“Aurian Arcadia,” the robed creature said, his attention on Avery. “I was expecting you.”
Hell...the creature had just offered up another name to fill in the blanks. Avery’s. Her angelic moniker was Aurian, a name that rivaled her beauty and shouldn’t have crossed this robed bastard’s lips. Names had power. Merely muttering real ones could give the speaker an advantage.
“You have something that belongs to me,” Avery said, her voice hazardously calm in light of what was going on and who they were facing.
The cavern was curiously quiet, its air supercharged with the electricity of this meeting between old foes. Rhys could hear that electricity crackle.
“Yes, perhaps I do,” the robed creature said.
One long glance showed Rhys that dozens of Shades had moved to block each entrance to the cavern. He counted four branching tunnels and carefully noted the location of each. Personal experience told him that Shades were not the problem here. The numerous species of creatures salivating for what was in those iron cages were the ones needing cautious observation. Or maybe there was only one real monster here—the butcher that would harm an angel to such an extent as this one had.
Strategy demanded that Rhys pay attention to details when he wanted to look at Avery. A swift exit, if necessary, would have to be in a safe direction, so he scanned the cavern, ignoring more personal needs.
Two dozen bidders were present at this market, all of them seeming to get along for the moment, at least until the action began. Opposing forces on the streets above these tunnels stood side by side without tearing each other apart. The only group with no representatives was the werewolves.
Passing seconds seemed like hours, and Avery hadn’t spoken again. Seeing into the hanging cages was impossible from where he and Avery stood. Did one of them hold a pair of red-tipped wings, or would those wings have faded in the same way Avery’s color had faded without them? She had been right. If they called to her, those wings had to be here somewhere.
There was one added problem, of course. Avery had been expected to show up, and someone had correctly predicted that. Possibly it was the same creature that had lured seven men to a castle with the promise of abiding by God’s will.
The whole thing stunk with the sulfurous stench of a trap, but he and Avery had figured this out before stepping into the dark.
“Now might be a good time to give them back,” Avery said at last.
“Have you come to bargain or to spend?” his Maker asked.
“Neither.”
Murmurs rustled through the crowd. This gathering thought too much time was being wasted. The comely, black-haired, velvet-clothed creature facing Avery was too perfect to be anything but Other. His smile was evil incarnate. Rhys had never seen an expression like that, so cruel and calculating. This creature wasn’t like the one in his memory. The Makers must have played their parts well back then.
“And look who accompanies you,” his Maker said, fixing Rhys with a stern gaze. “Hello, Perceval. It’s been a while.”
His instinct was to slide his blade into the madman’s chest and get this over with. Too much distance separated them, however, which likely was a purposeful attention to detail on his Maker’s part. Two immortals with blades would make a hell of a dent in this unnatural gathering. The question here was how much power this robed entity had and which species he had sprung from.
“Vampire,” Avery said, answering Rhys’s silent question. “Another rumor that had truth at its core.”
Vampire...
What was it Avery had told him, early on?
Legends say the Blood Knights were created by three magicians who were also the earliest form of what we know of today as vampires. If that’s true, it would explain a lot about you.
Rhys rocked on his feet and ran his tongue over fangs that had dropped, he supposed, because of the extremes of the danger confronting him and the reality of what those fangs meant. Somewhere in his tweaked DNA sat the reason for his unused teeth.
If what Avery said was true, the tarnished blood of the undead swam in his veins, but the outcome of that had to have been altered somehow by drinking from the golden chalice that had captured the blood of a man on a cross. He and his brothers had been resurrected to a life of immortality and had followed golden rules when everything else was a lie.
Avery took a step, listening. Rhys couldn’t hear anything beyond the anxious fluttering of the crowd. His world had been turned upside down but he had to concentrate on what was going on now, with her. His angel. When Avery took a second step, the red-robed creature across from them lifted a pale, languid hand. As if summoned, several more vampires emerged from the shadows. Young vampires, fully fed. Beautiful creatures. Aggressive. Deadly.
“You know what I want in exchange for that which you seek,” his Maker said to Avery. But Rhys knew the Maker’s attention had been divided, and that half of it lay on Avery’s unexpected companion. A Blood Knight had discovered the falseness of his origins and by accompanying Avery had found his Maker still very much alive.
“Nothing he says is the truth,” Rhys sent to Avery, sensing her tuning in to his thoughts.
“No one understands that better than I do,” she sent back.
“That thing you want so very badly,” Avery explained to the creature in front of her in a clear, strong voice, “is something you will never get hold of again.”
“What a shame,” his Maker remarked with another casual hand gesture. “Without your permission, I will now have to use force.”
“Like hell you will,” Rhys warned, prepared to do everything in his power to thwart that threat.
Chapter 22
The humming sound produced by her wings had become a body-piercing vibration that threatened Avery’s level of concentration when losing focus was risky.
Where are you?
Show me.
Her gaze never left the creature Rhys had called his Maker. She knew this black-hearted, ancient bloodsucker well, and remembered everything he had done to her. She remembered each taunt he’d made while she lay in chains in the dungeon carved beneath those tall white castle walls, and all his threats.
The three ancients at Broceliande hadn’t killed mortals regularly in order to fuel their strange, extended existence. Instead, they fed on those of different origins. Capturing Fae folk was their specialty. An angel had been their crowning victory. How had they accomplished that? By luring her to the castle’s garden, where a golden chalice sat submerged in a golden fountain. And then ensnaring her with a net made of fine-linked chain mail.
They had dragged her to the castle, across moonlight-dappled grounds. Securing her in chains had taken the effort of all three supernaturally strong creatures with the help of a conjured fog of gray, numbing smoke. Mordred’s mother had been the sorceress Morgana, and she had taught her son well.
“Vampires are nothing,” Avery said to the captor facing her now, in the present, without bothering to check out the minions the freak had set in place to test her reactions. His little army of vampires didn’t matter to her. Mordred didn’t matter. She had come here for one thing only, and the result was in sight.
More rustling sounds ran through the cavern. Other creatures gathered here were expecting an auction, and weren’t keen on patience. Even ancient Makers with one-track minds had to be cognizant of the danger in leaving this crowd on their own and without entertainment for too long.
“One drop of blood is all I ask of you,” Mordred said to her. “Two, at most.”
“Do you imagine I actually believe you’d be satisfied with that, or that you’d give me anything in trade?” Avery said.
“Or that you’d allow her to leave this place,” Rhys added, his attention also riveted to the black-haired monster. “It would seem that you are unable to keep your word in any c
ircumstance. Wouldn’t you agree, Maker?”
Rhys’s hand brushed Avery’s. The handsome Blood Knight stood very close, and the simple, brief touch of his flesh to hers made her skin burn. In spite of the situation facing them, her insides throbbed with an overarching need for him that refused to fade.
Emotions ran high. She wasn’t alone here, surrounded by darkness. Like her, Rhys had broken this Maker’s chains. Like her, his incredible body was also a vessel for the light. That infusion of her blood into the Seven had been this Makers’ biggest mistake. Mordred’s sorriest regret, she would have guessed.
“Wings!” Avery called out.
Her voice echoed in the giant cave, the sound eerily magnified by the conducting properties of the chalk in the walls.
In reaction, Rhys made a slight movement of his shoulders before settling back to stillness. This was his fight, as well. He’d been fooled by three master tricksters but had been able to avoid the kind of control they had planned for him. Instead of saving the Grail for Mordred and his beastly companions to barter with, as had been their plan, the Blood Knights created at that bloody castle had taken it away, hidden the chalice and continually defied all efforts made by anyone who tried to find it.
In the end, Avery thought, as Rhys’s heat bolstered her courage, Rhys would have to relinquish that coveted item. In doing so, he and his brothers would be free of the bindings of their vows and promises. When they were no longer Guardians whose paths had been set, their futures would be theirs—more than they had been for some time.
“Wings!” she called again, and was rewarded. A rush of wind reached her that turned her head. Up high, near the invisible ceiling of the cavern and behind the orange licks of fire in the grate, came the unmistakable sound of her wings trying desperately to flap again in an enclosed space.
Before anyone could blink, Avery bounded across the floor, past the robed monster that had not only dealt Britain’s most famous king a death blow, but had been responsible for setting this centuries-spanning game between them in motion.
Pushing off the central grate with both booted feet, she jumped up and caught hold of the chains. Climbing the forged links hand over hand, she reached the edge of the cage.
Momentum made the cage swing. Avery held on, ignoring the angry rumblings of the crowd. Some of those monsters might have come here tonight for the same thing. Parts of an angel. Or, hell, possibly Mordred had sold tickets, and they had only come for the show. Either way, she was not going to be anyone’s bitch.
She swung with the cage, feeling the rise and fall of the gust of wind her wings were creating without being able to spread to their full ten-foot width. Hoisting herself up, tucking into a ball, Avery shoved both of her boots between the cage’s heavy metal bars, absorbing the agony that left her hands branded.
Chaos had broken out on the cavern floor. Mordred’s monstrous gang was on the move, pushing into the crowd of angry onlookers. Some of the other monsters began to fight the intrusion with fangs and claws, realizing this night wasn’t going well and Mordred had lost control.
But the runes etched in the walls had stolen some of their power.
Rhys’s Maker’s vamp squad was doing some damage, by the sound of things. In the distance, and seemingly in a different world from the one she was in, Avery heard Rhys’s knife strike a monster’s body with a schwang and a thud.
Her heart continued to pound.
“Seize them!” Mordred shouted, his tone reflecting hints of anger tainted with surprise. He might have expected her, but obviously didn’t count on the kind of strength she still possessed or the prowess of the company she kept.
Should have known better, Avery thought, high enough now to see a pair of wings that were white as snow and looking peaked. The red tips were gone, faded along with the rest of each wing’s magnificent color. They fluttered when she spoke to them, recognizing Avery, welcoming her as if they were her pets.
“Like the rest of me, you have been drained and diminished, but we’re together now,” she crooned, searching for a way around the lock that sealed the cage.
Although she was strong, the lock was six inches in diameter and made of tarnished silver. There was no way to tear it apart with her bare hands. The cage bars were too close together for her wings to slide through. She had hit a snag and shouted a curse.
* * *
With action all around him, Rhys dodged two sets of fangs and parried with a successful double thrust that took out two of the young vampires. In the thick of the fighting that had broken out on the cavern floor, his Maker raged.
Enlightenment brought Rhys pain. More of the story of Castle Broceliande was needed, and yet those answers weren’t going to be found here tonight.
Revenge would have been sweet, Rhys supposed. It would have been warranted, and dished out in honor of his brethren who had also been fooled. But that would have to wait. He had lost sight of Avery. In a show of strength he never would have imagined her fragile body contained, she had lunged away, her tracks covered by a mob of creatures for whom fighting was a drug.
She had jumped and disappeared into the upper regions of the cavern. Clearly, Avery had found what she came here to find. The desire to be with her at that moment had been fierce and was now lost.
“Avery!” he shouted, fighting oncoming creatures with both hands and listening for her reply with senses that had been tuned to her thought frequency.
There was no reply.
He fought harder, spinning in place, slashing at the oncoming tide of creatures with his knife and his sharp wooden stake, two weapons most of these monsters could not stand against, weapons wielded by a Knight who had, like a few of these creatures, been a man before answering the call of a higher power. Or so he had believed.
Another vampire exploded in a blast of foul-smelling gray ash, which left him a few seconds of breathing room. When he turned back to the scene taking place at the heart of the cavern, his Maker was no longer in sight.
“Have you run?” Rhys whispered, searching for a glimpse of red robes among the rest of the blood that was flying in every direction. Monsters were tearing monsters apart. All the humans were dead.
Very few of the two dozen guests were left standing, and Mordred wasn’t among them. Three of his vamp guards were biting everything in sight. As talented as Avery and Rhys might have been, the demons present at this shindig had the upper hand. A demon’s touch was a sampling of the fires they hailed from.
Time was of the essence. He had to find Avery and get her out of here. Demons and vampires would be ravenous for a pale angel from the opposite camp, and they would soon tromp the vamps.
He glanced up.
The cages these monsters used to seal off their goods would have presented a problem for anyone. Avery’s wings were in one of them. Did he want to know what kind of things were in the rest?
His blood sang in his veins with unparalleled sadness for whatever those cages hid. His heart ached. Still, if he couldn’t reach Avery, there were demons to face. He’d have to keep them off her back. Demons exemplified the worst of the world’s nightmares.
“Time to change things up.”
Rhys shook his head and rolled his shoulders, allowing his sigils to blister his back. The burn caused a secondary reaction that spread in his body like wildfire.
Muscles twitched and shuddered as they elongated and stretched to form new shapes. Sinewy ligaments snapped to allow the quick expansion of bone. Catching the burn, his hands began to shake. Fingers tightened on the weapons they held until the hilt of the silver blade also picked up the heat.
His hair grew with incredible speed and now reached his shoulders, falling over him in curtains of brown and gold. He tore off his jacket and opened his borrowed shirt to give his arms room to move.
Rhys’s human semblance was peeling back layer by
layer to make room for the thing hidden inside, the thing nestled at his core that the creatures he’d called his Makers had manufactured and then set free. A fiery being so impossibly strong that the cavern couldn’t contain his anger for what these monsters had done to his angel. He was the Guardian now, protecting his own.
When he walked forward, the remnants of fighting ceased. As he lifted his head, the remaining two vampires backed into the shadows. Rhys trained his attention on the demons, both of which refused to clear his path to the grate.
When he became aware of Avery’s struggle overhead, he signaled for the demons to approach him, wearing a smile on his weathered, acutely chiseled face. They came at him, one after the other, hissing curses with their webbed hands raised.
But demons had no place here. Although they were below the surface of London’s streets at the moment, and in a darkness similar to the place they’d sprung from, hell’s citizens were weaker in any kind of light, and were blinded by his.
They didn’t reach him. A long silver blade caught them from behind and impaled them both like meat stuck on a skewer.
“You didn’t presume to think I’d leave you here to fight alone?” his Maker asked, effortlessly tossing both devilish creatures, each as large as he was, into the fire in the grate. “Have I taught you nothing...Rhys, is it, these days?” the black-haired vampire added, wiping the demon blood coating his sword on the front of his flowing robes.
“In fact, perhaps you taught me too well, vampire,” Rhys returned, moving forward in a blur of speed.
Chapter 23
Avery kicked at the lock on the cage until she had to give up. Below her swinging perch, Rhys was speaking, and she didn’t need three guesses to figure out who he was speaking to.
She was afraid for him. The castle’s creatures were terribly strong, and although she had seen to it that none of them could return to their home, she hadn’t succeeded in finding her captors once they had abandoned their posts. Realizing she was about to escape from their torturous chains, all three had disappeared as completely as if they had never existed in the first place.
Angel Unleashed Page 19