by D. D. Miers
My head shook as I looked back in the direction we’d run, to where Fleur and Quinn would now always remain. “We have to keep going. We have to finish this.”
“Then let’s see this rune you’re so certain about.”
My poor bag was riddled with cut marks and sprays of darkened blood, but it had held together enough to deliver our prize. I still felt, deep in the depths of my bones, that what I’d grabbed was important, but my heart still fluttered in concern that two people I’d come to consider friends had lost their lives over a mere piece of rock. What if I’d been wrong?
I pulled the stone out, now able to really look at it for the first time. The top edge curved in an unfinished, roughened edge while the flat of the stone boasted a single engraving that had everyone drawing in closer.
“That’s it,” Darius breathed. “That’s the symbol.”
“Well, shit,” Ronen teased, apparently trying to cheer me up. “You done good, Sloane.”
My smile was faint, given the recent loss, as Aedan reached in to flip the stone upside down. Sure enough, the back held more surprises than the front. Crudely drawn lines ran across the stone, their intersections marked with small triangles that pointed in different directions.
“What is it?” I ran my fingers across the engravings, half expecting something to happen. Nothing did.
“Let me see it.” Ronen snatched the rune, his eyes narrowing. “I know what this is.”
“Well?”
“It’s a damnable map.” A ghost of a laugh slipped from his lips, laced with pain and surprise. “A map for the tomb.” He shoved the rune back into my hands. “It’s the inside of our next destination.”
Silence pervaded our dwindling group as Ronen stalked off without another word.
“What just happened?” I asked Aedan.
“That’s where Clayvis died, Ronen’s first Fae familiar.”
“Ronen!” Darius ran after him, hissing his name beneath his breath. We were perhaps alone for now, but the more I looked to the shadowy world around me, I couldn’t help but feel that we were being watched.
“Shouldn’t we go after them?” I asked Aedan, who had yet to stop surveying the area.
“No, give them a minute. They’ll be back.”
I couldn’t help but wonder at Ronen’s pain for having lost his familiar. Perhaps I didn’t know Aedan all that well, but, even when I was facing the opposite direction, it was as if I could sense him there. Hard as I’d tried, I couldn’t ignore it; he was like a magnet I found myself drawn to.
“This city isn’t what I expected,” I suddenly said, wishing only to fill the void of silence.
“What did you expect?”
That was a question I didn’t know how to answer. We’d run down crumbling streets and past shanties that were no better than the camp outside, but I could also see sparkling gemstones and craftsmanship weapons beyond some of the shop’s clouded windows. Grass and weeds had sprung up, encasing some of the walls and rooftops in thick greenery. In every direction, the city seemed to sprawl outward. I imagined like any city, there would be both the good and the bad. Or, at least here, I imagined there would be the bad and the worse.
“I suppose I expected something…”
“Darker?” Aedan countered, his lips quirking ever so slightly. “You once thought all Fae, us included, were evil, did you not?”
My shoulders sagged with my heavy sigh. “Yes.”
“And yet, you no longer think I’m evil.”
“No, of course not, I—”
“I like to believe the same goes for them,” he countered, drawing my protests to a stop. “I don’t believe what we saw outside that wall can be pinned upon them all.”
I supposed he was right, but even as I looked out at the city that drew on for miles, I couldn’t help the chill that rattled through my bones.
“Hey!” Ronen shouted back from farther up the street. “You guys coming?”
We hurried after them, our march down the dirtied sidewalks eye opening. We stood within a metropolis the likes of which I’d never expected.
“The tomb is at least a couple of miles from here,” Ronen said. “We’ve got a lot of ground to travel, and, unfortunately for us, night is when the Dark Fae thrive.”
“Okay, so what are we going to do?” I asked.
“Keep our heads down, stay off the main roads, and hope no one asks questions.”
“Yeah, great. Sounds great,” I muttered, earning a chuckle of a snort out of Ronen as he took the lead.
“Just stick close.”
I held no quarrels with that, especially not as the city changed in every section through which we walked. The moment it appeared things began to improve in buildings that stretched toward the sky, we walked a bit farther, only to see the opposite side crumbling into what had once been a clear street. Through the open walls, wary eyes peered down at us, to the point my concern grew.
“We’re being watched.”
“Of course we are,” Darius murmured. We darted down the next narrowed street, where shells of cars rotted away, and old neon lights flickered with a pitching energy of magic. “And we aren’t alone down here either.”
Three figures poured out of a doorway ahead and stepped directly into our path.
“Well, would you look at that?” one of them slurred, their faces obscured by the darkness of their hoods. “A couple of Light Fae and…their pet humans.”
“Oh, and one’s a sweet young thing,” another sneered. I shivered under his leering gaze. “And she looks fiery. You know that’s how I like ‘em.”
Instinctively, I grabbed Aedan’s arm, already knowing he needed the reassurance to keep from doing something rash that would get us all killed. He hadn’t needed to say a word for me to feel the upset rolling off him.
“Look, guys, we’re just passing through,” Ronen said. “What do you want? Some coin?”
The three men laughed as one pulled a knife free of his pocket and flipped it effortlessly between his fingers. “We want you out of our part of town.”
“Yeah, I’m really failing to see what the problem is,” Ronen scoffed, “since that’s what we’re trying to do.”
“See, I really don’t think—”
Out of nowhere, Aedan shoved Ronen aside and clocked the man with the hardest punch I’d ever seen thrown. It wasn’t just the man who was stunned as he fell to the ground, but his friends as well. They stared in shock one second too long. In quick succession, Ronen and Darius grabbed the last two, the first head-butting the man so hard I swore he’d kill even himself, and the latter wrestling the man for the knife in his hand.
It was over almost faster than I could blink. Darius held the knife at the man’s own throat, and he hissed at me to hurry on ahead. I obliged, and didn’t spare a single glance back as I heard the telltale sound of a fist cracking against bone.
In seconds, Darius was back with us. He held the knife he’d stolen from the man out to me. Fortunately, no blood coated the blade.
“It’s not as nice as your dagger was, but it’ll do in a pinch.”
“Thanks.” I thrust it into the empty sheath, and while it sat a bit loose, it felt good to have another weapon at my disposal.
“They won’t all be quite so kind,” Ronen warned as we pushed on through endless runs of the city. Past encampments of tents and shoddy buildings filled with crying children and shouting men, we walked, our pace hurried and our goal in mind.
The city was only awaking now, and shock was at the forefront of my mind as Dark Fae after Dark Fae passed us by with no more than narrowed, sharp glances. They didn’t like us, but it seemed not all were willing to draw a weapon to prove it.
“It isn’t far now,” Ronen said when we turned away from the streets where the lighting flickered brightly, toward an area where shadows pervaded. While I thought I’d seen the worst of the crumbling walls and uneven streets, I’d been entirely wrong as the concrete beneath our feet became as difficult to trave
rse as the rocky mountainside.
“Shit.” Ronen’s arm flung out, dragging us to a sudden halt as we peered around the next corner. The street opened into a wide area covered in rubble and dressed in thick greenery that had encased it all. Yet, that wasn’t what drew my lips open. It was the massive beast that stood guard in front of what I presumed was our target. He stood nearly as tall as the eaves of the second-story building he guarded, up on two feet like a human but without any of the subtleties in his expression. Plain as day, one could see the viciousness on his face. Across his torso and limbs were snapped bolts and protruding arrows.
“What the hell is that?” I whispered, knowing now that Ronen had been here once before.
“That, my dear Sloane, is a berserker, and we’ll be lucky to survive it.”
16
It was a horrible plan. But it was the only one we had.
Killing the beast of a man wouldn’t be in our cards, not with Ronen’s skeptical warning or the injuries that seemed to do nothing but decorate it with snapped arrows that were now merely spikes upon his armor. We had but one option. We had to trap the beast, with efforts of magic and distraction, or we’d never make it out alive.
“Let’s go over it one more time.” Ronen scraped a crude map of the berserker and his surroundings in a stretch of dirt. “First, I’ll distract him long enough for Sloane to get into that pile of rubble. Sloane, don’t go too far. He runs faster than you think. Hit him with your crossbow to get him off me, and when you’re sure he’s after you, run. Best-case scenario, he trips in the rubble, then Aedan and Darius will be ready, and will use their magic to snag him in more vines than he can handle. It may not hold him long, but it will at least get us inside.”
“You don’t think he’ll try to come in after us?” I asked with visions of being trapped inside a collapsed building.
“He won’t damage what he’s here to protect. We just…might have a bitch of a time leaving after we’ve found the rune.”
“Oh, great. Yeah, that’s great.” I peered around the corner again, certain the thing could flick me with a single finger and break half my bones. “And you’re certain that’s where we need to go? It doesn’t look like a tomb.” Not with the striking columns that rose up the front, half of which were broken, and the marble facade that made it seem too bright to hold death in a city like this.
“It wasn’t always a tomb; it’s where the old humans stored their money.” Before I could satiate more of my curiosity, Ronen asked, “Now, are we all ready?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be.”
He stormed out, my heart thundering in absolute fear as the berserker’s attention swung to the dwarfed man. Ronen hadn’t had much at his disposal, but it took no more than a few swung rocks that bounced from the berserker’s chest like ragdolls to anger the beast. Once the mission was accomplished, Ronen ran away from the rubble pile, taking the beast’s eyes off my mark.
“Go, go, go,” Darius shooed as he urged me from our hiding place. I ran as quick as I could into the open and scaled, piece by piece, the rubble that would hopefully ensnare the berserker’s heavy steps. Unfortunately, not all plans went as precisely as hoped.
Ronen had gone too far. Apparently, the towering beast refused to stray far from the place he was meant to protect. He swung around as I hefted myself atop the next chunk of stone, my arms doing all the work before I jumped to my feet. For a moment, I caught his vicious gaze, certain he could kill me with it alone. Then, he charged.
The rubble shook violently with his every pounding step. Where I would have had ten seconds to escape, I now had only five. Knowing I could easily injure myself, I decided on the better of two evils. I spun and flung myself off the rubble. The jagged piles of rock came up to meet me, driving sharpened notes of pain into my torso and legs that caught the brunt of my weight.
“Sloane!” Over the din of the berserker’s steps, I heard Aedan shouting. “Get up! Run!”
I scrambled hard and fast, scuffing up what little of my leather pants had yet to be torn. Still, they kept me from smearing blood rather than leather shavings across the rocks as I hurtled back to my feet just in time for the earthquake to fall.
Dust and shards of rock engulfed me in a storm so thick a single breath burned my lungs. All around me, everything quaked, leaving me rattled and oblivious to the continued shouts. I couldn’t see, not in the thick dust that continued to hang in the air, and I was almost certain I was trapped and would find no escape.
The beast’s visceral screams were torture to my ears, and though I could see nothing, I crawled on hands and knees away from the booming sound. Between heaving coughs and my terribly slow speed, I finally reached fresher air, and found I could jump to my feet. I spun around, only to see the plan had yet to fully work.
The berserker had fallen, just out of reach of where I’d been. His screeches ripped across the air. Wrapped tight around his torso and limbs were vast stretches of thick vines that sprouted forth from the efforts of Aedan and Darius, via their magic. They focused on opposite sides of the beast, their own cries like that of warriors as they focused on the vines that spread swiftly.
The beast tugged his bonds, his fist crashing over and over into the stone below, obliterating it and giving him an iota more momentum. It was enough. A single arm ripped the vines length by length, and before Darius could react, the creature swung fast and hard.
Darius flew like a ragdoll, his body cascading lifelessly across the open ground until it came to a slow, resting stop. His arms and legs protruded awkwardly from beneath his torso, and he made no immediate move to get up.
“Sloane!” Ronen shouted from near the entrance. “Help me get him inside!”
I couldn’t help but glance back to Aedan, whose teeth gritted in a shout of frustration and strength that had him alone forcing the vines to encase the escaping beast.
“Go!” he yelled at me. “Run!”
The berserker hadn’t given up, and he flung stone after stone at me as I ran, some the size of boulders. Several shattered just before me, encasing me in dirt and dust and threatening to leave me with a broken ankle as I teetered on the loose rubble. Finally, I reached Darius’s side. With Ronen’s help, I dragged him through the doors that had already been snapped off the front of the building.
Inside, we scooted him behind the nearest half wall, an oddity to be sure, and with desperation in his voice, Ronen shouted at his familiar.
“Darius! I’ll kill you myself if you die!”
Footsteps slammed loudly outside. Aedan came through the door and skidded to a halt. “How is he?”
“He’s breathing,” Ronen answered. “But he—”
“Has a horrific headache,” Darius murmured, his voice barely audible above the continued cries of the angered beast. “Did it work?”
“Well…” Aedan said. “We’re all inside, but I can’t promise our exit will go as hoped.”
“We’ll just have to figure that out later.” Ronen looked directly at me. “The rune, where is it?”
“Here…” I yanked out the hefty piece of rock and handed it over to him. He wasted no time studying it with narrowed eyes that glanced about the room.
For the first time, I got a good look at the space, and I tried to imagine what it looked like when it had first been built. Directly above was a coffered dome ceiling with faded shades of blue and gold that had crumbled and begun to fall away in tiny heaps of dust upon the ground. The floor itself was in okay condition, but the shine of the marble was long since lost to the layers of dirt that had settled in its place. Much of the rest of it was ransacked, the low half-walls having taken hits from looters and hammers, and the high-placed arched windows left without a single full pane of glass.
“We need to go down,” Ronen said as he held a hand out to Darius. “Can you stand?”
“About to find out.” He stood on shaky legs, and though his eyes clenched shut under what I imagined was an intense dizzy spell, he soon released Ronen
’s grasp. “Let’s go.”
We went toward the back of the building, following Ronen, who held the rune close. We trudged down a spiraling staircase, cautious of each step that seemed to wobble with the threat of decay. Reaching the bottom, we discovered precisely why it was now called a tomb.
Endless rows of decaying wooden caskets lined the walls of the wide room, which was permeated with the stench of death and rot. My hand flung over my mouth, aiding only in slowing my breath rather than masking the horrific smell.
“Please tell me it isn’t far,” I mumbled nearly incoherently through my hand.
“Not far, just enough turns to disorient most anyone,” Ronen answered. He seemed unperturbed by the smell and marched on ahead past doors wide enough to allow cars to pass through, and thicker than most trees.
“What are those?” I asked as we turned down several narrow corridors that were miraculously lit with the same sparks of magic from outside.
“Vault doors. It’s where the coin was stored. And here…” In front of a closed normal door, he stopped. “This should be where we need to go.” He swiped his hand across the front of the door, clearing enough dust to reveal a series of the same triangles that were plastered across the rune map. Though the door was locked, a single kick to the knob left it swinging inward, revealing nothing more than another room full of stacked coffins and piles of skeletons.
Again, Ronen looked to the rune, leaving the rest of us to follow close behind.
“What are we looking for?” I asked as I peered over his shoulder.
“This symbol, here. I’m thinking it may be inside one of the caskets.”
I narrowed my eyes at the shape that looked a lot like the rune itself and hurriedly began to search the room. The dead I had seen, plenty of times over, but never had I dug through stacks of the fallen in coffins or otherwise. Opposite Ronen, I looked over every casket I could find, and was beginning to think it wasn’t here when something in the far corner caught my eye.
