Dangerous Creatures (Book 3, Pure Series)

by Catherine Mesick

  A cold, horrible wave of fear washed over me then.

  "Is something the matter?" Sebastian asked. "Suddenly you don't look very good."

  When I didn't reply, Sebastian went on.

  "And then I came back here to keep an eye on you for the Hunter while he went out to look for the Star of Morning. You didn't really think he would leave you unattended, did you?"

  "Then you let me escape?" I said.

  "Of course."

  "Why?"

  "I thought you might be able to find the sword, and you led me right to it."

  Out of the darkness Sebastian produced a sword that gleamed dully in the dim light.

  "Where's Terrance?" I asked. "What did you do to him?"

  "I left him where he fell," Sebastian said. "I didn't need him—I only needed you and the sword. And he was bleeding rather heavily from a wound to the head, so I don't think he'll be following us any time soon."

  I moved then, involuntarily, and Sebastian smiled. "Cheer up. At least you're back here where you wanted to be."

  He put the sword away.

  "Do you like the chains?" he said. "They're actually antiques. You may not have much appreciation for such things, but I really do value fine craftsmanship. These are actually the same chains that held the Hunter himself when he was originally caught in this tomb. I don't know why he didn't use them in the first place. Perhaps they bring back bad memories for him."

  I moved again then, and Sebastian looked amused.

  "If the Hunter couldn't break those chains, you certainly won't be able to. Although, I suppose you'll keep trying."

  He straightened up. "I think I hear the Hunter returning now. I'm sure he's going to be pleased with my night's work."

  Sebastian began to walk away.

  "Why are you doing this?" I asked. "What's in it for you?"

  He turned back. "I'm working for the most powerful vampire in the world—at least until the Werdulac is free. And then, who knows? The two of them will fight things out. But in the meantime, power has its privileges. The Hunter doesn't care for the perks, but I certainly do."

  Sebastian turned and disappeared into the darkness.

  A short time later, a large shape moved into the tiny room, and I looked up to see the Hunter standing before me.

  "What happened to William," I said. "What did you do to him?"

  As before, the Hunter said nothing, and his expression didn't change as he gazed down at me.

  "What happened to William?" I screamed.

  I could hear my own voice echoing around me. But the Hunter simply stared.

  After a moment, he turned and left the tiny chamber again.

  I sat then, in the darkness, staring toward the glow that issued from the nearby opening. I knew that I was looking at the glow that surrounded the Hunter's wife, and it occurred to me that that was the same glow into which I was supposed to go when the time came for me to take her place.

  I should have been horrified by the thought, but I was strangely numb to it. All I could think about was William and the last time I'd seen him.

  I could hear him screaming my name over and over again in my memory.

  In time, the memory began to blur and change, and I passed in and out of dreams. I woke once to find that tears were slipping down my face. But I did nothing to try to stop them, and I wasn't entirely sure I could feel them. I seemed to see the tears and myself from a distance, as if I had somehow left my body.

  I drifted into sleep again.

  When I awoke, the tiny cave room I was in was no longer dark, and the glow from the next room had disappeared. Instead, a dim, dusty sunlight was filtering in.

  It was day, and tonight was Walpurgis Night. This was the night I was going to lose my soul.

  I felt anger burning in me then, dark and horrible and strong. I pulled and rattled the chains until I felt some measure of relief—the activity, though futile, made me feel better. Then I settled back to think.

  I knew daylight was when most vampires slept, and I also knew that even if these two vampires were sleeping at the moment that I stood very little chance of getting past them. But all the same, I was determined to try.

  The first thing I had to do was get free of the chains.

  I glanced down at them. The chains were light and almost elegant, and there was even a diamond-shaped mirror on the back of each of the wrist cuffs. I tried to slip my hands through the cuffs, but there was no room—they fit so tightly to my wrists that they seemed to have been made for me. And how could I break chains that had once held the Hunter?

  And yet, according to the story Terrance had told me, the Hunter had once freed himself from these chains. And as far as I could see, they had not been broken—he must have found a way to unlock them. And Sebastian had found a way to make cuffs that were meant for the Hunter fit to me—he must have used something to adjust them. Perhaps there was a key.

  "Hey!" I shouted. "Hey! In here!"

  There was no answer, but I hadn't expected there to be one—at least not at first.

  "Sebastian!" I shouted. "Sebastian! Get in here! I want to talk to you!"

  That didn't bring a response, either, so I began to chant Sebastian's name steadily and to rattle my chains in time with the chants. I knew I wouldn't be able to get a rise out of the Hunter, but I thought I might just have a chance with his assistant.

  I kept the noise up for quite some time, and eventually, Sebastian's long, thin frame appeared in my tiny chamber.

  He appeared to be amused rather than angry.

  "May I help you?"

  I dropped the chant. "Seeing as you're going to steal my soul tonight, the least you could do is get me a drink of water."

  Sebastian seemed to consider the idea for a moment.

  "I don't see what harm it could do," he said at last. "And I suppose it would put an end to all this noise you've been making?"

  "It would certainly help," I said.

  Sebastian turned and left the room.

  A short time later, he returned with a wooden bowl.

  "It's not exactly water," he said. "But I have a feeling it will work even better."

  Sebastian kneeled down beside me and pressed the bowl to my lips. I tasted a cool, slightly sweet liquid, and I drank a few sips of it.

  "Did you give me this before?" I asked.

  "No," he said. "It must have been the Hunter."

  I drank again, and a curious feeling of well-being flowed through me. I kept drinking until the bowl was empty.

  Sebastian rose to go.

  "Wait!" I said.

  He turned back. "What is it now?"

  I didn't really have a well-formed plan, so I just forged ahead.

  "These chains," I said. "How do they work?"

  "You're kidding, right?" Sebastian said.

  "There must be a key."

  Sebastian looked amused. "Yes, there's a key."

  "Where is it?" I asked.

  He smiled and leaned down close to me.

  "It's in a place you can't possibly reach."

  He straightened up. "Anyway, sweet dreams for now."

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  Sebastian smiled and left the room.

  Moments later, I felt my eyelids growing heavy, and I remembered, too late, that the drink I'd had before had made me sleep for a long time.

  I felt myself drifting into unconsciousness.

  When I awoke, I felt stronger and more alert, and I was startled to feel something like a draft brush by me. I looked around, but I couldn't see where it had come from.

  I was relieved to discover that I still could see—it was still daylight—but I could also see from the light that filtered into my tiny room that the day was wearing away.

  Sunset wasn't too far off. I pulled on my chains, but they still held fast.

  I was aware then, that there was a presence in the room with me. I looked around but couldn't see anyone. Then there was a soft sound behind me—so soft that I
wasn't entirely sure I'd heard it. Then I felt something tugging at my chains.

  I looked around again, but I couldn't see around the boulder I was bound to.

  Eventually, the tugging stopped, and someone stepped out from behind the rock. It was Sachiko.

  She looked down at me silently, and I stared up at her, trying to think of a way to communicate without speaking. I couldn't move my hands, but I drew my feet up toward me and tried to scratch letters into the dirt with the toe of my boot.

  Sachiko watched me for a moment and then kneeled down and scraped together a small heap of dirt. As I traced each letter, she copied me. Soon Sachiko had traced out one word: KEY.

  She nodded and then raised her eyebrows. But I had to shake my head—I didn't know where it was. Then I spelled out the word SWORD.

  Sachiko nodded once more and then disappeared from the room so quickly that I never even saw her go.

  She was gone a long time, and when she did return, her hands were empty. She stared at me with a mute appeal in her eyes.

  I understood, and I nodded. Sachiko sat down beside me, and the two of us watched the light in the cave as it faded away.

  Eventually, we heard sounds of someone stirring in the other room, and Sachiko stood and placed a hand on my shoulder before disappearing again. I understood that she wasn't leaving—she had just gone to find a better spot to hide and watch. It wouldn't do us any good if she got captured, too.

  The shadows in the tiny cave room grew long, and Sebastian's tall thin form reappeared before me. He kneeled down beside me and stared at me steadily, and even though I didn't want to, I felt compelled to look at him. As I looked into his eyes, I felt my own vision grow hazy.

  I slipped into unconsciousness, and when I awoke, I was once again lying on the stone slab out in the main chamber, with the Hunter's wife beside me and the wide shaft that led up to the surface above me. As far as I could tell, I hadn't been out for very long—it had been just long enough for me to be unchained from the rock and then re-chained to the stone stab without my seeing how it had been done.

  I gave my chains an experimental rattle. I was bound just as tightly as I had been in the other room.

  I looked around the chamber and saw that the Hunter was sitting with his head bowed as he had done the day before. Sebastian and Sachiko were nowhere to be seen—but I knew that that didn't mean that they weren't close by.

  I glanced over at the Hunter's wife, who was once again staring at me with her beautiful, sightless eyes. Her snowy skirt still fell over the stone slab where she lay, and her slender arm still extended over her head with her forefinger pointing outward, as though she were pointing the way to eternity.

  I knew she hadn't moved in centuries, and I thought it was strange that she should have fallen that way at her death—it seemed a very unusual position for someone who had died of a vampire attack. I wondered what she could have been pointing to.

  I glanced over my head. From where I was lying, I could see both of us reflected in the diamond-shaped mirror in the opposite wall. It looked as if the Hunter's wife were pointing at our reflection.

  The position was so purposeful from this angle that it seemed unlikely that it was an accident. I began to wonder then, if the Hunter's wife had truly been dead when she'd been brought to this place. Perhaps a tiny spark of life had remained to her—perhaps there had been just enough for her to make one last effort to save her husband.

  Terrance had said that the Hunter had slipped his chains at the last moment and had escaped the full force of the weapon.

  Maybe the Hunter's wife had showed him how.

  I glanced over at the Hunter himself, and he was still sitting with his head bowed just as he had been a few moments before. He couldn't read my mind, of course, but I was sure he could hear that my heart rate had sped up—and that would surely give him a hint that I was up to something. But if he was aware of my agitation, he gave no sign of it.

  I tried to slow my heart and calm my breathing, and as calmly and casually as I could, I looked over my head again at the mirror on the opposite wall. I stared at the reflection of the two of us in the mirror, and I strained my eyes to see something significant.

  But I couldn't see anything in the mirror's reflection except for the two of us, and when I looked past my feet to the other side of the room, all I could see was another intricately carved wall with another diamond-shaped mirror set into it. I imagined that if I were standing, the two mirrors would reflect each other. But I couldn't see anything significant in that aside from the fact that the Sìdh seemed to like mirrors. There were even tiny mirrors on the cuffs of the chains that bound me.

  I quickly glanced down at the cuffs that covered my wrists. As I had noticed before, on the back of each cuff, just under the back of my hand, was a small, reflective diamond shape.

  I glanced back overhead. What if the Hunter's wife hadn't been pointing to the reflection in the mirror? What if she'd been pointing to the mirror itself?

  I twisted my hands, trying to move the cuffs so that my fingers could reach the small diamonds on the back. But no matter how I twisted and turned, I couldn't move the cuffs—they stuck fast to the back of my wrists.

  I remembered now what Sebastian had said—the key was in a place I couldn't reach. And he was right—the key was the tiny mirrors, and there was no way I could reach them without one of my hands being free. And both of my hands were held in the grip of an unbreakable metal.

  Yet, the Hunter had found a way to free himself without breaking the chains.

  I remembered now the groove that I had caught my jacket in—it had been cut into the rock and repaired. I looked for the groove now and found it just beyond my reach. The groove had been made by someone with longer arms than mine who had also worn these chains.

  I realized then that the Hunter hadn't broken the chains—he'd broken the rock. He'd broken the rock just enough to allow him to reach over to the other side, use the diamond key, and free his other captured wrist. Then it had been a simple matter to free himself completely.

  Breaking the rock must have taken enormous strength, and though the deep groove he'd created was still there, it was too far away for me to be able to use it.

  In my excitement, I very nearly called out for Sachiko, but I stopped myself just in time. The Hunter was too close, and he would surely stop her. I had to wait until he was distracted.

  The shadows in the cave chamber continued to grow, and the glow around the Hunter's wife grew brighter as the light from the shaft overhead faded. Far too soon, the light that filtered into the cave burned a dull red and then began to deepen into darkness.

  Sunset was upon us.

  Sebastian seemed to materialize out of the shadows, and I suddenly saw him standing just beyond the pool that lapped against the rocky island on which I was chained. And for just a moment, I thought I saw Sachiko's bright eye flash behind him in the darkness.

  But the Hunter himself did not move, and I wondered what he was waiting for—it was sunset on Walpurgis Night.

  The last rays of the sun soon died away, leaving us in darkness except for the glow around the Hunter's wife.

  And still the Hunter did not move.

  The only sound I could hear in the chamber was the water lapping against the rock. And then I began to hear another sound.

  It was soft at first, indistinct and formless—it might have been the sighing of the wind. And then it grew louder—I could hear voices whispering in the cave, but I couldn't hear the words—and I couldn't tell where the whispering was coming from. I glanced over at the Hunter, but he still hadn't moved, and Sebastian was still standing on the other side of the pool. Neither one of them was making any sound.

  The whispering continued, and soon more voices joined in. The whispering grew and grew until it seemed to fill the entire chamber. Then, as quickly as it had come, the whispering stopped, and the cave was silent once more.

  A few more moments passed, and then the carvings
on the wall began to glow softly—so softly that I wasn't entirely sure that my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. But then the glow in the carvings began to intensify—it looked like little silver lights shining out from behind the wall. As I watched, startled, the pale lights that emanated from the carvings began to slip out from the wall into the chamber itself.

  Soon the cave was full of slender, silver wisps of light that hung in the air all around us. It was then that the Hunter looked up.

  He stood and held one heavy hand up to the air, and several of the tiny lights moved toward him. At the same time, I heard a noise coming from the tunnel that led out of the cave.

  The Hunter didn't seem to have heard the sound—he continued to stare at the lights and walked closer to them until there was a crowd of them around him. But Sebastian turned toward the sound and disappeared into the tunnel.

  I heard another sound then, this time coming from the shaft above me. As I glanced up, I thought I saw a shadow move across the patch of stars above me.

  There was more whispering then, and I looked over to see the Hunter speaking softly to the lights. One of the lights detached itself from the others and wound itself delicately around his large hand. As I watched, the Hunter's face changed, and a look of rapture settled over his rough features.

  With the light wrapped around his hand, he began to walk toward me. He jumped over the water and onto the rocky island where I lay with an unexpected lightness, and as he moved toward me, I could see why Sachiko hadn't been able to get to the Star of Morning—it was tied to the Hunter's side.

  As the Hunter reached the middle of the island, the silver light slipped off his hand and went to hover over his wife, twisting and turning gently in the air above her.

  The Hunter came to stand beside me then, and he looked down at me with an expression that was not unkind.

  "Her name," he said, "was Sofya."

  Then he reached for the emerald that hung around his neck.

  "Sachiko!" I screamed. "The key to the chains is in the diamond on the cuff! Sachiko, touch the diamond!"

  But it wasn't Sachiko who answered me.