Still there was no communication from Duaric.
“But you know I’m coming, don’t you, cousin?” Lucien sneered.
The first faint glow of dawn’s light reached up from the eastern horizon and Lucien felt the pull of the soil calling to him. He would need all his strength for he knew the brutal anger that was driving him took too much of his energy. Striving to calm the rage building inside him, he looked for a place to secrete himself and spied a stony outcropping that had not been chosen by one of his men. Proceeding carefully so no footprint would mar the surrounding sparse vegetation, he walked to the pile of stones and stood there a moment, staring down, preparing himself to shape shift.
It was not a mole or a rabbit, mouse or ground squirrel that morphed there beside the stony concealment but a one-meter-long nose-horned viper, light slate brown in color with chocolate brown zigzag markings framed within white blotches down its back. With a fleshy horn on the tip of its snout, a long, accurate striking ability, hollow fangs that could easily dispense a copious payload of poison, the viper was considered to be the most dangerous and venomous snakes in all of Europe. Any thrall ventured near the place where Lucien had gone to ground would never live to hunt again.
Slithering between the sand-colored stones, Lucien ventured into a deep darkness that hid him from the day’s bright light. Flicking his tongue to taste the space around him, his amber eyes open, he coiled in upon himself and let sleep overtake him.
* * * * *
Stavros was acutely uncomfortable but he didn’t know why. Something was troubling his slumber, keeping him for slipping down into the rest he so enjoyed each day. Opening his mind to the Rift in the Veil around him, he could detect no danger but he felt it, nevertheless. From time to time, a cold shiver rippled down his spine and that was generally a sign to him that something was amiss. He turned over in the bed and dragged the covers of his head. Though there were no windows in his sleeping chamber and the door was heavy mahogany under which no shimmer of light could be detected, the weight of the sunlight disturbed his ability to sleep.
“You are up to something, Korvina,” Stavros mumbled. “Are you raiding my herds again, you bastard?”
Though they had grown up in neighboring villages and had known one another since they were toddlers, the two men had never been on friendly terms. Constantly fighting as youngsters, actively trying to hurt each other as young boys, and consigning one another to hell as they reached manhood, the cousins hated the other with a passion none of their relatives understood. Both were handsome young men—having the same mesmerizing eyes and dark complexion with thick black hair and strong features—so perhaps, it was their very resemblance that had caused the original antipathy between them. Whatever the cause, their dislike as boys had grown into full-fledged hatred as men.
Shuddering once more as the spectral talons of destiny scraped down his backbone, Stavros ground his teeth and pulled the pillow tightly over his face. His unease had grown to astronomical proportions yet he could not fathom why he should feel such dread, such nervousness.
“You won’t attack during the day, you coward,” Stavros hissed. “That much I know.”
But sunset was many hours away and sleep was just out of Stavros’ reach. Try as hard as he could, he was unable to sink into the arms of Morpheus, and spent the day trying to glean a measure of understanding from the savage vibrations that were disturbing him. Restless, his powers waning from the constant worry of a threat hanging over his head, he tossed and turned, feeling his energy slipping away. By the time he had fretted himself into a light doze, the sun was dipping toward the western horizon.
* * * * *
Khamsin sat beside the blazing fire Sibylline had lit for her and Christina. The storm still raged around them and Khamsin began to think this was the way the weather ran at Croì Cloiche.
“Why would she implicate me like this?” Christina asked for perhaps the fifth time.
“To hurt him,” Khamsin replied once again.
“It hurts me to think he believes me capable of such treachery,” Christina said and her voice broke. “We’ve been friends since childhood. He and Petros were my only friends. They were the only ones who accepted me as I am!”
“Once we are back at Modartha and we can sit down and talk to him, he’ll no doubt apologize for what he thought, Tina.”
Christina paced in front of the roaring hearth, her arms wrapped around her as though no fire could ever warm her. “I thought I recognized the term Bilitis’ daughter when Petros spoke of it but never could I have imagined Luc thought me a spy for that prick Stavros!”
Sighing heavily for they had gone over this same argument time and time again, Khamsin drew her knees up into the chair and laid her chin in the valley between them. She, too, was cold, but it was not coldness of flesh but rather of heart that caused her anxiety.
“It will torment him if Sibylline steals a child from him and takes it To The Ground,” Christina said. She stopped her pacing and turned to face Khamsin. “It will cause him great misery.”
“I know,” Khamsin agreed.
“And she will have her way,” Christina stated.
“I fear she will.”
The women were silent for a long while then Khamsin asked quietly if she thought Lucien would win his battle with Stavros.
Christina waved a dismissive hand. “Of course, he will win! Lucien is the heir apparent to Sibylline’s earthly throne. Of the four princes, he is the most powerful.”
“Sibylline seems to regret having turned Stavros. I know he is an evil man but surely she had to have known what he was like before she turned him.”
Plopping down in an overstuffed chair, Christina plucked at the chair arm. “She turned Stavros to anger Lucien.” She looked up. “They are cousins, you know.”
Khamsin blinked. “No, I didn’t know.”
Christina nodded. “They’ve despised one another from the cradle. When the prince in China died during the Great War, Sibylline needed another for the Fourth Corner of the Earth. No one could have imagined she’d choose Stavros. It made no sense then and even less sense now.”
“Except as a way to punish Lucien?”
A frown formed on Christina’s face. “Perhaps it was punishment or just simply meant to annoy Lucien that she turned Stavros in the first place. Who knows? Either way, it had little effect on him. Stavros becoming a Revenant was a joke to Lucien until the bastard started mistreating his humans and committing atrocities that boggled the mind. That was when Lucien began sending herders to Duaric to steal Stavros’ herds.”
“Do you think Lucien will kill Stavros?”
Christina laughed. “He’ll mutilate the bastard! I’ll wager Stavros has no idea you are missing and even if he does, he would have no way of knowing where you are. When Lucien confronts him, he will try to bluff his way out of it, maybe even hinting he’ll return you for a price. That price, of course, would be his worthless life. He might—and I stress the
might
—reason that Sibylline had a hand in your disappearance but that’s a long shot. The man is not overly smart at his best. As angry and afraid as I can imagine Luc is right now, Sibylline’s involvement won’t even have occurred to him. He’ll be too worried for your safety.”
“This must be hell for him for it is sheer agony for me,” Khamsin said and tears filled her eyes. “I wish there was something we could do.”
“All we can do is wait, Khammie, and hope Sibylline will make good on her promise to return us to Modartha.”
Khamsin’s eyes widened. “Is there a chance she won’t?”
Christina shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve always thought the woman mad but then I’ve had little contact with her over the centuries. She finds me loathsome.”
The thought of never seeing Lucien again filled Khamsin with overwhelming grief and she broke down and cried, burying her face in her hands. She barely felt Christina’s comforting arms around her and did not hear the soft murmurs meant to soothe her.
Chapter Twelve
Unable to continue lying in his bed, Stavros threw aside the covers and sat up slowly. He was dizzy with lack of sleep and his blood flowed sluggishly through his veins. Walking as though in a daze, he went to the door and opened in only a crack, wincing as his guards came to attention, their pikes slapping against the floor with a reverberation that caused the Revenant prince acute distress.
“Go,” he said, his words thick for the sun was nearing the ridge of the horizon. “Send men into the forest. There is a threat there.”
“A threat, Your Grace?” one guard dared question.
“Send men!” Stavros snarled, holding onto the edge of the door for he felt faint with hardly any energy left. “Korvina’s men. Find them and burn them where they burrow. Do it now!”
Prince Stavros Constantine’s fury was legendary through Duaric and the region surrounding the decrepit keep. No one dared to question his orders and both guards jumped at his bidding, hurrying away in tandem down the dark corridor.
Stumbling back to his bed, Stavros barely had the strength to climb atop the thick mattress. He lay there on his belly, his cheek pressed to the rumpled coverlet, his hands beside his head.
“No guards at my door,” he mumbled as sleep tried to glue shut his eyes. “No safety for the prince.”
Somewhere there was a Rift in the Veil. Beyond the battlements of Duaric danger was lurking, waiting, crouching. Agitation bubbled in Stavros’ gut. Never a brave man, he felt the disturbance to the marrow of his bones and knew a confrontation with his hated enemy was imminent.
“Burn his men,” Stavros mumbled as his tongue grew thicker and his words more unintelligible. “Burn Korvina.”
The sounds of harnesses jingling, leather creaking and horses neighing in the bailey made Stavros’ eyes open a bit wider. He heard the shriek of the portcullis as it was raised and the pounding of hooves as the thralls raced their mounts over the drawbridge. The stench of burning pitch drifted through the partially open door of his chamber and Stavros drew in the musky smell along with the scent of human fright that washed over the thralls. In his mind’s eye, he could see the thralls hoisting high-flaming brands meant to fire the hidey-holes of the Korvina clan. Though the sounds and smells were reassuring, fear put a squeezing hand on Constantine’s heart and sent bile up his gullet.
* * * * *
The nose-horned viper struck, its fangs catching the Constantine thrall in the fleshy part between thumb and index finger. It withdrew and struck again before the human could jump out of the way, this time snagging the screaming man’s wrist. Venom bubbled up from the man’s pierced flesh and he stood there—his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish—until the serpent slithered up through the outcropping and struck again, burying its fangs into the hapless man’s shin. The human took one step back then collapsed to the ground like a deflated balloon.
To the other thralls searching the mounds of leaves and fallen timbers, their comrade’s piercing scream sounded like a war cry and such it might have been for all around them shapes began to materialize with the setting of the sun, streaming up from the ground in wavering columns of wispy gray smoke that took on the form of men.
Without so much as a whimper, Constantine’s thralls dropped to the ground on their bellies, burning brands tossed aside to light fires in the dried leaves. Threading their hands behind their necks, legs crossed at the ankles, the thralls made it clear they were surrendering without a fight.
“We can’t let them live,” Nikos Carrus said loud enough for the thralls to hear.
Petros took shape beside the Dog Lord and gave him a tight-mouthed look before shouting at a couple of his troopers to put out the spreading flames before someone caught fire.
Lucien appeared beside Petros, the last thing about him to shift back into mortal form his serpent’s tongue that lashed out at Carrus, sending the Dog Lord staggering back. A low, vibrating hiss came from Lucien and Carrus put even more distance between them.
“Turn them,” Lucien ordered. “Now!”
Falling upon the thralls, the Revenants of the Korvina clan sank sharp lateral fangs into the necks of the thralls and the sound of blood being sucked, venom being injected, rang out through the forest.
“Do we really need more brothers?” Petros inquired in a conversational tone.
“It was either that or kill them,” Lucien explained. “There will be those at the keep who will fight. Those, we slay. These—” he swept his arm over the dozen or so thralls who lay stretched out on the ground “—gave us their lives in hope for mercy. What would we be if we took that life and gave nothing in exchange?”
“Just asking,” Petros said with a grin.
Lucien snorted and went to hunker down beside one of the thralls. He grabbed a handful of the man’s tangled hair and lifted his head to gaze into eyes that were already showing signs of the Revenant venom that had been injected into the man’s neck.
“How many among the herd at Duaric?” Lucien asked.
The thrall’s eyes rolled wildly in his head. He licked his lips. “Forty, Your Grace,” he replied, his voice a dry husk.
“And how many Revenant lords?”
His flesh taking on a pale blue tint, the thrall shuddered as the venom spread to his vital organs. “Only two other than our prince.”