“Are you all right?” Lauren approached the bed cautiously. “Brett?”
He was awake, back in his house on the mattress on the floor of his bedroom. “I’m awake.”
“Yes, thank goodness. You were thrashing and whimpering.”
The dream. The Hunt and the ancient evil. “I need to speak to Baal and Kenna, and I need to do it now!”
Lauren’s lips turned down. “That’s why I’m here. Brett, something’s happened to Kenna.” Lauren’s words cut into his brain like shards of glass and sinister laughter echoed in his mind.
Brett locked gazes with Lauren. “We need to get to the palace, now.”
Lauren held out a hand and helped to haul Brett up. “Baal feels you should remain here. The consensus is that Kai has her, a last-ditch attempt to stop the coronation and claim the throne. Baal and Davin are interrogating Kai as we speak.”
“What makes them think it was Kai?”
“Kenna and her mother were travelling by air in a carriage pulled by water horses. When she failed to arrive at the amphitheatre, Baal and a party of guards took to the road to investigate. They found the carriage smashed to pieces from the fall. Scraps of fabric were caught on the shards of wood. It was Kai’s crest.”
“I thought Kai was wily and sly?”
“He is.”
“Then I find it hard to believe Kai would send guards in uniform to kidnap Kenna. He would have hired an untraceable crew, or asked his guards to wear civilian clothing, And how did he pull the carriage of the sky?”
Lauren looked uncomfortable. “Baal is incensed. I do not believe he is thinking logically. There is considerable damage to the carriage. We believe it was shot down somehow.”
“And the horses?”
“Gone.”
None of this felt right. Coupled with the dream he’d just had and the knowledge he’d gleaned, the argument for Kai being the mastermind behind the kidnapping was circumstantial at best.
“Kai is the only one that will gain anything by taking Kenna.”
“And he would know he’d be the prime suspect, regardless of whether they found any evidence pointing to him, so why risk it? It makes no sense.” Brett shook his head. “No, there is something else that would gain from Kenna’s disappearance.”
“Something?”
Brett met Laurens gaze. “Yes. We’ve been pointing our fingers at the puppet while the master grows in strength. There is something under Twilight. Something that feeds off chaos and dissention, and Kenna’s kidnapping is going to give it exactly what it needs.”
Lauren pressed his lips together. “This is about your dreams, isn’t it?”
“It’s everything to do with them.”
“In that case, we best get you to the fifth dimension, and fast.”
Brett was already out the door.
21
Mum leaned back against the cell wall, her gaze on the door. Her usually youthful face was suddenly lined with age in the low light shining through the bars. She looked weary and tired and old.
“Mum? You need to tell me what you know.”
She licked her lips and nodded. “Yes. It’s time. My mother, Aurora, used to say there was a time that father was a warm loving man, a time when he used to laugh with his whole face. He’d been handsome, even with the birthmark that ran from his temple to his cheek, a heredity marker handed down from generation to generation in his tribe. Mother said it was the mark that had drawn her. She said, in a sea of bland perfection he stood out like an interesting jewel. She told me they were happy. That he’d called her is heart. But I can’t recall that time. The father I knew was often cold and distant, locking himself away in his chambers for days on end. The father I knew had no mark on his face, as if his association with the dark thing had wiped him of his uniqueness. And then there was the violence. He would fly into fits of rage at the drop of a hat. Mother took the brunt of it of course. On those nights when I helped by nursing her bruises and cuts, she would smile softly through her pain and tell me not to judge him too harshly. She’d say that he was not himself.” Mum snorted. “But the self he showed us was the only version I’d ever known. He killed my brother, you know. Killed your uncle in a rage. My poor little Yule, he was barely five years old and Orin killed him. That was the day I stopped calling him father. I started to run away, stealing into the fifth dimension and losing myself in its wonders. It was how I met your father. He was at the Cinder market and we …” She blinked and sat up straighter. “No. That’s not the important part.” She wiped at her forehead, which was beaded in perspiration.
“Mum? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine sweetheart, listen. My mother told me that Orin was altered by The Hunt. That ever since he harnessed it he’d been different, as if a darkness had seeped into his soul. At first it had been little things, like the nightmares, and then the aggressive outbursts had begun. She told me that at first he’d begged her to run, to take me and leave. Go far away. But she’d stayed because she loved him, and by the time things got bad there was no escape. He wouldn’t allow it.”
“So what happened? Where is she?”
“He killed her.”
“Oh god.”
“The night before she died, she woke me in a frenzy, she said …” Mum’s brow crinkled. “She said there was something inside him, that he wasn’t alone in his head. I asked her if it was The Hunt. Maybe if we released The Hunt he would be free. She told me The Hunt had never been his and that it belonged to another, and Orin was merely borrowing it. That it was all a lie. Orin had been lied to and was truly lost. We made plans to escape, serious plans hushed and huddled in the middle of the night. She told me Orin was waging a battle and losing, that whatever had a grip on him would inevitably have all of him. I begged her to stay with me that night, but she said if she stayed it would arouse the thing’s suspicions. She went back to her chambers.” Mum sighed. “I never saw her again. In the morning Orin told me she was dead. Just like that, no emotion, nothing. And then he carried on eating his breakfast.”
“Oh my god.”
“I didn’t want to believe him, of course. I searched the palace for weeks, thinking he’d hidden her away somewhere.”
“Didn’t you have a funeral?”
“Twilighters don’t have funerals. When we die we turn to light, to luma, and disperse into the atmosphere.”
Oh, I hadn’t known that. “Your mother was right. When that shit was in my veins I went somewhere. A cavern with a deep dark yawning maw, and it spoke to me. It said it was called Legion. I think it’s controlling Orin somehow.” Yeah, he was technically my grandfather, but calling him that felt wrong. “I think it must control The Hunt too.” I cast my mind back to the story Brett had told me, the one Orin’s concubine had recounted, about how Orin had mastered The Hunt and saved his people. “What if Orin was tricked into letting this thing inside him? What if by taking control of The Hunt he unwittingly linked himself to it?”
Mother grasped my hands. “That’s what I thought. But I couldn’t figure out what it wanted. Because aside from driving my father insane, it seemed to serve no higher purpose. And then Ibris was assassinated, and I knew. This thing, whatever it was, had a bigger plan and it was using Orin to orchestrate it. If he wanted Ibris and his spawn dead, then what would he do to me once he found out I was carrying Ibris’s child? So I ran.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
“I was going to wait until after the coronation. Learning about Bella, accepting who you were and claiming the throne, it was more than enough for you to deal with at the time. I wanted to allow you to settle before I told you about your connection to Twilight. But I was wrong. Maybe if I’d mentioned this evil inside Orin sooner, we could have avoided being captured.”
Ifs and maybes weren’t going to help us now. “We need to get out of here. The djinn and the humans need to know what we’re truly up against. You’re right, this changes everything. If we can take out that thin
g, this Legion, then we can yank out the problem from its roots.”
“It’s here.” Mums said, her eyes roving around the cell.
She looked pale, too pale, and there was perspiration on her top lip now. “Mum? There’s something wrong. What is it?”
“I can feel it, Kenna. It’s here, with us.” She scrambled onto all fours, her hands pressed to the hard packed earth. “It’s beneath us.” She pressed her ear to the ground and closed her eyes. “Can you hear it?” She began to hum, low and even in the back of her throat.
An icy finger trailed up my spine. “Mum?”
She ignored me, continuing the eerie humming.
I grabbed her shoulders and yanked her up. “Mum!”
She flinched and the humming cut off. “Kenna. I’m …I’m so sorry.” She reached up and cupped my face. Her hand felt different, softer, furry.
I jerked back and stared at it in horror. Her fingers were almost fused together, and fine dark hair covered her palm.
“What’s happening to you?”
She blinked down at her hand. “I thought I had more time.”
“Time? Mum?” An awful thought gripped my mind. “Did the guard come back when I was gone?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. Her eyes welled and she blinked, dislodging tears.
“He injected you, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” her voice was whisper. “He said it was a super serum. No need for a second dose. That I’d be ascending soon. A soldier in Legion.”
Oh god, oh god. “We need to get you out of here. We need to get to Caldwell’s lab. They could have a cure by now, or be close.” The door was hard and unyielding beneath my fists. The bars taunted me with their solidity.
“Kenna, baby, please.”
There was no escape. None unless they allowed it. I was trapped and Mum was changing. They’d come for her, and when she was gone they’d come for me again.
“Kenna, listen to me. Orin, my father, is still inside there somewhere. Why else would he have captured us instead of just killing us outright? I’ve been thinking. It’s why Orin went from asking mother to leave, to not letting her go, because the thing knew that as long as it had something that Orin loved, it would have its claws in Orin. And now it has us too.”
That didn’t make sense. “There were years when Orin had no one. Your mother was dead and you were gone … unless …”
Mum sat up, her eyes wide. “Oh, god, you think mother is still alive?”
It made sense. He’d called Aurora his heart, and if the thing had taken her then it would explain how it had managed to keep its claws in Orin for so long.
“Kenna, if this is true, you must find her. You must …Argh!” she doubled over, clutching her abdomen.
“Dammit, Mum.” I pulled her into my arms, noting the fur on her arms and the strange hunch to her shoulders.
She raised her head, and I gasped at the strange yellow irises staring back at me.
“Please.” She grabbed the cuff of my bodice.
What? No.
“Please, kill me.”
I dropped her and shuffled back, legs tangling in the awkward dress. “No. We can fix this. Caldwell will have a cure.”
She tucked in her chin. “There is no cure. Not for me. Brett didn’t fully turn, so there is genetic material for the cure to work with, but for me … it will be too late. If you let the change run its course, I’ll be lost.” She raised her head and locked gazes with me. “Kenna, please don’t let me be lost.” She convulsed and dug her nails … not nails, talons, into the earth.
A low mewling sound filled the air. Me. I was making that sound, because she was right. There would be no saving her. Her body was changing right before my eyes. Her scream cut through my brain, rising in pitch until it was something all-together inhuman.
Oh god. If I didn’t act now it would be too late.
“Kenna, please,” her voice sounded muffled and thick.
She turned her head, her mouth filled with elongated teeth, her brows thick caterpillars.
Gulping back the tears and taking a shuddering breath, I lunged and grabbed her in a chokehold. I adjusted my grip, pressing down on the artery at the side of her neck,
He body grew still, and she looked up at me one final time. “Be strong, baby girl. Be strong. I love you.”
She closed her eyes and drifted into unconsciousness.
Eyes burning, stomach in knots, I held on, pressing down on that damned artery for seconds that seemed to stretch forever.
I held on, even when I knew she was gone. Even then I knew she was dead.
21
BRETT
Baal pinched the bridge of his nose with bloody hands. It was Kai’s blood no doubt. Brett waited patiently for the djinn to absorb everything he’d just recounted. Erebus stood by the window, and Davin and Lauren had taken seats by the desk. Brett chose to stand by the door. The room seemed too small with so many large bodies in residence.
“I should have thought of it,” Baal said. “I should have figured it out by the state of the carriage. We were attacked by flying scorpions after the Black Moon Ball … I should have figured it out.”
“Orin planted evidence to suggest otherwise,” Erebus said. “Do not blame yourself. We all believed Kai to be responsible.”
“And now Orin will get what he wants.” Baal’s jaw was tight. “The hoard will grow in strength. The longer Kenna is missing, the more the realm descends into chaos. I can’t believe we thought the hoard had been our protection against Orin and The Hunt, when all the time this thing had merely been gathering its strength by feeding off the hoard.” He exhaled sharply. “We have to find her, but I doubt Orin will have her in his regular cells.”
“There are rumours of catacombs under the city,” Lauren said. “But as of yet the black mages have been unsuccessful in finding an entrance.”
“Then we go in force,” Erebus said. “We storm the palace, kill anyone who gets in our path, and search until we find her.”
“And that could be exactly what they want us to do,” Davin said. “Send forces after Kenna and leave the realm unguarded.”
Baal squeezed his eyes closed. “We need to act. Do something now!”
This was the cool composed djinn that nothing seemed to faze? He was unravelling before Brett’s eyes.
“Sabriel! Sabriel!” Baal circled the room. “Where the fuck is that angel? He knows where she is. He has to.”
“Yes, but you know he cannot intervene,” Erebus said.
Baal turned on him, green eyes practically shooting sparks. “I have ways to make even angels bleed.”
Davin stepped forward and placed a hand on Baal’s shoulder. “Calm, my friend. If we are to find her, we will need your logical mind to do so.”
Baal took a shuddering breath. “We go under the palace. We use the sewers. Just a small group of us. We search.”
It was a lame plan, but it was all they had.
The air behind Baal shimmered and Sabriel appeared. His blue eyes were dark and haunted. “I can’t find her. I can’t find her anywhere.”
“Would you tell us even if you did?” Davin asked.
Sabriel buried his face in his hands. “It’s my duty to watch over her, to be by her side in times of crisis and to comfort her. I was trusted to guide her.”
“Why can’t you find her?” Erebus asked. “You’ve never seemed to have problems before.”
“There is a barrier between us. Something is tainting out connection.” He looked up suddenly, his eyes widening. “Wait … I hear her.”
Baal grabbed hold of the angel’s tunic. “Where? Where is she?”
Sabriel locked eyes with Baal. “I … I can’t.”
Baal punched him in the face. There was no blood. In fact, Sabriel didn’t even flinch. He stared at Baal with an expression of awe, and what looked like dawning comprehension.
“This was the way it was always meant to be,” the angel said.
“What
the fuck are you talking about?” Baal shook him by the lapels. “Sabriel are you unhinged?”
“No.” Sabriel smiled. “But I do believe that for a time I may have been. You will find Kenna where you thought her to be. But she is deep underground. That is all I can tell you.”
“Get her out!” Baal said. “Do it now. I know you can.”
“Just because I can, it does not mean that I should. I am an angel, and my purpose it to watch. Not intervene.”
He said it as if he was reminding himself of the fact.
Brett was done listening to this bullshit. “There has to be something else you can do.”
“Yes. I will stay with her. Comfort her until help arrives.” He looked too Baal, whose fists were still tangled in the fabric of his tunic. “You will save her. It is your destiny to be together, and I have faith that nothing will come between you this time.” He vanished
Baal stared at the spot where the angel had been. “This time? What the fuck?”
“We should leave now,” Erebus said. “If we ride nonstop, we can make it to Twilight by tomorrow morning. We will search as long as it takes. The catacombs are real, and together we will find them.”
It would have been a rousing speech if it hadn’t been for the fact that they all knew this search could take days, weeks even. By that time, it might be too late for Kenna. Brett doubted Orin had taken her as a hostage. He’d taken her as a prize for Legion. He would feed her to it. There was no time. And yet they all moved to the door, intent on doing the only thing they could.
“Wait.” Davin’s command was soft, but it cut through the air like a knife. “I can find her.”
“What?” Baal turned to him, incredulous. “How? And why not tell us sooner?”
Davin bowed his head. “I’ve been running and hiding all my life. And if it were anyone else I would keep my lips sealed and continue hiding, but I cannot let Kenna perish to save my own hide.”
Under Twilight: an Urban Fantasy Novel (Fearless Destiny Book 3) Page 12
