Endure

by M. R. Merrick

  “Maybe it’s not beneath the volcano,” Tiki said. “There are many places in Drakar that are underwater. Villages and kingdoms you can’t even see on the surface. Drakar is like…a bunch of worlds within a world. Remember, Chase Williams, when you first arrived?”

  “There was nothing—just mountains and open plains all around us. We went through an underwater doorway that took us into the market.”

  Tiki nodded. “That is a simple entrance. Many of them are far too complex for the average person to uncover, which I suppose is the point. For instance, to enter most of the goblins’ territory, you have to go through quite an ordeal to find the doorway. Perhaps the entrance to this…crypt, is not actually under the mountain, perhaps it is within the lake itself.”

  “That’s brilliant, Tiki,” I said.

  Tiki shrugged. “If there is an archway in that lake, I don’t imagine it will be as simple as what we have seen. And you should know although Drakar is one of the most beautiful dimensions, there are dark territories and creatures that dwell there. Especially in the worlds within the waters. One must be careful.”

  “It’s the Underworld,” I said. “When isn’t there some terrible creature around the corner? Do you remember the goblin?” I shivered at the thought and all the sarcasm left my voice. “Tiki’s right, we better be careful.”

  Chapter 14

  Everyone had broken away from the table, but Chief lingered over the scroll, watching me. We’d been through so much since he’d helped Rayna through the shift, I felt like we’d hardly spoken.

  “Chase, do you have a minute?”

  “If you have a complaint about Eric, trust me I understand, but right now we need all the help we can get.”

  Chief smiled. “He is a strong personality, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about what happened back at the warehouse. You had Dante right there and the voices tore you away.”

  “I…yeah.” I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “I want to remind you of our time spent on the Hollowlights retreat, when your mind was being infiltrated by Riley and the Brothers. Their actions in your mind caused injuries to your body. I believe that you could spare yourself pain, as well as future dangers, by using that same approach with the voices.”

  I thought about it for a moment and immediately recognized a flaw in Chief’s suggestion. “This isn’t the same. It happens when I’m awake. Not only that, they aren’t breaking into my mind the way Riley was. I can’t find their energy and push it out of my mind. They live inside me. I can feel them, even now, roaming around my soul trying to find a way in.”

  “Perhaps you can. You know how to astral project and push yourself outside of your body. When the voices become overbearing, you must look inward. You cannot eject them, but you can push them back, perhaps buying yourself a moment of sanity in dire moments.”

  I didn’t think what Chief was saying would work. This was a completely different scenario, but if my life depended on it or it became too much, it was something I would try.

  “If it happens again, I’ll give it a shot.”

  Chief nodded, his hair drifting over his shoulder. “I’m happy to hear that. We are preparing to leave; I do hope you’ll be safe in your journey.”

  “I will, and please be careful. Getting numbers on our side is important, but not at the risk of more lives. If things don’t feel right, don’t hesitate to walk away from whatever you’re dealing with.”

  Chief smiled and bowed to me. “Safety is always my top priority.”

  The Hollowlight leader departed from the table, joining Garrett and Karissa in a discussion in the corner. Karissa waved to me and I waved back. She smiled, as always, and it never ceased to amaze me how she stayed positive during dire times. Maybe these weren’t dire to her. Maybe this was a welcomed escape from what her life could have been if Arian was still alive.

  “Chase.” Marcus stood beside me.

  “Hey, I’m just going to find Rayna. I want to see if they’ve found anything new in the book.”

  “I am headed that way myself, but I hoped to have a few words with you first.” Marcus’s neutral expression clung to his face. His tone was cool and even, and it made me wonder how he kept it all inside.

  “Sure.” I tried to make my voice sound level, but I knew what was coming.

  The kitchen was empty, but the hum from the cooler that held Vincent’s blood was loud. It was a static noise I welcomed. More and more lately when I found myself in complete silence, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. I feared that when I found peace and quiet something would be coming in to shatter the moment, and so the low hum of the cooler comforted me.

  Marcus closed the door, the brass latch clicking into place. I felt the room grow smaller and I wanted to avoid what was coming, but there was no way around it. “Chase—”

  “Before you start, Marcus, I know. I know you’re not happy with what happened. It was rash and a lot of people could’ve been hurt, but you have to know I wasn’t being intentionally reckless. We were outnumbered at the time and Dante was about to lay a deadly blow to me. I panicked.”

  Marcus opened his mouth to speak, but I shook my head and cut him off.

  “I know it isn’t smart to call an element you’ve never used, but I just grabbed the first one I reached. In my defense, we were in dire straits. I relied on the only thing I had to get us out of there—my instincts. They haven’t always led me in the right direction, but you know as a hunter, going with your gut is sometimes the only option.”

  “My turn?” Marcus asked, his forehead creased and a strange look played over his face. “I wasn’t going to say anything about what happened at Vincent’s.”

  “You weren’t?”

  “No. I wanted to talk to you in private about everything coming up. I wanted to see what you were thinking as far as a plan.”

  “Oh…” A flush of embarrassment flooded my face and I suddenly felt uncomfortable, like I’d accidently spilled a secret.

  The strange look I’d seen on his face turned out to be amusement, and Marcus’s lips cracked into a bright smile. “I think what you did back there, although risky, was smart. If you recall, in the beginning, I was excited to work with you was because of your instinct. You’re sharp, Chase, and in a fight your gut is almost never wrong. Before you had magic, before you were the Protector, you were a hunter, and elements or no elements, you were a damn good one.”

  His words hit me hard, sounding almost identical to what my mother had told me in that dream. I nodded and feigned a smile. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Marcus, but you’re wrong. My instincts have hindered me—hindered us—more than they’ve helped.”

  “You’re mistaking instincts for desires.” Marcus moved to the table in the corner, a stack of chairs piled up behind it. He leaned against it, his massive arms gripping the edge. “You’ve got this guilt inside you like you’re responsible for all this and you’re not. Did you go against what you were told on numerous occasions?” Marcus canted his head to the side and shrugged. “Yes, but not without reasoning.”

  Part of me wanted to speak, to tell him he was wrong, but the other part wanted to hear him out.

  “You were exiled at a young age and a pivotal time in any man’s life. Every adult and mentor you’d ever had, with the exception of Tessa, betrayed you. The only world you’d ever known had been taken away, and you were left to survive a life full of monsters on your own. Keeping your head above water was difficult most days, I’d guess. I have no doubts as to why you wouldn’t listen to those around you. I don’t think I’d have done things differently in your shoes.”

  “Thanks…” I said, unsure how to reply. It felt good to know that after all this Marcus understood where my head had been.

  “I know why you made the decisions you made, and regardless of their outcomes, you’ve turned into something more than the boy I met months ago. You’ve grown, and not just into a man, but a true hunter. One I respect.”

&n
bsp; Words were lost on me.

  “You’ve led this group through horrible dimensions, filled with some of the fiercest beasts I’ve ever seen, yet we’re alive to tell about it. Forget what we haven’t done and be proud for a second. Proud of yourself for how far you’ve come. How far you’ve taken everyone.”

  His words made me want to smile, but the thought of Willy came into my mind and took the urge away. “Not all of us lived to tell about it.”

  “And to be frank, we can expect more to fall before this fight is over. We all know why we’re here, and we stand behind you. Nobody has forced us. This is the choice we’ve made. Don’t discredit that or yourself. That’s what Riley wants. That’s how he plans to win: by getting inside your head and making you think you’ve already lost. Be strong like I know you can be.

  Trust your instincts.”

  I tried not to feel guilt about Willy, but it was hard. I missed him. And the thought that others might die was almost too much, but I knew Marcus was right. I let his words comfort me as best they could. I couldn’t think about what might happen right now. Letting Riley get to me would give him power. Power he didn’t deserve. The only way he had gotten inside me to drag me down was because I let him. I let him convince me he was right and that my friends were at risk because of me. That might be true, but they were here because they wanted to be—because they believed in me.

  “Thanks, Marcus.”

  “You’re welcome.” He smiled.

  “I mean it. Not just for this talk, but everything: for taking me and Mom in when we had no place to go, for trusting me when you knew you shouldn’t, and for saving my ass on more than one occasion. Even when I did something wrong, or said something out of line, you never stopped believing in me. I don’t think I need to tell you what that means to me.”

  Marcus pushed off the table and his massive hand swallowed my shoulder and squeezed it tight. “I’ve always believed in you, son. So did you mother, so did Willy, and so does everyone who stands behind you, even Vincent. If we didn’t believe, we wouldn’t be here. But we aren’t enough. Now it’s time for you to believe in yourself.”

  “I’m working on it.” I offered a half-smile. It was genuine, but all I could muster.

  “Which is why you need to go to Drakar without me.”

  My heart hesitated for a moment before it took its next beat. The floor of the kitchen seemed to fall out beneath me and the air was stuck in my chest. “What?” I asked.

  “Riddley believes if we’re going to get the other districts on board, we need to meet their elders in person. And I agree. You and Jax were right. You said if we’re going to build an army we need to do it all the way. There can’t be anything half-assed about it. We need those hunters, and I’m not sending Riddley alone. Nobody goes anywhere alone from here on out.”

  “I…I don’t disagree. But back at the cabin you suggested I go into hiding. Now you’re telling me to go back down into an Underworld dimension alone? I’m on board, but it just caught me off guard.”

  “I’m not so proud that I won’t admit when I am wrong. Hiding would’ve been a bad decision. Riley is too powerful and we can’t waste any more time. Between him, the Brothers, the Visceratti, and who knows what else, we have to act now. But you’re wrong about one thing. I’m not letting you go anywhere alone.”

  ******

  Marcus left it at that. He had agreed with my original plan and Tiki, Rayna, and Vincent would be coming with me. Marcus had tried to push Eric and some of his hunters on me too, but it didn’t take more than a glare before he retracted that statement. Eric was a good fighter but when we weren’t fighting, he caused more problems than not.

  Jonathan, Rayna’s dad, had urged Chief to let him come with us, but Rayna was very forward in her decline. She still wasn’t sure how she wanted to pursue things with him. I remembered the relief on her face when she found out he had survived, but she said she wanted to get through all this before she took things any further with him. When Jonathan pressed harder, Chief explained that he needed the entire pride focused on the task at hand, and that Jonathan needed to look at the big picture for now.

  Eric was tasked with reaching out to any other rogue hunters he knew, and he seemed happy with that. Vincent’s vampires were already healing and after saving them for the second time, there was no doubt in my mind that they felt an allegiance to us. Several of them had approached me individually to tell me so. I hoped that when I spoke to Vincent, he wouldn’t put up a fight. He’d sworn to me over and over again that he would help, but in the past that hadn’t proved to make him come willingly. Vincent was Vincent, and everything with him was like pulling teeth. Considering he’d experienced a bit of that for himself recently, there was a glint of hope inside me that said he might be accommodating for once.

  Rayna and Grams were crowded around a small table in a back room. Rayna was in the middle, her eyes intense and focused on the book. Marcus cleared his throat as he entered the room, hands clasped behind his back. A circle of unlit candles surrounded their table and the room was silent. Rayna remained fixated on the book, but the others seemed focused on her.

  After a long moment of feeling out of place, Grams finally looked up and grunted. “Can’t you see the kitty is reading? We’re busy. What do you want?”

  Marcus looked down at the blank pages and raised his eyebrows. “Reading?”

  Rayna’s intensity broke and she looked up. Dark red strands of hair were mixed with the black and falling in her face. She pulled them back with her hand and smiled. “These pages aren’t blank.”

  Marcus and I looked at one another then back down at the book. It was open and thick pieces of blank parchment were on both sides of the page. Marcus reached forward, flipping a few blank pages to the left and then the right. “Are we missing something?”

  “Yes!” Rayna nearly jumped out of her seat, moving around the table. She turned the book to face them, running her hands over the seemingly empty pages. “We all were.”

  “I think you need to be a little more specific,” I said.

  Rayna shook her head and the recently pulled back hair fell forward, framing her face. “Of course, I’m sorry, but this is exciting. I can read them. These pages aren’t blank to me.”

  “But you’ve looked at this book before and—”

  “Yes, but I was looking for the spell I thought would take you to the gods, before you tried the ring. I had seen there was a blank section in the middle, but I didn’t focus on it. When we opened it today, the pages were still blank. It drove me crazy, so I thought I’d reach out to the Fade. Maybe I could summon a spirit or something that would be able to help. Some of the spirits there are ancient, so someone had to know something, right?”

  “So you found one who told you the blank pages were not actually blank?” Marcus asked, trying to follow her train of thought.

  “Not exactly. I put the book in the center and we set up all the candles, but as soon as I started to channel the Fade, the words started to appear. My magic activated the book somehow.”

  “But the pages are still blank,” I said.

  “Only to you. Well, to everyone except me.”

  “So what do they say?” I asked.

  “I haven’t read all of them yet, but so far it talks about the Protector’s duty to fight for the gods. It essentially says you’re their champion, defender of the Otherworld. And here,” she pointed to the bottom of the second page, “it says if Ithreal’s essence is invoked, the only true way to stop him is the way it all began.”

  “The way it began…” I trailed off. “At your old house? Or at the tree? Or possibly the volcano in Drakar?”

  Rayna shrugged. “I’m not sure. It doesn’t go into more detail about it.”

  “Is there anything in there that is actually helpful?” I asked. “Anything specific?”

  “No,” Grams grumbled. “I told you they were assholes.” Grams pointed to the ceiling again. Eric walked into the room then and Grams gave
him a look that would turn Medusa to stone. “Get the hell out!” I expected an argument or some kind of rebuttal, but Eric turned around in stride and left the room without a word.

  There was an ounce of happiness that sprouted inside me seeing Eric walk away from that, but I fought back the smile. “Rayna?”

  “I haven’t finished reading. Give me a second.” Rayna’s fingers ran left to right over the next few pages. “It repeats the words on the scroll and talks about the gods coming together to bless the Protector. That could mean the gods that exist now, or the gods’ souls you’ve already invoked.” Rayna turned over the page and scanned it for a moment. “It does say that Serephina’s soul piece is the key to Ithreal’s true form being released from his prison.”

  “Elyas is the soul from the soul piece, but we don’t know what object the soul piece is. How can we possibly protect it?”

  Rayna focused on the page, ignoring more questions from Grams and Marcus. I moved closer and whispered, “Rayna?”

  She didn’t respond at first, and finally the questions died down. We all stood, awaiting her response. When she lifted herself from the book, her face had paled. Her eyes were distant and she turned to face me.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What does it say?”

  Rayna swallowed and it looked like it hurt. The confusion that distorted her features didn’t match the words she spoke. “According to the book, we already have Serephina’s soul piece for Earth.”

  “What?” Marcus asked. “How is that possible? The scroll?”

  She shook her head and lowered her gaze. The silence and anticipation was killing me.

  “Rayna, what the hell is going on?” I asked.

  Looking up at me, her green eyes narrowed. “It says the soul piece is you.”

  Chapter 15

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I’m the Protector, I can’t be the soul piece.”