Flight: The Roc Warriors (Immortal Elements Book 1)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  Now that I knew, I had to use it to find out what the hell was going on. How did they just happen to have Roc-specific items available so quickly? I slipped out, pulling the door shut behind me, and moved along the wall of the tunnel, backtracking the way they’d led us to emerge back into the factory. We were in the first tunnel on the right. I walked to the second tunnel on the left.

  No one appeared to notice me. The factory sat quiet. No conveyor moved pumice and silt along the belt to be pulverized by a giant block. No wheels or gears or pistons moved to harness the energy to move the conveyor. For the moment, the lava stream moved slower.

  Still, the feel of the space was off somehow. Growing up in the system, I’d learned a long time ago to trust my gut. And thinking about all that had transpired throughout my life, but especially the situations that had led me to Shadow, even though I thought I’d risen above it—thought I’d become a person to rely on education rather than gut instinct—I realized I’d never stopped.

  Never.

  My gut told me that the voice was somewhere at the end of this tunnel. A captive and not one of the Dangey held captive by the incubus or the ravens.

  Careful to keep to the shaded crevices the rock walls provided, I moved down the tunnel, this one longer than the one I’d just come from. There were no other doors, either. Just jagged blades of slate-carved corridor ready to puncture and slice the being, in my case, person, unlucky enough to scrape against it.

  A heavy-looking door, thick and steely, separated me from the voice and I tugged on the ring of wrought iron that made up the door handle. There wasn’t any window in the door and the ring didn’t budge. My witchy powers twitched beneath my skin, the electricity rippling throughout my entire body. I touched the wall, careful not to slice my hand, to ground myself, and called up the energy, pushing it into the lock.

  It wasn’t simply locked with a corporeal lock. Someone or something had placed a spell on this lock. A spell made up of dark energy. I intrinsically knew it as it felt dark, different from my magic, which felt white and full of light. Once again on this rescue mission I wished I knew more, had practiced more, was just more. But this was what I had to work with, so I worked it, focusing all my magical concentration on that stupid lock. My brow actually began to sweat from the effort no one else saw me put in.

  Ten more minutes, then fifteen I worked at picking it open. It felt hopeless and, in my hopelessness, I accidentally dropped my hand, the one touching the wall. But I dropped it sliding down the wall, the jagged bladed wall. Obviously, it sliced open my hand, though the wound was shallow. I wasn’t stupid enough to keep dragging my palm down a blade at the first feel of contact. Blood welled from the cut nonetheless.

  It hurt too much to keep that part of my hand pressed against the slate, which meant switching hands. My good hand went to the wall opposite the door and my bloody hand held the lock. When I tried this time, it clicked. A blood sacrifice to open the lock? I’d have never thought of that on my own. Why would I? During my brief lesson, Avalon had sidestepped any talk of dark magic.

  It was a heavy door, and it took every muscle in my body working together to haul that thing open.

  Inside, chained to an iron ring jutting out of the floor, sat a charcoal-looking body of a fire demon, the embers almost totally extinguished by the puddle of water he’d been purposely placed in. He was dying. I jolted, running over to free him. Considering the lock on the door, I used my bloody hand to touch the cuff keeping the poor creature attached to the water.

  It took about five minutes of concentration before the cuff time-lapsed into rust and fell away in a poof of dust. Then I picked up the Dangey and moved him out of the water. Most of the embers that were left glowed dimly. I found the brightest one, bright red, and focused all my energy on igniting that spot. Literally in the blink of an eye, I watched the water bead, lift up, and evaporate. Magic was trippy, but I loved it.

  In the next blink, and that same time-lapse phenomenon, he dried until finally flaring with orange, yellow, and red flames. His weakened voice spoke to me. “Thank you.”

  I tipped my head down slightly. “Do you have a name?” I asked.

  The Dangey looked at me oddly.

  “Identifier?” I asked then.

  The light went on in its coal-black eyes. “Acetylene.”

  “I’m Meena.”

  Acetylene still looked so feeble, like a campfire that needed to be stoked.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fuel,” Acetylene answered.

  Fuel? Oh, food. The other Dangey had been starving Acetylene. “What do you eat?” I asked, which was a stupid question because fire ate wood, paper, oils, fabrics, plastics, and rubber. Being made of fire, Acetylene would consume what any flames would consume to grow stronger. “Let’s find you something.”

  “Oh, Meena, I cannot let you do that.” Huh? I swung my head around to see Bracken blocking the doorway.

  And because it was Bracken, his words didn’t register and I sighed my relaxation. “Bracken. Glad it’s you. Have you seen Shadow?”

  “Shad is… tied up at the moment.”

  Acetylene next to me went stock still. I could feel the fear pouring off of him. “What?” I asked, it just now starting to click.

  “Your little friend there knows too much. Now you know too much,” said Bracken as he took a menacing, yes menacing, step toward us.

  Chapter Nineteen:

  The Betrayal

  Bracken? Race, I’d believe—he hated me—but not Bracken, who’d been kind and funny with me from the beginning. Not Bracken, who’d helped save me from going over the cliff. Not Bracken, who’d fought alongside me yesterday.

  What to do?

  What to do?

  What to do?

  Slowly, I crouched to touch the ground. However I got Acetylene and me out of here, magic had to be involved. Before I reached my point of contact, Bracken pulled a knife from his back pocket and whirled it at me. The point of the blade stuck deep in my hand and I screamed. Screamed. The bloody murder type—it hurt that much.

  “Shut up,” the jerk had the nerve to order as he strode cockily toward me, like he’d just knocked out the heavyweight champion to take the title, stopping in front of me—the toes of his shoes touching mine close—and he pulled the knife from my bleeding hand to tie both hands at my sides with a long piece of rope I’d neglected to notice wrapped around his shoulder until he pulled it off to bind me, to keep me from making contact with the earth.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks. Pain radiated up my arm. Acetylene needed fuel to regain strength and therefore offered no opposition.

  “Move,” said Bracken.

  Unable to do anything else, I did as he commanded. The longer I didn’t fight, the better my chances for coming up with a plan. He led us out of the room, down the corridor and back into the factory. When he shoved me over to the lava stream, that was when I started to struggle. He punched me in the stomach to shut me up. I hunched over, struggling to keep standing while dry heaving, the tears blurring my vision.

  The jerkface did that purposely to knock me off my guard. In a surprise attack, he came at me from behind with yet another rope, tying one end around my secured arms and knotting, then tossing the other end over a pipe that led from one machine to another. He used his massive arm span to reach the knot and tug until I lifted off the ground, swinging over the lava, and tied the end through one of the gears.

  “Why not just kill me now?” I asked, petrified that he’d take me up on it and trying like hell to keep my voice from quivering, but I had to know.

  He shook his head like I should already know. “You are my bargaining chip, sweetheart. The future king can be a great friend or an indomitable foe. Even if he is no longer a friend, I cannot have him as a foe, and he needs to see what will happen if he fails to cooperate.”

  “This is all for Shadow? Why? He loves you like a brother.”

  “Do not worry your pretty witchy head about it,�
� he said condescendingly and to be a jerk gave the rope a harsh tug. I thought my arms might pop their sockets. “Just know that the human reign is about to end. Immortals have stayed hidden long enough. You either submit or die. And let us face facts: we both know most of your kind are too stupid to submit.”

  Cloud City was the grandest city I’d ever visited. They even got human movies if they wanted them. I just didn’t understand his complaint. They had everything—everything—up there.

  “I cannot let you do this.” Race. That was Race’s voice. Both Bracken and I turned to look at the mouth of a tunnel to see the Roc man wearing an angry, angry scowl. His stance of a pure badass, menacing warrior. The muscles of his forearms bulged all the way down to his clenched fists. Somebody was about to get an ass-whooping.

  Bracken growled. Like, I thought bad guys only did that in movies, but he actually growled and launched himself at Race. Race, not waiting on the hit, launched himself forward at Bracken. When they collided, I felt the hit ripple through the air. My body swung, suspended from the rope.

  It reminded me of an MMA fight with all the kicks, punches and grappling. The main problem being these two trained together and were the most trusted guards for the royal family for a reason. The two matched each other blow for blow. Kick for kick.

  Race pulled back his arm and let fly. His fist hitting Bracken’s chin so hard that Bracken’s head whipped back violently. Spittle flew from his mouth. Blood poured from the cut now open at the corner of his lip.

  All the while, the Dangey I’d rescued, or quasi-rescued, was consuming coal from a cart meant to be dumped into the lava flow. His flames grew steadily brighter the more he ate. Once he finished off his meal, he snuck over to the machine attached to the pipe I was suspended from and began to climb.

  He made a rocking motion with his body as he slid along the pipe toward me, clearly indicating he wanted me to swing which I began to do as he reached the pipe allowing the flames of his fingers to lick at the rope. If we didn’t time this perfectly, I was going to fry in a river of magma.

  Race and Bracken continued to fight it out. The threads of the rope began to snap, dropping me lower toward the river below me each time. There was so much going on, I didn’t know where to look and the same as last night, Shadow cried loudly as he shot like a bullet, flapping his mighty wings into the fray. In that split-second Race looked from Bracken to Shadow. It was just enough time for Bracken to draw the knife he’d used to puncture my hand from a scabbard attached to his beltloop that had been concealed by his shirt until now.

  I saw. Oh hell, did I ever see and I screamed. “Race!”

  It wasn’t enough. Bracken plunged the knife deep in the chest of his best friend. He plunged it so hard the blade broke off at the hilt. Blood spurted from the wound. Spurted. I took first aid and knew how bad that kind of wound was. Race dropped to his knees as the last threads of rope snapped and I fell.

  Shadow flew below me and I landed on his back. Crest and Rogue finally showed, looking worse for the wear, but alive and pissed off. My mate set me down and I immediately fished the potion book from my waistband flipping through the pages to see if there was another useful spell. Preferably one to keep Race alive. But Race fell forward, faceplanting against the ground. I screamed again frantically picking up the pace of page flipping. There was nothing useful anything healing had to be brewed.

  I dropped to Race’s side and placed my hand on his back. It didn’t move. I felt for the pulse in his neck. He was gone. Gone. Thick tears blurred my vision but my hatred for Bracken overrode my pain. Race gave his life protecting me. I would have my vengeance.

  Connected to the ground, the pages of the book began to flip wildly by themselves coming to a stop on a potion I had no way to brew until I noticed tiny lettering scribbled in the margin. Two spells faced me. One read: Death. The other read: Binding. I chose death.

  Rising from our fallen warrior, I chanted the words printed in delicate script on the page. Bracken’s face started to turn red, then deepened to purple. His eyes bulged as he clawed at his neck as if clawing at something strangling him.

  I felt a hand touch my shoulder as Shadow’s gentle voice reached my ear. “Eaglet, enough.”

  “No. We’re going to watch his head pop.” I shrugged off his hand and returned to chanting. Bracken’s face darkened still to blue.

  “Meena,” Shadow said my name instead of using his endearment. “Do not do this. He will pay, but not here, not like this. Do not take that moment away from Race’s family.”

  He had a family? I diverted my eyes from the loathsome Bracken to Race. “What kind of family?” I asked and heard Bracken suck in a sharp breath.

  “Not a mate. Mother and father. Siblings,” Shadow answered.

  Race and Bracken had been best friends. Race’s family deserved to watch Bracken pay for his crime therefore I read the second spell chanting the words to bind him out loud to put fear in his heart from wondering what this next spell would do to him. His body went rigid. Arms locked to his sides, unable to bend at the waist or knees. Unable to turn his head.

  “Take him, Copper,” I said to him. “You’re the future king, it needs to be you that brings him to justice.

  “What about you, my dear one?” he asked.

  “Your brothers and I will escort Race’s body back to Cloud. They’ll keep me safe.”

  We still had to figure out if the Dangey were on our side or not. Could we expect them to pick up the lava production where they’d left off yesterday? God, I hoped not. And if not, where did they go?

  That was when Rogue approached his brother, placing a hand on Shadow’s shoulder. “He needs to pay, but what if we use him first?”

  “What do you have in mind, brother?” Shadow asked.

  Yes, what did he have in mind? I leaned in to listen along with Crest.

  “When Meena was unconscious, I looked through her book of potions. The traitor is bound, so he is not going anywhere…” Rogue stopped speaking waiting for Shadow’s reaction but that wasn’t enough information to give a reaction on.

  “Getting old here, Rogue,” Crest, obviously over the waiting, said.

  Rogue sighed. “I saw a potion in that book called Truth.”

  Seriously? A truth tea? The wheels in my head started turning. I closed my eyes, folding my fingers together in a child’s prayer position except for my pointer fingers which rested in the dip below my nose. I pictured the book, mentally flipping through the pages. With a truth tea we could find out the extent of our enemies and what exactly their plans were. But the best scenario would be if we could find out the extent of our enemies and what exactly their plans were and be able to send a man in to infiltrate in case the plans were now changing.

  Think… think… think… Meena. My mind continued to flip through the pages of text until I found the answer. “Forget,” I mumbled. Yes, that was perfect. I opened my eyes and repeated with more surety, “Forget.”

  “What are you saying, my love?” Shadow asked.

  “Rogue is right about using a truth potion. But what if we pushed our advantage a little more and give him a potion to forget we got the information out of him?”

  “I love your mate, Shad.” Crest kissed a brotherly kiss to my temple and took up the plan. “We send him back in but how will we get him to fill us in on any new activity?”

  That was easy—I mean, it wasn’t exactly easy holding the spell—but the answer was easy. “I’ll cloak us. That’s how I got Race, Bracken and myself inside the factory without being seen.”

  “You had no cloak when we arrived, eaglet.”

  “No, but that was because of the incubus. I couldn’t keep up the invisibility spell and fight off the pull of his pheromones.”

  A darkness passed through Shadow’s eyes at the mention of the incubus and his pheromones. It passed quickly enough, so quickly, that if I wasn’t his mate and thus attuned to his moods of light and dark, I might not have noticed it at all. But I did notic
e.

  “I couldn’t help it, Copper. No matter how hard I fought the power…” I trailed off. It felt bad to make my mate feel bad.

  “No, eaglet, you misunderstand me. He was draining you if I had not gotten there in time—”

  “But you did,” I spoke over him. “You got to me and put me in the bath that I’m fairly certain Bracken didn’t know would repair and rejuvenate my energy.”

  “But what if the Dangey did?” Rogue asked. “Clearly, Bracken had been feeding them information about us, thinking they were on his side. But what if we have some allies in the Dangey?”

  We had a plan and it was coming together nicely. As there was now a giant hole over the center of the factory—a giant hole I’d created when I brought the lake water from above crashing down on the Dangey—my mate and his brothers dropped their clothing to shit to bird. I gathered up all the pants, shirts and shoes and held them tight as Shadow lifted me with his talons, shooting off through the hole. Rogue followed, carrying a bound Bracken and Crest, regrettably, brought up the end of our procession carrying a lifeless Race.

  Shadow flew us back to the old hunting cabin. The place where I’d started this journey. It listed a little to the right, an unfortunate result of the quakes. We could hide out inside there, though. Put our plan in motion without being seen.

  Chapter Twenty:

  A Plan in Motion

  It could be said that having eagles for a mate and in-laws had its perks. Their keen eyes scoured the ground and despite the changed landscape from the ground shifting and debris, each a casualty of the quakes, they found the plants I needed to brew both the truth and forgetting teas.

  What was so much less than great—we had to lay Race’s body across the couch while we dealt with Bracken. Despite being a huge asshole, I was glad to have Bracken here with me when my family flew off to gather ingredients. Now, thankfully, they were back so it wasn’t just a traitor and a dead guy in the cabin with me.