Chapter 15 Lazriel #5
As I rose to meet my Dad, my veins buzzing and so warm, he assured me, “This is par for the course. They will rest here for ten minutes. Carers will come in to check on them, provide them with water, iron, and nourishment, then they will either return home, or be escorted to their quarters here. For Matthew and Eric in particular, they are regular feeders, so they wish to remain here. They prefer the Shadow Tunnels to their lives above ground.”
“Wow, that’s a hell of a thing.”
“How do you feel?” he asked, looking me over. “You appear energized. Greatly so.”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “I really am. And it was good… going there… doing that.”
“I would imagine it would be, especially with it being your first feed from a human.” He brushed his fingers over my cheek. “I’m proud of you. And I’m glad it pleased you.”
“Thank you. You made all this possible.”
“Something I should have done much sooner. So don’t thank me.” Emotion flickered in his eyes briefly, and then he stepped back and gestured at the door. “Now you are satiated, there is something I wish to show you.”
Ah, back to the cryptic. Like when I’d first arrived here. Well, he hadn’t steered me wrong once yet, so the least I could do was give him the benefit of the doubt.
I followed him out, taking one last glance back at Matthew and Eric looking so satiated and peaceful.
We made our way through what I’d sometimes come to term in my head as the luxurious vampire bunker. The Shadow Tunnels were really a covert, fortified underground network, a subterranean fortress, labyrinth-style hidden beneath unknown terrain. The tunnels were dug deep into the bones of the earth.
Smooth black stone walls shimmered faintly with protective magical wards. Pipes and power lines ran overheard, some bracketed to reinforced steel beams. In some places, the rock had been carved into archways and alcoves with flickering sconces.
The tunnels branched out, each hallway leading to some pocket of The Shadowed’s operations, like suites for agents in the Residential Wing, or the Combat Area, the Vermillion Chamber, the Medical Bay, Utility Corridors and Escape Routes, and the Command Center which doubled as a war room.
I’d briefly been inside the latter.
But as we delved deeper into the tunnels, dropping in stages with stairs that coiled downward, my boots echoing off stone, a more brightly lit area up ahead caught my eye.
An area I hadn’t been to before when he’d given me a brief tour of the place.
We made a sharp right turn and then, etched into heavy stone, were a set of double arched metal doors, a sign engraved across the surface: Investigative Sanctum.
Remnant walked to the right door and the moment he was within breathing distance, a security console shot out.
Not any ordinary sort of console.
There were no buttons. Just what looked like some sort of needle.
He pressed his palm to it, pricking his skin, enough to draw a few drops of his blood.
And then the console shot back inside, concealing itself, and both doors whirred and clanged, followed by them opening smoothly.
“Nice.”
He smiled, then gestured for me to follow him inside.
The moment we stepped across the threshold, the doors closed behind us, a lock clanging into place again.
Just that slight sound echoed around the still room.
I was expecting there to be people milling about inside, just like everywhere else we went in the Shadow Tunnels.
“I’ve had them clear out so that we are afforded privacy,” my dad said, reading me well, as had come to be the way with him.
“Privacy for what?”
“For what I have to show you, of course.”
“And that might be?”
“You’ll see.”
“Shit, you’re a real fan of cryptic, aren’t you?”
“There is a right time and a place for everything. Patience is—
“A virtue?”
“A necessity. Strategically sound. Highly advisable.”
“Ah, got it,” I teased. “Locking that pearl of wisdom away as we speak.”
A chuckle escaped him. “I have no doubt. In spite of your sarcasm.” He beamed out at me.
“You have learned a great deal since being here. You demonstrated that during our battle in several distinct ways, and during your feed just now. Do you feel it? The blood humming through your veins, energizing you, yet also calming you in an inexplicably satiating way?”
“Yeah. That’s the perfect way to put it, actually.” I grinned out at him, barely believing it as the words left me, “I want to do it again, experience it more… just like that.”
“Then I will ensure feeders are brought to you when you take your leave. Until I am able to teach you how to cultivate your own in a safe and secure manner.”
I started. “Take my leave? You’re… you want me to go?”
“On the contrary. I wish for you to remain right here by my side. However, I am sure that you will wish to leave once I show you what I intend to. You will be pulled back to them.” Off my look, he said, “Those whom you love so dearly, my son.”
“I don’t understand.”
He smiled sadly. “You will.”
He led me further into the space, my senses on high alert now after that hefty dose of more cryptic, my entire body tensing.
I took in the room.
Holy shit.
It was some sort of mystical forensics lab, like magic and science meshing in a weird, yet layered and highly-controlled way.
Smooth black stone walls wrapped around the space, the buzz of magic rolling through them.
The outer perimeter was full of rows of white-lacquered workbenches covered with microscopes, alchemical burners, numerous vials, and calibrated measuring tools.
Magically-created projection screens hovered over each station, showing real-time results for whatever was being researched—some really complicated shit was about all I could tell.
I caught sight of vaults with frosted glass front compartments containing relics, shards of weapons, bottled essences of magical beings, preserved tissue even, bones.
Above, a narrow mezzanine ran the perimeter, where there were tons of bookshelves stocked to the brim, magical research manuals, grimoires, the whole nine.
“This is where we push the boundaries of what is possible, even in our world dominated by magic and supernatural beings,” Remnant told me.
“Yeah, I’m getting that. Wow.” Kind of along the lines of how I imagined the secret magical research group that Sylas was a part of being.
“Come,” he urged, gesturing to a frosted glass privacy panel over to the far left of the space.
I followed him over and choked at what I saw.
There, hovering in a blinding white field of energy was a heart—a golden, shimmering heart.
Pulsing.
Alive.
Not pumping blood, but… energy.
“Mystic Heart is its rather apt name.”
Just below it were three gems about the size of my thumb, rectangular shaped with rounded corners, each one a different vibrant color—amber, turquoise, and fuchsia. They were levitating just below the heart, its golden streams enveloping them. Powering them.
“What are those?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off the entire stunning display.
“Necromantic cores.”
I jolted and spun to face him. “What?”
“Salvaged by teams of my magic-wielders and vampires working in concert. From three recently deceased necromancers.”
“Recently deceased? And necromancers… they’re so hard to come by as it is.”
“They are being hunted. Cassius has a spell sweeping the supernatural world for necromantic essence in a bid to locate a learned and highly experienced necromancer who could help Sylas with his illness. That spell has now located seven necromancers, all of whom have been found murdered.”
“Shit,” I uttered, shoving my hand through my hair. “So this is targeted, intended to stop Sylas from being able to get better, right?”
“There are other facets to it. But, yes, one reason for this murder spree is to prevent Sylas from being cured. To weaken him and ensure he is no longer a threat.”
Fuck… Sylas. I felt fucking sick with it, hearing about this obstacle to him being able to get better, the cruelty in it, the constant damage to him, how it had to be eating at him in so many ways.
I pulled up short from going further down that path, already feeling that twitch within that warned of an explosion of anger. And that wouldn’t help anything.
But understanding this that my dad was showing me now very well could.
“Why did you salvage their cores? When a necromancer dies, so does that part of them, right? At least on the living plane.”
“Very good. Yes, they do. However, not with this being a factor.” He gestured at the heart.
“Hold up. You’re telling me that this weird heart is powering the cores?”
“Infusing them with life would be more accurate. And it was also able to revitalize them from death state.”
Holy. Shit.
“Do you feel it yet? It could be difficult given the shock you are in the midst of processing as well as the very personal nature of all of this to you, but attempt to focus. Do you sense the familiarity?”
I shifted my weight and stared at the heart, honing my senses for several moments, until something did break through.
“It’s Celestial.”
“Yes, essentially. It was created, shall we say, from Celestial power, which my researchers were able to fashion into this magical living form of a heart.” He ran his hand reverently just a couple of inches from the field itself.
“During the Severance when many True Celestials landed on the mortal plane in a bid to prevent Ariana, Cassius, Ketheron, and their team from carrying out the spell, The Shadowed was already prepared and waiting. While they were engaged in battle, we extracted portions of the magical essence—a formidable spell to pull from so many as well, which was fortunately masked by that of the Severance.”
And the shocks just kept on coming.