The Slayer, page 24
Pitch darkness swallowed them whole.
The roar of his pulse kicked up another notch. Ever since they’d descended down the staircase, Alexa had tried without success to shut out the shushing sound of his blood, but the increasing tattoo of it made it almost impossible to ignore. She turned, glancing at him, able to see the ripple of heat coming off his skin, outlining his muscular form beneath his clothing. Being a vampire did have its advantages, but being able to see him clearly in the dark right now wasn’t one of them. All it did was send her bloodlust to a dangerous tipping point.
“You’re not scared of the dark, are you?”
“No.”
She thought about how he’d panicked in the casket while Boris had climbed the tree and she had transported when the werewolves had come barreling through the graveyard. Realization hit her. It wasn’t the dark. It was the tight, confining space that triggered his deliciously rushing heartbeat.
“Just because it’s dark doesn’t mean this section isn’t vast. It could go on for miles and miles,” she said, hoping to reassure him.
“Ain’t going to help if we can’t see it,” he ground out.
Alexa sighed and drew down into the center of her being just behind her solar plexus, pulling the energy together to manifest a new oil lamp. The weight of it settled firm and cool in her hand, and she lifted the glass to blow on the wick and light it.
The flicker of light grew and illuminated the sculpted planes of Winchester’s face, pale and drawn. “All you had to do was ask,” she said, then handed him the lamp. “Is that such a hard thing?”
He blew out, making his mustache flicker with movement. “You have no idea.” Alexa’s own lips began to tingle as she remembered just how his mouth felt slanted against hers.
Winchester held the lamp high, illuminating the tunnel. But the light only stretched so far, ending in a black, gaping maw ahead of them. “Well, we ain’t getting out the way we came in.”
“If my sense of direction is correct, then this tunnel should lead us almost beneath the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés ,” she murmured, her voice echoing off the rough limestone walls.
There were no walls of stacked bones in this section of the catacombs. It had been intentionally sealed and protected by the ossuary. Surely this tunnel would lead them to where Mama Zinka claimed they’d find the missing piece of the Book of Legend.
They turned a corner and found the tunnel branched into three. “Which one do we take?” she asked.
Winchester searched the pale stone, looking for any clue they’d missed. Above each tunnel entrance, carved into the stone, was one of three small images. A lion’s head, a palm tree, and a raven. The signs of the three brothers of the Legion of Hunters who’d hacked the Book apart in the first place: Cadel, Elwin, and Haydn.
“That way.” He pointed at the tunnel with the raven above it.
The contessa searched his face and glanced at each of the tunnels. “How can you tell?”
He pointed up at the insignias.
“Of course. Haydn. He brought our piece of the Book to the Byzantine Empire.”
Winn stopped in his tracks and stared hard at her. “Our piece?”
She frowned, putting her hands on her hips. “Well, we have been guarding it for six hundred years. So, yes, I’ve come to think of it as ours.”
“It belongs to the Legion.”
“It belongs to whoever can keep hold of it,” she challenged.
He stiffened and rolled his shoulders back. “You know I’m going to take it back with me.”
“Of course. And then you’ll return it, as you promised His Imperial Majesty.”
Winn gave a harsh, grating laugh. “That’s if I survive.”
“What do you mean?”
“I ain’t stupid, sweetheart. When you spouted off that prophecy I noticed that the Chosen don’t all survive. If that’s part of the deal, then I’ll go along with it, but it’s going to be me who takes the fall, not one of my little brothers.”
Her lips thinned, as if she wanted to say something but purposely held it back.
The internal clock in Winchester’s head still ticked away the minutes. Their time to find the Book and return with it grew shorter and shorter. He grabbed hold of her bare hand, instantly aware of the spark that arced between them when skin touched skin. “Come on, we’ve got to find that piece of the Book and a way out of here.”
They tramped down the darkened tunnel, aware of the steady plink and plunk of water that dripped down through the limestone. No wonder the catacombs were unstable, Winn thought. The ground above them was being held up by a sponge of rock that was growing more porous and flimsy all the time, and whole sections of Paris blithely went about their business completely unaware they could sink to their deaths if the ground collapsed beneath them.
Without warning the tunnel abruptly ended at a locked and rusted iron gate. Winn lifted his lamp to get some kind of view of what lay on the other side and found himself staring at a stone sarcophagus. It was like being in the tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. Those ambrotypes of his friend Marcus’s explorations and digs in search of errant mummies would have come in handy about now.
Winn rattled the gate, getting a fine powdery coating of red rust on his hands and down the front of his black pants for his trouble. “We’ve got to get this gate open.”
“All you had to do was ask.” Alexa evaporated in a swirl of smoke-like particles and appeared on the other side of the iron bars. She tinkered with the complicated latch on the other side of the door. Her brow furrowed. “It’s stuck. We need something that can break it loose.”
Winchester cursed under his breath. “Move.”
She took a step back.
“Farther.”
She took two more steps back. Winn pulled out his revolver from his hip holster and held it at almost point-blank range to the lock and fired. The shot rang out, echoing loudly in the chamber, and spiked the air with the smell of gunpowder and hot metal.
Winchester kicked open the gate and stepped into the small vaulted room, holding the oil lamp aloft. The stone of the massive sarcophagus was a gray marble and totally different than the surrounding limestone. Atop it was carved the figure of a man with long, flowing hair and a copious beard, his eyes closed, a kind of crown around his head. His chain-mail armor and long tunic made him look a bit like how Winn expected King Arthur might have appeared. An ancient metal shield, depicting a raven, wings outstretched, rested atop his stone midsection.
Alexa stepped closer, inspecting the reposing statue. “Is that Haydn?”
Winn pulled at the end of his mustache. It could be. No one knew for sure where they had buried him. “Don’t know.” A ragged crack ran along the hardened wax seal that caked the seam between the lid and the base of the sarcophagus. Small chunks of the hardened wax lay in the dirt.
“Whoever it is, someone’s been to visit lately. The seal’s been broken. There’s no dust on the bits of wax on the floor.”
Winn crouched down to examine the stone more closely. All along the sides of the sarcophagus were images in intricately carved relief. There were demons with forked tails and horns battling three knights on the ground while harpies dive-bombed from the air. Each knight held a book in his hands. There was another image of a sword hacking the center of the book. Winn ran his fingers reverently along the images. Each one was part of the stories of the Legion that his father had told him and his brothers so often when they were children he’d memorized them.
But there were other images. Disturbing images that clamped down on his gut and made him break out in a cold and clammy sweat. One showed a man in what looked like a cowboy hat atop a mechanical horse, a piece of the Book held aloft in his hand as he battled a giant scorpion. Another showed a man in modern jodhpurs and boots and a cowboy hat, a machete held high over his head as he fought back an enormous jaguar the size of a horse against the stepped sides of a temple. And then there was the one of what looked like a cowboy with a crossbow hanging from an airship. What the hell?
“The prophecy is far older than you realize.” Her voice seemed awkward and unnatural in the eerie stillness of what could only be the tomb of the youngest brother, Haydn.
Winn turned his gaze at her. “You said Kostick—”
“Kostick was not the first. Just the best known.”
Winn stood up, his legs feeling a bit wobbly. “Others?”
“Since the time of the brothers.”
“You know about Legion lore?”
She nodded and looked away from him. “It always pays to know one’s enemies.”
He deliberately stepped closer to her, the energy sparking in the air between them like a living thing. “And is that how you feel about me? Am I your enemy?”
Her amber gaze, sure and strong, connected to his. “No. Not anymore.”
Winn sensed there was something she still held back. “But?”
“But, there were things Kostick told me that he told no one else.”
He grasped her by the arms and forced her to meet his gaze by tipping up her chin. “Tell me.”
She swallowed hard, and he watched the movement beneath her flawless skin. “He said I’m to be the destruction of the Chosen. And that I’ll be a traitor to my own kind.”
“Nice story, but not necessarily the truth.”
She glared at him. “How can you say that?”
“Because we all make choices, Tessa. You get to decide if this is your fate or not. Same as me.”
Her eyes welled dangerously with unshed tears. Damn. What had he said wrong? He’d been trying to encourage her, but apparently he’d mucked it up somehow. The tears spilled a shining trail down her cheeks, and he inwardly cringed, as if she’d dealt him a physical blow.
“Ain’t worth crying over,” he murmured softly, pulling her into his chest. Hell, if there was something to cry over, it would be the fact they were trapped like rats in this deep, dark hole with nothing but bones and a stone sarcophagus for company.
Alexa sniffled. Gods, did she wish she could believe him, but she’d held back the most important part of Kostick’s prophecy from him. You shall be destroyed by your heart’s desire.
Even as he held his strong arms around her, deep within her chest her stone-cold heart fractured a bit. She had never thought to see the day when a Hunter would comfort a Darkin. He rubbed a reassuring hand back and forth over her upper arm. “We’ll stick together and find the Book and a way out.”
She pulled back and stared up into the deep blue of his eyes. “And then what?”
Winn sat down on the floor, bringing her down to sit with him, his arm around her. “Fate is a fickle mistress. We aren’t going to wait on her. We’ll decide what we do next when we get there.”
She nodded, suddenly quite mortified at her bout of feminine hysterics, so out of character for her. How long had it been since she’d cried? Ivan’s death. Two hundred years worth of pain and sorrow bottled inside her could only be contained for so long. Alexa nestled against Winchester’s side, absorbing the comfort he offered her. Even trapped within the catacombs, he offered her hope that they’d escape with the Book and prevent the ending of their world. Her eyes grew heavy, her body relaxing. Perhaps she was better off following Winchester’s suggestion and focusing herself on the task at hand and leaving what-ifs for when they arrived in the moment.
Beneath her cheek his breathing became deeper, more rhythmic. Alexa realized he had fallen asleep. It was a wonder he hadn’t collapsed sooner. By her calculations it was well past midnight and they’d had a most trying day.
Normally she didn’t sleep well, but with Winchester’s arm around her, his strong body beside hers, a few moments of rest could do no harm. Alexa let herself drift off as she listened to his slow, steady heartbeat.
Images of fire raining down from the sky and smoldering ruins infiltrated Alexa’s dreams. She knew it was a dream because she could neither speak nor move, only watch the tableau unfold before her. Outside the city burned. The lick of red flames left the stones of the old Roman city wall and church smoldering and blackened, but still standing. Holy ground remained the only protection left against the tumult that reigned in the streets of Caer Guricon.
It was not the English from the East who burned their city, nor Viking invaders. It was something far worse.
“We must separate the book. It is the only way.” The knight turned from the nightmare outside the window to look at his two younger brothers, Elwin and Haydn. Both wore dour expressions through the soot streaked on their faces, their tunics tattered and singed, their once proud breast plates now dented and scratched. For six long days since the Gates of Nyx had cracked open on the solstice, shaking the very earth with great rolling waves, they had battled the demons, the children of the night, the monsters dredged up from the very pits of Hell itself. Now there was nothing left of the city save the church and the rubble of the walls and Roman ruins that had once surrounded it.
“That is madness, Cadel. Without the information inside, how can we hope to defeat them?”
Cadel turned away from Elwin, staring again out at the flames that ate the city whole, unable to block the terrified screams of its people. “That is the point. If they take the Book, all of the Book, our cause is lost forever. Only by separating it can we have a prayer of its survival. Of the survival of mankind against these devils.”
“It’s impossible. We’ve already lost over four hundred men. What hope do we have?”
“If we take the oldest catacomb passage beneath the church we could reach the wood.”
“Run? What kind of honor is there in that?”
Cadel stiffened at the blatant insult. He spun, his honed reflexes giving him the advantage over his slightly younger brother. He grabbed fistfuls of Haydn’s tunic and heaved him up to his toes. “We are avowed Hunters. We are bound to no lord, no country and no king, save He who reigns in Heaven. We leave not as cowards, but as means to preserve and save humanity itself.”
“But surely the Book is not worth—”
“Have you no idea how important the Book of Legend is? With it, the hosts of Hell could fully open the Gates of Nyx forever. Look how much suffering has happened when it was only cracked open for mere minutes. The whole Kingdom of Mercia and of Powys must have felt the earth’s upheaval.”
“But how will we pass the knowledge on? How can we hope to train a new legion of Hunters without the Book complete?”
“We will each take a third of the Book and scatter it to the corners of the earth, farthest from this place. From these portions we will train new Hunters as best we may.”
Elwin sighed, beating his thigh with his fist, the chain mail clinking. “I think he’s right. There’s no other way now.”
“But when will the Book be brought back together?”
Cadel opened the Book, placing the leather binding down upon the tabletop. “My hope is never,” he said as he heaved a heavy swing of his sword, cleaving the Book into two parts. He handed the first third to Elwin, then flipped the Book open again and aimed his sword.
“But the prophecy of the Chosen—”
Thwack. Cadel took a second third of the Book and held it out to Haydn. “Today is not that day. We have closed the Gate. The Book will be made whole once more only when the Gates falter once more. Until then our course is clear. We must battle those that have entered our world and preserve our knowledge to train the next Legion of Hunters. Take your portion of the Book and guard it with your life. Tell no one, save your heirs, of the Book.”
Haydn linked Cadel’s forearm in his own, a greeting and also a good-bye. “So be it. I shall go east to the borders of Hungary.”
“And I shall travel south to the Kingdom of Navarre.”
Deep down Cadel knew he’d never see either of his brothers again. “God preserve you both.”
Elwin nodded. “And you, brother.”
The graze of a rough finger over her cheek woke Alexa. “Rise and shine, my lady.” The sleepy rumble of Winchester’s voice was soothing after the disturbing dream about the brothers who had separated the Book.
Alexa pulled back and yawned, stretching her arms. “You slept well?”
“As well as one can in a catacomb when you’re not dead,” he archly replied.
“So where do you think the Book is hidden?” she asked.
“Funny you should ask that. I had this strange dream.” Winn glanced at her, and an arc of recognition passed between them. Both of them gazed at the same instant at the stone sarcophagus.
“Do you think we can shift the lid?” Alexa asked.
“If a group of gypsies could do it, certainly together we can.”
She gave him a tremulous smile of gratitude.
“We’ll push on three. Ready?”
Alexa put the heels of her hands on the edge of the heavy stone lid and dug her feet into the gritty dirt of the rock floor. “Ready.”
“One. Two. Three.” Winn sucked in a deep breath and shoved at the same time she did. The lid scraped, making a grating sound like a metal sword being drawn against a rock wall that put her nerves on edge. Without the hardened wax seal to hold it in place, the lid slipped from its mooring, sitting crooked on the coffin.
Within the thick, stone sarcophagus lay the shrunken, desiccated remains of a knight in his helmet, gauntlets, and chain mail. The fabric hauberk he had once worn had long since disintegrated, leaving only a film of colored dust against the intricately woven metal rings. He held his massive broadsword in his skeletal fingers, and just above his hands sat a large, heavy square object wrapped in oilcloth and tied with modern twine.
Winchester let out a gasp. “The Book!” With a shaking hand he reached for the package atop the corpse’s chest.
A skeletal hand grasped Winchester’s wrist in a firm grip. The head rotated, its empty eye sockets locked on Winchester.
“Who dares disturb me?” a dust-dry voice crackled. Clearly someone had placed an enchantment on the knight’s remains. Alexa wasn’t sure what to do next. Without knowing who’d cast the enchantment, it could be nearly impossible to break it.
