Dayhunter (37 page)

“I’m not sure. I think so,” I hedged, finally forcing my feet to resume their steady approach. My hand fell back to my side, where I anxiously flexed my fingers a few times as if to loosen the muscles. The power in the air was building. “Can you tell if the energy will peak tonight or tomorrow night?” I asked, glancing over at him.

“No idea.” He shrugged his wide, narrow shoulders before looking down at me. “I’m not an earth user.”

Frowning, I paused before a set of cracked and crumbling stairs that led up to the palace. There were essentially two types of magic: earth and soul, which was also referred to as blood magic. Most magic users dabbled in both, but eventually everyone specialized in one side or the other. Both sides could do the same things, but each magic style had its own requirements and limitations.

And then there was Rowe. As a naturi, he was naturally a strong earth magic user, but he seemed equally adept at weaving blood magic, given that he’d gone to the trouble of arranging a harvest in Egypt less than a week ago. It would have been so much easier if the naturi stuck to earth magic and the bori stuck to blood magic. Then a person would know exactly where she stood when the shit hit the fan.

With one foot on the stairs, I reached out and scanned the area. Danaus and Penelope were roughly south of us, slowly approaching, while Hugo was in position to the east. Unfortunately, out of the five of us, only Danaus could sense the naturi. We were waiting for him to fire a shot to signal that they were here if no one else reacted first.

Creeping to the top of the staircase, I paused, squatting down, pressing my hands against the worn stones. The palace was mostly raised above the hill upon which it stood. If I walked onto the ruins, I would stand out as an easy target for any of the naturi. Despite the darkness of the night, I could easily see within the thick shadows. The only forms I could pick out were columns and bits of broken stone. The area appeared deserted, but I knew better.

I rolled my shoulders once and clenched my teeth. The push of the power in the area had grown a little stronger as I climbed the stairs. A throbbing had started in my temples and I could feel pressure building at the base of my skull. For a whole new reason, I had begun to hope that this battle wouldn’t take too long. The pain was starting to become a distraction, and I wasn’t sure how it would affect my ability to control my powers.

Ryan eased down so he was sitting opposite me on the stairs, his body held low to the ground. I wasn’t sure how good his eyesight was in the pitch-black, but I assumed he knew a spell or two to make it better than the average human.

“Has Danaus told you about Rowe?” I whispered, drawing the white-haired warlock’s attention back to my face. He nodded, so I continued to pick away at the thought that was nagging at me. How often would I find myself in the company of an ancient warlock with oodles of magic information crammed into his brain? “He’s different. Scarred. Dark hair, dark eyes. Unlike the other naturi. It’s from the magic?”

Ryan seemed to hesitate a moment before he nodded. “He’s tainting the magic so it’s tainting him,” he finally replied in a low voice. “He’s using the power of the earth to fuel blood spells.”

I stared at him for a long minute in silence, taking in his snow white hair and gold eyes, features I’d never seen on another human being in all my six hundred years, before finally voicing the thought we both knew was floating through my head. “The opposite of what you’ve done. You’ve tainted earth spells by fueling them with blood magic.”

The perpetual smile that seemed to haunt Ryan’s face melted away and his expression became completely unreadable. There were no laws against what he and Rowe were doing. However, it was my understanding that the mixing of styles was dangerous and frowned upon.

“This isn’t the time for this conversation,” Ryan stated in chilled tones.

“Actually, it is,” I corrected, smiling broadly at him. I leaned closer and lightly laid my hand over his wrist. “You know earth spells. You’ve got an abundance of power flowing up from the earth here. Use it. Cast something here and now. Anything.”

He pulled back, his mouth finally slipping into a frown. “The earth spells I know aren’t to be used lightly, and my strength isn’t in using power from the earth. It would be too dangerous.”

“More dangerous than allowing the naturi to complete their sacrifice here tomorrow night?” I demanded, my voice briefly spiking higher. “If you cast something here now, won’t it siphon off some of the power? Couldn’t it disrupt their ability to break the seal?”

The warlock looked away from me, staring off across the ruins. His brow was furrowed in thought as he turned over my argument. My understanding of how magic worked was pretty rudimentary, but the logic seemed to fit. If we used the magic here before the naturi, the power from the earth would dissipate and move on to the next location. It was extremely unlikely that the naturi would be able to find the next location before the new moon tomorrow night. They would have to wait until the Fall equinox more than a month away. That would give us ample time to hunt down Rowe and destroy him.

“There’s another problem,” Ryan stated after a couple minutes. “Regardless of which earth spell I cast, I’d have to start it with blood magic and then switch to earth magic.”

“Can you do that?” I asked, earning a very smug smile as laughter danced in his narrowed eyes. I rolled my own eyes in response. “So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t use my own soul to fuel my magic,” he admitted, his smile never wavering.

Of course not. That kind of nonsense was for the novices. Why waste the energy from your own soul when you could drain anyone else’s energy that happened to be near you? No wonder he was so comfortable as the head of Themis. Not only was he tapped into an excellent source of information regarding all the other races, but he was constantly surrounded by an ample source of energy. Much like nightwalkers, blood warlocks always stuck close to cities, while the few earth witches in the world preferred wooded regions. You have to stick close to your food source. Or in the case of magic users, your fuel source.

“I repeat: What’s the problem?”

“No humans nearby.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to remind him that Danaus was not far, but I swallowed the hunter’s name. We both knew that Danaus wasn’t entirely human, though I wondered if Ryan was aware that Danaus had some kind of bori connection. Obviously, the hunter was off limits, which was probably best for everyone involved.

“Can you use a nightwalker?” I asked. I wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea of Ryan highjacking some of the energy that kept me alive, but I was more afraid of facing the naturi here in another battle to protect the seal.

“I can’t. You don’t have a s—”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” I hissed, tightening my grip on his wrist. “Nightwalkers have souls. Besides, we’re pure blood magic. It’s how we stay alive.”

He moved his arm, twisting it so I would release him. “I can try. I’ve never done this so I can’t be sure—”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, cutting him off. Turning my attention back to the ruins, I looked over the area, searching for any sign of the naturi. It remained quiet, with only the sound of the wind lightly rustling the leaves in the surrounding trees. Before we moved, I mentally reached out and told Penelope and Hugo what our plans were. They would keep us covered while Ryan cast his spell.

I pushed off the ground with both hands, climbed the last couple stairs, and walked across the stone floor, heading deeper into the ruins. Since Danaus had yet to fire a single shot, Ryan and I assumed there wasn’t a naturi in the actual ruins. Of course, I checked more than once to make sure that Danaus was still alive and conscious. Not that I thought Penelope could kill Danaus, but I definitely didn’t trust her. I needed the hunter alive much more than I needed her at that moment.

“Where are we going?” Ryan whispered, leaning close to me as he spoke. It seemed silly to me. We were completely out in the open, easy targets. If the naturi couldn’t see us, I certainly wasn’t going to worry about them hearing us. Of course, when I replied, I whispered too. Some things defy logic when fear is twisting like a knot in your stomach.

“There’s a large courtyard in the center of the palace. I’m willing to bet the magic is strongest there,” I replied. Danaus and I had spent most of the flight to Crete studying maps of the Palace of Knossos. There was more than one place the naturi could use for the site of the sacrifice, which might be problematic with only five of us there. It would be better if we just got rid of the magic now and ruined their plans.

Pausing to edge around the corner of one of the few walls that was still standing, I saw Ryan closely examining the faint mural that had survived the centuries. Even in the darkness I could tell that the colors were relatively crisp despite the wear of the ages. I wished I could have taken the time to wander the ruins and marvel at what had obviously been an amazing structure. But for now the naturi dominated my thoughts.

“Mira,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder before I could walk away from the wall. “Those old myths about the labyrinth…”

“The labyrinth was supposedly found under the palace.”

“And the minotaur?”

One of my eyebrows popped up in surprise at his question. I honestly couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking. The minotaur? The half-man, half-bull creature that was supposed to be held captive in the center of the maze.

“They made the lycanthropes,” Ryan reminded me when the silence had stretched for longer than he was comfortable.

“That has never been proven,” I murmured, shaking my head. I had trouble accepting that supposed myth surrounding the lycans and the naturi because there was a second half to it that I found even more distasteful, which had to do with the origins of my own race. “There’s no such thing as the minotaur. Just a fanciful human tale.”

We continued on for another couple minutes before we came to a large clearing in the center of the palace. The space was rectangular, its edges marked off by broken rocks from what had been the walls, columns, and roof of the building centuries ago. I had heard old tales of the Palace of Knossos when I was growing up in Chania, but we never traveled far from our home.

“Do you have a spell in mind?” I asked, turning my back to Ryan as he stood in the center of the clearing. The power in the air was incredible, pushing against me as if it could force its way through my skin and into my organs. But at the same time, the energy felt thick and heavy. The very molecules felt too large to sink into me, but it didn’t keep them from trying.

“Yes,” he replied. Even his voice seemed more muffled here, as if the sound was fighting its way through energy. “I’m going to create a storm.”

I suddenly spun around to face the warlock, my mouth falling open at his announcement. “Isn’t that a rather big spell? With this much power in the air, you could destroy half the island, not to mention us.”

“Actually, if I’m not extremely careful, I could destroy not only this island, but several others in the area,” he said. His voice was calm and even, as if the notion of ending countless lives didn’t ruffle his feathers in the least. “This is what you wanted.”

“I want you to cast a spell, not cause mass destruction. Why such a big spell?” I might not have known much about magic, but I did know that weather spells were extremely complicated and took a great deal of energy. Very few could even cast them, and of those that could, even fewer had the ability to control them once they were started.

“I told you, I’m not an earth user. I don’t know a lot of earth spells and the few I do know are very dangerous. Do you want me to do this?” he demanded. Both his hands were raised out to his sides, his palms facing out. It was as if he were about to grab the air around him and pull it in toward his body.

To my surprise, I hesitated only a moment. This was stupid. This was dangerous. And this might be our only chance to stop the naturi in Crete. If we could stop them tonight, I thought, we could spend the next few weeks hunting down Rowe, our main target.

“Do it.”

Ryan drew in a deep, cleansing breath while his eyes fell shut. I was turning my back toward him again when a gunshot rang out. Damn it. We had company. The warlock was of no use to me now. He couldn’t be distracted from the complicated spell he had committed himself to, and I needed to protect him no matter what.

Pulling the gun from the holster at the small of my back, I turned slowly around, holding the weapon before me with both hands as I scanned the area. I didn’t see or hear anything yet. A second shot was fired, the bullet pinging off a stone behind me.

My stomach lurched and I spun around in time to see a naturi running toward me with a short sword raised above his head. I squeezed off three rounds before I finally managed to lodge a bullet in his chest. The naturi jerked at the impact before stumbling over some broken rocks, sending him to his hands and knees. With a loud clatter, the sword hit the ground while the naturi softly groaned.

A smile drifted across my lips, and then I was unexpectedly knocked to my knees. My arms fell and the gun almost slipped from my numb fingers. Nothing had hit me. From my back came a tugging sensation, as if something within me had been snagged or caught. My vision blurred and fatigue weighed on my shoulders.

Ryan had succeeded in tapping into my energy. I doubted that most humans would have even detected it, maybe only paused and yawned at the sudden wave of fatigue and then gone on with their day. However, my existence was pure soul energy, I could no longer generate my own, which was why I had to feed on the blood of others. If Ryan didn’t release me soon, I would need to either feed or sleep. Not an option at the moment. As much as I wanted to drain the moaning naturi dry, their blood was poisonous to all nightwalkers.

A scrape of stone and a new voice jerked my attention back from my own fatigue. A second naturi knelt next to the one I had shot only seconds ago. With her right hand, she was helping him to sit up, while still holding a sword in her left.