“Whoa. I think I know what Ruth is looking for,” Bella said with eager awe, having recovered before the others because her eyes were not as sensitive to dark and light theirs were.
Eyes cleared and a chorus of gasps came out of the group as they hurried to crowd around the entrance of the hidden room.
“Told you it was books,” Bella murmured.
It was an understatement. It was actually an underground library. It was a bit worse for wear because of the years it had spent being ignored—the damage of water that had changed course over the years of erosion ran down walls that had been meant to be dry—but it had at one time definitely been a well-appointed library. It had red runners between every set of shelves in the corridor, the embroidered ruby velvet of it clearly once very rich and very fine. The torches lit up study tables as well as podiums that held singled-out tomes of enormous size.
And, of course, along both sides of the corridor were shelves and shelves of books reaching well beyond what even their keen sight could see.
“Wow,” Legna said, at a loss for any other reaction.
“Okay, how would Ruth, of all people, know this was here?”
“Clearly she doesn’t know it’s here. She thinks it’s up there,” Siena said, pointing above herself to the stone that would block Ruth’s progress even had she suspected something beneath it.
“True. Mary does not have the power to burrow through earth and stone. That is a male Earth Demon trait,” Jacob said, his eyes as wide as everyone else’s as he scanned the library slowly. “Do you think it is safe to go in there?”
“I think so,” Siena murmured, “but I wouldn’t put money on it being completely harmless, so keep alert.”
The battle they had been headed for was completely dismissed, all of them understanding that this was a more critical task. They moved into the isolated cavern, males linking hands with females, everyone wary as they prepared to take whatever forms they needed to in order to escape damage and carry those with them to safety as well.
Siena preceded them all, wide golden eyes skimming over the titles of the nearest volumes. Elijah was close behind her, so close that when she stopped, he bumped into her back and then remained there until she continued on.
“Siena, this is the Treasured Tongue,” Syreena whispered, her sense of reverence coming through loud and clear as she reached to take a book in her hands, holding it as if it were a precious gem. “The historic language only the members of The Pride now know. It would be lost to them as well if not for the fact that they spend so much time maintaining their knowledge of it.”
“That means this is a Lycanthrope library?” Elijah asked.
“No.”
Everyone turned to see Bella pull another book down.
“Jacob, this it the ancient language of Demonkind.”
Heads turned from one woman to the other. They crossed to meet each other and inspect the books.
“They aren’t the same,” Bella informed them. “Let’s see if there are others.”
There were. Books in languages both known and unknown to those in the room.
“The language of the Vampires,” Gideon said, shaking his head. “This looks like Shadowdweller print. These are those bold, picturesque characters they use.”
“It’s a Nightwalker library,” Siena said, her whispering voice echoing off the ceilings high above them.
“A lot of them are ruined,” Elijah remarked, dropping a saturated book onto a table, where it immediately disintegrated.
“Noah, have you ever heard of anything like this in your history?” Siena asked the King.
“Nothing. This…this is beyond anything we would ever know.”
“I never heard about this from The Pride, and they have a knack for telling some pretty primordial tales,” Syreena said, continuing to inspect the shelves with skimming fingers. “Is it possible this precedes even our forbearers?”
“And none of them thought to tell any of our historians about it? I find that hard to believe. Surely some kind of story or legend about it would have survived…some written proof or mention of it somewhere,” Noah insisted.
“Oh yes,” Bella said, her eyes rolling and her tone dry, “just like you were aware of that happy little prophecy I found that said we were all about to get tossed into a clothes dryer, tumbled around, and literally spit out just to see what comes out in the wash.”
“Good point,” Elijah chuckled.
“Jacob, look at this.” Noah beckoned the Enforcer. Jacob came to peer at the book over the King’s shoulder.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“What?” the others asked.
“Spells,” Noah answered, his dark eyes serious and weighted with concern. “Magic-user spells.”
“In a Nightwalker library?” Isabella pushed through them, inspecting the huge volume with sharp eyes. “Latin. Italian…this is…I don’t even know what this is,” she said shaking her head. “But there’s even Egyptian hieroglyphs in here. This is, like…the unabridged spell compendium of the whole world! This is what Ruth and Mary are looking for. I would bet my stash of chocolate bars on it.”
“I think she is right,” Noah agreed, leafing through the pages gingerly, but finding them all too sturdy. “We have to destroy this.”
“Absolutely not!”
“Bella,” Noah warned.
“Don’t even think it, Noah. There’s a reason this is in a Nightwalker library, and maybe you should figure out what that reason is before you go around willy-nilly playing Fahrenheit 451.”
“Bella, do you know how dangerous this book would be in the wrong hands?” Noah argued.
“But it isn’t in the wrongs hands, Noah. It’s in yours.”
“Noah, I think she may be correct,” Gideon spoke up, his silvery eyes suddenly flicking to the King’s so the monarch understood how serious his opinion was. “We have been looking for ways to block the Summoning and Transformations for centuries…for millennia, even. Maybe this book or these others hold those answers.”
Noah immediately appeared to take that into consideration.
“There is one thing we can all agree on.” Siena spoke up suddenly, her voice deepening with grave seriousness. “We must keep Ruth and Mary as far from here as possible. That volume is probably only a scratch on the surface of what this place holds. The power that they would potentially have access to if they discovered this library is immeasurable. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think they’ve had more than enough advantages since they defected.”
“Agreed,” Jacob said shortly. “Noah, Bella…I know the temptation of all this knowledge is overwhelming to you both, but we had best deal with our traitors and their compatriots before we let ourselves be distracted any further.”
“Also agreed,” Noah said with a sharp nod. “But I do not feel comfortable leaving all of this open like this.”
“It has gone undisturbed for untold centuries, Noah,” Siena reminded him gently. “I will return the seal and locks to what they were when we first arrived. Once we have dealt with Ruth, we can worry about guarding this place any further than that.”
It took a long moment, but eventually Noah nodded his acquiescence. The powerful group immediately backtracked out of the library, leaping down from the entrance so the Lycanthrope Queen could reseal the tricky door. It took some effort and a little helping counterbalance from her powerful mate to reseal the ancient mechanism, but eventually they too were able to leap off the ledge and into their party of companions.
“Come on, let’s kick ass,” Bella offered with irreverent enthusiasm, grabbing her husband’s hand and hurrying him into the deeper recesses of the caverns.
Mary was marching restlessly up and down the side of the dig site, her arms folded around her waist, chewing her bottom lip as her nervous energy radiated off her in waves. Her mother had not yet joined her, making her more than a little concerned for her safety should something suddenly go wrong. However, her
mother had remarkable power, and that included the ease and speed of her teleportation abilities.
Her mother had sufficiently frightened her, mentioning the powerful men and their mates who were potentially out for their blood. Mary had been raised in perpetual awe of those names, even in spite of her mother’s constant derision.
Noah. Elijah. Jacob the Enforcer.
Especially Elijah. Mary had once followed her mother to the training grounds when she had still been a warrior under the fierce Captain’s command, and had seen for herself how brutally cold and powerfully calculating that Demon could be even when only practicing. When she and her mother had stood over the warrior in the Russian forest not too long ago, watching him die with a seemingly baffling simplicity, Mary had still been awed and afraid, in spite of his apparent weakness and their apparent victory. It came as almost no surprise to her when she had discovered the warrior had somehow managed to cheat a so clearly imminent demise. She had always believed him undefeatable, and that was reinforced now more than ever.
Her nervous gaze twitched over the rows of women working patiently on the hard, cold ground that supposedly concealed the Black Tome her mother was searching for so desperately. According to the scroll, it was supposed to be the centerpiece of an ancient library that had existed long before even Gideon’s time. It was a concept hard for one as young as she was to wrap her mind around. That such a thing would even survive all that time seemed impossible, but her mother had already discovered a companion book, so it must still be possible for the Black Tome to have survived even all these ages.
According to her mother, that book would have the power to destroy even the most powerful of enemies. Even Noah, the extremely potent Fire Demon who could probably destroy the entire Earth if he put himself to the task.
But Mary didn’t think they needed it. They had just destroyed Gideon, the most Ancient of their kind. If they could do that, they could do anything.
“I would not rest so comfortably on that assumption if I were you.”
Mary jolted out of her private thoughts with a gasp, whirling to face that low, cold statement’s birthplace. She found herself staring up into fearfully cold silver eyes, the mouth beneath them twisted into a sardonic smile of cruel confidence that she would never hope to know the meaning of.
“Uh, uh, uh,” asked a soft, warning voice behind her, making her about-face once more with speed and terror to face a matching set of silver eyes. “I know what you’re thinking,” Magdelegna warned with a cruel smile of her own. “Your mommy cannot help you now.”
Mary’s heart pounded with violent speed as she realized she was telling the absolute truth. The young Demon was surrounded by all those Demons whose names and legends she had so feared for all of her life.
“Jacob, Bella, concentrate on keeping this little brat under wraps. Ruth will come for her soon enough.”
This order was given by the Demon King as he and the others turned at the sudden shouts of warning coming from the churned-over field full of magic-users and hunters.
“As a Druid I know once said, let’s kick ass!”
After that gleeful statement, the next thing to exit the Lycanthrope Queen’s mouth was the chilling scream of the cougar.
Ruth was jolted out of her study of the open book before her by the loud sound of startled, urgent voices outside of her tent. She stood up so fast that she knocked back her chair, and, grabbing protectively at the heavy, old volume before her, she reached out with her powerful mental senses.
She abruptly realized she was under enormous threat. Worse still, her daughter was being threatened. Frantically, the Demon traitor pushed back the knee-jerk fury and blind urge to react that her mothering instincts demanded. Luckily for her, her centuries of training as a warrior reminded her that fighting under duress of emotion was the surest way to lose a battle. It was, in retrospect, exactly how Gideon had managed to obtain the upper hand so unexpectedly in her attack on him. A mistake she was apparently still going to pay the price for, she realized as she sensed the Ancient’s presence close by. Angry fingers wrapped around her slender throat, gripping at bruises that were no longer there except in her memory of how Gideon had made them and almost killed her in the process.
Now they sought to capture and harm her only living child—even after what they themselves had done in their arrogance to cause Mary to suffer in the first place! If not for their self-righteous laws, Mary would have been mated to a Druid male who would have loved her with incomprehensible power, doubling the girl’s potential, or perhaps more. But no. They had not seen fit to save that poor Druid male from a terrible death by starvation. They had only changed the laws to suit themselves when one of their elite clique had been in need of it. The Enforcer and his bride.
And now those two same dared to hold her daughter captive, their self-righteousness radiating off them like a reeking plague. Ruth knew they were using Mary to bait her, but she would not be so easily fooled, nor her purposes so easily circumvented.
Isabella stood nearly toe to toe with the young Earth Demon, her violet eyes full of barely repressed anger toward her. Mary and her mother had ambushed her when she had been pregnant, beating her down in a specific attempt to end her child’s as well as her own life. The female Enforcer would not soon forget or forgive that slight. Neither would her mate who, at present, was casting out a sensory net meant to prevent Ruth from sneaking up on them the way they had crept up on her encampment and unprotected offspring. In the field, necromancers and hunters were being engaged and easily defeated. The hunters had no weaponry outside of the odd excavating tool, and the necromancers were heavily dependent on their concentration and no doubt a great deal of preparation before being effective in battle. Only those to whom the power came more naturally would present a true challenge. That and the fact that the infiltrators were quite outnumbered.
Isabella was unconcerned, however. Redemption was a powerful motivator. There wasn’t a Demon or Lycanthrope on the field who didn’t have good cause to visit redemption on this particular group.
Suddenly, Isabella felt an eddy of displaced air striking her strongly in the back, making her stumble forward. Jacob whirled to face his bride as his sensory alarms blared loud and wide. Elijah also felt the eddy even at his distance in the field and was distracted from his current adversary long enough to look in the Enforcers’ direction.
The warrior knew the feeling of displaced air from a teleport when he felt it. So did the Enforcers. The problem was, there was no one or no thing at the center of the displacement.
“Where is she?” Isabella asked frantically, instinctively backing closer to her mate.
Elijah saw their confusion, and a sick, cold trepidation crawled up his spine as he watched them flail for a target. The sensation got the attention of his bride, and he saw her turn to look at the Enforcers out of the corner of his eye. Her golden eyes slid closed and her whiskered nose lifted into that trace of a breeze. Immediately, the hackles on the back of her neck rose to full attention. The cat shifted to the Werecat with heart-stopping speed. Elijah knew her thoughts instantly. Ruth was there. Despite what their eyes were telling them, the senses of the cat could not be so easily tricked.
Jacob caught Siena’s metamorphosis and the clarity of its motivation a moment too late. Isabella was suddenly yanked off her feet and sent flying in his direction. He couldn’t avoid catching his wife even if he had wanted to, but even with her petite stature, the speed of her impact into his chest sent him reeling and tumbling over backward.
Elijah reacted instantly, focusing on the younger traitor Demon and demolecularizing her into nothing but a breath of air. His wife was covering land in awesome, powerful leaps, literally following her nose in order to find the other, who had somehow masked her visual presence.
Ruth materialized with a scream of frustration just when Siena was not more than two leaps away from pouncing her into the ground. The Elder traitor flung out a violent hand toward the Lycanthrope f
emale. Siena struck a wall, mid-bound, and recoiled off it and into the dirt with a startled cough. Ruth had teleported a solid rock into her path at too short of a distance for her to change her direction. Stunned, Siena touched a padded paw to the rend in the fur across her forehead, coming away with bloodied fur for her effort.
Ruth then teleported herself away. Elijah braced himself, feeling quite surely that she would follow her daughter’s trail at any cost. Since forcing Mary into the noncorporeal state took a great amount of effort, more so because she was fighting it tooth and nail, Elijah whipped her back into her natural form by his side before he lost the opportunity to do so. No sooner had he done this than he felt Ruth appear violently at his back.
Ruth had always been an accomplished backstabber. Literally. It was one of her favored attack strategies. Elijah had taught her how, so he was well prepared for the blade that came slicing toward his exposed flank. He didn’t waste precious energy changing form, but instead ducked and rolled with remarkable agility and speed. Even so, the blade breezed past his ear, nicking the lobe.
The warrior didn’t have time to note the injury. Ruth teleported again and was once more at his vulnerable back. Instinctively, Elijah blocked her stroke with his arm, sending sparks flying as the metal of her blade contacted the links of his golden armband. Without concern for the wickedly sharp blade, Elijah wrapped his bare arm around it and jerked downward, disarming Ruth neatly, although at the expense of a good bite into the flesh of his biceps and forearm. Again, the armband saved him from the worst of it.
Ruth turned to look at her child, clearly trying to focus on her to teleport them both away. But as it had been every time she had tried so far, something was preventing her from taking her daughter with her. Frustrated and enraged, Ruth teleported away, alone, before the Demon warrior gained his feet and could regroup to attack.
Elijah did get up, but he had a different target in mind. He grabbed the disoriented Mary by the throat, using the hold to jerk her back against his chest. Mary gasped, then gurgled out a restricted sound of panic as that enormous hand cut off her air supply. She was too young and inexperienced to use any of her innate abilities after being jostled around from captor to captor like she had been. All she could do was flail and grasp at the steadfast hand locked so firmly around her neck.
Elijah: The Nightwalkers Page 32
