"Stop it!" I scream, thinking quickly. I can't give him the shard, not even to save Dean's life, but there has to be another way. "I'll help you. Just don't hurt him."
Levi drops Dean's body, and I rush over to him, helping him up. He's shaking, but he's strong. He leans into me, whispering in my ear. "I hope you have a plan."
"I'm working on it."
He looks worried, but what other choice do I have? I need to buy us some time.
Gripping his hand, I pull him forward as he rips off his shirt to use it as a bandage against his arm. Even through the pain he winks at me.
"See? Wearing a shirt can come in handy," I tell him.
"Nah. If I didn't have one, I'd just borrow yours. Bigger win for both of us."
I roll my eyes, but then remember what we just left, and my heart sinks. "Iris. He killed Iris."
Dean shakes his head. "She's the Unseen Lord. She's not easy to kill. She'll regenerate, but she won't be able to get here. We're on our own."
"I… I don't really know how to react to that right now."
"Hurry it along, people. Power awaits," Levi says, stroking the shards at his waist.
Right. I have to help the bad guy. "Give me a second to get my bearings," I say, taking a moment to look around.
We arrived just where I intended, and everything matches my vision. I look up, and in the pale blue sky I see wings stretching wide, casting a long shadow over the hills in the distance. I suck in my breath as the dragon soars overhead, majestic with scales of blue jewel tones that flash against the light of the sun.
When I lay my hand on the fountain, made from the remains of dragons, I feel the energy in this world, how it was shaped by the dragon's breath, how it took form out of the bones of the dragons. When I open my eyes, the Star shards glow brightly on Levi's hip, and the world looks different. A magical trail of white light leads me forward, and I follow it as if in a trance.
Dean doesn't let go of me as we walk towards the ruin. An ancient stone stairway descends into an underground entrance covered with hanging vines that have climbed and crawled over and through the stone engravings and pillars framing the door.
Using one of my axes, I chop away at the aggressive foliage. Dean helps with his sword, but Levi and my mother just watch and wait. I feel her fear and his impatience and anger. Both exhaust me as I struggle to figure out how to stop Levi before it's too late.
I can already feel the toll the use of the Star's power is taking. It is robbing the life of hundreds of people each time Levi uses it. Stealing pieces of them. Leaving them weaker to fuel the power needed. And it's giving Levi more life. He's become stronger, more dangerous, with each new shard found, and with each use of its power. I'm running out of time.
Once the door is cleared, Levi shoves me out of the way to study it. Then he uses the shards to blast it with power, hoping to break it down.
Nothing happens.
"Get this open," he shouts, his anger overcoming him.
I lay my hand on the stone and close my eyes. It speaks to me, but its voice is muted. Muddled. The door has seven concentric rings carved into it, each with different symbols, though they are covered with so many layers of sediment they're hard to decipher. "We have to position these symbols in the right order," I tell them. "That will unlock it."
"Then do it," Levi growls. "That's why you're still alive, after all."
Right. The circles move with great reluctance, slowed by age and time, the stone grinds together as if waking from a long winter slumber.
I try a few configurations to no avail. Dean runs a hand over one, and pauses, then asks to borrow my axe.
I hand it to him, and he uses it as a chisel to reveal more of the symbol on one of the rings until it's decipherable. He then holds up his arm, revealing the demon mark on his wrist and compares the two. "What do you think?" he asks.
I peer closer. "It's incredibly stylized, but yes, it could be a match."
His eyes light up. "Help me clear away the others."
We work silently, using my axes with care as we chip away at the wall, until all seven symbols are more easily read. Dean sucks in a breath as he studies it. "The rings are the Seven Realms of Inferna," he says softly. "But… that makes no sense. Why would they be here, in Nirandel?"
"I don't know, but if that's true, then we need to align the symbols to the correct realm," I say.
He nods and begins working. I don't know the demon symbols of each of his brothers, but he does. Levi looks on with interest, but says nothing and offers no help.
The largest circle is the hardest to move, and it takes both of us all our effort to budge it from its spot. Once we set it in place with King Fenris's demon mark visible, we step back and wait.
Nothing happens.
At least not at first.
Then, the ground beneath our feet shake, and within the wall stone and metal groan and grind together, moving for the first time in who knows how long.
A thrill travels up my spine. Despite the stakes, despite the circumstances, this is my calling. This is where I feel most alive. When I step into the timeless places where the past has gone to die and explore what still remains. Unearthing history makes me feel alive. So when the door splits in half and pulls itself open, revealing a dark hall covered in so many spider webs it will be impossible to walk through without hacking them away, I don't hesitate to step in.
And Dean is right by my side. I can tell by his face he's having the same experience as me. We are both seekers of the lost, of the ancient, of the historic. We share that bond. That thrill.
I grab a torch from the wall and Dean lights it. We move slowly, our boots crunching spiders moving underneath the white, haunting layers of webs that surround us on all sides. From a distance it might look like snow, but up close you can see it move, writhing from the many bugs trapped, the many bodies moving around their prey.
With my axe I hack away the webs that block our passage forward, ignoring Levi and my mother who follow, keeping my attention on my work and on Dean. Of the four of us, three of us are archeologists and know more or less what we're doing. That thought gives me some comfort.
I always wanted to go on a dig with my mother, but this isn't how I imagined it.
The reality would break my heart if I let it, so I shove that aside for now and keep my eyes forward. It's all I can do.
I feel the last shard calling me, pulling me to it. It lights a fire in my gut, my heart racing faster, the closer we get.
A thick layer of webs blocks our way, and Dean uses his sword to tear open a section for us to walk through. His body is slick with sweat, and I can tell his shoulder wound still pains him, but he keeps at the work.
When we step through the webs, I suck in my breath, and Dean pauses beside me.
"What's the holdup? Keep moving," Levi shouts, but even he falls silent when he sees what we see.
The hall we took to get here has opened up to a cavern filled with the tiny corpses of children. Dean and I walk through, studying them. They've been buried with stones in their mouths and lead on their eyes. Their bodies are wrapped in cloth. There are hundreds of them, maybe thousands, tunneling through the cavern. "What is this?" I ask. But I know. Because I've seen something similar on earth. "These children were all given vampire burials," I say. "Or a variation of that. I've seen this before. But it's not that common. On earth, vampire children were unearthed from the 5th century. They were buried with stones in their mouths to keep them from rising from the dead as vampires and spreading disease. The children mostly died of malaria, or other contagious diseases, and because little was known about the decomposition of bodies, superstition suggested vampires could eat their way out of the graves. Thus, the stone in the mouths. But… why would they be here? Now? Guarded by a door with Inferna Realms on it? And in such numbers?"
Dean's eyes widen and he hangs his head. "I know what this is." He turns to look at me, his eyes full of sorrow. "Superstition isn't just a human failing
. Vampires have them too. These are the bodies of children born deformed, of stillbirths, or of children who developed deformities later in life and died in unusual circumstances. The superstition of our world was so strong that the bodies were taken to another world and buried here."
"What did vampires fear would happen if the remains weren't handled this way?" I ask, my inquisitive nature always at the ready for new information about a culture or history of a people.
Dean shrugs. "War, famine, disease, the usual fears."
Having seen and studied so many histories and ways of handling the transitions of birth and death, this news doesn't alarm or shock me. Rather, it's a new piece of information, and another realization that humans and vampires aren't as different as I once imagined. We are both a people filled with dark and light, flaws and redemptive qualities, bloody histories and hope for the future.
Levi finally finds his voice and shoves me forward. "Enough. This isn't what we're here for. Keep moving."
The cavern of dead children takes an unknowable amount of time to cross. With my heightened powers I can see pieces of the lives lost here. "Not all of these children died naturally," I say, my throat constricting. "Many were killed, often violently, for being different."
Dean says nothing, only nods in a sad confirmation of my words.
Why must we all be so terrified of those who are different? It's a question I can answer from a sociological perspective, even a cultural anthropological perspective. But the answers, the knowledge about our natural and ingrained tendencies fall flat when faced with the reality those tendencies create.
We must rise above our base urges to murder and maim out of fear of displacement, out of the primal urge to conform or die as an outcast of our tribe. We cannot rise to the higher calling of our souls if we are forever stuck in the fear-based mindset of our egos.
With a sad sigh I move forward, out of the den of dead children and into another room, where the stone floor is covered in water growing with god knows what and filled with hundreds of different flowers that float atop. The water reaches my ankles, and I step carefully, unable to see to the bottom through the muck and flowers. Across from us is a bend in the stone wall that looks like it might be an opening, so I make my way there, but as Levi and my mother follow Dean and me, a trap is sprung.
I turn and pull out my axe, aiming it at the door we came through that's now grinding to a close. With precision, I throw the axe and it catches the bottom of the door, holding it open the width of the spike.
Dean raises an eyebrow. "Nice throw, Dr. Stone."
I can't help but grin in relief. "Thanks, it might be our only way out."
Just as the words leave my lips, the heavy stone door crushes my axe, closing completely, and the room begins to fill with water, trapping us.
And once again I'm thrust back into the exciting game of how will Alex die today? Drowning, or at the hands of a psychopath vampire bent on destroying all the worlds?
Alex Stone
"The room is a trap," my mother says, stating the obvious.
"So untrap it," Levi growls.
This man is seriously all charm. *Insert eye roll here.*
I'm not terribly worried about getting us out of here. I've been in worse jams than this, more or less. I mean, the being held hostage by a crazy vampire part is new, but otherwise, this is a fairly standard run-of-the-mill booby trap situation. I just have to find another door.
I continue onward, heading towards the part of the wall that looks promising, when my unflappable optimism takes another hit.
The walls screech, grown, and begin to close in.
And the ceiling is in on the action, lowering slowly onto us.
We will soon be squished like a marshmallow in a S'More if I don't get my ass in gear. I dash to the other side of the room and study the sliver of a crack in the wall. A small ridge extends out, like a saucer or a shallow bowl. A riddle is carved into it, but not in a language I recognize. I call Dean over. "Can you read this?" I ask him.
He nods. "It says, 'only the sly may enter'."
The water is rising, flowers sticking to my body as it reaches my chest. The walls and ceiling are closing in, and the four of us are pushed into the center with only an arm's length separating us from our bloody, broken ends.
I repeat the riddle in my head. There's something tickling the back of my mind, but it's so out of context I can't quite reach it. I close my eyes and focus, ignoring Levi's urges to hurry up, ignoring my mother's pleading eyes, grasping on to the confidence I see in Dean's face. He believes I can figure this out. I know I can. I must. Too much depends on it.
Only the sly… the sly… "Sly!" I scream, my eyes popping open. "Sly, from the Black Lotus. The door wants an offering. A flower. Quick, everyone, search the waters for a black lotus. Hurry!"
My words pump adrenaline into everyone, as the water threatens to overcome us in short order. We splash through the water, ducking beneath it, searching amongst hundreds of flowers that must be magically induced to stay in perpetual bloom. I toss aside a red rose, a blue carnation and a silver daffodil that's actually quite stunning, but definitely not the point.
"Found it!" Dean says, holding up the black flower in triumph.
The dark petals of the lotus brush against my skin like velvet as he hands it over to me and I study it. The water is now too high for me to stand. Dean, being taller, still has a few inches, but I'm forced to tread water to reach the door, while delicately cupping the lotus so as not to crush it. I place the flower on the small stone dish with the riddle inscribed, and I cross my fingers.
The flower glows darkly, submerged in the dirty water. The smell is noxious—like rot and mildew, and it permeates my skin, though the leather outfit Iris provided seems to be doing a good job of keeping that portion of my body protected. I might just have to upgrade my wardrobe, assuming I survive this.
The walls push into us, forcing Dean and me into Levi and my mother. We are completely submerged now, without any room to come up for air. The pressure builds, pain flaring as bones and joints are bent against the unyielding stone. Levi attempts to use the shards to shatter the walls, to no avail.
And then, as suddenly as it began, it stops. The walls halt. The water begins to drain. And the crack where I placed the flower groans to an open, with just enough room for us each to squeeze through.
We step into the next cavern looking like drowned rats. Levi is furious, but silent as he wordlessly propels us forward into a space that is once again filled with dead children, this time covered in spider webs like the ones we fought through in the first hall. These remains are different, however. There are no stones in the mouths, no iron on their eyes. They are not wrapped in cloth. And their bodies haven't decomposed at the rate one would expect. They look relatively fresh. And there are no infants. All these children are at least ten to twelve years old, and all perfectly formed. Except that their eyes and mouths have been sewn shut. I shudder at the sight of it. This isn't something I've ever seen before.
"What is this?" I ask into the silence.
Dean stands beside me, studying them. "I have no idea."
"It doesn't matter," Levi says, shoving into us. "Find the shard."
In the center, a huge web is wrapped around something that is waist high. I walk carefully towards it, my axe out, studying the shape. "Help me," I tell Dean, as I delicately cut through the sticky white tendrils.
As we pierce through layers, a white glow pulses through what remains. In the end, we reveal a pedestal with the final shard resting on it.
I step back, sweat mixing with the vile water coating my skin, my eyes burning.
"There you go, Levi. It's all yours."
Dean looks ready to object, but I caution him with a glance and he stays silent.
Levi just laughs. "Do you think me a fool? It's likely trapped. You fetch it and bring it to me," he says from the spot we first entered through.
Eh. It was worth a try.
&
nbsp; I use my gifts to see into the space, to identify the connections and networks, to read the room, as it were.
This one can't be claimed with a simple trick, like replacing it with a bag of rice. But I'm not seeing another way around this. I know it's trapped, I just don't know how.
I approach it cautiously, holding my hand out to touch the shard.
As I make contact, a vision overtakes me. One that upends my entire world, my entire existence. One that finally locks into place the last pieces of understanding. Tears fill my eyes as I lift the shard, almost against my will, my hand acting of its own accord. When the vision fades, I am faced with a new and shattering truth.
I open my eyes and find everyone staring at me. I look down and realize I am glowing. Levi, in fury, races towards me and grabs the shard from my hands. As he does, the tomb comes alive. All the dead children rise in unison, pushing past spider webs, their eyes and mouths still sewn closed. They move towards us and begin emitting a strange, dark sound, guttural and evil. And then tiny spiders emerge from their mouths, their ears, their eyes, crawling over their faces as they approach us.
Dean raises his sword and slashes at one of the dead children, severing it in two, but more keep coming, swarming him as they leap through the air like small, violent, acrobats, latching on to their victim. The vampire goes into rage mode, tearing them apart one by one as they clutch him, small hands winding around his throat in a desperate attempt to choke out his life.
Another child comes for me, but my mother screams and runs forward, pushing me aside and attacking the creature. The child corpse falls on her, and they roll to the ground. Another two pounce her, pinning her to the ground as spiders find purchase on my mother's skin, digging into her as she screams and fights. One child chokes her while the spiders continue eating away at her flesh. I need to stop this!
Frantically, I tear the shard from Levi's grip and place it back on the altar. The children freeze, their hands falling away from Dean and my mother, and they collapse to the ground as the spiders crawl back into their dead bodies.
Vampire Girl 7: Fallen Star Page 8
