Legacy of Flames- The Complete Trilogy, page 58
part #1 of Legacy of Flames Series
Cutting two more undead down, I climbed over their bodies. Wandering further into the dark wasn’t my wisest idea, but I needed to cut the enemy off at their source. I stepped forward, and the ground gave way beneath my feet. I flailed for a moment, claws scrambling for a ledge but finding nothing.
Shift. Ember, shift.
I couldn’t even tell how big the hole was, and if I shifted and got stuck, I might collapse the whole tunnel trying to get out. Dirt fell on my head and into my mouth, making me cough. My claws sliced the earth easily. Too easily. More dirt fell. I couldn’t grip the edges, nor was it wide enough to fly out. Ember, you’re an idiot. I’d let my judgement get clouded, too shocked by the dragons’ alliance with the hunters to remember basic lessons like don’t run alone into dark tunnels. Especially in places where the floor had recently collapsed.
My body smacked against hard earth, knocking the air from my lungs. I gasped and flailed again, then stumbled to an undignified stop.
“Hello?” I rasped. The landing was too soft to be coincidence. Too smooth. Someone else was down here. They’d set up a trap, and I’d fallen right into it.
“Hello?” I called again.
There was no light, but when I reached for the wall, it opened into a narrow tunnel. I felt my way through, glad of my enhanced senses. Not so much for the smell, though. It was a combination of water and rot, blood and something more unpleasant which vaguely reminded me of the truck loaded with dead faeries I’d ridden in once. A chill raced down my back.
The tight space sent panic fluttering through my chest, but I had a decent sense of direction. My friends, though… not all of them could climb out of a hole like the one I’d fallen into. And what if there’d been live hunters alongside the undead ones?
A high pitched scream rent the air, and I jumped. My head smacked the tunnel ceiling. Wincing, I walked at a crouch towards the foul smell. Instincts told me to run, but the only way was forward. There’d bloody better be stairs or another way back up to the tunnel.
I tripped over the first body, nearly face planting. His dark hunter uniform almost hid the bloodstains. Stab wounds, maybe. Too dark to see, though a faint light like a candle glinted ahead. Candles? That was new. They were placed on the floor at random intervals, between stalagmite-like-structures. No… not at random. In a circle.
Like… a necromancer summoning circle.
This was really, really not good. The hunters’ blood was fresh, the entrails glistening. And the bodies were ready to rise as undead. So this was their source. But this many dead? Surely nobody would sacrifice hunters just to raise them as mindless corpses without the intelligence and resourcefulness that made them deadly killers. No… there must be another purpose to this ritual.
I faltered beside a heap of corpses. Some in uniform, some not. Astor had said they’d widened their recruitment recently. Had they grabbed random people off the street? Surely there couldn’t be enough hunters left to sacrifice. But any life would do if there were rituals involved.
Another person was tied at the circle’s head, a man covered in a layer of blood. His clothes were soaked in it. I moved closer, not straying beyond the candles in case the circle sucked me into it.
The bloodstained man’s hand twitched. He was alive. The circle was still active—and he must be the necromancer.
I needed to shut it down, but I was no necromancer or even a mage. I kicked dirt onto the nearest candle, but the flame burned on, relentless. I kicked the candle itself instead, and it didn’t budge. Shit. My experience with anything necromancy-related was pretty much zero. How to put out candles if their light wouldn’t die?
A familiar voice rang out: “Stop, Ember.”
Malkin.
He emerged from the shadows with a bloody dagger in his hand, like a phantom. But very much alive. So he’d actually hired supernatural help this time around. Or kidnapped it, more like.
“I knew it was you,” I said, to cover up my panic.
“I wouldn’t move, Ember,” he responded. “Your friends are mine.”
My heart dropped like I’d fallen into the earth again. “No.”
“You all walked into my trap. Did you guess I was beneath your feet all along?”
“Well, it’s where you belong.”
My breath caught as he moved closer, pulling a gleaming gun from his belt. He didn’t need me alive. He’d damn near killed me several times already. I was no lab rat, and apparently he’d graduated from labs to necromantic summoning circles. If my blood hit that circle, who knew what it’d do.
“Apparently you haven’t learned any lessons from captivity, Ember.”
“What the hell did you do with the others?”
“Merely removed them to a more convenient location. Of course, if they gave my guards any trouble, then they deserve their fate.”
“Guards? The undead? Why are you slaughtering your people?”
“They’re doing what I intended all along—willingly giving their lives up for our cause. A single life doesn’t matter, not if we achieve our aim.”
A chill raced down my back. I’d forgotten what it was like talking to Malkin—how utterly disturbing it was to talk to someone so focused on his own goals that sacrificing human lives meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Dying in a summoning circle didn’t seem like a worthy goal to me. But then again, I wasn’t a hunter.
Did he take Astor, too? And the Moonbeam?
“Ember? Are you going to come with me?”
“No. I don’t believe you. My friends are miles up there.” I pointed at the earthen ceiling. “You can’t know for sure they were captured, and you have a habit of underestimating us.”
His mouth twisted. “Perhaps, Ember, but your friends are in a fight they cannot win. They’ll submit, and if they refuse to cooperate, they will die.”
“Thought we were going to die anyway. Or have you got a new execution planned for me, on account of all the trouble I’ve caused you?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He indicated the necromancer, who’d began to stir again. “You’ll be one of my sacrifices. The blood of a dragon shifter… I confess, I’ve never used it in conjunction with necromancy before, but the essential rule is that a supernatural’s blood has stronger effects than a non-supernatural. When your lifeblood is taken into the circle, so shall this world be cleansed.”
“You’re deluded,” I said. “Seriously. I don’t know how you got from dragons are evil monsters to this fanaticism, because it doesn’t make a jot of sense. Was your grandfather into human sacrifice, too?”
“So you did speak to them.”
Shit. He knew I’d been in Madison’s house. “I worked it out,” I lied. “You seemed to know the shifters, and you said it’d been in your family for decades. It’s not hard to guess what happened.”
“No, Ember, but I doubt you were thinking clearly enough to guess. It must have been quite a blow to find your people with the enemy.”
You don’t know the half of it. My heart hammered, blood rushing through my veins. If only I had the space to shift, without risking going into that summoning circle.
If only I had the Moonbeam.
Then I’d use it for a boost and make him burn.
“Let them go,” I warned Malkin. “This is between the two of us. I’m the one who tried to set you on fire.”
“Don’t try to fool my memory, Ember. Your friends were almost as destructive as yourself when you broke into my stronghold.”
“That’s because you tried to kill us, you prick. You can’t expect anyone to take that lying down.”
“On the contrary, sometimes it’s good to know when it’s time to quit. Like now, for instance.” He moved to the side, gesturing at the summoning circle. What had he been trying to summon? What had this man been forced to do for him?
I’ll set you free, I thought desperately—the necromancer was barely alive, and Malkin had held him prisoner down here for at least a week. Killing him would be a mercy, especially as without a necromancer, Malkin couldn’t go through with his plans.
The thought sickened me. No. I can’t kill an innocent man—a prisoner—because of what Malkin did. It’s all on him.
I took a step to the left, thinking the movement was subtle, but Malkin’s gaze went to my feet. “I wouldn’t try to help him, Ember. He’s already lost. And you will be, too.”
“Never. I won’t submit to you, Malkin.”
“Your kind already have, Ember. They knew the battle was lost from the start.”
“You put Lorne in power because he wouldn’t stand in your way. That’s why you did it, right?”
“So there was a little rat sniffing around the village earlier. I thought so.”
“You and your buddy are in contact, right?” He couldn’t have got from the village to here so fast, not without us noticing. The mirror was the only way back. “You’re like… he’s like a puppet dictator, isn’t he? You tell him what to do.”
“Naturally,” he said tonelessly. “I can’t have anyone getting any dangerous ideas.”
“No shit.” Fury threaded through my veins again. Malkin gave me the serious creeps. Not because he was evil, but because he didn’t even try to hide what he was. He didn’t wear a mask, like the Elites. His depravity was on display for the world to see.
And the hunters followed him to their deaths anyway.
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why you kept me and Cori alive, when you had contact with the other dragons all along. That part about needing Cori or me to face the Sidhe in another invasion, then—it was all a lie?”
“Not quite. The Moonbeam, however, was unable to link with the village until I found the mirror—after all, it requires a dragon shifter to activate it.”
“So that’s why you kept Cori,” I growled.
“Correct. The others were not my priority at the time. I debated what to do with your sister for quite a while after her capture. Nobody was supposed to have escaped the village.”
“I guess not.” Heat boiled in my blood, raging at him.
Malkin moved deliberately, skirting the circle’s edge. I tensed, thinking he was coming to shove me into it, but instead, he trod carefully behind the circle, into another tunnel at the far side. To reach him, I’d have to follow his path around the circle to avoid treading in it. Fine, then.
“Running away, Malkin?”
No answer. Instead, the candles burned brighter, dazzling my eyes. Grey smoke followed, filling the space between the candles in the circle and masking the necromancer from view.
A dark shape materialised in the summoning circle. Or more accurately, out of thin air between the candles. Not a spirit, but something from the other side of the veil which brought a bone-chilling shock of cold air. My teeth rattled as another icy breeze slapped me in the face, like the scent of Death itself. I hadn’t seen smoke swirling like that, monsters crawling out of the dark, since the day of the faeries’ arrival.
The day the veil nearly split in two.
“What the fuck is that?” Somehow the words escaped, though the smoke completely obscured the tunnel Malkin had disappeared into. His reply, however, drifted back across to me.
“Your demise, Ember,” he said. “Once your blood is spilled in the circle, you’ll be the last sacrifice and you’ll instigate a second breach of the veil—a controlled one this time. The mages will fall, and the Orion League will take their place.”
The beast in the circle reared up at me. I stared for a second—I rarely faced enemies I’d never seen before—then my instincts kicked in. Fury ripped through my veins, unleashed in a swipe that sent the shadowy creature reeling back. It jumped at me again, and it wasn’t alone this time.
The circle was filled with a mass of shadows. At least five of the same creature, layer upon layer of living, pulsing darkness.
Shadowy claws hit at me, crashing into the scales of my shifted hands, and darkness swallowed me.
16
I fought and thrashed, fighting for air like I’d fallen into the sea once again. Except shadows filled my lungs in place of water, and grabbed onto my arms like slippery tentacles. My claws sliced through them easily, but with my sight smothered in grey smoke and darkness, I couldn’t see the way out. Gasping and striking everything that hit me, I staggered forward one step. Then two. Surely I’d see the candles at some point. I needed to take them down.
A cut to my cheek drew blood. I tilted my head so as not to spill a drop anywhere in the circle, and moved forward another step. Shadowy tentacles yanked on my legs, pulling me onto my back. I kicked again, despair and panic battling the fury in my chest. Fire—fire. Never mind the lack of space. If I didn’t shift, I’d die.
Fire roared down my back, and I lashed at the shadows again. This time, they fell back, breaking free of my legs one at a time. In the dark, a scaly appendage appeared then disappeared again. So that’s why my back felt weird. I’d shifted my tail? That was a new one.
My tail lashed out, colliding with the shadows. It barely made a dent. They were a dense mass, thick and unyielding.
Using my tail as well as my claws, I pushed the creatures back, letting the fire in my chest build. Slow. Controlled. As I’d done once before, while underwater. My body shuddered, the world distorting as my eyes moved, my face shifting. I couldn’t breathe fire in this form, but my body was shifting, too.
I wasn’t a full dragon. I couldn’t feel my wings, nor the press of the tunnel’s tightness around my body. But it was enough.
The beasts exploded in fire and ash, a viscous black substance spattering the walls. I lunged forwards, and caught sight of a flicker of light. Yes. A candle.
Now to destroy it.
My claws dug into the ground, tearing through the earth, and fire engulfed the candle—more powerful and destructive than any other flames.
The shadows receded, the smoke clearing enough for me to see the way through. In a torrent of roaring anger, the shadowy beasts disappeared, sucked back into whatever hell they’d come from.
But the necromancer had gone. Malkin must have taken him elsewhere to complete the ritual.
I shifted back into fully human form to get into the tunnel Malkin had presumably left through. I hesitated, then picked up one of the remaining candles to light the way ahead. The small light only illuminated the area around me, leaving the path mostly in shadow. Following the growing scent of rot and water, I walked, cursing Malkin with every step.
The hunters had the Moonbeam back. They controlled every connection to the dragons in the city, and now there was no way for me to go back to help them.
But my friends had to come first. Will, Becks, Kit, Astor… all of them had been there in the tunnels, ready to fall into the hunters’ trap.
I paused as light filtered in above. I must be reaching somewhere with a way to climb out. I hope.
The light grew, along with the smell of rot. The ground grew damper. Maybe I’d gone into an old sewer tunnel. It smelled like the dead in here, which probably wasn’t far off the mark. Light flashed, revealing water puddling on the floor—and a path through into a wider tunnel. I quickened my pace, hurrying towards the source of the light.
Without warning, a whistling sounded in my ears and agony spiked through my shoulder blades. The candle slid from my grasp as my hands shook, and I reached for my shoulder, seeking the source of the pain. Not a needle as I’d first thought, but an arrow.
Magic suppressing arrows. To stop me shifting. Shoulders burning, I continued forwards. There must be a way out. Malkin had gone this way himself.
Movement sounded ahead. Undead? Wait—shit, I didn’t have my claws. I couldn’t shift. I shakily dug in my pockets.
Gone. My spells had gone. They must have fallen out in the fight, or been pulled out by the grasping tentacles. I was unarmed, deep underground, and walking into a trap.
There was no other way but forward. More distinct shuffling indicated a living presence.
“Hello?” a voice rang through the darkness.
“Who is it?” I hurried faster, though the drug slowed my steps.
“Holy shit, it is Ember.”
I gaped. “Giselle? Is that you?”
This was where she’d ended up? The voice was definitely hers, but I’d dropped the candle. A dim glow from above wasn’t enough to make up for it.
“Ember, I’d leave while you can.”
Not very encouraging, but her voice grew louder as the tunnel widened into a cave. Its ceiling was two metres high, and inside… were cages.
“Damn.” I hurried forward. Giselle was in the cage nearest to the passage I’d come through, which was why she’d heard me. But she wasn’t alone. In the cage next to her was Astor. He lay as though unconscious on the floor. Four more cages contained Cori, Will, Becks and Kit. All my friends. Imprisoned.
“Goddammit.” My claws were gone, so I couldn’t cut the cages open, but surely I had something in my pocket to use as a lock pick. A layer of ankle-deep water filled the room. So that’s where the damp smell had come from. The water trickled in from a hole above. Wait a second.
Oh no. Oh, shit, no. At the rate the water was flowing, it’d fill the whole room. The whole tunnel would flood, eventually. How long did I have to free them—hours? Minutes?
I ran to the end of the row of cages, seeing no way out of the tunnel, either. It dead-ended. Had I missed a turning, or had Malkin got outside another way? He must have done. Unless he’d had the Moonbeam, and surely I’d have seen it. “Shit. Shit.”
“Ember,” said Giselle. “There’s no way out. I’ve been here hours. I’d have found it by now.”
“I won’t leave.” Why would Malkin keep her alive? Unless, like Astor, she’d ended up underground first, and been caught later.
“Is anyone else awake?” I called into the cages. “Guys?”
Nothing. Cursing, I tried the bars on all the cages. Each was locked with a padlock I couldn’t break with my hands, shifter strength or none. I rattled the bars on Cori’s cage first, then the padlock, twisting it in my hands. No effect. The sound of gushing water filled my ears, and I looked down, my heart sinking. It’d already risen above ankle level. At this rate, we had less than half an hour at most.
