CHAPTER THREE
Shit.
Vaughn dove forward.
Elena yelped in surprise, her nails scraping the metal lip, digging in for purchase. The unexpected momentum and gravity was too much. She slid into the darkness.
He snagged her wrist and her body struck the side of the vertical shaft, the sound echoing in the tunnel. There was no way to know what lay beneath them. Immortal or not, it would still hurt like hell if the opening was meant to prevent someone from reaching the room at the end of the tunnel.
“Hang on.”
“Thanks for the tip,” she said, not quite masking the trace of concern buried beneath the sarcasm.
He pulled hard, wrenching her up through the opening. He fell back a safe distance from the hole, Elena landing half on top of him—and hard enough to knock the breath from him.
She flailed as if he’d dropped her, and he locked an arm around her back.
“I’ve got you.”
She relaxed, then tensed. “I’d rather be saved by the Loch Ness Monster.”
“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Consider yourself lucky. That beast is all tentacles.”
The light brightened once more, but not to such a blinding degree this time, giving him plenty of light to see Elena’s face. The sorceress was definitely smiling.
His lips curved in response. Elena’s gaze fell to his mouth. A beat passed, and then another. His heart pumped a little faster and he spread his fingers across her lower back, guiding her a little bit closer. Just for a moment.
Her nails gripped his shoulder as she raised her head, then she froze. Whatever she saw in his eyes—hunger, lust, way too much of the wolf—sent her scrambling off him.
She peered into the hole, giving him enough time to get his mind off the mouth that had been inches from his. He blew out a breath, his animal half more on edge than ever.
Just the kind of complication he needed.
“I would have dropped you.” Elena rose to her feet, not waiting for him before striding forward.
“You’re welcome,” Vaughn called out, finally jumping up to follow her.
They walked in silence, making their way toward the end of the tunnel and the light blazing from a recessed square in the middle of the stone wall.
He nodded to the markings he could barely make out on the floor. “We go down.”
She moved aside when he gestured for her to give him room. He traced the rim of the markings, following the dust-covered metal pattern until he felt the handles.
Sweet Avalon, the hatch was heavier than it looked. His arms burned with the effort of raising it only a few inches.
“Feel free to help,” he gritted out.
“And miss the Strong Man performance?”
He growled and heaved. With a rusted screech the hatch gave way. He took a second to catch his breath. “You can hang back here and wait—”
She dropped into the hatch.
Of course she did.
Vaughn grinned and dropped in after her, landing on the balls of his feet.
Elena was already disappearing through a narrow opening on his left. He waited a beat before trailing after her, the wolf tugging at him to give chase.
He ignored the playful impulse, focusing on their surroundings. He was too close to fulfilling his assignment to lose focus now.
One last job and he’d have his sister back.
Piper would no longer be alone or scared or hungry or hurt. She’d be okay. Protected and safe. The way he’d promised his parents, the way he’d promised her.
“Don’t look!” He jerked Piper around, pressing her face to his chest, shielding her from the carnage.
“Vaughn.”
“Do. Not. Look.”
She sobbed against him, but obeyed, her fifteen-year-old body trembling as their parents were slaughtered.
“I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”
The memory faded as fast as it slammed to the forefront of his thoughts, reminding him of how he’d failed his sister, failed his parents when he’d sworn to take care of his sister.
He didn’t have Piper. Didn’t have a fucking clue where she was or what the bastard who took her had done to her.
And it was his fault.
“Dreaming of Scooby Snacks?”
He glanced at Elena, shaking off the past and shoving it back in the closet that would drag him into the darkness if he didn’t keep his head on straight.
“Let’s go.” He moved past her.
“How do you know you can trust me? I mean, you brought me along for the ride, but how do you know that when we reach whatever it is you’ve come for that I just won’t take it from you?”
“Maybe I’m hoping you’ll try.”
Vaughn caught the ghost of a smile that touched Elena’s lips before she rolled her eyes. “You’ve still got a few tricks left to learn, pup.”
“You do know I’m a lot older than you, right?” By more than a few centuries actually.
She shrugged, dismissing that fact as meaningless.
Okay then.
He strode through the doorway Elena had peeked through when they had jumped through the hatch, and found himself in the middle of a circular stone room.
Evenly placed torches on the perimeter walls illuminated the monstrous columns and arches carved into the surrounding stone, reminding him of some kind of archaic temple. Pottery and animal-like carvings—some intact, others shattered into palm-sized pieces—were scattered around the chamber.
A mural covered one wall, depicting some kind of ceremony maybe. All the people were painted with staggering detail, their matching expressions worshipful. They surrounded a central figure draped in a long black cloak, sitting on a throne.
No, not a cloak. It was the woman’s ebony hair surrounding her, her eyes huge and red, like rubies set ablaze.
Some kind of primitive Rapunzel?
He studied the chamber again before coming back to the mural. Where the hell were they exactly?
“We didn’t cross the veil, did we?” Elena studied her surroundings.
“Pretty sure you would have felt that before me.”
As a sorceress, Elena was more sensitive to the veil that served as a barrier between Avalon and the human realm. To Vaughn, crossing the veil felt like slipping through invisible cobwebs, but this time he didn’t feel the familiar sensation of coming home echoing in his bones.
Vegas might excel at recreating other parts of the world for the awe and pleasure of tourists, but there was no way anyone could replicate the primeval feel of the towering columns and the statue he discovered on the other side of the column in the middle of the chamber.
Was this place somehow in between the Earth realm and Avalon? Could such a place even exist?
Not long ago he might have entertained any number of possibilities to explain the colossal sculpture he walked toward. The black marble gleamed as if touched by a full moon, the curves distinctly feminine.
While the hair didn’t stand out on end the way it did in the painting, it fell in thick waves around the woman’s face and fiery eyes.
He cocked his head, half-expecting the eyes to blink and follow him.
“If you touch her and she tries to kill us, I’m going to be highly annoyed,” Elena warned.
“Once wasn’t enough?” he said, referring to the Gauntlet and how he’d touched a mural on a wall in the catacombs and transported them all into the middle of a battle. “Or were you secretly hoping I’d have to carry you out of here?” he added.
He’d carried Briana’s huntress friend out of the catacombs, Elena right on their heels, after that round of the games nearly killed them. Nessa, however, hadn’t appreciated the assistance, regaining consciousness just long enough to nearly behead him.
A curious emotion flashed in Elena’s eyes before she squared her shoulders. “Beheading, guillotine, maybe even tar and feathers. Those are my secret hopes where you’re concerned.”
“You usually sound more convincing when you bluff.”
A flash of blue ran down her arm revealing a glimpse of blue ivy, the same tracings he’d seen when her magic nearly collapsed a section of the catacombs down on all their heads.
Created by the Fae during the first Campaign, the catacombs had originally served as a sanctuary, protecting their race from becoming pawns or soldiers in the first war between the gods.
Over the centuries, the catacombs had absorbed so much Fae magic the maze-like tunnels and caverns were rumored to be alive and could manipulate their surroundings. Few who entered the catacombs ever made it back out.
They’d been lucky to get out alive. Elena had lost a lot of blood and taken a good hit to the head, and even though she’d been conscious and clung to him most of the way, her tracings had appeared on her skin and then vanished every time she’d met his gaze.
She’d blamed the effect on the massive amount of magic in the catacombs. But they weren’t in the catacombs now.
Her eyes flared as he took a purposeful step in her direction. “What are you doing?”
“Testing a theory.”
“You might not like what happens when you experiment with me.”
“Scared?”
She scoffed, but something that might have been nervousness flickered in her eyes. Interesting.
He lifted a hand, his eyes locked on hers as he caught one of the random curls that fell down her arm. He wrapped it around the tip of his finger, the dark threads like silk.
“Smell my hair and I’ll save you an expensive vet bill by neutering you myself.”
He couldn’t deny that it crossed his mind, the wolf itching to take her in. But not nearly as eager as the man. He let the curl slide free, grazing her arm in the process.
A burst of blue erupted across her skin, disappearing so quickly he might have missed it if he hadn’t been watching for it.
Grinning, he took a step back. “Experiment concluded.”
Her eyes narrowed like she’d missed something. “Let me know if you publish your findings in some psychiatric journal. I’ll do a dramatic reading of the results over drinks.”
“Already making plans to see me again?”
“Oh, did you think I meant drinks with you?”
Laughing he turned back to the statue when all he wanted to do was take another step closer to Elena.
Focus.
The woman immortalized in obsidian held out two hands, silently beckoning him to take a closer look at what she offered.
“Does she look familiar to you?” Elena mused. “It feels like I’ve seen her somewhere before…”
He tuned out the nuances of her voice that rolled over him, sinking under his skin. “Stay.”
She cocked her head. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”
“The dog jokes are kind of predictable, don’t you think?”
“Just trying to pass the time while you pussy-foot around in here. Either you don’t have a clue what you’re looking for, and while you are annoying, you don’t strike me as the type to be that reckless. Or you know exactly what you need, but are afraid what will happen when you make your move.”
It took one second too long to realize her observation hit a little too close to home, but her next comment surprised him too much too worry how she’d read him so easily.
“Will it get her back? Your sister?”
He stared at her.
She walked to a stone ledge and pulled herself up to sit on the edge. “You weren’t drowning your misery in a bottle upstairs. She must still be alive, and after the lengths you went to try and win the Gauntlet to save her, you wouldn’t be wasting your time with anything other than finding a way to free her.”
He’d known Elena was incredibly perceptive, but he hadn’t expected her to think too hard about the whole thing. He’d warned Dare not to underestimate her, and he’d gone and done it himself.
She crossed her legs, swinging them like she was seated on the edge of a cliff and couldn’t wait to jump for the rush of it.
Alive. Unbelievably alive.
It didn’t seem to matter whether they were exchanging snide remarks over a game of Blackjack, lounging by the pool between competitions or dropping into misplaced ruins—she looked incredibly, amazingly alive.
“If I hadn’t told you to come with me—”
“I would have followed you anyway, yeah.”
The wolf tugged at him.
“Down boy.”
He frowned, realizing he’d taken a step toward her without planning on it.
“You’ve got that look in your eye, Barkley.”
He was almost afraid to ask.
“The one that says you’re thinking about kissing me.”
Well if he hadn’t been, and he was pretty sure he’d briefly contemplated how good her lips would taste, he sure as hell was thinking about it now.
It would only take three steps, a firm tug and she’d be off the ledge and in his arms.
“And while it sounds like a fantastic idea,” she continued, “and I can guarantee I’m a pretty incredible kisser, there are two problems.”
Now this he had to hear.
“One. I don’t even like you, but that’s not insurmountable because I can tell you some crazy stories of guys I kissed that I disliked more than you.” She hopped off the edge.
Inches separated them.
“Two,” she continued. “I don’t want to be the reason you screw up getting your sister back, because like I said, I’m a pretty incredible kisser.” She leaned in until her lips nearly grazed his jaw. “And if you ever get the chance to kiss me, you might not want to stop.”
She sauntered past him, her words sinking under his skin like a narcotic.
In his head, the wolf nipped at her in passing.
***
Keep walking.
If Elena kept walking she wouldn’t have to think about how, for one crazy moment when her eyes drifted shut as she spoke, she’d actually wanted him to kiss her.
And making it all that much worse was knowing she might have been the one who didn’t want to stop.
Sweet Avalon, keeping a low profile must be getting to her if she was thinking about how good the gargoyle smelled and how close she’d come to leaning all the way into him. Even though she’d turned away from him, she could still feel the flutter threading through her veins at the thought.
Focusing on the statue, she ignored the way his gaze followed her and the smile it brought to her lips.
“So what’s the prize?” She studied the carved lines in the marble that marked the woman’s lips, following them down to a slender throat and then a mark on the statue’s chest, like a tattooed necklace in the form of a Fae glyph.
A pulse of something—a faint whisper of power—drew her closer.
“Unless you’re still worried I’ll take it from you.”
“I believe you already pointed out the lengths I’ll go to get my sister back.”
She took another step and something flipped the volume switch on the whisper, cranking it until it thumped in her blood. She needed to get closer, needed to touch it, to feel the power she could sense running beneath the surface. “Do you feel that?”
She closed her eyes, her pulse quickening, her magic no longer a calm ocean within her, but waves that beat and thrashed at her control. She took another step despite the ice that curled up her spine.
Just a little closer.
Vaughn caught her hand and everything went quiet.
She glanced at him, saw the wolf in his eyes. Hauntingly beautiful.
She touched his face, reading the fear in the wolf’s icy gaze. She felt it, too. Something in the air as cold and dark as it was sweet and hypnotic.
Vaughn leaned into her palm. “Sit this one out, Ivy.”
She glanced at the statue, torn between wanting to know what would happen if she kept going, and at the same time somehow knowing she shouldn’t.
She wasn’t afraid of making an enemy of Vaughn, but for some reason she preferred not to. At least not today.
And it had nothing to do with the curious flutter that went haywire whenever he looked at her like…
Don’t go there.
She let her hand fall back to her side and backtracked to the ledge and hopped back up. The whisper was back but muted, the once thundering beat little more than a hum.
Keeping an eye on her, Vaughn returned to his position opposite the statue, studying the cupped hands she could see now held a stone, box-like object.
Vaughn set his hand on the box and said something, his voice so low she couldn’t make out the words.
Her hearing might not be as highly developed as the gargoyle’s, but she heard significantly better than a typical mortal. No that it made much difference today.
Vaughn glanced around, frowning.
She whistled. “A little anti-climactic, don’t you think?”
He scowled at her, the gesture unmistakably sexy even though she doubted that was his intention. He touched the box, his lips moving again.
A little closer wouldn’t hurt as long as she stayed behind Vaughn, right?
She hopped down and the moment she took a single step another crackle of power stretched and reached for her. The magic in her blood responded in kind, thrilling and terrifying her in the same beat.
“What the hell is in that box?”
Vaughn didn’t answer, and she suspected he wouldn’t have even if he knew. She was betting he didn’t.
He flattened his palm on the box at the same time she reached for his shoulder, suddenly needing an anchor.
A spark erupted between his hand and the box, the power shooting through him like a conduit and right into her.
She stood in the middle of an ashen field.
Curls of black smoke stretched toward the dark sky, the smell of burnt flesh making her stomach clench. The crumpled shapes of slaughtered innocents dotted the blood-drenched ground that reached for miles in every direction.
So much death. So much loss.
She turned, looking for a path through the wasteland and stepped on something. She glanced down, stooping to pick up the mud-covered doll with dirty yellow hair made of yarn and a pale dress with a crooked seam.
She closed her eyes before she saw the small owner of the doll.
“Elena.”
She pivoted at the sound of her name.
To the right a woman faced the carnage, her hair the darkest shade of ebony. She was dressed for battle. Armor-plating covered her chest, a sword clenched in a tight fist stained with blood hung at her side.
No one else moved across the devastated landscape.
“Come, Elena. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Elena hit the wall ten feet away, sliding down the crumbling stone, panting through the pain that branched off every vertebra in her back.
She shook off the spinning sensation that caused the world to tip to the right and made it to her hands and knees. What the hell?
Vaughn took a step toward her, and she held up a hand.
“I’m good.” She took another shallow breath and got to her feet faster than she wanted to.
No signs of weakness allowed. She’d learned that much from her magic-focused father after he’d retreated from her and Emma when their mother left.
She waited until Vaughn’s attention returned to the box before she grimaced at the lingering pain. Faint images in her mind were already slipping away like a dream, but not the sensation that someone had been calling her.
Maybe just the wolf?
He stood near the statue, peering at the box. He lifted a chunk of it off and tossed it aside. He withdrew a smaller box tucked inside, this one infinitely more ornate, encrusted with multicolored jewels set deep in the polished stone.
The magic that whispered, now yelled, its call promising the sweetest power and the coldest death.
“Are we going to have a problem?”
She followed Vaughn’s gaze to the flicker of blue flame stirring the air above her open palm. She closed her fist over the newly formed energy ball, extinguishing the magic she couldn’t recall pulling together.
“Good.” He tucked the box into the band he wore at his waist and pulled his shirt down to cover the faint bulge.
When she found herself staring, she forced herself to look at anything in the room but him. “That thing is throwing off some serious ancient magic.” Nearly as old as the magic she’d tried to channel when she’d nearly collapsed a section of the catacombs during the Gauntlet. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Barkley.”
“Worried about me?”
Normally she would have rolled her eyes at his flirtatious wink, but it was taking serious effort to hide how much everything still hurt. “More like worried I’ll be dragged into whatever war you’re about to wage.”
Someone was bound to notice something that old and powerful had gone missing. And just what the hell was in that box?
“I just want my sister back. That’s it.”
“And the people who have your sister, what do they want?” Equally drawn and repelled by whatever Vaughn had in his possession, she kept a careful distance as they made their way back to the hatch in the ceiling.
“Would you bother asking that question if it was your sister?”
“My sister has turned abduction into a survival sport. She can handle herself.”
Elena had done her best to keep her twin from sliding into a powerless abyss when Emma grew afraid of her own magic as a child. Even when it meant leaving Emma to the wolves and giving her no choice but to fend for herself.
“We are talking about the same sister, right?” Vaughn asked. “The one who can barely harness her magic without it blowing up in her face?”
“My sister has skills you’ll never fathom and a lot more tolerance than I do.”
“So the big and powerful Oz has a soft spot after all. Unless it’s just the guilt of getting Emma into trouble all the time that’s talking.”
So what if the jury was still out on whether or not she’d screwed up with all the years of forcing Emma to sink or swim? She’d do it again in a heartbeat if she thought it was the only way to save her twin from her own fears.
Although her sister had been the stronger twin when they were kids, everything changed dramatically when Emma was traumatized after her magic backfired. Only recently had they realized it wasn’t a backfire so much as discovering her magic was more grounded in their Fae heritage.
Vaughn folded his hands together, offering to boost her into the hatch above.
Tempting, but no.
She jumped on her own, catching the ledge and dragging herself up into the shaft.
He whistled at the move. “So you obviously wanted me to save you earlier.” He leaped up, pulling himself easily into the shaft with her.
The space felt much smaller than before. “Nobody is casting you in the role of white knight.”
“Good. Hero shoes are a bit of a tight fit for me.”
Tendrils of magic made the hair on the back of her neck rise to attention, sending a shiver rolling up her spine.
He gestured for her precede him. “Let’s go, Smeagol.”
She arched a brow.
“I’ll feel better when you don’t look like you want to club me over the head to steal the Precious.”
She smiled despite herself, but couldn’t help but wonder how long she had before she considered a similar scenario. Although clubs were a little archaic for her tastes.
She suspected she might have already made a move for the object if not for her Fae heritage holding her power-hungry sorceress tendencies in check.
The only thing she disliked more than having to walk away from a boost in power was losing the choice to walk away.
Emma was one of the few of their kind capable of turning away from power, often tuning out its tempting call altogether. Elena had once considered turning from power as a weakness, but after watching Emma discover the true depth of her abilities, she wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Do your eyes always glow like that?”
She touched her eyes.
“It’s kinda hot.” Despite the smile in his voice, she didn’t miss the wary tone.
They weren’t even touching and she could sense the tension coil under his muscles in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. She didn’t need to look to know his wolf was close to the surface.
If she tried taking the box from him, one of them wouldn’t leave the tunnel alive.
She walked faster, thinking of her sister. The sister she’d nearly lost because she’d been so determined to help Emma see that she wasn’t as incapable as she believed.
Elena hadn’t rushed to free her sister when Emma was mistaken for her and abducted by the Callaghan family. They held Elena responsible for trapping their brother in his stone panther form for over a century.
Even though everything had worked out and Emma freed Cian with a magic that had nothing to do with mystical daggers or breaking a curse, the whole mess could have blown up in Elena’s face.
Losing Emma would devastate her, and if Vaughn cared for his sister even half as much as she did…
The increasing darkness as they neared the mouth of the tunnel made the lure of the magic pull at her even harder. Almost as if it knew that once she crossed the barrier it would be too late to ensnare her.
Her heart thumped, beating in time with the magic that wound around her body, each silken tug slowing her down.
“Vaughn,” she whispered in warning.