Chapter 5 #2
If he hadn’t seen Trace shift into a goddamn wolf, and hadn’t seen the shit he’d seen over the past few months, he’d have considered Ward Sutherland to be insane.
But he had. He knew there was more out there than anyone realized.
His brain was already cycling through worst-case scenarios.
The heat was rising steadily again. He scanned the walls of the chamber.
There were no exits that he could see, no air currents, and no light.
We’re fucked.
Juice leaned in and jerked his chin toward the wall closest to where they’d slid down the slope. “Bran says there’s something behind that wall.”
Viper followed his gaze. That end of the chamber had a narrow seam running vertically through the stone. “Something? Like what?”
“Don’t know.” Juice paused as if he was listening to his mate’s voice in his head and frowned. “Feels… old.”
Of course it does. Everything on this damn island feels fucking old.
Ward sat down heavily on a chunk of stone. “I think… I think this island was meant to be a prison.”
I’m on this fucking cray-cray train anyway. Might as well see where the fuck it’s going.
He turned slowly. “What kind of prison?”
Ward’s voice was ragged, almost as if he didn’t quite believe what he was about to say. “For someone powerful. Someone they didn’t want coming back.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Reaper snorted. “You mean like a demon?”
“I mean like a king,” Ward whispered. “A warrior king. One that was bound by druids with a chant carved into this mountain and left to rot for eternity.”
Viper scrubbed a hand over his face.
First, fucking Al-Rami chose this island of all places to fucking hide in. Then the volcano. Now we’re in a tomb with an Indiana Jones reject who thinks we’ve found a goddamn Celtic apocalypse bunker. Fucking awesome.
“Sutherland,” Reaper called. “Do ya mean glyphs like these?”
They all crossed to where Reaper pointed to a symbol carved into the wall—one of the lower, near-invisible ones etched in deep, almost black against the basalt.
Ward’s eyes locked on it instantly. He went utterly still, then pulled his notebook out of his back pocket with shaking hands. “I sketched some stuff earlier in what feels like another lifetime. Lemme look.” He flipped the page. “Yes.” He breathed. “That one is new.”
Viper crouched to get a better look. “What’s it say?”
Ward’s throat worked as he translated it out loud. “Let no breath stir within the bones of kings.” The glyph shimmered faintly in the green glow of their chem lights. Above them, the barrier trembled, the glowing flow rippling like it was waiting to strike.
“Fan out,” Viper ordered. “Search for more.” He had no idea why he gave the order.
They were all going to die anyway. But somehow that didn’t matter.
It was a distraction they all needed from the reality that burned over their heads.
He could give his men this, even if he wasn’t sure what the fuck it was he was giving them.
Easy day.
Easy fucking day.
“I got another one.” Zero brushed at the wall a little closer to a vertical crack in the wall. He stepped aside as Ward rushed to look at it. They all waited while he sketched it into his books.
“What’s it say?”
“Let no door open ‘til oaths are sung in blood…”
Another quake rippled through the floor beneath their boots. A soft groan came from the mountain’s depths, and fine cracks whispered across the empty space above them as if the volcano was winning its battle against the magical barrier that held its weapons at bay.
“I have one,” Trace growled. “Right here next to the crack in the wall here.”
Overhead, the ash and rock pummeled the barrier, and it felt like the whole island shook and shuddered under its onslaught.
“From the hand of hound and brother born of war and the druid with the blood of Tuatha Dé Danann.”
Trace staggered back a step like he’d been punched in the chest. He lifted his hand and turned it over to show them his palm with its wide arch of bleeding marks from where the tips of his claws had slid into his flesh in an effort to keep from shifting.
“We’ve got the blood from the hand of the hound and plenty of brothers to donate some; we just need the druid. ”
“I don’t understand?—”
Viper caught Ward’s upper arm and shook his head, cutting him off. He tugged him out of the way. “Let Trace look at the glyph.”
It looked like every muscle in Trace’s body was coiled, like he was straining against a leash. Viper recognized the scent of blood as it thickened the air. Trace’s voice was raw as he turned back to Ward. “I need the rest,” he said. “All of it. The entire chant.”
Sutherland hesitated, his grip tightening on the weather-worn field journal. “This isn’t—” He shook his head. “It’s not finished. It’s a translation at best. I don’t know if it’s even right.”
Trace’s voice dropped to something that wasn’t entirely human. “We don’t have time for right. We have minutes at best.” He jerked his thumb upward to where more cracks appeared under the onslaught over their heads. “Hand it the fuck over. Now.”
Viper stepped between them and angled his chin at Ward. “Give him the damn book.”
Ward looked at each of them in turn—men who’d charged into a dying mountain, men who stood like they’d seen war and loss and bled for both. Then his gaze settled on Trace, eyes black and wild, lips pulled back from teeth that didn’t look entirely human anymore, and he handed over the journal.
Trace didn’t thank him. He dropped to one knee by the final glyph, flipping the pages with bloody fingers, scanning each line with laser precision.
As he read, his lips moved in silence. No one spoke.
Even the mountain seemed to hold its breath.
Then he whispered the lines aloud, his voice low and reverent.
“Behold, son of Cumhaill, true king.
Under starlight blood, beneath the heart of the sun.
We bind your power to the bones of the earth
With the wind’s voice and the tears of stone.
Let your breath be silenced by root and flame.
Let your name be forgotten beneath shadowed time.
Let no song find your ears nor light your path.
There is no path home.
Unless you turn back upon your own heels.”
The chamber pulsed, and above them, the roar of the pyroclastic flow intensified.
The pressure in the room built to a razor edge, like the entire mountain was pressing inward, trying to fold them into its stone heart.
But Trace wasn’t finished. He turned to the page where Sutherland had added the latest glyph translations at the bottom.
“Let no breath stir within the bones of kings.
Let no door open ‘til oaths are sung in blood.
From the hand of hound and brother born of war and the druid with the blood of Tuatha Dé Danann.”
Trace stood and cast his gaze over his mate.
He squeezed his hands shut, and when he opened them again, his palm was bleeding freely.
The blood dripped down his wrist and spattered across his forearm.
Slowly, he pressed his hand against the glyph beside the seam in the wall, and the sound of a hunting horn blasted through the chamber.
Fuck me, did the stone respond?
A hum rose beneath their feet, and the glyph shimmered. Its lines glowing gold, then shifting into a pulsing amber. The crack in the wall expanded, and for a moment, Viper thought the mountain itself was going to split in two.
Then Trace whispered something no one understood—old and aching—and smeared his blood across the glyph in a wide, deliberate arc, and the walls sang in answer.
There was no other way to describe it. The air around them vibrated with resonance like a choir of stones mourning the loss of time.
The barrier pulsed once more, then the entire wall dissolved into nothing but light and heat.
A blinding flare erupted from the seam, driving them all back.
The light burned as bright as a thousand suns.
When it cleared, the chamber beyond was revealed.
Ward screamed, and Viper whipped around, his weapon raised, ready to save him from whatever caused that terror-filled noise. He narrowed his eyes in confusion as he noticed Ward looking past him.
Shit. It’s behind me.