Death Mask (Wraith's Rebellion Book 3)

by Aya DeAniege

  I adjusted the tablet around my neck and looked Quin over. He didn’t seem like his normal self. A lot less focused, to be sure. It may have been the events of just an hour before, and I don’t think anyone would blame him for being fatigued after that.

  He needed food. I was hoping he’d eat while we were away, but I didn’t want to suggest it. I was afraid that would bring up the topic of werewolves again, and he might get that look on his face.

  The one that turned my insides to ice and stole my breath away. There was still a fluttering in my chest, one that caused my stomach to do flips and my already abused insides to quake. I was all too familiar with male aggression directed towards me. I knew what could happen, what would happen.

  And that fear was just from what mortal men had done to me. What would he do to me for whatever unspoken rule I had apparently broken?

  Rosalyn took my hand. Then she released it. She pulled back completely and frowned at me, a finger motioned up and down.

  “You’re not squashed.”

  “Why would I be squashed?” I asked.

  Then I looked around.

  Magic is a lot smoother than I thought it should be.

  We were standing in what could best be described as a stone room. There was one doorway out, but no door on it. Torches lit the area, but they didn’t give off the light of a fire and instead seemed to give off that unnatural colour of an incandescent bulb.

  The walls were brown stone, the floor more of the same. It all looked like it was naturally occurring. I couldn’t see anywhere that might have been a chisel or hammer mark.

  There was no breeze, the air felt stale and stuffy like I had covered my head with a blanket for too long. There must have been the right amount of air because Rosalyn didn’t appear to have any difficulty breathing. She did have goosebumps down her arms, however. It must have been chilly. Perhaps we were underground somewhere.

  All kinds of questions were boiling up in my mind, begging to be asked. I very quickly sorted through all the questions I had and decided to ask the personal one first.

  “Are you strong for a witch?” I asked.

  “Uh, that’s a difficult question to answer,” Rosalyn said. “I’m very good with teleportation. It’s like driving a car, though. Some are all over the place, some cause accidents, and some of us learn to be decent drivers. I’ve never taken anyone with me, though.”

  “Because they get squashed?” I asked.

  She nodded twice. “Every generation has the moron who thinks they’re special. Oh, we can teleport vampires, but you still get squashed and have to wait to reform on the other side. My grandmother tells stories about vampires coming to witches when she was a child. You knew, she said, it was important when a vampire begged a witch for that sort of help.”

  “So, she knows this is possible.”

  “But she knows it’s still here.”

  “Why didn’t she know where it was?”

  “She gave it to someone to care for. They placed it here.”

  “The Great Maker?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see their face or anything about them. I just had the overwhelming feeling of respect and caring, even longing between the two of them. They loved each other very much.”

  “Then why hide the heart? It’s the symbol of the soul, isn’t it?”

  “A heartless man is usually equated to lacking a soul, yes. By removing it, she may have sought to contain her pain, as emotions run through the heart and affect it a great deal. Maybe she even took her child’s heart to try to absorb the happiness of the child. Like an antidepressant.”

  “Or?”

  “Or she yanked it out to keep her children from killing her and used her child’s heart to hold the child ransom. If she were killed, so too would the child.”

  “Great. Might kill Lucrecia in the process,” I muttered.

  “What?” Rosalyn asked, her voice raising in pitch. “Why would Lu try to kill his sister?”

  “Because he’s crazy?” I asked.

  “Necromancy traces back. If he killed her, the heart would die as well. It might have even killed his Maker. What a moron.”

  We could just kill Lucrecia and end the trouble.

  The moment the voice surfaced, I smashed it back down and built a mental box around it, then hucked the box into an ocean at the back of my mind.

  “That’s normal for a baby vampire,” Rosalyn said. “The lethal thoughts. Though, I would have thought one who woke so quickly would have settled in by now.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe Death started the break. I dunno.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

  “I ate the body Death was in, and he rode me for like fifteen minutes. The Great Maker banished him from my mind though, so I’m fine.”

  Rosalyn’s mouth fell open, then immediately shut. She gave herself a shake and scowled at me.

  “You said not to use the tool, you said nothing about eating a body and accidentally taking in the magic. Okay? So I thought I was obeying your rules.”

  “Which is why I’m not saying what I want to say right now,” Rosalyn said through gritted teeth.

  “Just give it to me straight, how fucked am I?”

  “Super fucked.”

  “Banshee, fucked?”

  “Did you invite Death back in?”

  “No.”

  “Yup, Banshee fucked, really, super fucked. Every bit that little mortal you can’t handle will lay the foundation for the vampire others will come to know as Banshee.”

  “Unless? There’s always an unless.”

  “Unless you accept everything that you do, but that would require things that modern mortals just don’t have.”

  “And then?”

  “And then you’d be a creature apart from vampires. None of them has accepted everything that they are. That’s the split that Bau talks about. The difference between vampire and human, mortal and predator. Every time they shed an identity, they deny a part of their past. The secrets they tell, the lies that are constantly coming out of their mouths. Their history is so broken that they don’t remember who or what they are.”

  “Until I turn someone else?”

  “The Council granted a one-time permission. They aren’t going to let you turn someone to use them as a blood bag. And that’s five hundred years in the future. A lot can happen in that time.”

  “Right, I’m going crazy.”

  “You should tell Quin.”

  “Yup. Because apparently, Balor was right, I am going to be the whiny grief-stricken sort of vampire. Ugh. Fine, whatever but we have to get through tonight, right?”

  “That’s true. You could still die. It’s through there and in a chest.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “There may be boobie traps.”

  “Wouldn’t be a weird dungeon protecting the still beating heart of an immortal necromancer if there weren’t boobie traps.”

  “Try not to die too quickly.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk.”

  “Anytime!”

  She patted me on the back and grinned. I made a face at her, then looked into the darkness of the doorway.

  “How exactly do I see, since I still have baby vampire eyes?”

  “Oh,” Rosalyn disappeared, leaving me there in the darkness.

  Because the moment she left, the lights went out. I stood there, utterly horrified at the idea of being stuck in the underground cave thing with no way out and no understanding of how to find my way out. There was just enough time to really wonder if I was going to die down there, then she popped back in with the lights.

  Rosalyn handed me a flashlight and smiled innocently.

  It was a huge flashlight. One of those box like batteries and the giant bulb on the front that was almost bigger than my head. I turned it on and swung the light about, testing it a little bit.

  “Quit stalling. We don’t have all night. Quin said to tell you that Lucrecia is freaking out.”
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  “So he should distract her.”

  “Why is it important that she’s freaking out?”

  “Makers can find Progeny who are freaking out. It’s a survival thing. And our target is Lucrecia’s Maker so…”

  “Freaking out is a bad thing. Got it, hurry the hell up, then.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her, then walked towards and then through the doorway.

  The air on the other side of the doorway almost felt thicker. Like it was trying to hug me or something.

  “I process blood, right?” I called back.

  I was asking for the wolf blood. If the effects of blood lasted only as long as it remained in my system, then as it left I’d be more vulnerable, one would think. I wasn’t certain if that was how blood worked, but for some reason it made sense. Sort of like how alcohol would wear off.

  “The more you waste time, the less effective it is, yes,” Rosalyn said.

  “So, the air isn’t trying to hug me. It’s trying to suffocate me, great,” I muttered as I looked around the new room.

  “The effects shouldn’t wear off that quickly,” Rosalyn said, sounding puzzled. “It must be a pretty powerful spell.”

  “So, I have until dawn?” I asked.

  “Until tomorrow night, but you still have to get through her magic.”

  “Right,” I muttered as I swung the flashlight around the room again, “that annoying little tidbit.”

  The yellow light fell on stone and more stone. The room I stood in was simply a larger stone chamber with no place else to go. The two chambers were joined, and there was no exit.

  I guess that’s why it required a witch and a vampire. It was probably safe to assume that Bau couldn’t teleport either.

  The floor was stone, just like the walls and ceiling. Biting my lip, I moved my foot over the floor. There weren’t pebbles or sand even.

  “Bad news,” I called back.

  “What?”

  “It’s gone,” I said.

  “No, your light is on it,” Rosalyn snapped. “The pedestal.”

  I saw no pedestal. That told me that this was a very dangerous position to be in. There were a couple of options for why Rosalyn was seeing what she was seeing, however. I didn’t like any of them.

  “You think it’s a trap?” I asked, not daring to turn my back on where she said the pedestal was. “She knows you’re working with us and this is a big trap and now we’re stuck here and I’ll have to claw my way out?”

  There was silence behind me. It was a heavy sort of silence, as Rosalyn considered what we might have just done.

  “Or its fae magic,” she said finally.

  “Why do we think that?”

  “Fae magic is like sunlight to vampires. Oh, your two races get along very well, but vampires tend not to try the fae because their magic has evolved. It’s now like sunlight is to vampires in books. Burn, baby, burn.”

  I sighed loudly. “Except I’m not immune to fae magic. I’d rather not be dust, which is what sunlight does to vampires in books.”

  “I don’t see sparkles, and this is really old. It could just be an illusion spell.”

  Sparkles, I took a moment to think back and realized that she had actually said that. That fae magic was like sparkles. I’d have to keep an eye out for them and glitter and pouting, I guessed. Looking around the chamber, I saw no hint of fae magic.

  “She says to the immortal in mortal danger,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing!”

  Grumbling, I shuffled forward, hesitating here and there to try and determine if that prickling sensation I felt was from fear, or from fae magic warning me off. The air felt… something… for a moment. Then there was a relief and fresh air almost. I dragged in a breath and took another step forward.

  The pedestal appeared. I set a hand on it and didn’t explode in flames.

  Yay.

  I looked at my hand, frowned, then looked beyond it.

  “Holy shit balls.”

  Beyond the pedestal, there were more. The little stone room was suddenly a massive chamber filled with a soft golden light. Up the walls in the distance, I could see books, just books to the ceiling. There were large statues back there too. I swear as I watched, they turned towards me.

  Between me and them were all sorts of items. It reminded me of Aladdin’s little chamber of secrets. Was that what it was called? There were literal piles of treasure and gold. Some shelving was placed all over, weird items sitting on all of them.

  Instinctively I looked down. I was so thankful to find that I was standing on stone, not a carpet.

  I don’t want to play in that kind of story.

  As I looked up, the statues seemed to move closer.

  “What is it?” Rosalyn seemed to ask near my ear, almost like a fly. Her voice was higher in pitch and had a buzzing distortion to it.

  “Reality is apparently relative,” I squeaked out.

  I grabbed the box from the pedestal and back peddled.

  No, those statues are definitely moving.

  I swore, and I repeated that swear word over and over again as something nearby moved. A figure came around the corner as everything began to fade. I couldn’t make out anything except the eyes, which remained even after everything else had faded.

  Flaming eyeballs.

  It hadn’t been mortal. I don’t care what kind of supernatural you are, flaming eyeballs meant flaming brain, which meant a bad time.

  I pressed against the stone walls of the smaller chamber, unable to move. Everything in me was trembling, the floor came up to meet me, and I whimpered.

  My first full thought was an uncomfortable one.

  Thank goodness my bladder doesn’t work yet.

  “Helen,” Rosalyn snapped out like a person tired of repeating herself.

  I clawed at the floor. Having gotten my hand to work, the rest quickly followed. I scrambled to get out of the larger chamber and into the smaller one. I didn’t stop moving until I smacked almost face first into the far wall in the smaller chamber. Pressed against the other wall, I sunk down, huffing and puffing as I hugged the chest to me once more.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I think I might have just found the man that you call the archivist.”

  “The Archivist is a myth,” Rosalyn said.

  Troy knows.

  “So are the archives,” I managed to get out.

  “Her heart was in the archives? Why didn’t you grab other stuff?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, the giant statues with giant weapons turning towards me? Or maybe the man with flaming eyeballs? If his eyeballs are on fire, then so’s the rest of him, Rosalyn!”

  “Oh, that’s just a jinn,” she said.

  What came out of my mouth was a flurry of curse words that were so mangled not even I could make them out, and then:

  “What in the hell is a jinn?”

  “A genie,” Rosalyn said. “Their eyes glow.”

  “These were flaming, not glowing. I didn’t say glow, now did I? I said flaming.”

  “Calm down, you’re alive, aren’t you?”

  “The question is, for how long?” I muttered. “Myth says genies don’t like you taking their treasure.”

  “That’s dragons. Genies are a part of that treasure. They’ve mainly been enslaved by humans, but they find a delight in the submission. Well, most do.”

  I glared at her.

  “Gimme your hand, damn it,” she snapped back, holding her hand out to me.

  I grabbed it, and we appeared back in Lucrecia’s home.

  “What happened?” Quin asked.

  “She saw a jinn.”

  “It was not a jinn. It had flaming eyes!”

  “Actually flames?” Quin asked.

  “Yes!” I shouted.

  “I’ve met him before, not a jinn. Tried to seduce me, at least, I think he did. Odd place for him to be.”

  I sputtered out several so
unds and glared at Quin. He looked pointedly at the tablet, then met my eyes and gave me a smirking look. I took that to mean that he wasn’t going to elaborate on what had to be an interesting story because he had broken the way we told the story.

  “In the archives?” I asked, pushing off the floor and holding out the box. “Because that’s where he was, Quin, in the mythical archives that the vampire archives are supposed to imitate. Books all up the walls and moving statues.”

  He made a little sound at the back of his throat, then looked down at the chest. Ever so gently, he took it from me.

  “The Archives aren’t protected by witch magic,” he said as his phone began going off.

  Sighing, he handed Rosalyn the box and picked up the phone.

  “Anna, talk to me about—yeah, and? Well, maybe if you answered your phone, you would have known what we were up to.”

  “Oh my god,” I whispered. “Anna is Androgen, not Sasha?”

  Quin frowned at me and waved me away as he turned and walked towards the kitchen.

  I had been in the archives.

  Androgen was calling because I had gone someplace I shouldn’t have gone. It wasn’t the vampire archives either. It was something else, something that its Maker had inherited.

  Bau’s heart had been kept under lock and key by the creature known only as the Archivist. The one who had told the sisters, Lucrecia’s sisters, how to kill their Maker.

  I turned to the chest.

  “Stab the heart,” I whispered, then looked up.

  Lucrecia walked out of the kitchen as I looked up.

  “What?” Rosalyn asked.

  “That’s why she needed a new heart. The sisters didn’t fail, did they?”

  “How would I know?” Lucrecia asked.

  “If the heart just had to be destroyed, why not just complete the ritual?” Rosalyn asked.

  “No, if it’s destroyed, she probably assumes the life of the one she hosts, necromancy, right?”

  Rosalyn considered for a moment, then glanced at Lucrecia. Ever so slowly, the witch turned back to me.

  “Necromancy would have to have the balance. I think you’re right. That would also explain why the donor doesn’t recall. The heart is emotional and memory.” Rosalyn hesitated. “You think she had me look back because she didn’t know who took it or where it was?”