by Ciara Graves
“Hello, brother.”
Slowly, I turned around, and the shadows all moved aside.
Antonio stood a few yards away, eyes dark and nothing like they were in life. His face was twisted in an angry snarl, and there was no happiness about him, nothing like the brother I knew. He exuded only hatred.
“Antonio, you need to listen to me.”
“Yes, about this whole journey you decided to set yourself on,” he mused, walking toward me, “I’m afraid we need to have a little chat about that.”
Chapter 5
Mercy
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Rufus whistled loudly. “This is going to be hell getting inside.”
“What makes you say that? The twenty-foot stone wall, the iron gate, or the fact that this entire place reeks of magical barriers.” Gingerly, I stretched my hand out, and a buzzing filled my ears. “I hope you have a way to break this.”
“Not me, you.”
“I can’t use magic, you know that.”
“Then why are we here?” He waved his arm at the gate. “If we can’t get past this barrier then we can’t get inside.” He turned around and stomped off into the trees surrounding Liam’s property.
It had taken us days to find the mansion in the first place, and now that we were here… no. No, we were getting inside this damned house tonight.
“Wait.” Rufus came back as I dug the toe of my boot into the dirt, knowing I’d regret this. “I’ll do it, but if this kills me, it’s on you.”
I stepped into the light from the lanterns on the outside of the wall. Shaking out my hands and telling myself how stupid this idea was, I stepped up to the wall and reached out, palms flat.
The buzzing in my ears returned, growing louder the harder I pushed. My body shook, and the magic shoved against me. I dug my boots into the mud and with a grunt of effort, heaved right back. White and gold flames manifested at my hands, covering my fingers and flaring up my arms. At the same time, my knees were ready to collapse, and the buzzing drowned out the sound of my strained breathing and my racing heartbeat. I locked my knees, my grunt turned into a bellow as my magic found a crack and exposed it. The barrier shattered around me, blowing back in on itself.
Then the world went dark.
I came to when a harsh slap to my cheek made me sit upright.
“Good. You lived.”
Holding my cheek, I glowered at Rufus. “Was that really necessary?”
“Nothing else was working.” He held out his hand for mine. “Up and at it. You were out for about five minutes, and we don’t have that kind of time to lay around.”
My body ached like one giant bruise. The scar on my face burned. He was right, though. We had no time to waste. If that barrier were here, then someone would be in charge of monitoring it. Rufus hustled to the gates and kicked them dead center, right in the seam. They swung open enough for us to slip inside and we ran to the front door.
“You think there are any more barriers?” My voice was weak as I fought to stay upright.
“Don’t sense any. You?”
“Can’t feel anything much right now except pain,” I uttered, “but no, there’s no magic I can feel.” I held my hands out to the front doors. The only vibe they gave off was as creepy as the rest of this giant, dark mansion.
Rufus opened the front door, and we both braced for an attack. Except nothing charged at us. No alarms rang out. The only sound was the cold winter wind howling around the house and through the doors we just opened. Dead leaves blew into the foyer, and I shivered until we were fully inside, and Rufus closed the doors behind us. They slammed shut, the sound making me jump.
I glared at him.
His gaze was focused on a set of stairs to the right. “You good down here?”
I pulled the small flashlight from my coat and flipped it on. Then I took my pistol out and kept it in the other. “Yeah, sure. Just going to creep around a dead mage’s home looking for a podium. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Good.” Rufus set off up the stairs.
“Ass,” I whispered under my breath then moved deeper into the house.
The foyer was small, but once I was through it, the rest of the main floor spread out around me. There was no sitting room or kitchen, nothing like I expected to find. Instead, the walls were lined with shelves that reached to the ceiling, all of them filled from one end to the other with books.
The flashlight beam lit up dust-covered tables scattered haphazardly around the open space. There was a podium against the far back wall with what appeared to be a large tome on it. I didn’t see any others around and hoped it was the one the ghoul was talking about.
I took a step to make my way toward it when a whistle sounded in my ear, and I swallowed back my scream.
“This is a nice place,” Todd’s ghost said after he finished whistling.
“Really? Now?” I snapped, shaking my head as I continued forward.
“You killed me, remember? You thought I was going to make this easy on you? Not even close.”
I ignored him the best I could and reached the podium. The tome’s pages were covered in layers of dust, and I wiped it away with my arm the best I could. It was open to a page of a tree. A dead tree. Its branches stretched up toward a black sky, and dead center was a red moon.
“Blood Moon,” I whispered, reading the text at the top of the page. “What does that have to do with anything?”
I started to flip a few pages, but a rustling sounded across the floor. I moved my light toward the opposite side of the room. Several loose pages scattered about the floor. There was a bit of a draft in here, but not strong enough to move those papers. I glanced around for Todd’s ghost, but he’d disappeared. It was probably just Todd messing with me again, so I looked back at the tome and turned the page.
“Shit,” I whispered as the image of the tree and moon went from peaceful to devastating.
The page after showed a map of the entire country with red lines that glowed. The lines practically seemed to glow off the page in the darkness. I aimed my flashlight down and turned back to the first page where the moon shone crimson. Words appeared at the bottom of the page. I hadn’t noticed them the first time because of the flashlight. They were in a language I’d never seen before. The following pages were the same, with even more text. I was about to yell for Rufus when more papers rustled.
A creepy laugh came from nearby.
“Not me,” Todd whispered, and I jumped with a curse to find him right beside me again.
“Not you? Then what the hell is it?” I lifted my flashlight again, along with my pistol.
More papers floated through the air.
I crept forward, taking one slow step at a time.
Todd stayed right with me, not that I expected him to be any help at all.
Footsteps made me whip around, but there was nothing there. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I readjusted my grip on the pistol.
Just when I opened my mouth to yell for Rufus, something slammed into me from behind, and I went sliding across the hard tile floor, my gun and light skittering away. The light stayed on, spinning around and around before finally coming to a stop. I pushed up off the floor, chin bleeding from where it smashed into the stone. Several sets of legs were illuminated by the flashlight.
A hand reached down and picked up the light.
I rose to my feet, fumbling to get my sword. I extended it and held it at the ready as the flashlight beam lit up the leering face of not just one goblin, but five. No, seven. All their eyes appeared hazed over just like the ones who’d swarmed Rafael and me on the roof the night I met with Wesley.
“Boo,” the gob said.
Then the light shut off.
“Rufus,” I bellowed.
Shadows darted around me.
A hit caught me in the right shoulder.
I swung wide with my blade, but another hit sent me sprawling backward, my back smashing into a tab
le. I ducked when I sensed something in front of me and shoved my blade upward, into the chest of a goblin. He gasped, blood spurting from his mouth as he died on my blade.
I kicked him off my sword and spun around, my eyes adjusting to the gloom just enough to make out shapes. As I lunged at another one, I hoped I didn’t run Rufus through by accident.
A gob latched onto my back. I yelled, driving us both backward until I hit the bookshelves. They toppled onto us. The gob released me, and I spun around, slashing him open from shoulder to gut. He staggered away, and another took his place. Hands grabbed hold of my sword arm and bashed it into the wall.
I cried out at the pain as my grip loosened. My blade clattered to the floor, and the gob landed a series of blows to my stomach and ribs until I managed to get my arms up to block. I clocked him, and he flew backward.
Then they swarmed me, and I was on the floor, doing all I could just to keep my head protected. Kicks struck me in the back and legs.
A boot smashed my face, and for a few seconds I passed out from the hit.
Just when I expected the end to come at any second, a bright flash of light filled the floor, and the gobs shrieked, covering their eyes as they ran for cover.
“Mercy.” Rufus sprinted to me.
Weak, I rolled over, using broken chairs and tables to pull myself upright.
He took one of my arms and draped it over his shoulders. “We have to go.”
“You think,” I gasped through the pain. “Wait… wait.”
“For what? That won’t hold them off forever! Mercy.”
I had no idea what magic Rufus just used, but I could not leave those pages behind. I limped to the podium with the tome. No way was I going to carry the whole damned thing. I tore out the pages I needed and shoved them in my coat. My sword and pistol were somewhere in the room, who knew where.
Rufus was right back at my side and hauling me out of the house as fast as he could get us.
“What did you do?” I glanced back over my shoulder as the bright light faded.
“You think I came here unprepared? You have a lot to learn,” he snapped. “Keep moving. We have to get past the wall.”
I was going to ask why when a rumble started from inside the house. The gobs who attacked had reached the front door and were bound to catch up to us. Rufus threw us through the gate and kicked it closed. I figured we’d get up and keep running as the gobs charged the gate, but Rufus pulled me to the ground and covered my head, telling me to hold on.
“To what—”
The explosion tore through the house, cutting off the rest of my words.
I caught a brief glimpse of the building then Rufus shifted as debris fell around us.
Liam’s mansion and all the gobs inside it were obliterated. When the ground stopped quaking, Rufus let me sit up and look. There was nothing but a damned hole in the ground.
“What… where did you get something that powerful?”
“Something I had lying around.”
“You had a magical bomb that did that just lying around?” I asked, alarmed. “What else do you have that I don’t know about?”
“Enough to get us out of situations like this. What did you go back for?”
I tugged the pages out of my coat carefully and handed them over. “What do you know about this?”
He flipped through them, using the light from the few lanterns still working, shaking his head. “Blood Moon? Not much.”
“In the dark, different words showed up on these pages in a language I didn’t recognize,” I told him. “You think this has anything to do with why he was turned into a hybrid?”
When Rufus reached the map, he let out a long, low whistle. “Chances are high, I’d say.”
“Did you find anything upstairs?”
“One thing.” He handed the pages back to me and removed what looked like a calendar from his back pocket. He skimmed over the pages until he reached this month and tapped the page. “Liam had an appointment one week from tonight, and he jotted down the location and time.”
“Sector… does that say 1462? It can’t. There’s no sector that number.”
“I’d tend to agree, but we’re both wrong.”
“At least the trip wasn’t a total loss.” I looked at where the house had been. “Damn.”
“I expected something to be guarding it, but not goblins.” He gave me smirk. “You’re covered in blood. Might want to get home and clean up before you start to stink.”
He was right. My entire front was covered in black gob blood mingling with my own. I was going to feel every hit tomorrow, every bruise and cut. We lost our chance to tear the house apart and really see what Liam was up to, but we had some new information to go on now.
“If you don’t know about the Blood Moon, who would?”
“Someone who was alive for the last one.”
“And when was that?” I asked as we started into the trees, back toward the transport.
Rufus said I’d have to wait until we got back to safety.
Liam’s house was in Sector 52, far out in the wilderness of Tennessee. No one out here would recognize us or care about what we were up to. But the explosion might cause some attention, so we picked up the pace and didn’t speak about what we found again until we were back in Sector 21 and in Rufus’s hideaway. “So?” I asked, picking up our conversation. “When was the last one?”
“Five hundred years ago, give or take a year.”
“Great. I don’t know anyone that old except Wesley. We don’t even know if he’s alive or not.”
“Yes, you do. You know someone that old.”
I frowned. “No, I don’t.”
“Bowen’s pushing six hundred.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “He’s not that old.”
“Yeah, he is. Pretty sure he doesn’t like to talk about it, but he’s quite old.”
Bowen. Figured it would be him. “Bowen and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment.”
“Then get over it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is. You’re making it complicated. I don’t care what he did,” he said, cutting me off. “What matters right now is tracking down the mage who cursed you and figuring out what these pages mean.”
I scoffed. “Why do you suddenly sound like another Damian?”
“I’m not just some goblin, you know,” he muttered darkly, stalking toward me. “Back in the day, I was more than a criminal. Your father and I were innovators. We had a purpose. He was the magic, and I was the brains to everything we created together. Shuval and her hybrids changed all of that. I said I’d help you find the mage, and I will, but this is so much bigger than your revenge. Until you understand that, I won’t help you.”
My jaw dropped as he walked away, dismissing me. “That was not our deal.”
“Fine, then drag me back to my cell,” he challenged. “Tell Damian all about what you’re up to. Have fun being locked in your apartment.”
I considered my options and saw how that would play out. “You were going to do this anyway, weren’t you,” I said quietly. “Finish what you all started. No matter what I said.”
“Yes. Do you want to be pissed about it? Be pissed and get over it. We have work to do, and you have a vampire to speak to.”
I stormed out of his small hideaway and into the night. The ride back to my apartment was long, and by the time I reached it, slamming my door shut behind me, my anger had faded. It was replaced with the knowledge that Rufus was right. I had no reason to keep being ticked off at Damian or Bowen. Yeah, they lied to me, but to keep me safe.
I picked up my phone on my way to the bathroom, having left it behind so Damian wouldn’t track me these last few days.
I found a few messages from Rafael. His texts sounded strange. There were a few missed calls from him, too, but no voicemails. Those were all from Damian. They started with his yelling at me and ended with him begging me just to let him know I was alive
.
I turned on the shower to heat the water up then texted Damian to let him know I’d swing by the office in the morning. His reply was immediate and short telling me if I wasn’t there by ten, he’d come to my place. I was surprised he hadn’t been waiting for me in my apartment but was damned glad he wasn’t. When the water was hot enough, I shed my bloody clothes and stepped under the spray. The fight replayed over and over in my head. I killed two gobs at least, maybe more. But that bomb Rufus set off, that killed the rest of them. Just more blood to stain my hands.
As the water’s heat disappeared, I continued to scrub and scrub at my arms and legs. The blood took forever to finally wash off and down the shower drain. I stepped out and dried off, shoved my wet hair messily out of my face, admiring the new bruises that would be even better in a few hours. My scar was vibrant red from using my magic.
Damian was going to have questions, a lot of questions. Bar fight sounded like the best explanation I could give him for my newly acquired bruises and cuts. I stepped out of the bathroom, dressed, and went back to grab my coat with the papers in it.
“You done for the night or are we going to have some fun?” Todd appeared at my side as I sat on the couch.
I didn’t jump this time.
He frowned. “Don’t go ruining my fun now, Mercy.”
“You’re getting predictable.”
“Guess I’ll have to make some changes.”
I almost asked him not to, but what was the point? He had every right to make my life a living hell. I spread the pages out on the coffee table then got up to turn the light off. Just like they had in the mansion, red words appeared on the pages. I took a pad of paper and jotted them down the best I could, wondering what language they were written in. The pages were old, but not yellowed. They were more like parchment instead of paper.
Todd studied them as closely as I did.
“See something interesting?”
“Actually I do,” he said, but his ghostly hand went right through the page he tried to pick up. “Mind? Grab the light first.”