The Adversary

by Thea Harrison

  Pia had been in too much shock to take note, but Graydon, who had also been present, said, “Four. There were four.”

  Eva swore under her breath. She knelt, opened her backpack, and yanked out a black vest. “Now do you see why I wanted you to wear some protection?”

  Chagrined, Pia obediently shrugged on the Kevlar vest Eva pushed her into. “I did not see this coming.”

  “Said every dead person on every damn battlefield everywhere,” Eva snapped under her breath. “Throughout history.”

  “Okay, geez, I get it. I’m sorry,” Pia muttered as she fastened the vest into place with shaking fingers. “You can stop chewing on my ass any minute now.”

  Eva caught her hand and squeezed it in reply. “It’s only ’cause I care.”

  Pia twined her fingers through Eva’s, returning the pressure. “I know.”

  Bel and Graydon, and Grace and Khalil, stayed with Pia and Eva while the others fanned out to search the rest of the site. The scene was weirdly macabre, like a graveyard filled with tombs, with piles of construction materials and dirt casting deep shadows, and the wind whispering through the trees.

  Or was it the wind? These days, Pia had grown suspicious of that sound. She squinted, trying to look at things out of the corner of her eye to see if she could catch the subtle flicker of movement indicating the presence of the unseen, but it was too dark, and she felt too rattled. She wrapped her arms around her torso, waiting nervously for the professionals to process the scene and report back.

  It felt like a long time, but it must have been only a few minutes later when most of the others came back except for Liam, who knelt on one knee at the edge of the hole. “Only three bodies, all with the same cause of death,” Bayne said to Graydon. “They must have trusted whoever came up to them, because there aren’t any signs of a struggle. That fourth guard has got some ’splaining to do.”

  Pia couldn’t drag her gaze away from her son. He was so close to that black gaping maw. “Liam,” she said tightly. “You’re working my last nerve.”

  He held up a hand without looking up. “I hear you, Mom. It’s okay. I’m only looking. Do you know if they left ropes going into this hole when they pulled you and Dad out? Because there’s one here now.”

  “I don’t think so.” Graydon relaxed his hold on Bel and strode over. “There wasn’t any reason to leave a rope dangling. Don’t touch it without evidence gloves. It’ll mess up the scent. Here.” Reaching Liam’s side, he dug into his pack and brought out some thin gloves.

  Together he and Liam pulled up the rope, and Morgan, Bayne, and Rune gathered to inspect it. A few feet away, Carling stood gazing down into the hole. The Vampyre said almost contemplatively, “There’s a lot of residual magic down there.”

  Every instinct Pia had was shrieking. Unfortunately, most of it was contradictory stuff. She. Did. Not. Want. To. Go. Down. There. Again. And yet here she was, determined to do just that.

  And she couldn’t stand how close Liam still stood to the gaping hole, even though he was surrounded by some of the most competent and dangerous people she’d ever met. Even if he was one of the most competent and dangerous people she’d ever met. Man, those mom instincts. They could be exhausting.

  Forcing her leaden legs to work, she walked to Liam’s side. It might be entirely irrational, but she felt better as soon as she laid her hand on his arm. He patted her fingers absentmindedly. Most of his focus was on the rope and the others.

  “There’s Pia and Dragos, which is to be expected,” Rune said. “And there are traces of many other scents. Also not unusual at a construction site where all the materials were shipped in. But then there’s one fresher scent overlaying it all.”

  “And all of those scents are Wyr,” added Morgan. “I think your fourth guard went down there. The question is, did he come back up again?”

  “Only way to know is to get down there and find out,” Bayne said. “Let’s light it up.”

  Breaking open several glowsticks, Bayne and Graydon tossed them into the hole. Everyone gazed at the uneven floor below strewn with rocks and dirt. A hint of large carved columns edged the cavernous scene that faded to black in the distance.

  Nothing happened. There was no sound, no movement. Rune looked at Pia. His lion’s gaze picked up the faint glow from the glowsticks and gleamed. “If our fourth guard is still down there, he’s either unconscious or dead.”

  “Or possessed,” she said.

  “Right,” said Morgan briskly. “Only one way to find out.”

  He took a step forward and dropped into the hole. Pia and the others watched as he landed below with an inhuman grace. As a werewolf, in some ways he was stronger than a Wyr wolf would have been.

  “Aw now, you don’t get to have all the fun by yourself,” Bayne told him. The sentinel leaped to join him.

  Khalil offered, “I can transport everyone else down.”

  “That might not be the best idea,” Carling said. “When you Djinn arrive somewhere, you’re like a mini tornado. We don’t need for your Power to trigger some kind of magical trap. Let’s go down with as little disruption as possible, at least until we can gauge whether or not it’s safe to do anything else.”

  “Rune and I can take three or four people each in our gryphon forms,” Graydon said. Rune gave him a nod. “If anybody’s uncomfortable with that, they can always climb down.” Graydon took the length of rope and let it fall down into the hole again.

  Pia patted Liam’s arm and smiled. He didn’t smile back. He said, “I don’t like letting you go without me.”

  “But you will, because you promised,” she said.

  His mouth tightened. “I will, because I promised. Besides, I think I’ve figured out my next job.” He called down, “Any sign of a body?”

  Bayne looked up. “Not yet. I’m thinking he climbed down, did a little graverobbing to go along with his murders, and then climbed back out again. He didn’t need the rope any longer, so he didn’t bother to recoil it.”

  Liam looked at the other sentinels. “Let’s assume Bayne’s right and he made it out again. I’ve got his scent. I’m going to start tracking him up here.”

  “Good idea,” Rune said. “Report back when you know something.”

  “Will do.”

  Rune and Graydon shapeshifted. Each gryphon was massive, roughly the size of an SUV, with the head and wings of an eagle, and the heavily muscled body of a lion. They were so outrageously magnificent that despite everything Pia’s spirits lifted.

  She turned to Liam. He told her grimly, “Be careful. I’ve already got one parent I’m worried about.”

  “You be careful too.” Her mouth tightened. She wanted to send half a dozen bodyguards with him, and she couldn’t, not when he was so focused on establishing his adulthood and independence. He would never forgive her if she babied him too much in front of the others. Besides, he might not be an accomplished sorcerer like someone as ancient as Carling or Morgan, but as a dragon, in his own way, he was the most Powerful one there. “I’m trying to think of a good reason why a Wyr would betray his fellow guards, kill them, go into the ruins and then disappear, and I’m not coming up with any scenarios that I like. If he was graverobbing like Bayne said, he might be carrying some dangerous artifacts. Don’t touch anything with your bare hands.”

  “I hear that one loud and clear.” He took her by the waist and hoisted her onto Graydon’s back, behind Bel, and Eva leaped behind her. “I’ll check back soon.”

  “Okay.” She touched his cheek.

  Then he stepped back. Moving with predatory grace, he glided into the shadows.

  She didn’t have time to watch Liam’s departure and fret. Graydon launched, and Pia plummeted once again into the scene of her worst nightmare.

  Chapter Five

  Down below, everyone fanned out, moving cautiously and keeping close to their partners. The sentinels broke open more glowsticks, scattering them along the floor, until the underground cavern was lit with a sh
arp, thin illumination.

  Pia was surprised at how many details she remembered: the murals carved in stone that towered the height of three men, and the faint, complex mosaic underfoot. Eva kept pace with her, step by step.

  Grace, who had been the most silent in the party until now, breathed, “Ooooh, this place.”

  Khalil stalked by his lover’s side. “What do you see, Gracie?”

  Grace spun in a slow circle, eyes wide. She was a pretty, young human in her twenties, with tousled, titian-colored hair and a delicate tan to her fair skin, and a limp from an old injury that hadn’t received magical healing when it had occurred. As a result, she would always carry the limp.

  She was also the Oracle, from a long lineage that dated back to ancient Greece. Once, kings and emperors from all over the ancient world had come as supplicants to the Oracle, offering vast fortunes in gold, jewels, and silver just to gain an audience.

  In the modern age, those supplicants had whittled down to a trickle. As Oracle, Grace was forbidden to charge money for her services, and bore the obligation to grant audiences to those who asked. Her family had fallen into difficult times financially… until Grace had discovered she could help heal injured Djinn.

  Now, the Djinn as a society showered her with devotion, and she held an almost unimaginable wealth in Djinn favors. Eager and grateful Djinn offered to babysit her niece and nephew, to provide bodyguard services when Khalil needed to make trips away, to go grocery shopping, and to whisk her home into sparkling cleanliness. No task was too great or too small for them to do.

  One Djinn-owned company that offered website services built and maintained a website devoted to the Oracle and managed her appointments with scrupulous attention. At a party, Grace had once told Pia laughingly she had no idea what the website said or how much they charged—she wasn’t supposed to know, and the whole process was outside her control—but as a result her financial resources had grown by leaps and bounds. It was a very fine thing to be so universally loved by the Djinn.

  Grace said, “This place is crowded with unhappy ghosts.”

  “Are any of them speaking to you?” Bel asked.

  The Oracle shook her head. “Not yet. At least, no one is standing out. Many of them are too worn and faded to be very aware of what’s going on. Maybe someone will come forward. Right now, I think they’re waiting to see what we’re going to do.”

  “I’d like to know that, myself,” Eva muttered to Pia.

  “This place is very Egyptian,” Carling remarked. The Vampyre had walked up to a column and ran her fingers lightly down the carved surface. “It’s quite similar to the elaborate mausoleums our people would build for our god-kings. The language is similar too. I can almost, but not quite, read it. If I had a few months, I’m sure I could translate it.”

  “I’m not sensing any active magic,” Morgan told the group. He strolled through the gigantic chamber as casually as though he were walking down the Champs-Elysees in Paris. “But that doesn’t mean there’s no danger. There could be magical traps.”

  “If this is anything like my original hometown, likely there are magical traps,” Carling replied. “They’ll be set to protect things of value, like any attendants that may have been poisoned and buried here to look after their master, jars of embalmed organs, and stores of food. For a tomb of this size and grandeur, I would not be surprised if there was a treasure chamber somewhere. This place would hold all the things the deceased would need to have a comfortable afterlife.”

  “Where’s the sarcophagus you and Dragos discovered?” Morgan asked Pia.

  She pointed into the darkness. “Down there.”

  Nobody was willing to cast a witchlight yet, which called for more glowsticks, and the group naturally coalesced into a tighter formation as they walked the rubble-strewn hall.

  “I’m not feeling the narrative we’ve got so far,” Bayne muttered. “Why would Number Four kill his coworkers, climb down here, and then vanish? To become a guard, he had to have undergone a background check. He knew those people he killed. They were likely friends, or at least friendly acquaintances. They would have gone out for beers after their shifts. Then, suddenly, he bugs out and murders them? This doesn’t add up to me. We’re not seeing the whole picture.”

  “Maybe, like Pia said, he became possessed too,” Rune suggested.

  “Maybe.” Bayne did not sound convinced. “We know it can happen. But Dragos didn’t run into trouble until he and Pia came down here. Number Four would have had to kill the others before coming down here. So as a plausible motive for murder, I don’t like it.”

  Pia didn’t like it either. She didn’t like anything about this return trip to hell. She didn’t like saying goodbye to her Peanut—even if he was close to Dragos’s height of six foot eight now and the size of a six-seater Cessna jet in his Wyr form. She didn’t like letting him hare off into the unknown after some unknown murderer, while her mate remained bound by null spell chains and possessed by the most unholy asshole she’d ever had the misfortune to meet… at least this year.

  She couldn’t take it any longer and her resolve broke.

  “Bayne.” She spoke more harshly than she had meant to. As the sentinel spun to give her his full attention, everyone else did too. “I don’t like that Liam went off on his own. We all have each other, but he doesn’t have anybody with him. Normally, a random guard couldn’t possibly be a match for him. Hell, we all know that an army of a thousand guards wouldn’t be a match for him—normally—but we don’t understand what happened here, or why Number Four did what he did.” She met Bayne’s sharp gaze. “Maybe I’m being overcautious, but could you go join him, please?”

  “I think you should,” Morgan said when Bayne glanced at him. “I don’t need a partner. As Pia said, we’ve all got each other, and I feel no need to wander off on my own. Better safe than sorry.”

  “I’m on it.” Bayne nodded to her, loped back to the area below the hole, shapeshifted into his gryphon form and launched out.

  I can just hear Liam now, Pia said telepathically to Eva. ‘Moooooom!’ But I couldn’t help myself.

  No, he won’t, Eva replied. That’s a child’s reaction—that’s what Peanut would have done. Liam’s smart and sensible, and he’ll see the reason why when Bayne catches up with him. Sentinels work together as often as they work alone. You’re tying yourself up into knots over nothing, sugar.

  At that, she took the first deep breath she’d taken since they’d arrived at the construction site. Eva was right, and Pia gave her a grateful look. How long do you think we’ve been down here?

  The other woman shrugged. Maybe fifteen minutes? Liam doesn’t have that much of a head start. Bayne’ll catch up with him in another fifteen. You’ll see.

  Okay.

  As the group continued forward, the huge, ornately carved sarcophagus came into view. Sparks of gold glinted in the reflection of the glowsticks, and a pile of rubble and large fallen stones had damaged one end, breaking it open.

  Pia’s heart began to pound. Part of her was angry at herself. Lately, she was nothing but a bundle of raw nerves and jittery thoughts.

  “If Number Four’s motive was to steal some treasure, he didn’t do a very good job,” Rune said dryly. “If I’m not mistaken, there are embedded gems underneath all that dust. He could have pried out the gold and gems and left a rich man.”

  “What do you think, cupcake?” Graydon asked Pia. “Does everything look the same as when you and Dragos were down here before?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Gray. I was busy panicking when Dragos collapsed.” She shrugged as she looked around. “Sure, I mean, spooky sarcophagus, creepy whispers on a dry, creepy wind…. Wait.” Her gaze sharpened and she strode over to one of the murals. Eva dogged her footsteps so closely she bumped into Pia when she stopped.

  “Sorry,” Eva muttered.

  Pia shrugged that off and pointed at the mural. “The center of this mural has been destroyed. It wasn’t like this before.
I was fascinated with it. There was this big battle scene—you can still see it at the sides.”

  The others jogged over to join her. Rune crouched. “Lots of footsteps around here, and they smell like Number Four.”

  “Pia, describe what was here before,” Carling said. “Try to remember every detail. For some reason this was important.”

  “It was….” Pia’s voice died away as she stared at the fresh scars in the mural and struggled to get past the many upsetting events that had happened since then. The stone looked like it had been hacked at with an axe. “Like I said, there was a battle scene. Very epic. Lots of people. There was an army on the ground, and winged creatures flying overhead. One of the ground figures was bigger than the others. Maybe he was Sarcophagus Guy. He wore a gold crown and he stood on top of a hill. I don’t know, maybe the crown was painted, or maybe the gold was real….”

  The whispers intensified, and the warm, dry air moved, blown by a restless wind.

  Bel breathed, “Oh Lord and Lady, there they are again.”

  “I see them too, just like on the beach,” Grace murmured. “They’re glorious!”

  Pia shrugged impatiently. “I know, I know. The unseen are here.”

  “Pfft, I don’t see anything,” Eva muttered.

  “Me neither,” said Rune.

  “They were here the last time too,” Pia told the others distractedly. “There was something else in the mural, and it’s on the tip of my tongue. I just can’t quite get it.”

  The figure was bigger than the others. The biggest one on the wall….

  …and he wore a crown that shone with a dim glint of gold…

  …and he was doing something. Something. What the fuck’s the matter with you, Giovanni? Pull it together.

  Then it came to her, and her shoulders slumped. “I remember now. The guy held a scepter or maybe it was a weapon. Maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

  “This scene was important enough for Number Four to take an axe to it,” Graydon reminded her.

  “Are you sure, Pia?” Morgan asked. “Could it have been a sword?”