Chapter 66
DANTE
By the time Luca and I dragged the last unconscious body into the shadow of a crumbling stone wall, I was one breath away from abandoning our plan entirely, heading to the DiRavello palazzo, and tearing Giovanni apart with my bare hands.
“She shouldn’t have gone in there alone,” I muttered, wiping blood—someone else’s—off my hands. “Not with him.”
Luca didn’t look up from the body he was checking for weapons. “She didn’t go alone,” he reminded me calmly. “She wanted to, but she agreed to back up, which, from my sister, is a big concession.”
“Nico doesn’t count.”
“Oh, he counts,” Luca said evenly. “You just don’t like the idea because it’s not you.”
This fucking kid. Mouthy. So godsdamned mouthy.
I fixed him with a glare that should have had him pissing himself, but he just lowered his head and waited. “Not against Giovanni,” I snapped. “Not in his own house where he’s got the full weight of the Brotherhood backing him up.”
Because Giovanni had tried to kill my wife twice now, and the thought of her being anywhere near him made me twitchy. And I wasn’t the only one. The demon inside me was restless, not even content with the mayhem we were unleashing.
And my fucking brother was a prisoner in his own prison, and damn if there wasn’t some kind of fucking twisted irony to that.
Between Luca and me, most of the guards were down, except for the three protecting the old mausoleum.
As it turned out, the DiRavello family island was well guarded, and the Basin was a critical piece in this cat-and-mouse game.
But Emberline’s safety came first, and the thought of her facing her uncle by herself...
There were too many things that could go wrong, and the bastard was always—fucking always—a step ahead of us.
Violence burned under my skin like a second pulse as I eyed those last three guards.
“Emberline can take care of herself,” Luca said, rising to his feet. “You’ll just piss her off if you keep acting all possessive and shit.”
For a second, I just stared. This little… was he giving me… marriage advice?
The demon stared down at him, too, wondering whether he had a death wish.
“Look.” Luca ran his hand through his head of hair. “You do you, but if you want my advice, you’ve got to give Emberline some space.”
I watched his mouth move, wondering if I could get away with gagging him and leaving him on the boat when we were done.
“You keep cramping her style, and you’re going to lose her.”
Not if we lock her up forever, the ifrit whispered.
“She’s my wife.” I exhaled hard. “I know what I’m doing. We’re… I am giving her space. We’re figuring it out.”
He just slanted me a look like he seriously doubted that.
“How are we on time?” he asked instead of giving me more shit, which probably saved his damned life.
When I’d agreed to partner up with Luca, he’d seemed like a nice, quiet kid. Had I known I’d be getting the third fucking degree, I would have left him behind.
The old mausoleum was half-swallowed by overgrowth, its stone facade cracked with age and neglect. It sat in the center of what had once been a memorial garden but was now something forgotten.
The guards had their backs to us, talking in low voices.
“I’ll take the two on the right, you take the one on the left,” I decided. Despite his propensity to run his mouth, the kid was a good fighter. Not as good as Emberline, but skilled enough, I trusted he could handle himself.
I moved first, legs pumping, closing the distance between us before they could react, driving my shoulder into the first soldier’s chest, slamming my knife into the second one’s on my way past.
Number one clawed at my neck, but my knife was already sweeping across his throat, blood spraying as I turned back to the second, climbing to his feet.
He drove his fist straight into my jaw, the impact snapping my head back.
I grabbed his collar, yanked him forward, brought my knee up hard into his ribs, then broke his neck.
He hit the ground and didn’t get back up.
Luca moved with me, but where I was brute force, he was control.
The guard on the left was fast, slashing out with his knife before Luca drove his blade into the male’s shoulder, then shifted, caught his wrist, and used his own momentum to flip him backward, slamming him flat onto the stone.
Air exploded from his mouth, and Luca was already there, pinning him in place with a knee, blade plunging down into his throat, twisting.
Five seconds. Clean. Efficient. No wasted movement.
“Nicely done,” I said, turning to face the front of the mausoleum, two rotting doors that looked like they hadn’t been opened in centuries.
“Thanks. I’ll take that as high praise, coming from you,” Luca replied, inspecting the gash on his arm. “Don’t tell Emberline; she’ll freak out.”
I snorted. “She’d never let you out of her sight again.”
“Tell me about it. She thinks I’m incapable of fending for myself. Big sister syndrome, I guess.” His expression brightened. “You could put in a good word for me.”
“That I could, but it’s my policy not to get in between siblings.” Actually, it was my policy not to piss off Emberline because she’d carve off my balls. I approached the heavy doors, their surfaces carved with names that had ceased to be legible years ago. “Let’s get this done.”
My hand found the edge, fingers digging into the groove. Luca nodded, bracing himself on the other side.
“On three,” I said.
“One.” I set my stance. “Two.” Muscles coiled. “Three.”
We pulled, muscles straining against something more permanent than age and rot. There was powerful magic here. “Wait. Try the sigil.”
Luca pulled the pendant out from beneath his shirt, murmured a few words, and miraculously, the doors opened of their own accord, giving way with a low, grinding groan that echoed out into the night, revealing a musty, dark interior.
“Wait out here.” I stepped inside first, and the smell grew stronger—earth, decay, and something older. The walls were lined with shelf after shelf of stone coffins, their smoke-blackened lids cracked. Burned on pyres, then brought in here to rot in the dark.
Luca came up beside me, a small torch flaring in his hand, casting flickering shadows across the walls. “Gods, it’s really here,” he whispered.
The Basin sat in the center of the open space, emanating the kind of power that rattled bones and made you want to kneel. Inside me, the ifrit recoiled, hissing, diving deep into the shadows.
Up close, the thing was massive, carved from glittering rock that drank up the light, the dark, stained surface etched with those strange runes. Runes I now recognized, after all my time in the Fossa. Witch marks. The same kind carved into my bones.
No wonder the demon hated this thing.
Those runes reminded the demon of its prison.
“Right where he thought no one would ever look.” I glanced at Luca. “We owe you one. Without you, we would’ve never found this.”
He held my gaze, something unreadable flickering in his expression. “I told you I could help. It’s time you all start trusting me.”
The kid had a fair point.
I gave him a short nod. “Yeah, maybe it is. Now, let’s get this thing stashed somewhere safe and our asses to the rendezvous point, like we promised your sister.”
Our bonding moment was interrupted by a dragging sound outside the mausoleum.
“We got all the guards,” Luca whispered. “I’m sure of that.”
I trusted him on that. He knew every inch of this island, and we’d made a full sweep with a head count before we’d engaged. We didn’t miss anyone. I turned to face the door, and the darkness beyond the entrance shifted, like the mist rolling in, or…
An Ashbound burst into the mausoleum, claws extended.
“Get behind me,” I shouted, spotting a dozen more outside. “Better yet, get behind the Basin and stay the fuck down.”
They spilled into the chamber like nightmares given shape, fire glowing in their cracked skin, eyes burning with the same ancient power trapped inside me. The ifrit stirred, took one look at the Basin, and went back to sleep.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I hissed, ripping the head off the first creature. “This is no time to be shy. Here’s the bloodbath you’ve been waiting for. Now, wake the fuck up and get in the game.”
They’d tear Luca apart, and without the ifrit, I would be fighting for my life.
I rammed my body forward and met them head-on. Skeletal fingers, sharp as claws, slashed at my face, raking down my side as I shoved the writhing pack back—and back and back, out through the door and into the night.
I kicked the mausoleum door closed behind me with a boom as Ashbound circled me like a pack of starving dogs. These were old, some of the first; their skin was stone-like, so smooth, the moon glinted off the polished surface, and they were far more powerful than newer ones.
One was an old guard I recognized by his missing ear, an empty glow in his eye sockets.
They weren’t sentient.
Tools, at best, driven by a vicious hunger for blood, like the ifrit, but lacking logic.
Teeth snapped at the nape of my neck, and I pivoted, slamming my knife into the thing’s throat, yanking the blade down, shredding desiccated flesh.
“Any time now would be great,” I hissed to the demon. “I closed the door, the big, scary rock is gone. You can come out.”
Flames erupted all down my arms, suffusing me in liquid heat, my clothing disappearing in the blaze. The Ashbound didn’t recognize the danger; instead, the circle closed in around us.
Perfect.
I closed my eyes, took a breath, and dropped every guard I’d kept on myself all these years.
The demon rose like a vengeful storm. He and these things had been born of the same magic, but he was their god, and they his subjects, no match for the wall of consuming flames spreading out around me like a tsunami.
When I opened my eyes, every single creature was nothing but broken chunks of bone and smoldering ash.
Luca emerged from the mausoleum, a mix of fear and awe on his face as he huffed a shaky laugh. “I guess you don’t need my help after all. These things are…” He looked around, speechless. “Gods. What are they?”
“Ashbound. I’ve fought these things for fifty years. You can learn to fight them, too. I can teach you.” Fuck, what was I? Some kind of mentor now?
“I sent my sister the message.” He tapped the side of his head. “That thing looks heavy.” Luca resheathed his knife, glanced at the Basin, half hidden in the dark. “You sure we can get this thing to the drop-off point?”
“Of course.” Up close, the relic felt… wrong. Magic prickled my skin, and it was heavy in a way that had nothing to do with weight, humming with an otherworldly presence, as if the thing was watching us.
I wrapped my hands around the edges and lifted.
“Fuck.” My back strained, muscles protesting as I managed to haul the rock a foot off the ground, panting. “This thing weighs a ton. More than it should.”
“Because it’s not just stone,” Luca counseled, moving in to help me center the weight. “It’s six centuries of blood. It’s generations of power.”
Nico had moved the other one using some sort of Draconi magic. And the fucking thing had been a decoy. I didn’t have Draconi magic, and the demon was hiding again, the pussy.
“I can’t believe you’re afraid of a rock,” I grumbled, bracing my feet, praying I didn’t blow out a knee. Or my back. Nico would never let me live it down.
“Can you dematerialize with that thing?” Luca asked.
I barked out a short laugh. “Not a chance. Maybe if I was a hundred years older… but this is the real deal, and it’s too damn heavy. We’ll need to get it to the boat.” Between us, we maneuvered the Basin carefully, every step a new challenge as we navigated the path to the dock.
Using the boat opened us up to detection, to attack on the open water, to wasting a shit ton of time while Emberline faced her uncle. I cursed beneath my breath.
But this was our task, and we couldn’t just leave the fucking thing lying around.
The sturdy little vessel waited where we’d left it, rocking gently against the dock. Wrestling the Basin onboard was a fight in itself, too many close calls and a whole lot of swearing, but we managed without tipping over.
Barely.
I shoved off, the boat riding way too low, engine roaring to life as Luca untied the last line. I didn’t feel any better when the mausoleum disappeared, spray hitting me in the face as we sped out into the open water of the lagoon.
“I’d offer you my coat, but it wouldn’t fit,” Luca apologized, grimacing at my nakedness. “I hope you aren’t planning on being out in public tonight; you’re not exactly dressed to impress.”
“I’ve had about enough of your mouth tonight,” I grumbled, but the kid was right.
“Here. Take the fucking wheel.” I rooted through the storage box and found a blanket that stank of dead fish and wrapped it around my waist. If I was letting the demon out of play on a regular basis, I really needed to figure out my clothing situation.
“Emberline better be in one piece when we get back,” I said,
Luca’s jaw tightened as the boat cut through the dark water. “Em’s smart. If anyone can handle my uncle tonight, it’s her.” He steered us toward Venice. “She was calm when I told her about the Ashbound and the number of guards. And Nico won’t let anything happen to her.”
“You trying to convince me or yourself, kid? You clench your jaw any tighter, you’ll crack a tooth.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “It’s just that my sister has a terrible habit of letting her temper take over. And when it comes to my uncle, she has a lifetime of pent-up rage.”