ArcKnight (The ArcKnight Chronicles #1)

  Ephrem

  Langley shoved a stack of books toward me. They were old and smelled of the must of centuries. Everything I wanted to know about the KelHan pack was contained within these stacks. Langley warned me I might not want to know what was in there. That some things were meant to be buried forever. I gave the old man a curt nod, noting his beady eyes, filled with more knowledge than any man should ever possess. His warning had not been given lightly, and I thanked him for his concern.

  It had everything to do with my fiancé, Lily. For her, it was worth shaking out the skeletons, even when it involved a centuries-old curse.

  Settling down at one of the desks, I flipped through the delicate papers. The archives were vast, dark and reeked of old leather. Langley practically lived there, biding his time documenting the current events and organizing the ancient ones.

  “I found another one.” Langley approached the desk with another book of bound papers. The pages were uneven and had been woven into the book seemingly at random. It was thinner than the other massive volumes he’d given me earlier.

  “I appreciate this, really. Is there any way you’d happen to know anything about a KelHan shifter named Grayson?”

  Langley rubbed his white beard thoughtfully. He could play Santa Claus each winter if he wanted to, but I doubted he’d ever thought of taking such a job.

  “I think this is the volume you need to read the most carefully. It has family trees as recent as this century, sketches of the leaders of the KelHan pack and details about the prophecy they used to claim would one day save them.” A long, aged finger reached out of his long robe and tapped the volume he’d just brought.

  “Thank you again, Langley. This helps a lot.” I grabbed the volume and flipped to the first page. Langley was already gone before I looked back up, and I wondered if he’d even heard me thank him. It didn’t matter; I had what I needed. I just needed to narrow it down even more.

  The first page was a decorated family tree. I followed the tree to Grayson KelHan’s branch. It indicated he’d never married but had remained celibate for centuries. Impressed, I followed the lines that listed his parents, who were now deceased, having died shortly after their banishment. Grayson had a sister, but her whereabouts were unknown, for she had disappeared shortly after leaving the MarkTier stronghold.

  Flipping through the following pages quickly became tedious. There were extended branches of more families than I could ever count in the KelHan pack. If MarkTier was big now, it had been quadruple it's current size when the KelHans were part of the pack. How had such a great pack disappeared off the face of the earth? How was it that Grayson had been born in the 1600s and was still alive?

  They were immortal. The rumors about the curse allowing them to live were true. If Grayson was really four hundred years old, where were the rest of them?

  A feeling of doom filled my gut as I passed the next section: a list of known dead in the KelHan pack. There were almost as many names there as in the pages of all the lineages. It was heartbreaking to find that there were less than a hundred left of them at the last census, which had been taken at the turn of the century.

  What had killed them off? It had been a slow but unrelenting extinction. Had the curse driven them to their deaths? Had it involved some sort of disease that could wither them into dust? It had something to do with their gargoyle abilities. It had to.

  “Do you remember the hall of statues?”

  I looked up from the book and watched as Langley walked past me and plucked another volume from a wall of bookshelves. I’d need a very tall ladder to reach the top of that stack.

  “Yes. It’s located in the catacombs of Temple, right? Near the western edge of the city? Right next to….”

  “Right next to Center Park.”

  Something clicked in the back of my head, and I struggled to understand what it meant.

  “There is one large room down there, full of gargoyle statues. They were a sight to behold. Wings tucked on their backs. Grotesque faces with tusks extending down their chins. The talons! Those things could shred anyone into strips of meat.”

  “What are you getting at, Langley?” I asked.

  “Well, I’d totally forgotten about the statues, but I thought you should know that there is an entrance to the catacombs on the outside of the city. The tunnels run for miles under the forest. There, the boundaries of Temple do not reach, and the woods take over. If you count the known dead KelHans, you’ll find they match the number of statues exactly. Every one of their dead is encased in stone, trapped. Dormant and waiting.”

  I gawked at him, shocked at his revelation. “Their dead remain frozen in their stone prisons? But why? I thought they were immortal, but here it says most of them are dead.”

  Langley shrugged. “Some say the only reason we are alive is because we agree with this life given to us. What happens when we no longer cooperate?”

  He walked away, leaving me more baffled than ever.

  “What?” I asked out loud. He was already gone, back into the stacks of ancient manuscripts and his own mind. Sure, he was a bit senile; he was the oldest resident of the MarkTier stronghold. I doubted he would live much longer, but while he did, his knowledge was bottomless.

  Looking back down at the pages before me, I shook my head. Who would have thought the KelHans were buried beneath Temple? It was crazy that they would return them to the city’s hidden catacombs. The only thing that bothered me was how they died. Were they just hibernating? Waiting? If so, for what? How did one kill an immortal flying stone creature? There had to be more to the curse than anyone had ever heard. I hoped I could find it in that book.

  As if reading my mind, the next page grabbed me. It had a drawing of two people. One was labeled Grayson KelHan and the other… the other was Lilliana. Well, it looked exactly like her, but the caption identified the figure as Malia KelHan. It was a drawing of Grayson’s sister.

  And she’d been reincarnated as Lilliana of ArcKnight?

  What did it mean? I flipped past the next few pages, hoping to find something else having to do with Lily or Malia. How could she be the perfect doppelganger of a long-dead KelHan? Especially Grayson’s sister? There was something there I wasn’t comprehending, and I had to find it.

  “Langley?” I called out into the stacks, listening for the familiar shuffle of the old man’s worn-out leather shoes and his robe swishing past the rows of books. I called out once more, hoping he hadn’t yet left.

  “Lang—”

  “I’m right here.” He appeared next to me, and I gave a little jump.

  “Geeze, Langley. Make some noise!”

  “I apologize. I thought I might have left out something important, and I was right. Here.” He held out another older book that looked like a diary of some sort. The outside was well-worn leather. Inside, the pages were weathered but newer than some of the others I’d been looking through. “It belonged to a KelHan. I believe her name was …”—he flipped open the cover and narrowed his eyes—“… ah, yes. Malia. I think this is what you’re looking for.”

  He placed the book in my hands and disappeared into the stacks once more. I listened to the rustle of his robes before opening the book. It did indeed belong to Malia KelHan. The girl Lily resembled. Flipping through the elegant script handwriting, I found that a lot of it was useless to me: a girl’s dreams, desires, wants and daily activities. It was a recording of her life from the day she turned sixteen to around the time she would have turned twenty. I was impressed with how meticulously she documented mundane things. But there were gaps. Large periods of time when she didn’t write in her diary at all. I wondered what she’d done during that time.

  Skipping through toward the end, I stopped on one page where the rune that graced Lily’s palm had been hastily drawn on one of the pages. There Malia’s writing changed, became more desperate, as though rapidly scratched onto the paper. I turned to the next page and stopped.

  I don’t know how I’m going
to tell Grayson, but I figured out how to break the curse. Unfortunately, it still involves death. If I succeed, I might not see my brother for a very long time. I know he will figure it out and find me when the time comes. He will have to sacrifice so much while I rest in oblivion and he lives on in this wretched world. If I succeed, I’ll break the curse on all my people. In the meantime, those who do not wish to live another day with this curse have taken my potion to petrify them until I return. They feel no pain, no wants, needs, cold, heat or even hunger. The potion turns them to stone indefinitely, resting in an eternal slumber until I return to revive them.

  When I return, Grayson will have to activate my memories. It might take some work and time to remember what I’m supposed to do, but once he contacts me, it will return like water rushing through a broken dam. Only then will I be able to break this spell placed on my family and my pack. I only hope my reincarnation cooperates with him and understands what must be done.

  I must die so that my pack can live. When I awake in the future, I will bring the MarkTiers to their knees.

  Those were the last words written in the diary, but there was a folded sheet shoved into the blank pages that followed. I pulled it out and found yet another diagram of the rune of Lily’s palm and several ancient words written in what looked like Latin. Three words caught my eye: Ultionem reputabuntur mihi.

  I hurried to the front of the archive where the modern reference books were kept and pulled out the Latin to English dictionary. I flipped to the page I needed, and my heart sank when I read the translation: Vengeance will be mine.

  It was the spell Lily needed to unleash whatever magic Malia had laid out for her return. Grayson would have the second part of the puzzle, I was positive. Wherever Lily had to be when she muttered these words was where Grayson would lead her. The words would unleash her army of gargoyle shifters, awakening them from their sleep, ready for war against the MarkTiers.

  This couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t allow it.

  I rushed out of the archives, diary in hand, to seek out my brother, not knowing if I would tell him of Lily’s involvement. She was in danger, and I couldn’t risk her life, no matter how foul her nature could turn once her vengeful spirit returned in full force.

  My love could bring my family to its knees, but what else could I do?

  Chapter Thirty-Three