Night Cries (Hunters of the Dark #2) Page 25

  “Thank you, Todd,” Krystal whispered. Then he crumpled to the ground, like he was a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  Rachel stared down at Todd in shock, then looked at Krystal. “What just happened?”

  “I can explain later. But listen…the singing’s stopped. Now’s our chance to use the device.”

  With a frown, Rachel cocked her head. Sure enough, all was silent save for settling debris. “If the singing starts up again and interferes with the device, we would have destroyed our last hope of getting out of this situation.”

  “We need to end this,” Krystal said, suddenly very intense. “Now.”

  Rachel nodded slowly. “Alright. But we should move quickly. Can you stand?”

  Krystal looked down doubtfully. “You look for it. The vampire can carry me if we’re successful.”

  “How did you know Damien was a vampire?”

  “Later…please. Just find the device. Turn the power on and hit the red button. I saw them do it in the van. It’s very simple.”

  Looking down at Todd again, Rachel shook her head in disbelief. “You’re a necromancer. You control the dead.”

  Sighing, Krystal nodded. “Yes. It’s a teensy bit more complicated than that, but yes. We can talk more later, but first thing’s first.”

  Rachel stood up straight. “We will be talking at length. Hunter has a lot to answer for.”

  “I’m not dangerous,” Krystal insisted, suddenly gripping Rachel’s leg.

  Eyebrow raised, Rachel glanced down at the hand on her leg until Krystal relaxed her grip and looked away sheepishly. “We’ll see about that.”

  ***

  “Rachel will be happy that I’m wearing my water-proof mascara,” Amelia murmured as she crawled on hands and knees along the small tunnel that the opening of the cove had allotted entry into. “It survived a car crash, shifting dimensions and a nice little swim.”

  “That could be their new slogan,” Shanna quipped with a smile, peeking back at her, feeling a wave of deja vu as she recalled crawling behind Felicia during their first meeting at Styx. The thought of Styx brought Jordan to mind, where he'd seen her at her worst, her most pathetic. She hoped he was alright. She felt like he kind of looked out for her...like a big brother. Family she’d never had.

  “I would buy it,” Amelia agreed. “I imagine shifting dimensions is a common problem nowadays. Forget swimming.” She paused. “I didn’t pick water for my element for a reason, you know.”

  “Now, when you say air is your element, what does that mean really? You have complete control over it?”

  “More like I have a bond with it. If I provide the right words, it will act as a familiar of sorts and guide me, help me. Powerful sorcerers would be able to exert more control over it, but that would take decades. I’m just an amateur.”

  Shanna wormed her way along the tunnel behind Natalia slowly, feeling incredibly claustrophobic and a little panicky. It reminded her of The Descent, a film she would not enjoy a cameo in, what with the collapsing tunnels and, oh yeah, horrifying monsters. She shivered and continued crawling along determinedly until it finally opened up enough to proceed on foot, though hunched over a little. It was really dark in the tunnel, but there seemed to be a little bit of light that always shone far up in the distance so they could see, at least, the direction they traveled in. It was several minutes before the tunnel gave them ample room to stretch, of which they took advantage, and then stand upright altogether. Not long afterwards, they passed beneath a hole in the ceiling, where light shone down into the darkness like a beacon.

  “I was right,” Amelia remarked. “Hole in the roof.”

  “But where’s the singing?” Shanna asked. “We haven’t heard it since we came down here.”

  Amelia looked over at Shanna, her eyes widening. “Do you think it’s a good thing that we can’t hear it anymore? Or do you think they know we’re here?”

  A white light suddenly flashed through the tunnel, coming through one wall and passing through the other. It tingled as it went through Shanna’s flesh, but was gone before she could fully react.

  “Uh…what was that?” Cameron asked, unable to hear a response anyway, should they provide one.

  “That should have restored us to the correct plane,” Hunter announced, a little too loudly, as if he’d heard Cameron’s question.

  “Wait - we’re back to normal?” Amelia asked. “So, we’re not stuck in this mess anymore?”

  Shanna cocked her head. “Yeah, but now they have our friends. We can’t just leave now.”

  “Yeah, but at least we know we won’t be stuck. Thank you, Todd.”

  “Sshh!” Natalia stopped suddenly with a sharp hiss and held her finger to her lips so that everyone got the message, earplugs or not.

  Shanna peeked around her and realized that the tunnel opened up into a room ahead. A room that was lit by an unseen fire, shadows dancing over the walls.

  Amelia looked anxious as they skulked up to the opening, Natalia taking a quick peek into the room before drawing her head back.

  “I don’t see any threats,” Natalia whispered. “But be prepared and no matter what, no noise. We don’t want to alert anyone to our presence. This is our only advantage.”

  Shanna and Amelia both nodded enthusiastically, gesturing to the men to hang back for a moment, as they slowly crept into the room. It was decked out in purple and black-dyed cotton and linen, and smelled moldy and old, rotten. A stone altar held a fully-lit candelabra, its wax dripping carelessly over the tablecloth. Someone had obviously been there very recently. Another smell in the room took Shanna a moment to identify, and when she did, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. Blood. It appeared sporadically across the floor, recent but dry. There wasn’t much else to their surroundings, so they quickly moved on, though Hunter had to be torn away from the apparently ancient tapestries and cloth. But if it weren’t for his lingering, they would have missed the stash of dozens of backpacks behind the altar. They were all ripped open, some emptied of their contents, as if someone had stolen them from tourists and had been desperate for something that they might contain. One of them came with a working flashlight.

  “We’ll use this as a last resort,” Natalia announced under her breath. “We don’t want anyone to know we’re coming.”

  Amelia agreed and held onto it happily.

  Very cautiously, they crept into the next room. A few steps in, the inky blackness beyond immediately sucked all of the light that was cast from the candelabra of the previous room. But even without the light, it was easy to tell that the room was huge. Cavernous. Every step echoed.

  “I don’t like this,” Amelia murmured, then suddenly stepped on something that caused a loud crunching noise. The noise seemed to go on forever as it crashed over the walls.

  Shanna winced and looked over at Natalia, who looked fairly annoyed.

  Then Shanna stepped on a similar object and they all stopped where they were.

  “I think…we should use the flashlight already,” Shanna suggested.

  Natalia frowned, but nodded, and Amelia immediately clicked on the light, its beam sweeping over the ground and the dozen white strips of wood littered there.

  They began to move forward again until Amelia suddenly did a double-take and bent over to touch one of the strips of wood. As she held it up, Shanna could make out a red string hanging from it. Then upon moving a little closer, she saw that it was curved into a very familiar shape, and wasn’t wood at all. It was bone. A bone freshly stripped of its flesh.

  Amelia suddenly dropped the bone and swept the arc of light from her flashlight along the floor up to a pile of bones not a foot away from them. As she lifted the light higher, a mountain of bones rose before them as the light crept up it slowly. Some were white and picked clean, as if polished, and some had bits of muscle and blood still clinging to them. Shanna realized it was what she’d been smelling
all along. Death. Rot. Decomposing meat that hung from these ribs and skulls and femurs and pelvises. If she looked closely, she could make out the individual skeletons of a few bodies, while ones clean of flesh and gristle had fallen apart, limbs mixed among other limbs.

  Amelia choked on the smell and nearly vomited, but quickly whispered something to the air that seemed to relieve her.

  Cameron was all but clinging to Shanna, especially when a skull echoed loudly as it descended the pile of bones, bouncing off of other bones with various dull thuds before landing right in front of Natalia, the lower jaw falling away from abuse.

  They all stared at the pool of light that Amelia had fastened on the skull, its eyes still intact, its brains oozing out through its nose holes. Then Amelia brought the light slowly up the mountain of death before stopping on a moving figure.

  A red-head crouched atop the impossibly tall pile of bones, taking a bite out of a human arm as if it were a drumstick. She tossed it aside and glared down at them with a hiss, blood dripping out the sides of her red-stained mouth. She snapped her fingers then and a torch came to life on the wall behind them.

  The horror of it all didn’t really sink in for Shanna until the room was fully lit. Then every skeleton, every single gleaming, smiling skull, came out of hiding. Hundreds of dead lay beneath this girl, perhaps thousands, who seemed to brighten as she took them all in.

  “Hunters!” The girl suddenly called out in a friendly tone. “You’ve decided to come to us instead of drawing this out, I see. How very delightful.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “I’m not sure where to begin here,” Valor admitted, looking out over the beach from the edge of the ruins. “The hunters were going to comb the beach?”

  “Yep.” Rachel’s eyes swept the beach imploringly, to no avail. Any sign of footsteps had been washed away by the sea long ago, and the sky didn’t look like it was going to cooperate with them much longer. Already, the wind was whipping them unrelentingly amid the sky’s groans. And while it was awful that her fellow hunters were out there somewhere, she couldn’t help but feel ecstatic that she’d been reunited with Valor. It felt like she could breathe again, relax, with this…adult who could take charge and give orders to remedy the situation, standing in their midst. She didn’t feel cut off anymore, but like they could easily just walk away from this. It was just another hunt now.

  “Well, we certainly can’t just wait and hope for the best.”

  “He can smell them,” Krystal announced suddenly.

  Rachel turned to Krystal, who looked like a child in Damien’s arms, her small frame and bright outfit confirming the fact that she was only fourteen, despite the scary things that came out of her mouth. She was looking up at Damien with a curious expression.

  Valor sent Rachel an uneasy look. “You can smell them, Damien?”

  Damien closed his eyes and seemed to breathe in deep. “I can. They went south.”

  Krystal smiled triumphantly, carefully avoiding looking down at her leg in its makeshift splint. It wasn't broken, as they'd feared, but still required medical attention. And hurt like hell. But Damien didn’t seem to mind carrying her. Didn’t even seem to notice the extra weight.

  “Alright. Let’s move,” Valor said, and they all began walking up the beach in the direction that Damien indicated. “So…Rachel told me that you are a necromancer.”

  Krystal nodded. “Yes. I wasn’t…aware of it until recently. Then Hunter happened upon me when one of your psychics felt my presence.”

  “You are aware that all necromancers eventually delve into the dark arts, practice voodoo, and are completely consumed by their power?”

  Looking away, Krystal sighed. “I…Hunter’s explained a lot. All necromancers work with the monsters. He wants me to be different. To work with Visum et Repertum. The first necromancer on the good guys’ team. I would be a powerful asset.”

  “Assuming you can control yourself. Your powers are anchored in darkness. The dark could consume you as easily as you would master them.”

  Krystal glared at Valor. “I didn’t ask for this, okay? But I’m not going to go all Dark Phoenix on you, alright? I’m not like that. And Hunter will teach me.”

  “You’re emotionally under-developed and susceptible to outside influence,” Damien informed her. “Perhaps Hunter is merely keeping you from the bad guys so that you won’t be an asset for them. Get out of line and-”

  “Quiet,” Krystal told him.

  And he was.

  Rachel glanced over at Valor, then back at Krystal. “Well, either way, we’re stuck with each other for now, and I’d rather have you on our team than theirs.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I don’t trust you. No offense.”

  With a small smile, Krystal nodded. “No. I suppose I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

  ***

  “Amelia,” the red-headed siren breathed as she descended the mountain of bone carefully. “You feel just as powerful as my sisters have led me to believe.”

  “Want a demonstration?” Amelia asked with a tight face.

  The red-head laughed. “My. I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I am Alsa. I am Queen of the sirens until that time when we release Persephone from her prison in the Underworld forever. Then she will take her rightful place with us, ruling over this world.”

  “Still on the wrong foot,” Amelia warned her.

  Alsa cocked her head. “I can see how you would see it that way, being a slave to the men of your species, blinded to how they treat you. I assure you that in our new world order, women will be royalty. You could have a special place beside us if you help us find the power source to free Lady Persephone.”

  “And yet I feel so unmotivated.”

  Alsa reached the bottom of the mountain and was nearly face-to-face with Amelia. “I am much stronger than you are. My sisters and I will kill your friends without remorse if you remain uncooperative. It’s with regret that I come to threats, but I feel you’ve left me no choice.”

  Shanna felt Cameron shift tensely behind her. He couldn’t understand the exchange, so she merely squeezed his hand, offering a small comfort for the time being. He must hate feeling so helpless.

  “I won’t help you realize your twisted little world,” Amelia said firmly. “That’s my final answer. Do what you will.”

  Alsa’s face suddenly darkened. “If that’s your answer, we will find another way to locate the power source. But I will beg no longer. You have chosen your path, short as it will prove to be. But as a courtesy to your sex, I’ll give you a five minute head start.” She grinned maniacally. “I’ll probably be hungry again by then.”

  Shanna looked at her sideways, not really believing or understanding her.

  Alsa sighed. “That’s four minutes and fifty seconds. Be gone or something.”

  Natalia looked back at the others and gestured to the next doorway. They proceeded. As soon as they were out of sight of the door, they began to pick up their pace, the men catching on to the urgency of the situation. And probably very grateful to still be alive, for the time being, after that encounter.

  “What a loony,” Amelia muttered as they made their way through a long hallway. “She can’t be that powerful, can she?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Natalia said. “I’ve seen some very impossible things.”

  At the end of the hallway, they reached another room, this one with a heavy, medieval door. Inside, they found that the uneven rock walls were supported by wood beams that were quite rotted in places, threatening to fall apart at any moment. Along the floor were iron chests and random pieces of furniture, such as a moldy couch and a few tables with chairs. There were empty wooden barrels and crates, as well as a cache of swords and gunpowder rifles.

  “A pirate cove,“ Natalia nodded to herself. “That explains the crude passages and furniture. This place was probably dug out by s
laves of pirates after its discovery. A perfect place to hide their treasure.”

  “Although it seems to all be gone,” Amelia said, peering into a chest she’d just opened with a creak. “None of these empty containers are going to be heavy enough to hinder Alsa in the least.” She closed the door and, with Cameron’s help, moved the couch in front of the door, wrinkling her nose at the musty smell that rose from it.

  “Let’s move along then, quickly,” Shanna hissed when it was secured as best as it could be. They left the room and crept along another short passage before they came to another room, this one being a small dungeon containing several of their friends. Raidne and Ligeia presided over them, mocking them. Amelia quickly stepped back once she’d entered the room, motioning for the others to fall back, telling them what lay ahead.

  “I saw Jade, Brett and…Jordan didn’t look so good. And Saul is most certainly dead.”

  Shanna pursed her lips, not allowing herself to think too much about it. They had to end this quickly. Get in and get out before Alsa got too far.

  They all unsheathed their weapons, an act that the men understood perfectly.

  “Quick and brutal,” Natalia cautioned them. “Surprise will hopefully be enough to keep them off their game.”

  “I thought I heard a little something in here,” Raidne said, putting her hands on her hips and stepping into the passage with them. “Isn’t this cute? A rescue party.”

  “Who are you?” Amelia asked.

  Raidne smiled. “Heh. Well, I’m-”

  Natalia hit her from behind with a club before she could finish her thought, and Raidne fell to the floor with blood on her lips.

  “Sorry, but I really couldn’t care less who you are,” Amelia said, kicking Raidne in the side. “Seen one siren, you’ve seen them all.”

  Raidne groaned as the hunters moved on to the dungeon, rushing Ligeia all at once.

  Ligeia was obviously startled as they swarmed her and didn’t protest in the least as the keys to the cells were wrestled from her grasp and she herself was thrown behind bars.

  “Are we ever glad to see you,” Jade said. “One more minute of listening to this one flap her gums and I would have just slammed my head against the bars to end it all.”