Darkness Seduced (Primal Heat Trilogy #2) (Order of the Blade) (29 page)

Ana stopped as Frank flipped on the lights, flooding a massive pit with stark white light. They were deep underground, standing at the edge of the huge cavern looming below them, dug into rock hundreds or thousands of years ago. It looked like an ancient coliseum, with holes carved out of the walls at the base, as if they were tunnels leading off to prison cells. It was cold, damp and brutally desolate, and Ana couldn’t stop herself from shuddering. She felt like she should be in Greece, not underground in eastern Oregon. “What is this place?”

“You don’t recognize it?” Frank walked forward, leaning over a hard clay railing to study the ground below. “It was our training ground.”

“Ours? What do you mean?”

“This is where Illusionists were brought to refine their skills many centuries ago, and even far more recently than you imagine.”

Ana’s belly twisted with discomfort when she realized what he meant.

Thousands of years ago, when Illusionists were first discovered, they were used by brutal leaders to torture prisoners. The Illusionists would create false images so real that the people seeing them were unable to convince themselves they were fake. The illusions were dark and terrifying ones that would leave the prisoners screaming and writhing as they clawed their neck to pieces, trying to pry the rabid dog off their throat. A dog that didn’t exist, except as an illusion.

It wasn’t just the horrors that the Illusionists could create that tortured prisoners; it was the fact that the prisoners eventually went insane, unable to tell truth from reality, until everything was a terror.

Illusionists were the worst kind of torture, because they destroyed the mind and made the mind destroy the body. Over the years, Illusionists had been selectively bred. Only those with the worst, most deadly illusions were allowed to live, until the race became dark. So very deadly. They had become the harbingers of nightmares, the demons of the mind, making people insane with the sheer horrors that didn’t even exist, except in their victim’s mind.

Except Ana.

For some unknown reason, she’d been born with the capacity only for light, happy illusions. She had been the key to helping Grace cope with her own horrific illusions, ones that were so powerful that even Grace was affected by them, unable to see through her own nightmares. Through all that Ana had experienced, all the hell she and Grace had faced since childhood, Ana had relied so heavily on her happy illusions to stay sane. How many times had she created a peaceful meadow scene that had filled her and Grace with serenity and relief, pulling them both back from the edge of the horrors they were living?

But it had all ended when Nate had discovered that if he beat Ana badly enough, he could force dark illusions out of her. It was one of those dark illusions that had killed Elijah. Ana closed her eyes, remembering that horrific moment when Elijah had tried to save her, giving his life only to have her deadly illusion burst free. The way he’d called her name as he’d died—

Tears filled her eyes. She was such a monster. She was exactly what the Illusionists of the past had been: tools to murder innocents. She’d killed so many Calydons when Nate had kidnapped her, but the one that still haunted her most was Elijah’s death.

Since she’d been free from Nate, she’d tried three illusions, and all of them had been of Elijah dying. Her happy illusions were gone, replaced by her worst nightmare: the moment she’d killed Elijah.

Each time Ana had done an illusion and relived Elijah’s death, she’d felt his blood on her hands, seen his eyes glaze with death, and felt the weight of his body as he fell on her. She’d relived his death again and again and again.

So Ana had stopped the illusions. She’d shut them down. What used to be her greatest joy was now her hell. Without her happy illusions, Ana didn’t even know who she was anymore, and she had no tools to cope with the nightmares.

And here, in this place of death and torture, Ana knew exactly what kind of illusion would be called forth. “I don’t want to be here.” She turned to leave, and Frank stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“But you are here, my dear. This is your world.”

She shook her head. “No. It isn’t.” Lethal illusions would never be her world. She refused to be that person, that nightmare, that sadist.

“Yes, it is. This is your history.” Frank took her arm and tugged her down the clay steps that were as hard as cement. He pointed her toward a massive throne made of red clay, with dark bits of volcanic rock pressed into the arms for decoration. “This is your future.”

She tried to back up, frantic now. “No—”

He shoved her into the chair. “This is the seat for the Illusionist. Down below is her victim. Trapped.” He gestured to the empty clay benches surrounding them, a balcony where observers had no doubt cheered on the illusion. “This is for the audience, who are always at risk of falling for the illusion as well. It is the game they play, like people of today who eat puffer fish. Risking their own death is half the fun.”

Ana gripped the armrests, fighting against the images trying to fill her mind. Visions of crowds, of death, of torment, of her being the key to it all. “Why are you showing me this?”

“Because this is where you will heal.”

Um, no. “This place won’t heal me—”

“It will.” Frank leaned over the railing, as if he were presiding over some festival of death. “In this place, you’re free to do your illusions, with no fear of hurting anyone. It’s here you can practice, until you learn to control them, to direct them to one person or thousands. You’ll learn how to keep them from affecting yourself.” He turned to look at her. “Here, you are free.”

Ana stared at him as his words sank in. There would be no risk here. She could practice until she found her equilibrium again. Her happy illusions. There was no one to hurt here, except for herself.

He smiled. “Yes, Ana, I’ve been saving this place for you.”

“Why?”

He pulled off his sunglasses and looked at her. His eyes were ice blue, like the frost of an icicle on a sunny day. Cold. “I promised your parents I would look out for you.”

“My parents?” She cocked her head, finally realizing how she knew him. It was so long ago, she barely remembered him. “You were my father’s best friend. I remember you. You went by another name back then—” She couldn’t remember what it was... “I liked you. You were nice to me.”

That’s why she’d been drawn to him. Because she had memories of him rocking her on his knee, telling her jokes and giving her candy. Because he made her think of her life before her parents had died and everything had fallen apart.

But he’d disappeared around the time of her parents’ death, and she’d forgotten about him completely.

Frank nodded and slipped his sunglasses back on. “This is where your parents and I spent thousands of hours practicing. This is their legacy, and I give it to you.” He gestured to the pit. “Try an illusion, Ana. For them.”

No. She wasn’t going to do an illusion for her parents, or for Frank. She was going to do one for Elijah. She’d sent him out of this world in a scream of terror, and it would end now. She would find her way back, and she would use her happy illusions to bring peace to people who were suffering.

She was taking herself back, and she was doing it now.

Ana faced the pit and leaned forward over it. She reached out with her mind, trying to picture a meadow with flowers...and suddenly her forearms burned and she felt Elijah’s presence in her mind so vividly she spun around, expecting him to be standing behind her.

He wasn’t.

She frowned. “Has anyone else been here lately?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing.” She knew Frank had been involved in Elijah’s death. If he’d been working with Nate, Frank had to have been involved. Had he somehow brought Elijah’s spirit to this place? Or...she recalled suddenly Elijah’s revulsion when he’d learned she was an Illusionist. Was this where Elijah had learned to hate Illusionists? Had he once been tortured here?

She knew then that this was why she’d had to go with Frank. Because there were answers about Elijah here. Somewhere in this God-forsaken place that was stained with blood and nightmares, were answers she needed. “I’d like to be alone here.”

Frank nodded. “As you wish. When you’re ready to leave, just go up the stairs on the north side of the balcony. They lead to the living quarters.”

She gave him a vague brush of her hand as she leaned over the railing, staring into the pit. There were so many dark stains on the hard clay, and she pictured Elijah, lying there bleeding.

An illusion crashed through her, rising so quickly and powerfully she was helpless to stop it. The wind rose with a howl, her hair lifted and Ana screamed against the darkness rising within her. “No!”

But the wind stole her voice and the air pressure beat at her ears, and suddenly Elijah was on the ground in the middle of the pit, chained down, screaming as flames licked at his skin, burning him alive. Smoke rose from his body, charring him, his howl of agony blistering through her. She saw herself in the Illusionist chair, causing his pain, torturing him. She could smell the burning of his flesh, hear the popping of the flames as they turned his bones to ash, feel the scorching heat from the fire as it licked away at his life.

Ana fell to her knees, her hands pressed to her head, desperate to stop the illusion. “God, no! Don’t do this!”

But his screams went on, and she heard her own laughter, laughing at his agony as she sat in the Illusionist chair and watched him writhe as his skin melted from his body.

“It’s not true,” Ana wrenched out, her fingers digging into her head as she tried to fight it. Tried to suppress it. But it was too strong, so much more powerful than anything she could control. “It’s an illusion, dammit! You’re not really killing him!” But she couldn’t make her mind accept that. She couldn’t block the horror as tears spilled from her eyes, as her soul broke with the horror of murdering her mate again. “God, Elijah, I’m so sorry!”

But it didn’t matter. For the fifth time in two weeks, Ana killed him, and she had to live every moment of his agony along with him. The fact that the first death was the only real one, the only time she’d actually killed him, didn’t matter. Just as her illusions were reality to whoever she was inflicting them upon, she couldn’t escape them either. She knew they were fake, but her mind and her soul lived and suffered through them as if they were real.

It might be an illusion she was reliving now, but it was based in truth: she’d murdered the man who’d been destined to be her mate. She was every bit the demon as all those who had sat in that chair a hundred years ago and tortured strangers to their death.

Ana groaned as the illusion finally faded, and she slumped to the hard clay, her tears dampening the red rock. Was this why she’d come? To live her worst hell again and again? To punish herself? There had to be more. There had to be something else. There had to be a reason.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the stone ceiling, tears still trickling down her cheeks.
Elijah. Why am I here? This has something to do with you. I know it does.

There was silence, and then she heard his voice, so faint, so broken, so weak in her mind.
Ana.

She jerked upright. “Elijah?” It had sounded so close, so real, not a figment of her imagination.

But there was no one in the coliseum except her.

Of course Elijah wasn’t there. She’d seen him die. The only place he still lived was in her heart. And in her nightmares.