The East Gate (Dawnbringer, Book 2)

by Elon Vidal

  Making it as if he was showing them around, Damon had them tuck in a corner where they would be able to sort through crypt archives while he made it as if he was giving them a history lesson. They went to work, checking different records about the crypts in the country. It was boring work and so far they hadn’t come across anything actually helpful.

  "I don’t know how humans do it,” Elijah complained as he carried a pile of books to the table.

  Any other day and Dawn would have laughed, but she knew that Elijah was not making a joke. He really was struggling with being ordinary and having to do simple everyday things without the help of his magic. While she was used to it and didn’t think anything of it, her friend had never had to live a day without waving his hand and making things appear.

  "Everything is so slow and so inconvenient."

  It had taken him thirty seconds to walk to and from the bookshelf, but again, it wasn't something she was going to react to. Elijah deserved to complain about everything he was going through right now. She would do the same if she were in his shoes. Hadn't she too complained about not fitting in almost her entire life? This was no different.

  "And I feel so tired all the time, like I'm running on a cheap quality battery."

  "That's because you lost part of your life force," Damon replied, reminding Dawn that he was still in the room. "You should rest."

  Elijah pushed a book away in frustration. "All I do is rest and sleep, and all it does is make me even more tired. And to make matters worse, everyone is treating me like I might break at any moment. They are treating me like a... like a human."

  He said the last word with such contempt that Dawn almost reminded him that she was half human and it wasn’t a bad thing. Almost. The way Elijah was looking right now told her not to even think of mentioning that. And because she had already thought of it, she needed to get it out of her mind right away. She had spent all her life not knowing how to cast spells and surrounded by people like Elijah who could make things, or even themselves, appear and disappear. She had coped and kept up with training and potions. She tried not taking it too personal, but she did think of her dad and how he’d always found it difficult to come to terms with Dawn’s magical Fae mother.

  Damon, however, hadn’t received the memo from her thoughts, because he dived right in. "Dawn is almost human and she seems to do quite well," he said.

  Dawn sighed and mentally face palmed. Why wasn’t telepathy one of her powers?

  "Dawn has had nineteen years to get used to it; I've had a few days. So, forgive me if I'm not doing so well." Elijah's chair loudly scraped the floor as he stood and left the room.

  Dawn raised a brow at Damon. "Proud of yourself there, warlock?"

  "He'll be fine. He needs to toughen up otherwise he is of no help to himself or to us," Damon said.

  She shook her head and stood up too, intending to go after Elijah.

  "You heard what he said. Don't coddle him," Damon said.

  Dawn hesitated. She was concerned for her friend’s wellbeing, but she also understood Damon was right. They were doing all they could to restore his powers back and he needed some time to come to terms with his new reality. If they could avoid it, it would be more of a temporary thing and a permanent one. She then sat back down, next to Damon.

  “I think I found something anyway,” he continued, using magic to place a book in front of her.

  “A crypt below an old church?” Dawn asked as she looked at the records.

  “Built by witches as a magical sanctuary It dates back to a time before the so-called Enlightened ascension, yet it holds members linked to Enlightened lineage. It could be what we are looking for. It’s worth checking out.”

  Dawn nodded, feeling hopeful that this was the one.

  The place was cold and reeked of death, which was befitting since it was a graveyard after all. The cemetery was unpretentious, tucked away from any major dwelling. It was difficult to make out how large it was in the woods as trees, vines, and bushes had found their place to grow along the tombstones. It was fitting for witches that would have rather it pass as something unworthy of attention. Most headstones were worn-out marble and the passage of time had eroded engravings. Dawn could still make out wavy lines emerging from the eyes of carved skulls and symbols such as three interlinked triangles on one, or a three-pronged spiral on another. She couldn’t quite make out the meaning of several markings she could see, such as lines meeting at an angle on one end and small circles on the other, or nine-tip stars and what resembled moons or suns. At night and among the vines and trees, there was an eerie feeling to it.

  While Dawn had never given much thought to cemeteries and their potential to be scary, she was certainly thinking about it now. She remembered the first time that she had seen a dead person. Her human grandmother, her dad’s mom, has passed a few years back. She remembered her body at the bier ready for eternal rest. Seeing her there had been a shock to her system but not altogether a traumatic experience. Her nana didn’t seem real. She was more like a wax statue and she preferred to remember her while she had been alive and well. In a way, to her the dead had always been that: dead. Incapable of causing any more harm on the living.

  "I hate this," Elijah said, running his hands up and down his arms.

  Dawn wished there was something that she could do, but they had no choice. If they were to find the next artifact before Fisher, they had to move fast and close their minds to everything else around them.

  "There are a thousand graves here, how are we supposed to know which one is the one? And we are not going to dig a grave or anything like that, are we?"

  "Now that would be just disrespectful," Maggie scoffed as she appeared.

  Dawn smiled and shook her head. "Careful Elijah, let's not offend the dead. Maggie is here."

  "Here and ready to solve a mystery!" Maggie said in a sing song voice.

  Dawn had to hand it to the ghost and her ability to stay ever cheerful. Perhaps it was a side effect of death, the inability to take anything too seriously anymore.

  "Look for any strange symbols," Damon said as he shined his torch on some epitaphs.

  "Define strange. Because to me, all these graves have strange symbols engraved on them," Dawn pointed out. "I can't tell what's Greek and what's magic."

  Damon turned to look at her with a raised brow. "Didn't you take languages? Half the spells in first year are in Greek for crying out loud."

  Dawn grinned. "Which is why I'm so terrible at spells."

  Damon muttered something as he turned around, and she could only imagine just how much he wanted to lecture her right now.

  "I like brooding warlocks," Maggie said, floating to stand next to Damon.

  "I think Maggie has a little crush," Dawn whispered to her best friend.

  Elijah scoffed. "On him?"

  "Aww is he jealous?" Maggie giggled.

  "Doubt it." Dawn chuckled as she went back to looking at the grave markings.

  "You might be right. He has eyes only for you."

  Dawn ignored the ghost, not in the mood to entertain her active imagination. It was hard for the hopeless romantic to accept that not everyone was out to date every attractive person within their vicinity. Even her kissing Elijah had just been a gesture of friendship, intended more as comforting someone dear to her who was in distress than a romantic sign. Maybe while they were here, she could find a nice dashing but deceased fellow for Maggie.

  "I think I found something," Damon called out from the stone church door. This was what they had seen back in the archive. It blended well with the overgrown forest and looked unkempt, not quite like in the picture. The doors were busted, and the walls were cracked. It was a small building made of large stones. How had these witches carried them here, Dawn wondered? The markings along the frame resembled many she had seen scattered along the tombstones. Spirals, dashes, triangles, and symbols of nature.

  Inside the place was disheveled. It appeared someone, or something
, had been there before. Branches crept in through the window openings and roots lifted the walls on a few spots. Dawn felt a shiver when she entered.

  “There’s a underground passage to the crypt,” explained Damon, as he stepped down the large stone steps into the belly of the site just before the altar. “Careful with your heads.” He managed to provide some light with his hand, a simple warlock gimmick. Dawn wondered if she’d ever be able to summon her light energy at will. Not for now she thought. It seemed to come to her whenever it wanted, not whenever she did.

  They walked a few short steps and entered a small cavity. A grave lay there. She didn’t pay much attention to it because Damon’s light shined into a narrow, long, and dark passageway. Where might that lead to, Dawn wondered, though she really preferred not to have to go there. She returned her attention to the grave Damon was shining his light on. There was a fresh shrub of flowers growing on the side of it.

  "That looks like hemlock," Dawn said.

  "Wiccan witches use it for spells," Damon said.

  "And it only grows on graves of powerful magical creatures," Dawn added.

  Dead men spells, they were called. Once you cast a spell using hemlock from a grave, it could not be broken. Dawn wondered exactly how someone had found that out, and it was the kind of magic forbidden by the Council.

  "You think this is it?" Elijah asked.

  "Maybe not. There could be more graves with hemlock around here. We should look some more to make sure," Damon replied

  Dawn nodded just as a piercing scream cut through the silence of the night. Her heart stopped as she looked around the room in a panic, not seeing anything. Not even Maggie. Was there a creature lurching in the darkness? Was it a Hound perhaps? No one else seemed to react.

  "Dawn, what's wrong?" Elijah asked.

  She looked at him and the concern on his face, and it clicked that she'd been the only one to hear that.

  "I heard a scream,” she said, walking forward and checking on either side of her. She had heard Maggie squeal so many times and that scream had sounded like her. Only it was an actual scream, the kind someone made when they were scared out of their minds.

  Dawn walked in the direction that she thought was the right one. Into the tunnel. Damon followed behind lighting up the space. A few yards in and the tunnel suddenly opened up in various directions. She looked around the maze-looking crypt. Roots emerged from the ceiling and at times continued piercing the tunnel into the ground below. She immediately realized that there were more niches on either side. Her palms started to sweat at the thought that if it was indeed Maggie, what could scare a ghost?

  “Maggie!” she called out.

  “Dawn, wait!” Damon called out behind her, but she didn’t slow down.

  Another scream filled the place and Dawn broke into a run, looking in every direction she could. She brushed passed low hanging roots and over fallen stones, trying not to knock into headstones on the sides or get entangled in webs. She was making her way in the direction she had heard the scream.

  “Maggie! Where are you?”

  Now was not the time for the ghost to be playing hide and seek, she thought.

  “Dawn stop!” Elijah called out too.

  She stopped for a second and turned around, her chest heaved as she tried to catch a breath.

  “Your hands,” Elijah said.

  They were glowing. A bright shimmer emerged around her palms. She hadn’t realized at first, just like she hadn’t felt it intensely the first time light energy emerged from her. But she recognized the warm sensation it caused in her. It felt welcoming, just like the first time around.

  The third scream shook the surrounding walls. Dawn ducked, but it took all of them a few seconds to realize that it hadn’t been the scream causing the minor earthquake. It was the hoard of shadows that were headed straight for them. They were wraiths.

  “Take cover!” Damon shouted and they all ran to stand behind the pillars in the crypt.

  It worked for a second as the shadows whooshed past them, only to stop and turn, coming back toward them. This time they split and zeroed in on each one of them. Dawn’s first instinct was to protect Elijah, but she didn’t have anything to use that would work on the ghost-like creatures. The good news was that if the wraiths were here, then they were probably in the right place. The bad news was that they were in the same place as dangerous creatures that couldn’t be killed.

  ‘Here lies Dawn Preston’, she thought. ‘A new addition to this crypt, died of unnatural causes.’

  FOURTEEN

  Dawn spun and landed on the ground with a thud. She coughed as the taste of dirt and dust filled her mouth. Elijah groaned somewhere in the distance, and she tried to get up to find him. She used the pillar to support herself and provide some means of shelter from the murderous spirits.

  "Dawn! Elijah!" Damon called out. His voice echoed through the crypt, sounding like he was way farther than the last place she’d seen him.

  The crypt was now darker and colder than it had been minutes ago. Dawn shivered and gripped the pillar tightly, wondering if it was possible to become one with the thing.

  "Damon!" she called back. "Can you do something?"

  She looked down at her own glowing hands and wished she knew what to do.

  "There are too many!" he said, followed by a quick flash of light. He used his magic to fight back. You had to give it to him, he had skills, disappearing and reappearing in the blink of an eye, creating wind and light blasts intended to keep the wraiths at bay. But his efforts seemed to prove no obstacle for the shadows.

  "Elijah! Are you okay?" Dawn called out, trying to move from the pillar so she could check on her friend.

  When she didn't get a response, a cold feeling settled in her stomach and it had nothing to do with the chill in the place. She took out both her daggers and held them in front of her, despite the zero to nil possibility that they could help her in any way against spirits.

  "I see him," Damon shouted. Another burst of light interrupted the darkness.

  At this rate, he was going to exhaust himself and deplete his magic before they could figure out a plan to get out of there. A wraith hidden in the shadows came at Dawn when she moved from the pillar. She swung her daggers; the weapons went right through the creature. She screamed in agony as it brushed against her arms and chest.

  While it looked like it had basic human shape, a cloak of smoky tendrils flowed behind it, and its claws were like sharp shards of ice. The ever-shifting shape of its head was a blurry resemblance of face forever stuck in her retina with a look that demanded terror in response. Dawn thought she could even make out what had once been long hair. It was hard to believe that something so dark had been made out of creatures as beautiful as Pixies.

  "Dawn?" Damon called out with fear in his voice.

  "I'm okay,” she groaned. She patted her ribs to find that her insides were still intact.

  Her jacket and shirt were torn, and she lifted them up to see a claw-like mark on the side of her stomach where she had been scratched. It was so cold, but it felt like she’d been burned. She was sure she would live. At least for a couple more minutes until the wraiths decided to finish them off. The creatures circled around them without actually launching a full attack. What was Fisher up to, Dawn wondered.

  "Dawn," Maggie gasped as she appeared next to Dawn.

  She wanted to hug the ghost; she was really glad that her friend was alright. Despite looking like she was scared out of her precious mind, Maggie didn't look like she was harmed. Could ghosts be injured?

  “Are you okay?” Dawn asked anyway.

  "They just came out of nowhere. I wanted to warn you, but they came at me all at once and tried to pull me apart.”

  “They can hurt you?” Dawn asked in surprise.

  Maggie nodded. “For a second there, I actually thought they would kill me!”

  “You need to get out of here, now!”

  “I can’t. I keep ending up h
ere if I try to appear somewhere else.”

  She was just as trapped as the rest of them. Was that even possible? She was most worried about Elijah. Without his magic he’d be a sitting duck for these creatures.

  “Can you go to Elijah please?” Dawn said. “Don’t let him out of your sight.”