by Carmen Caine
Seizing one of the locks, I slipped my hand into my pocket. Marie’s watermark immediately slid into my seeking fingers and, taking up the tear-shaped stone, I quickly dropped it into the lock and moved to the ring.
“What is this?” Jacques hissed, baring his fangs.
“A watermark, most powerful,” I explained, setting the thing upon the ring and clicking it shut. The lock clamped onto the surface with a metallic clang before melting inside. “It’s a message, Jacques, for one who can undo the Mindbreaker.”
The French vampire lifted a disbelieving brow. “Undo the … Mindbreaker?”
“It will soon trigger, leaving a message for the one bearing the highest code of honor and the strongest sense of justice,” I swore, thinking of my future latchling. “A white warlock and a highlander worthy of his clan. One who will lead the charge to destroy the Mindbreaker, once and for all. A latchling of great promise.”
Jacques tilted his head to the side, and then his dark eyes flooded with realization. “A latchling,” he gasped. “You gave birth to a latch—”
“No!” I gasped, whirling to clamp my hand over his lips. “Never utter those words, Jacques, I beg you. They are most dangerous.”
He blinked and grasping my wrist in his cold fingers, pulled my hand down. “What do you hope to accomplish here—”
“He is at the gate,” Esmeralda’s reedy voice cut through our conversation like a knife.
Jacques’ head snapped back.
“Go!” I said, pushing him away. “Delay him a little longer, dear friend. I need but a moment and I will follow.” It was a lie, but he didn’t detect it.
With a nod, the elegant vampire vanished into the curtain of shadows, and just like that, I stood alone.
It was time.
I didn’t hesitate. Joining Esmeralda at the table, I lay my hand upon the Hell Stone. “You must open this for me, devilkin,” I said. “It is our only hope.”
She looked at me as one betrayed—and, indeed, I’d misled her. She sprang to her feet, her aged face a mute mask of horror.
I slid my hands over the Hell Stone’s rough surface, unable to hear the weeping, hideous screams of the lost souls I’d once heard before. Perhaps that, at least, was a blessing. “I must open this stone, Esmeralda,” I said. “It is my destiny to find its secret. ‘Tis the only way to truly stop him.”
“You do not know what you will suffer, foolish human,” she replied, the utter despair in her voice made the fine hairs on the nape of my neck bristle. “The moment you open the stone, it will suck you in and trap you there for an eternity.”
Suck me in? I blinked, but taking a deep, cleansing breath, I replied, “Then if that is my destiny, I will face it.”
“You do not understand. You will not die. You will live in torment—forever,” she stated harshly.
“Then I will do so,” I said stubbornly. “I must open it. I must learn what his secret is, else how may we win?”
Esmeralda’s shoulders sagged and I knew I had won.
“If I truly vanish into this stone, you cannot tell it to anyone,” I said then. “They must not know.” What good would it be for them to live in despair, knowing I lived in hell?
“This is foolish. You will fail,” she hemmed, her brow furrowed and her lips pursed in distaste. “What good is the knowledge if you’re stuck there with it?”
The way she put it sounded so simple, so true. But I knew better. Instinct informed me it was the key, the reason for which I became a latchling. “I cannot explain the force of my knowledge,” I told her. “It is something I know I must do.”
She dropped her head in her hands. “Fool,” she grated, though if she spoke of me or herself for aiding my quest, I could not tell. She didn’t fight further. Nor did she announce she would begin. She simply closed her eyes and concentrated.
The Hell Stone clicked, and the section with the eight-pointed star shifted down.
I held my breath, knowing the Hell Stone had been unlocked.
“I will not open the door for you,” Esmeralda said in a high-pitched, fearful voice. “You must open the door to your own doom yourself, fair lady.”
I swallowed and nodded, my limbs suddenly feeling like lead. Slowly, I lifted a hand and I watched my fingers slide over the stone, catching on the lip of the stone door.
Time seemed almost to stand still as, slowly, I pried the stone open.
I heard a sound first. The sound emanated from the stone, deep and intense, resembling an enormous swarm of angry hornets.
Then the stone’s door dropped wide open, revealing nothing but a blank, inky darkness. But the darkness began to grow. I heard Esmeralda’s thin voice shouting. A breeze stirred my hair. A warning from destiny? My last chance to run? Perhaps. But I did not take it.
I knew I faced my true fate at last.
The darkness grew and with it came the screams, both swallowing me whole.
So many things happened at once.
Agony flared over my entire body as I fell into that chamber of souls. I fell and fell. Dark tendrils of mist reached out, clawing and grasping at me. Eerie laughter floated around me like whispers in the wind.
The humming grew louder, mixing with high and low pitched screams of those banished into the darkness ages before me.
A deep thrum of terror began to vibrate in every cell in my body.
“No, Elizabeth,” I gasped, closing my eyes in the effort to refocus myself. “You cannot fail.”
But I did.
I gave in, putting my hands over my face to scream.
I couldn’t succeed in such a horrible place. How could I? Only pain and insanity lay ahead for me. Pressure began to build inside my skull as a sweeping wall of screams obliterated all thought, sapping my will. I hung there in the darkness, suspended in terror, no longer able to even think. Fear swirled around me like a living entity.
I do not know how long I remained that way.
I only know my next rational thought arrived with Esmeralda’s appearance, once again in cat form.
“You cannot stop now,” she said.
I blinked, startled that I could understand her once again. She faded from my sight the next moment and agony slashed through my body. I reeled backwards, coughing as white-hot fingers of pain rolled over me.
The screams echoing around me were impossible to ignore. I couldn’t shut them out.
Again, Esmeralda appeared in front of me, and this time, she brought with her a tiny bubble of peace, an oasis in the chaos surrounding me, threatening to unhinge my soul. I stared in wonder at the tiny cat, knowing my respite would last only a short time. Already, I could sense her protective shield failing, the forces outside being far too strong.
“Sleep,” the tiny creature sobbed, reaching up to place her paws upon my knee. “It is all I can do for you now, fair lady.”
I knew what that spell cost her. She’d sacrificed her true devilkin form to reach me here in the Hell Stone, to send me to the darkness of a dreamless sleep, just as she had her own kindred, still trapped within the stone. She’d be locked in the body of a black cat forever now, never able to change again.
I bowed my head. The night had been filled with so many sacrifices.
And for what?
I’d learned nothing.
Already, I could feel her spell working its magic upon me.
“May you never dream,” she said.
I barely registered her words as a heaviness descended over me. I felt my body rise as my soul moved to a safer place.
Caught half in a dream state already, a vision appeared to me then and I watched it, as if from far away.
I saw an eight-pointed star spreading far out below me, just like the one carved on the Hell Stone’s door.
At each point stood a Fallen One, a foul creature of the Hell Kind, ancient and evil. The Fallen Ones sought to walk the earth to feed on men’s souls, wreaking havoc with their every touch. But these Fallen Ones had no desire to walk on Earth. At leas
t, not yet. These Fallen Ones stood in Emilio’s thrall and in their clawed hands, they held a portion of his Mindbreaker mana, his power, appearing to the naked eye as a small, glowing ball of light.
So, that is how he’d vanished those many years ago. He’d devised a clever way to hide from the world. He’d sent his mana into the safekeeping of his minions and remained on earth as a vampire, simply biding his time for the day to retrieve his powers once again.
But as a vampire, Emilio lacked the power to summon the Fallen Ones back.
The Rowles entered the vision then, and I saw over time that Emilio manipulated them into fashioning the ring, a portal to access the Fallen Ones hiding place. Using the blood of those possessing the Second Sight, the Rowle warlocks called the Fallen Ones back, and one by one, the foul creature’s returned, to bow before Emilio and relieve itself of its burden, a portion of Emilio’s power.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
Six of the foul creatures had already done so, returning six portions of his power, each fragment stronger than the last.
I wanted to weep.
We all stood so very, very close to destruction.
Only two Fallen Ones remained in the mists, waiting to relieve themselves of their burdens.
In the midst of my despair, I saw it then: the secret to Emilio’s undoing, waiting there in the center of the star.
I reached for it, but alas, I’d lost control of my hands.
Esmeralda’s spell had caught me in its grip, and I was too weak to resist. I screamed in vain for the spell to stop, but my eyes closed and the last thread of my consciousness slipped away.
And in the Hell Stone I stayed.
A Latchling Most Powerful
I woke the day of his conception.
My latchling of promise.
My descendant.
At first, I did not understand the meaning of it. A surge of power flashed through the Hell Stone, bringing with it scattered visions of the past seven hundred years, and for a few precious fleeting moments, I regained consciousness.
I saw Dorian first. He lay in the ground, buried in Venice with a brick in his mouth. His flesh had rotted from his bones, but his mind still thrived. I wept for him, trapped in a hell just as I. Who had put him there? Why?
I saw Jacques next, imprisoned by a powerful witch.
The wolves? Few of the Stonehenge pack had survived the ravages of time.
And then I heard him.
My latchling.
A boy.
His name? Lucian.
But mystery of mysteries, how had he come to bear the surname of Rowle?
Lord Lucian Rowle.
Ironic.
I knew full well that he didn’t have one drop of Rowle blood pulsing through his veins. That blood had died over seven hundred years ago. Indeed, a snippet of a vision fled through my mind, revealing Lord Rowle had never recovered from my attack. He’d lain in his bed in Dunnottar, wasting away for months before finally passing on.
Yes, it was a surpassingly strange twist of fate that my daughter’s descendant would once again marry a Rowle and carry the same name.
It smacked of design … but whose?
Sleep beckoned me then. My last thought before Esmeralda’s spell swept me away once again was a blessing for Tabitha, the fledgling House Drake.
She’d kept her promise.
She’d seen my latchling born.
* * *
I awoke again on the day of his birth. I heard his cries, the cries of a newborn, of one coming to grips with the raw power unleashing in his tiny veins—an unimaginable power that had simmered over seven hundred years.
I wept upon hearing his voice even as I wondered how I’d heard it.
I had no power left.
But then, this latchling did.
Somehow, unconsciously, he was reaching back to me. An instinct buried deep within him knew that I still lived.
Lucian. My Lucian.
Again, sleep claimed me.
* * *
The next time I woke, I felt the pain of loss breaking his tender, young soul, the heart of a young boy having just lost his mother, and shortly after, his father.
His heart bled.
My Lucian … my poor, poor Lucian. I wanted to reach out, to cradle him close. I feared for him. He knew nothing of his heritage or of what, exactly, sang in his blood.
But then I felt it.
An evil presence in his life, something seeking to control him. A malevolence all too familiar.
Emilio.
I screamed at Lucian to run. I begged. I wept.
But alas, he did not hear me.
He could not.
I realized then why I’d begun to awake. In his times of stress, he unconsciously called out to me, unaware of how much he shared, how much he needed me in his times of suffering.
It was bittersweet that I began to wake more often. Esmeralda’s spell still held, though I did hear the screams in the Hell Stone but as if from a distance, like the memory of a bad dream.
I felt Lucian’s sorrow.
The poor boy met so much misfortune. Pain and sorrow had caught him firmly in their grip.
And then, at the young age of twelve, revenge arose to consume him.
At first, he struggled to walk the balance between honor and such a deep, deep anger—but he’d discovered the one responsible for his parent’s death.
Revenge one, then.
I wasn’t surprised to learn the identity. I’d expected as much.
Emilio.
Oh, but revenge ate my Lucian’s soul, causing him to eschew the white and choose the black arts. I wept that my latchling, my hope, the descendant of the Stonehenge Druids had chosen such a path. But I could not spare him the pain. Instead, I suffered with him.
The cycles continued. I wondered if my Lucian would ever know true happiness.
And then one day, something most unexpected happened.
I heard a new voice, a mysterious voice, one calling itself ‘One of the Damned’, but I could tell already she was anything but.
Cassidy.
Cassidy Edwards.
Her voice parted the Hell Stone’s darkness around me. I saw her, a delicate sprite of a child, but lean, quick-witted, and strong. I saw her with Dorian—my Dorian! He’d escaped his Venetian grave and stood tall and strong, just as I remembered him. But he stood with her in his arms.
Jealousy raged through me, even as I saw him practice his vampire wiles on the girl.
What was he after?
I saw it then. His honor. His loyalty. He sought to free his vampire clan. And still, even as I knew it a ploy, it hurt to see him there, kissing her as he’d once kissed me.
This Cassidy awoke then, a curiously powerful creature. She heard my thoughts, or some of them, speaking to her through the Terzi spells. I didn’t understand at first, but as time passed, I sought to reach back through each glimpse she provided to me, warning her of the Terzi warlock, speaking of my Lucian.
To my surprise, she heard my voice.
After seven hundred years, I’d actually spoken to another!
But the realization of exactly how that was possible came so very swiftly upon the heels of that happiness.
She could access the stone because … it was … hers.
She was Emilio’s child.
Another haze descended upon me. I battled it, fighting valiantly. I wanted to reach through the barriers, to converse with Cassidy, to understand where her loyalties lie. I wanted to speak with Lucian, to share what I knew, to warn him of the Fallen Ones, to let him know that Emilio stood only two fragments away from regaining his strength entirely, and I wanted to share the secret of his undoing.
But alas, sleep claimed me once again.
Time passed. I do not know how much.
But the searing power of Marie’s watermark pierced the shroud of that veil, jolting me into an awareness so strong I knew I would never again fall asleep.
Had the s
pell truly lasted these seven hundred years without triggering? But then, of course it would. I hadn’t died.
I opened my eyes, trying to see through the inky darkness surrounding me. Lucian had received my message. My abilities that he carried in his blood would awake soon. He would change, whether he willed it or not.
But he’d chosen the dark path.
I bit my lip, striving in vain to break free, to discover what had happened, but there is little I could do within the Hell Stone other than sit in darkness, fretting for what seemed like an eternity.
And then I felt it.
A sensation I recognized, a sensation that transported me back through time to a place of laughter and happiness.
Love.
True love.
My latchling, my Lucian had found love. And with that feeling, I felt a change in him, something that made me laugh aloud.
My Lucian had forsaken the dark arts.
My Lucian was turning white.
Tears coursed down my cheeks.
“Oh, my sweet latchling,” I whispered. “My powers will now awake in your blood. The Stonehenge stones will sing for you, my child.”
And for the first time since the nightmare began, I felt a surge of true hope.
The End
Elizabeth Rowle’s story continues in Cassidy Edward’s Novella: “Highlander Blood Moon”
About the Author
Click this link for a list of Carmen's books on Amazon
Like many of us on this planet, USA Today Bestselling and Multiple Award-Winning author Carmen Caine is from another world. She spends every moment she can scribbling stories on sticky notes that her kids find posted all over the car, house, and barn. When she’s not busy working as a software engineer or writing stories, she spends her time texting her kids on an insanely small, Keebler-Elf-sized keyboard (yes, she hates cell phones), trying to convince her Doberman that being jealous of the new Frenchton puppy just isn’t worth it (no luck so far), and tending to the barn full of animal misfits, including a runt lamb who sneaks inside the house and a rescue llama with a bad attitude.
