DANGER: RADIOACTIVE LANDSLIDE
THESE ANCIENT BUILDINGS ARE CLOSED FOR DECONTAMINATION AND STRUCTURAL UNDERPINNING. THEY ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. PLEASE KEEP ALL CHILDREN AND PETS WELL AWAY FROM THE EXCLUSION ZONE.
- WORLD HERITAGE IRELAND
“Great,” said Isabel. “He probably impersonated an Irish Heritage executive and got the whole thing shut down with one phone call. Disgusting man.”
“At least no members of the public will be caught up in this,” Rufus said. “That’ll reduce our safety worries. And his lies will be found out eventually. The place will be swarming with Special Ops. Probably FBI too, given Sebastian’s global presence. But look. Look around. Doesn’t this strike you as strange?”
There were no henchman lurking anywhere either. The doorway to the monument was unguarded. In fact, there seemed to be no people here at all.
“Why doesn’t he have his armed thugs everywhere?” said Isabel. “There’s nobody here to stop us getting into the monument.”
“Perhaps he needs them all inside,” said Rufus. “He’s probably worried Sebastian will shift and he’ll be ripped to shreds. I don’t doubt that he’s warned the hired muscle that they may need to come and enact vengeance afterwards, in the event that that happens.”
“You mean if Sebastian rips out his throat, he’ll want someone to come and kill me later as revenge?” I said.
“Well, yes.”
“Then I guess Lavery doesn’t know about my fate and the fact that I’m supposed to die here?”
Rufus shook his head.
“I’m sure he doesn’t have any idea. But, I should point out, we don’t know that for sure either.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we do. Don’t argue any more, Rufus. I know you’re just trying to make me feel better. But really, what’s the point? It’s just the way it is.”
We jogged to the entrance of the huge temple.
Just as we got there, I turned. “You know, there’s always a chance I got this wrong.”
“What?” said Isabel. “Do you feel that you made a mistake? Sebastian’s not here?”
I shut my eyes. My heart juddered in my chest and my fingers tingled.
“No. There’s no mistake on that,” I said, opening my eyes. “I was right about Sebastian. He’s here. I need to get inside.”
I sprinted for the entrance. The others followed right on my heels.
Two wooden staircases flanked the doorway. Those stairs were usually packed with tourists waiting in line. Today, they were empty.
A gigantic ancient stone stood in front of the doorway. Its ancient spiral carvings were awesome up close. This visit, I barely noticed them.
Within the space of a minute, we were all at the top of the stairs and heading inside the monument.
I looked up at the space where the sun shone through, every winter solstice. Warm rays lit up the whole chamber on those days.
But this wasn’t solstice, and it was cool and dark inside.
I wondered if my adoptive parents had ever come here to see the rays hit the inner tomb at solstice? Or if my birth mother had?
There was no time to ponder this or anything else, though. We had to get inside before Lavery’s insane plan went any further.
The sky above us was a sullen mauve-grey. It grew darker as thick clouds moved across the sun.
It hit me that this may be the last daylight I’d ever see.
* * *
The door led to a stone passageway, which felt cold out of the warm spring sunshine. It was plenty tall enough to stand in, but somehow still felt cramped. We all tiptoed in.
I pushed down a rising sense of claustrophobic panic. Dahlia clung on to my arm.
“You okay?” I whispered.
“Mm-hm.” But she was trembling. Lucas placed a hand on her back and whispered something in her ear. She took her hand off my arm and let him guide her along.
Isabel and Rufus edged round me so they were in front. I protested, but Isabel put her finger to her lips and leaned in close.
“You’re pregnant and you’re that murderous fuck’s number two target. You’re damn right we’re going to keep you surrounded.”
I gave in and accepted my place between my friends.
We crept along the passageway where the walls curved round a little. We could just make out the rhythmic hum of voices somewhere in the distance.
The chanting. It was the chanting from my visions.
My palms were sweating and I felt sick to my stomach, but I kept going. I felt certain Sebastian was somewhere nearby.
It was as if my whole body was propelled forward by an invisible force. Sebastian and I were two super-powerful magnets, bound to snap back together eventually no matter how or why we were separated.
The passage was longer than I had imagined. It got colder and darker as we traveled deeper inside the monument.
We must have walked fifty feet before Rufus stopped suddenly, holding his hands out to stop us physically from moving forward. By this point, it was pitch black and we couldn’t see a thing.
The chanting was louder. I recognized the voices as male, but I didn’t know what the language was. Isabel leant over to whisper in my ear again.
“Is this chanting the same as in your visions?”
I clutched on to her, suddenly hit by a wave of vertigo.
“Yes. Oh my god, Isabel. This is it, isn’t it? This is it.”
She squeezed my hand. “Be strong, Finola. Be the vessel your beautiful tiger cub deserves. Let’s go get its Daddy.”
I took deep breaths and tried to stay as calm as I could. My heart banged furiously in my chest and adrenaline shot round my system. I hoped the baby wouldn’t be damaged by the stress.
Then I remembered neither of us was likely to make it out anyhow. Not if my visions were accurate. Recurring migraine visions were always a premonition of the person’s own death, after all. Sebastian, Isabel, Rufus and Lucas had all confirmed that.
Sadness cloaked me until I felt like giving up, there and then.
But I held my nerve. Just like Rufus told me to, at the start of this mad adventure.
I was here to help save Sebastian’s life. And I was damn well sure I wasn’t going to let myself get killed until after that happened.
“We need to get round this next curve and I suspect we’ll be in the main chamber,” Rufus whispered to us all. “You see the flickers of flame up ahead?”
Dim orange flashes appeared on the furthest edge of the wall.
Rufus patted my shoulder, and probably everyone else’s too.
“They must have set up the ritual right there in the central burial area. It must have started already. Now I want you all to be strong and prepare yourself. We don’t know what sort of scene we’re going to witness. There may be some unpleasant sights and sounds, so we’ll need stout hearts and strong stomachs. Now, you’re the newest one in this situation, Dahlia. If you feel you can’t cope, I want you to make a run for it back the way we came. Right back up the passageway. Just get moving and go. Lucas, you can go with her after the Grand Trine takes place, if need be. The whole point of our coming is the Grand Trine, so that means Isabel and Finola have the most dangerous job of their lives coming up. I’ll be here to help any way I can. But Dahlia and Lucas, I don’t want you two to feel bad if you have to bail at any point. We’ll understand. Sebastian would too.”
Lucas said “Sure,” in an unconvincing voice. Dahlia wouldn’t budge.
“No. I’m not going anywhere. My friend needs me. She thinks she’s going to die here. I’m not having that. I’ll take that motherfucker on myself if I have to. We’re going to nail him. And Finola is leaving here with us. That’s the end of it.”
I hugged her tightly, choked up at the determination in her angry, righteous whisper.
She held me in an iron grip. “Love you, babe.”
“Love you too, D.”
Rufus patted us all lightly in the darkness. “Lucas, I need you to shift now. Th
en on the count of three, I need you to roar to Sebastian in a way that lets him know there are three white tigers including him. That way, we can get the Grand Trine underway immediately. The Grand Trine should take approximately three minutes from start to finish. We may be ambushed by his men while we’re doing it, so I’ll need you to try to hold them off in shifted form, please. We’ll have to hope they don’t have any automatic weapons down here, although they’d be idiots to bring those to an underground site with unknown structural integrity. Are we all ready?”
I heard Lucas tear off his clothes. He then shifted into his liger form. Dahlia gasped, even though we couldn’t see him. We could sure hear the growling.
He was enormous as a liger, with his giant-sized paws and rumbling purr. It did feel reassuring to have a huge beast padding along behind us.
Isabel had to recite the spell with me, so she couldn’t shift. I wondered if she might do it afterwards. If any of us were still alive at that point.
“On the count of three, then,” said Rufus. “Three… two… one… Let’s get him.”
We burst round the corner into a circular stone chamber. It was lit by flaming torches, which highlighted three recesses round the edges.
In front were a group of men on their knees, chanting. I counted thirteen of them.
Lavery was in the centre of the circle, eyes shut and arms held up, as though receiving an evil blessing.
The chanting was loud and they all seemed to have their eyes shut. We hadn’t been spotted. Yet.
Then I saw him.
Sebastian.
He had been stripped except for some sort of brief fabric tied around his waist. His arms were tethered with what looked like thick reinforced metal bands. The same bands held his ankles and there was a sturdy iron bar round his waist. Not even a tiger could break those bonds in a hurry.
But he was alive. I held my breath, drinking in the sight of him. The sense of relief was intense.
That feeling was only temporary. It looked as though he’d been beaten, or otherwise hurt. His chest glistened with sweat and streaks of blood criss-crossed it.
Anger bubbled inside me. I was so furious, I imagined I could probably tear out Lavery’s throat there and then with my bare hands, without even a second’s remorse.
The rage was energizing. All fear disappeared at that moment.
I vowed to myself that I’d do this job, no matter what the consequences. I wished my baby could live on, but I knew that was up to fate.
At last, I saw how fate had us all in the palm of its hand, just like Sebastian taught me. If only I hadn’t needed to learn the lesson like this.
Rufus signaled for Lucas to make our presence felt. I peered over Rufus’ shoulder at the scene before us.
Lucas let out a roar so loud and strong, it made the stone walls vibrate. For a second, I wondered if the whole prehistoric structure could crumble and bury us alive.
Sebastian’s face looked up to us. His eyes damn near burst out of his head to see Lucas standing there.
Lucas roared again, more softly this time. Sebastian looked amazed, peering to see who the third tiger was. But he couldn’t see anyone.
Whatever their tiger language was like, it apparently wasn’t complex enough for Lucas to be able to explain that the third tiger was inside my belly and that I was going to be doing the talking.
Lavery stopped the chanting with a shriek. I stepped forward.
“What the fuck are you doing here, witch? Don’t you know when you’ve got a good deal?”
Suddenly Sebastian saw I was there. He evidently hadn’t seen me before now.
Tiger claws shot from all his limbs, then retracted again. His face flashed black-and-white and then back to human. He growled, so deep that I felt my skeleton judder with the bass notes.
Don’t shift now, I begged him silently. Lavery will destroy us all if you do.
“Start the Grand Trine!” Isabel yelled.
“Get them!” Lavery bellowed to his men.
Thirteen white-clad men stormed across the chamber towards us.
Isabel and I started to recite the Grand Trine words. Sebastian joined in, without missing a beat. We spoke the ancient words in unison.
Time seemed to slow down. I felt so calm, like I was floating.
The words flowed out of me, all those complicated old-fashioned words, all in the right order. The Grand Trine bathed the three of us in a white light. I felt my strength building with every line we uttered.
If we could just finish the spell, Lavery would be destroyed. Sebastian would be safe. Dahlia and Isabel and Lucas and Rufus would be safe.
And me? And our baby? Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance my visions were wrong.
I clung to that hope like a drowning woman to driftwood.
The white-robed men still approached us, even in slowed-down time. We got to what I estimated was the final third of the spell.
“Take her out,” shouted Lavery.
I braced myself for attack.
Instead, the men rounded on Isabel and punched her hard. She fell to the ground, unconscious.
Lucas, in liger form, received a tranquilizer dart to the flank, just as he crouched to spring at the attackers. It looked just like the one Sebastian had been forced to accept from Lavery, in the hotel room.
Now Lucas too dropped forward, not unconscious, but very woozy.
The Grand Trine was over. Over before we’d had a chance to finish the job.
Our one and only chance of saving everyone’s life had been lost.
39
Sebastian half-shifted and roared loud enough to wake the dead.
“I suggest you get back to human form, Chase, or I’ll skin your girlfriend alive while you watch,” Lavery barked. “And men, bring our latecomers into the circle please. I hate any of my guests to be wallflowers.”
We were pulled forcibly into the middle of the chamber and surrounded. I was close enough to Sebastian to see the look on his face.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to him.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “I love you. I always have and I always will.”
Piers Lavery laughed his awful laugh.
“It’s a terrible shame love doesn’t conquer all, isn’t it? You must feel cheated. Finola, I’ve got a special treat for you. I’m going to kill you with my brilliant Anti-Finola potion, instead of flaying you alive. It’s a much nicer death, relatively speaking. Sebastian, your reward is that you can watch. Unless you both do exactly as I say.”
Sebastian stared at him with such contempt, I worried Lavery might just shoot him there and then.
“What do you want now, you revolting little man?”
Lavery just laughed. “I want you to lie down on this altar and let us finish the magical ritual. Then we’ll cut out your heart. You’ll have no restraints and nothing to pin you down. It’ll be an entirely voluntary slaughter. Those are the best kind. If you do all of that, without shifting, I’ll let your girlfriend walk out of here.” He smiled sickeningly. “Unless she’s as rude to me as you are, and then I’ll swat her like a wasp.”
“Just do it then. Get on with it.” Sebastian nodded. “I’m bored of all this waiting around.”
“No,” I shouted. “Don’t agree to it, Sebastian! What are you doing?”
“I should warn you that if you do shift, I shall make sure your girlfriend is immediately killed before your very eyes. Oh, and I have another surprise. Anti-Finola doesn’t bring quite as peaceful a death as I told you just now. I was telling little fibs.” He chuckled, like a deranged imp. “It’s downright agonizing, if I got the formulation right. And you know me. I got the formulation right.”
Isabel’s unconscious form was laid out on the floor behind us. Her chest rose and fell, so we knew she was still breathing. It was a small comfort, but I clung to it.
Rufus, Dahlia and Lucas were held at gunpoint by three of the men. The other ten made up the rest of the large circle.
/> How did we ever think we’d have a chance of completing the Grand Trine without Lavery stopping us? It seemed laughable now. Yet we had genuinely believed it would work.
Perhaps we didn’t realize how small the chamber would be. Perhaps we thought we’d be done before the goons got us. It didn’t matter now.
Fate evidently had a darker twist in store for us, and this was where we found ourselves.
Lavery reached into a velvet pouch sitting on the altar and took out handfuls of identical glass capsules. Each one looked like the vial he’d used to threaten me in the hotel room.
“This is my clever, clever substance, Anti-Finola,” he said. “It will kill Finola and nobody else. It’s specially formulated from the exact sequence of her DNA.” He held up one hand. “I know, I’m a genius. Save your accolades for later. I’ll autograph one of Chase’s cold, dead fingers for you if you crave a souvenir.”
Walking round the circle, he handed one vial to each of his men. “One for you, and one for you, and one for you, and…”
When he’d given one to each of his henchmen, he stopped right in front of me.
“And one for you,” he said, holding out a vial of my personalized death potion. I took it warily.
He patted my shoulder, mock-compassionately. “You may decide suicide is preferable to another moment of Chase’s tiresome conversation. Have that with my compliments.”
Then he skipped back to the altar with a light, carefree step.
“Chase, what’s it to be? Are you going to bore us all to death with your melodramatic tiger antics, or shall we do this the sensible way?”
Sebastian snarled at him, but he nodded.
“Fuck you, Lavery. And yes. I’ll do what you want. But if you harm Finola, I swear I’ll take your head off with one bite.”
Lavery laughed and clapped his hands together. “Brilliant! Quite brilliant. Men, undo Chase’s fastenings please. I want him walking on his own two legs to the altar. Note I said two, Chase. Not four. Walk to the altar as a willing human. Then we shall recommence the ritual.”
While four of Lavery’s men set to work with keys to unlock Sebastian’s metal bonds, Rufus cleared his throat to speak.
Tiger Billionaire: The Whole Story (BBW Paranormal Tiger Shifter Romance Box Set) Page 25