Rise of the Arcanist Series: Books 1 - 6

by Elizabeth Kirke

  I fought the urge to panic. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but the tunnel was getting so small and so dark. What if it just kept shrinking? We couldn’t turn around. We…

  Wait, the tunnel was dark?!

  I gasped in horror; my night vision spell was wearing off. My arms were trapped by the walls and as much as I tried to roll and wiggle, I couldn’t reach my wand!

  “Charlie,” I said. “I can’t reach my wand and my night vision is fading!”

  He cursed, but if I couldn’t even turn around, there was no way he could.

  “Keep going,” he urged. “I’ll make sure we don’t get separated. Here.” A tiny light flared up in front of me. The flames flickered eerily off of the walls around us, making it all seem even smaller. It was also even hotter. As much as I hated to crawl in the dark, I knew the flame would start using up Charlie’s energy.

  “I’ll be okay in the dark,” I said. “Don’t waste your strength.”

  The fire died down quickly, confirming that he was worried about that too. “If you need it, just ask,” he said, before he started crawling again.

  In just a few minutes, the tunnel was nearly impassable and everything was black. I wanted to scream, wanted to cry. What the hell was this? We were supposed to be rescuing Thomas and instead Dani was gone too, TS and Mariana were god-knows-where, and Charlie and I were probably minutes away from being trapped. Worse, every moment wasted increased the potential that Thomas could die. If he wasn’t dead already.

  Would Charlie and I die down here too?

  I quickly pushed the thought away and suppressed a sob, hoping Charlie wouldn’t hear.

  “What the hell?” Charlie said. “Jen…”

  “What?”

  I heard the sound of scrambling and jumped in surprise as burning hot hands closed around mine, dragging me out of the cramped tunnel. No way! I kicked and pushed and slid forward. I wanted to cry in relief as Charlie pulled me to my feet.

  I wasted no time in pulling out my wand. “Mar!” I blinked my eyes as I looked around my newly lit surroundings.

  “What?!” I yelped. We were standing in a circular room identical to the one we found at the bottom of the staircase.

  I turned slowly, taking it all in. There were several doorways cut into the rock walls. Not one of them was as tiny as the tunnel we had just escaped. None of them seemed to lead to it either. In fact, all seven had stone staircases in them and Charlie and I had not just come down any stairs. It was as if the tunnel had never existed.

  In all honesty, the tunnel could have been a strange nightmare, if not for the fact that Charlie and I were both dirty from crawling, our clothes torn in a dozen places. My knees and elbows were scraped and bleeding and I was drenched in sweat. Charlie’s shirt was ripped at one shoulder, blood staining the edges of the fabric; he scratched at a cut on one palm and a blood-tinged tendril of steam wafted up. He looked up at me and our eyes met.

  I rushed forward and hugged him, even though he was insanely hot. His arms wrapped around me and I could feel his heart pounding.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never even heard of something like this happening.”

  We stopped hugging, but still stayed so close together we were touching as we looked around.

  There were a total of seven openings in the rock walls, all shaped like rough arches, each with a set of stairs going up, twisting away out of sight, all evenly spaced around the circle and identical. If one did lead back out, it was impossible to tell which one it was.

  No, they weren’t all identical. One of had water all over the steps! It was raining when we came in, could the wet stairs be the ones that led out?!

  “Hey,” I started. “Look at the—”

  “Shh! Listen!” Charlie hissed.

  I fell silent, then heard a thud, then another. I swallowed hard as the distinct sound of footsteps echoed in the chamber, louder and louder. Someone was coming.

  Chapter Six

  Thomas

  The trees parted into a clearing and I snarled in annoyance; the rain had already washed away the scent. Well, unless the werebear had gone missing in the clearing itself, he must have gone across it. With any luck, I could find his scent again somewhere else along the perimeter.

  I started off searching for the scent, sticking to the edge of the trees. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I paused long enough to answer.

  “You said five minutes,” Danio snarled before I could say anything. “I don’t suppose you turned back around after two and a half?”

  “I’m coming back now.”

  Even as I spoke, I caught a whiff of the scent and jogged a few more feet.

  “As in, literally heading this way?” asked Danio.

  “Just a second, his scent is so fresh here…” I sniffed again and tried to follow it. I had a strange, uneasy feeling and took a quick look around to make sure I was alone.

  “Tick tock, Clark. Get your ass back here. Now.”

  “I don’t smell anything else,” I said, as if that was an excuse for taking more than five minutes “No blood magic, no other people… it’s like he just wandered away and…” I scanned the trees again and my breath caught.

  “Oh my God,” I gasped. There, hardly ten feet away, was a tree with an opening just like the one where we found Fletcher. “There’s another one!”

  “What?” Danio asked.

  I sprinted over to it and examined it quickly. Identical. I caught a whiff of the werebear – had he gone inside?! I stuck my head in and sniffed. “Hang on,” I said absently, remembering Dani was still waiting. “I just want to see…”

  I knew going into the tree was a bad idea. Yet I just… really wanted to. I felt like I had to. Just a quick peek…

  “See what?” Danio demanded.

  Instead of answering him, I went down a few steps into the tree. The stairs curled around and I really, really needed to see what was around the corner.

  “What do you mean there’s anot—” Danio started.

  The abrupt cut-off distracted me and I looked down at my phone. Call ended. Did he hang up on me? Either he’d call right back or I’d call him when I got back outside. The stairs kept curving around and I just wanted to see… then I’d get out.

  It was quiet, disturbingly quiet, as I tiptoed down the steps.

  “Whoa…”

  I found myself in a small, circular room. There were several openings cut into the walls all around me, each with another staircase inside.

  I had seen enough; something about this just felt wrong. The silence was unsettling and… oh my god, it wasn’t silence!

  “Tethys!” I gasped, I whipped around to face the stairway I had just come down.

  I couldn’t sense him!

  After a moment of panic, I realized he wasn’t dead. No. He was there, but not there. No emotions, no physical sensations, absolutely no idea where he was in relation to me, not even a vague sense of direction. All I had was an idea that he simply was.

  I poked my tongue with the tip of one fang, quite a bit harder than necessary. It didn’t come close to the excruciating, blinding pain of actually being bitten by a vampire, but hurt more than I intended. On the bright side, it was sure to get Tethys’ attention and, I supposed, proved I wasn’t dreaming.

  But there was no answering signal.

  Instead of giving up, I stood there, desperately waiting for some sign he was out there. Nothing. I heaved a sigh and spat out a mouthful of blood with a wince. I gingerly prodded a gland in my mouth with my injured tongue and let my saliva convert to a healing accelerant. My tongue almost immediately felt better, but I didn’t, not with a strange, blank sensation in my mind where Tethys should have been.

  I took some comfort in knowing he wasn’t dead – I was positive he was still there. Somehow. It almost felt like something was between us, blocking us; all I had to do was concentrate harder and I could push though… Y
et no matter how hard I focused, I couldn’t.

  For a horrific moment, I wondered if this was what a real phantom bond felt like. Sometimes when one magic in a bonded pair died the survivor claimed they still experienced emotions that weren’t their own. A few were even driven insane, convinced the bond wasn’t broken and that their other half was out there still. A phantom bond was what everyone told me I was experiencing, until I figured out I had actually bonded with Tethys at the same instant my familiar died.

  As quickly as the awful thought struck me, I dismissed it. In order to feel a phantom bond, Tethys would have to die first and I knew, firsthand, that his death would not be a matter of suddenly noticing he was “quiet”. No. It would be a physically painful, gut-wrenching agony as a piece of me was literally torn away. This was different. It was strange and unsettling, but very different.

  But how?! How the hell had Tethys vanished?! He wasn’t even on his way to the park, was he? I tried to think of how far away he was or if he seemed like he was getting closer before our bond was blocked. In all honesty, I had been partially blocking him anyway, on purpose. I didn’t want either of us distracted by the other on a different case. No, he hadn’t been near the park. Then how did he…

  No. No way.

  I swallowed hard and looked down at my phone; Danio should have called back by now. No service. Well, that explained it, but was that because I was too far underground or because I was the missing one? Our bond wasn’t affected because Tethys had vanished like the others: it was me.

  I looked around nervously. Bond or not, it was still eerily quiet. It was, however, full of scents, some old and faded, others a bit newer. One of them was the werebear, although I had no desire to follow it any farther into this place. If it weren’t for the fact the entrance looked just like the one that led to the blood caster’s cavern, I would have wondered if there was something less sinister going on, like people simply getting lost down here.

  Well, not me. I was not sticking around. I turned and headed back up the stairs. They twisted around and around and I came out…

  “What the hell?!”

  An ocean, an actual freaking ocean was spread out in front of me. I took a few steps out, the rock floor beneath me changed to sand and there I was, standing on a beach. There was nothing like this anywhere near the park. Forget the park, there was nothing like this in the entire state! Long Island, I supposed, but that was on the other side of New York. Maybe Lake Erie, but I had gone there to drop Danio off a few times and didn’t recall it looking quite like this.

  I turned slowly and my jaw dropped. Okay, scratch the Long Island or Great Lakes theory. A cliff loomed up behind me, so high I couldn’t even see the top, despite bending back as far as I could. I walked away from it, backward, until I heard the water splash against my foot and I still couldn’t quite make out the top.

  It looked like it was made of hard-packed sand instead of rock. Sticks and roots and even actual rock stuck out of it all over, like someone had just plowed it all up into an impossibly high dune.

  The cliff curled around to my right, seemingly endless as it jutted out the water. I turned left and swallowed nervously. The ocean, the cliff, and a narrow beach stretched out away from me, as far as I could see.

  I realized abruptly that it was broad daylight. Stranger still, I couldn’t for the life of me sense how close sunset was. That was unsettling. I always knew.

  “This is impossible,” I said out loud.

  Was it a dream? It sure as hell couldn’t be real. A bit of chilly water sloshed above my shoe and I frowned down at it. It felt real enough. I backed away from the water and knelt down to gather some sand in one hand. Yes, it felt very real. I could feel the sun beating down on me and the sand between my fingers, my sock was wet and cold, and the air smelled like salt water.

  Yet, it was all totally impossible.

  I decided that, wherever or whatever this place was, I didn’t want to linger. I turned to go back to the staircase and froze; the towering dunes behind me were nothing but one solid expanse of sandy cliffs. I rushed forward, running my hands over the hard sand where the stairs had been. A few grains of it rolled and fell beneath my finger, so I dug into it, making sure the hole didn’t collapse the cliff above me; but I found only hard-packed, untouched sand with no evidence a stairway had ever been there. The doorway was gone.

  I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, willing myself to be back in the tunnel or the park when I opened them. Even as I did, I could still hear and smell the ocean. I opened my eyes and heaved a sigh. Still standing on a beach.

  Under any other circumstances it would have been peaceful. The water was lapping serenely at the sand and the ocean was as smooth as glass. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, although there was absolutely no shade. It was actually uncomfortably hot, especially in jeans and a sweatshirt. The sun didn’t bother vampires all that much, but not even a human would have enjoyed standing on the shadeless beach for long and my eyes were adapted for seeing in the dark, which meant the bright sunlight stung a bit more. I turned away from the light glinting off the water, blinking.

  There was nowhere to go expect down the beach and I didn’t like the idea of staying put. With no other choice, I started walking.

  Nothing changed. The cliffs and the water and the sun stayed exactly the same; just one seemingly endless beach. No birds, no crabs, no signs of any sort of life…

  I broke into a jog and then, just to make some distance, a flat-out run. The soft sand slowed me down quite a bit, so I moved to the edge of the water, running on the hardened sand left by each retreating wave. I went a few miles before I slowed my pace, discouraged and admittedly a bit tired.

  “This is insane!” I yelled. My voice echoed off the cliffs, but if anyone could possibly have heard me, they didn’t answer.

  I turned and looked behind me, I couldn’t see where the cliff curved over the water back where I had started anymore. Everything looked exactly the same in both directions. I turned in a small circle; beach, water, beach, cliffs. In all honesty, I was starting to get pretty freaked out. What was this place?

  It was way too hot to keep the sweatshirt on, so I pulled it off and, after some deliberation, ditched it.

  I started running again, this time it was more out of desperation than the desire to cover ground faster. I had seen a lot of weird stuff in my life, more so than a lot of magics. Hell, I had a two-way soul-pack bond with a werewolf; my girlfriend was a witch who didn’t know what magic was until she was in her twenties; I had once taken an experimental potion and been human for a few days; and I was likely one of the rare few who had fought with a blood wizard. But this was just beyond anything I could have imagined.

  After a few minutes, I slowed to a jog. Good thing I grabbed two pints of blood earlier; I wasn’t outside during the day much anyway, certainly not running like this under the relentless sun. My shift at MES was probably close to ending by now, but instead of getting ready to go home to bed, I was on this stupid, endless beach. I was hot and sweaty and starting to feel exhausted, my arm and face felt like the sun was burning them. I paused to examine my arm, sure enough, it was starting to look red.

  What the hell was happening?

  Through it all, I didn’t even have the comfort of sensing Tethys. I was so completely, utterly alone. I hated to admit it, but I was starting to get scared. So much for vampires being one of the toughest magics in the world; I was losing to a beach.

  I picked up my pace again, sticking to where the dry sand met the wet. Every few yards I splashed into a deeper wave as it rolled up the beach. It still looked the same as far as I could see. So, I kept going, my speed changing as I alternated between feeling fatigued and being frustrated.

  At last, something did change: the beach looked smaller. I came to a stop, breathing hard, and studied the sand for a minute. Yes, there was less dry sand here. I was significantly closer to the cliff than I had been when I started out. Even as I watched, one
of the shallow waves went all the way up and brushed the cliff before flowing back into the ocean.

  I wondered, not for the first time, if I should turn around and try to find the staircase again. If I were running out of beach, it would be pointless to go much farther. I looked behind me and realized in alarm that the beach wasn’t narrower up ahead, the tide was coming in! The entire beach was nearly gone.

  “Shit,” I groaned. This was bad.

  Each wave seemed to come up higher than the last. Even if I wanted to, there was no time to turn back now. All I could do was hope that I’d find something else up ahead. With no other choice, I started running again. Vampires didn’t usually get the chance to push themselves to the limit, but my legs were aching from running on the uneven ground and my hearts were pounding. I had a headache from the heat or maybe from the too-bright sun streaming down. My skin was red enough to rival a fire elemental and I wondered if it would blister at all before it healed. I honestly couldn’t remember ever having a sunburn before and if they felt like this, I certainly didn’t want another.

  In minutes, the dry sand was gone. The tide was coming in and coming in fast. It wasn’t long before I was forced to slow down because the water was so deep. It was halfway up my shins, climbing higher as it soaked and weighed down my jeans; my shoes and socks were heavy and each step felt a little harder than the last.

  I started wondering just how high up the water was going to get… Who would have thought the gently flowing water would have become so threatening? Every peaceful wave that lapped against me went just a bit higher than the one before it.

  Before long, running was no longer an option. I was wading through waist-deep water, one hand against the sandy cliffside to keep my balance. Sometimes I stepped in a deeper spot and slipped, but still, the sun beat down from the exact same position in the sky and the water relentlessly crept higher.

  I heard a strange rumble and paused, looking for the source. I looked out over the ocean and frowned, squinting into the sunlight – there was a strange shadow on the water. I watched it for a moment as the sound grew louder.