He wasn’t sorry he had helped her get to this point. He only wished it had taken longer.
“Do we dig?” he finally asked.
“If this is truly the way it has to be,” Mason replied.
“Will you truly be glad?” Avery asked Mason without looking up. “Glad to be free of this burden?”
“Some,” Mason said. “It’s brought me luck, Faith and a pack of new friends, things that are rare in our world.”
“Faith?” Rhys repeated.
Mason smiled wearily. “The name of the love of my life.”
So, Mason had found love, as had a couple more of their brothers. The lucky ones. Rhys didn’t want to look at Avery in case she could read him and understand why his heart was racing. Nevertheless, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
Love wasn’t in the cards for him. In his long lifetime, he had never found anyone like this angel. In her, he had found his soul mate. He would never have given his heart so willingly and completely to anyone else. It was hers for the asking.
As she continued to stare at the ground beneath her knees, Rhys almost expected Avery to address those personal thoughts. Instead, she said, “Darkness is upon us.”
Chapter 28
Darkness is upon us.
Words to chill the soul.
Rhys and Mason spun around with their weapons in hand. Avery didn’t move. The clearing had begun to vibrate—little ripples running underfoot, overhead leaves rustling. In this holy place that Mason had carved for the Grail, there was going to be a war of intentions. No one realized that better than Rhys and his two companions, whose lives had been consumed by the fallout from this golden Grail Quest.
Clouds were rolling in—huge black clouds coming toward them in an unnatural wind to eat up the sunlight.
The first monster arrived by itself. It wasn’t a vampire, or didn’t look like one to Rhys, in spite of its sharp, snapping fangs.
“More of that bastard’s experiments,” he muttered, waiting, gauging where to strike a quick death blow to this extraordinarily tall beast’s body when it attacked.
The thing appeared to have been pieced together from parts of several monsters. Hideous face. Broad chest. Its Frankenstein-like image wavered on the outskirts of the clearing, as if it were half Shade, when that wasn’t possible.
A roar from above them announced the visit of a second monster as it dropped from a tree. Anger flashed across Avery’s face. She said, “They think they can just waltz in here and take it from us.”
“Guess they don’t know us very well,” Rhys remarked, ready for whatever these creeps were going to do next to try to make Avery’s prediction a reality.
The third odd beast that showed up had a face like a demon—red skin, slits for eyes. The rest of it was a more familiar shape. Mordred had successfully crossed a human and one of hell’s citizens, and however daunting that idea might have been to some, it was a further mistake, and an example of the Maker’s susceptibility for tinkering with the wrong kinds of monsters. Demon, sure. But humans were always vulnerable to intimidation and a show of greater strength, and this latest visitor’s body was mostly human.
The newcomers didn’t attack. One by one, more freaks appeared until they surrounded the clearing. Wide-bodied creatures. Ugly as sin.
“Great odds,” Mason said.
“Seven of them,” Avery observed, as if that should mean something. “He’s toying with us.”
Seven...
Rhys went inward to find more details.
Seven monsters for seven Blood Knights. The number seven was a magic number in fantasy, religion and metaphysical belief systems. There were seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues. Seven days in a week. In Christianity’s book of Revelation, there were seven churches, seven angels, seven seals, seven trumpets and seven stars. Scholars suggested the number seven depicts completeness and perfection. And on the seventh day, God rested...
But these monsters weren’t Blood Knights and were nowhere close to perfection. So it was a mockery of the seven Knights that Mordred was offering here. More of his ridiculous game, since the Maker knew that one Blood Knight, on his own, could easily mop up the motley gang facing them and think of it as a walk in the park.
Rather than joining them, as Rhys and Mason stood alertly on the mound, Avery stayed where she was, staring down. She pressed her fingertips into the dirt, and the earth quaked. Soil sifted through her fingers when she raised both hands, and the sky darkened further.
The ground rocked. The monsters watching Avery shifted uneasily without pouncing.
“What are you waiting for, reinforcements?” Rhys said to them.
“They’re waiting for him. Their Maker.” Avery’s voice was hushed.
Rhys could sense that this was true. His nerves began to buzz along neural pathways as if galloping toward a fire. A smell he knew all too well drifted past the trees. He almost choked with recognition.
“Here we go,” he said, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the mad, sadistic vampire and the unearthly, undead queen that would surely be with him. The end game was now in motion, with all the pieces on the board.
* * *
Avery had to concentrate on what she was doing, which was a chore with monsters raining down around her. Still, unless Mordred and his companion had grown much stronger since they last met, showing up here was of little consequence to her. Desire for vengeance still sat heavily on her soul, and she’d get to that. First, she had a holy relic to collect and remove from Mordred’s reach. She needed all of the Blood Knights in accord in order to have it, and two of the seven were going to be busy for a while.
The monster’s monsters hadn’t moved. She wasn’t sure they could speak. Like silent sentries, they also awaited the coming of their masters. When viewed through the lens of the physical beauty Rhys and his blood brother possessed, those creatures looked like poorly made life-sized voodoo dolls.
Rhys had lowered his weapon. He was on guard, on edge, his senses attuned to what was coming. She could stand beside him, touch him, whisper assurances to him that things would be all right. He would like that and appreciate her closeness. She would have loved the feel of her hand on his arm, her fingers on his back. But she might also be a distraction for him when his full attention was necessary.
Everyone wanted more answers than they already had, except for her. The Grail was within reach, and she felt its vibration. The chalice was calling to her, light to light. It had helped to mold Rhys into the creature he was. The glorious Knight with a heart of gold. And here it had rested for a very long time.
There was no reason to consider how much darkness that powerful relic had also caused. The hurt, pain and suffering its continued existence on this plane promised if it was found again by the likes of Mordred. So she pushed her hands deeper into the soil and closed her eyes. “You know what I’m here to do, and why. Blood Knights...can you hear me, through this Grail?”
The earth shook again. In the periphery, she saw everyone take a step to ride out the aftershock. Her senses wrapped around the golden chalice Mason and his brothers had sealed inside a metal box. That box wasn’t buried deep. She could reach it by shoving aside a few handfuls of dirt and bracken. But she had to wait for the rest of the Knights to answer her call.
Mordred was there, suddenly, his presence crowding them all. Avery looked up to see the other fanged viper of Castle Broceliande had, indeed, come with him—a perfect pairing of majestic wickedness with terrific acting skills.
Their beauty was deceiving. Their hearts were blackened by greed and all the blood they had ingested. But they had never shown either their fangs or their true natures to the Knights they had recruited. Most onlookers would have thought them fair, if they didn’t look too closely.
Decked out in velvet finery, they approached t
he clearing as if they owned it. Although there was no more Broceliande, chances were good they had found another lair to replace it. The world’s vampire population was proof of their continued existence. The monsters they had brought along were examples of how far astray their genetic tinkering had gone.
No shame showed on their white faces. The midnight-haired female that had helped to slice Avery’s flesh to pieces in the deep dungeons of Broceliande spoke first.
“Blood or no blood, we should have killed you when we had the chance, angel.”
* * *
Rhys took a small sideways step toward Avery. A protective move. Her hands weren’t free, so she couldn’t have drawn her knife. Both hands were buried to the wrists in the earth as if she would, in fact, dig the chalice out of that mound. Her folded wings were motionless.
In his mind, he heard her silent message. “Release your claim.”
“Perhaps you have forgotten about the light,” Rhys suggested to Mordred and his mistress. “And how hard that light is to maneuver. Because of your deceptions, there is always evil to face.”
Their attention veered to him through red-rimmed eyes that could tolerate the darkness of a cloud-covered sun. Rhys wondered briefly if they had gotten rid of that sun moments ago, or if Avery had done it to pave the way for this face-off. Although his angel hadn’t moved, he could have sworn he felt her hand brush his. While she hadn’t blatantly looked his way, more of her thoughts came to him. “I have it,” was her next message. “I will take it home.”
She had found the Grail. She had her hands on it. It was the end of an era. The end of hundreds of eras.
“What is it you expect?” Rhys asked the manipulators of this monstrous gathering. “That we could allow your nasty machinations to continue now that we know what you truly are?”
Mordred smiled. “Do you include yourself in that sentiment, Rhys de Troyes, as well as your silent brother, when we made both of you?”
“Yes,” Rhys replied. “We now understand what we are.”
“Then you will be happy to hear that we’ve come to end all that pain and drama. Right here, now.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” Mason asked.
With a dismissive gesture, Mordred waved a long-fingered hand that might have been used to cut away Avery’s wings. Rhys could see in his mind the chains and the knives they had used. Or maybe he was tapping into Avery’s mental images of the past.
Mordred said, “Give us the Grail, and all will be well.”
“You know that isn’t going to happen, Mordred.”
Hearing his true name spoken caused Mordred’s eyes to narrow. He lowered his voice and spoke to his ancient paramour. “You’re right, my dear. We should have killed the angel.”
“You did try, as I recall,” Avery said.
She held a carved silver-and-bronze box that Rhys estimated to be twelve by twelve inches in size. As she brushed away the dirt, the damn thing began to shine as if it hadn’t been buried for hundreds upon hundreds of years.
Mordred let out an appreciative gasp. The female beside him lunged, using a wave of her hands to unravel the silence and unleash her lust for what rested inside that box.
The trees surrounding the clearing shook free of their roots and began to fall. At the same time, the ring of Mordred’s monsters sprang to life.
The demon hybrid was the first to reach Rhys. Like the vampires they had fought earlier, this creature that never should have existed also carried a black blade. It moved with unexpected swiftness, going after Rhys with a relentless series of slashes and forceful thrusts. Rhys dodged each attack and parried with his knife, calling up skills from many old battles as he rallied to the challenge.
The clearing was engulfed in a sea of motion. Mason was grappling with two more of Mordred’s creatures. The rest were heading toward Avery, alongside the chatelaine of Castle Broceliande. The fanged vixen reached to take the silver box from Avery but drew back, howling. The box had protections, wards that scored the vampire’s white flesh. She hissed when her skin began to sizzle.
Avery, Rhys reasoned, had known about those wards.
More sounds joined in with the dark mistress’s shout of pain, coming from all around them. Rhys feared Mordred had, indeed, brought replacements, but the female vampire’s howl had set off a recognizable string of others.
Howls. Close by.
Wolves.
* * *
With the silver box tucked under one arm, Avery fended off attackers. She deftly fought her way to Rhys’s side, striking down one mindless beast with a well-placed stab from behind and ramming another with her shoulder. Rhys finished that one off with a smooth spin and a blade to its throat.
Her pulse raced. Her heart ached. These monsters felt pain the way any of the beings present did. She, Rhys and Mason were killing them, but Mordred pulled the strings. Mordred and his companions had set all of this in motion, the fights, the aches and the need for revenge. Yet Mordred was standing back, happy to let his minions do the work.
Something else rode the wind, however. Wolves were coming, moving fast and on all fours. Sensing how their minds worked, she realized these were Weres, furred up without the kiss of a full moon. Lycans that could shift at will. Lycans were werewolf royalty, and she had met one of them by freeing it from a cage.
She felt their approach, watched as those wolves sprang from the forest with their teeth and claws bared. Ten of them. Larger than regular wolves, fiercer, with the unmistakable gleam of intelligence in their eyes. She had seen others like them in the city. Detective Crane’s pack. Leading these feral beasts was the black wolf they had rescued, here to repay a debt.
The wolves leaped into the fight, biting, clawing, tearing apart what was left of Mordred’s monsters as they fought side by side with Rhys and Mason, somehow getting the fact that the Blood Knights were the good guys.
The closer they got to Avery, the more her own wildness blossomed. Slowly, with fighting all around her and Mordred’s mistress about to return for another shot at the box, she faced Mordred.
“How do you plan on getting that chalice back to where you’d take it, Aurian Arcadia?” he asked. “Your wings don’t work. The pathetic things are nothing more than show for a fallen angel whose side deserted her long ago and still pays no heed.”
She heard him clearly amid the sounds of fighting. The female version of Mordred was getting too close.
“You don’t suppose what’s in this box will heal me?” Avery said.
“It’s a pity you won’t have time to find out,” Mordred warned.
“Isn’t it more of a pity that you showed up here and brought your paramour with you? That you have played into my hands at last, and I get two for the price of one?”
A flicker of doubt crossed Mordred’s pasty features and lingered. “You did not call us out,” he said.
“Didn’t I? We’re all here, monster. The beloved Knights who unknowingly betrayed your trust now see what you are and what you’ve done. Do you suppose they will allow you to get away with more of the same? In the game of Mordred versus the Holy Grail, which side do you think they will continue to back?”
Rhys was listening. His share of monsters was gone. Mason stood beside him, LanVal’s stern gaze pinned on the raven-haired vampire queen who had paused, suddenly uncertain about victory.
The sound of the wolves ending the unnatural life of the last creature to oppose them was a gruesome reminder of Mordred’s need to dominate. Together, Avery and the two Blood Knights faced Mordred, each of them with a weapon in their hands.
Chapter 29
“Perceval.” Mordred’s voice was low and well-practiced in the art of using true names to reel in his prey.
“It’s too late for that,” Rhys said. “Your cover has been blown and look where the fallout
has landed us.”
Mordred wasn’t ready to concede any of his power. That much was obvious in spite of the fact that he had nowhere to go at the moment. The tables had turned. The Maker was trapped.
When Mordred’s gaze slid to Avery, Rhys inched closer to her. She wasn’t sending messages, and he couldn’t read her. The strips of cloth she had wrapped around her torso were stained with dark blood that wasn’t hers. It couldn’t have been hers, because her blood was as colorless as her skin. Her newly reattached wings, though more colorful than when he had first seen them, seemed a long way from being useful. Maybe it was as Mordred had suggested, and they never would be useful again.
What then, my love?
They’d find a new place for the Grail and continue guarding it? It would be his turn to watch over the relic this time, and he’d get to have Avery for a while longer?
Avery stood next to him in all her pale glory—tall and beautiful, holding tightly to the box that protected the item she had suffered through all of this to find.
“She can’t take the Grail,” Mordred’s mistress warned, backing up to stand by her lover.
“Her wings will heal,” Rhys said. “When they do, you won’t be around to stop her.”
Avery’s appreciation came to him in the form of a wave of familiar warmth...and as quickly as that, Rhys remembered where he had seen her before. Her warmth had given her away.
On the sidelines. Always on the sidelines and out of reach, he had glimpsed her hovering. Here and there, year after year, with a few breaks in that span of time, this angel had been around...a pale ghost who disappeared when he got close to noticing her. That is what he hadn’t remembered until now, and why her scent was familiar.
Power. Scent. The search for her wings. Hell, had Avery set this whole thing up in order to get what she wanted, as she had just intimated, or was she playing this by ear, like he was?
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