Looking around, his eyes finally seemed to focus on the destruction around them. He saw the splintered furniture and shattered glass. He saw the holes in the wall and he smelt the knight's blood. Whatever had happened, Tristan had put up a hell of a fight.
"It's not his fault," Nye was saying. "It's not his fault."
Tristan's eyes snapped open and he drew in a loud, wheezing breath, clutching his chest.
"Arrow," he exclaimed, trying to stand.
"She's gone," Zac said evenly as the knight's gaze finally settled on the two vampires who stood above him.
"No," he said, eyes darting about the room wildly. "No."
"Who took her?"
Tristan groaned, holding his head in his hands. "Witches. The Coven..."
"How the hell did they know?"
"Witches," Nye shrugged. "How do they know anything?"
"I'm sorry," Tristan grimaced, clutching his head. "I tried to stop them. I tried…"
Nye hauled the knight into an armchair. "I know, mate. You made a right mess. How's the limit on your credit card? The damage bill is going to be huge."
"Shut the hell up," he hissed. "We have to go after them."
"Yeah, we do," Zac said, looking at Nye.
"I have to go," he spat.
"I don't like your tone, Tristan."
"I love her too, you know," he hissed, standing up. "I fuckin' love her too, so don't go blamin' me. You're the one who drugged her, or have you already forgotten?"
Zac grabbed the front of the knight's shirt and jerked him close.
"Zac," Nye said quietly. "This ain't the time to be fighting over it."
With a grunt, he let Tristan go, pushing him away.
"We've got to work together," the spy continued.
Zac looked Tristan up and down and scowled, "I still fucking hate you."
Tristan grinned wryly, "Better than nothin'."
"How are we going to get into the sanctuary?" Nye asked.
"Coraline," Zac said. "She'll get us in."
Tristan pulled his cell from his pocket. "I have Coraline's number. I can call her."
"Give it here," Zac said, holding his hand out.
Tristan unlocked the screen and dialed the number and didn't hesitate handing it to him.
Turning his back to the others, Zac held the cell to his ear, seething as each ring went by, until finally someone picked up.
"Hello?" came her tentative voice.
"Coraline?"
"Who is this?"
"You're favorite bad guy."
"Zac?"
"We need your help."
"I'm done helping," she snapped. "You know everything I do. I'm not coming back. Not after you crashed a car with me in the boot."
"They have her, Coraline," he spat.
"What do you mean?"
"What do you think it means? The Coven have Aya."
"Shit."
"Yeah, big fucking piles of it," he said. "You need to get me in."
"But, you have Celestine blood…"
"We've never tried my blood and I don't want to have to rely on it. Not now. There's too much at stake."
"And what do you think you're going to do against forty odd witches?"
"Whatever it takes," he said simply.
Coraline sighed and he could imagine the annoyed look on her face. "You better hope to god that I haven't been blacklisted yet."
"You're still in Salisbury? I'll come and get you."
"No, it'll be faster if I get the train from here. They go every hour and the next is in twenty minutes. Get me from Waterloo. Two hours."
"Okay," he sighed sharply.
"She'll be okay," Coraline reassured him. "I know them. They are my family in a sick roundabout way. They won't do anything until they wake the Original Witch and something like that will take time."
"Okay," he said again, knowing that she was right. "I'll be waiting." There was nothing he could do to get her here faster and Gabby couldn't help with this. What they were going to do with Aya and the Original Witch he didn't want to know.
He pressed the end call button and tossed the cell back to Tristan.
"Have we got a plan?" Nye asked. "I don't wanna go into this witchy showdown blind."
"No," Zac said firmly. "I'm going in alone with Coraline. I have Celestine blood and that will fool them long enough so I can wake Aya."
"You hope," Tristan scowled.
"What other choice do we have?" he almost shouted at the knight.
"You can let us back you up," Nye shrugged.
"No," Zac shook his head, scowling. "If there's one thing I know about witches, they will peg both of you as vampires without having to lay eyes on you. You'll be good as dead."
Nye scowled. "Are you still so willing to throw your life away?"
"Shut the hell up, Nye."
"No way," Tristan exclaimed. "I mightn't like you either, Zac, but Aya is important to me and you're important to her. You should be dead right now and you're still here. If that's not an omen, then I don't know what it is."
"God damn it, Tristan is right," Nye said.
"And you're important to her, Tristan," Zac scowled at the knight. "And you," he jabbed a finger at Nye, "have just got your second chance. You both know I'm right. I'm the only one who can go into that place and have a hope in hell of coming out alive."
Nye shrugged, looking away. "I still don't like it."
"Neither do I," Tristan agreed.
"It's how it is," Zac said. "You don't have to like it."
"She'll still be out," Nye said reluctantly, taking out something from the inside pocket of his coat. "Take this."
Zac snatched the auto-injector from him. It was a clear green tingled liquid instead of the thick, slimy emerald it was the first time.
"It'll wake her up in a hurry, so try not to give her all of it and administer it slowly."
"Why?"
"Because it might make her lose control," Tristan said somberly and from his tone Zac knew that he'd seen her at her worst.
"It'll be fine," he murmured, looking at the injector, not sure who exactly he was speaking to. "It'll be fine."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Zac stood next to Coraline in a dark alleyway, their breath vaporizing in clouds around them on the cold night air. Coraline's train had been delayed twenty minutes because of ice on the tracks and he was thoroughly wound up.
"Where is this super secret hideout anyway?" he asked, twitching at the thought that they'd lingered too long already. It had almost been ten hours since Aya had been taken and it made him restless. Who knew what the Coven was doing with her? Coraline said they'd wait until the Original Witch had been woken, but what if it was already too late?
"Underground. I thought you knew this?" she said, shooting him a withering glare. She wasn't happy in the slightest, was she?
Giving the witch an equally hard scowl, he said, "Let's just get in and get this done."
"This is the back door," she said, pointing to the wall. "The main entrance is over a few blocks. I assume this was how she got in the first time."
"It's a brick wall," Zac hissed.
Coraline rolled her eyes and sighed. "There's a glamour over it, idiot." She pressed her hands against the brick wall and to Zac's surprise, it wavered like ripples of water across a still surface.
"The wards are gone," she frowned, as an image of an old wooden door appeared.
"What does that mean?"
"Either they know we're coming, or they haven't replaced them since the Hunter was here."
"Aya came through here before? On her own?"
"Yeah," she said vaguely, pushing open the door and disappearing through the wall.
Before he could think twice about it, Zac followed, stepping into darkness. It didn't take long for his eyes to adjust and when they did, he saw the beginning of a staircase spiraling downwards. Without another thought, he began to descend, following Coraline down into the depths of the station, the
air cooling even more than outside.
The stairwell opened up into a long hallway and Coraline walked down it without hesitation, trailing her fingertips along the wall. Soon, they came out into what was the ticket hall and it was dark, the only light pooling in from a dozen skylights that had been set into the celling high above, but the debris that littered the place was as plain as day.
"What the hell happened here?" he exclaimed, eyes running over the collapsed tunnel and the broken skylight in the ceiling. At some point someone had repaired it with a strategically placed board at street level.
"What do you think?" Coraline said. "The Hunter was here and it didn't go well."
"You're saying Aya caved in the tunnel?"
"Yes."
Zac gave her a look. She was mad. There was no way Aya could have done this.
"You don't know much about the Celestines do you?"
"So now Celestines can move the earth? C'mon."
"Yes, they could. And don't give me that look. I didn't know she still had that kind of power."
"I guess there's a lot of things we don't know."
Coraline looked away. "Well, we can't go that way anymore."
"How can we get through?"
"This way," she pushed through a side door hidden behind the ticket kiosk. He would have missed it if it wasn't for her.
"Obviously," he exclaimed.
Coraline led him through to another hallway without a word. This time it looked like a service route that would have been used by staff when the station was still in operation. It was dark and cold and obviously saw little use from the Coven, if they used it at all.
"How did you know this was here?" he asked.
"How do you think I managed to get out of here unseen? They don't know about it."
Zac was having a hard time believing her. "They don't know about a door set in plain sight?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "Forget it."
"Witchy juju spells, whatever," he shrugged.
"We could be discovered here," she said, ignoring him. "There's nowhere to hide, so I suggest you stay behind me."
He nudged her forwards down the hall. "Fine with me."
As they walked down the passage in the murky light, Zac listened to the surrounding silence. For a network of tunnels, even as built up and habitable as these, the slightest sound would echo and right now there was nothing. For a place that was meant to be a sanctuary for an entire coven of witches, it didn't seem right.
"It's a bit quiet, don't you think?" he murmured.
"Yeah," Coraline whispered. "I was thinking the same thing."
Involuntarily, he shivered, suddenly wanting to get out of here as soon as he could. "Can you sense her?"
"I think Alisandra's got her in her rooms."
"Alisandra?"
"The Matriarch. Our leader. Their leader."
"I'm right behind you." It wasn't the time to question her our leader, their leader mishap. She was on their side.
They passed several doors and turned a few corners, not coming across a single soul. Something was going on and Zac didn't like it one bit.
"Here," Coraline said, stopping in front of him. Her hand was on a door handle and she stood completely still for a minute before opening it inwards.
Zac wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't the lavishly decorated interior of the Matriarch's room. Past Coraline's shoulder he caught a glimpse of red and burnt umber colored Turkish rugs on the floor and large landscape paintings on the walls. It was less like a room in an abandoned underground train station as it could be. A Japanese style folding screen, covered with cream rice paper had been drawn aside and somehow he knew she was behind it.
Stepping into the room behind Coraline, his heart skipped a beat as he laid eyes on a comatose Aya. She was laid out on a bed, asleep and peaceful. There was no blood or any signs that she'd been hurt and he stumbled past Coraline, who began rifling through Alisandra's things.
Dropping to his knees beside the bed he grasped Aya's hand. God, what would she say when she woke? He pulled the auto-injector from the inside pocket of his coat and almost dropped it when Coraline let out a surprised cry.
"What?" he hissed, looking back at her.
"It's Alisandra's grimoire," she gasped, snatching it up.
Zac knew enough about witches to know that their grimoire was like a gold mine and the grimoire of the Matriarch of the Coven? Coraline held the worlds weight in uncut diamonds in her hands.
"Aya will need that," he said watching her flip through the pages.
She nodded, but he wasn't sure that she'd actually heard him. She opened her mouth to say something, but her head turned towards the door and the grimoire snapped closed.
"Coraline?" he asked, frowning.
"I can feel something," she said, clutching the grimoire to her chest. "I better go check it out."
"You better not be ditching me and running off with that," he said, the warning clear in his voice.
"I'd never leave the Hunter behind," she cried.
He regarded her for a moment and said, "Fine."
"I can feel a build up of power," she said. "Get her out. I have a bad feeling they're performing the ritual."
"Ritual?" Zac asked, swallowing a lump in his throat.
"Yes, the ritual to wake the Original Witch."
"Now?"
"Yes," she spat. "If I'm right, then I have to stop it, like last year."
"Then go. I've got her."
As she disappeared through the door and down the hall, Zac turned back to Aya. Pressing the auto-injector into the side of her neck, he pressed the antidote into her system as slowly as he could, remembering Nye had told him that it would bring her back fast. Too fast and it would cause all sorts of problems. Like her loosing it and they couldn't afford that. Get out and regroup. That was their objective.
When she began to stir, eyes fluttering, he put the injector away, putting it back into his pocket. Clutching her hand, he caressed her face, rubbing a thumb over her cool cheek.
"Aya," he whispered. "It's Zac. Wake up. Please wake up."
"Zac?" She was disoriented, her eyes trying to focus on his face. "What have you done?"
"I'm sorry," he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
She blinked hard a few times and began to look around and recognition flashed in her eyes. "Where am I?"
"The Coven, they..." He didn't have the opportunity to finish his halting explanation.
Aya sat up sharply, pushing him away. "What did you do?" she roared at him.
"I drugged you, so Nye and I could kill Regulus. The Coven took you before we could return."
She looked horrified as the words tumbled from his mouth. Standing abruptly, she paced the room a few times. He reached out warily, but it was the wrong thing to do. She pushed him hard against the wall, her fingers biting into the skin at the crook of his neck. She was losing it, he could feel the tension coiled in her lithe body even as it pressed up against the length of him.
"I haven't finished with you," she snarled and was gone.
Aya felt her fingers dig into Zac's neck and it took everything she had to hold onto herself. Even as the words left her mouth she knew it was only a matter of moments until she lost control and she had to get away from him.
"I haven't finished with you," she snarled and left the room in a whirlwind of fury. He drugged her? He drugged her?
But, she had bigger problems to deal with than Zac. She felt power thick on the air and it stunk like Alisandra. Her vision began to slip into a blurry haze as she stumbled onto the main platform of the station.
The thirteen witches of the inner circle were standing in a sweeping arc across the rails, their backs to her with their heads hung low. Behind them were another twenty witches in the same position and all of them were chanting in unison, the low murmur of their voices echoing against the walls. Thirty-three witches. She'd never been up against that many at once before. There was no telli
ng who would come out of this, especially since her true end was almost guaranteed.
Breathing heavily, Aya grasped the edge of the opening to the tunnel and clutched her chest. Her heart thumped erratically and the whoosh of blood almost drowned out the witches. How they hadn't noticed her arrival was beyond her. Trying to focus on the words of their chant, she stiffened and almost lost her balance, finally understanding what they were doing. They were performing an awakening ritual. The awakening ritual. She had to stop it.
In a split second she let herself slip and all at once she felt her mind drift away and give in to the beast that lived inside of her. Her vampire side. Aya knew that she couldn't do this any other way. Was it desperation or fear that led her to take this path? She didn't know.
At least she had the sense to go after the inner circle first. They were so deep into their trance that she'd ripped through four of them before they began to stir, the spray of hot blood coating their clothes and faces. The witch standing directly beside her screamed in horror when her eyes roused on what was left of her sisters, but it was cut short when Aya plunged her hand into her chest and tore out her heart. Tossing it aside as the witches body crumbled to the ground, her white eyes locked onto Alisandra's.
Aya's head cocked to the side and she felt her bloody lip curl into a sneer, revealing the fangs underneath. This one she would save for later. In a blur, she was on the line of witches behind the Matriarch, hands tearing and fangs biting through flesh and sinew, sticky blood coating her face and hands and soaking through her clothes.
She was sure that they tried to defend themselves. After all, they were the mighty Coven, Celestine incarnate, but even they didn't have the power to stop a hybrid vampire in mid rampage. Whatever power they tried to restrain her with didn't bother her in the slightest. In fact, she didn't feel it at all. Blood ran in rivers down the platform and along the disused rails, it splattered on the walls and coated the world red. Aya tore and ripped everything she grabbed hold of apart, unaware of who or what it was.
Suddenly, she stopped, her hands empty. No one was left. Except… Her head snapped up as she heard a muffled sob to her left. There was someone left. Aya lunged towards the sound with incredible speed and her hands latched onto living flesh.