Nightfall (Pact Arcanum Integrated Serial Edition)

by Ahsanuddin, Arshad

  “I swear it on the Light.”

  Rory took a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “The pact is made.” The light flared, and Rory was drowning in music again, the echo of the voice thundering in his ears.

  Time moved forward again, though he remained a phantom in the room. From his astral viewpoint, Rory saw the underground chamber explode in pure white light—a power exceeding anything he understood of magic. He felt the psychic shockwave that smashed the stone walls to rubble and blew the roof of the underground chamber all the way up to the surface, the fragments of the ceiling raining down upon the mesa above them. A column of argent fire burst upward from the detonation into the starry sky and burned away the overhanging clouds. Through his soul’s connection to the vampire senses of his new body, he shuddered at the sensation of the sunrise in the middle of the night.

  Anaba stood gingerly and assessed her injuries, finding herself to be completely healed.

  Rory saw himself kneeling in the center of the room with his hands clasped in the same position as before—the flames extinguished as if they had never been. His skin and clothing were whole and unmarked, his eyes closed in a silent fugue.

  By the time Take had crawled to his hands and knees, Ana had already walked forward to stand in front of Rory, retrieving her staff as she went. She knelt in front of the vampire and touched his shoulder. “Rory? Can you hear me?”

  “Ana,” said Take, his voice strained as he grabbed his swords. “Get back. You don’t know how dangerous he is.”

  “How’s your neck, Take?” Ana asked, not turning around.

  Silence.

  Ana gently pried Rory’s hands apart.

  Take gasped at the blazing white cross branded into each of Rory’s palms.

  Ana held her free hand over the harsh radiance, trying to understand the magic she could feel locked within them. Then she let her hand fall to her side and stared at Rory in wonder. “It’s consecrated silver, tattooed through all the tissue layers of his palms and embedded in the bones of his hands, charged with a Pure Draw of holy power. But it’s remaining contained, and it’s not burning him like an activated holy object should.”

  Take whispered, “Is he still a vampire?”

  Anaba murmured the words to a spell, her strength having returned with her life. Immediately, each of them was surrounded by a colored aura. Ana’s and Take’s were white, and Rory’s glowed red. “He’s still a vampire,” Ana said. “The red light marks the Red Wind that keeps the vampires alive.” She looked at Take and then stopped, staring at the white light that gleamed from the other Sentinel and from herself. “That shouldn’t happen.” She banished the spell. “I don’t get it. Living creatures are supposed to be blue. There are only two spirit principles.”

  Take touched his triad sister’s shoulder. “Did you see what happened, Ana?”

  She nodded, passing on the memories of what she had seen while she lay paralyzed. “From the residue of power all around us, I’d say the entire room has been bathed in a Pure Draw, raw magic from beyond the Gates. It was an extra-planar incursion, Takeshi.” Noticing his blank look, she tried to explain. “Something intervened. Something so powerful that it shouldn’t even be able to exist in our universe. I could still feel echoes of the shockwave when I woke up, the intrusion of another level of reality into this dimension.”

  Take knelt beside her in front Rory. “From above or below?” he asked.

  Ana shrugged. “No idea. But I’m betting Rory will have the answers when he wakes up.” She climbed to her feet and walked away, sitting next to the altar to wait.

  Rory looked up into the light that still surrounded the room. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Your fealty has been accepted, Sean Magister Jiao-long. You are our instrument on Earth. Go now in peace, the way you came.”

  Rory found himself suddenly cast back into his body. With a silent breath, he opened his eyes, taking his time adjusting to his new senses. It seemed like it had been hours, but only a minute or two must have passed in this world. Anaba sat back against the altar and hummed to herself while Take paced in the open space next to Jiao-long’s body. Rory looked around tiredly and watched as the other two realized he was awake.

  Ana stopped humming and stood again.

  Take moved in front of Rory, both swords drawn. “Don’t try anything, Rory.”

  Rory stood and glanced at each of them in turn. “I’m sorry.”

  “Is that supposed to matter?” snarled Ana. She visibly seethed to Rory’s new senses. “You tried to kill us!”

  “And I pulled it off, too,” Rory said sadly.

  Ana frowned. “Are you saying we were dead? For real?”

  “Yes.” Rory sighed. “If I could have stopped myself, I would have. But it was too late. All I could do was fix it.”

  “Fix it, how?” asked Take, his brow furrowing in confusion.

  “I'll tell you how,” Anaba said, still furious. “He cut a deal.”

  Rory’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know?”

  Ana pointed to the chalice on the altar, still a third full of Jiao-long’s blood. “I know what that is for, though it shouldn’t exist, and I don’t know the spell to use it.” She shook her head. “Pact Arcanum. Christ, Rory, what have you done?”

  “What’s Pact Arcanum?” asked Take.

  “Remember the vision we all had when the Gift kindled? It’s a ritual that allows a magician to send an enslaved soul to bargain for favors with beings from other planes. That’s how vampires and Sentinels were first created.” Anaba’s voice was tight with disgust. “The knowledge of the ritual and the tools to perform it were systematically destroyed in the early stages of the war, after those who invoked it became so powerful that they wiped out their entire civilization fighting among themselves. The Sentinel Gift and the Nightwalker Firstborn were the only relics of their society that survived anywhere in recorded history.”

  “You said it yourself, Ana,” said Rory. “I cut a deal.”

  Anaba stalked toward him, stopping just inches away. “With what?”

  “It said it was an angel.”

  She threw up her hands. “Are you insane? You can’t make bargains with either side like that! They don’t see us as people, only pawns. As far as they’re concerned, we’re just instruments.”

  Rory chuckled. “That’s the same word it used.”

  “So you made a bargain with an angel. What did you ask for?”

  “Power.”

  Take frowned. “What kind of power? To do what?”

  “To raise the dead.” Rory folded his arms in front of him.

  The other two stared at him, aghast.

  “Rory…” Ana started to say, then faltered, trying to find words to express her thoughts. “I’m truly happy to be walking around again, but you shouldn’t have done that.”

  Rory’s gaze dropped. “I had to make it right.”

  Take sheathed his swords and put a hand on Rory’s shoulder. “Rory, what did you have to pay?”

  “I have to serve.”

  “For how long?” asked Anaba, still hostile.

  Rory gazed into the distance, his eyes unfocused. “Until the end of the war or the end of the world, whichever comes first.”

  Anaba stared at him. “You’re crazy.”

  “Those were the terms.”

  Take took a deep breath. “What kind of service?”

  Rory looked up at the stars glimmering through the rent in the cloud cover. “Maybe we should discuss this elsewhere? There’s no telling who saw the light or felt the shockwave.” He knew Take and Ana recognized his evasion, but over the link he could feel their need to get away from this place, steeped in Nightwalker power. He watched as their Sentinel instincts warred with their discipline, demanding they attack the vampire before them and stretching their control to the limits.

  Finally, Take nodded curtly. “Fine. We’ll figure this out when we get home.”
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  “First things first,” said Anaba, stepping up to the altar and closing her eyes.

  “Ana,” said Take, “what are you doing?”

  She didn’t answer, just lifted her staff to draw a sigil in the air in a trail of orange fire.

  The others recognized the symbol just before it was complete. Rory threw Take to the floor, shielding the Sentinel with his body as the room erupted in multicolored fire. When the storm cleared, Rory stood. The burns on his skin faded almost immediately, and he reached down to Take, who hesitated before taking his hand. Rory tried not to take it personally. After helping Take to his feet, he confronted Anaba. She was standing, unharmed, next to a six-foot circle of molten glass where the altar once stood.

  “A Rune of Unbinding?” Rory’s voice was edged with disbelief. “What are you trying to do, setting one of those off in close quarters?”

  “I am closing a door that should never have been reopened,” Ana answered coldly. She glared at Rory, her eyes hard and unyielding. “There will be no more bargains.” She tapped her staff against the floor, and the world turned white as she cast another spell. Then the three were standing back on the mesa, next to the new crater above Jiao-long’s underground fortress. Surrounding them was a large clearing where the trees had been blown down by the violence of the explosion.

  “All right,” Ana said over the link. “We need to get away from here then we’ll decide what to do next. Rory, get us coordinates.”

  Rory extended his senses to orient himself and calculate a bearing to teleport them away. Then he stiffened. “Oh my God.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Take.

  Wordlessly, Rory showed them exactly what he had detected: hundreds upon hundreds of vampires standing quietly around them, watching their every move.

  They were surrounded.

  NIGHTFALL

  CHAPTER 14

  September 2020; House Curallorn Stronghold, Cahokia Mound City, Collinsville, Illinois

  Layla sat in her sanctum, the apex of an inverted pyramid that extended deeply underground beneath the ruins of her great city of Cahokia. Bright tapestries and artwork from her client civilizations in Africa and America surrounded her, and she stared at them in admiration as she sipped delicately at her goblet of bloodwine. The air was perfumed by fragrant woods, kept vibrant through magic, and the sharp tang of human blood. Layla watched as her forces surrounded Jiao-long’s stronghold. Using her spell-enhanced sight, she saw through the eyes of her Primogenitor, watching the red lights of her enemies perish one by one, dying at the hands of her hapless pawns. The light of their lives winked out as the Sentinel assault on the fortress continued.

  Within minutes, all the lives in Jiao-long’s fortress had expired, except for the three Winds she had entrapped and the greater light of Jiao-long himself. Layla smiled, idly wondering if they would be strong enough to destroy the Firstborn vampire. If not, no matter. She had already arrayed her forces across the mesa above Jiao-long’s base. As soon as either side was dispatched, she would strike to dispose of the other. It was only a matter of time until her dominion was complete.

  The light of Jiao-long’s life disappeared. Layla laughed out loud. It was done! The long game had finally come to an end—her opponent had been taken out of play. She was about to order her forces to enter the fortress and eliminate the Sentinels when she noticed one of the remaining three lives had changed, the light shifting from blue to red. A new Nightwalker? How could that be? The three mortals in the fortress had been Sentinels; she had seen to it herself. How could one of them become Red?

  Frowning, she watched as one of the blue lights went out. Minutes later, the other was also extinguished, leaving the red light alone in the fortress. They killed each other. Extraordinary. Could Jiao-long have found a way to turn a Sentinel? A fledgling’s instincts would be to destroy any life that crossed its path, so it was plausible that a new vampire could turn on the others. No, that is ridiculous. No fully-active Sentinel has been turned since the imposition of the Gift more than thirty thousand years ago. There must be some other explanation.

  The spell she was using to view inside the fortress suddenly flared and burned out, and the psychic landscape rang like a bell as she felt the sun rise in the middle of the night, even from more than a thousand miles away. The mesa overlying the underground chamber at the heart of Jiao-long’s fortress exploded upward. Fractured stone and debris rained down across her forces. The trees were flattened around the site of the detonation, creating a wide clearing in the forest. A column of brilliant light burst out of the crater like a javelin, spearing upward into the night sky and burning away the overhanging clouds.

  Fire and Darkness! A mystical shockwave of such power could only be the result of an extra-planar incursion—the intrusion of another order of reality into this dimension. One of the greater powers has intervened on this plane, for the first time in thousands of years.

  She ruthlessly focused her thoughts, abandoning her strategies. Incursions were always linked to great upheavals in history, sometimes to the rise and fall of entire civilizations. The origin of the event must be eliminated immediately if any of us are to survive. All other concerns are secondary.

  Using the coordinates her Primogenitor supplied, she immediately teleported directly onto the battlefield and ordered her forces into the clearing. Just as she was about to send her forces into direct assault on the fortress, the white light of a teleport matrix formed in front of her. “Surround it!” she mentally instructed, as she walked forward alone to confront the threat. The light of the teleport matrix faded, revealing her three Sentinel proxies. Impossible. She had seen two of them die. What could it mean?

  * * *

  Take felt Ana try to teleport them to safety, but she stopped when a jumper block went up all around them.

  “Peace, Sentinels,” said a voice from the darkness in front of them. “We have no quarrel with you. We only wish to talk.”

  “Ana,” whispered Take, “make a light.”

  Anaba raised her hands slowly and spoke into the darkness. “I am going to cast a light spell. It has no offensive potential.”

  “Proceed,” said the voice.

  Ana mumbled under her breath. Immediately, a soft white light illuminated their surroundings. The vampires were arranged around them in carefully regimented concentric circles, layered deeply into the darkness beyond her light and encircling them completely. Before them, watching them with an unreadable expression, stood a single dark-skinned Nightwalker about six feet tall, with braided black hair hanging to her waist. She wore a formal black cape over her deep sapphire evening gown. “Takeshi Nakamura, called the Wind of Earth.” When she spoke, it became clear it was she who had addressed them from the darkness.

  Take looked at her. “Do I know you?”

  “You do not, though I know you. I am Layla Magister Curallorn, called Nemesis, the Prince of Wrath.” She moved closer, examining him as if he were an insect under a microscope. “I have been tracking your movements since the day you first opened your eyes, hoping you would lead me to victory.”

  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” said Take irritably. “It’s been a long night. If you’re not going to attack, stand aside and let us go.”

  “You will not leave, Sentinel,” she said fiercely. “Not until you give us your news. Where is Jiao-long?”

  Take tensed. “He got in my way, and now he’s dead. Are you going to get in my way, Nemesis?”

  A psychic sigh spread through the crowd, but the vampires didn’t budge from their positions. Nemesis laughed at him. “You are the first Sentinel in more than a millennium to have slain one of the Firstborn, Takeshi Nakamura. Shadowhunter, I name you.” She dropped the veneer of civility, and her eyes glowed red. “For five hundred years, I have waited for a Sentinel strong enough to eliminate my greatest enemy. Jiao-long forced me to divide North America into two territories, one on each side of the Great River, but neither of us was satisf
ied. I have used various proxies to feed you and your predecessors intelligence on House Jiao-long for centuries, thinking one day you might annihilate my opponent for me.”

  Takeshi stared at her, speechless.

  She flashed her fangs in a wide grin. “Did you think your string of successes was due purely to your own devices?” she asked in amusement. “Your tactical skill has brought about the endgame much faster than I anticipated, but surely you realize there was a greater game at work. You are to be commended for playing your part so well, Shadowhunter. A lesser strategist would have surely failed me.”

  Anaba’s eyes flashed. “You broke my wards to let Jiao-long’s scions capture Rory, didn’t you? And you weakened their psychic shields to allow me to follow them here.” Her knuckles showed white on her crystal staff. “I thought it was just a lucky break that led us to Jiao-long’s base, but it was a set-up. All of it.”

  Take ground his teeth in frustration, remembering Antonio’s forced betrayal. She had made them all dance to her tune like the conductor of an orchestra. “Is that what you think this was? A game for your amusement?”

  Nemesis gauged his outrage with amusement. “That is exactly what this was, mortal. And in any game, there comes a time to separate the players from the pawns. I am a player. Jiao-long was a player. You could have been a player, but you were not motivated enough to deal with Jiao-long.” She glanced behind Take to where Rory stood. “I merely arranged the proper incentive by allowing your lover to be taken.”

  Take felt Anaba mask her fear with casual disinterest as the Nightwalkers took a single step forward, tightening the ring around them.

  “Why does she think the two of you are sleeping together?” Ana thought over the link. “Did you guys hook up when I wasn’t looking?”