by Scott, Helen
Marcella shot him a narrow-eyed look. “Gideon is far stronger than he realizes. That’s something that’s your fault.”
“My fault?” Darius gaped at her, hands slamming to his hips in agitation. “How the hell is it my fault?”
“Because you failed to change Eastbrook.”
Straightening, aware that he was now in the firing line, he bit off, “You can’t be serious.”
“You’re the Enforcer for the Maximus line. You should do something about the Academies.” She folded her arms across her chest. “If you don’t do anything, why would anyone else? Gideon was totally underprepared where his powers were concerned.” She sniffed again. “In fact, they all are. Not one of them realizes the extent of what they can do.”
“And you know this how?” I asked quietly, drawing her attention to me.
When her eyes softened, she reached over and cupped my chin. “Because I hold your powers in my hand, of course. Well, metaphorically.” As soon as she brushed my cheek, she shot Darius another glare. “You claim to have forged this brotherhood, putting together five brothers each with the powers of the Sires on their side, and yet you underprepared them for their future. That’s on you. So yes, we have to argue about that now, because sometimes I’m going to draw on their reserves and it’s going to frighten them.”
“You could just warn us, chick,” Raven stated with a snort, as he meandered, cool as fuck, over to the bed and began walking around its perimeter.
“Easier said than done. I don’t always know what I’m going to do.”
“That makes no sense,” Barclay retorted, his nose crinkling.
She tutted. “Of course, it makes no sense. I make no sense, Barc.”
A laugh escaped Cade. “At least you admit it. That makes you a thousand times better than every other woman I’ve ever come across.”
Though she stuck out her tongue at him, she stepped away from me and headed, as Raven had, toward the bed.
“It was stupid of me just to touch it,” I admitted, staying far back now.
“We had to start somewhere,” Cade reasoned. “Just glad you’re the one who got shocked and not me.”
I snorted. “You’re all heart.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“Now we know not to touch it, and we also know that Marcella can heal us.” Cade shot my hand a look. “Boo-boos all better now?”
Though he was mocking me, I shook my hand, wriggling my fingers. “Yeah. No pain at all.”
“That’s new,” Raven noted, but his focus was on the ornate tapestries that decorated the bed.
“Yeah. Each time I unite our powers, I learn something different,” Marcella murmured. “No big deal.”
“I beg to differ,” Gideon rasped, rubbing his left forearm where four of the runes she’d called upon were still glowing faintly.
Another eye roll was all the apology he got, then she bent over at the waist and murmured, “Merlin and the Lady of the Lake.”
“Looks like it.” Raven rubbed his chin. “So, if memory serves, the story goes that Merlin was basically a sex pest as well as the Maker of our kinds. He tried to get it on with the Lady of the Lake who was like this maiden who lived in a, you guessed it, lake, and when he wouldn’t take no for an answer, she trapped him in a tree.” He pulled a face. “So, that aside, why would those two characters be decorating this tomb?”
Marcella sighed. “I have no idea. This is like no tomb I’ve ever seen. I mean, I know in pyramids the Pharaohs had all their worldly goods stored with them for the afterlife, but this is like an old-fashioned bachelor pad. If the only way to enter the place wasn’t through the earth, it’s like he could live here full time.”
The bed was shrouded by a mist that made the center of the mattress impossible to see. Although it was pretty wispy, there was so much of it that it looked like cotton candy. The tapestry depicting Merlin and the Lady were all that was visible around the outer perimeter of the comforter, but deep in that center? Buttkiss. That was what you could see.
“How about you connect with his mind?” I suggested, throwing the question at Raven.
He shook his head. “Tried. There’s nothing there.”
“Maybe you need us behind you,” Marcella reasoned. “Just like outside, but with the focus on you.”
“How would you do that?”
“I’m not sure.” She pulled a face. “I made a Celtic knot before. Each of the points represented the walkers, and we remained firmly in the middle, grounding you. In this instance—”
“You said it yourself, Chella,” Barclay interrupted, evidently excited.
“I did?”
“A pyramid.”
She blinked at him. “I guess that might work.”
She didn’t hang around. Within seconds, I felt her calling on my power, and although each time she did that, I grew accustomed to it, it was still odd. It was like she was taking some of my energy away, but she was doing so with loving intentions. Kind of like being fucked to death. You’d die happy, a big ass smile on your face, but you’d still die.
“I’m going to layer us. Gid, Darius, Barclay, and me on the base, then Keiran and Cade above us.” She tilted her head to the side, eyes closing as she held out her hand. It was the first time I noticed it, but her finger glowed like Gideon’s tattoos.
I shot Gid a look, and I saw that his lips were pursed. Whatever she was doing, he didn’t like, but Darius was right. We could save our arguments for another time. We had bigger fish to fry.
“Okay, Raven, I think I have that set.”
The drawing of our power was steady. After the initial tug, I wasn’t uncomfortable. If anything, I was bored, just waiting for something to happen.
When it did, okay, that came as a hell of a surprise.
“He’s here,” Raven rasped, his voice so different than his usual tenor that I almost strained to hear him.
The initial tug looked like child’s play, and I almost staggered to my knees from the amount of power Raven called from Marcella, and through her, us.
I wasn’t alone either in being unbalanced.
Darius and Gideon were holding onto the wall, Barclay had bent over at the waist to prop himself up on his knees, and Cade and I were leaning against each other.
As the wind buffeted me, I closed my eyes to protect them and tried to focus on not falling on my ass.
“Can you wake him?” Marcella called out, and I realized why.
All of a sudden, there was a wind. An intense wind that had whipped up out of nowhere.
Was that Gideon? Marcella? Or, and this was the most concerning aspect, Arthur?
It was hard opening my eyes again, hard to pull back the lids, and when I did, I saw the swirling of the clouds over the bed. They were being pulled apart, the tendrils drawn away to the four corners of the room, and the faster the wind blew, the quicker the mist dispersed until there was nothing hovering over the bed at all.
The man lay there, his hand resting on his belly, with a peaceful expression on his face as he Slept.
It was weird to see a Sire so vulnerable, especially after coming across Morgana who was the antithesis of vulnerable and Elayne who, though apparently kinder than her sister, was still powerful enough to contain Morgana. A terrifying enough prospect in and of itself.
“I’m going to take this as a good sign,” Marcella called out. “Next phase. Back to the Celtic Knot. All three of you work on waking him up.”
I gaped at her. “How the fuck are we supposed to do that?”
“You’re asking me? I can only mess with time, not anything directly related to him,” Cade grumbled.
But we had no alternative because before we had a chance to spill our complaints, the power changed. Morphed. We were no longer directly being called on for our powers, but instead, the demand was there, and it was real.
Stronger than outside.
Stronger than before.
How was that possible?
What had chang
ed between inside and outside this tomb?
But even as she changed the energy formation from the pyramid to a knot, I sensed what Raven was doing. Felt him in the other man’s mind, and then, because he was Sleeping, I tried to dive into his dreams.
There was a block up, and it astonished me considering Raven could access the Sire’s mind. Why couldn’t I access his subconscious?
I frowned and thought about how I usually slipped into dreams. The conscious mind was different than the subconscious. It had fewer guards, more entry ways. Making my job harder than Raven’s.
Still, I usually found the body, which I had, then discerned a dream and slid into that like I was an actor walking onto a movie set.
But this was different.
I tilted my head to the side and realized the Sire had more elemental guards around him. Four walls. One of air, the other of earth, the next of fire, and the final one was made of water.
His soul was bang in the middle, and the only way I could think to access it was to say, “Gideon, I need your help.”
“How?” came the immediate retort.
“Marcella, the Sire has four walls around his subconscious. I need something to knock them down.”
“They’re elemental?” Gid asked, putting two and two together since I’d asked for his help and no one else’s.
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Marcella murmured, and I felt the subtle shift of the knot as she introduced a fourth point, Gid.
He was an anomaly. His powers so alien to me in contrast to my walker brothers. I tried to figure out a way to show him what I was seeing, but I couldn’t. It made me wonder, though, if I could with practice.
Marcella seemed to think we were capable of far more than we’d ever been taught, and I had to believe that if something could be imagined, then it could happen.
Now was not the time for that thought, however.
Instead, I called on Gideon’s talents with the elements and nullified each wall with its opposite. I used the water to quench the fire, and a gust of air to disperse the earth.
It seemed ridiculously easy, but then I figured how rare it was for a walker to be able to call on a druid’s power and knew that this was only possible because of the uniqueness of our brotherhood.
Arthur’s mental walls tumbled down and what they revealed?
Stunned the shit out of me.
* * *
Raven
I wasn’t sure whether it was because we were linked through Marcella or what, but I could see what Keir did in Arthur’s subconscious, and it was completely fucked. The unconscious mind was usually focused on one of a few different things, and when Keir went in, much as we did with Marcella, we entered a specific dream or unconscious thought. Arthur’s mind was about as far from that as possible.
Instead of a thought or dream, it was like I was looking at a map of the whole damn solar system. Dusty glowing rings spiraled toward the star at the center and dominated the endless black of the rest of his mind.
Are you seeing this shit? I mentally asked Keir.
I felt him nod in response, and suddenly, the solar system seemed to spin up, like a motor being turned on. What had been a spiral was now a dizzying swirl of color and light.
Who dares disturb my slumber? a voice echoed around us.
I felt Keir’s shock along our bond, as though neither of us had expected this to work. Why, I wasn’t sure. I mean, we’d made it work with Marcella twice now, so it wasn’t like the method was untested. All I could do was respond with a mental image of all of us in his bedroom? Tomb? Tomb room? Too much?
Time seemed to move forward in front of our eyes and swiftly pass us by as we watched earth and humanity grow and evolve until it was too much and destroyed the one place we could survive. It wasn’t the only thing Arthur showed us either; it was like he was scanning through possible futures to see which one he was joining, like skipping tracks on a playlist to get to the song he wanted to hear.
When I saw a flash of Marcella’s face, I figured he’d found the right track. The problem was as her face flicked into his mind over and over again, it looked like she was in excruciating pain, enough that I was mentally wincing on her behalf. Her skin was mottled with light and shadow as she appeared to be fighting to hold on to something. What it was, I couldn’t tell.
The time has come. The three sons of Arthur must channel their powers to bring me into the physical world. After that, I shall Awaken shortly.
All images fled his mind, and Keir and I were left staring at an eternity of blackness before being unceremoniously kicked out of Arthur’s mind. When we both blinked and found ourselves back in the same room as everyone else, I knew what we had to do.
Don’t mention what we saw to Marcella. Not yet, Keir’s mental voice called to me.
I was just about to say the same thing. I glanced over at Keir, who was rubbing a hand across his jaw as he nodded to me as subtly as he could.
“So, is he waking up, or is he napping for the rest of time?” Cade asked gruffly, off to one side. I had a feeling that his powers with time had been called upon by Arthur, but as he couldn’t get inside the Sire’s head, he was as blind as the others as to what the fuck was happening here.
Shit, I’d been in Arthur’s head, and even I wasn’t certain about what we were doing.
“You need to work with us to bring his consciousness back into his body or something like that,” I explained, as I ran a hand through my hair rather than tug it out by the root. That would have been far more satisfying.
“What am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can see the sun from down here,” Cade grumbled.
“Did he seem okay? Not evil?” Marcella asked, and I knew she was thinking about Morgana just from the hitch in her voice. The Mother had scared her, and fuck, I couldn’t blame my female. Morgana had frightened the shit out of me too!
“He felt ancient, and he had a dreamscape like I’ve never seen before, but overall I didn’t get any bad vibes from him,” Keir shared gruffly.
The image of Marcella in pain flashed through my mind again, and I wasn’t as convinced about the lack of bad vibes as Keir evidently was. My gut churned with worry for her as I felt like I was about to watch her be torn apart. She was too important, not just because when she died I died, but because I never wanted to see her in pain.
I knew we had a long road ahead of us with one thing or another, but I was hoping against all the odds that we would come out on top and we would be able to have a period of peace where we could just enjoy each other. My brothers and I had been through so much, and so had our Sixth, but somehow it felt like the road had only just begun. I only hoped it was smoother in the future than it had been so far.
“So, what do I do?” Cade inquired, as he came to stand beside Keir and me.
The three of us looked back and forth at each other for a moment before Keir said, “We have to channel our powers together to bring his mind into the present, into this physical world.”
I wanted to laugh because he sounded a little pompous the way he said it, and I was the only one who knew that he was just repeating what Arthur had told us.
“And how do we do that exactly?” Cade countered with a raised eyebrow, as though he knew that Keir was full of shit.
“Good question,” I murmured.
I reached out, careful not to touch anything, worried that even though the clouds that covered Arthur had long since disappeared, the barrier that was protecting him could still be in place. The lower my hand fell, the more I realized that the barrier was gone, and what was in front of us was just a body in some kind of stasis. Eventually, my hand carefully touched the fabric of the blanket covering him, and as soon as we connected, I felt his presence grow a little more in the room.
“Put your hands on mine and try to push your power down into him,” I ordered, sounding like I knew my shit when really, I was just winging it.
“And then what? Sing kumbaya to each other?” Cade asked with
a snort.
“If we have to, yes,” Marcella ground out the words.
I glanced up at our mate and, for a moment, I saw the mottled skin from Arthur’s mind, but when I blinked it was gone. Tension flowed through my mate. Her whole body was almost vibrating with it, and all I wanted to do was ease that for her. If waking Arthur was one way to do so, then that’s what I’d do.
After a few seconds, Cade finally relented and put his hand on top of Keir’s, which was on top of mine. The three of us had powers that resonated with one another, and I could feel their magic buzzing against my skin as we all tried to focus on the man in front of us.
I mentally reached for his consciousness, offering guidance to bring it back to his body, but found nothing. The space where I had felt him before was empty.
Do either of you feel him? I asked.
I felt them both mentally shake their heads.
We need more then. I think we have to light it up like a beacon, so he knows where and when to go, I suggested, thinking aloud more than anything. Well, mentally aloud, however that worked.
When? Cade asked incredulously.
Yes, when. If we are struggling with this because you’re not giving it everything you’ve got, I’m going to kick your ass later, I mentally responded, and tacked on a growl for good measure.
And I’ll join him, Keir added, shoving his mood through the bond so we could both see how over this he already was.
Fine, jeez! Cade’s energy surged after that, and I felt the buzzing intensify as I pushed more of my own energy into it as well.
Keir was right behind us as we gave everything we had into creating a beacon or pathway for Arthur to follow back to his own body. The more energy we pushed into it, the more the earth began to shake, rattle, and roll once more. Everything was vibrating underfoot, and I wasn’t sure how much longer the ancient tomb would withstand the forces that were battering it in that moment.
A great clap of thunder sounded from high above us, but it was so loud that it seemed to echo all the way down the stairs and contribute to the shaking ground. A moment later, and it felt like I could see sounds, taste light, and possibly even melt into a puddle on the floor. Pain coursed through me and I was sure it was going through Cade and Keir as well, but I couldn’t move to check on them.
