Unus (Stone Mage Saga Book 1)

by Raven Whitney

  On our way down the hallway, I heard a rumbling noise coming from the pit. I looked down over the railing to see the sand falling away in places like it was slipping through a sieve. I came to a halt as I saw a tide of skulls erupt from the sand and begin ripping into the corpses of the fallen. The immense horde boiled over their bodies like piranhas, tearing into their flesh with sickening sounds that reached all the way up to the fifth floor. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the horrific scene, even as Liam led me forwards.

  “Don't watch,” he said softly. It didn't work, though. I was morbidly entranced. By the time we'd reached our cell, there was nothing left in the arena— not even a smear of blood in the sand. With nothing else to eat, the skulls then went still where they were and slid passively back beneath the sands.

  I had the errant thought of what happened to the flesh consumed by monsters with no stomach? Had that happened to the wendigo I'd burned last time? By the time it had died, I was already dead. Did those skulls rip into my body, too?

  “No,” Liam said, answering my obvious, unspoken question. “The guards pulled you from the cell after the wendigo burned out to make sure you were actually dead. When they saw you were regenerating, they dumped you back in here.”

  The door slammed shut behind us, leaving us alone in our cell. As soon as the guard was out of sight, Liam let out a frustrated string of creative curses.

  “Quattore is here now, as well. There are too many of them. You can't go looking for the GPS tonight.” His words were tense as he began pacing along the opposite wall of the cell. Abruptly, he whirled around and smashed his good fist into the stone wall, leaving a trail of dust and pebbles cascading to the floor. Erupting into another string of vicious curses, he cradled the now injured hand of his shredded arm in the crook of his broken arm.

  Sucking in a breath of shock, I went to him and took his hand. Even though he'd only struck it a single time, the rough stone and the force of the blow had caused major damage. The skin around his knuckles was gone, revealing a flattened surface of bright white, finely smashed bone that glittered in the bloody mess.

  “I apologize for the outburst,” Liam muttered, gently pulling his hand from mine.

  “So if four members of the Eight is too many for your friends, then I guess the max must be less than that,” I stated questioningly. It was chicken of me not to ask him directly, but I was really trying not to make him mad again. He couldn't afford any more broken bones.

  He nodded. “We'll have to wait until there are no more here than three. Three of them will be hard enough, but the battle would still probably be victorious. Four and the outcome would be up in the air.”

  “So we'll have to wait for our chance.”

  “Yes. We have to wait in a place where our everyday survival isn't guaranteed. That and we don't know how long you'll be able to mimic the undine.”

  He brought up a good point. I still had no idea how to turn my body into water or how long I would be able to do so, which was a critical part of our escape plan.

  Continuing, he said, “From what my bounty hunter colleague has told me about her ability, she can only mimic one species until she comes into physical contact with another. Then, she mimics the second species. If you're the same way, we're pretty screwed. You'd end up a mage.” He pointedly lifted his broken hand from mine. Whoops. If I was the same way, touching Liam's hand just now could have erased the undine.

  “It would probably be a good idea to practice, huh?”

  “It would and it wouldn't,” he cautioned. “It would be good to know what you're doing, but at the same time, you'd be using up your magic. I have no idea how much you've got in you, but once you're out, you're out. Since there's no raw magic down here, your stones won't recharge.”

  That was a difficult predicament. “What would you do?” I asked, needing his guidance here. I would hold on to what I had now, if it meant I would have it for later. But it wasn't just me in this situation: it was Liam and everyone else being forced to fight for their lives in this tower. The weight of life-and-death responsibility was heavy and maybe it was weak, but I almost wanted somebody else to make this decision for me.

  After a moment of thought, he responded, “I would wait and hang on to however much magic you have. If you run out of mimic magic while you're in the pipe, you could revert back to your human form.” His reasoning— while it was dark— was spot-on. I didn't want to find out what would happen to a rapidly expanding human body in a one-inch metal pipe unless it was on Mythbusters.

  Liam sank to the dirty cot on the floor and winced from the impact jarring his broken arm and hand. I sat down next to him and took his broken hand in mine. If I didn't have to worry about contact anymore, I might as well help him. Maybe it was because I wasn't used to seeing people getting hurt, but it bothered me to see him in so much pain.

  In all of the paranormal movies and TV shows I'd seen, the witch always used her hands to heal people. So I focused my mind on mending his smashed bones, and sure enough, my hands began to feel warm and tingly. I ran them over his hand, rubbing with my thumbs until it looked pink and healthy again. Shifting, I moved to his arm and did the same, feeling the definition in his biceps. Soon, the swelling and discoloration in his arm had vanished.

  Amazing. Maybe in this magic was God. That was truly a miracle if there ever was one— and it was in the palm of my hands. It wasn't my place to question why it had been placed there, just to use it. A breath of awe whooshed from my lungs as I realized exactly what I could do with it. There was no person on earth more deserving of a miracle like this than my mother.

  “You probably shouldn't have done that, but thanks anyway.” Liam gently extricated his arm and stretched it. He looked down at his other hand and flexed his fingers, as if testing them to make sure I hadn't messed them up.

  “You're my only friend in here,” I stated, trying to sound rational, but if I was being fully honest with myself, it bothered me on some level to see him in pain. “It would be bad if you were hurt.”

  He gave me a carefully blank look. “Not to sound ungrateful, but it would have healed in a few hours anyway. You just wasted some of your most precious magic— healing— on something minor. Next time, you should save your magic and let a few broken bones heal on their own.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess that's just more incentive to get the hell out of here, then.” I laughed. It was an almost desperate gallows laugh and I hoped Liam didn't notice the weakness in it.

  9

  Hey, did you nod off there?” Lexie asked, tapping my cheek.

  Startled, I looked around for her. Lexie was sitting right in front of me in her stars-and-moons pajamas. We were nestled in a blanket on the couch in her room with her favorite animated movie playing on the TV.

  I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was alive.

  She yawned and stretched. “We can go to bed now, if you're getting too sleepy. We've seen Where's Meno? a dozen times already. It's not like his dad won't find him this time or anything.”

  Before I could think, I'd launched myself across the couch and squeezed her as hard as I could, half expecting her to vanish like a mirage.

  She laughed, hugging me back and petting my hair. “Man, what did you dream about?”

  My throat choked up and my eyes stung with fresh tears. “Hell.”

  “That's no fun.” Her fingers hit a snag in my hair and I yelped. “Before we go to bed, you need a shower. You're filthy.”

  That didn't make sense. I looked down to see that my hands were covered in blood. I jerked back from her to see that the rest of me was dripping with it, as well.

  Lexie shrieked, the sound echoing. Suddenly, she was deathly pale and a red line crossed her neck, oozing black water down her body. Her hands cupped her face as she screamed, as though her soul was on fire. Right in front of my eyes, her body started to warp like melting plastic.

  She faded away into nothingness, but not before she cast me a vengeful, accusing glare. Eve
n after she vanished, the screaming didn't stop.

  Instead, Lexie's voice morphed into a man's.

  My sleep-addled brain snapped back into wakefulness at the realization that there were words in the desperate cries. A man was pleading almost incoherently.

  The sounds of wailing, snarling, and hissing were nearly constant in the tower, but for words to reach inside the cells meant that there was something going on in the pit, where the containment spells were limited.

  Liam stood leaning against the wall, watching the commotion with his arms crossed and no expression on his face. He must have heard me move because his eyes briefly darted to me before returning to the pit.

  “Stay there,” he rasped in a flat tone.

  I wanted to take his advice, but at the sound of a woman's hysterical sobbing, I had to see what the commotion was.

  On the sands below was another scene from a horror movie. A man in a guard's uniform stood chained in the center of the ring by thorny tendrils extending from the dome above. Octavius stood, an angelic-looking wraith, glaring with his arms crossed over his black leather-clad chest.

  To the side, a tiny woman in one of the burlap prisoner dresses stood chained in the same way. Her dark, tangled hair bobbed over her face as she wept, pleading for mercy. Red stripes of blood criss-crossed her body. Unus stood behind her like a lover, smelling her neck and caressing her ribs. No, he wasn't caressing her. He was digging his fingers into the gashes along her torso.

  I turned to Liam, who still lurked against the wall. “What's happening?”

  Before he could say anything, the woman let out a shriek, jerking my attention back to the pit. Her legs no longer supported her and she dangled from the iron vines, causing the barbs to dig deeper into her skin. Unus had severed her Achilles tendons.

  The man bound in the center before Octavius began to scream in Latin, thrashing violently against the restraints. After repeating the same phrase over and over for a time, Octavius held up his hand, halting the man's words, but not the whimpers of pain that he seemed to be unaware of. How he knew that Octavius had raised his hand was beyond me since his eyes had never once strayed from the woman.

  Octavius stepped in front of the man and tapped the side of his face, like he was patting a dog for rolling over. “Say that again for those here who do not speak the mother tongue.”

  The man didn't seem to hear him, struggling to look around Octavius to the woman. It was a big mistake on his part. Octavius slowly reached inside his jacket and pulled out a plant with a long stalk covered in small, pink, bell-shaped flowers. I recognized it from the gardens at Lexie's house as foxglove.

  Octavius gently stroked the flowers against the man's cheek, leaving a trail of bright red welts. The softness of his gesture didn't reach his voice when he shouted, “Pay attention to me,” like a petulant child.

  For the first time, the man looked at Octavius and even from this distance, his rage was clear. Biting his words out, he said, “I betrayed you. I betrayed you when I plotted to break my mate out of the pits and escape with her. This is all my fault. I planned the whole thing. She had nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh, God, please don't let him do what I think he's going to do,” I murmured aloud. I prayed that He answered me this time. If He wouldn't save Lexie, if He wouldn't save my mom, if He wouldn't save me— who did everything right, prayed every night for my whole life, and hardly asked Him for anything— then He had to intercede for those two people down there who I knew were about to go through the worst hell imaginable.

  Liam shifted, reaching out to grab my hand. “If you don't want to watch this, it's okay.”

  I couldn't find my words. All I could do was squeeze his hand and stare.

  At the man's words, Octavius' tension dissipated and he spoke again in a much more sane-sounding tone, “I am gladdened to hear your confession. You and your precious mate are hereby sentenced to death.”

  Simultaneously, they screamed in protest.

  Octavius gazed straight in the man's eyes, calling over his shoulder, “Unus, you may play with the girl for now, but leave her face and her tits pretty. You know how I like them. I'll finish her off when I'm done.”

  Unus beamed like a kid in a candy shop as he stepped in front of her and ripped the dress from her body, the force pulling the sharp vines so deeply into her skin that they vanished beneath the red in some spots. She was silent as she hung limply from the dome. By her lack of reaction, she'd probably passed out from the pain.

  This must have offended Unus because he slapped her across the face and shouted for her to wake up and smell the bacon. She started sobbing again, twitching from her injuries. Only once she started to make those pitiful noises again did the smile return to his face.

  He cracked his knuckles and pulled his fingers one by one. He lifted her chin with one hand to pull her gaze to his and with the other, dragged his index finger just under her breasts. Without taking his eyes from her face, he dug his fingers into the gouge they left behind and jerked the skin from her entire abdomen, exposing her every muscle.

  Her mate flailed wildly and shrieked in unison with her, his own agonized cries echoing her unholy suffering.

  It wasn't until Octavius flicked his hand in the man's direction that I even noticed him. He had been perfectly still, fading into the background, as he stared at the scene with the woman unfolding in front of him.

  “Stop, Unus.” Octavius had to shout in order to be heard above all the screams.

  Unus obeyed, stepping back from the woman and standing still, awaiting further instructions as the blood dripped from his fingertips.

  Octavius sauntered in front of the man. “You've become a nuisance. You need to go away now.” Another one of those eerie grins crept across his angelic face and he backed up a few steps. He slowly raised his hand from his waist. A rumbling noise vibrated up from the sands before the mass of skulls erupted again.

  They tore at him from the toes up. His shrieks were unlike anything I'd ever heard or could ever forget. I had to get away from that sound.

  I spun on my heels, breaking the hold that Liam had on my hand and ran to the farthest corner of the cell even though it was nowhere near far enough away to escape. I plastered my hands over my ears and stuck my head between my legs, pressing my knees against my ears. It wasn't enough to muffle the miserable wailing.

  Liam sat next to me and put an arm over my shoulder, but I stayed in that position.

  Once the man went silent, the woman started again and the screams just didn't stop. For what must have been hours, I didn't move. Even after the tower went silent, I stayed curled up in that little ball.

  Sometime later, the pain in my muscles became strong enough that I had to move. It snapped me out of my daze. I asked the one question that had been spinning in my mind over and over again since I curled up, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  My voice just above a whisper, I specified, “Why are they monsters?”

  Liam let out a breath and ran his free hand through his hair. “Well that's a broad, philosophical question.”

  I glared at him as he stared at the ceiling with hollow eyes. “And that's an evasive response. You know what I mean.”

  It was almost a minute before he finally answered, “I don't know. They just are. Maybe the degree has something to do with our relative immortality, but humans can be just as vicious and hungry for other people's pain. They just can't take as much of it before they die.”

  “That's cynical.”

  “And true. You're talking to a man who remembers the days of the Inquisition. It was tea time compared to Octavius' hobbies, but their human thirst for torture was just as strong.”

  Having studied Medieval history while at Brown, I knew exactly what atrocities he was talking about.

  “As for why they are the way they are, who knows? Maybe they had crappy childhoods.”

  “What do they even want?” Frustrated, I waved my arms, gesturing to the monumen
t of opulence that was this castle. “Octavius has all of this. What more could he want?”

  “It isn't castles he wants. It's power.” Taking his gaze off the ceiling, he finally looked at me. “The Paxian world has its own system of government separate from humans. Each species has their own rule: the fey have their Dark and Light Courts, mages have Rhytha's Circle, vampires have their King, shifters have packs, etc. The Pax is a pan-species organization that loosely rules over them all and is headed by the Princeps, Cyrus the Great.

  “Many years ago, when the Pax was still in its infancy, Octavius partnered with the Princeps and helped it to grow. They had a falling out not long after the Pax gained footing as a respectable organization and Octavius believes the role of Princeps is his by right. Obviously, that's a bad idea for everybody.

  “So to get what he wants, he's partnered with seven other mages and has built the Eight to fund and develop his own private military, large enough to take the Pax by force.”

  The idea of a monster like Octavius having an army— large or small— was enough to make my stomach churn. Even though I knew what the answer would probably be, I asked, “What happens if he wins?”

  Liam sighed deeply, leaning the back of his head against the wall again and closing his eyes. “If Octavius were to take the Pax, he would use it to take command of the other species and first, he'd eliminate the entirety of the human race, then he'd probably kill the shapeshifters, too. He's an old bastard who still remembers the worst of the shifter wars and would kill all of them just out of spite. And once the human ants and shifter scum are wiped from the face of the earth, he'd rule over what's left as the supreme leader.”

  Shifter wars? The way he said it told me there was more to the story for him than history, but I'd have to file that question away for later. I sensed it was probably a sensitive subject. “I can understand why the shapeshifters would fight Octavius, but why do the rest of you care?”