22. Night

22

NIGHT

A s we head into Rome’s underground, Arturos, Quinn, and I go from a straight staircase to a corkscrewing one, to a set of stairs so steep they’re basically a ladder. Far beneath the city, the earth has a musty scent, like graves. As Arturos picks a lock on another gate, this one not warded, I finally see catacombs. I’ve been to the catacombs beneath Rome in the human world; these are similar, except the vaults are decorated with an ancient script.

I can’t tell whether it’s Fae or Vampire, though, it’s so similar to both.

As we enter the catacombs, piles of bones greet us, stacked beneath the vaults just like in the human world. The skulls here grin with needle-sharp fangs, like either Vampires or Fae in their shifted appearance. Their long finger bones have cruel talons, like both Lineages grow when they fight. It’s strange, and the energy down here is strange, too.

As if death and the Night are mingled with life and the Light.

I turn to Quinn, raising my eyebrows, but it is Arturos who answers my unspoken question.

“This is one of the oldest catacombs beneath Rome,” Arturos says, his hushed voice respectful as he motions us down the tunnel, left of a branch point. “It’s rumored to have bones from some of the oldest Vampires and Fae; not only that but from Crimson Angels and Fallen Ephilohim Archangels also, like still work for the Intercessoria. Some say a few of the Ascendents themselves are buried down here, in special walled-off areas of the catacombs, the ones who never re-ascended back to their celestial realm. I doubt it, though. Rome is full of wagging tongues, and rumors grow larger by the decade.”

“Still, the energy down here is ancient.” Quinn gazes right and left into the dark, bone-filled vaults as we meander through. “A sensation lingers here, of death so old it has forgotten time. I wouldn’t doubt if some of these vaults are ten thousand, twenty thousand, perhaps even fifty thousand years old. Dating back to the time of the Fall.”

“Wouldn’t all these remains have gone to dust by now?” I ask, some of the bones crumbling, but not nearly as old as what I imagine a fifty thousand year skeleton would look like.

“These catacombs are protected by ancient magic, and it preserves the bones.” Arturos waves at the vaults. “Worshipers and those with a casual interest in the remains are allowed down here by the magic that pervades this place. Anyone who means the remains harm, however, gets a nasty surprise—instant incineration from the ages-old magic that was laid down here. Don’t try to move anything, or disturb the remains. Though you can touch them, so long as you have respect in your heart.”

“I don’t think I will.” I recoil from getting too close to the vaults on either side of us now. “I’d rather not be incinerated today.”

“A good choice.” Quinn’s smile is amused as he glances at me; love beams in his dark eyes for just a moment, before he returns to our task. “Where has the Revenant in question been seen?”

“At the entrance. It was clamoring to get out and eat passersby two nights ago, though it wasn’t strong enough.” Arturos glances at Quinn. “I thought perhaps we would have seen it by now. There’s a chance it’s already moved on to less strongly warded gates, or places where a ward has already been destroyed so some lovers can come down here and fuck. ”

“Vampires do that down here?” I blink, lifting my eyebrows as I glance at Arturos.

“All the time,” he says with a chuckle, his midnight blue gaze flicking to me before he sobers. “Any Vampire of significant strength can break the Council’s wards and get into the underground, Ariana. There is a penalty if they’re caught, but it’s so common the Council rarely enforce it. Vampires adore bones, and these catacombs are a heritage site of the city. We feel powerful down here, where death and the Night reign. Add sex and some blood-drinking to that… and it’s a tremendous aphrodisiac, to our kind.”

“Not for me.” I shake my head, wondering at how different I am as a Dark Fae from Vampires, though I do share in some of their magic. “Would that turn you on, Quinn?” I ask him. “To do it down here?”

“No.” He shakes his head as he glances around. “The smell down here is… too musty. Give me my cathedral vault beneath the midnight stars any day, with a good glass of wine with the Missa Solemnis by Beethoven playing. I am a creature of luxurious habits. Fornication down here among old, rotting bones simply isn’t my style. Though I cannot deny this place holds power.”

The topic of sex has us all falling quiet now. An awkward silence fills the air as Quinn and I reflect on the Wanderer’s outing of Arturos’ love for me—and I’m sure Arturos is thinking about the same thing. Though I can’t read his mind, I can read his aura as he blushes and his darkwater magic stirs around him. He says nothing, but his gaze flicks at me.

I feel barrenness in him now—deep like the oldest, darkest oceans.

I know he’s lonely; loneliness practically boils off Arturos as I recall he doesn’t have a Dark Haven of his own, his Vampire-Siren kind tremendously hard to Sire, and thus rare. Quinn and I returned one of Arturos’ kind the night we shattered the Bloodstone; but she’s taken off around the world now, and I don’t know if she and Arturos talked about restarting the ancient Dark Haven of the Deeps before she departed.

I’m sure the tall, handsome Arturos has lovers aplenty, though he never talks about it. What he lacks is anyone who truly understands him, as I feel him stuff all his morose energy back down now to focus on our task.

Not even his Sire the Wanderer understands him; I know this with the deepest truth-telling ability of my Dark Fae power. She made him, but she never stuck around long enough to get to know him; I feel that lonesome abandonment eat at Arturos’ heart now. Like a dark cancer, I can see it then, as it winds through his heart and body, writing nasty, red-gold Vampire Bloodsigns all through him. I blink and the vision is gone.

It stops me in my tracks, though, as I stare hard at him now.

Wondering what I’ve just seen.

“Ariana? Are you alright?” Arturos stops, turning towards me as Quinn stops as well.

“Did you see something in the tunnel?” Quinn frowns; though as he steps close, peering in my eyes, I know he feels my sudden shock.

“Your aura…” I frown at Arturos now. “What’s wrong with it?”

“What do you mean?” He comes to me, gazing into my eyes like Quinn. “What did you see in my aura just now?”

“I don’t know.” Perplexed, I try to reconnect with wherever I went when I saw it, but it’s gone. “I thought I saw… Vampire Bloodsigns written all through you. Is that possible?”

“To have one’s body be taken over by Bloodsign is a very dark and ancient method of Vampire control, Ariana, called Bloodsign Enslavement,” Quinn says, shocked now as he peers at me. “It was a way our progenitor species, Crimson Angels, would create a Dark Haven to do their bidding. Only the oldest, most ruthless Masters can do it anymore, as a way of controlling underlings in their Dark Havens. The Wanderer would never use such a thing on her progeny; they do not need it. Her progeny respect her and treat her with the deference she inspires; and she lets them do their own will, unless she needs someone to sit the Council for her for a while. She would never do such a thing to Arturos.”

“Maybe it’s just the weirdness of the magic down here, playing tricks on me,” I say now, though I feel certain about what I saw. As Quinn peers into my eyes again, I know he feels I’m telling the truth. Turning to Arturos, he lets his eyes unfocus as he slips into a slight trance.

To scour Arturos’ energy for any trace of what I just saw.

“I see nothing,” Quinn says as he comes back. He turns towards me, frowning, then taking my hand. “I believe you know what you saw. A Master as powerful as Arturos, however, has never been taken by Bloodsign Enslavement, not that I know of. Even some of the oldest members of the Council who can do it would never manage it on him. Nor would they try; to enslave a fellow Council member in any way is death.”

“I can assure you I’ve not been enslaved by a Council member, Ariana,” Arturos says, a grave tone in his voice now as he stares me down. “If someone had ever tried such a thing, I would have felt it and thrown it off. To become enslaved to someone that way is a lengthy and painful process. It takes hours, even days, to write as many Bloodsigns into a person as one needs to command them. No one takes something like that voluntarily.”

I think now of that Bloodsign Lucca used to save us the night we exploded the Bloodstone. Just making one Bloodsign nearly killed him; even for a Vampire, I can’t imagine the power and energy it would take to write as many as I thought I saw coursing through Arturos’ body right now.

“It must have been my imagination,” I say, though I’m still uncertain. “Maybe a memory from someone dead down here, of something done during their time… just showing up on Arturos’ frame.”

“Perhaps.” Quinn’s dark aura churns now as I feel him run through a myriad of possibilities for what I just saw. I feel from him how impossible it would be for any Master to enslave Arturos like that, though. As Quinn pushes it from his mind, I decide to as well.

Because I know this vision doesn’t help us right now, when we need to focus on the task at hand.

Suddenly, a sound like nails screeching down a chalkboard comes from the tunnel ahead. As it shivers me deep into my bones, I know what that sound is.

The cry of a Vampire Revenant.

Quinn and Arturos are instantly at attention as that sound comes screeching down the catacomb towards us. I feel Quinn listen for more than one voice in that horrible, ear-jarring sound; there’s nothing else, just a single Revenant swirling towards us in a maelstrom as it comes rioting around the bend ahead.

Quinn and Arturos are in action, and I am as well. We went over this part of the plan extensively before we set out; as Arturos whips a Glock from his gear with a knife-sized black Vampire spear, Quinn does the same. Those spears lengthen into cruel black Vampire fighting-weapons, festooned with violet-crimson Bloodsigns as Quinn and Arturos fire two shots simultaneously into the oncoming Revenant.

As I grip my Faeanic spear, lengthening it out into its full blade as Fae runes all down it flare with red and gold fire, the Revenant gives a horrible shriek. Quinn and Arturos’ shots were true; whatever they’ve got in those special Revenant-piercing bullets worked.

The Revenant slows, coming for us in less of a hurtling black wind and more of a roiling sea of madness. It snarls with a shrieking, tortured sound as it nears that we hurt it. It’s still hungry, though, as Quinn whips his Florentine Box from his black satchel and slides it fast across the floor to an open space. He whips out his Fae amulet, gripping it, and making it flare with light until the box is in its proper, full size.

“Ariana!” I hear Quinn and I know my cue. I wield my Fae blade and write sigils for containment in the air, hurtling towards the box and making sure the Revenant follows me. It does. It snaps around as I run—not just from my sudden movement, which puts them on the hunt, but also because I’m the warmest, most alive thing in the catacomb.

Arturos is dead, and Quinn is mostly that way as I feel him make himself as cold as possible, so the Revenant tracks me rather than him. As I rush up into the box, sprinting all the way to the back so the Revenant has room to crowd in here with me, it follows.

Like lightning made into smoke, the seething, furious creature whirls towards me, racing up the open ramp into the box. It’s a lot bigger than other Revenants I’ve encountered; as it enters the cage, it comes towards me with such speed that I hear Quinn and Arturos fire three additional shots each into the whirling, screaming mass to slow it.

It doesn’t slow as it reaches me, however, tentacles of night wrapping around me now from that seething black mass in every direction. It drains me; I feel myself relive all the worst memories of my life now, as those black tentacles of Night pierce through my flesh.

Deep into my very soul.

Everything around me is smoke-black now, churning with terrible Night as I roar, warding the thing away with my Faeanic spear. I write sigils like happiness and Light in the air around me as I try to forestall its taking. I must weather it long enough for Quinn and Arturos to raise a portal to get me the fuck out of here; they feel far away now as all my worst memories from childhood and being teased as a redheaded American living in Florence thunder back.

I haven’t had a hard life, but neither has it been charmed. A myriad of horseback riding accidents in my youth come back now with bone-shocking force; far away, I feel Arturos heave the ramp of the box up to form the fourth wall of the cage, Quinn working his magic quickly to seal up the sigils that lock the ramp in place and fortify the box with his magic.

The Revenant doesn’t care; it only wants to feed as I hear it screech in frustration now. I understand as it screeches that I’m not giving it enough. I’m not reliving memories horrible enough for it to feed properly. Its terrible magic makes me fix upon that night I got skewered by the Summer Fae King then, by Archivolio Bellari’s lance of pure Light.

I scream as I feel that massive lance of Light spear me right through the chest.

Not just once—but over and over and over again .

It’s beyond madness as I fall to the floor of the box, shaking and screaming, dropping my spear. I’m on hands and knees and the Revenant is devouring me; I feel my Light gutter, the Night inside me roaring as it tries to fend off this terrible creature, and fails.

It’s too strong; what we captured was one of the Revenants Quinn warned me about—a loner, one who’s far too competitive with its kind and too strong for others to let it feed with them.

It has no problem feeding by itself as darkness takes me now, deep into my very marrow. This isn’t even Night anymore, it is pure hell as I collapse, shrieking and jerking, feeling that lance spear me endlessly. The Revenant is forcing me to relive this one memory, over and over as it feeds.

Because that’s the most delicious place to take me—as I feel my death approach.

“NO!” Quinn’s voice roars through my torment, even as I feel the Revenant decide it wants to kill me and take what it can from my death. I feel Quinn break the sigils on the box then; he gives a hammering wave of pure Night, and the sigils burst like thunder underground.

Quinn is surging up the ramp. I hear him roar as I feel him slit both wrists with his Vampire blade, making them drip with blood to attract the Revenant. “Take me! Take me, you bastard! I know you want memories of hell! Well, take mine, and leave her the fuck alone!”

It goes. I’m left gasping for breath on the floor of the box as the massively powerful Revenant leaves, jerking in a palsy like a spider in death throes. I’m not dead, but it was a near thing as the behemoth of smoke and darkness rushes towards Quinn now.

And wraps around him—engulfing him in a swirling orb of Night.

Quinn’s scream is diabolical as it eats him. I feel his Night blaze through my very soul as this hellspawn Revenant makes him relive the worst memories he has—of Emiliana DiClario, and all the torturous abuses she used to heap upon him.

I feel Quinn dive into those memories now, even as he throws up a wall of pure iron between us, cutting me off from it. He cuts me off from him as the Revenant devours him instead of me, trapping Quinn in his worst version of hell.

And making him relive it—thousands of times a minute.

“Ariana!” Arturos is in the box with me now, hauling me up under the arms and rushing me out. Somehow, Quinn has maneuvered up the ramp with the Revenant wrapped around him; I see brief flashes of him standing with arms outstretched like a sacrifice as he takes it with him, up into the box. But we have no means of getting him out now as Arturos slams the ramp shut with his darkwater magics, waving his hands fast through a series of Vampire sigils to re-seal the box, that I’m sure Quinn was using.

But Arturos’ power isn’t Quinn’s, as he uses it to seal the box in as much of an approximation of Quinn’s sigils as he can, though they’re not the same. And now Quinn’s inside the cage, and I feel him losing his grip on sanity as his most horrible memories of Emiliana devour him. They’re beyond awful; they’re demonic, as I feel just the slightest edge of what he’s going through and panic outside the box.

Because I know he can’t withstand this. He’s too weak, with part of his magic stored inside me and the other part used to heal himself last night when that assassin struck. As Quinn loses his grip on reality, shrieking like his very soul is being devoured by the whirling maelstrom of darkness inside the box, I scream at Arturos.

“Do something! Get him out of there!”

“I don’t have a strong enough bond to Quinn to teleport him out!” Arturos finishes sealing up the box and faces me. Horror devours him as he watches what’s happening, scrubbing a frantic hand through his wavy dark hair.

Helpless—as helpless as me.

“Form a bond! Figure it out!” I scream at him now as I hear Quinn’s shrieks—gradually transforming into a terrible nails-on-a-blackboard sound too now. It’s as if he’s a moment from going Revenant himself, along with the creature that’s devouring him .

“I don’t have an official bond to him, you do!” Arturos says, snarling at me now as his eyes flash vertically-slitted with the old power of his Siren-dragon as it heaves through his bones.

“Then make one!” I scream at him as I whip my hair aside—offering him my neck.

Arturos understands. In a moment, he gets what I’m offering; with a snarl, he hauls me close, biting down hard into my neck.

I scream as he does it. It’s not nice, and it’s not pretty as he grinds his teeth down and drains me, trying to make a bond to Quinn. But it works; as my blood and magic—and Quinn’s and Lucca’s also—drain into Arturos’ body, he swallows like a madman. Suddenly, he has our trio’s power inside him as he heaves a deep breath, breaking from my neck.

And roars—with the ancient voice of his Dragon.

Power like a maelstrom is flowing from Arturos now, as he draws on the fullness of our trio’s bond in a riptide. It shakes the catacombs, his energy flooding the entire space as I join him now, screaming through my mind for Lucca to join us.

As I scream desperately for Lucca to give us everything he has, we fight to keep Quinn alive and sane. I feel Quinn slipping towards insanity now though, as those piercing shrieks get broader, deeper, and longer to the Revenant’s taking. Two distinct shades of darkness whirl inside the Florentine Box now.

As Quinn goes Revenant—the last of his humanity and Light snuffing out.

Quinn is replaced by the true darkness of Night as Lucca’s power joins us. Lucca gives us everything he has now, though, to save Quinn from this worst Vampire fate.

As Lucca gives us his purest, brightest love—the true power of our bound Light Fae—my Dark Fae magic explodes with midnight rainbows in the catacomb. Lucca’s Light blazes through me in a supernova, blinding me as everything blazes sunlight-bright.

As Arturos’ watery domain seethes inside us also now, I know we’ve bound him, as well. Not in the same way Lucca, Quinn, and I are bound to each other, but somehow bound to our same fate.

Power explodes throughout the catacomb, reaching Quinn inside the box. A portal is suddenly open, and Arturos knows what to do with that power. He flashes in, getting Quinn out, and shutting the portal quickly behind.

And Lucca and I work our deepest magic now.

To return Quinn from the last edge of Night.