Chapter 23
A few miles up the ridge, in the dragons’ lair, the ground trembled. The coffee in Thorne’s cup swayed and sloshed. He whipped his chair around and studied the computer screens, massive spikes appearing on all his graphs.
Earthquake? What the fuck? He tapped the keyboard to pull up a geographical overlay, looking for the epicenter of the quake.
Oh, hell. There were three dots on the monitor. Three centers. Under Mount Hood, where the Draken Lord’s tomb lay. Here in their lair. And…
A few miles down the ridge. Under Blaze McKenna’s house.
Fuck.
Zane and the woman had gone looking for the Seal. If they’d found it, and damaged it…
The cave trembled again, harder.
For a moment, he froze. Should he head for the tomb? Or for the Seal, and Zane—who he’d grown to love like the brothers they pretended to be? His emotions warred with his responsibilities—but there really wasn’t a choice. The most important things were all in the same place.
Thorne didn’t bother to head for the rooftop. He slammed through the doors of the Batcave and ran down the underground corridors. Past his lair. Down another echoing tunnel, to an opening in the hillside masked with shrubs and magic.
Tyr! he called out. Get to the monitoring station!
On my way, Tyr responded, his mental voice sounding startled. What the hell’s going on?
No clue. I’m going to find Zane. If it looks like the tomb’s going to blow, then…
Shit. Then what?
He noticed how Tyr didn’t even bother trying to get him to finish that sentence. If the tomb went now, there wasn’t a fucking thing they could do about it. Even if Tyr were in the tomb itself.
He tried not to picture what would happen if the Draken Lord rose with Tyr there—his charming, loyal, annoying brother dwarfed by the power of an ancient Draken Lord.
Although if it happened, they were probably all dead anyway.
He ran harder, air knifing into his lungs, and burst through the spell and the underbrush at the mouth of the tunnel without stopping. He launched himself into the night air a thousand feet above the city, Changing as he fell. His huge, midnight-blue wings snapped out, bearing him upwards, and he caught an updraft and banked, heading for Blaze’s house.
Praying they could avert disaster.
Zane and Blaze sprang apart, staring at each other.
Every piece of gold in the artifact room reverberated in a jangling, discordant cacophony. Blaze’s eyes were wide, her whole body on the alert. “Did you hear that?”
“Could anyone possibly have missed it?”
Blaze had already pulled away from him and was racing for the vault, shouting protection spells as she ran. Zane followed. Inside the vault, amid the black fog, the wooden box was vibrating on the shelf, rattling everything around it.
Blaze went to grab the box. “Don’t touch it!” Zane said.
“We have to get this to my workroom,” Blaze snapped. “Create a circle of protection. Can you help me?”
“I’ll try.” He didn’t know how his magic would interact with hers, or what had set this thing off. Him and Blaze making love? How? Why? What the hell was that idol, and how did it connect to them both?
Zane conjured a leather jacket before she could reach for the box again. The black fog felt damp and slimy, like the tentacles of some swamp thing. “Here. Wrap it in this.”
Blaze tossed the jacket over the box and bundled it inside. Zane spared a moment to restore their clothes—it was bad enough facing this thing without having to do it naked. Blaze paid no attention to whether either of them was naked or dressed. Wisps of fog were beginning to seep out of the folds of the jacket, groping at her fingers.
They ran for the workroom. It seemed like miles, though it was only down a couple of hallways. When they got there, Blaze dumped the bundle on the worktable and dashed for the shelves with the herbs, gathering jars into her arms. “White candles!” she called to Zane. “Four of them! And salt!”
He complied, pulling items off the shelves and bringing them to the table. The leather jacket was moving like there was something alive inside it. It gave a great heave and the wooden box tumbled out, the lid clattering open. The idol rolled out. As they stared, mesmerized, it began to vibrate, bouncing off the tabletop until one shuddering bounce set it on its base.
The golden eyelids blinked and the ruby eyes began to glow.
“Holy fuck,” Blaze muttered.
She dumped salt in a circle around the idol and sprinkled handfuls of herbs in with it, drawing runes with her finger.
“Find me shungite, black tourmaline, angelite and selenite,” she commanded.
Zane tore himself away from the animated idol and headed for the trays of semi-precious stones on her shelves, picking out the ones she needed. Black tourmaline for protection, shungite for purification, angelite for calling on the forces of light, and selenite for creating a positive energetic field.
By the time he got back to the table, they could both hear the idol murmuring. “Come to me. Set me free. Come to me. Set me free. Come to me…”
Its mouth gaped open. More black fog billowed out, spreading out along the tabletop, tendrils reaching out.
Zane set the candles at the four compass points of the circle. Blaze arranged the stones, and then Zane flicked his fingers and the candles lit all at once.
Blaze grabbed his hand, rushing through an invocation to the Elemental Powers. “Guardians of the East, South, West and North, we invite you to our circle. Accept our offerings and lend us your powers of protection and strength, to contain this evil and banish its spirit, returning it to whence it came.”
Zane felt her magic surge through him, powerful and beautiful, shining white. It mixed with his blue dragonfire and streamed through the fingertips of their free hands. Sparkling blue fire swept around the perimeter of the circle, rearing high in the air as though a circle of gasoline had been poured on the table.
The black fog drew back as if the fire burned it. The idol’s mouth opened again, and an angry noise like a faraway freight train emanated from it. It grew louder and louder, as if the train were bearing down on them.
“COME TO ME!” The words rolled out into the room, filling it with sound, and a rushing wind hit them, blowing Blaze’s hair back and forcing them to shut their eyes against the fetid smell it brought. The flames around the circle of protection bent and flickered, nearly going out.
Zane felt Blaze throw more power into the circle, and he gave her everything he had. But he was deathly afraid it wasn’t going to be enough.
Rebel crouched outside Blaze McKenna’s window, hidden in the shadows on the balcony. She’d felt the evil magic as soon as the rogue witch let it loose. Hell, whole cliffside had trembled like there was an earthquake.
And now it was out of control. She’d seen the panic in McKenna’s eyes as she raced into the workroom with her boyfriend and dumped that box on the table. She was clearly throwing every kind of protective magic she knew against the idol, and it was about to annihilate all of it.
Rebel backed up, moving towards rope dangling from her grappling hook, attached to the chimney two floors above. She’d disarmed McKenna’s security system like she promised, both at the front gates and in the house, so Jack and his dark wizard friends could get inside undetected. Now it was time for her to get the hell out. She had a feeling things were about to get ugly, and she wanted to be far away when they did.
She spoke into her headset, twin to the one she’d given Jack. “Tell those guys they need to get in there now. I don’t know what McKenna did, but whatever it is, she fucked it up, because that thing’s about to blow.”
The deep, gravelly voice of Jack’s boss came over the headset, overlaid with Jack’s, as if they were speaking at the same time.
Because the boss was speaking with Jack’s mouth. He’d taken over Jack’s body and was using it as his own. Rebel shivered.
“Where in the house are they?” he asked.
“The magical workroom.” The sorcerers knew where it was—she’d shown them on the plans. “I’m on the balcony outside. It looks like they did a spell that went wrong—there’s some kind of entity trying to get out of that damn thing. They’re trying to put it back in, but it doesn’t look good.”
“We are at the front, preparing to breach the magical defenses.” Fuck. That voice. Even without seeing Jack’s vacant eyes, the idea of his body being used by this sorcerer gave her the willies.
But it seemed like she hadn’t made the wrong call after all. Because however dangerous Jack’s associates were, whatever that rogue witch was doing in there was even more dangerous.
A sense of wrongness filled the air, and the hair stood up on the back of Rebel’s neck. They had to be stopped.
“If I were you, I’d hurry it up,” Rebel said. She made her way to the rope, but hesitated, unable to tear her gaze away from what was happening on the other side of the French doors.
Inside the workroom, the floor was shaking. The voice thundered in Blaze’s ears, but she didn’t know if it was inside or outside her head anymore.
“I AM YOUR MASTER! FREE ME FROM MY CAPTIVITY!” Another gust of wind almost blew out the flames of their protective circle.
Blaze could feel the dark, rotting power of the idol pushing against her magic. For a moment, it was all she could do to keep it in.
Her heart pounded in her chest. This was insanity. Sooner or later her strength would give out, and then this thing would break free.
It was calling to her. She could feel it pulling at her, tempting her, making her wonder why she was even bothering.
Why should she turn down what it offered? Immense magic, far beyond what she wielded now. And that was just the beginning. Worship. Adulation. The power of life and death…
Oh hell no. This is what it had done to her father, to her coven, to everyone she loved. She was not going down that path.
“JOIN WITH ME! REVEL IN MY POWER!”
There were two voices now, one overlaying the other. As if something even older and more powerful had joined with the idol, both of them speaking with one voice.
“CHILD OF MINE, JOIN ME AND COME HOME!”
It wasn’t only speaking to her. Blaze whipped her head around and stared at Zane. He was surrounded by blue light, every muscle rigid as he stared at the idol.
A sharp, dark shadow sprang from his body, as if a spotlight had been turned on behind Zane. But it was misshapen—not human. Winged, with horns—a demon?
Then another shadow sprang from her. This one was human, but it was still terrifying. Both shadows stretched over the tabletop, into the center of the circle, and touched the idol.
And it pulled.
Everything dark inside her rolled through the shadow towards the idol. All her resentment, her loneliness, her rage and despair. Her fear and her lust for power.
She could see waves of darkness pulsating from Zane, too—through the shadow towards the idol. His face twisted. The flames of the protective spell sputtered lower, nearly going out.
She could hear the idol laughing, rumbling like an avalanche of rocks falling down a mountain.
NO.
Blaze refused to surrender. And she refused to let her darkness drag her down.
She gripped Zane’s hand harder, digging her nails into his flesh. “Fight, dammit!” she screamed over the noise of the laughter.
“CHILD OF MINE, JOIN WITH ME AND COME HOME!”
The doors of the workroom burst open. Three figures in hooded black robes burst in. With a shock, she recognized Liriel and Jerome, two of her friends from childhood. The face of the one in front was frozen like a man who’d died in agony, and he had a gaping black hole in the middle of his chest.
She didn’t recognize him, but she recognized the voice coming from the hole in his chest.
“MASTER! I AM HERE!”
Silas.