Shadowed Threads (17 page)

“This is beautiful,” Pamela whispered, and then slapped her hand over her mouth.

I pointed to the only door in the room. The next ten minutes, I spent trying to get closer to Jack, but only managed to get turned around. We would head toward him, and I’d think we were getting somewhere, and then we’d hit a dead end. Like a fucking maze, the Doges Palace twisted and turned, rooms, hallways and more just kept blocking my way. Shit.

Inside yet another dead end room, I stood staring at the wall, knowing that if I could get through it Jack wasn’t that much further away.

I narrowed my eyes and used my second sight, hoping there would be a hidden door. There wasn’t, but other things became very apparent.

Like the warnings scrawled in blood on the paintings in the wall.

Dying is a blessing.

Death is a curse.

May your bowels be filled with blood and mercy.

Nice. Real classy.

But better than that … I lifted my hand and traced the bloody arrow pointing toward the door. Rather obvious and it was one of two things: a marker system for new vamps needing directions or a fucking trap.

I was going with a trap, for five hundred, Mr. Trebek. If I was right, and it was a trap, it would lead us where we had to go. We just had to ready for the trap to spring. Yup, no problemo.

Pamela grabbed my hand and frowned at me. I pointed at my eyes, then at the wall. We’d been practicing using her second sight, but she struggled with it.

Her eyes widened and she pointed. Apparently she got it this time around. We followed the arrows out into the hallway, down a set of narrow stairs and onto the main floor.

Where all the humans were hanging out, taking pictures and staring at the walls like the tourists they were.

Crap.

The arrows led straight across the main entrance. We were going to have to bolt for it if O’Shea wasn’t going to get noticed. I snorted softly to myself and glanced over at him. Yeah, who was going to miss a five-hundred-pound jet-black wolf running across the palace entrance?

His slowly silvering eyes flicked up to me, as if he knew what I was thinking.

I’d wanted to avoid the humans as much as possible, they were just cannon fodder, and had a tendency to get killed when supernaturals rumbled.

“Pamela,” I whispered. “Can you block off the entrances to the main room, so people can’t go in and out?”

She nodded, stepped out, and lifted her hands. A tingle of energy trickled along my skin and I watched as the humans were slowly corralled into one doorway or another. Then Pamela darkened the blocks so they weren’t clear, but murky and shadowed. So they couldn’t be seen through.

“Brilliant. Good job.”

She grinned up at me and I grinned back. Score one for the witch.

We jogged down the final flight of steps and started across the main entranceway. A roar of defiance shocked the shit out of me. I spun, and in the main doorway leading into the palace stalked a fucking, I’ll-be-damned Gryphon.

A lion with wings, he was easily as big as O’Shea, maybe even bigger. Hard to tell with the wings. Shit, he must be some sort watch dog for the vampires. Tawny hide rippled over thick, powerful muscles, his darker mane waved in the breeze as he walked, and his wings were the color of honey. Stunning, he was a truly incredible creature. But he was still going to try and kill us, of that I had no doubt. Which left me no choice.

“I thought you blocked all the entranceways,” I said as I pulled my swords free.

“I did, he must have broken through,” Pamela said.

That meant one of two things. Either he was another Immune like me, or he had some sort of magic of his own. I was hoping he wasn’t Immune.

Pamela snapped a hand forward and the Gryphon ran through what she tossed at it. Immune, it was then.

“Leave this one to us,” I said as I stepped sideways, cutting down through the Gryphon’s wings with my sword. Feathers and blood spurted out, and the Gryphon roared. But before he could spin and tackle me, O’Shea was on his back, his jaws sinking in around the Gryphon’s neck.

The huge cat reached up and yanked O’Shea off his back, tossing him to the floor, leaving his back exposed to me. I ran forward and sliced downward and lengthwise as I passed the Gryphon’s side, cutting though his ribs and opening up his guts. Viscera spilled out onto the tiled floor and the Gryphon slumped, his last breaths slipping out of him in a matter of seconds. Fast, so fast and a trickle of remorse skittered through me. Gryphon’s were rare, kind of the endangered species of the supernatural world, and we’d cut him down in a matter of minutes.

Jaw clenched, I went to one knee and put a hand on the tawny hide, felt the heat from his body fading already. Son of a bitch, of all the things the vampires could have used for a guard animal, why did it have to be a Gryphon? And one that obviously had no real fighting skills for us to take him out as fast as we had. Just one more reason to go after the Child Empress. This death shouldn’t have happened either, didn’t need to have happened.

I stared around us. The whole set up had seemed too easy. O’Shea’s eyes caught mine. Yeah, too damn easy, indeed. Like they were testing us, to see if we were worth bothering with. My hunch that this, and the arrows, were a trap increased—like a tightening noose around my neck. Not a good sign.

“Let’s go, they know we’re here.”

Chapter 20

W
e found our
way down into the lower levels via a panel in the wall that the oh-so-helpful bloody arrows pointed to. Once inside the walls, I could see where they’d been opened up and made to look like a reflection of the true palace. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that I was in the regular section with the oil paintings directly on the walls, the scrollwork, even the gold laid into the floors was the same.

“Why would they go to all this effort?” Pamela asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I don’t know. Now be quiet.” I suspected I did know the reason, but I wasn’t going to go and try to explain it right then. I’d save that for later, when we weren’t walking into a nest of vampires who knew we were coming.

Vampires were one of the few supernatural creatures that had once been human. They had all started out normal at one point. From what I understood, it was a big part of why they were such assholes. Werewolves were the same, and the two groups were some of the most difficult to deal with. The rest of us had never been human, even if we thought we were, we had always been different. I suspected that this attempt at ‘normalizing’ the insides of the walls was to make the vampires feel like they were still a little bit human. Even though there wasn’t a drop of humanity left in them.

We worked our way through, toward Jack who was close now; there were no longer the dead ends when it came to trying to pin him down.

The next corner rounded into an intersection of hallways; I could feel Jack, closer now. Where we stood, six branches led off from the intersection. Dark, long tunnels that no doubt held creatures we wanted nothing to do with. From what I could tell, Jack was at the end of the branch on our right. At the end of it, there was a single, flickering light above a heavy wooden door. Iron slides that banded across the wood were an added strength over a simple lock. Made me wonder what the fuck they kept locked up down here.

If it hadn’t been for Berget, I never would have even thought about going down any of those hallways, except for the one Jack was at the end of. But down one of those dark tunnels was the Child Empress. I hesitated, staring at the hallway across from me, and found myself Tracking vampires as a group. No one close, everything was all still and quiet; the only vampires I could feel were about a mile deep. How the hell was that possible in a floating city? I shook my head. That didn’t matter, at least not yet.

I pointed at Jack’s door and took a step forward.

And that’s when the trap was sprung, and all hell broke loose.

From each of the dark hallways came a vampire. They could have moved faster, but by the grins on their faces, they wanted to see our fear. Wanted us to believe we could break free of them. How the hell had I missed them?

We were so fucked.

O’Shea managed to grab one; Pamela nailed another with a fireball, which did far more damage and the others gave her some room.

The other four advanced on me, as if I were the dangerous one, which I freaking well knew I wasn’t compared to O’Shea, or even Pamela with her fireballs. Yet they tackled me, pinned me to the ground, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. My muscles strained against their hands, fought them, but there was no comparison. Their strength and speed wasn’t legendary for no reason. I knew why they were at the top of the food chain.

“Get her out of here, O’Shea,” I yelled, my words echoing against the painted walls.

He snarled at me—defiance I could feel dancing along my skin—and snatched one of the vampires by the leg and threw them against the wall. From the corner of my eye, a vampire reached from the darkness toward Pamela, his mouth open with glee. Shit.

“Get her the fuck out of here!” There was nothing I could do, my body completely controlled by the vampires who held me tight.

O’Shea spun on his haunches, and I saw him take everything in. There were just too many of them, we wouldn’t win, and he finally got it. Time for a retreat and a re-group, if wanted any chance at saving me, he had to leave. His claws scrabbled across the uneven rock, and then he bolted past me, grabbing Pamela as he went. Down one of the corridors they ran and disappeared into the darkness.

The vampire closest to me leaned down and put her mouth close to my ear. “Our Empress is waiting for you, Tracker. But don’t worry, we’ll find the girl, and her little dog too.”

“Fuck you.”

“Umm. I’d like that, but I heard you prefer your wolves to women.” She licked my cheek and I went very still, turned just my eyes to her.

“Perhaps your girl would be more to my liking.”

I stared up at her, knew that the three colors in my eyes would be shifting wildly with my anger. “Touch her and I’ll stop playing nice, you fucking piece of shit.”

She laughed, but there was a touch of fear in her laughter, like she was trying to convince herself.

They lifted me, one vampire on each arm and one on each foot, holding me above the ground as they took me down the hallway toward Jack’s door. The last vampire stripped me of my weapons as they walked. Everything went—my two swords, knife, whip, crossbow and bolts.

The door opened, and I was thrown into the cell, landing flat on my back on the hard floor. It knocked the wind out of me, and I lay there, waiting for my breath to come back. What a freaking mess this was.

Finally, I rolled to my knees and squinted into the darkness, knowing Jack was in here somewhere with me.

“Jack?”

“What the fuck, Rylee.” He was in the corner on a low pallet, a blanket over him. I made my way to his side and sat on the edge of the pallet. His skin, what I could see of it, was grey and sallow, his eyes were sunken into his head and his bright red hair seemed to have dimmed in the short time since I’d seen him last.

“Jack, shouldn’t the vampires have been sleeping?”

“They are, you idiot. Those were the mother fucking pets. How the hell did you get this far, anyway?” He’d barely finished speaking when a series of coughs wracked his frame, the wet awful sound of fluid on his lungs. Fluid or blood, one or the other.

“What happened to Doran, why didn’t he try to help keep you out of their hands?”

He spat a gob of something against the wall, and we watched it slide down for a moment before he answered.

“There were too many of them, no need for the fanged fuck to get taken too. He was all but shaking in his boots, didn’t want to be taken to the Empress again.”

I put a hand on his shoulder, hoping I was right about him and the fact that they would have thought him defenseless when they took him. “Jack, they took all my weapons.”

“That surprises you?”

“No, but did they take all yours?”

He gave a chuckle. “No. They didn’t even check me. I’m just a dying old man. It’s between the pallet and the floor.”

I slid my fingers along until I felt the handle of a weapon. I pulled out a short sword, about half the length of my two, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing at all.

“It is spelled to cut deep, like yours, so watch the edge,” he muttered.

“They’re going to take me for an audience with the Child Empress.”

“You think you’ve got it in you?”

I took a couple of swings with the sword, feeling the weight of it, how it cut through the air.

“If I don’t, we’re all dead. So yeah, I guess I do.”

“Good. But don’t come back for me. Stupid bunch of idiots, you shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

I ignored him and checked the door over, but it was too solid, even for a spelled blade.

“Rylee, I have a few more things to tell you. If you’re ready for it,” Jack said, coughing again after he spoke.

“Is it bad? Cause honestly, I’m full up with bad shit right now.”

I went and sat beside him, found my hand wrapping around his, knowing that again, I was going to lose someone I cared about. Yet he’d only been in my life a few weeks. Not long enough to get this attached, surely. Especially not since he’d avoided and pissed me off at every turn.

His fingers gripped mine. “I should have let you read those damn books.”

A shiver of fear tiptoed up my spine and sat on the back of my neck, but I still had to know. “Why?”

“I lied to you.”

Dear gods, not again. Men and lies, lately they seemed to be fucking joined at the hip.

He leaned back on his bed. “There is a prophecy that I would train the last Tracker, I’ve always known that it was true. You are the only one I’ve ever trained, even a little bit. I don’t have much to offer you, only the knowledge of what we are, of how to not get used up. But that doesn’t matter.

“You are the last of us, Rylee. You are the one who will stand between the world and the darkness that comes. I’ve known it from the minute you walked into that fucking hospital room with that bedraggled werewolf. I saw it in both of you, the start of the prophecies coming to light. Even though I couldn’t Read you, I knew.”

I tried to pull away, but he held my hand tighter than a dying man should have been able to.

“Jack, you are fucking delusional. Just rest.” The fear on the back of my neck dug in deep, just like Faris’ fangs.

With effort, he sat up until he was looking me right in the face. “I can’t Read you. But I can Read all those around you. And their stories, what I see there, all of it points at one thing. You are the center of it, the center of where all the stories sit. Like a bright spot that keeps me from Reading you.”

What the hell was I supposed to say to that? Anything?

“Just listen to me, kid. You have so much coming your way, but just follow your heart. That is what you have to do. Hold to what you know is right, no matter what anyone else says.”

“Even when it means rescuing an old, stubborn, dying Tracker?” I lifted an eyebrow at him, wanting to change the subject. Needing to. I couldn’t be the last Tracker, that wasn’t possible. But hadn’t I for years thought I was the only Tracker?

He shrugged and slumped back to the pallet. “Perhaps, but was it your heart that brought you here or your need for revenge?”

My jaw tightened. “Did you meet the Child Empress?”

“Briefly. I saw a lot around the kid, even though she was covered up. Death, lots and lots of death and manipulation, but that is true for any vampire no matter how young they are. But you are trying to change the fucking subject. Right now, it’s about prophecies. You need to read them, understand them, so when the time comes you have at least an idea of what you’re going to be up against.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face, thinking that perhaps Jack had a fever, and that he’d lost his marbles in the last few days locked away inside the palace walls. Fuck, anything was possible. But what he was saying couldn’t be true. I was no legend in the making. Trackers were just that—Trackers; nothing more.

I stood, and Jack let me go. Pacing the small room didn’t help, only made me feel more freaked out. Fuck, this was bad.

“Rylee, the end game is going to be played out, and you are central to it. Many of your friends are central to it.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to take this, Jack?” I shouted, feeling an unfamiliar wash of anxiety sweeping over me.

“Like a fucking Tracker,” he shouted back. “You do what you must, you keep your oaths, you save the goddamn world. Stop whining. This is your life, learn to fucking deal with it.”

Was he right?

Yes, fuck it all to hell and back, Jack was right. At least about dealing with my life, and probably about the rest too.

But at that moment, I just couldn’t handle more shit about the prophecies. I had to worry about saving my ass, Jack, Pamela, and O’Shea. Kill a Child Empress and escape a nest of vampires.

Yeah, I was kind of tied up.

“Later, Jack. Can we talk about this later?”

He threw his cane at me, and I dodged it easily. “You don’t fucking know if there will even be a fucking later.”

I blew out a sharp breath of air. “If the prophecies are right, there will be a later and we can talk about it then.”

With a mutter of some choice expletives, he lay back down on the rough bed. He couldn’t really argue with my logic and we both knew it. If he was right, I would have a later. If he was wrong, well, we’d find out soon enough.

I leaned against the far wall, watched Jack slip in and out of sleep, knew that I should probably sit with him, hold his hand. But I couldn’t because he would start in on me again.

Why do the prophecies scare you so bad?
 The words weren’t from Blaz, or any other person. They were my own thoughts, scrambling through my head.

Yeah, good fucking question.

More than anything, I wanted to believe I had control over my own life, that fate wasn’t forcing me into situations. Manipulating me. Fuck, I hated that more than anything else, and that’s what the prophecies felt like, a complete and utter shit-hole of a manipulation.

The day waned, or I assumed it did. I was thirsty, hungry and tired. I didn’t dare close my eyes, and I could do nothing about the other two issues. I wondered about Pamela and O’Shea. Please, Gods, let them get out of here. I Tracked Pamela, but she wasn’t far away, certainly not as far away as I would have liked. Damn, they were still down here. My guts clenched. I had to believe O’Shea would protect her. Had to.