Chosen (7 page)

“You're not going out there alone.”

“You mean without you,” Geoff clarified with a laugh. “ 'Cause really, mate, she wouldn't be alone. She'd be with us and we've protected her back more than once.”

“What's with the
we
crap?” Silas finally looked up from the plate of cheese to focus on them. “I'm not leaving this mountain except to tend the seas until this blood's been removed and I'm just a Witch again.”

“We can do it without you. Any spells, potions or charms we need . . . Haven can take care of,” Kyana added in a much calmer, more persuasive tone.

“We shouldn't need a Witch,” Ryker said, his temples pounding. “We're gods.”

“Newborn gods, Ryker,” Artemis reminded them. “You've only mastered a tenth of what you can do, while we had millennia to learn all we know.”

That didn't make him feel a whole lot better.

“I can help them, Ryker.” Haven's eyes lit up, and she looked altogether relieved at being handed something useful to do. “And if Cronos is near, I can feel him. I can warn them, keep them safe.”

It saddened Ryker to see how desperate she seemed to make up for so many things that hadn't truly been her fault in the first place. But until she finished her cleansing, it was risky to let her venture out and chance her being taken by Cronos and used against them again. He wasn't stupid enough to say so, however. Telling Kyana he didn't think Haven should accompany her would be starting a whole other kind of war he had no energy to fight.

“If Cronos is after her, then she needs to be with one of you at all times,” he finally conceded. He couldn't keep any of them on the mountain. He didn't plan on sitting still the entire time himself, but he couldn't take off and leave as often as he knew they would.

“All right then.” Geoff stood and rubbed his hands together. “Looks like we have ourselves a full team.”

Looks like.

Kyana also stood and motioned for Haven. “Let's go to Huguenot Cemetery and see if we can trace anything back to Cronos. I want to find that son of a bitch.”

Shoving aside the sheer curtain guarding the huge window that overlooked the mountain, Ryker studied the bustle of activity outside. Olympus was humming. In his gardens below, people rushed to carry out his orders while he debated whether to try to keep Kyana here with him. She needed to fight, and forcing her to stay behind was going to be a challenge.

He rested his head against the cool glass. His choices were very limited at best. These were his people now. His responsibility. His duty. He had to keep them safe. Had to make sure the craziness going on Above didn't reach the realms of Below and never came close to even touching the gates to Beyond. The human world, the world between humans and deities, and the world of the gods. All of them were in danger.

He might not have learned a lot from Ares, but he'd certainly learned about duty and what it meant to be a warrior. Now, as the new Zeus, he was going to have to learn how to accomplish those things without a sword, without bloodshed.

Maneuvering the players in this ordeal was going to be one hell of a game of chess.

And he'd always hated that damned game.

Chapter Ten

K
yana walked along the inside of the Huguenot Cemetery, inhaling deeply in hopes of catching something on the wind though she knew it was pointless. Whoever had made the marks of Cronos on the coquina walls had long since gone. And so had their scents. Magic users were far more difficult to track than humans—charms, potions, and spells cloaking them so even the most skilled couldn't trace them.

She passed Haven, who was conducting some sort of spell over the mark, searching for a trace of magic that they might be able to follow. If Kyana's nose was going to fail her, maybe Haven's witchery would be a bit more successful.

Sighing, she began her third lap around the large square, her ears picking up every door shutting, every window being boarded by the human residents who were still too afraid to trust that the Order would protect them now that the sun had gone down. She couldn't blame them. The Order hadn't done a fantastic job protecting them when Hell had broken free. Why believe they could do better now that things had calmed again?

And if they only knew the danger that was waiting to pounce, they'd pack up and move their families as far away from the Order as humanly possible.

“Still nothing?”

Geoffrey's voice spun her around and she shook her head. “You?”

“No. Scent's too old and Hades didn't exactly leave me many tracking skills. Least Artemis could hunt.”

“For all the good it's doing us now.” Kyana leaned against the wall, her gaze swinging from the spot where Haven crouched, intensely focusing on the blood sickle on the wall. “I'm so sick of the threat of Cronos hovering over my head.”

Geoffrey shrugged. “Kinda grateful to him just now, to be honest. He offered Haven a reason to be free of that horrid Healing Circle—gave us a reason to be near her. Gave her a way to hopefully redeem herself with the rest of the Order before her trial.”

“Asshat.” Kyana rolled her eyes. “There are less world-destructive ways to spend time with her. If she winds up dead, it really won't matter how her trial would have turned out, would it?”

He grumbled something under his breath and left Kyana alone to sit with Haven on the ground. While she watched Haven work, she dragged her finger over her hunting attire, changing the leather from black, to white, to red, and left it that way. The convenient method of wardrobe changing was nifty—one that Haven was going to envy the shit out of when she was more fully her shopaholic self.

Kyana smiled, wishing things could go back the way they were, then felt her face fall solemn as she realized that, without all the horrible things that had happened, she would never have gotten so close to Ryker these last couple of months. Was she truly so shallow that she could be grateful for the devastating events that had taken place because it had brought him into her life?

She was beginning to sound as illogical as Geoff.

But truthfully, she
was
grateful for Ryker. She just wished she was as useful to him as he'd been to her. His fight with Ares had really gotten to him and she had no idea how to make it better. She'd known he resented his father for leaving his mother pregnant and alone, knew he thought Ares had raped her.

Kyana wasn't so sure. Ares didn't seem to be
that
kind of god. He was way too uptight to be ruled by sexual impulse the way some of the others were. But arguing that point wouldn't help Ryker. One didn't take the side of the enemy when trying to soothe a friend.

He needed someone with actual experience in the child/parent relationship thing, and that certainly wasn't her. Her human father had sold her to the highest bidder—allowing her to become Prince Mehmet's seventeenth wife. Hardly what she'd call a doting father. And her mother was no more loving than her father had been. She'd hated being touched, hated the messiness that came with children. She'd been glad to see Kyana go at the age of fifteen. And truthfully, Kyana had been glad to leave.

Until she realized she'd traded one hell for another.

The only real parental experience Kyana had was with Henry, the man who'd Sired her, who'd saved her when Mehmet had nearly murdered her by turning her into the Dark Breed she'd become. She'd adored him, and he her, until the day a Vampyre hunter had taken him from her.

Since then, she'd pretty much just been alone. Haven and Geoffrey had become her family, and more and more, she was considering Ryker the same.

That she didn't know how to fix any of them was likely going to kill her before Cronos ever got the chance.

“Nothing.” Haven stood and brushed her hands on the jeans Kyana had painted on her before they'd left, then stooped again to pack her tools. “A Witch didn't make this mark so I can't pick up any magical residue from its caster.”

Grateful to finally have a break from the dark corners her thoughts had traveled to, Kyana helped her gather her belongings. “If a Witch didn't do this, what did?”

“The only other magic users I know of are Mystics and Mages, and if a Mystic is responsible for this, I'd be very surprised.”

“Really?” Kyana asked, folding her arms over her leather vest, suddenly cold. “Marcus was a Mystic. So was Drake.”

And both had been responsible for the deaths of a lot of Chosen. Drake had been Haven's boyfriend—a murdering, lying weasel. Marcus had been the one who'd nearly murdered Haven, forcing Kyana to turn her and start all this mess in the first place. How could Haven forget all that?

“I know,” Haven said through gritted teeth. “But they were the exception, not the rule. I seriously doubt there's a sea of Mystics gone wild out there. Far more likely to be a Mage, though I really hope I'm wrong.”

“Because they're strong?”

Kyana didn't know much about Mages. She'd met only one Light Mage before and he'd been a mountain-dwelling hermit who'd threatened her life for stumbling onto his territory in Scotland when she'd been desperate to feed. And if a Mage was practicing in a graveyard, it wasn't bound to be a Light Mage. No light spells required anything dead. No, if Haven was right, this would have been the work of a Dark Mage. Something Kyana had never seen before.

“Yeah, but mostly because they freak me out.” Haven shuddered and let Geoff take her arm for a moment before pulling away.

Kyana watched Haven make her own path for the gate, then looked to Geoff. “She faced Cronos. You'd think a Mage wouldn't scare her.”

“Mages are given their powers by Witches,” Geoffrey said. “If a Witch doesn't have an heir, he or she usually bequeaths their powers to someone they find fitting—and when that person receives them, they become a Mage. You'd think the power would get a bit diluted as a hand-me-down, but it's actually far more concentrated and powerful than when carried by the Witch.”

“So? There are a lot of things out there that are more powerful than a Witch.”

“Yeah well, over time, there have been some crafty Mages who wanted more power than was bequeathed to them. They found a way to get it. Those became the Dark Mages.”

“And that would be . . . ?”

“They drain the Witch while she's alive, stripping her of all her magic until it kills her.”

No wonder Haven had looked terrified. She might be three breeds in one, but the Witch in her was still dominant. Being stripped of those powers probably wouldn't kill her since she still had Vampyre and Lychen beneath that layer of herself, but she'd been raised a full Witch—likely brought up on horrifying stories about what Dark Mages did to their victims.

“The good news is that the surge of power is temporary,” Geoff continued. “Every few years, they have to drain a new Witch or be reduced to whatever they were before they became any sort of Mage.”

“How is that good news? That means more Witches die.”

He stepped over a headstone. “It also means there's a time when they're weak and very vulnerable. Not so scary.”

Kyana disagreed. She'd rather come up against a fully fed, powerful Dark Breed than one desperate to survive. That sort was usually far more deadly than the former.

“Good Lord. Look at that.” Haven stopped several feet ahead of them before shooting off toward the shadowed right corner of the graveyard. She looked over her shoulder at Kyana. “There are so many!”

As Kyana and Geoff headed toward Haven
,
her gut twisted in dread. Each and every overturned headstone in this corner of the graveyard held some semblance of the mark of Cronos. Sickles drawn in blood, dirt, and mud were everywhere.

“Haven, can you cast your visibility spell here?” Geoffrey asked, squatting to lift a finger full of dirt to his nose.

“Yeah, but it's pointless. Whoever did this wasn't traceable at the other mark . . .”

Kyana stopped listening. Her gaze had drifted downward to an open grave, the casket splintered, revealing nothing but dust inside.

“The bones are gone,” she said, lowering herself into the hole. “He's raised some from here.”

“Kyana, what are you doing?” Haven jogged to the side of the hole, her eyes wide. “Get out of there!”

“I will, but . . . There's something shiny over here.” Kyana disappeared into the darkness for a moment, then stood back up, holding a small silver, circular charm in her hand for the others to see.

“Kyana! No! Drop it!” Haven screamed.

But before Kyana could register the warning, something thick and prickly crept around her ankles. Two huge, spidery vines shattered the earth inside the grave to wind around her boots and up her calves.

“Kyana!” Haven threw herself onto the ground and reached for her, but before she could grab hold, Geoffrey was on his belly, his arms around Kyana's waist.

He pulled with all his god-strength. Her muscles stretched, ripped, but the ground cracked, and reaching, inching vines pulled her deeper into the damp earth.

She tried to grab for the dagger in her boot, but the possessed roots latched on to her wrist, binding her arm to her hip as the thick limbs snaked up her body to encase her chest.

“Get me out of here!”

The ever thickening roots grew outward by the hundreds, pulling against the hands holding her. She didn't know what evil this was, but it was winning. If they didn't figure out a way to break the binds sucking her into the ever-widening hole in the grave, it would be too late.

“Hang on to me,” Geoff shouted, wrapping his arms more firmly around her waist and shoulder.

She clung so tightly to him that when the ground opened again, pulling her more deeply into the hole, she dragged him halfway into the grave with her.

“What the fuck is this!” Geoff gripped the thick roots in his bare hands and ripped them away from her throat. The vines turned thick and black and slippery as though they'd been plunged in oil, and he lost his hold.

She gasped, but before she could pull in a full breath of much-needed air, the vines regrew, tightening around her throat and snaking their way into her hair and over her face.

Geoff grabbed for her again, but the roots were too thick for him to break. He climbed into the grave with her, trying to push her up as Haven pulled. Instead of hoisting her out of the ground, the vines holding her legs squeezed around her and retreated, pulling her slowly back into the earth.

“Drop the charm!” Haven's voice broke through the fog of oxygen deprivation, but it was an order Kyana didn't have the ability to follow. The vines had crept around her fist, holding the charm prisoner against her palm.

“Free her hand.”

“Don't let go of me,” Geoff hissed as he pulled at the vines wrapped around her throat. “Just hold on to me.”

Kyana felt herself slipping into unconsciousness. Felt her hold on him loosen. He grabbed her beneath her arms and pulled.

“The roots won't stop until they bury her alive,” Haven said, jumping into the hole with them.

“Get out of there,” Geoff shouted. “They'll kill you.”

“Got. To. Free. Her. Hand!” Haven ripped at the veins with her claws and fangs.

Warm blood slicked Kyana's wrist and pooled in her palm. Haven continued to pull at the thick vines until she freed Kyana's fingers. The bones in her hands popped and cracked, but Haven continued to fight against the vines until she had the charm in her hand and threw it out of the grave.

“Shatter it!”

When the vines slinked from her face, Kyana pulled in huge gulps of air. The burning in her chest eased and she coughed. “Get . . . me out . . . of here.”

Geoff pulled himself and Kyana out of the grave, dropping her as he rolled toward the charm and shattered it with his elbow. It burst like fine crystal. With a hiss, the roots shrank and slithered back into the ground.

Geoff pulled Haven from the grave, then returned to Kyana's side.

“Holy fuck,” he whispered. “You all right?”

Her heart still pounded hard enough to cause minor earthquakes, but other than the slight burn of scrapes and cuts—from both the roots and Haven's slashing—everything seemed to be working all right.

“Pissed enough to murder, but yeah, I'm all right.”

She shifted, looking at her arms and hands. Tiny black lines crisscrossed her flesh, and she was pretty sure her face and throat looked ten times worse. Her body shook violently as if an iceberg had settled in her chest, freezing her from the inside out. It looked as though her veins had been injected with an inky poison.

“What the bloody hell was that?” Geoffrey asked, wrapping his arms around Haven and rocking her gently.

“Definitely Mages,” Haven breathed, running her hands over her body as though to shake loose a nest of spiders. “Dark Mages. You wanted magic users, Kyana? You got them. A lot of them. And they're powerful as hell!”