by E. G. Foley
Each took hold of a handle and pulled the double doors open for their master to enter. The most curious sound filled the air—a deep, resonant rhythm.
Lub-dub, lub-dub…almost like a heartbeat.
But it was much too loud, too forceful. She could feel it vibrating inside her ribcage. What the devil?
Ravyn crouched down on the landing and stared into the room as Wyvern entered. She furrowed her brow in fascination, not understanding at all what she was seeing in there.
It wasn’t so much a room as a laboratory set up in a giant dark cavern, with a huge, columnar machine in the center. Some five feet across, the machine reached nearly to the ceiling, with a greenish liquid visible inside.
Ravyn had no idea what this was, but her Guardian instincts sensed a grotesque malevolence behind it.
The inexplicable apparatus was pumping the liquid up and down, and pushing it out through a tangle of tubes that flowed from it in all direction, twisting this way and that, connecting it to dozens of small, dark alcoves pitting the cave’s walls.
Hold on…
She squinted, using all the acuity of her sharp Guardian eyes to peer into the nearest of those alcoves.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Those are people in there?
Sleeping or unconscious men and women lay in containers rather like glass coffins in each of the alcoves. The tubes running from the machine fed into each one’s left arm…just above the spot where a Lightrider received his Flower of Life implant.
She leaned closer, straining her eyes.
It can’t be…
As the heavy doors began to swing shut, she spotted a familiar face with a bushy red moustache inside that coffin.
Ravyn gasped in astonished recognition.
Tex?
CHAPTER 35
Red Sky at Morning
Finnderool, Sir Peter, and Ebrahim had been sent out to finish the demolition job on the island of Nisáki, where the children had finally confessed the Atlantean artifacts were stored.
As for Janos, when he heard the name the children had given Derek of the antiquities dealer in Malta, he took it upon himself to tie up that particular loose end.
This little worm’s treachery had resulted in Wyvern sending the Nightstalkers after Jake. So of course Janos was glad to settle that score.
Ambling through the labyrinth of dark, cobbled lanes, he searched out his target and tried to ignore the rage he’d felt ever since he’d seen Urso slaughtered right before his eyes.
His last and only real friend.
Something in him had changed after that. He was almost afraid to wonder exactly what it was. But he felt odd, very odd indeed, and very much colder than he’d ever felt before.
Ranging through the moonlight in restless solitude, he mused on how very hard he had tried to preserve his humanity in his new un-life. Had tried to love his beautiful and sinister vampire brides—even after he realized how they’d tricked him with their glamours.
Like a fool, he had actually seen them at first as damsels in distress that he could rescue somehow. It was only after the honeymoon that his eyes were opened to the truth: they were murderous harpies who enjoyed toying with their prey before they fed.
And their children!
When he’d learned he was going to become a father, Janos had been so happy. For a few short months, he’d had hope amid the darkness of his new existence. Then the creatures had been born, and it was all he could do not to recoil in dread from his own repulsive hatchlings. But still, he had tried to be a good papa.
There came a point, however, when not even a vampire could keep telling lies. Not even to himself. His existence was a nightmare, in short, and the devil-may-care bravado he wore in front of others was naught but a mask.
Only the girl, Isabelle, by her empathic powers, had discovered he was as trapped as that tortured angel he’d found in the bowels of the Black Fortress.
Oh, if only he’d listened to Derek all those years ago and simply walked away…
But it was too late now. So stupid. Janos knew that such a fool did not deserve a second chance. He only deserved to do the Order’s dirty work, as needed, and to lie for them, for he was good at that.
Tonight, though, listening to the sound of his own footsteps echoing in the hollowness of dark, twisting streets as empty as his soul, Janos decided that the loss of his humanity was really nothing to be mourned.
All it brought him was pain, after all.
The death of Urso had severed his last link to the living world, so Janos abandoned any intention of surviving the coming war. He’d fight as hard as he could for as long as he could be of use, but when death came, he would welcome it with open arms.
Then his footsteps stopped, and he lifted his gaze to the quaint wooden sign hanging over one of the shops. Antiques, it said. Proprietor: Dr. Dmitri Giannopoulos.
Now that is quite a mouthful, he thought, and smiled with velvet menace. He was pleased to see a light on in the shop window, despite the lateness of the hour. It was coming from the back of the establishment.
He let himself in, since the door was unlocked. The Open sign hung on it was all the invitation any vampire needed to come in.
A little bell jingled over the doorway. Janos stepped in, glancing around at the eerie rows of silent, staring statues and tawdry replicas of ancient vases.
He shut the door behind him with a discreet click and walked in slowly, on his guard for anything that Wyvern might have supplied for his servant’s protection that could give him any trouble.
There was nothing.
The only sound or sign of life came from the disheveled little man slumped behind the desk in the back.
Talking to himself.
“Good evening.” Janos slowly walked toward him through the shadows.
The archeologist didn’t even look up.
“I beg your pardon,” Janos said smoothly. “Are you Dr. Giannopoulos?”
Janos realized the man was drunk. The empty bottles littered about the desk made that clear—but there seemed to be more to this decline in the professor’s mental faculties than mere wine.
He was in his own world, whispering to himself. “It was real, I tell you. He could make the rocks fly up into a pile and walk about…”
Janos pursed his mouth. Oh, he had seen this before. The aftereffects of direct dealings with evil. It happened to vampire minions all the time.
The poor fellow had been driven mad by his service to Wyvern, by all he had seen, and perhaps from heavy exposure to the Atlantean artifacts themselves.
“Ahem. Dr. Giannopoulos?” he tried again politely. “I understand you sell rare antiquities.”
The man’s bleary gaze climbed to meet his. “Er, y-yes… How can I…?” He struggled to pull himself together.
Janos smiled patiently. “I hope I’m not intruding. The sign said you were open?”
“Yes, yes. At your service, of course,” the doctor mumbled, clearly desperate for customers. He put his glasses on and tried to smooth his greasy hair. “Was there something in particular you…?”
“Actually, I am looking for something very old.”
“Excellent, excellent.” Giannopoulos tried to stand, but wobbled and plopped back down into his chair. “Greek, Roman, Egyptian? Phoenician, perhaps?”
“Even older than that,” Janos said, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “I hear that you, sir, have discovered the lost treasures of Atlantis.”
The man’s glazed, bloodshot eyes widened. He glanced around nervously, then whispered to Janos, “How do you know about that?”
“Lord Wyvern told me,” Janos confided with a knowing air. “He gave me a copy of your extraordinary book.”
“Really?” Giannopoulos drew in his breath, and seemed to take in Janos’s own vaguely sinister demeanor. “You…are a friend of His Lordship?”
“Oh yes,” Janos said. He killed a man who was like a brother to me two weeks ago, actually. “Our acquaintance goe
s back for several years.”
He gave the doctor a meaningful look, and let the fellow take that as he willed.
“Aha…”
If Giannopoulos assumed that Janos, too, was a sorcerer, well, that was hardly his fault.
Janos gave him a sympathetic gaze. “May I ask, are you all right, Professor? You seem a little unwell.”
“No, no, I’m fine. It’s just… Well, it’s all very confusing!” he whispered. With another paranoid peek over each shoulder, he leaned closer. “I mean—have you ever noticed that His Lordship has six fingers on each hand?”
“Oh yes. It’s most intriguing, isn’t it?” Janos asked, using all his vampire charm as he leaned against the desk with a confidential air.
“And double rows of teeth!” the man whispered, anxious and bewildered.
“I know. Very rare. ’Tis a mark of great distinction, and proof of his pure Nephilim bloodlines.”
Giannopoulos blinked.
Janos tilted his head thoughtfully. “I understand His Lordship had you to thank, my good fellow, for informing him about those pesky children that came into your shop…?”
Only a glimmer of wariness passed behind his bloodshot eyes at the question, but Giannopoulos could not contain his disgust. “You mean the magical boy? Horrid little barbarian. Oh, yes. He came in here, tormented me—” Giannopoulos tried to hold back, but it seemed his need to unburden himself of his frustrations over Jake’s naughty deeds was greater than any misgivings he might’ve had about his late-night customer. “Their behavior here was nothing compared to what they did on the island. They were supposed to die there, but nooo!” The man scoffed and shook his head.
“What happened?” Janos asked innocently.
“They destroyed them!” Giannopoulos cried, his anguish bursting from him. “Buried them, under tons of rubble. Gone! All my Atlantean treasures.” He shook his head, distraught. “All gone. Buried under tons and tons of rock.”
“Did you tell Lord Wyvern this?”
“Of course I did! I didn’t want His Lordship blaming me for it. That horrible boy and his little friends—they’ve ruined my life! Don’t you see? I was to have gone down in history! Just like Dr. Schliemann. But not anymore!” he said angrily. “Now I’m nothing once again. So, yes, my friend, you’d better believe I told the earl right away. As far as I’m concerned, whatever His Lordship may have done to them, the young ruffians deserved it.” He paused. “What did you say your name is, by the by?”
“Probably better not to use names,” Janos said sweetly, “under the circumstances.”
“Ah yes, of course. Well, for your sake, pray you have no dealings with that enfant terrible, as the French say. His companions are almost as bad. In fact…” He glanced around furtively again. “I can tell you in no uncertain terms that at least one of the girls with him was—a mermaid!”
“No,” said Janos, feigning amazement.
Giannopoulos nodded earnestly. “It’s true! Mermaids are real. I’ve seen them for myself in these waters ever since I was a boy. You probably think I’m lying, but–”
“No, no, I believe you,” Janos soothed. “But I have bad news for you, friend. It’s not just mermaids that are real.” Then he leaned across the desk, widening his smile until his fangs showed. “So are vampires.”
The muffled clatter inside the shop that followed was barely heard in the dark, cobbled street outside.
The light winked out in the shop window, and a short while later, Janos stepped out into the moonlight again. He flipped the sign from Open to Closed before pulling the door shut quietly behind him.
With an elegant tug on his sleeves, he smoothed his jacket, wiped a small droplet of blood off the corner of his mouth, and then strolled back off into the darkness.
# # #
Jake, too, had turned colder ever since he’d learned of Red’s capture. His friends might’ve hoped that returning to Griffon Castle would improve his mental state, but they were mistaken. If anything, it pained him all the more to be at home. The place felt empty without Red there.
Maddox, obsessed with worry over his birth mother, trained constantly, waiting for any news. Dani and Isabelle were at a loss with how to deal with either boy, Jake knew. Arch and Nixie kept to themselves, just trying to stay out of the way. Nevertheless, they remained as loyal as ever as they all returned to England.
A mere three weeks had passed since King Nereus had granted him the promise of his particular reward.
Jake wasted no time in collecting on it. Derek and Aunt Ramona had agreed to take him to the Lincolnshire coast.
That very morning, Jake strapped on one of Archie’s underwater breathing masks, then braved the cold North Sea for a brief audience with the stern, Viking-like cold-water sea king, Oceanus.
After receiving a few instructions on what was and was not allowed regarding this dangerous prisoner, he had been escorted by Nordic mer-Vikings to the dungeon in an old shipwreck guarded by orcas.
Then Jake had interviewed the prisoner.
Fionnula Coralbroom was as horrid as he remembered, a bulbous sea-hag from the waist up, all dark, writhing tentacles from the waist down. It was hard to fathom how she had transformed herself into a beautiful woman by stealing the magic in poor Red’s feathers.
But when Jake had swum in to see her, she had certainly been intrigued to receive his visit.
As she was serving a life sentence for her crimes, they both knew Fionnula had nothing left to lose. And so, through a mix of threats from her muscled mer-jailers and bribes that would gain her a few small comforts in her cell, the sea-witch had relented and finally told Jake what he wanted to know.
By the time he had climbed out of the water that afternoon and walked up the beach in a daze at what he’d heard, he knew he would’ve fought any number of locker lords, destroyed half a dozen Atlantean orbs, and helped whole schools of mermaids in distress in exchange for the secret Fionnula had finally revealed.
The last time he had seen her, she had been trying to escape after Red and he had wrecked her plans. What she had said that night in the ballroom when Jake had cornered her had always seemed like nothing but a cruel lie meant to shock and distract him so she could get away–and it had worked.
But the tantalizing hint she had dropped had given him no peace ever since. Her words had gnawed continuously at the back of his mind.
“Your parents are alive,” she had taunted.
At last, over a year later, she had been forced to explain her cryptic claim.
“To the ordinary world—the humans’ little constables and detectives,” she had said in the chilly green gloom of her cell, “it looked like an ordinary murder, motivated by revenge. Yes”–she rolled her eyes—“I cast a glamour over Waldrick to disguise him as that pitiful baronet, Sir George, who ended up being hanged for the crime. That’s true. But how could I refuse your charming uncle anything, after all his kindnesses to me?
“Waldrick took me in and protected me when I was a fugitive, banished from this miserable kingdom. So, naturally,” she continued, “when he asked me to help him kill his brother—and you—it seemed a reasonable request. I was happy to oblige, knowing how much it would mean to him. All he really wanted was his turn to be the earl.”
Jake shook his head in disgust.
“But then”—her simpering tone sobered—“your uncle confided in me that your parents were Lightriders. And that changed everything.”
“How?” Jake demanded.
“Well, from there, things became considerably more complex.” Fionnula sighed. “My poor, dear, stupid Waldrick. So trusting. I didn’t see fit to tell him of the change in my plans,” she added. “He’d be none the wiser, after all. I saw no reason why we both couldn’t get what we wanted.”
“What was in it for you?”
“Aside from the use of the gryphon feathers restoring me to my former magnificence? Why, an alliance of sorts—just in case I ever needed more serious help on land than my darli
ng Waldrick could provide.”
“What do you mean by—” Jake started, but she flicked her fingers to shush him, determined to tell the tale in her own way.
He shut his mouth.
“Waldrick got the pleasure of gunning down your parents and becoming the earl, as he’d so long dreamed. Disguised by my magic as Sir George, he got away with it scot-free, too—at least, until you came along.”
“Well, I hope you’re happy to hear that your actions ruined your hero’s life along with mine,” Jake said angrily. “Because right now, Uncle Waldrick is imprisoned in a tower in the middle of dragon country, and if he ever tries to escape, he’ll no doubt be eaten by the local wildlife.”
“Humph! I already knew that, of course,” she huffed. “But perhaps his sentence might’ve been a little lighter if anyone had ever bothered asking me about the bullets that we used.”
“What? What about them?”
She just sat there gloating, savoring the small measure of power the knowledge gave her.
“Explain yourself!” Jake ordered.
“First, tell me this, boy. Did you really blow up Davy Jones?”
“Yes,” Jake snapped, impatient to hear the rest, but she started laughing.
“That is so amusing! We had some good times, Davy and I,” she purred. “I do love a bad boy!”
“Oh, blech.” Jake grimaced. She really had no shame, the hussy.
“Don’t worry; he’ll be back. It may take him a century or so, but fate is fate, and my old, jolly pirate can’t escape his, any more than you or I can, Jacob.”
“Would you please get on with your story?” he insisted.
“Yes, yes. Furl your sails, as Davy would say.”
“The bullets?” he reminded her.
“Indeed.” A sly smile of satisfaction curved her blubbery lips. “Now, you’re a smart boy, Jake. Do you really think I would go to all that trouble of changing Waldrick’s appearance for the task, and not bother to dust the bullets with a pinch of magic, too?”
Jake stared at her. “What did you do?”
She could not seem to resist having the chance to brag at last about her sinister accomplishments. She simpered as though she were still the beautiful opera star Waldrick had paraded around London on his arm. “The cute little silver bullets that I loaded into the pistol for Waldrick were treated with something very special.”
