Dark Angel Box Set

by Hanna Peach

  “Right,” said Alyx, catching on to what he was saying. “So you just have to figure out the right sequence of movements…”

  “…and the key will be freed to slide into the center,” he finished for her.

  Jordan began to slide the different rings back and forth, seemingly to test them at first. Then his movements grew more confident. Alyx barely realized she was clutching onto his shoulder as he worked with impenetrable concentration. She watched the ring-pieces slide in and out. She chewed at her lip when he cursed and retraced his movements. She bounced on her toes when he hissed “yes” under his breath.

  Finally, “I think…” he slid the last ring away from the key. He grinned. “I got it.”

  He glanced up at Alyx just as she looked at him. She only realized now how close their faces were. She must have been leaning in closer and closer to him as he worked without realizing it.

  We’re breathing the same air, she thought. This felt so intimate. Jordan’s eyes dropped to her lips. Was he going to kiss her? A rush of heat rose through her body rendering her breathless, and yet there was an odd sense that this…this was wrong. Did she want him to kiss her?

  Yes.

  “Do you…” he started to say.

  No. Yes. I don’t know.

  “…want to do the honors?” he finished.

  Honors? Of course. Idiot. The key. Alyx cleared her throat and leaned back. “No, you should do it. You solved it.”

  Jordan grabbed the back of her hand with his and laced his fingers between hers. He raised their combined fingers up to the key. Tingles shot up Alyx’s arm as he pressed their fingers to the cold stone.

  Together they moved their fingers up. The key-piece slid effortlessly to fill the space in the center of the circle. She heard a click. Jordan pulled his hand back and Alyx felt a strange sense of loss and relief when his warmth left her skin.

  Alyx stared at the silent stone. For a moment everything was still. Then there was a soft hissing… Finally, the rock began to crumble away, falling into a dark hole in the shape of an arched doorway. For a moment, Alyx just stood there blinking.

  “Let’s go, but be careful,” he said, unsheathing his sword and moving into the tunnel.

  She nodded and unsheathed hers as well. Who knew what they were entering.

  Chapter 16

  Alyx stepped inside the opening behind Jordan. A noise behind her made her jump. But it was just the rocks scurrying back to reform the stone wall. The tunnel inside sloped down and was lit by a row of pale yellow glow worm globes secured to the wall at head height. Jordan led the way, Alyx close behind him. The tunnel spiraled down into the depths of the mountain. Finally it began to level.

  “I think I see the end of the tunnel,” Jordan whispered back to her.

  They came to a stop in front of a rock wall.

  “A dead end?” said Alyx. “Surely not.”

  Jordan reached his hand out and he gasped when his fingers went right through the stone. A mirage. He pulled his fingers back. “I’ll go first.”

  Alyx nodded and gripped her sword handle tighter. Jordan stepped through the mirage and Alyx followed.

  Through the mirage wall Alyx took a second to reorient herself. They were standing at the edge of a large circular space capped with a dome. The ceiling must have been coated in Mirage magic as it looked like the daytime sky, blue and spotted with moving clouds. The walls that rose up were rock but covered mostly with moss. Wooden shelving meandered around parts of the walls in spiraled sections like a spider’s web. In the center of the chamber rose a dark structure, centralized at the base and up a kind of trunk, then spreading out to form branches. Off the ends of these branches were large, red glowing orbs like poisoned apples, large enough that Alyx didn’t feel that she could get both her arms around them.

  Alyx’s mind flashed back to her memory of the naked and bloody bodies in Michael’s DreamScape “garden”. A chill fell down each vertebra of her spine like a trickle of water. What the hell was this place?

  “It doesn’t look like anyone’s here. I’m turning off the Miragecharm for now to conserve it,” Jordan said. She could hear his nerves tightening his voice. “Let’s not stay in here for too long. Let’s find what we need and get out.”

  Alyx nodded. As much as she wanted to tear this place apart and inspect the structure closely, figuring out what is was and what it was for, she couldn’t forget why they were here. To get Mayrekk’s prisoner’s apex and Raphael’s charm.

  Alyx scanned the shelves in the room. Mayrekk’s bracelet must be in one of these cases.

  A familiar silver glinting off a circular object caught her eye. She gasped and raced over to one of the shelves. There was Mayrekk’s apex, Raphael’s charm, Elijah’s pick and Jordan’s lion’s head ring. The only thing missing was the Black Stone sword that Michael had taken off her when he had captured her in the Hollows.

  “The apex is here,” she called out. She reached for it but her fingers met a stern invisible resistance. These shelves were sealed behind magic shields. “But they’re shielded.”

  Her fingers splayed against the invisible shield. She could almost touch it.

  “Maybe this will work…” she mumbled to herself as she thrust Tobias’s pick towards the case in hope. The case crackled and jittered at the sparks coming off the pick like sparks off a welding tool. Come on, work.

  But the magic held. Alyx stared at the pick, then the case, her heart drowning in disappointment. They had gotten this far... Surely there was a way in. She pulled back the pick and thrust it forward again. A futile effort. These shields were stronger than anything she had ever seen before. How the hell would she get in? There had to be a way.

  “What is the meaning of this?” A cold familiar voice echoed across the chamber, startling Alyx so that she jumped away from the case. There, on the other side of the chamber, was the chilling beauty of Elder Michael.

  Michael’s icy eyes turned their full force towards her. They seemed to peel back her mask and made her feel like she was standing before him, bared. For a split second, as he raised his palms to her, she was frozen with uncertainty. How the hell did Michael get from the ceremony to here so quickly? The ceremony couldn’t be over yet.

  A pulse erupted from his palms with a thick crackle.

  “Duck!” Jordan cried.

  The forcefulness and solidity of his voice snapped her out of her state. Alyx leapt to the side and rolled into a crouch as a ball of DreamWalker blew past her, barely missing her. At the same second, Jordan threw a ball back at him. She saw Michael’s eyes widen then narrow. No sooner had Jordan’s DreamWalker hit Michael’s chest than a thick shield of his defenses pushed it skillfully away like water around a rock.

  Michael aimed his palms at Jordan, and this time he let out a pulse of magic. It seemed to lash at the air as fiercely as his snarl. It collided with a matching pulse from Jordan in a burst that blew the hair from Alyx’s face and made her skin break out in waves of prickles and her hair rise with electricity. Holy Hell. This was powerful magic.

  Michael’s pulse was tinged with a kind of purple fire and his anger seemed to make his magic flare and spark with a greater intensity. It began to push back against Jordan’s. Jordan had to tilt his face away from the spray of the colliding magics as it inched towards him. She heard him grunting under the strain. Michael’s magic would overtake Jordan’s completely if Alyx didn’t do something.

  Alyx dropped to a crouch with a leg extended out to her side. Her skirt slid apart at the split on either side of her leg, giving her access to her weapons. She snatched a knife from her boot and hurled it at Michael. He cried out as the sharp point went straight through his right palm, cutting off the magic from that hand.

  “Cursed she-devil,” Michael cried as he clutched his injured palm to his chest, staining his dark-colored shirt with blood. She could see the blue DreamWalker magic from the knife soaking into his body, sparking blue electricity as it did. Michael’s other palm
was still trained towards Jordan. Now that there was only one pulse directed at him, Jordan’s magic began to push back.

  Michael let out a grunt of annoyance and reached to pull out the blade out of his injured hand. His pulse dropped, allowing Jordan’s DreamWalker to slam into him. But he had steadied his defenses and Jordan’s pulse flowed around him.

  He ripped out the knife from his right palm with a grunt and threw it at Jordan. Jordan dove aside, his own DreamWalker pulse dropping. The knife missed him. As Michael aimed his palms at Jordan again, Alyx could see that his wound was already healing.

  Alyx snatched her dagger from its boot sheath and launched herself at Michael. But he saw her before she could get to him. Michael turned his partly-injured palm towards her and a small bolt of magic flew towards her.

  It was too late to spin out of the way. Alyx pulled at her defenses like she had been trained to as she met the bolt of magic face on. It hit her square in the chest and she was thrown back in the air. She fought to keep her defenses up, but Michael’s powerful magic was seeping in, wearing down sections of her shield. She felt her body growing heavy as if filling with lead as she fell from the air. The rocky floor came at her with a thud. She felt the air rush out of her lungs.

  “Alyx!” she heard Jordan cry. “You bastard. If you’ve hurt her…”

  Alyx squinted through blurring vision. With her cheek lying heavily on the wooden flooring, she could see Michael redirecting his magic over her head towards Jordan. Jordan. Her stomach lurched at the thought of Jordan fighting against this powerful Elder alone. Alyx struggled to move, but her legs were heavy and her arms felt like she was trying to pull through cement.

  The air again grew thick and hot with DreamWalker magic as Jordan and Michael faced off again. Her vision wavered behind heavy eyelashes. An object on the floor came into focus. It was her fallen dagger, just to her right. If she could only reach it…

  Alyx focused on drawing herself out of the DreamWalker influence and pulling herself back to wakefulness. She gave an internal cheer when she felt her mind clearing. She tried to reach out again, but it seemed the DreamWalker effects on her body were taking too long to wear off.

  If she could use her mind, could she use her bloodink? Alyx cast her mind to the marks hidden on her ribs. Half an Animale and partial WaterBearer, EarthSifter and AirWhisperer… An idea came to her as she remembered the glass shards that Israel had used to attack the Darkened at the demon den with his burgeoning Air magic. That memory felt odd in her mind. Frayed, almost. But no time to worry about it now.

  She pulled at her bloodink and was relieved to feel the lightness of the Air magic blowing through her body. She drew it into her palm. She put all her energy into flicking her fingers, and the magic swirled, cool and contained in her hand. She pushed out the Air magic. She directed it carefully towards the fallen dagger like an extension of her hand. The soft white haze curled around the handle like an ethereal snake.

  She let part of the magic spread across the room in a light sweep. The magic curved across the two life forms standing off against each other so that she could sense them both. Jordan and Michael. Symon’s words echoed again in her mind.

  “Always focus on where you want it to go, not on where you don’t want it to go. Magic doesn’t understand negatives. It just sees what you focus on. It will just as easily aim exactly for what you don’t want to hit as what you want to hit.”

  Alyx closed her eyes. Focus. Trust. She didn’t have to open her eyes to see the Air lifting the dagger from the floor. She could feel it as if the air was part of her. Alyx directed her thoughts to Michael. And only to Michael. She drew the last of the Air from her skin in a single burst. In a violent release her mind threw the dagger towards its target.

  She heard a cry as her blade found its mark. She felt the room grow warmer. She felt the reverberation in the floor when a body hit it. Then the room became still.

  Please, let it be Michael who had gone down. Alyx pushed again with her limbs, awkward and heavy like a baby elephant. She heard movement, then felt two strong arms pulling her into a sitting position. Her head rolled back to see Jordan’s concerned face peering down at her.

  “Alyx, are you okay?”

  “Did I get him?” she croaked out. Even her throat felt stiff and dry.

  A smile broke out across Jordan’s face and he laughed. “You’re okay. Yeah, you got him.”

  Alyx felt a cool pulse traveling through her back. Jordan was using his DreamWalker to pull her out of the cloak of Michael’s magic. It spread across her body like a crackling frost and it cast aside the heaviness in her body. Within seconds she felt the life return back to her, and the sensations in her skin sharpened. She could feel the warmth where Jordan’s hands lay flat across her back, especially where they lay on bare skin, where there was no fabric.

  She gasped a little in surprise as Jordan pulled them both up in the air, then he set her down on her feet.

  “Can you stand?” he asked, still holding on to her.

  “I think so,” she said.

  Slowly, hesitantly it seemed, he pulled his arms away from her. Looking around, Alyx could see a fallen Michael, eyes shut, her dagger sticking out from his shoulder and a pool of blood staining the wooden floor. He looked dead but she knew he wasn’t. He deserved to be. Her chest suddenly filled with resurfaced anger.

  “That blade needs to be repositioned just a few inches down and to the left.” Through the heart. Even the Seraphim don’t recover from a heart wound. In the time it took for the body to heal it, it would be too late. She advanced towards him.

  A warm hand on her arm, firm but gentle, stopped her. “Alyx, we can’t kill him.”

  She spun towards Jordan, her fury redirected at him. “What the hell do you mean ‘we can’t’?” She pushed his arm from her. “What he did to Mini, to my parents, to you… He has caused so much death, so much pain…” Her vision narrowed as she frowned at him. “Whose damn side are you on anyway?”

  “God damn it, Alyx.” He shook his head, composing himself so that his face returned to calm and his voice leveled. “I despise him as much as you do. But we need him alive so we can get him to open the shields. Remember why we’re here.”

  He was right. Alyx felt her anger begin to deflate within her. She took a steadying breath and nodded. “Okay. But after we find it, he’s getting a blade to the heart.”

  “Done.”

  “Then maybe a haircut at the neck.”

  “Got it.”

  “Then chopped into little pieces and burn each one.”

  “Have I ever told you how incredibly sexy you are when you talk dirty?” One of the corners of Jordan’s lips was pulled up in a half smile. He must be joking. Sort of.

  “I’m going to secure his hands so he can’t point his magic at us.” Jordan pulled a length of rope from under his long jacket. “Then I’ll wake his mind but keep his body asleep. You’ll have to make him open the shields.” He pulled out Alyx’s dagger from Michael’s body, wiped it on his shirt and tossed it at her, handle out. “Catch.”

  She caught it and resheathed it. She found her knife lying at the edge of the chamber and tucked it back into her boot.

  Jordan rolled Michael’s body onto his stomach. “You have any ideas on how to make him open the shields?”

  She shrugged. “Ask nicely?”

  Jordan stopped tying Michael’s hands together behind his back to raise an eyebrow at her.

  “Or we could just beat it out of him.”

  Jordan grinned. “That’s more like it.”

  When he finished tying Michael’s hands, he lifted Michael’s slumped body and threw it so he was sitting against the outer chamber wall. Michael’s face fell to one side, his jaw slack, his eyes half-open as if he was dead.

  “You ready?” Jordan asked.

  Alyx gritted her teeth. “Do it.”

  Jordan directed a small pulse at Michael. Unlike the pulse to put him to sleep, which was warm and thic
k like a blanket, this pulse, designed to wake him, was cold and fresh. Within seconds, Michael’s eyelids began to flutter open.

  “What the…” his features hardened as he caught Alyx’s eye. “Come back to me, did you, pretty? What? Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you under that mask?”

  Alyx’s fingers went to her face and touched the lace of her mask. Even with it on, she now found herself feeling exposed.

  “You’re not even supposed to be here. We saw you…” Alyx’s voice trailed off when she realized, “that was someone else. Under a mirage.” Alyx frowned. “You would miss entwining your own son?”

  The side of Michael’s lip twisted up, which left no doubt in Alyx’s mind how little Michael thought of his son, Daniel. For a moment Alyx felt a little sorry for Daniel.

  “You’re a very clever little thing, aren’t you?” Michael was staring at her with eyes like ice. “How ever did you find my chamber of Eden?”

  His chamber of Eden. “What the hell is this place?”

  He laughed. “No, no. I shall keep the secret of Eden and its Tree of Knowledge all to myself.”

  Alyx glanced up to the structure taking up the center of the chamber. Tree of Knowledge. What did that mean? What was it for?

  Alyx fought off a chilling shudder.

  “Clever. And brave, like your mother was. Pity both of you have to die.”

  Alyx’s vision clouded with the pale image of her mother’s face from Michael’s “garden” DreamScape, so like her own face but with chocolate eyes that stared lifelessly back at her. Alyx let out a small hiss and sprang to grip her hands around Michael’s neck. Even death would be too kind a fate for him.

  Jordan leapt forward and gripped a strong hand to her arm, preventing her from getting at Michael. “Alyx. Remember why we’re here,” he said firmly. His words broke through her hazed anger like rays.