for hundreds, if not thousands of years, she felt a kind of pity for them.
Following them closely, she stepped into the darkened room right behind them.
The darkness seemed absolute. When she stepped into it, she immediately felt as if it was engulfing her, that she was drowning in sorrow. The torchlight was an island of sanity. She realized that they were surrounded by people, men and women both, and they were in chains. The light glinted flatly off their eyes, and they watched the two men with hate.
“All right,” one man said. “Show us your chains.”
Slowly, each of the people in the darkness held their chains up in their hands, showing the guards the unbroken length. One of the guards took a deep breath, and he began counting. Hailey felt the bottom drop out of her belly as the count grew to be more than fifty. Then it was more than seventy. Finally, it hit an even one hundred.
As he counted, she looked deep in the eyes of the chained people. They were mostly men, but there were some women. There were some who looked like they were barely out of their teens.
The Templars turned, relieved to go. As Hailey watched, however, a dark-eyed girl looped her chain around one upraised foot. The Templar, cursed, pinwheeling his arms in a panic before falling into the mass of chained bodies. The scream that he made tore right through Hailey’s soul, making her scream as well.
She sat up straight in bed, the scream still on her lips. Piers and Kieran jerked up out of their own sleep, Piers immediately touching Hailey to see what was wrong and Kieran scanning the room for some sign of threat.
“A nightmare?” asked Piers.
Hailey shook her head.
“No,” she said softly, “but I think I know what we need to do.
• • • • •
“Are you absolutely insane? No.”
Hailey bristled.
“Do you really think that you are going to get very far by taking that tone with me?” she asked angrily. “Do you think that you can order me around like I was a teenager getting your burger?”
“I think that you should listen to common sense,” Piers snapped. “Hailey, you’re not talking about a hike in the woods. You’re talking about a journey into a place that left us all with scars and that nearly succeeding in keeping us more than once.”
“I’m talking about a place where people are being held,” she said. “Those people being guarded by Templars, those have to be the spirits that the demons have replaced. They weren’t destroyed, and if Captain Warwick is any indication, they can be rehabilitated. They can be saved.”
“At what cost? Hailey, we don’t know what is really going on. They could be a trap. They could be something completely unrelated
to the attack that we are facing now. There are too many variables to assume that going in is worth the risk.”
“That is not a decision you get to make for me,” Hailey cried, exasperated. “Liona, tell him!”
They were seated in Piers’s office. Liona was perched on a window seat peeling an apple as if it mattered not a bit to her.
“Tell him what?” she asked. “You already have. What I will tell you, Hailey, is that you need to consider the risks as well. There is of course the risk of you being killed in the Shadow Walk Prison, or captured or enslaved forever.”
“Oh yes, just that,” Kieran murmured sarcastically.
“But more than that, there is the risk that you will simply be unable to leave.”
Hailey frowned.
“My eyes.”
“I see you have my meaning. Every time you step into the Shadow Walk Prison, it sinks its claws deeper and deeper into you. It turns into something that is more a part of you. Your eyes show us that.”
“It doesn’t mean that that place will defeat us,” Hailey said.
Liona shrugged.
“Of course. Put it this way. If there were bets being taken, I would say that I believe in you more than I believe in the Shadow Walk Prison. However, that would be a very close thing.”
Hailey sighed.
“Thank you for your honesty,” she said.
She meant it though. Liona cared for her, but the other witch was deeply pragmatic.
Liona hopped off of the window seat.
“I have told you everything that I can tell you. At this point, Hailey at least knows more about the Shadow Walk Prison than I do. Kieran and Piers, you know more than most others. All I can tell you is that I have the utmost faith in all three of you. The future that I see is still murky, but I can tell that it is coming closer.”
She closed the door behind her softly.
“So whatever we do, it’s going to have vast and world-changing consequences,” said Kieran drily. “That makes this ever so much easier.”
Piers scowled.
“It shouldn’t be easy. Hailey, there are so many risks to this. The worst part is that they are risks that we don’t need to take. We may never need to take them.”
“But we won,” Hailey said.
Piers frowned at her while Kieran raised an eyebrow. She thought that in this matter she was closer to Kieran than she was to Piers. Piers liked things in certainties, and he placed the lives of his people at the highest priority. Kieran was used to weighing his options, taking risks and understanding that some sacrifices needed to be made.
“What are you talking about, Hailey?”
“The last time we fought the Shadow Walk Prison, we won,” she replied. “Don’t you remember that, at least, Piers? It tried to take us, and it couldn’t. We defeated it.”
“We got out with our skins,” Piers sighed, but at least he looked a little more open to the idea.
They resolved to speak more on it later. Hailey was a little disappointed, but she knew that there was no leaving right away, not when Piers had so many responsibilities as coven master.
She assumed that there would still be time to figure out the intricacies of the trip, to learn what needed to be done and to make it easier.
She was wrong.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE NEXT MORNING, she and Piers were trying to figure out where they could go to deploy their camouflage spell next. Some covens would benefit from it greatly, but their very obscurity would mean that it was difficult to get to them.
A knock on the door made Hailey look up in surprise, and she was even more shocked when the door opened before Piers even called out.
Julie appeared in the doorway, her face grim. Hailey was shocked to smell smoke on the other woman. Julie was a firecracker, what the Wiccan world called a witch who controlled fire. In the months that she had known Julie, however, Hailey had always seen a level-headed woman who loved her plane more than she cared about her more esoteric affinity with fire. Now, though, there was murder in Julie’s eyes. She made the air crackle.
“Piers, there’s Templars at our perimeter.”
Piers immediately stepped away from the map, heading towards the window.
“Where? How far out?”
Julie’s laugh was nasty.
“At our perimeter. Right by our wall. They’re definitely looking for something. They’ve not tested the gorge yet, but they will.”
Piers nodded, opening the window.
“Get all of the children and people who can’t fight down to the cellars. After that, come looking for me.”
He spared a glance at Hailey. She could tell that he was torn on where she should be, so she made the choice for him. She laid her hand on his elbow, pulling the energy from him as quickly as possible. Before he could say anything, she pushed herself out the window, flying towards the wall. She could hear him curse behind her as he did the same.
When they landed in the ramparts, there were already several people there. They were unaccountably quiet, staring over the edge. When she looked too, Hailey could see why.
There was a score of Templars just a hundred yards or so away from the base of the wall. They looked like men who were on business. They were armed, and she could tell that they were searching.
The illusion that she had created was one that stretched out beyond the walls. To the Templars, it looked as if they were standing close to the edge of a gorge. Though her illusion was sound, she felt sick to her stomach. It would only take one moment, one step to reveal that there was no gorge there but solid ground.
Kieran climbed up on the ramparts, his face grim.
“There are demons in the woods. The full hundred that Hailey saw in her dream unless I miss my guess. They’re lying down with some Templars watching them, but they look ready for battle.”
“Can we fight them?” Hailey asked, her voice hushed.
“We can defend against them, certainly,” Piers said. “They didn’t call in a helicopter strike after all. The Castle was designed to maintain defensive capabilities against Templars. If it was just those below? I’d bet on us on a heartbeat.”
“But the demons…” Hailey said.
Piers nodded. “The demons are a game changer. We always knew they would be.”
Julie approached them, her face still tense.
“The kids and those who can’t fight are below, boss. Got any orders for us?”
Piers thought for a moment.
“It looks like everyone’s already at their watch stations. If they actually seem to figure out we’re here, rain hell down on them. Until then…”
Hailey turned just in time to see one of the Templars wander a little closer to the space that she knew marked the edge of her illusion. He looked out over what he thought was a gorge, unaware that a dozen tense people were looking back from an invisible manor wall.
Hailey didn’t realize that she was holding her breath until another Templar called. He turned away, making her breathe a silent sigh of relief.
“The Castle was never made to defend against demons,” she said softly.
Piers looked torn, and then he nodded reluctantly.
“Every time we’ve faced a demon, we’ve barely survived it. Kieran, could the Magus Corps do any better?”
To Kieran’s credit, he said nothing about Piers’s asking after Magus Corps aid.
“No,” he said flatly. “We’re ready for combat, but the demons are something else again.”
“All right,” Piers said.
There was something final in his voice. Hailey knew what he meant even before he said it. Even though it was something that she wanted, it still made her ache to see him capitulate.
“I need an hour to make sure that the people of the Castle know what to do. Kieran, give the Magus Corps a full report of what is happening here. Let them know, however, that our role at the moment is purely defensive. Hailey…get Liona.”
“We’re going back into the Sh
adow Walk Prison,” she said softly. He nodded.
“Gods above help us, but we are.”
• • • • •
Hailey helped Liona get her supplies ready, and then she, Liona and Lucius brought them to the bedroom that she, Piers and Kieran shared.
“What do you see?” she asked as Liona set up her supplies. Liona glanced at her.
“I see greatness,” she said softly. “I don’t know how this will turn out for you or your men, dear one. Whatever you do is going to change the way our world works, however. If it is any comfort, all I know for sure is that I have complete faith in you.”
Hailey smiled. Her stomach was churning with nerves, but in many ways, she felt ready. There was a kind of freedom in knowing that there were no other choices. She knew what she had to do. She was going to do it.
Lucius took her aside as Liona busied herself. In some ways, it was hard to remember that this man had been living in the forest for years, unaware of the woman who missed him so fiercely. Hailey supposed that when you had more than a thousand years to learn about yourself and who you were, you took transitions a little more easily. His curly hair was professionally dressed, and there was very little of the wolf in him, until you looked deeply into his eyes.
“Liona has faith in you, but do you have faith in yourself?”
Hailey shrugged uneasily.
“I know what needs to be done, and I know that I am going to do it. Does that count?”
Lucius’s smile was rueful.
“It serves for most things. I am a veteran of many battles, Hailey. All of mine have been fought in the real world, but if you would listen, I have advice for you.” When Hailey nodded, he continued. “Battles are won and lost by very small factors sometimes. Some battles will never be won no matter how much you fight, but others can turn on a missing horseshoe or a mislaid message. Sometimes faith in yourself and in the soldiers who fight with you are what it takes to turn a battle. Sometimes it’s enough.”