Chapter 66
66
EVANGELINE
A fter Blake and Rohr stalked away, after I wrestled my guilt into submission, after that creepy voice inside my head crooned its loathsome congratulations on a job well done, and that dark presence slithered away, I pulled out my phone.
Then closed my eyes, searching deep.
This wasn’t Ravok. The control lacked his cruel, brutal edge. But this had all the earmarks of a smarmy, blond haired Ancient—fond of planting distrust amongst allies.
I bent over my screen, staff and soldiers streaming in and out of the dining hall around me, and aside from a few curious glances, everyone left me alone as I scanned the pages of the stolen folio.
One clue. All I needed was one small thing to point me in the right direction, to confirm this was, indeed, Malachi inside my head, forcing me to wander the halls late at night and become his little meat puppet.
How fucking fitting. I thought bitterly. Exactly like my father and uncles. My sister, the beauty, and me, the blade. Broken, damaged, but intact enough to get the job done. As if violence was all I was ever good for.
The past poked at me like a sharpened stick as I scanned line after line, overflowing with Tyrell’s jealousy, rage, and pettiness .
Until there it was.
He has brought a secret to these shores. Hidden something right beneath my nose. Knowing Malachi, what I seek could be inside this very castle.
Unbidden, an image flashed into my head. Malachi, sitting on an altar in the center of a dark, round room smelling of ancient magic and limestone. I drew a breath, testing every subtle nuance of the dining hall air.
The same limestone this castle was built on.
I rubbed my temples, willing some other revelation to appear, but all I saw were stone steps that went on forever. A hallway lined with open cell doors. The dungeon.
I pushed to my feet so fast heads turned, but I pocketed my phone, found someone to sweep up my broken coffee cup, headed to my room and got dressed.
In all black, covered up with a knee length sweater that covered my thigh sheath holding an assortment of knives. I shoved extras in each boot, plus an eight-mil handgun in a specially-made holster right between my shoulder blades, packed with silver bullets, thanks to Commander Nash.
Then I made sure my phone was fully charged, wiggled it into my sock, and pulled my pantleg down to hide it. Never knew when an emergency call might save my life, unless, of course, it went to voicemail and then I was fucked.
I found Bex in Angel’s room; their heads bent together over a book. I caught the barest glimpse of the cover and grinned. More werewolves, of course.
Putting my back to the door, I took a long look at my happy, giggling sister, the bright spots of color in her cheeks, the light in her eyes. “I need you to both to stay inside this room tonight.” I told them, and the giggling stopped immediately. “Don’t argue, just do what I say.”
I made one stop on the way.
“Eldric.” I crossed the darkened library in a few, quick strides. “Just the person I was looking for.”
“Lady Evangeline.” His eyebrows shot up. “You seem to be on a mission. Is everything all right?”
“What’s beneath the dungeon?” He blanched and I poked him in the chest. “And don’t tell me nothing, because I know there’s something there.”
Eldric scratched his jaw, golden eyes narrowed as he considered me, his normally pleasant expression hardening. “You don’t want to do this, Evangeline. You should wait.”
“Wait for what?” I studied the vein ticking in his forehead. “For you to sell us out to Malachi? For you to help him kill Riordan and take the throne for himself?”
“For backup, dumbass.” Eldric winced. “I mean, Lady Evangeline.”
“For the record, dumbass is actually a nice change. Now spill. What do you know that nobody else does?”
He sighed. “There have always been rumors of a level beneath the dungeons. Fifty feet down, maybe more. But Tyrell spent years searching, and failed. I even poked around a time or two, but if there’s anything below the dungeon, I’ll be damned if I could find it.”
“Tyrell built this place. The blueprints only show two basement levels. Officially, at least.”
“True, but legend has it, the architect spent three years excavating the bedrock before the first cornerstone was even laid. Three years of digging…” His expression sobered. “That’s a big fucking hole. ”
“Yes, it is.” I frowned. “What’s he hiding?”
“Hard to say. Vampires have more secrets than any other species I know. Every royal estate I’ve ever visited has some cache of secrets, and I’d expect Laurent Tyrell had more of those than any of us. But…rumor was, even he wasn’t privy to all the secrets of this place.”
Eldric shrugged. “Use your imagination.”
“Trust me, I am.”
I was imagining the Silverwood Vault, thirty feet below the now burned-out White Chapel, protected by witch magic and hiding a multitude of family sins. Whatever was concealed beneath this castle was far worse.
“Would you like some company on this little quest?” Eldric straightened up, curiosity overflowing his golden gaze. “Or were you planning on going it alone? With your poorly concealed knives and your gun and your extremely rash attitude, that will surely get you into trouble?”
“Alone.” I said stiffly. “I always work alone.”
“Pity, so do I.” Eldric rubbed his hands together, falling into step beside me. “This will be fun.”
“I didn’t say you could go.”
“You never told me no.”
“ No .”
“Too late.” He said cheerfully. “We’re already halfway there. Besides, I am loads of fun to be around. And you can tell your sister how incredibly amazing I am. Put in a good word for me, you know, when we get back.”
“You want me to put in a good word with Angel? About you?”
“That would be the ideal outcome, given I’m risking life and limb to help.”
“And what if we don’t? Get back?”
“Well,” he pushed the doors open and waved me through, “then I suppose I’ll have to give up my dream of romancing the captivating Angelique Silverwood. But don’t ruin my fun, Lady Evangeline, because I have to say, I haven’t had this much excitement in years .”
I started down the steps that felt eerily familiar, like a dream I’d had too many times, except for Eldric yammering non-stop the entire way down. “Tyrell was so predictable, with his auctions and his cruelty and his…”
“You never thought to do anything about that?” I asked sharply. “Or were you content to watch the carnage and borrow his books?”
“I’m mortally wounded, Lady Evangeline, that you think so low of me. Of course, I did something. I eavesdropped. Passed information to Fiona, who waylaid shipments of slaves. We freed whomever we could from the dungeons before Valaine got his claws into them, rallied support for Riordan and waited for the day Tyrell died.”
“Well, he’s gone now.” I murmured, coming to a stop at the foot of the stairs. The cells looked exactly as they had in my head, doors half-open, the place stinking of piss and old blood.
Eldric halted beside me, “so, according to legend, there’s a door. Like the secret passageways, but more cleverly hidden, leading to some lower level. but nobody’s ever found it, because…”
I closed my eyes, letting the awfulness of this place sink in as Eldric chattered, pacing from one cell to the next, the creak of unoiled hinges and sharp metallic clangs interrupting my thoughts until I raised my hand.
“ Stop . For one fucking minute, stop moving.” Even with my eyes closed, I sensed him open his mouth to argue. “ And talking.”
I didn’t tap into any of my senses. Scent and hearing and smell wouldn’t help me. I delved deeper, searching for something hidden for so long, I’d forgotten its existence. I tested the air for witch magic, a tainted darkness that smelled exactly like rotting eggs.
There. At the far end, to my right.
A vibration, like a tremor in space, the witch magic sang to me, not a lilting joyful melody, but a song of absolute rage, of cruelty and vice, as chilling as the damp, dripping stone around us.
“There.” I opened my eyes and followed my pointing finger to a bare wall, unremarkable in every way, except for the faint outline of blue magic hidden in the mortar. The tracing of a door, barely big enough for us to pass through.
Ten steps and my palm pressed flat against the stone, Eldric silent behind me, as frozen, splintering magic swallowed up my hand in a wash of icy blue before the stones disappeared, leaving a hole of darkness.
“Well, that was unexpected. Now I’m sorry I came.”
I slanted him a sideways look. “I thought you were all about the excitement. And the fun .”
Eldric grabbed a torch off the wall, and peered into the darkness. “That was before I was about to enter a gaping black hole of evil. Ask me again in a few minutes.” He conjured up a flicker of fire at his fingertips, and the torch burst into flames.
I didn’t ask him anything, too focused on breathing and keeping my feet balanced on the narrow steps that went round and round and round, shoulders brushing the rough walls. Eldric kept the torch raised, though I expected he had an even harder time fitting his much wider shoulders in this tight, claustrophobic space.
I didn’t remember this .
Maybe I’d never been down here before, despite what my faulty memories showed me.
But then we stepped into a round chamber, the carefully sloped walls the dark blue-gray shade of Darkmore Castle above us, recognition slammed into me hard, and not in a good way.
“Hello, Vicious.” Malachi’s molten gaze turned to ice when Eldric banded his arm around me and tried to shove me behind him, the torch flames licking the ceiling.
“You have been a naughty girl.” One beat passed, then another, the three of us locked in a battle to see who blinked first.
“Well, you’ve been worse.” I ran my eyes over him, the block of iron he was perched on. “Lurking down here, in a room that shouldn’t exist.” Behind me, Eldric was frozen, every muscle in his lean body trembling as Malachi unfolded himself off that iron box and prowled toward us, hands in his pockets, death in his glare.
“You brought an uninvited guest to our secret place, Evangeline.” His tongue flicked out and wet his bottom lips, fangs flashing as he tutted me. “Our very, very secret place. Obviously, I was not forceful enough suppressing your memories, since you remembered how to get back down here.”
I shifted between Eldric and Malachi, pulling my knife, “If you so much as think about hurting him, you fuck, I will carve that evil little smile off your face.”
“Really?” His eyes ignited. “First my cock, now my lips? It’s like you don’t want me to have any fun when we do finally have time to enjoy one another. And I do intend to enjoy you, my pet.”
“I’ll enjoy seeing you dead.” I hissed. “I’ll enjoy hacking your head from your corpse even more. ”
“Always such a pleasure, Evangeline.” The smile slid off his face as he flicked his narrowed, deadly gaze to Eldric, and before I realized I’d moved, I had my palm flattened against Malachi’s chest, surprising both of us.
Malachi clamped his hand over mine, pressing my palm tight against him. “Well, that feels nice. We should do this more often.”
“Don’t kill him.” I didn’t care that I was touching the enemy, didn’t care about his creepy attempts at… whatever the fuck this was . If I caused Eldric’s death…I’d never forgive myself.
“And what, pray tell, do I get in return for my magnanimity?” His thumb rubbed over my knuckles as I gripped the knife in my other hand, wishing with every fiber of my being I’d come alone. Simpler getting the job done when nobody else’s life hung in the balance.
Don’t ask, Evie. Don’t…
“What do you want?”
He pretended to mull this over, but he’d already made his decision. I knew because his heart drummed faster beneath my palm, a shiver of heat spun out around us, filled with carnal anticipation.
“A kiss.” He murmured, searching my face. “Not a simple peck on the cheek, but the sort of kiss that might convince me to not kill a certain busybody librarian, and leave his body down here to rot. The kind of kiss that you would give to, say…one of your lovers .”
No, anything but that.
“And before you make a poor decision,” his fingers wound into my hair and tugged my head back, until my throat was bared to his devouring gaze. “Remember all I am capable of. Then ask yourself is a kiss really that high a price to pay for mercy? ”
“You are a fucking monster.” I hissed.
“Me?” His eyebrows shot up. “I’m a shallow imitation.”
His gaze drifted over to the altar, dark metal gleaming like it had been recently polished. Some strange power emanated from that box, not witch magic, but something darker, something frighteningly…familiar.
“If you only knew the monster who made me,” he said softly, a shudder rocking through him. “He stalked me across blood drenched soil like an animal. And I ran from him, like prey. My Maker even smelled like cruelty…” He pulled back, nose flaring before his face settled back into some semblance of civility.
“No, Vicious, I am not the monster in this room. Now what will it be? A kiss in exchange for mercy, or poor Eldric pays the price for your foolishness?”
“Swear you won’t touch him.”
He rolled his eyes, ever the dramatic. “Fine. One real, passionate kiss from your soft sweet lips and I shall leave Eldric Drakon untouched and alive to skulk about the library another day. Is that clear enough for you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Of course, I will take his memories, like I take yours. But he will survive.”
The smile fell off his face, his gaze dropping to my mouth. “Now put the knife down, Evangeline and fucking kiss me. Make me believe you want me.”