The men led me through a heavy door on the side of the room. That door took us to a nearly pitch-black tunnel of steep, spiraling stairs. On the landing, they escorted me down a long hallway to the left. From the hall to the right, I heard growls and howls. There were the holding cells.
We stopped in front of an oh-so familiar metal bar door.
One of them opened the door and held it for me.
I stepped inside the arena. This one was rectangular and bigger than a basketball court. The flooring was large, smooth cherry red and black stone tiles laid out in a checker board pattern. The walls were higher than the arena's, but the cage was just the same thorny iron as I remembered.
I was more prepared this time. I might not have much in the way of training or experience, but now, I was a force to be reckoned with.
Tresia entered from the same gate behind me and stood at my side.
“This time, I'll be taking the unusual measure of joining you in the roulette arena myself.” Tresia smiled, her eyes burning with anticipation. She strode across to the other side of the arena and waited for one of the referees to position himself on the sidelines.
“Go!” he called out.
Tresia drew her rapier and began to walk with that rolling stride of hers across the arena. This time, though, her steps were uneven. “A word of advice, be mindful of your feet. Have you ever played roulette, Constance?”
“How do you know my name?” After being called “Stone Mage” all the time, it was strange to be called by my name. I couldn't recall any point where she'd heard it.
“I know more than you think, you silly girl.” She giggled with a stinging condescension as we began to circle each other. “You left something behind when you staged your little rebellion in Octavius' keep.”
She was trying to distract me. I drew my sword, but knew that I would never beat her in swordplay. I had to steer this fight back to where I had the upper hand: magic.
I jumped up and used a pillar of air to leap straight over her head. I landed right behind her, readying to thrust my blade into her back when pain exploded through every cell in my body, seizing my muscles and sending me to the ground.
Tresia's uproarious laughter echoed through the hall and the clattering of my sword as it was kicked across the room.
“You never have heard of roulette,” she taunted as she speared my thigh all the way through with her sword. “Look around, Constance. Every red square you see is a different, random agony. That's what led the Circle to declare them illegal, calling it 'wanton and unjust torture'.”
Having regained control of my muscles, I grabbed hold of her blade and focused my fire into it. The steel grew hotter and hotter under my palms until it seared my muscles, cauterizing the wound. Every instinct I had told me to rip it out of my leg and let it go. But I couldn't release it until she did.
Tresia looked uncomfortably down at her hand until she realized what I was doing. She stomped one heel down next to the hole in my leg. “Cut that out.”
“You asked for it.” I reached out, snatching one of her daggers from her thigh holster, exposed by a slit in her dress.
As quickly as I could, I stabbed it into her wrist that was holding the sword.
She staggered back, grasping her hand.
I took the opportunity to jerk the sword out of my leg by the blade and throw it across to the other side of the room away from my own. It cut into my palm, but I could take it. If there was anything pits like this one taught me, it was how to take a hit.
“You sneaky brat!” She drew the other dagger and threw it at me.
I couldn't dodge in time and it buried itself in my heart. It was a skillful throw, and if I hadn't had healing magic, it probably would have won the battle for her. I staggered back, but remained off the red squares. Wrapping my hand around the handle, I pulled it out and healed the flesh behind it.
Now she had to use her magic.
A muscle ticked in her jaw and the fire whip began to take shape in her hand again. The rage melted from her face, replaced by the cruel smile. She tapped her temple and teased, “Think, Constance. What did you leave behind?”
A chunk of my leg, that was for sure. Other than that, I couldn't recall. Everything there happened so fast and I was so focused on just surviving, that anything else was a blur.
“It was something that I could use.”
“A brain?” I quipped, causing her to lash out. I caught the end of her whip with her own dagger. “I think my head got bitten off by a wendigo while I was there, but it's all a bit fuzzy. I don't know whether my head reattached itself or if I grew a new one, so I might've left you a brain.”
She pulled and pulled against me, but damn had I gotten strong. Tresia must not be keeping up with her weight training.
I tilted the blade toward her and the coil of her flaming whip slid off before the blade got too hot to hold again.
The tip of her whip twitched like a rattlesnake's tail.
We stood at a standstill for a time. Until she flung a volley of tiny fireballs at me from behind her back. Shit, I'd been so focused on the whip I must have missed her slip her hand out of view.
My first instinct was to dodge, but with the threat of red squares, I clamped down and raised a wall of flames in front of me. Maybe fire would cancel out fire.
It blocked most of them, but one of them landed on the hem of my dress. Using the dagger, I cut and ripped away most of the hem, leaving it now at garter-length.
While I was distracted, she'd launched her whip at my legs. It wrapped around my ankle, catching my hose. Not only was my ankle on fire, it was spreading up my leg!
I screamed and struggled not to panic. Fighting the ingrained stop-drop-and-roll routine, I instead sent out a powerful— if undirected— gust of wind. The whip and my leg were extinguished, but not before a deep burn marred my leg.
The whip reformed around her. “Come on, surely you're smart enough to figure it out. Darling Duo had it, too.”
She wasn't going to distract me with that. I wasn't going to let her. But that was like trying not to think about polka-dotted elephants. It wormed its way into my brain.
What the hell was she talking about?
I had to end this soon.
She lined up another, much bigger fireball and hurled it at my chest. It was big enough that her whip started to flicker.
I dropped where I stood to my knees, letting it pass overhead. Responding in kind, I launched my own at her and from the ground, I hurtled myself forward, dagger raised to stab her in the heart.
She spun around me, dodging the dagger and grabbing my braid.
Tresia kicked the back of my knee, sending me to the ground. She wrapped the length of my braid around her fist, pulling it tight against my scalp. She used her hold to manipulate my head.
I struggled to keep the dagger out of her reach, too. If she got it, she'd cut my throat. But with this hold, my worries were irrelevant. Unless I could break away, she'd snap my neck and kill me while I was unconscious.
“My, my,” she purred in my ear. “It seems you aren't that smart after all. Looks like I'll have to spell it out for you.”
“Wow, you can spell?”
“You left your purse behind in Octavius' treasury.” She giggled. “You were in there and you didn't even think to get it back before you fled.”
My purse?
“And in your purse, was your name and address. It led Duo straight to your Mommy and Daddy.” Her voice had taken on a sickly sweetness. My heart was sinking. Duo was dead. “He had such a bug up his snatch about collateral damage. After he kicked the bucket, I took up the mantle and I've never had such… qualms.” She sounded so smug and sadistically pleased.
“So here's the best part, I had my lieutenant go find out what Mommy knew.”
No. No. NO.
“From what he reported, she took it like a woman. But then, I kind of expected that of Meilyr ap Heilyn's granddaughter. She fought until the end, even as s
ick as she was.”
Everything burned. My soul was on fire.
“He waited around so long for you to show up, we thought you didn't care about your human parents. But then, Jack showed up with you and my worthless coward of an assistant fled to retrieve me. Why do we ever send a man to do a woman's work? And why were you stupid enough to hang around your bondm—”
Her words cut off in a shriek. Before I'd known what I was doing, I had whipped the blade back, slicing through my hair and her fingers.
I buried the dagger into the side of her neck.
Shock came over her face and she stumbled back, trying to stymie the jugular blood that rushed down her chest with her ruined hand.
Silly her, she stumbled onto a red square.
Ropes of the same thorny metal shot upwards and wrapped around her, pulling her down to the floor and pinning her there.
Without a word, I retrieved my sword from the sidelines. It almost felt like I was watching myself from afar. My whole body was numb. I couldn't hurt anymore, like all of my nerves had been burned away.
“Any last words, you pathetic cunt?” I didn't even recognize my own voice.
Even knowing she was going to die, she looked down her nose at me. “It will never stop, you know. Not until you're his.”
“Or he's MINE!” I swung the sword down with everything I had, slicing through her neck with one strike.
I was getting better at this.
The clang of my sword against the stone reverberated through the room and for the first time, I noticed that there were no people watching above us.
Using my foot to hold it still, I pulled the dagger free from Tresia's severed head and tucked it into my garter.
It was time to move out. I had prisoners to release and a lieutenant to find.
17
Snarls and roars resounded from down the long row of prison cells. There wasn't anyone guarding the prisoners and a panel on the wall with switches. Almost all of them were in the “locked” position.
I switched them all over to “open” and stood aside to wait for Percy.
There was a stampede of creatures, both humanoid and not running for their lives to escape the dungeons. Among them was a wolfman with jet black fur.
He paused after he passed me where I stood and changed course to meet me.
“You're Percy.”
The wolfman nodded, slowly shifting back to his nude human form with pops and grunts. He was still tall, but was built leaner than his brother. His skin was lighter and his eyes were hazel, but they had the same face. Maybe they had two different fathers.
I didn't care.
“Byron sent me,” I said. “You're to go to the stairs of the state capitol building in Oklahoma City. You'll find him there.”
He nodded solemnly.
I grabbed his arm as he was about to turn away. “Before you go, what's the name of Tresia's lieutenant?”
“Gavin,” Percy answered. “Weaselly-looking bastard. Dark hair, dark eyes, pasty-ass skin, even for a vampire. He's been after Tresia's job for years.”
It was that slimy son of a bitch in the pinstripe suit. The creepy guy who tried to blackmail me into killing Tresia. He had tortured and killed my mother months ago and I hadn't even known. I had been hiding out in a beach shack while she'd been writhing in agony.
I nodded, not letting the rage show on my face. “Thank you.”
Percy rejoined the stampede up the stairs. I waited for it to pass. My quarry wouldn't be going anywhere until I “took him unawares”.
Once it was clear, I walked up the stairs with unfeeling legs.
The entire hall was empty. From far away, the sounds of a battle raged. It was far more than Liam and Jack grappling with guards.
“Stop in the name of the Pax!” an unfamiliar voice shouted.
So Liam had called in backup.
I could pursue Gavin in peace, then, while they were busy.
The red door he'd told me to go through was just ahead and beyond it was Gavin, waiting for me.
It creaked open and I stepped inside. Tresia's office and apartments were a sumptuous suite, decorated in burgundies, violets, and golds.
Gavin reclined in a settee, not reading the book in his hands. Perhaps imagining how all of this was going to be his soon. How wrong he was.
“Ah, Stone Mage,” he said, setting his book down and rising casually.
“Constance.”
“Yes, yes,” he waved his hand dismissively and peered around the room. “So how are we to do this? I was thinking you could strike me over the head with a candelabra. Painful, unfortunately, but convincing to an observer.”
“You don't like pain, huh?” I stepped forward and closed the door behind me. Wouldn't do to have someone walk in.
Gavin laughed and crossed to retrieve a golden candelabra from a table on the other side of the room. He had turned his back to me. “Well, who does?”
“Some people do.” I gripped my sword until my palm went numb while he plucked each of the tiny candles free. “Some people can dish it out, but can't take it.”
“Of course,” he answered absentmindedly, not paying me the slightest bit of attention. Or maybe he just couldn't hear me over the dollar signs that were ringing in his ears.
I snagged a silk handkerchief from the desk and wrapped it around my free hand as I crept closer.
Only a foot behind him now, I whispered with a voice as cold as the grave, “Gavin.”
He startled and turned around to face me. But it was too late. I'd already smashed the sap potion against his chest and dropped the handkerchief to the floor before it soaked through.
Before he realized what was happening, I'd run him all the way through with my sword, which was embedded in the heavy wood of the desk.
“What is this?” He seemed confused as he struggled with each motion. Desperately, he reached for the hilt of my sword and choked on the pain of leaning into the blade with each try. “A sap spell? We had a deal!”
I snatched one of his hands and stabbed it clean through to the desk with Tresia's dagger. The other one got a letter opener.
He screamed incoherently, looking between his hands, his abdomen, and me.
“Gavin.” I tried to get his attention, repeating his name several times. It didn't work, at least not to where he was focused. I patted him on the cheek. “Gavin. Pay attention to me.”
He snarled and bit my hand.
Jerking it back didn't work. His jaws were clamped shut like a beartrap. With my other hand, I punched him square in the nose as hard as I could. A satisfying crack reached my ears.
That got him to release his grip.
He bared his bloody fangs at me, hissing.
“Are you with me now?” I asked, cradling my healing hand.
He nodded.
“Good,” I said. “You killed my mother, didn't you? Winnifred Flynn, a kind, sickly, heartbroken woman. An innocent woman who had nothing to do with any of this.”
He was quiet for a moment. I liked to think it was out of shame or guilt. More likely, he was trying to come up with a way out of this. Finally, he lisped around his fangs in a wet, nasal voice, “I did as I was commanded.”
“So you did kill her?” I asked, crossing to the fireplace, where a set of decorative Japanese swords adorned the mantle. “You tortured and murdered a woman who was too weak to swat a fly.”
“If I didn't do what Tresia said, she would have killed me.” His voice cracked when the realization of what I was getting at hit. “I only did what I had to.”
“You didn't have to kill my mom.” I shook my head. “Any idiot could see she had no idea where her daughter was, that she was agonizing over it.”
He took a sharp breath as I grabbed the longest one. “I followed my orders. Tresia was the one responsible, not me! I was just the tool she used.”
I pulled away the sheath, revealing a real sword with shining, honed steel underneath. The face reflected in its polished surface
was one I didn't recognize. I didn't care.
“I swear, I swear it'll be different under my rule as Tres.” His voice was getting more desperate. Even pleading for his life, he was planning for a future he wouldn't have.
“It will be different because there will be no Tres.” I raised the sword over my head. “Ever again.”
As Gavin's severed head fell onto the Persian rug with a wet thud, a certainty filled me that soon, there would be no Eight.
I wasn't going to rest until they were all wiped off the face of the earth.
Dear Reader,
I can't thank you enough for spending your valuable time and money on my book. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed it. It took a lot of hard work and courage to get it written, edited, and published.
It would mean the world to me if you'd leave me an honest review at Amazon and/or Goodreads. Indie authors rely on reviews from readers just like you to make our living.
Constance's journey continues in Quattore, which will be available in February, 2017. Join my mailing list with the link below for deleted scenes, author commentary, and progress reports.
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About the Author,
Raven Whitney is a broke millennial living in her parent's horse barn on a farm in the middle of nowhere. She graduated with honors from college with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry, but left behind a career in academia to pursue all the stories that had been so insistently whispering in her ears since she was a teenager. She dreams of one day opening her own microbiology lab and owning a little home of her own in a place that has stoplights.
When she isn't attached to her laptop or working on the farm, she's often found nestled in the couch with at least two animals and a book. She's a sucker for anything with a fuzzy face, silly BuzzFeed articles, and chocolatey sweets. She is also a lifelong hoarder of books and mangas and will one day die when a mountain of her collection collapses on her.
Tresia (Stone Mage Saga Book 3) Page 15
