Fire magic exploded over my arms and the hands holding me vanished. The vampires behind me screamed as I pushed the element over them. Their bodies lit up in a scorch of burning flesh before their ashy fate was met.
The heavy wooden boards that covered up the warehouse windows shattered, and ropes fluttered through the openings. Eric slid down into the warehouse on a repelling line with hunters alongside him. Streams of sunlight warmed the room, setting vampires on fire in every direction. The demons holding my friends burst into flames and roared as they scattered to the shadows. Tiki and Vincent tackled Caterina, who fought back with deadly talent, avoiding each stream of sunlight. Her body arched around the sunlight and she struck out with her claws, tearing into Tiki’s arm.
The elevator on the second floor dinged and as the doors opened, Marcus walked into the room. His arm swung to the side and two silver blades rotated end over end, piercing Alessia in the back. She roared and charged toward him, but Rayna’s whip snapped on the air, catching Alessia’s cheek and tearing her face open in a gush of red.
Dante and I stood in the middle of the raging war. His black gaze scanned the room and a spine-chilling growl resounded before he lunged. I dodged his first strike, then his second, countering with my fist smashing into his jaw. I put more power into that punch than ever before. A flood of strength filled my body and my limbs, offering me a force I’d never known. My arm was a blur and when my fist made contact, Dante’s jaw shattered beneath my knuckles. The bones cracked and loosened, and then I was pushing into soft broken flesh. His claws tore across my stomach, cutting the top layer of skin I’d healed. I grabbed the hair that framed his face and used it as leverage, pulling his head down toward my knee. I brought my leg up hard and blood splattered my pants as his nose broke. Dante staggered backward, blood running from his mouth and nose. The muscles in his jaw flexed and he winced. Through his transparent skin I saw all the broken pieces of his jaw floating loosely inside his face, and like a floating puzzle it reassembled itself. He moved in a haze, his claws wounding my back and my arms before I caught sight of him. I swung my fist, but he was too fast and claws cut across the back of my leg, tearing into the muscles.
I dropped to one knee, screaming in agony while warm fluid gushed out of my leg. Dante’s chest heaved with jagged breaths. He looked like a beast—his shoulders raised up by his ears, claws protruding from his fingers, and eyes full of hatred.
“I…cower…to…NO ONE!” He arched back his arm to lay a final strike, and I didn’t stop to think, I only reacted.
I channeled the first element I felt. Flashes of light arced between my fingers and each hair on my body rose. Static electricity snapped around my ears and a blinding light surged through the warehouse. Brief coils of light rolled over my arms before bursting in every direction, striking demons all around me. Power built in my chest and a ball of energy grew between my hands. Before I knew what was happening, the light vanished and a second later, a striking burst of light exploded over the room, and everything went white.
I squeezed my eyes shut and lines of color flickered behind my lids. Colorful dots swam around me and when I opened my eyes, there was darkness. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust, and dimly, the room came back into view.
Red and yellow embers danced in the air and the ceiling rained ashy flakes of what were once born vampires. I climbed to my feet, pain shooting through my leg the moment I tried to put any pressure on it. There wasn’t time to heal myself. I staggered backward, trying to avoid any oncoming attacks and regain my balance. The bright dots that had become a part of my vision merged together and faded to reveal Dante not moving in for the kill, but standing frozen in front of me.
His eyes were locked on mine, his broken jaw hanging open, dripping with blood. His head canted slightly to the side as dark lines moved up over his face from beneath the collar of his shirt. The lines jutted left, then right, and after a few moments, all those lines branched off into widening cracks and his skin began to split. Black blood ran from his wounds and his skin began to gray. Sparks of embers sputtered from the growing crevices, and the blood that ran down his skin ignited like an accelerant. Flames swallowed him and he fell to his knees as drifts of smoke smoldered into the sunlight. There were no screams, only a brief gurgling in his throat before his body hit the concrete. His clothes shrank and melted, coiling up before they too, turned to ash. When all that was left was a smoking pile of dust, the warehouse had gone silent.
A few shifters lay injured on the ground, while others had become piles of powder. Rayna stood with her whip by her side, ashes and blood smeared across her face. Marcus stood beside her, a single hand on her shoulder that she welcomed by leaning into it. Everyone’s eyes were on Tiki. Blood ran from cuts over his torso. It seeped into his pants, staining the frayed rope and white fabric. Tiki’s hand patted Vincent’s shoulder, while Vincent leaned on his knees in front of a pile of ash I imagined was his sister, Caterina. Black tears fell from his golden eyes and he whispered the words “I’m sorry” over and over again.
Aside from Vincent’s trembling breaths, the warehouse remained silent. Sparks of lightning arced between my fingers, strings of power left over from my element. All the hairs on my arm and neck were upright, and a patch of soot stained both my palms. The power rippled inside me. I felt it crackle in my eyes and curl in my soul, ready to strike into the darkness at my command.
All my elements sat idly inside, waiting for my call. Each of them would have their turn, of that I had no doubt. I looked around at the injured wolves and the ashes some of the others clung to. This was a small victory for us, but it had come with a cost. We had started on what promised to be a vicious journey—one that began with the death of one of the most powerful vampires on Earth. Now that Dante and the others were dead, we could get the scroll back, and I was one step closer to staying alive. That was more than I could say for anyone else.
Chapter 13
After the injured had been taken care of, I washed the blood off my body in the makeshift bathroom of our warehouse. The hot water had run out long before I had a chance to get cleaned up, so it was quick but refreshing. I changed into the last pair of clothes I had and sat on the cot in my room, staring down at my hands. I called the lightning element forward and sparks of power jumped from one finger to the next. The hairs on my arms rose and a shiver rippled through my body. I pulled the element back and the hairs, one by one, fell flat against my arm.
The souls whispered inside me. They weren’t painful, but I could hear them in the distance and I made a point not to focus on them. The last thing I wanted was them screaming through my mind. They were supposed to help me, but today they nearly got me killed. Mostly, I could ignore them, but the sensation of their essence roaming inside me became a growing discomfort.
The door creaked open and Rayna slipped into the room. She’d changed into a long-sleeve black shirt and a dark pair of jeans. Her hair was still wet and the red and black stuck together in shiny strands.
“Hey,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah, fine. Why?”
Rayna shrugged and sat next to me. “You kind of freaked out back there with Dante.”
“It was the souls. They all came forward screaming for me to do something different. They shrieked and shouted all at once until it became this skull-splitting pain that I couldn’t manage.”
Rayna’s hand slipped into mine, squeezing it. “We have the scroll now. We’re going to finish the ritual and you’ll be back to normal in no time. Well, better than normal.” Silence hovered between us for a moment and I found myself running my thumb back and forth over her fingers. “What you did back there was pretty amazing.”
“I panicked. That just happened to be the element that came. I didn’t know what it would do. It just…went everywhere. We’re lucky none of our people got hurt.”
“That’s an understatement. You took out more than a dozen born vampires in
a single blow, not to mention Dante. We’re all a little lucky today, but that was impressive.”
“Let’s hope it’s that impressive when I see Riley again.”
“You’ve got the power now and you can control it. After everything that’s happened, we can finally stop him.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Rayna turned my face to meet hers and pressed her lips against mine. When she pulled away, the comfort her eyes instilled in me was tranquil. “I know I am. Now come on. Grams and Lillian are waiting for me with The 11th Dimension, and you need to go help the others with the scroll.”
******
Vincent stood alone in the corner, letting a near-empty bag of blood drip into his fangless mouth. Some of the others huddled around a table in the center of the room, looking over the scroll. I should’ve been excited to have the next piece of the puzzle, but I found a strange sympathy tugging at me for Vincent. I hated that I felt anything toward him, but there it was, and there was only one way to make it go away.
The vampire instantly looked uncomfortable when I approached, and I prepared my wits for some snappy comment, but when it never came.
“Chase, before you get upset, you need to know I wasn’t trying to trick you.” I opened my mouth to speak but he cut me off. “No, let me finish. I thought if you knew how old he was, that he was second generation, you would be less inclined to help. I swear I wasn’t playing games, but…I had already lost one family, I couldn’t lose a second.” Vincent’s eyes were intense and focused—he looked nervous.
“I’m not upset.”
Vincent looked up, hesitant at first, as though he’d expected me to hit him. “You’re not?”
“No, very little about you surprises me anymore. I knew your father was old…I just didn’t know how old. It doesn’t change anything.”
“It doesn’t?” Vincent cleared his throat. “I mean, good. I simply wanted you to know I wasn’t trying to deceive you again.” Vincent adjusted his shirt that was stained with blood and torn open from his father’s attack. “So then why are you over here? Shouldn’t you be with the alphas, deciphering that godsforsaken thing?”
“I came over here to say I’m sorry and see if you were okay,” I said, but Vincent looked confused. “For your family…I know what it’s like to lose someone.”
“Please,” Vincent waved me away. “Those imbeciles deserved a fate much worse.”
“I thought you said no more games? I saw how upset you were, you don’t have to pretend like—”
“I don’t know why you’re wasting your breath on sympathies. In truth, I’d hoped my sister would survive. I felt if she could break away from the Sovereign’s prehistoric grip, she could become something more, but she was a casualty of war. It was not unexpected. I don’t need to tell you of all people that. Your stuttering friend suffered a similar fate.”
“Don’t,” I said, and all the sympathy I’d felt vanished. “My stuttering friend had a name and you damn well know it. He wasn’t a casualty of war. Willy was a hero.”
Getting under my skin seemed to bring Vincent back into his comfort zone. He shrugged. “If you say so, hunter. But save your sympathies for yourself. That’s where you like them to be anyway, isn’t it? Besides, soon you’ll face off against your own family. Let’s hope you have it in you to take your father’s life as you did mine. If you do, you’ll see why your sympathies are wasted. When you’re responsible for the death of someone who has clouded your life for so many years, it’s a weight lifted from your shoulders. You’ll feel lighter, I assure you.” Vincent’s feigned confidence didn’t go unnoticed, and his eyes wandered from mine. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have no time for idle and unintelligent chitchat. Look at me, I can’t possibly help save the worlds when I look like this, now can I?”
The anger that built inside me should’ve been thick and pulsing, but something he had said buried the emotion and left my mind reeling. Riley had taken the lives of my mother and my best friend. Every ounce of my being hated him for that. I wouldn’t have a problem taking his life, would I? I thought about it for a moment and as the faces of Willy and my mother floated through my mind, I was sure I could do it. The father whose approval I had desperately strived for was gone. He had been for a long time. When I had become old enough to train, I stepped out of the role of son and into the role of student. I’d lost any semblance of a father years before I had been exiled, and now the man he’d become was not a man at all. Riley was a monster and I was a hunter. It was my responsibility to destroy him.
“Chase,” Eric shouted from the table. “Get your scrawny ass over here and help us, will ya?”
Eric’s voice made me cringe, but he was right, I needed to get in there. The sooner we figured out the scroll, the sooner I would be back in one piece.
The scroll was unrolled and pinned down on each corner with a book. On it were the words I’d read in the sanctuary just moments before I’d been marked the Protector.
Ariaca, tracious, ona-forle, ma-tre-meendo, straticalla
“These are the words you read in the sanctuary?” Marcus asked.
I nodded. “I read them aloud and a few moments later the tattoo was being burned into my back.” I shuddered at the memory. It had been painful, but nothing compared to what I’d experienced since then.
“Well, what the hell do they mean?” Eric asked.
I glared at him across the table. “Oh sorry, I left my Languages of the Underworld for Dummies book back at the condo. Want to go and get it for us?”
“Save it, smart-ass.”
“I don’t know what it says. Elyas told me the power was in the words, not in their meaning.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case right now, does it?” Eric snorted.
“I’ve studied ancient scrolls and languages since I was a child in the Circle,” Riddley said. “Whatever language it is, I have not seen it before.” He hunched over the table, and although he appeared better than when I’d seen him last, he still looked weathered.
“Nor I,” Chief and Jax said after one another.
“Well dammit, none of us know what it means so let’s find someone who does and cut their fingers off one at a time until they tell us.” Eric grinned.
“It’s not from your world.” Tiki walked into the room shaking out his wet hair. He stopped at the table and eyed Eric, after a pause, he moved around to the other side to stand between Marcus and me. A gray towel was wrapped around Tiki’s waist and Marcus gave him a strange head-to-toe look. “My pants are still drying.”
“You know we brought clothes for you from the warehouse, right?” Marcus asked.
“Marcus Starkraven, as I’ve said before, the clothes of your world do not appeal to me. Nor does the firm embrace they enforce around my—”
“Okay, okay. You’re pants are drying,” Eric said. “Nobody wants to hear about your demon junk.”
Marcus sighed and rubbed his temples. “Tiki, do you know what this says?”
His orange eyes studied the parchment and after a few minutes, he smiled. “Amazing.” He ran his fingers over the script. “Six languages from six dimensions. If one was not well versed with a deep understanding of the many Underworld cultures, they would never be able to decipher this.” Tiki laughed. “How very clever of the gods.”
We waited quietly, standing around the table and staring at him. Tiki’s eyes panned from face to face and he continued to smile.
Marcus cleared his throat, but when Tiki didn’t react, Eric chimed in. “So tell us what it says!” His voice was gruff and angry
“Oh, my apologies.” Tiki looked uncomfortable for a moment before turning his attention back to the scroll. He mouthed the words quietly himself and then nodded. “These languages are very old. Most speak the common tongue of English now, for it’s the easiest of all the Underworld dialects. This is a rough translation, for each word is actually a short passage from another language, but essentially it says:
*
“Fire spills from rocky peaks, its base a ceiling for dower
Confined within are vessels of purity, a crypt for the highest power
Wakes of purple roll above, below a key to fate
Which arch shall close the Circle of Light, and create a pact that cannot break”
*
Tiki sighed. “I cannot translate the last word. Straticalla is goblin. Ca means below, but I do not know the rest. I never had the opportunity to learn their language.”
“Well that’s as clear as a mud-covered window on a rainy day,” Eric said.
“It’s a poem,” Tiki said, turning to me. “Or a riddle...the answer is here, Chase Williams, we just have to decipher it.”
“Forget that last word for now. Circle of Light was the original name of the Circle,” Riddley said. “The pact could be the original oath taken by the hunters.”
“And ‘wakes of purple roll above’ could be a wake, as in a wave,” I said. “If that was the case, the ‘where’ would be Drakar. All of the water there is purple.”
“Purple water? What the hell kinda places do you people spend your time in?”
“Yes,” Tiki said, ignoring Eric. “And the first part, ‘Fire spills from rocky peaks,’ could be a volcano.”
“Where Riley first started the ritual,” I said.
Marcus nodded. “That would make sense. That was where Riley opened himself up to accept Ithreal’s essence. It’s where all of this began. Perhaps there is something beneath it, something of Ithreal’s?”
“It can’t be beneath,” I said. “The cave we were in collapsed and then the volcano erupted. There’s nothing but lava underneath.”
Marcus put a hand over his mouth and looked back at the words. Silence drifted through the room and the tension was almost palpable.
“Oh this is horse crap,” Eric said. “We need to go after the source like I’ve been saying from the beginning.”
Everyone ignored his outburst and he waved us away, walking out of the room and into the daylight outside. The tension in the room seemed to dissipate when he left, and I could see Tiki relax.
Endure Page 11