This place was spectacular.
I could have gotten lost in here for hours. I would have loved to read all of the historical plaques and lit a candle for my loved ones. The tourists seemed equally transfixed. This place called to a deeper part of us, a holy place buried inside the depths of our souls we hadn’t known existed until we stepped through those doors.
“Look for suspicious behavior,” Seraphina whispered in my ear, bringing me out of my reverie.
I snapped into focus and stopped admiring the incredible details of middle-ages architecture in favor of hunting the bad guys we detoured for.
I wondered at the significance of their presence here. We’d caught them in Peru last fall and in Omaha not long after that. They’d taken the Citadel over the winter, which had been another hotbed of Magic for us. India would have been as useless to them as it was to us.
There were stores of Magic in Russia, but they had also been abandoned. And Africa held more mysteries for us than even we had time to discover.
We had chased them to Morocco before but had not found them. And now we were here, in another well of Magic.
Although this one had remained untapped for at least a thousand years.
So, why? Why here and why now?
“Where are we going?” I whispered to Sera as she pulled me toward the far wall and to the back of the cathedral.
We continued to wander through tourists, keeping our arms casually linked and our bodies turned into each other. She would sometimes pause and lay her head on my shoulder. The gesture reminded me of what my life could have been like if things with her had worked out.
If we had managed to stay together. Which of course… we couldn’t do.
“Weren’t you the one that suggested the catacombs?”
I looked at her sharply. “You’re not serious.”
“My vision suggests…” She pointed one finger at the floor. “Down.”
“No.”
She cocked her head to the side and gave me an assessing look. “What do you mean, no? Yes.”
“No,” I said firmer. “We can’t break into the catacombs in the middle of the day.”
“Use your Magic. Make these people turn their heads.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why not? It’s simple Magic. If you won’t, then I’ll do it psychically.”
“Sera, no,” I argued.
“Bastian, why not? Oh.”
“No, oh. There is no oh. There’s just no. Get the thought out of your head because I’m not going down there.”
“They dead bodies are not what you have to worry about you big chicken! There are live people down there that may or may not be causing serious harm to someone we know and love! Or even someone we don’t know and love! What if it’s your aunt down there? What if it’s Analisa or Jericho’s mom? Or, worse! What if there’s a whole bunch of people down there and Terletov has solved the mystery of how to transfer Magic and keep people alive?”
“I hate that you’re making sense right now,” I grumbled. I felt goose bumps prickle over all of my skin and I steeled myself for the chilling foreboding that there was no way out of this.
“Well, I hate you, so I guess that makes us even.”
“Yes, you might hate me! But that doesn’t mean you’re inherently afraid of me! Or that you have nightmares of being buried alive with me! Or that something down there, something that has been dead for centuries upon centuries will reach out and grab you and pull you into its skeletal grave where you’ll be forced to give it your corporeal body so that it can raise an army of undead and take over the world!”
She scrunched her eyebrows together and shook her head at me. “It’s basically the same.”
I let out a steadying breath. “This is a real fear, Sera. I cannot go down those steps.” Especially now that I could see how far down they went. An iron gate and rail blocked our easy entrance to crumbling stone steps that lead to a lower part of the church. I could feel the cool air as it rushed up from the crypt. Torches lighted the way, but that did not make it any more welcoming.
The locked gate that kept people out seemed to be a temporary fix. Usually, tourists were allowed to explore the upper part of the tombs and see all the buried priests, bishops, and one Spanish prince, that long preceded them. Experience and a love of history and culture promised that once we walked through the main antechambers of the crypt, we would come to secret stairs leading deeper into the bowels of the church. Eventually, we would find the oldest of catacombs, holes dug into the walls stuffed with bones of ancient bodies.
That was the place I dreaded most in life. I had an unnatural fear of dead things. And I always had. I wasn’t supposed to die. My people weren’t supposed to die. Therefore, death freaked me out more than anything else.
Seraphina clicked her nails on the iron gate and waited for me to make a move. When I didn’t, she used her own powers to keep heads turned away while she started shaking the gate loudly.
I sighed with resignation and Magically unlocked the padlock so that I didn’t have to make a fool out of myself.
“You could have done that five minutes ago,” she complained.
“I could have.”
“You’re just mad I’m making you go down here.”
“I am,” I confirmed. “You could have warned me back in Italy that I would have to do this. Then at least I could have mentally prepared myself.”
“And you could let me go down here alone if you want to. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
A punch of anger hit me in the kidneys and I wanted to wrap my arms around her and hold her to my chest. How could she think I could do that? Did she really know nothing about me? I would never make her do this alone, especially when her powers weren’t exactly useful in a situation like this.
Not for the first time, I wondered what we were going to do when we actually found this trouble we had come looking for. We had no weapons and a limited supply of Magic.
What if Seraphina was right? What if we stumbled right into Analisa, or even Terletov? Then what? Would I sarcasm them to death?
Would that even work?
My constant wit seemed to torture Seraphina well enough. Or at least make her want to kill herself.
Maybe the same approach would work with the bad guys.
I kept my eyes trained on my surroundings without really taking too much in. I didn’t want to memorize the details of the carved tombs or embellished coffins. I just wanted to find the big bad and get the bloody hell out of here.
We had to be creative with our Magic to continue our journey to the lowest catacomb. We made it a point not to damage any of the history or artifacts, which became increasingly difficult as we went.
The air became bitingly frigid the further down we traveled. It smelled like musty, cold earth. Our bodies were forced together in the cramped hallways and corridors, but I practically worshiped the feel of Sera’s warm, living body against mine.
It at least beat the sensation that dead hands were going to start clawing through the packed dirt walls at any second.
A light in the distance pulled me away from the horror movie replaying in my head and we quickened our pace. The hallway widened out into a large circular room with smooth walls and a sloping center. In the middle of that space stood four hooded men chanting around a blue orb of light.
Magic.
The old school kind.
Their presence felt shifty and odd. I hated the sensation Terletov’s goons brought with them. I might not have been a Titan, but I could feel this. I could feel how wrong it was. My skin crawled and my internal organs itched uncomfortably.
But we’d found the right place. Seraphina’s vision had been spot on.
“Well, well, well,” I grinned, still trying to come up with a plan to break up this party of evil. “Look, Sera, we’re not too late after all.”
Chapter Four
Seraphina
I decided right after we took care of these jackass
es, I needed to kill Sebastian.
Could he do anything without sarcasm?
It might be physically impossible for him to speak without infusing some kind of inane jokey-joke into every single word.
The four men that had been hovering over the blue orb of Magic looked up at us from under their dark cloaks and scowled.
“What’s the plan?” I whispered to Sebastian out of the corner of my mouth. I felt pinpricks of fear work over my body as I realized we had no escape plan… no way to get out of this one.
“You were supposed to come back with something about how you’re always late and then I was going to say something about how you’re on time for the important things.”
I pushed his shoulder. “Are you kidding? You’re working out a bit? Like we’re comedians!”
He smirked at me. I nearly told the group of Terletov’s men they could have him.
“I’m stalling for time. You were supposed to realize that!”
“No need to hesitate,” one of the burlier men announced. “We’re ready when you are.”
The blue orb continued to spark and sizzle with super-heated Magic. It actually reminded me a lot of Eden. I had seen her Magic more than once and this was a very good representation of it.
I knew it was old, but not much more than that. Eden was the only Immortal I knew that had dealt with any of the Magical hotspots up close and personal. And she’d never learned to wield the power in its Source form. She always ended up fighting it, until she beat it into submission.
In India, she’d basically stolen the healing Magic from the Cave of Winds. And in Romania she’d wrestled some kind of tornado and destroyed the holding powers of the dungeons.
These men seemed to be trying to harness the power somehow, but their methodology didn’t make sense to me. Also, I didn’t see Terletov around anywhere and I highly doubted he would let his henchmen absorb whatever superpower the orb had for him or the others. If there was something to be gained from this place, he would be here himself.
That meant this was a suicide mission. Or at the very least, Terletov had sent them to test it for him.
Sebastian must have had the same thought.
One of the men pulled out a gun while his friends yelled at him to be careful of the orb. Sebastian took a leaping jump and crashed into the goon closest to him. Sebastian didn’t hesitate to shove the man straight into the orb of Magic.
I jumped back as the circle of electrified light expanded and contracted to encompass the entirety of the man. He screamed out in absolute agony while the crackle of lightning grew to a deafening volume.
I tried to look away, but I couldn’t. The vision of the man getting fried to death while his cloak turned to flames around him was too much. I had to see it through. I had to know what happened to him.
His screams echoed in the small, rounded chamber and chased each other down the narrow corridor. His body seemed to convulse for eternity. The Magic took its sweet time killing him and all the while his skin became blacker and blacker.
By the time the blue orb released him by dropping him on the compacted dirt floor, every inch of his body had turned black and ashy. I felt like I could blow hard in his direction, and he would crumble to dust and blow away.
My stomach churned at the horrific sight and I finally ripped my eyes from the gruesome scene. I looked back at the orb and noted that it was noticeably bigger. Now, mixed in with the blue, faint strands of puke green could be seen that weren’t there before.
The dead guy’s Magic.
The orb had taken it and absorbed it into its own.
How strange.
There had been a marked silence while the man electrocuted to death and for long moments after as we all comprehended what happened.
And then, as if an alarm had been sounded or a starting gun let off, we moved into action at once.
Sebastian jumped for his next victim and I did the same. Without weapons, I had to put myself in a position where I couldn’t be shot or shoved into the orb of Magic that would incinerate me.
That was the last thing I needed or wanted.
I dove for his waist and tried to tackle him to the ground. I had hoped to catch him off balance and force him to throw his gun away.
That didn’t happen.
First, I threw my arms around his waist but couldn’t get him to move. Apparently, I wasn’t as strong as I liked to believe I was. Second, he swatted me away like a fly.
I felt the punch come at my ribs and knock me five feet into the curved wall. I hit my back first and then my head. My bones seemed to crack with the impact and black dots danced in my vision.
I reached back to find a thick trickle of blood on the crown of my head.
Bastard.
My body would heal quickly, but as he lifted his gun with a sadistic chuckle, I realized not quickly enough.
I could barely see through the pain, but if I didn’t do something fast, I would never get the chance again.
I fumbled around for a weapon of some kind with my fingertips. I managed to find a rock that would do the job. I lifted it quickly and used Magic to aim for me.
The rock sailed out of my hand and hit his right arm in the wrist. That was the hand he’d been holding the gun with and the rock managed to hit him just right. He dropped the gun when it went limp in his hand. And he stared at me with a mixture of undisguised rage and surprise.
I dove for the gun at the same time he did and we became a mess of tangled limbs and flying fists.
I was used to men behaving like gentleman. This was the first time a man hadn’t cared at all that I was female. Even Lucan had treated me with a certain amount of respect. This guy fought me like he hoped he could kill me in this fight.
And he so easily could have.
We rolled around on the floor while Sebastian fought off the two remaining guys nearby. The searing hot orb crackled overhead. I could feel the heat and electricity of it bouncing around in the air just above my face.
The man fighting me tried to push me toward it. I struggled desperately and just managed to hold my face back from the charged field that surrounded the meaty part of the Magic.
I wiggled my knees up to my chest and leveraged my feet against his torso. I pushed hard and tried to kick him into the Magic. I had grimaced for all of one second before I realized that was what he had been trying to do to me.
I kicked harder.
I tried to push my Magic into him, but he had all kinds of mental blockers up and running. I swirled my Magic around and turned on the persuasion. Mediums didn’t have the coolest, violent powers that the rest of the Immortals had, but we did have the ability to bend others to our will.
If I could slip by his mental defenses, I could persuade him to push himself into the Magic. Or at the very least not hurt us. But I couldn’t. I came up against a solid, impenetrable wall.
He pulled back an inch and then threw himself on me. His hands went around my neck and he maneuvered me so that my back was now to the pulsing Magic. I felt the heat of it press against my skin and the finality of death hang over me.
Geez! Was this really how I was going to die? Single, dirty from rolling around on the dirt and in the basement of a church where my body would turn to ash?
No way. I had always imagined my death as some kind of Sleeping Beauty scenario. After a long, prosperous, fulfilling life, I would simply lie down on a handmade trellis bed carved by my handsome lover and close my eyes. My hair would be laid out perfectly, my hands primly folded over my stomach and my shoes would be designer, not the cheap tennis shoes Sebastian picked up for me earlier today.
A gun went off and echoed loudly in the small chamber. I screeched and faltered for a second. The man I was trying not to let kill me pushed me with more force and I almost rolled into the orb’s reach. A body slumped to the ground and then I heard the telltale sound of searing skin. The orb had claimed another and I was terrified that it was Sebastian.
My heart lurched in
my chest and a hundred confusing emotions swirled around me, but most of all fear gripped me tightly. That couldn’t have been Sebastian. He couldn’t die. Heartache bellowed in my chest and I thought for a moment, that if he died, I would follow after him. I couldn’t lose-
“Duck, Sera!” the man himself called out.
Oh, whew. He was still alive. I could stop being so dramatic.
For once in my life, I didn’t question him. I dove to the side while he came barreling at me. The guy fighting me didn’t have time to adjust with me when Sebastian rammed into him from behind.
We had been on our knees fighting, and when Sebastian’s body pushed into his, it sent the traitor flying forward. The Magical orb scooped up his body immediately and expanded to cover both his and the other guy recently shot. Sebastian grabbed me by both arms and pulled me with him as we scrambled back to press ourselves against the wall and away from the sparking electricity.
The two men were nothing but charred bodies layered in ash and dead flesh. I stared at them for only a second before I dove for the abandoned gun just two feet away. I staggered to my feet and held my finger steadily over the trigger.
By the time I stood up, the remaining guy had his gun pointed at Sebastian. His hood had dropped back to reveal a sickly looking man with putrid yellow skin and sunken eyes. His hair had come away in clumps all over his scalp and left scabbed over patches of bloody skin.
From here, I could smell him, rotting death that reeked of evil.
This was how all of the other victims had smelled right before death. When Terletov tried to exchange their Magic and failed, this was what happened to their body.
This man was about to die.
A warning flared in my gut. I didn’t understand it though. I didn’t understand what I should stop him from doing.