by E. G. Foley
At least they didn’t seem to be suffering. But Jake’s heart broke to know there were far too many people for him to rescue.
Not without an army—and a large team of healers.
He wasn’t even sure how to rescue his parents. Aye, he had to find them first. Maybe they had long since died.
That was still a possibility, he admitted as his grim stare traveled over the honeycombed walls of the cave.
There was only one way to find out. He’d have to check each and every glass coffin.
And, hopefully, he would recognize their faces from the family portrait in the great hall at Griffon Castle. Twelve years older now, they’d probably look somewhat different.
Then, absurdly, Jake started getting nervous to meet them for the first time. Butterflies in the belly and all.
Pay attention! he told himself sternly. What he ought to be nervous about were the white-coated scientists or doctors scattered throughout the room.
They drifted here and there, seeing to various tasks: monitoring the unconscious people in the glass boxes, inspecting the tubing connected to each, and jotting notes on their clipboards. One pored over paperwork at a lamp-lit table, while another took readings of some sort off the side of the machine.
Most strolled around at floor level, but a couple wheeled tall library ladders around the cavern and climbed up to check on the captives in the higher alcove niches.
Jake shook his head, seething. Heartless blackguards. He gripped his spear, tempted to skewer a few.
At that moment, one of the scientists up on the ladder turned and spotted Jake peering over the barrels.
“Hey! You shouldn’t be in here!” he yelled, then pointed at him. “We’ve got an intruder!”
“What?” The man checking the machine turned and saw Jake. He narrowed his eyes, hung his clipboard at once on a little hook, and strode toward Jake at a quick clip. “You there! Who are you? How did you get in here?”
The chap doing paperwork abandoned the table and ran toward Jake from the opposite direction. The rest of the scientists quit what they were doing and came to see what was going on.
Heart pounding, Jake rose to his feet. There was no point hiding anymore, but now what?
With the wall at his back and the first two scientists closing in from either side, the rest already on their way, he looked right and left, unsure what to do.
He couldn’t just run. His parents were here. He wasn’t leaving without them.
His only option was to seize the initiative. Good. Jake never minded going on offense.
He marched out angrily from behind the barrels and took a few aggressive paces toward the center of the dim, giant cavern, ignoring the scientists as they approached.
“Mother! Father!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Where are you? Stay back!” he added, menacing the scientists with the spear.
The two white-coated men slowed their pace as they saw he had a weapon.
“Show me Lord and Lady Griffon. Now!” Jake ordered them. “Or I swear I’ll run you through!”
The two nearest fellows halted, lifting their hands in an effort to soothe his fury with a show of surrender.
The others who’d been working in the cavern gathered around. “Did he say Griffon?” one of the new arrivals murmured to his colleagues.
The others nodded. They exchanged meaningful glances, then the paperwork man looked at Jake.
“So, you are…?”
“That’s right! The chosen one,” Jake said sarcastically. “And I didn’t get picked for the Black Prince by bein’ a nice boy, so don’t make me hurt you.” He brandished the spear at all of them. “I want to see my parents. Where are they? What have you done to them? Show them to me!”
They all just stood there, studying him like he was a lab rat from some experiment that had produced highly interesting results.
“Now!” Jake roared, his impassioned order reverberating under the cavern’s hollow dome.
“He is hysterical,” one of the scientists remarked.
Jake’s temper snapped. “Hysterical? I’ll show you hysterical!” He strode over to the machine, changed his hold on the spear to use it like a bat, and took aim at the big glass container at its base. “Show me my parents or I’ll smash this thing to smithereens!”
The scientists panicked.
“No! Wait, stop!”
“Don’t do it!”
“You’ll kill them all!”
“What?” Jake paused, still poised to swing.
“The machine is keeping them alive!” said the man who’d been taking readings off the contraption.
“What if I don’t believe you?”
“That’s a chance you’re willing to take?” the man asked.
Jake faltered, then straightened up, at a loss, and lowered his weapon. He hadn’t come this far to save his parents only to kill them himself by making some hotheaded blunder.
“Why are you doing this?” He gestured around the cavern at the scientists’ unholy work. “How could you?”
They looked grimly at each other.
Unfortunately, the Drow must’ve heard the commotion, for the double doors burst open at that moment, and the black-clad warriors stepped into the cavern with Duradel between them.
The high priest’s bodyguards drew their bows in unison, and Jake cursed. Not these blokes again.
Good old Crescent Moon, the polite one, and angry Triangle Chin.
Still standing uncertainly by the machine, Jake tensed for a fight. As the tall, graceful warriors prowled toward him, the scientists parted to let them pass.
The high priest hung back near the entrance but looked fully at home in the twilight of the cavern, his pale hair gleaming.
“Do not be alarmed, Jake,” Duradel called in his creepy, singsong accent. “As I said, we mean you no harm.”
“It would be best if you came along peaceably, Your Highness,” Crescent Moon said. “We will show you to a guest chamber you can transform to your liking with nothing but a thought. The rooms here have magic in the walls.”
Humph. At least that explained Badgerton’s den.
“Illusions don’t impress me,” Jake replied. But for the sake of the captives, he took a few wary steps away from the machine, then stood planted.
Beyond that point, he refused to budge. His parents were somewhere in this cave, and he wasn’t leaving without them.
The Drow crept closer.
“You’d better back off!” Jake angled the spear at them.
“Now, now, boy, don’t make a fuss,” Triangle Chin taunted him through gritted teeth. “We don’t want things to get…messy.”
“You won’t shoot!” Jake retorted. “Wyvern said you’re not allowed to kill me.”
“No, but we can shoot you in the legs,” Triangle Chin replied. “We’re very good with these things, you know.” The dark elf indicated his bow. “Our kind begin archery training at the age of five. Do you suppose we’ll miss?”
Jake swallowed hard. Quickly shifting the spear into his right hand, he raised his left, palm open, to deflect any arrows they might let loose with his telekinesis.
“Come, Jake, there is no need for any unpleasantness,” Duradel said. “Better us then the dragon, surely.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Let us talk privately for a moment, my lad.” Duradel walked over, finding his way with ease, thanks to his carved wooden staff. As he approached, the priest’s two stone-faced bodyguards moved closer to protect him.
A pair of bookends, those two.
“Perhaps I can help you understand why you are so important to us, Jake,” Duradel said smoothly. Though his milky eyes stared into space, he gave a vague smile, revealing incisors filed into slight fangs. “I can show you the magnificent destiny the Brotherhood is offering you. Will you let me?”
“Will you let me see my parents?” Jake countered, a little put off by the fangs.
“That is not my decision to make. It’s up to Lord Wyver
n.” The prophet inched closer. He smelled like incense. “Put the weapon down.”
“Not bloody likely. Where are they? Which of these alcoves—”
“Hush.” Duradel reached out without warning and lightly grasped the top of Jake’s forehead.
“Let go o’ me!” Jake pulled back, but Duradel’s grip only clamped down harder.
“Just…look,” the priest ordered him.
Jake resisted. He still had the spear, but he was not about to stab a blind man. The moment he glanced at Duradel’s eyes, though, the seer projected a vision into Jake’s mind.
Images started flashing.
Jake rebelled at the invasion into his head, trying to jerk his face away. Duradel’s long-nailed fingers dug in insistently at his temples and hairline.
In the next heartbeat, the oracle’s psychic power overwhelmed him.
The cavern faded away. Jake stood immobilized. His eyes were still open, but an inner darkness dropped over his mind like a black screen. Then all he could see was the vision Duradel was sending.
Jake saw a family…
The thing he wanted most in all the world.
Not just any family. He stared.
A royal family.
With untold power.
He was the son, of course: the Black Prince. He stood in the center and just ahead of his parents.
Behind his left shoulder towered Wyvern arrayed in the black robes and the tall, viciously spiked onyx crown of the sorcerer-king.
Beside him, just behind Jake’s right shoulder, stood Fionnula, glittering in black diamonds and black pearls, her chin lifted proudly.
She held a wand in one hand but rested the other on Jake’s shoulder in a motherly pose. Her red nails dug into him, but Jake didn’t feel it.
He was staring at himself in the vision.
He, too, wore a crown, a simple iron circlet. He looked good.
The three of them stood on a balcony somewhere looking down upon a wide, barren plain, where a throng had gathered to pay them homage.
Jake’s gaze traveled over hordes of ogres, trolls, Drowfolk, vampires, wraiths.
Even Nightstalkers bowed in submission. And there were dragons arrayed at Wyvern’s command.
Then Jake could not help but thrill as he realized that he, too, had his own private army…of gryphons. He looked up at the night sky and saw them circling under the moon, screeching with battle-readiness to do as he said.
Duradel had his full attention as the meaning of the vision sank in.
Blimey, Wyvern had taken over the world. Half demon, infused with the power of Shemrazul, his dark magic had become unstoppable.
Then Jake’s own role in the picture came clear.
Why, he had the power to command anyone he wished to do anything he pleased.
Total control…
This was something that all the wealth in the gold mine he had inherited could not buy.
He could make laws—and enforce them.
Wyvern didn’t care if Jake used his power for good, within reason. No, his doting Nephilim papa thought Jake had hung the moon and stars. He was allowed to do anything he liked at any time.
That meant he could do…oh, marvels.
Things that would impress even Dani O’Dell. He could make the world good enough for her. For all his friends. For every kid who’d ever gone hungry or taken a harsh blow from an angry parent…or apprentice master.
He could have revenge on those kinds of people.
He could force everyone to act decent, like they should. Like he’d always known that people ought to act when he was starving on the streets of London and nobody cared.
How many times had he vowed he’d get even with people someday, with this unfeeling world? He had known at the time that it was just a pipe dream. You couldn’t force people to care, to do the right thing, not even for penniless orphans.
But maybe…he could.
Jake stared, riveted by the possibilities. He could sic his righteous gryphons on any evildoer, aye, and make an example of him or her. No mercy; no regret.
And crime? Injustice?
In his role as the Black Prince, he could use the warlocks’ magic to punish the wicked and even predict crimes before they were committed. He could stop bad things from ever happening to innocent people in the first place.
Gooseflesh ran down Jake’s limbs as he realized that the Dark Druids were offering him the chance to wield almost godlike power.
Only…that was how Zolond got started, according to what Aunt Ramona had told Nixie.
Geoffrey de Lacey had started out good.
The road to Hell had indeed been paved with good intentions, at least for the Dark Master…
Zolond.
Aunt Ramona! Jake suddenly thought, yanked out of the vision by the thought of the Elder witch. Panic shot through him as his original mission came flooding back.
What am I doing?
He had promised Archie he’d help defend the Dark Master and, thus, Aunt Ramona. If one died, so did the other. Jake’s heart leaped into his throat.
What if Zolond’s battle against Wyvern was going badly?
He should be out there! Especially now that he’d glimpsed the Nephilim’s grandiose intentions.
He had to stop Wyvern from fulfilling his plans!
He jerked free of Duradel’s hold—both physical and mental—and took a step backward. “Keep your hands off me!”
Suddenly, two scientists grabbed Jake from behind. One restrained him with a rough bear hug while the other pressed a rag soaked in chloroform over his nose and mouth, trying to knock him out. Jake fought immediately.
He recognized the sickeningly sweet chemical smell from Archie’s lab. The boy genius kept a small supply on hand, as chloroform was the chief anesthetic used before many medical procedures.
First the stuff made you silly, then it knocked you out cold.
Around here, they probably used it on any Lightriders who started waking up.
More scientists piled on to hold him still. The Drow stood back and watched. Fingers tried to pry Jake’s grip off the shaft of the spear. He didn’t dare let it go.
Aware he had only seconds to break their hold before the powerful sedative took effect, Jake elbowed someone hard in the stomach. Then he lunged one foot forward and sent another scientist flying with a back kick, just like Derek had been training him.
He twisted and he wrenched; he ducked and punched and scrabbled in close quarters as the white-coated men hemmed him in on all sides. Jake fought like a wild thing, and suddenly managed to seize the wrist of the hand still trying to hold the rag over his mouth.
“Watch out! His hand’s free!”
Jake pulled the rag away from his face and gasped for air, already feeling woozy. He fought to keep his wits about him. As soon as he’d filled his lungs, he clutched the spear in both hands and swept it sideways with all his strength, using it to mow down all of the doctors ringing him in.
The scientists fell back in chaos, but the Drow lifted their bows.
“Should we shoot, sir?” yelled Crescent Moon.
“Stand down!” Duradel thundered.
Jake didn’t wait to see if the bodyguards would obey. He didn’t much like it when people threatened to shoot arrows in his legs. He tore the bows out of the warriors’ hands with his telekinesis and hurled them off to the farthest reaches of the cavern.
The next thing he knew, Jake was sprinting toward the doors. Clutching his spear, he burst out into the lobby, where at least it was brighter.
For all of three seconds, Jake stood there, panting and trying to clear his head from the slight numbing tingle of the chloroform.
But although he’d escaped the cavern, he realized in the next heartbeat that he was hardly in the clear.
A long, low snarl from several yards down the hallway to his right proved to be Tazaroc, slowly prowling toward him.
“Oh, I really hate this place,” Jake whispered, chest heaving.
A roar shook the basement behind him.
The dragon was on its way.
CHAPTER 35
Tazaroc
Stumbling slightly in his haste, and starting to feel a wee bit addled from the chloroform (he must be loopy, for he found the prospect of being eaten by a dragon oddly funny at the moment), Jake raced up the dark stairs and flung himself around the landing.
Perhaps he’d inhaled a bit more of that stuff than he’d realized, for the staircase zigzagged like a ship’s passageway at sea. His face felt numb, his feet tingly, and his hands all floaty.
Now that he’d escaped the clutches of the white-coated horde, the effects of the drug they had forced on him became more noticeable. Jake wasn’t sleepy, but felt a bit giddy and lightheaded—and knew that he was nowhere near alarmed enough about the dragon chasing him.
Well, that’s not good, he thought with amused detachment from it all. His mind seemed to be working slowly. The usually fast-flowing current of his thoughts had turned as lazy as the charming little brook that wrapped around the wooded grounds of Griffon Castle.
Meanwhile, he could hear the dragon pounding down the basement hallway after him. It exploded into the lobby at the bottom of the stairwell with another reverberating roar. Then its footsteps thundered across the big waiting room; its leathery wings snapped like sails in a high wind as it used them to propel itself faster after its quarry—i.e., him.
Jake giggled inappropriately as he stumbled up the wavy second flight of steps.
Shh! he scolded himself. Be serious! You’re about to have your head bit off.
Fortunately, he sobered up quick when the dragon gained the stairwell, snapping its jaws like it couldn’t wait to eat him.
Upon reaching the upper hallway, Jake barely had time to pivot and take a defensive position. Choosing the top of the stairs as the place to make his stand, he clutched the spear tight in his right hand and raised his left to use his telekinesis as a shield. He planted his right leg firmly behind him, shook the wooziness out of his head, and braced for the onslaught.
He didn’t have long to wait.
Tazaroc careened around the landing below, molding its serpentine body around the tight turn, and then lunging up the second flight of steps.
