Smiling genially back at the aged Vampire king, she softly replied, “I’d like that.”
Chapter 18
Cynric screamed, his head splitting with the force of his Sleeper’s ire.
Apparently, it wasn’t happy with him for turning over their stronghold in the Vampire realm. The creature had granted the small blessing of taking its anger out on him silently. The only thing more offensive to a Druid than a Dark One’s voice was its presence. Thankfully, his arrangement with the Sleeper granted him a glorious reprieve from that.
For now.
“You would not have to suffer so if you would not go out of your way to do things that displease him. Like running away from the Druid bitch when you so clearly had the upper hand,” a malicious voice sing-songed to his right.
When he made his retreat into the Necro realm, he’d landed in a space covered with a soft, black dirt-like substance. He dug his fingers into the black soil, and fought back the urge to disassemble the wholly irritating Necro prince who’d addressed him. It would serve no purpose; the sorcerer would just pull itself back together, and proceed to be even more annoying afterward.
During the Sleeper’s temper tantrum, Cynric had apparently bitten his cheek. After spitting out the blood that had collected in his mouth, he rolled his bottomless black eyes over and glared darkly at his unwelcome companion.
“Have you always been daft, or is it something new you’re trying on for size?” he taunted.
The Necro did not receive his caustic inquiry favorably. It narrowed its black and green eyes at him dangerously. “Watch your tongue when you speak to me, cretin,” it seethed through bared black teeth.
Drawing a morbid sense of enjoyment from the Necro’s censure, Cynric righted himself. He waved a hand down his front to erase any trace of dirt from his clothes, then turned his back on the malevolent sorcerer, and straightened the sleeve of his jacket in short, jerky movements. He raised his chin and stared coldly out across the cavernous, dark landscape of the Necro realm.
“It is much too soon for the start of the main event,” he stated solemnly under his breath, more to himself than in response to the Necro’s earlier rebuke.
Starla was much too essential to the fruition of Cynric’s plan for him to risk a slipup by engaging her in battle too soon. It did irk him a bit, though, to have lost his research subject. He’d grown to enjoy his sarcastic little talks with the human boy he’d crossed with Vampire genes. He felt a measure of attachment to all of his creations, but he’d allowed Caleb to keep his free will, something he hadn’t dared in any of his prior experiments.
He had known that they would eventually separate, given the purpose he’d chosen the boy for. Still, he couldn’t help but feel the loss.
The cold, clammy breath of the Necro on the back of his neck interrupted his musings. He suppressed a shiver of disgust, and turned his head to glare over his shoulder at the dark creature.
“You pretend to have this elaborate plan, but I know your game, Druid. You take from my father your freedom, and expect to give nothing in return. Unfortunately for you, that’s not the way this works,” the Necro hissed. The cloying sound of its voice forced Cynric to wince away from its closeness to his ear. “You will do exactly as we require of you.”
The pitiful sorcerer dared to threaten him? How quaint.
Lowering his chin and glaring darkly at the monstrosity across from him now, Cynric flexed his power. Now within the closest realm to the Dark One’s own, the seal contracting the Sleeper to share space inside his soul had strengthened, giving Cynric tight control over his own abilities, which he now wielded fully in the face of the offending Necromancer.
“Threaten me all you like; you need me far more than I need you,” the Druid countered, his low tone filled with dangerous promise.
The Necro backed down. Folding its pointed-fingered hands in front of it, it nodded. The deep frown on its face did not match the malicious amusement that glinted behind its dark-lit eyes. “A sad fact that is the only thing keeping you alive right now,” it affirmed, wicked delight dripping from its sickly-sweet tone. It turned to the side languorously and rolled its head back and around to face the Druid, a disturbingly euphoric expression masking its dark-skinned face.
“I know your weakness,” it punctuated with deliberate slowness. “Defy us, and I will make you watch as I defile her, your precious Druid queen.”
And leaving that sinister promise to haunt the air around him, the Necro abruptly left Cynric alone.
He cursed.
He didn’t actually believe that the Necro could do it, but it unnerved him that the creature had known the prospect would get under his skin. He’d taken incredible care not to divulge anything concerning his previous association with the leader of the human Hunters to either the Necro or the Dark One, a mental seal he expended great effort to maintain. He hadn’t thought himself so transparent during their brief encounter in the Vampire mines.
He ran a hand over his face, took a deep breath, and cast the issue aside.
The longer he dwelt on it, the greater the danger that he would inadvertently divulge more to his constant companion than he would willingly allow. He had no responsibility to look after her anymore, and he knew very well that she had grown more than capable of looking after herself.
She was, after all, the sole reason for his current predicament. He would never let either of them forget that.
* * * *
Kaelyn tried, and failed horribly, not to stare at the collection of large, imposing males seated in the low lighting around the black marble table. The Hunters had placed her in a makeshift setting right between Tyrian and Starla, and she felt completely out of place in the assembly. She tried not to let her intimidation show on her face, but with little success. Tyrian reassuringly took hold of one of her clammy hands in her lap, and squeezed. She shifted her gaze to meet his eyes, and drew comfort from their intimately familiar emerald depths.
“Thank you all for coming,” Starla began. “First and foremost, I’d like to welcome the Vampire Medium, Kaelyn Hamblin, to our meeting.”
Every Hunter in the cavernous room gazed squarely at her. She went stock-still, breath frozen in her lungs, as they stared. She’d failed her drama elective in high school due to crippling stage fright, which apparently also applied to real life.
Tyrian squeezed her hand again, and she exhaled. “Thank you,” she croaked, her hoarse voice barely a murmur.
Starla smiled at Kaelyn warmly, and turned her head toward the Hunters. “Next on the agenda are the unfortunate events that transpired to bring her to us. Caleb, please come in.”
Kaelyn widened her eyes, and turned halfway in her seat to the entryway of the cavern. As she watched, the teenager sauntered, tight-lipped, into the room. She’d had no idea that Starla had planned to parade the boy around like some sort of freak-show carnie. Anger boiled up inside of her, and she opened her mouth to voice her displeasure. Tyrian’s steady grip stopped her; she whipped her head around and pinned him with a silent question. He shook his head, a silent warning in his emerald gaze.
She turned her gaze back around to Caleb, now standing at Starla’s side at the head of the table.
“How the hell?” someone asked, she had no idea who. Caleb’s discomfort under the scrutiny monopolized her attention, and raising her hackles even more.
“Please.” Starla held up a hand. “Caleb’s condition is hard enough on him as it is; let us not add any more stress to the situation. I have called him here as a visual representation of what this new threat is capable of.”
It still amazed Kaelyn that such a tiny slip of a woman could so easily command the seriously huge men (and woman) seated around the table. They heeded her words, not uttering a single syllable regarding the boy; some even turned their eyes away altogether. Caleb visibly relaxed, released a short breath, and dropped his startlingly blue gaze to hers. He winked at her. Her anger evaporated, and she tugged the edges of her lips in
to a small smile. She softly shook her head, and relaxed back into her seat before turning a chiding sideways glance at the young Page.
“It’s not just Caleb,” Tyrian spoke up, drawing the attention of many of his fellow Hunters. “He’s crossed at least half a dozen other realm species as well.”
Unease fettered through the Hunter ranks; a few of them murmured restlessly.
“For what purpose?” a dark-skinned Hunter across from them asked. The mutterings of the others ceased.
“What else? Realm domination,” a blue-gray-haired Hunter two seats down from him replied jokingly. He suggestively raised and lowered his eyebrows.
Starla shot a pointed glare down the table at the man. “Sorry,” he replied, wincing. Then he quickly looked down and away.
Starla sighed softly in exasperation, and waved a hand in the air. Another chair materialized next to her.
“Caleb, please have a seat,” Starla offered. She gestured the boy over, and he immediately sat down. He sat up straight instead of slouching, as she’d frequently seen him do during their time locked up together. It appeared that the boy did have some manners after all.
“Cynric is not the real enemy,” Starla declared grimly.
Kaelyn shot forward in her chair, and slammed her free hand down on the surface of the table. Too agitated to consider the consequences of that action, she turned a heated glare to Starla and seethed, “How can you say that after what he did to Caleb?” She wanted to add, “after what he did to my father,” but she held her tongue.
If her ire perturbed Starla, the Druid didn’t show it. Calmly, she turned her milky gaze to the riled Medium and explained, “He is being controlled by a Sleeper.”
A thick, almost tangible silence saturated the room at her declaration. Thankfully, it didn’t affect everyone. A familiarly sultry voice from three seats down piped up, “How’s that possible? Sleepers can’t control their hosts.”
Starla lifted her gaze toward the Witch Hunter. “Not when contracted with a blood seal, no,” the Hunter leader conceded gently. “Cynric’s contract is a twisted perversion of Druid magic. I don’t know how or why he created it, but the fact is indisputable. Cynric is under the influence of a Sleeper.” She paused then, seeming to collect herself before concluding, “And it is an Old One.”
Apparently the revelation left others besides Kaelyn in the dark. The occupants of the room passed a varied assortment of glances among one another, every one of them seeming to be just as perplexed as the last. No one, it seemed, had ever heard of an Old One. Kaelyn hadn’t remembered reading anything about them in Starla’s library, and the subject of their nature intrigued her as much as it did, to all appearances, the others.
“What is that?” she finally asked, when she realized that no one else would. They all appeared to be a bit wary of the answer.
A faraway look entered the Druid’s translucent gaze; she seemed to travel back in her mind to a time long since passed. “They were the first. The original five realms, forefathers of the current thirteen. The Sleeper within Cynric is of the Abyss. A Dark One. The evilest and most powerful dark race to ever exist.”
Starla’s admission floored the room. Kaelyn had to admit that it had shell-shocked her a bit. She’d only learned a couple of weeks before that Vampires existed, and now this? What would come next? The Easter bunny? The tooth fairy? Freaking Santa Claus?
She raised a hand to her forehead, her eyes wide with shock.
“How are we just learning about this now?” came the aghast voice of her mate.
Kaelyn shook her head, and ran a hand roughly through her hair to pull it away from her face. She asked instead, “What happened to the first five realms?”
Starla took a long, deep breath. “Two of them were destroyed in the war that cut off the Abyss, barricading it from ever bleeding out into any other realm. The Gateway realm, now known to you all as the human realm, was likewise encased in a protective bubble, its walls much less fortified. And then there is the higher realm that my brethren retired to; it is also of the original five.”
Kaelyn had never before heard Starla mention the others of her race. As far as she had learned from Starla’s books, the Druids had simply disappeared from history, fading out very early on into legend and myth. Starla spoke of them with fond reverence, but also bitter sadness.
Kaelyn could kind of understand that; someone had once left her behind, too.
“If the Abyss was cut off, how did Cynric contract a Sleeper from it?” a ruggedly handsome gray-eyed Hunter at the end of the table asked. His chiseled features struck Kaelyn as slightly less grim than the others’. If she remembered correctly from her brief jaunt through Tyrian’s memory, his name was Aldrich.
“Most likely while he was also imprisoned within the Abyss,” Starla replied succinctly. She stared down at her hands, clasped in front of her on the table.
“Well that seems important for us to know,” piped the dark-haired Hunter of the Troll Realm across from them in a low, quippy tone.
Starla sighed once more, and slid her eyes closed in a show of exasperation. Kaelyn, however, hadn’t missed a brief flash of guilt that entered her gaze just before her eyelids could conceal it. When she opened her eyes again, only disappointment reflected in them.
“Cynric was always a bit…eccentric,” she explained. “He was a scientist amid spiritualists. As you can imagine, those sorts of ideals were frowned upon within our society at the time. It never seemed to bother him, though, until...” She trailed off.
She’d gotten that faraway look in her eyes again, and Kaelyn reached out to lay a hand over one of hers. “Until what, Starla?” she gently prodded.
The Druid seemed to return to reality. “He snapped,” she replied immediately. “He murdered his mate and their unborn child. A crime for which the punishment was an eternity of imprisonment within the Abyss.”
Kaelyn drew back in horror. She’d known of the madman’s depravity, but to murder his own child before it even had a chance to draw its first breath was deplorable.
Tyrian brought his strong arms around Kaelyn, dragged her back against his chest, and rested his lips atop her head.
“How did he escape?” she barely heard someone ask. Her mate’s calming presence sapped some of the horror away from her, letting her remain focused on the meeting.
“I suspect in the same way he was able to contract an Old One as a Sleeper. With help.” Starla spread her arms out, her palms up in front of her, as though laying out a sheet. Then a shimmering tapestry suddenly dropped, seemingly out of thin air, onto the table, and Kaelyn nearly fell out of her chair.
She was beginning to understand why Starla commanded such respect.
“The Abyss is parent to the Necro and Nightstalker realms,” Starla explained, gesturing to one glowing section of the tapestry. It appeared to be an elaborate map of the realms. Kaelyn clearly made out the twelve realms that encircled the human realm. Each realm featured a single intricate symbol at its center, depicting its native species. Five larger ellipses curved around the outer edges of the exquisite canvas, the Byzantine cursive scrawled over and across them like no writing the Medium had ever encountered.
“Of course it is.” Caleb’s drawling, sarcastic tone to her left brought her back sharply from her study of the map, reminding her of the presence of others around her. She would have to remember to ask the Hunter leader more about the language at some time after the meeting.
“I believe we can rule out the Nightstalkers as the possible culprit,” Starla stated wistfully. She slid her gaze across the table, to the biker-looking Hunter seated next to Lilith. “Which leaves the Necros.”
Kaelyn immediately recognized the Necro Hunter from Tyrian’s memories, his sharp, dark blue eyes steady as he held the Druid’s pointed stare. He didn’t respond immediately, but seemed to consider the implications. Then he sniffed indelicately, and turned his head away from Starla with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s possible, t
heir head honcho is a piece of fucking work,” the Hunter iterated in a gravelly voice, contempt clear in his tone. He turned his icy gaze upward once more. “I’ve only encountered him once; not exactly eager to do that dance again.”
“You wouldn’t be alone,” Starla assured him. “This problem concerns all of us now.”
“Why?” the Troll Hunter asked with a shrug. “Because he’s got a hard-on for Tyrian’s Page? No offense.”
Caleb shot him a tight-lipped smile, and nodded sharply. “Yeah, some taken.”
“Because he is after the Mediums,” Starla’s amplified voice blasted through the room. Clearly, she had approached the end of her fine line of patience. The seriousness of the situation suddenly settled around them all. “Not just one of them; he needs all of them to achieve his goal.”
“What kind of goal are we talking about, here?” the Demon Hunter broke the silence with his pragmatic voice.
“My ancestors crafted a seal to contain the very foulest inhabitants of the Abyss,” Starla explained, “the worst of them a being called Keyon—the father of the Necro race.”
“Well, this keeps getting better and better,” Caleb muttered under his breath.
Kaelyn closed her eyes, and ran her hands through her hair. Then she leaned forward, and rested her elbows on the black marble. “What does he need the Mediums for?”
Starla’s solemn, pearlescent gaze met hers briefly; the Druid stiffly drew herself up in her chair. “There is a key to the cage locking Keyon inside the Abyss. Cynric has somehow obtained it, but he cannot use it without the blood of all twelve Mediums, combined with the blood of the creator of the key.”
Lilith leaned forward suddenly, and craned her head around to lock gazes with Kaelyn. “Did he get yours?” she asked, a seriousness in her amber pools that the Medium did not usually see there. Suddenly, everything became clear. Caleb’s kidnapping and experimentation, her imprisonment with him—the bastard had wanted him to feed from her. To take her blood, and probably the blood of the others as well.
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