by Platt, Sean
John glared at the big blue man in charge still holding a blade to Hope’s neck.
Her eyes locked onto John’s, and he gave her a glance, hoping she understood that he had this under control.
“Don’t kill him,” John said.
Vashkar looked down at John with so much disdain, it seemed like he might do it simply because John asked him not to. Maybe cut Hope’s neck for good measure, too, just to prove who was boss.
John continued his plea, “You’re bringing us to Prince Jacob, aren’t you?”
A glint of recognition in Vashkar’s eyes.
“Jacob is my brother. That’s why he told you not to kill me. Nor does he want to harm Hope. Fuck that up, and he’ll have your head. So here’s the deal: I’ll play nice and go back with you. But if you hurt either of my friends, I’m not doing shit. I will make you kill me. And then you’re fucked.”
Vashkar laughed, but John could tell that he’d wormed into the monster’s head, laying eggs of doubt. He was likely trying to find a scenario where he could kill Larry while still keeping John from fighting back. But short of incapacitating him, he had no options. And John was an unknown variable. These men didn’t know how to bring him down without the encounter turning lethal. It would almost be easier to bring all three to Jacob. At least that’s the conclusion John hoped everyone would come to.
Surrendering and going back to Jacob with these fuckers wasn’t an ideal scenario, but definitely better than losing Larry. It would give John time to think of a way out.
Jacob hadn’t killed John, despite having had a few opportunities. Surely that counted for something. Maybe Jacob could be reasoned with. Perhaps John could offer something to release Larry and Hope. Again, not ideal, but ideals were for people with options.
As Larry stood before Vashkar’s men, one put a gun to his head and said something in a language John couldn’t understand.
He seemed to be asking permission.
Vashkar looked at John, eying him a stone-cold glare.
John yelled, “Don’t do it, or you’re all dead. By me or by Jacob, either way, dead.”
Vashkar grunted something.
The man grunted back, then used the gun’s butt to hit Larry in the back of the head, sending him to his knees.
Vashkar looked down at John, still holding his blade to Hope’s neck. “Fine. He lives … for now.”
Vashkar shouted something in another language as if commanding somebody John couldn’t see.
Moments later, a horse and carriage arrived, driven by a surly looking man with a shock of red hair and a scar bisecting his face.
The carriage was a black metal box without windows — their prisoner transport.
“Walk,” Vashkar commanded John, pointing at the carriage.
John hoped he wasn’t making a mistake in not fighting, that he wasn’t signing death sentences for two of three people he loved in the worlds.
Twenty-Seven
Caleb
2013 (Now)
The birds gave it away.
Hundreds of scavengers circling the dark gray sky above the town of Crow’s Nest, battling one another the ground, seeking to feast on scraps of flesh.
Earlier that morning, one of the couriers en route to The Citadel in Golden Cove had seen the birds and alerted The Hand, though the young man had been terrified to enter the town alone, sure the butchers might still be there.
Caleb and Raina led an expedition — twelve of The Covenant into Crow’s Nest — as a nasty storm brewed above, bellowing thunder and crackling lightning at war in the swirling clouds. A cold breeze settled into Caleb’s bones as he surveyed the corpse-strewn street.
In the two years Caleb had been working with The Covenant of the Hand of the Seven Gods, they’d dealt with rogue witches, the occasional werewolf, and a stray Valkoer attack or two. But nothing had prepared them for this.
More than two hundred dead — men, women, children — killed in their beds, in the streets, or wherever they happened to be when the Valkoer came. So many dead that the vampires hadn’t enough time to finish them all off. Some bodies were partially burned. Fortunate for the birds, who would otherwise have nothing but ashes to eat.
Caleb and Raina stood over a pair of ashen corpses huddled together — a woman with a child who was no more than three, frozen in time, their bodies scorched to husks.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Caleb asked.
“Nothing, not even during The Great Purge when the Valkoer were resisting capture, refusing exile to The Forgotten Kingdom.”
“How many of them do you think attacked?”
“A dozen? More? This doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe they’re starving?” Caleb suggested.
To his left, a fat black bird was prodding its sharp beak inside a half-burned corpse until it found something and pulled, stretching tissue like a giant pink worm.
Caleb had to turn away. Something struck him.
Raina said, “They shouldn’t be starving. Their numbers aren’t that big and they have prisoners they feed on, not to mention whatever illegal arrangements they’ve got on the island or with others.”
Caleb stared at the corpses feeling like he was missing something. Then it hit him. “They wanted these bodies found.”
“What?”
“Why leave bodies half-burned? Why not finish the job?”
“Maybe someone came along and spooked them away?” Raina suggested.
“Who could’ve scared away a group that did this?”
“Perhaps the sun was rising?”
Caleb looked around. Despite his forensic experience, he couldn’t guess time of death for bodies in this condition. Not without a lab or scientists to run tests.
One of The Hand, Brother Paul, came over as lightning ripped through the sky.
The first fat drops of rain began to fall.
“Brother, Sister, you must come.”
“What is it?” Raina asked, following the man toward a barn whose doors had been ripped from their hinges, its livestock slaughtered with what appeared to be claws and blade markings.
“Drain the people and kill their livestock?” Caleb said. “It’s like they were trying to send a message, but to whom? Do we know of any squabbles between these folks and the Valkoer?”
“None that I know of,” Raina said.
“Do you think that there’s a rouge group of Valkoer operating outside The Forgotten Kingdom?” Caleb asked.
“Anything is possible, but …” Raina stopped when Brother Paul ushered them into the dark barn to show them what he’d brought them to see.
A boy, no more than eleven, still in his bedclothes, shaking, crying, sitting on the straw-covered ground, being comforted by Sister Celine.
Celine looked up. “We found him hiding behind bales of hay.”
“What’s your name, son?” Raina asked.
The boy looked up, his puffy eyes red as his nose. “Callum.”
“Did you see what happened here?”
He nodded, swallowing a lump of grief. His mouth twisted to form words that he had to force past his lips.
“Th-they came after we w-went to bed. I heard my sister scream. Then my p-p-pa and ma. They were all in the same room. I was sleeping in the cellar because my uncle was staying in my room. I tried to go help, but my uncle grabt me, told me to hush, and hid me ’til it was over.”
“Where’s your uncle?” Caleb asked.
“They f-found him just as he was trying to secure the barn doors. Then they kilt him. I thought for sure they’d seen me, too, but they din’t.”
“Did you see them?” Raina leaned forward. “Did you see who did this?”
“’Twas the Knights that did this. The Black Valkoer Knights!”
Raina looked at Caleb and sighed. This wouldn’t go down well with Prophet Malachi. This was a clear violation of the Treaty, and could give The Hand the excuse they needed to enter The Forgotten Kingdom and eradicate the Valkoer once
and for all.
While they did want to take Jacob down, Raina didn’t want a wholesale slaughter of everyone on the island.
But Caleb couldn’t help think of the positives here. He’d been wanting to go into The Forgotten Kingdom to find Jacob ever since he arrived here two years ago. But the Treaty had prevented The Hand from just marching in and demanding to see the Prince. Additionally, the King and Council had all said the same thing, Jacob had gone back to Earth.
Caleb had wanted to follow him, but he was forbidden. Once you were a member of The Hand, you were a lifetime member.
You couldn’t just leave when you felt like no longer doing your duty. Leaving could get you killed.
Caleb had no intentions of staying forever, but he couldn’t leave until he was certain he’d found and killed Jacob.
While Caleb was originally biding his time until he could find Jacob, after which point he would find a way to escape, something had changed in the past two years.
He’d come to like this world.
Things were simpler.
People were usually kinder.
Caleb was making a difference, helping to protect towns from the monsters, wild things, and people roaming The Southern Realm.
Was making a difference, anyway.
This could change everything.
Again, the boy spoke. “What are you going to do about the others?”
“What others?” Raina asked.
The boy pointed toward a cellar door with a large piece of wood barring it shut.
“Who’s in there?” Raina asked.
“The people they din’t kill. They put them in there.”
Raina’s hand found her sword’s hilt as she approached the cellar.
Caleb followed, drawing his silver and onyx blade. He’d grown proficient at wielding it, though he would’ve traded blade for gun in a breath.
But nobody in The South had guns, at least not the kind he was used to. They were forbidden in the Treaty, a way for The North to maintain power over The South, as The North had plenty of weapons, some rumored to have been brought over from Earth before the original portals were closed.
At the cellar doors, Raina motioned for Brother Lio to remove the bar. The big man hefted the bar aside and it dropped to the ground with a thud.
Brother Lio looked back at Raina and Caleb.
Raina nodded.
Lio leaned down and opened the door.
Something leaped out and on top of him — a Valkoer dressed in commoner’s clothing.
Lio screamed as the thing feasted.
Another five Valkoer, all dressed like commoners, poured from the cellar, growling, heads darting back and forth as they surveyed the barn.
Oh God, they turned the villagers. Turned them and left them as a trap.
Movement to Caleb’s right.
He turned to see the boy, Callum, calling out, “Dad?” arms wide as he ran toward one of the Valkoer.
“No!” Caleb rushed forth to throw himself between the boy and his father-turned-Valkoer.
Too late.
The boy ran right into his father’s waiting arms.
And the father fed.
Caleb thrust his sword through the boy’s back to end his suffering, then plowed it straight through the father’s chest.
The swords were blessed silver with onyx designs forged into the blades, deadly to Valkoer and Were-Beasts.
Boy and father convulsed, burning alive at the end of Caleb’s blade.
Movement to Caleb’s left.
He couldn’t pull the sword from the father and son, so he let go, drawing the dagger from his belt, turning to face a female Valkoer racing toward him.
She reached out, hands clawing at his face.
He ducked, not to avoid being burned since she couldn’t harm him, but rather to avoid a telepathic assault, intentional or incidental, which might fatally distract him.
She went right over him.
He looked up as she sailed past, sticking the blade in her gut and slicing it open.
Hot blood painted him as he held the blade tight and her body crumpled to the ground just past him.
Raina screamed from somewhere behind him.
He turned to see her on the ground, struggling against a fat man choking her.
Caleb whipped the dagger across the barn, straight into the side of the fat bastard’s head.
The fat man screamed, burning from the inside.
Raina shoved him off of her just in time to grab her blade and slice through another charging Valkoer.
Caleb spun around, scanning the barn for more danger, searching for his sword.
Then he realized he wouldn’t need it.
Everyone was dead, except for him and Raina.
“Shit,” he said, looking around.
Outside a woman’s scream drew their attention.
He ran out into a torrential downpour to see four surviving members of his party, their hands full with a trio of Valkoer who had escaped the barn and backed them up against a wall.
Caleb was about to run into action, but he’d left both his sword and dagger inside the barn.
Moments after realizing he was screwed, Raina appeared from behind and tossed Caleb his sword.
They rushed into battle together, easily felling the final villagers-turned-Valkoer, then stood there drenched by the rain while recovering their breath in the ugly aftermath of two massacres. Caleb stared at the senseless slaughter, feeling sick, anger stirring in his gut.
“Do you think King Zol’s men really did this?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Raina said. “This would be an outright provocation of war. And he controls his people too tightly to allow for this.”
Caleb spotted something among the dead, a body dressed differently, in dark black leathers with daggers strapped to a belt across his chest.
He walked over, Raina following, and looked down to see the man’s dead gaze looking straight up, a black blade thrust in his skull. Black veins like spiderwebs beneath his skin as the blade’s poison took root.
Valkoer.
On his left hand was a ring bearing the insignia of a lantern in a cave. He’d seen that ring enough times to know whom it belonged to.
Caleb pulled off the ring and showed Raina. “This is Under Harbor’s Shadow Guild, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Which means this wasn’t King Zol’s men. It was someone from the Town of Jonah.”
Twenty-Eight
John
They’d been riding prisoner in the horse-drawn carriage for a few hours along bumpy roads to wherever Jacob was waiting. Rain pelted the metal walls and roof of the carriage.
John and Larry were on one side of the box, John’s helmet confiscated before they shoved him inside, with Hope sitting across from them. They were bound together by chains and cuffs. John had tried to break free, but the metal was stronger than anything he’d broken on Earth. Magick didn’t work to open the locks on the cuffs, either.
He shrugged to his companions, not wanting to alert the unseen man riding just above and in front of them.
Hope whispered, “Why does Jacob want us?”
“I don’t know,” John whispered back. “Maybe he’s going to give me one last chance to join his whatever the hell he’s got going on.”
“And if you don’t?” Hope asked.
“I don’t know.”
Hope was quiet. Her eyebrows raised. “You wouldn’t actually join him, would you?”
“I’d do almost anything to keep you two alive.”
Hope shook her head. “You are not joining him. I still remember the way he looked at me, like he owned me or something. Need I remind you that he tried to kill us, John. I’d rather die than be anywhere near him.”
“Nobody’s dying,” John said.
“So, you have an idea?”
John looked at Larry, who was uncharacteristically quiet, then turned back to Hope. “I always have ideas.”
“Mind
running a few by me?” Hope’s voice was pitched higher than normal, the anxious tone she used for worrisome things — like whether they’d make rent, or when she was convinced that her paintings were terrible. It was hard enough to calm her when the stakes weren’t life and death. Now, it might be impossible. But he had to say something to earn her trust, to make her believe that he’d find a means of escape.
“I’ll figure a way out. I always do.”
He gave her his most charismatic smile — the one that usually bested her defenses. The one that once ended with them kissing in bed after one of their very rare arguments.
But that was a long time ago, and the smile wasn’t nearly as effective while being transported to your vampire brother intent on destroying the world.
She shook her head and sighed, looking down.
Larry finally spoke. “If John said he’s working on something, you can trust that. I’ve seen this guy get out of way more fucked-up situations than this.”
Hope looked at Larry and visibly relaxed. Perhaps he’d managed to do what John couldn’t. Or maybe he looked so damn sad with the giant bump on the back of his head, she couldn’t bring herself to argue.
Either way, mission accomplished — for now.
But as they neared their destination, John wondered if maybe this would be the one thing he couldn’t think, or fight, his way out of.
Twenty-Nine
Abigail
They stood in a large round chamber in the base of a tree with two of the Druwan and Mother kneeling on the ground before them, arranging small colored stones in a rectangle.
“What are those for?” Abigail asked.
“Materials for the portal spell.”
“You need materials?” Abigail asked.
“Different spells cost different things, depending on the magick user. Some spells work with merely words. These are usually minor spells — telekinesis, minor confusion spells, and the like. Larger spells, such as this one, usually require a cost. A sacrifice of blood, or magickal items.”