“Cal?” Valen lunged towards him.
Cal managed to hold his free hand out and shake his head.
Because he had the sudden urge to lash out at his brother to keep him away, to protect himself.
“I don’t think…” He swallowed and breathed through another wave of nausea. “It likes it.”
Valen slowly looked from him to the gate. The colours tried to break through, writhing beneath the crimson, turning black in places.
“It’s fighting you?” Keras looked as if he wanted to reach for him too, but held himself back as he looked between Cal and the gate.
Something slowly filled his brother’s eyes.
“Doing this,” Cal muttered and straightened as he finally tamped down the pain, bringing it to a more manageable level, one where he could move without wanting to vomit. “Don’t try… to… stop me.”
Keras’s jaw flexed and he pivoted away from Cal on a low curse.
The second of the night.
Cal wiped his clean hand across his mouth and then motioned for his brothers to back off, because the connection between him and the gate calmed as Keras distanced himself.
Either it hated his brothers near it now it was damaged, or it really didn’t like Keras anymore.
It was probably the latter since Keras had attacked it, but there was no harm in gaining himself some space in which to work.
His brothers backed off and he focused back on the gate.
Pain rippled through him, a streak right up his front and back. He focused on that line as he squeezed his hand, dripping more blood onto the gate, building the connection between them. The blood gathered along the line of the fracture and then parted as he stared at it, wanting to see beyond the crimson to the glyphs and rings. Sparks of colour emanated from the shattered glyphs.
Could he repair them and restore the gate?
That weird connection between him and it coaxed him into doing it.
Because the gate wanted to be fixed?
He looked at Keras where he had stopped near Valen and Eva. The look in his brother’s eyes was right. The gate had to be sealed.
Pain shot up his chest in a fierce wave and he gritted his teeth against it as the connection wavered and the colours sparked brighter, turning black as they arced down to land on the crimson. He clenched his jaw and focused through the pain, but his connection began to slip, his control fading with it.
He looked down at his hand.
The offering of blood he was making wasn’t enough. Not if he wanted complete control over the gate. Not if he wanted to seal it. He had to give it more.
He drew the knife from the sheath.
Looked at his wrist.
“Don’t,” Keras barked.
Cal drew it across his left wrist.
His head turned as blood spilled in a waterfall onto the gate and he blinked hard, fighting to keep his focus as he watched it hit the disc and spread across it in a thick layer, one that muted all the colours.
The connection ran deeper, another thousand hot needles piercing his bones, and he swallowed down the bile that rose up his throat.
The world blurred but he kept it together, kept his eyes on the gate and his mind on not only closing it, but sealing it shut.
Marek’s voice swam in his ears, something about not being able to find Caterina.
And then something that sounded a lot like a demand to know what the hell Cal was doing.
Cal leaned forwards as heaviness invaded his body, blinked again and tried to focus on the gate. The connection between him and it seemed to disappear, blurring like the world around him, and he couldn’t distinguish himself from the gate. It was as if they were one.
A familiar feeling built inside him.
A sense that he wasn’t alone.
That part of him that had been missing, the other half of his soul, was right there before him.
Tears filled his eyes as he reached for it. For her.
Her sweet laughter chased around his mind. Her teasing words. Her scolding ones. He sank into it all, let it wash over him as he reached harder, stretching further, sure that if he could just make it another inch that he could touch her again.
An image of a young girl holding his hand and pulling him through a field of daisies and poppies sprang into his mind, her blue eyes filled with laughter as she looked back at him, golden hair bouncing with each stride as she told him it was fine and they wouldn’t get into trouble for playing in the Elysian Fields.
Calindria.
She stopped and turned, beamed at him, and his heart ached.
“Gods, I miss you.” He shook his head when her hand slipped from his, as she backed away from him. He reached for her, silently begging her to come back. “Don’t leave me.”
She turned away and disappeared. The lush green world around him withered and blackened, the blue sky darkening to dull red and the river that snaked through the land turning to blood.
Because there was no light in this world without her in it.
“Cal.” Marek’s voice was distant and watery in his ears.
He shook his head. He didn’t want to go. He could find her. Wherever she had gone, he would find her.
Or he would follow her.
“What’s wrong with him?” Daimon this time.
“Calindria’s blood was used to create the gate.” Keras’s voice was louder. Had he moved closer?
A firm hand landed on his left shoulder and another gripped his right, and something solid pressed against his back.
Just as his knees buckled.
“I have you,” Keras whispered close to his ear. “Focus on the gate, on what you want it to do. Focus on the present. We will find Calindria, I promise you.”
Cal sucked down a deep breath that burned his lungs, as if he had forgotten to breathe and had been on the verge of suffocating. Maybe he had. Maybe that was why he always blacked out whenever he remembered something about his sister.
Because he wanted to follow her.
And the only way to do that was through dying.
Keras eased him back onto his feet. “She would want you to live. You know that.”
Cal did.
Calindria would scold him if she knew he was even thinking about following her. She would be hurt by it. She would blame herself for his demise, and it would destroy her.
He didn’t want her to be sad.
He wanted her to be happy.
He wanted her to run in those fields again.
To laugh and smile as she had then.
“But it’s her,” he croaked as he looked at the gate. “I can feel her there.”
“It’s her blood, Cal,” Marek said, closer to him too now. “It’s not her. We will find out what happened to her and we will make sure she can rest at last.”
Cal focused and realised that Marek and Keras weren’t the only ones around him. Valen and Eva were there too, and Daimon. Everyone was there at his back. At his side. Lending him their strength.
He pulled down another breath.
Told himself that Marek was right and it was her blood he could feel in the gate. It wasn’t her. She was out there somewhere and they would get her to the Elysian Fields.
But that wouldn’t happen unless he sealed this gate.
He pushed deeper into the connection between him and the gate and focused on sealing it. If he had to seal something, how would he do it?
Probably with wards.
What were wards?
Symbols that held power.
Like the glyphs on the gate.
He closed his eyes, inhaled slowly, and pictured the glyphs that filled each ring of the disc and how he might change them in order to shut it down. As the first glyph altered, he sensed a difference, and the pain lessened.
Encouraged by what had happened, he moved on to the next glyph and then the next one. He lost track of the world again as he altered one after the other, and lost track of himself in the process. It was only when his head turned
and darkness encroached at the edges of his mind that he realised he was running out of time.
Losing too much blood.
He moved faster, pushing himself to keep going, even as the darkness spread and began to crowd his mind. He had to keep going. He changed another glyph, and felt the gate weakening, the connection fading with it. One last push.
Cal pictured the remaining symbols, the five that filled the central disc of the gate. Someone propped him up, slipping an arm around his waist. Someone else gripped his arm for him, keeping it above the gate. He silently thanked his brothers as the first glyph changed to a ward.
One designed to keep things hidden.
It was the closest to sealing as he could get and it was powerful, bound to the one who created it. It would prevent the gate from appearing to anyone and no one but him would be able to undo it.
He changed the second and third glyphs to the same ward.
Started to change the fourth and then stopped as an idea hit him.
Three wards would be enough to hide the gate. The remaining two could be changed to something stronger.
Something liable to drain the last of his strength from him.
But he would do it.
He focused on both remaining glyphs at once, because the darkness was spreading faster now and he wasn’t an idiot. He had one shot at this, and he couldn’t risk leaving even one glyph unchanged.
Cal pictured the ward, imagined drawing it in his blood on the gate, overwriting the glyphs with it. One line formed and then another, and a dash and a circle. He slowly built the symbol, imbuing it with the last of his strength, with every shred of his power.
“Whatever he’s doing, it’s working,” Daimon muttered.
Cal pushed through the pain and the darkness, holding on to consciousness and refusing to lose his grip on it. Just a few more lines and he would be done, the wards completed.
The last curved spikes and slashes were the hardest, slow to form as they drained the last of his power.
When they were done, he waited, barely breathing, and willed the wards to take effect.
If he had done it right, they would be enough to bind the power the gate contained, and in conjunction with the ones designed to hide it, the gate would be rendered inactive.
Sealed permanently.
The twin wards shone, golden light chasing over their surfaces, and he felt it when the gate disappeared, the connection between them severing, leaving him missing part of himself again.
Relief washed through him, stripping him of his remaining strength and he sagged in Keras’s arms as his legs gave out.
“It’s done?” Marek sounded as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Rome gate feels different,” Valen muttered, a thoughtful edge to his voice.
“Hong Kong too.” Daimon sounded distant.
“You will have to tell us what you did later.” Keras gently lifted him into his arms and Cal didn’t have the strength to make his brother put him down and stop coddling him.
Just this once, he wouldn’t fight his big brother. He was too damned tired.
He sank against Keras’s chest and mumbled, “After I’ve slept for like… forever.”
Coolness embraced him as they stepped, a brief connection to the Underworld that soothed him and eased some of the pain burning in his heart, and then more voices rose around him.
“What happened?” Esher’s shocked voice became a snarl and Cal knew he had seen the state of him. “Who did this?”
Cal peeled his eyes open as someone touched his wrist. Aiko was there beside him, her dark eyes filled with concern as she assessed his injuries, and then she was springing into action, her black hair bobbing in its pigtails as she raced from the room.
She returned with a medical kit and set it on the low dining table that occupied one side of the room. Keras turned away from her, carrying Cal like a damned princess in front of all of his brothers, and set him down on the couch that faced the TV.
Aiko hurried over to him, sank to her knees beside him and applied a white square piece of padding to his wrist before she carefully wrapped a bandage around it. She did the same with his hand, and he didn’t have the strength to tell her that wound was fine and already healing.
“I asked who did this,” Esher snarled.
“I did it.” Cal pushed the words out, not about to let his brother go over the edge and flip his switch because he thought someone had slashed his wrist for him. “I needed blood to seal the gate.”
Esher’s dark blue eyes landed on him. “You sealed a gate?”
“The twin one.” Marek gently placed his hand on Esher’s shoulder, over his dull grey shirt.
Esher’s black eyebrows dipped low. “I felt a shift. I thought I was just being weird.”
“We all felt it. Sealing one gate appears to have distributed the power it once contained to the remaining ones.” Keras came to stand over Cal, his green eyes holding concern as he looked down at him. “Will you be all right?”
Cal tried to give him a thumbs-up, but he didn’t have the strength.
“Quit coddling,” he murmured and sighed as he closed his eyes. “Just gonna nap.”
Sleep rose up on him, swift to claim him.
“We’ll keep you safe.” Valen sat on the arm of the couch above his head, his presence a comfort as Cal slipped into the darkness.
His brother’s voice echoed in the black as he succumbed to it.
“You two have a wraith to hunt and a woman to save.”
Chapter 31
Caterina didn’t get a chance to see where she landed as she came out of the teleport still clutching Eli and Lisabeta. The second her feet touched the ground, and her legs turned to noodles beneath her, she was hurled into a portal by the wraith. Had she wasted the last of her strength teleporting him and Lisabeta only for him to immediately take her back to the fight?
She stumbled out of it and tripped, landing hard on golden gravel that told her she wasn’t back at the gate and breathing heavily as her entire body quaked, every inch of her trembling and weak. Teleporting before had left her shaky, but nothing like this. She felt on the verge of passing out, and that was something she couldn’t allow to happen. She had to be on her guard.
Fear pressed down on her, but she fought it as she mustered her strength, gathering the tattered remains of it for when she needed to defend herself. It wasn’t a case of if. Eli and Lisabeta had brought her to a place other than the gate for a reason, and every fibre of her being was screaming that it was to kill her.
She tried to lift her head as the wraith casually stepped out of the violet and black swirling smoke, his shoes appearing in view beside her.
They halted.
Caterina managed to edge her eyes upwards.
Lisabeta helped her by kicking her in the gut and flipping her onto her back, ripping a cry from her as pain blazed outwards from her side.
She lay there a moment, Eli staring down at her, his violet eyes bright in the low light that came from in front of him, casting shadows in his sculpted cheeks and golden highlights in his short onyx hair. The buttons that ran in a line down the front of his tight black cotton coat, from his Mandarin collar to his waist, glinted in the light as he moved to face her.
Canted his head.
Sighed.
“I commend you.” His low voice sent a tremor through her as his eyes narrowed on hers, brightening in a way that said he wasn’t as impressed as his words sounded. He was angry. “It is rather noble of you to sacrifice yourself for the sake of those wretched gods, but I do not appreciate it… and I do not think they will either.”
“We should have returned to the gate,” Lisabeta said as she scowled down at Caterina.
Eli cast her a withering look and Lisabeta lowered her head, settling her gaze on the gravel, making it clear who was in charge between them.
“The gate is useless to us now.” Eli’s tone was hard as diamonds, black as night. “We would be outnumbered if
we returned now and there is no guarantee we could open the gate enough to cause the necessary break down of the barrier between this world and the Underworld even if we did manage to defeat the wretches.”
“Marek will be looking for her.” Lisabeta sidled up to him and ran her hands over his shoulders, her breasts threatening to spill from her elegant black dress as she pressed against his arm. “Perhaps we can use that to our advantage.”
The wraith frowned and his jaw flexed as he stared at Caterina for what felt like forever and she fought her racing heart, trying to calm it.
It was impossible when she felt sure she was about to die.
Eli wanted her dead. It blazed in his eyes. She had known that would be her fate for interfering with their plans and buying Marek and his brothers time, but now that she was facing death, she wanted to live.
Could she muster a barrier if he attacked her? She doubted that she could right now, and what good would it be if she managed it anyway? She was no match for Lisabeta and Eli, not if they worked together. Not when she was alone.
Part of her clung to what Lisabeta had said to her lover, hoping that he would listen to reason.
The rest of her was strong enough to face whatever fate awaited her, because it was better she died than Marek came under attack again. If her sacrifice could buy him time to protect the gates and keep this world safe, she would gladly go through with it.
“Very well. For now, we will keep her alive.” Eli turned away from her.
Caterina felt as if he had just announced her sentence, each word falling like a gavel as she sank against the gravel, head spinning and heart racing. She would have accepted death, but she couldn’t accept this.
She couldn’t let him use her against Marek. Not again. She had to do something.
She had teleported them away from Marek and his brothers in the hope of saving them, and this world.
She hadn’t considered that Marek would come after her, or that the wraith would so easily turn this to his advantage, making her his captive again.
Bait.
She focused, trying to summon that feeling she had whenever she managed to teleport. Her body shook, muscles turning to liquid as she tried to force it, and she sagged when it was too much, had her heart labouring and breath sawing from her lips. Maybe if she had more time. She hated the thought of them using her as leverage against Marek, but it would give her the time she needed to regain her strength so she could teleport away from them, ruining their plans again.
Marek: Guardians of Hades Series Book 4 Page 32