My Merlin Awakening (Book 2, My Merlin Series)

by Priya Ardis

  Under the volcanic rock, archaeologists had found a perfectly preserved city, a snapshot in time. I took a breath. It didn’t taste right. It tasted of panic and horror.

  Yellow artificial light bathed the eerie tomb. We picked through the dusty ash and half-height crumbling walls into an area where the buildings, some two or three stories high, sat solidly erect.

  Matt led the way. I had no idea what light-bulb of an idea he had us chasing down, and as usual, he wasn’t telling. Somehow I found myself between Vane and him. Both flanked me in full bodyguard mode. It should have bothered me. I wasn’t frail. However, inside this forgotten city of buried despair and inevitable death, I was glad for their support.

  “There were no bodies found.” Vane flipped through a pamphlet next to me. “The historians think they might have fled the city when the ash started and gone to a nearby shore to wait for boats.”

  “Rourke says among the gargoyles, it’s rumored that many of them escaped to Aegae. It is possible. I believe the Minoans traded a great deal with Triton’s people. It explains their great wealth of knowledge.” He pointed inside one of the preserved buildings to a rectangular slab with a hole. “It’s a bathroom. They had indoor plumbing.” Behind ropes to ward away tourists sat large pots beneath windows of buildings, still completely intact. The narrow streets of the small city barely contained the three of us.

  Matt walked through the small town to a low building marked “Xeste 3.” Vane found a description in the pamphlet. “Two stories high with fourteen rooms on each floor. Many frescos. There are ceremonial rooms at the back.”

  “That’s where we’re going,” Matt said, pointing down. He lifted up a rope and went under the flimsy blockade to the ruin.

  “What if someone comes?” Gia hissed at me.

  I glanced around. No tourists or guards seemed to be around. Not that it mattered. Between wizards and gargoyles, no museum guard stood a chance. I shrugged and hiked down. The entrance led to a dark passageway with cramped steps going up. To the right, I saw Matt continuing down the short passageway into the rooms. He held a small fireball to light the way.

  “Convenient working with wizards,” Colin commented. He came in immediately behind me, holding a flashlight.

  I stepped into a long rectangular room with partitions in the doorways that led to other rooms. Matt and Vane stood in the center of the room. Matt’s fireball rose in the air to illuminate the area. Nothing but dirt and stone shone on the stripped walls.

  “The frescos have all been shipped to the museums,” Colin said.

  Vane took out his cellphone. “We don’t need them. I’ve hacked into Princeton University’s computer system. They did 3-D modeling of the frescos.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  Vane gave me a crooked smile. “I have electronic eyes everywhere.”

  Gads, I hoped not. Then, I remembered when Vane showed some video footage of Matt and me on our first date and I wondered if he really did. It was a scary thought.

  “How are you getting any reception in here?” Grey asked as he squeezed inside the room. The space was fairly big, but with eight people inside, it didn’t seem like it.

  With a few clicks, Vane pulled up an image. He waved a hand in the air. “Likhati.”

  A faint outline of the frescos appeared against the walls. I squinted at the picture, unable to see the watercolor images in the low light.

  “Little help,” Vane said to Matt.

  Matt waved his hand. I gasped. In thick oil paint, colorful frescos of aquamarine swallows dancing between red lilies appeared. Around them, a host of blue monkeys were in various activities. One strummed a harp, another played with a sword, and another held the sword’s scabbard. With an eerie feeling of familiarity, I touched the knife at my side. Matt had shrunk Excalibur before we left Athens.

  Matt shook his head. “This isn’t it.”

  We went to the next room, past the partition. It was a dead-end, but the room extended up into the first floor. Once Matt lit the area, my eyes went immediately to a small flight of five steps that led down to what amounted to a hole in the ground.

  “The guide book called this the Lustral Basin.” Vane peered down over the hole.

  Frescoes lined the bottom of the walls as well as the top. There were many pictures of colorfully dressed women. Behind us, two shapely maidens wore elaborate jewelry.

  Straight in front of us, though, stood the most interesting part of the fresco. On the bottom, three maidens were painted in various positions. The first maiden was mostly naked with a hand offered out. The middle maiden was sitting on a knoll. In a sorrowful pose, she held her foot, which was bleeding. The last maiden’s head was turned away, looking off into the distance.

  “An initiation ritual on the north wall.” Vane read the inscription for the painting on his phone.

  Matt pointed up to the top part of the wall. Next to a large window, a maiden sat on a stepped altar or throne. To her left was a blue monkey and to the right, a griffin. The maiden held the griffin with a rope while he tried to climb the throne. The monkey was presenting the maiden with a bouquet of flowers.

  “Look at her hair,” he directed.

  Long flowing locks on the maiden’s head supported a crown of dots decorated by a looping band that ended in two spiral tongues. I followed the line of dots from the crown to the maiden’s shoulder. A snake slithered up her neck and moved horizontally through her hair, flicking out its forked tongue.

  “Medusa?” Vane asked.

  Matt took out the bronze snake from an inner pocket of his biker jacket.

  Vane pointed to the left wall. It had a picture of a man on the bottom and some kind of plant above. He tapped on the touch screen phone. “Wait. There’s more. This piece is spread out over several rooms. Let’s bring it together.”

  He waved his hand. The picture changed. Spread out across the bottom wall, four men, three naked youths, and one older fellow performed some sort of ritual. The older man held what looked like a jug in his hands.

  “Remind you of something?” Blake said from behind me.

  I nodded. On initiation to Avalon Prep, we’d drunk Lake water. While I had kept my clothes on, what happened after the drink had left me more naked than I’d ever been in my life.

  “Lake water?” Vane asked, following our train of thought. “But in the fresco, it’s red, not blue.”

  “But what does it tell us about opening the snake?” I asked.

  “Yes, what does it mean?” Rourke’s voice came from the doorway. The cane dragged loudly against the stone floors. Sylvia and Deirdre ducked in after him. They looked around at the frescoes with wide eyes.

  “Impressive,” Rourke said.

  “More than impressive,” Matt said. “It’s the answer. Look at the three maidens. They are leading you toward the east wall.”

  We all turned to the right. The fresco showed a pair of horns from which red drops dripped down to an altar.

  “Blood,” Vane said.

  “We need a daughter of Apollo,” Matt said. He opened his coat and pulled out a miniature bow. With one word, it grew until it became a regular sized bow. He floated it to me. I took it. Everyone in the room, apart from Matt and Vane, stared at me.

  “She is a daughter of Apollo?” Sylvia said.

  “Full of surprises, aren’t you, lass?” Colin commented.

  He didn’t know the half of it. Somehow, my family line had been blessed or cursed, depending on how you looked at it, by Apollo. It was the reason Matt and I would never be together. Prolonged physical contact between us blocked his visions.

  “Why a daughter of Apollo?” Rourke asked

  “I’ll explain in a bit.” Matt pointed me at the basin. “First, I need you to go down.”

  “Why?” I eyed the creepy hole and its crumbling steps with misgiving.

  “We also need light.” Matt continued, ignoring my question. He commanded, “Gantavya,” and punched a fist at the ceiling. Th
e roof groaned above us. Steel poles that made up the aluminum-colored roof bent downwards to form a hole in a perfect circle. The rest of the recently renovated roof remained intact. Red rays of the fading sun streamed inside.

  Colin muttered, “I hope you’re going to fix that.”

  My grip tightened on the bow I held. “I don’t even have an arrow.”

  Matt laughed. It was the first time I’d heard the rich vibrant tone in a long time. The last time I’d heard it was speeding along the winding roads of Concord, riding on the back of his Ducati. For a second, it lightened my mood… until he plunked Medusa’s snake in my hand. “Here is your arrow.”

  “Grey, I need you to stand here,” Matt directed Grey.

  I continued to stare at the cool metal snake in my hand. I put it between the string and the bow and realized with a start he was right. The hissing tongue of the metal snake had a groove at the edge that settled snugly on the string.

  Matt took out what looked like a metal stick from his pocket.

  “How many things do you have in there?” Gia asked.

  Matt shrugged. “It’s a simple displacement spell.”

  “Simple isn’t what I’d call it,” Blake murmured.

  “Aayat,” Matt commanded. With a faint whisper of blue light, the stick lengthened into the trident. He held out the trident to Grey. “Send a blast exactly where the monkey’s hand meets the maiden’s on the painting. Hit exactly that spot or you’ll hit Ryan below.”

  “What?” I squawked.

  Grey eyed the trident skeptically. “Why?”

  Matt thrust out his hand. He shot a fireball at the wall.

  I gasped. “Matt, what are you doing? This is an ancient site!”

  But instead of it blasting a hole in the fragile wall, the fireball bounced back to Matt. He caught it and it dissolved. “See, all is not as it seems. Look at the shape of this room. The walls are slightly angled, not in absolute straight lines. And the picture of the goddess on the wall.”

  He moved to hand Grey the trident. “When Grey hits that spot on the fresco, the blast will bounce off the wall and build energy. Enough energy that when Ryan shoots the snake it will have the power to open the snake.”

  “That sounds convoluted,” Vane said.

  Matt waved at the chamber. “It’s a test. When Vane blasted the snake with a fireball in the temple, I noticed that the metal felt oddly cold. I’ve never seen such a thing before, but I have read about it. Triton’s people were said to have been gifted a metal that no one else had. In all the history of the Minoan, they talk greatly of their metals—bronze. But what if it was something else? The Akrotiri are the link between Medusa and Triton. This ritual room was built very carefully. We were looking for a key. This is it.”

  Matt pointed to Vane’s phone. “Look it up. The pictures point to the basin and, if you think about it, only the daughter of Apollo could make such a mark. Only she can open the head. The Gorgons, one of whom is Medusa, were the guardians of Apollo. Gorgon markings protect Apollo’s temple. A friend, however, may possess the snake.” He looked at me. “That friend is you. Why else would the snake be an arrow?”

  “Trust me,” he whispered in my head.

  Vane scowled as if he heard Matt. “It’s ridiculous.”

  Matt’s brow arched. “Your projections must be absolutely accurate. The blast has to start off at the correct spot or the angles won’t work out.”

  “They’re accurate,” Vane gritted out. “It’s your conjecture that’s suspect.”

  Rourke glanced back and forth between the two brothers. “Are they always like this?”

  “Pretty much,” Gia murmured from beside Blake.

  “Matt hasn’t been wrong so far,” I said to Vane. With slow hesitant steps, I started toward the hole. At the bottom, surrounded by a cage of stone, I looked up. I saw nothing but the red sun.

  “Everyone step out of the room,” Matt said.

  Feet rustled across the stone floor above.

  Above me, I heard Sylvia ask Matt, “Are you absolutely sure about this? What if Grey is just a bit off?”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mom,” Grey replied dryly.

  “He’s a trained Candidate. He’ll be fine.” Matt peered over the hole, down at me. “Face the altar with the horns. The east wall.”

  “Alright, bossy,” I thought back.

  Matt smiled sheepishly. “Alright—”

  I was still turning when a trigger-happy Grey blasted the trident. I cried, “I haven’t strung the arrow!”

  “Crap,” Grey said from above.

  Matt dropped to the ground on his stomach. The shot barely missed him. A whirling ball of yellow light whizzed by above me. It boomeranged to another wall and then back down into the basin. I cried out when a green fireball scraped my shoulder and blasted into the wall beside me. It started bouncing around like a crazy superball. Suddenly, a blue and red shield surrounded me. The fireball bombarded the shield with hits. It took minutes for the fireball to fizzle out. The blue and red shield faded

  I ran up the stairs in time to see Vane yank the trident away from Grey. He said furiously, “You could have killed her.”

  “Did you see the shot?” Matt said. “It was yellow, then, green. It got brighter the longer it went. I was right.”

  “I’m fine. Thanks for caring,” I said.

  Grey looked at me mournfully. “I thought Emrys told me to go.”

  Matt blinked. “Maybe Vane should fire it.”

  “You know I can’t.” Vane stalked to Matt, his hands fisting. “Is it true? Did you signal Ragnar to go early? Did you risk her to test me?”

  Matt held his ground. “That might be something you would do.”

  Vane gave him a long steady look, which Matt returned. Finally, he ground out, “Get it right this time, Ragnar, or I’ll skewer you with that thing.”

  Grey gave me a sheepish look.

  Vane pointed me back into the hole. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?” His shoulder bumped Matt’s as he stalked out of the room.

  I heard him murmur to Matt, “No more games.”

  I hurried back down the steps, and in one smooth move, hooked the snake on the bowstring. Grey fired a blast from the trident. It zinged above me. I waited. The fireball sailed over me in slow motion. Against the red sun, I saw the green fireball clearly. I pulled my arm back and let the arrow fly.

  The snake arrow nailed the green fireball. It spun in place. The red sun flared. The snake sparked for an infinitesimal moment in time and then plummeted down with extreme force. I threw my hands over my head. A web of blue magic, Matt’s magic, caught the snake before it put a hole in my head. The snake hung in the air.

  I reached up and plucked it from the web. A crack ran down the center of the hissing tongue. I pulled the tongue. It slid out like the stopper to a bottle. The snake opened.

  CHAPTER 11 – HOLDING ON

  CHAPTER 11

  HOLDING ON

  I ran up the steps of the creepy basin and held the snake out to Matt. “It worked!”

  “What do we do with it now?” Vane said.

  Matt pointed to the fresco of the four men. “Drink it.”

  “Ugh,” Gia said. I agreed.

  The rest of the group wandered in from the doorway. A bullet zinged through the air. It scraped my arm. I almost dropped the snake.

  “What the hell?” Vane said.

  Colin stood behind everyone else. He held a gun at the back of Grey’s head. “Give me the snake, sword-bearer.”

  Blood dripped from my arm. I stemmed the wound with my free hand. Vane took a step toward me.

  “Nobody moves,” Colin commanded as he tapped the gun on Grey’s head. “A crude weapon, but one I could slip undetected around the wizards. You never thought to check for regular weapons. Now, get me the snake, sword-bearer, or we’ll see how much damage I can do to your brother’s head.”

  Vane raised a brow. “What makes you think I care?”

/>   “You may not, but the sword-bearer does and that’s enough,” Colin said calmly.

  Matt crossed his arms. “Think about this, Colin. We’ll never let you out of here.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Master Merlin,” Colin said. “Now, walk toward me, sword-bearer. Give me the snake and I give you your brother.”

  Rourke leaned on his cane. “Colin, I command you—”

  “Save your breath, Sire,” Colin interrupted.

  “How dare you!” Deirdre snarled.

  “I am sorry I have to go against the family. I have served faithfully since I was a lad, but you are weak and you’re losing your grip over us. Those of us who are stronger broke free first. Oliver will be the new king. My fealty must go to him.”

  “I knew that dog was behind this,” Vane muttered. “Where is he?”

  “On his way,” Colin knocked the barrel of the gun on Grey’s head. “Now, the snake. Please, hand it over.”

  “Oliver will not be the new king,” Deirdre burst out.

  “What are you doing, Deirdre?” Sylvia said.

  “Colin,” Rourke said. “Do you want Oliver as king?”

  Colin frowned. “I do not. But I feel his presence pressing down on me.”

  “Push it back,” Rourke said. “Since he turned against us, we have known he would not be a fit king. There is another.”

  Colin looked at me. “You mean her. I smelled it in her blood. Your family line, but she is still a regular.”

  My eyes widened. My heart raced so fast I thought it would fly out of my chest. My mother, my real mother, had never talked about my father. I never knew him. “You’re… you’re…”

  “No, my dear,” Rourke said. “Oliver thinks you are his sister because his mother did. And I allowed him to believe it because I needed to protect another.” He looked at Grey.

  “You are not my father,” Grey snarled.

  “He is not,” Sylvia said. “But you are next in line. Your father was his half-brother.”

  Rourke said, “My half-brother had a wizard father, but he was older. By all rights, the throne should have gone to him. However, he never accepted his gargoyle nature and the role fell to me.”