Chapter 28 #3
“Oh, my know-it-all son, it’s not my desire to take the lives of these hybrids here tonight.
My attention is directed toward the two thousand currently battling Gregor.
He’s saving them for me, merely intending to incapacitate, to save the kills for me.
He’s looking forward to it as much as I am—an immense invocation of Risen Reckoning that will not only award Gregor what he desires and further his support and deference to me, but will also strike fear and reverence into the higher echelons of the supernatural world. ” His lip curled. “It will make me.”
“It will be your downfall,” my dad rumbled. “That is the extent of it, the only way it can possibly play out.”
Morien sneered at him, then told Sylas, “The spell you saw through, the illusion not only warped the reality around you, it impacted perception to such an extent that it was not able to be registered magically either, certainly not sensed by vampires or shifters. I suppose your experience at Glasswake Settlement served you well in the end.”
Sylas’ eyes narrowed.
That piece of shit, bringing up Glasswake like this after all the trauma, grief, and guilt Sylas had endured over it when Corvin Morvain had caused that massacre that Sylas had carried as his weight for far too long.
He was dealing with it now, he’d processed it, and he was no longer burying it beneath extreme-level compartmentalization. But still… having it shoved in his face now… it was disgusting.
“That spell used at Glasswake to fool you was actually my design. I taught it to Corvin Morvain. A friend to us all. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“For me? For Ketheron? For Ambrose? For Ariana? For Kai? For every fucking one who was abused by that fool, I like to think of him as the despicable little bitch who died in horrific pain and torment in a desperate attempt to escape my wrath.” His eyes darkened.
“In fact, recalling him being torn apart by that warped portal gives me immense satisfaction and still thrills me to this day. And for you, father dearest, I like to think of him as your benefactor who you knelt to and likely opened wide for too, in order to have him engineer your resurrection. Because as powerful as you believe yourself to be, all you really are is beholden to others, offering dark favors to inflict pain and misery, chaos and destruction, all so these misguided beings will hold you up.”
I smiled to myself.
There he was, Sylas at his fucking best with the biting takedowns.
Morien’s eyes flamed with his power as Sylas’ words obviously struck just the way that had been intended.
“You antagonize me once again, wish to strip me of credibility.” He glared at my dad. “And you attempt to portray my victory as an impossibility, as lofty dreams that can never be realized.”
“Your megalomania has made it impossible for you to maintain a healthy grip on reality,” Dad told him. “And without that, you cannot effectively strategize. Although you undoubtedly deserve being torn down verbally as much as physically, my assessment is pure fact, Morien.”
Morien glared out at him. I saw his fingers twitch. His jaw clenched.
Good. He was rattled. Majorly.
It had worked to undercut the fucker and what he’d believed was his carefully laid plan and controlled situation here.
As he went to bite back, because, of course he couldn’t let it go, Sylas made his move, sending a rolling sweep of power out at the hostages that shattered the Dark Fae chains binding them, then also broke the Inhibitor cuffs on those hybrids who had magic-wielder capabilities.
The moment it happened, it served to cause the next level of distraction, and under my dad’s signal, we moved in, him and his vampires bursting toward several of the Dark Fae, coming up behind them and snapping their necks, killing them before they could use their stolen Celestial and black magic against the hostages to stop their rescue, or us.
The Celestial power from the remaining thirty started firing then, though, forcing us into a defensive situation of using our rapid-fire movements to redirect blows away from the hostages.
My dad’s magic-wielders swept blanket healing spells over the hostages, enabling them to get to their feet and defend themselves as well.
He gave the call to evacuate them ASAP, which split the fifteen vampires—ten evacuating a half dozen hostages at a time, with five remaining here to fight with us.
Sylas was wrapping twenty hostages at a time up in his magic and sweeping them toward the pocket dimension exits, while I took to grabbing hold of him and moving him in bursts whenever Celestial power from the Dark Fae fired at him.
I saw my dad protecting one of his magic-wielders who was performing a spell that would note the Celestial signatures of all that stolen power being used, which we’d then send along to Cassius and Ketheron for the Celestial children to lock onto and siphon.
Even the ones The Shadowed agents had killed could still be read, the power siphoned.
Given that it wasn’t their power, it wouldn’t just die with them, it would remain—fucking dangerous shit there.
Through it all, Morien was just standing there watching with a studious expression.
On first assumption it looked like he was reveling in the nightmare he’d created and even being one of those assholes who made other people do his dirty work.
But with that studying look, it couldn’t be.
He’d even said that his goal hadn’t been to kill these hybrids in particular, that he was saving his power for a massive display.
Then, why be ordering his Dark Fae unit here to fight back against us as we pulled the hostages free? Why not just lash out at Sylas and try to take what he needed from his son?
I saw my dad and Sylas darting glances over at the bastard every now and then too, clearly on the same suspicious track that I was.
“Something’s wrong, Sylas,” I spoke, as I burst him back again a few feet, a bolt of Celestial power sailing on by.
Even with that, he didn’t break his power stream that was sending the hostages toward the exit a hundred feet away, the way we’d come in.
“I know.”
“You… what?”
“He’s here instead of being with Gregor performing Risen Reckoning, because he can’t actually perform it yet. His dramatics here point toward exactly that.”
“What? He has enough power with the Celestial and black magic,” I pointed out.
“Those are essentially boosters. He still needs enough of a foundation to be able to invoke it, and that lies in necromancy for him and that spell.”
“He hasn’t been able to feed from other necromancers as, following his murder spree to do just that, they all disappeared,” my dad said, as he burst over, and I looked to see that his magic-wielder was free and clear, off to get those signatures to Cassius.
Thank fuck, we wouldn’t have to deal with this stolen Celestial power and black magic much longer.
Hold on. What they were saying crashed into me, an awful chill shooting down my spine.
“He knew you’d come, Sylas. Because of the threat of him using Risen Reckoning on the hybrids here.
But we didn’t know he couldn’t perform it, he knew we didn’t know…
he didn’t plan to kill these hostages… all he wanted was you.
He’s absorbing your power every time you use it, manipulating you into using heavy amounts of it by bringing along these Dark Fae hopped up on black magic and Celestial power. ”
“Yes,” Sylas confirmed. “That’s what he’s doing. I can feel the absorption—since we engaged.”
Shit, his expression was absolutely wretched.
Because Morien had lured him into another sort of trap not that dissimilar to Glasswake.
Even though Sylas hadn’t fallen for the illusion aspect this time, him being here and coming to liberate the hybrids was now essentially the reason that Morien would actually be able to invoke Risen Reckoning again—and this time on a mass fucking scale.
Oh, fuck, it was horrific… disgusting that he was putting that on Sylas.
As if he didn’t already bear enough fucking burdens as it was.
My dad spun around, calling out orders, bursting out into the battlefield to assist, and take out two more of the Dark Fae in quick succession by appearing behind them as they were distracted by his agents, and ripping their hearts from their chests, before returning to us, and telling Sylas, “We’ve completed three quarters of the evacuation. ”
“And you’re telling me to stand down, stop using my magic?”
“Yes. You need to leave.”
“I do that and you’ll have no protection against necromancy. Even without Risen Reckoning, he can puppet all vampires here, and even those who aren’t dead with the perversion of Undead Domination that he’s forged with black magic in play.”
“Myself and my agents will see to the situation.”
“The risk is—”
“There is always risk. It is how you manage said risk.” My dad gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Go with him. Leave this place.”
“So, you do think you could die then?” I snapped.
“What I think is that with the stakes raised, my concern for your wellbeing skyrockets and impacts my focus, my son.”
Oh. Well… I understood that. A fuck of a lot.
“I’ll take him out,” Sylas seethed. “I’ll put that perversion of necromancy down right here and now.” He finished sweeping his magic with another load of hostages who he’d encircled with his red power, then turned and started forward.
My dad did what I’d been about to do, snatching Sylas’ arm and stilling him in his tracks. “He’s been absorbing your magic, he’s wielding Celestial power and black magic. We need to wait until those are siphoned from him.”
He flinched, which had me tensing, knowing his Ancient Vampire senses had picked up on something before anybody else.