Chapter 18
Eleni
My task completed, we set to begin lowering the women when my wards went off.
Lyall immediately went into battle stance, his claws extruding, and an insane amount of magical energy swirling around him.
Since embracing his divine light, he had grown exponentially more powerful. And it was incredibly sexy.
But I gestured for him to stand down.
“Whoever it is, they are not enemies,” I said reassuringly.
“Didn’t they notice your wards coming in?” Lyall asked in a less-than-impressed tone.
I gave him an indulgent smile. “They most certainly did but also recognized them as mine.”
He harrumphed and shifted his stance to something less intimidating but without fully dropping his guard.
To my shock, it was Father Paulus—although I should really call him Grand Master Paulus—and four other Templars who stepped down the staircase into the dungeon. I would have expected Prefect Ewan and his team to be the first to arrive considering it was his clerics who were held captive here.
His smile faltered as soon as he saw me.
It hurt more than words could express, even though I understood his reaction to my new appearance.
And yet, I had hoped he loved me enough that it wouldn’t distress him, just as it had left Lyall totally unfazed.
Then the sadness in his eyes as he forced a broader smile back on his lips made a light go off in my mind.
It suddenly dawned on me that it wasn’t disappointment, disgust, or distrust that prompted this reaction from him.
He just realized that there would be no way for him to keep me within the Order.
For more than two decades, he had led an unrelenting campaign to convince the Church that I was an asset and not a threat. It was only over the last few years that they had finally seemed to accept it, although they never fully accepted me. Now, that ship had sailed.
As if to further confirm the thoughts filling my mind, Sister Martha frowned and eyed me warily. But Brother Conrad hissed as soon as he spotted me, and whipped out his staff, ready to launch into battle.
“Demon!” he yelled.
“STOP!” Paulus snapped, raising his palm in an arresting gesture. “Eleni is not a threat. She’s an ally.”
“She has fallen to the darkness that had been festering in her from the start!” Conrad shouted with a mix of outrage and disbelief before pointing an angry finger at Lyall. “She consorts with other demons!”
“I said stand down, Conrad!” Paulus said in a menacing tone. “Do you forget that she’s the one who called us to rescue our Sisters?”
“It could be a trap!” Conrad countered.
I rolled my eyes and interjected to prevent Lyall from giving in to his obvious desire to go tear the idiot to shreds.
“A trap for what?” I asked, annoyed. “For your sorry ass? If I want it to set a trap for you and the Church, I wouldn’t have invited you here. Instead, I would have freed the women myself and sent them back to all of you as moles and assassins.”
“You confess?!” he exclaimed.
I rolled my eyes even harder, this time restraining my own urge to slap the stupid out of him.
“If you are so skittish, leave and let us complete our mission,” I said with exasperation.
He looked at the others for support. Finding none, he glared at me.
“You were always a danger,” he hissed before turning his attention towards Paulus. “We warned you she would turn bad, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“I didn’t turn bad,” I snapped. “I simply became what I was always meant to be.”
“An abomination!” Conrad spat.
“No. Something different. Something powerful. Something in control of their urges and abilities,” I replied calmly.
It stunned me how true those words suddenly sounded to my own ears despite the endless bouts of self-doubt I had gone through over the past couple of weeks since releasing my darkness.
I gave him a disdainful look. “Funny how you would stand here trying to cast aspersions on me. Unlike you, I never indulged in cruelty and unnecessary torture in the name of a faith you don’t even believe in.”
“You dare!” Conrad shouted, his face red with anger.
“I dare and double dare,” I snarled. “Tread carefully, Brother Conrad. Everyone sees you for what you are. You can only get away with it for so long. Now either help or leave. Elliot will know the minute we start rescuing the women.”
“You do not command me!” he growled.
“ENOUGH!” Paulus shouted, showing more anger than I could ever recall him displaying towards anyone who wasn’t an enemy. “Like Eleni said, you can either help or leave. These women cannot wait for you to finish throwing your tantrum.”
Conrad clenched his teeth, visibly itching to argue some more. Instead, he cast a detection spell. He couldn’t be certain, as his powers didn’t rival mine and made it a lot harder for him to detect anything with great certainty. But it was enough for him to throw out his accusations.
“You did set up traps!” He exclaimed.
“Against Elliot, you imbecile! Not you. Stop wasting our time,” I said angrily before turning my attention back to the women.
He appeared to want to say something else, but Paulus and the others approaching me made it clear any further discussion was over.
“Why are they still alive after all this time?” Paulus asked pensively.
“Tonight is the full moon,” I mused aloud. “I suspect he was waiting for it to perform this ritual. After all, the day he intended to capture me in the crematorium was also on the full moon.”
“That makes sense,” Paulus said while assessing the situation of the women.
“We can split our forces into two groups. Half of us can unravel the magic binding them, and the others can use levitation to take them away from the pit. I don’t trust the energy emanating from it.
We should join forces to make sure the levitation doesn’t falter. We can’t lose them now.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Lyall interjected. “You can all focus your energy unraveling their bindings. I will go get them.”
“Get them how?” Conrad growled, making me seriously consider kicking his sorry ass into the pit.
Lyall didn’t bother answering and merely deployed his light wings. With the streaks under his skin glowing, alongside with his bluish white hair, my man looked like a divine angel. A possessive pride swelled within me as I admired his beauty.
Conrad took a step back in shock, mouth agape.
“What in the Nine Hells are you?” he breathed out, flabbergasted.
Lyall gave him a contemptuous once over. “I’m the ‘demon’ soulmate Eleni consorts with.”
As one, Paulus and I snorted. Conrad mumbled something unintelligible as my mate took flight. He headed straight for the women located higher up on the ropes, who happened to be the ones who had been kidnapped first and thus been held captive here the longest.
With our joint forces, we quickly freed the first woman from her magical bindings. Lyall took her in his arms with infinite care before flying her back down to us. One of the Templars I didn’t know took her from him and made his way up the stairs to take her out of the dungeon.
As soon as the first bindings were severed, the air shifted in the room, indicating a trap had been set off… or at least an alarm that would set some very unpleasant things in motion.
“Get ready!” I warned, even as we hastened to free more women.
To our collective surprise, nothing happened for a while. I was beginning to think maybe what I had detected wasn’t some sort of tripwire spell, although I couldn’t imagine what else they might be. And then a series of runes lit up around the edges of the pit.
“That’s no good,” Paulus said. “Hurry, everyone!”
He didn’t have to say it twice.
Instead of carrying one woman back at a time, Lyall had us free a second one so that he could fly down two of them at once.
He handed them to the templars who ran back outside with them.
One of the men whose name I didn’t know had just taken the seventh woman out, with Martha running behind carrying the eighth one, when panicked shouts resonated from outside.
Lyall—who was bringing the next cleric down for Paulus—landed next to us instead, still holding her in his arms. Conrad ran back down the stairs, making a respectable job of controlling his fear.
As much as I despised him, and for all his faults, he was a decent fighter and knew how to hold his composure during battle.
He didn’t give into panic or abandoned his unit to save his own life.
“The exit is sealed!” Conrad exclaimed. “The word of power no longer works!”
Even as he spoke those words, the runes around the pit started glowing red. As one, we moved away from it.
“Looks like we’re about to have company,” I said, as clicking sounds rose from the depths of the pit. “Take the women upstairs and cast a protective wall in front of them.”
We couldn’t see the bottom, so the gods only knew how deep it went.
Martha and Conrad nodded. She raced up the stairs while he took the woman Lyall was still holding before following in her wake.
But the air shifting around us drew our attention away from it.
To my shock, I noticed a very angry Elliot standing at the back of the room, on the opposite side of the pit from us.
“You fucking survived!” he hissed, his eyes throwing daggers at me. “I told Demetra her obsession with you would be her downfall.”
“Why was she? Why couldn’t she leave me alone?” I asked.
If I could keep him talking for a bit, it would buy time for the Templars to make the women as secure as possible, for those outside to try and figure out a way to reopen the exit, and for us to assess any weakness we might exploit to take down that wretched male.
To my relief, the others seemed to guess my intention and didn’t make waves.
He snorted and gestured towards me.