Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
PARIS
The fucker blew dust in my face.
“What are you doing?” I cried, staggering back. “My fucking eyes!” I roared, summoning my stakeblade into my right hand while rubbing my poor peepers with the other.
“Necessary,” a man’s voice floated at me.
Yeah, and your guts on the ground is also necessary!
I stayed still, eyes closed, drawing on my executioner training, focusing on the tells of the body looming close by. I waited for a moment to grab him when he came within reach so I could wrestle some answers out of his mouth before sending him to the hells.
Due to it being daytime, I knew he wasn’t a vampire.
“It will now begin,” my attacker threw in.
Oh, awesome, a cryptic sentence. I always loved those.
The stinging in my eyes began to ebb, apparently no damage done. But my face tingled, a strange iciness passing over me.
Was it magical dust? I didn’t have the skills to detect spells, although sometimes I got a tingle on my radar. Probably came from living with a mage.
This made no sense. I wasn’t supposed to be outside. I’d been chilling at home with my fuckbuddy, Hal, trying to steady my nerves before the big night. The one which would end in the vampire king’s death.
Wait. I’d already tried that. Became a thrall, kissed the king.
Let him touch me.
What the hell was going on?
I opened my eyes and was greeted by a blurry figure. It was like his form had been smudged across a screen, then scratched over with a knife.
“Who are you?” I rubbed at each eye in turn with my free hand, pointing my weapon at him.
“The beginning of the end,” he answered.
Prick.
“Answer me properly,” I demanded. The weird scratches across his body appeared to expand.
He didn’t answer, slowly moving left.
“Keep still,” I warned. “Or I’ll gut you.”
Hold on a minute. My brain began to catch up. This must be what’d happened to me before I woke up on the ice of the Albion River frostbrood nest. When I’d found the crystal blade.
The man leaned on the wall, the alleyway around us a clear picture. I knew this place. It sat two streets away from the north bank of Oreflame City’s Albion River, and was a handy shortcut between Highwall Gate sub-rail station and a seriously cute park I liked to hang out in.
This alley always stank of fish and cheese from the Scales and Cheddar café nearby.
Ugh. What a grim place to eat.
Was this Caer’s power shining a light on a memory? It felt different, though. No song, no white rose petals. Colder, stranger, my insides performing backflips.
“I brought you here to…” A crackle of white noise swallowed the rest of his sentence.
Shit. “What did you say?”
“I brought you…” More crackling, the edges of the alley blurring. “…crumble…”
“What?” I stepped forward.
The ground quaked, throwing me into a wall.
“…you?” the man cried.
Dammit. Why couldn’t I understand him?
A second rumble split the ground open beneath me, the shaking throwing me into the opposite wall.
Fuck!
“…out!” a woman’s voice boomed down the alleyway.
That voice. I recognized that voice.
With a third, violent quake, the ground collapsed. I plunged into darkness, hitting a slope. I was sliding, rolling, chunks of rock scraping my face, dirt filling my mouth.
By Aidan! What the hell was happening?
My back slammed into a wall, forcing a cry from my throat. Coughing up dirt, I rolled onto my side. I was totally winded, my chest on fire, and dizzy, on the verge of puking my guts up.
A grunt sounded from nearby, followed by coughing.
Had the man fallen with me?
Long seconds ticked by while I lay still, feeling like my limbs were filled with cement. I couldn’t move, too heavy, my spine pulsing with pain. So, I waited, listening to the man hack his lungs up while the werewolf part of my blood applied healing and painkillers.
Aidan bless the cocktail of red stuff in my veins.
No. Don’t let Aidan bless anything.
“Caer?” I spoke, pushing myself to my knees.
My head bumped the ceiling, forcing me to hunch.
The elf deity didn’t answer.
“Where…” the man said, the rest of his words drowned out by that damn crackling.
Okay. Time to get out of here. I wasn’t about to get trapped underground. Me and confined spaces did not mix.
Where were we? In one of the old mine shafts beneath the city? Oreflame City used to be a huge mining city, though all the mines were closed now, thanks to the more efficient spots opened out in the southern wilds of the Human Domain.
Over the years, there’d been a few incidents of underground tunnels collapsing, creating sinkholes.
Lucky me to be caught in one.
I started to crawl through the darkness, drawing on my executioner training to stay calm. If I lost my head to panic, I’d be dead sooner than later.
I reached out with all my senses for hints of fresh air, for sounds, for any sign of an exit.
You’re not getting trapped down here, I reassured myself.
Damn right!
Sinkhole…
The word echoed in my head as an image of the mermaid drifted across my mind. Copper scales on her light brown face, her eyes bloodshot like she’d been crying. I’d met her after escaping the ice. She’d given me money for the tram back to my flat, mentioning a sinkhole incident.
Sinkhole…
I’d seen her face again when Silvanus brought me to the island.
Who was she? What did she have to do with this?
“What happened to me?” I said into the dark.
“There is something else in here with me. Hidden. It won’t show me what it is.” That’s what Caer had told me.
Goosebumps prickled across my skin. Something else?
Another entity? Some nefarious fucker pulling at a different set of strings attached to the crystal dagger?
I mean, the weapon liked to show up whenever it wanted, and even took out two vamps, easily bypassing the rules that only a stakeblade or sunlight were able to slay them.
But it always vanished around Silvanus with a scream in my head.
Yeah, made so much sense.
Swallowing a lump of fear, I crawled forward slowly. This vision would tell me, right? There were answers coming.
A seismic quake forced me backward, the ground dipping beneath me. Chunks of debris rained down on me from the splitting ceiling.
The man screamed, and so did I.
A blink, and I flashed forward to me falling, body bouncing on rocks, spilling out of a hole and landing in a chamber of glacial blue light.
Frostbrood ice.
More flashing forward through events—a storm of white noise and scratches consuming most of the images of me running through icy tunnels, the man behind me. My lightfeet skill kept me from slipping in the tunnels wide enough for us to stand in.
The man stayed hidden, muttering something inaudible.
Hissing sounded from behind us.
I glanced over my shoulder.
There were frostbrood hunting us, just around the bend.
“Keep moving!” I bellowed, picking up the pace.
A puff of silvery smoke and the crystal dagger appeared in my hand.
Flash, flash.
Icy claws in my belly, the frostbrood landing a killing blow.
Flash, flash.
The man screaming, pain, pain, pain. So much blood. My blood, sunlight in my eyes. Almost free, too much damage—
Screaming darkness.
Let me out!
Let me out!
Let me out!
I woke up with a scream.
“Sugar!” a woman yelped.
“Let me out!” I roared, heart a gong in my chest, panic coming at me in a full-on assault.
Dagger.
Dagger mine.
I see it. I see it glisten, I feel it want, I long for it because I am full.
Full of all.
Full of everything.
Full of—
I kicked out and lunged forward, crawling across the sofa, throwing myself off the edge. Landing in a heap, I curled into a ball, whimpering, the screams of the darkness still rampant in my ears.
“Paris!”
Floral essence filled me up, giving me the strength to leap to my feet.
Let me out!
Let me out!
Let me out!
“Paris?”
There was a presence behind me, a potential threat. Danger, danger, danger. Killers everywhere, darkness and pain and ice and violence all churning inside me.
I was drenched in confusion, caught between reason and nightmares, I prepared to fight.
Where am I?
The damn screaming. It wouldn’t leave my ears, my heart about to implode from fear.
Let me out!
Let me out!
Let me out!
“Sugar?”
The crystal blade burst to life in my hand. I spun to face the speaker behind me, the pointy end of my weapon hungry for blood.
I’ll kill any fucker who tries it!
But Medusa was standing there, her hands up defensively.
I blinked, lowering my weapon. All at once, my fear shut down, leaving me sweaty with relief.
You’re okay.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, the dagger vanishing of its own free will.
I rubbed my eyes, faint itching in each of them.
“Keeping an eye on you,” she answered.
I scanned my surroundings.
“The house,” I whispered. “Hawthorn Isle.”
Back in the here-and-now, remnants of Silvanus’s kiss vibrating through my body.
Medusa nodded, offering a warm smile. “You’re safe, sugar. Silvanus had something to take care of back at the palace.”
Trembling, I wrapped my arms around myself. Despite the blazing heat of the fire making the building toasty, a nasty chill found its way into my bones.
“I… I…” I couldn’t speak.
“Take your time,” she said.
I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths, calming myself down, painful pulses in my temples.
“I think I had a vision,” I revealed after a minute. “No, I know I had a vision.” I opened my eyes, my forehead creased in irritation. “Fuck.”
“Do you need to sit?” the snake shifter asked, gesturing to the sofa.
“Y-yeah.” Rubbing my temples, I plonked myself down.
A sinkhole, the mermaid, a possible magical attack, running from a frostbrood, and the dagger. None of it pieced together whatsoever.
Ugh. My poor brain.
I leaned forward, putting my head between my legs.
“I feel like I should rub your back,” Medusa said.
I laughed, the distraction welcome. “That’d be nice, actually.”
She sat beside me. “Then get ready, sugar.”
Her touch was soothing, kind of like a massage with feather-light pressure.
“Thanks,” I whispered.
“Not a problem.”