30. Disaster

30

DISASTER

A s Quinn is attacked by the Vampire Revenant when the Music of the Spheres breaks, I lose it. Released from the Music’s diabolical grip as it finally jangles out to nothing in the Colosseum, my mind is gone as I hear Quinn’s horrible screams. My Dark Fae power rises in a maelstrom as those screams turn to shrieks, just like before; Quinn is being devoured by the Vampire Revenant, and I don’t even care what my power does, as it seethes through the night with a thousand impossible harmonies.

To save him.

Rainbows of bright gold and silver careen through the domed-in Colosseum now, coming from me. As Quinn’s last shred of protection between us finally breaks, the most horrible memories of Emiliana flood me, heinous with the terror of her innumerable crimes.

Quinn’s mind is being shredded by the Revenant, already broken by that horrible backfiring of the Music that Gold Eyes caused. His sanity disappears as his shrieks cascade out like a Revenant’s now.

And I feel my grip on sanity waver, too.

I lose control. Nothing is in my mind, nothing in my heart and soul except saving Quinn as the fullness of my magic is unleashed by my need. The Music has broken my mind, demolishing every last bit of my restraint.

Catastrophic power pours through me now—lighting everything up in a terrible dayfire all around. I channel Lucca’s diamond Light as that insane magic sears through me, along with Quinn’s unholy darkness with its scalding red and gold flame.

My own magic sears gold and silver in a maelstrom as the Music pours from me in a horrific splendor now. Where it took all three of us to create the Music previously, it’s just me this time—the power of the insane sound I’m creating deafening my ears as it shreds my consciousness.

Sigils of impossible varieties flash through that Otherworld, blazing into our world even as they blaze out again, chaotic and wild. As a sphere of massive daylight magic blooms out around me, it’s like plasma being born.

That liquid light explodes from me suddenly, scalding through the Colosseum in a terrible wave. My wave of plasma power flows out, and out, and out. A distant part of me is aware of the Council Masters shrieking.

As those on the lowest tier of the Colosseum are incinerated by my terrible magic.

Someone has released the dome around us; Council members are portaling out in flashes of dark magic as my massive wave of unhinged Light and Night seethes, rising through the Colosseum’s tiers like the world’s most implacable tide.

That energy is being channeled all through me by my terrible power exploding. It blazes even harder now as Lucca reacts beneath our feet, trying to stabilize me; Lucca’s power is simply more Light, though, as it scorches through me like a thousand suns.

Quinn shrieks and falls to the ground, released by the Revenant who has been incinerated by my sudden blast, though I feel how his sanity is broken. And without Quinn’s agile mind and deep control to stabilize this power, I feel his massive Night roar.

To fight with Lucca’s Light inside me—for dominance.

Our trio’s bound magic runs amok now, as everything sears so bright inside me I have to close my eyes. I fight for the last shreds of my sanity now as I fall to the ground, covering the shrieking Quinn with my body as I pray this Light doesn’t incinerate him, too.

As his and Lucca’s powers war inside our bond, I feel ripped apart to my very marrow, screaming and shrieking with my own cries now as my power explodes like a bomb. It pulverizes the lowest tier of the Colosseum as that shockwave hammers out; something about that discharge suddenly exhausts both Quinn’s and Lucca’s magics inside me, though.

As I cease to channel their tremendous Light and Night.

Everyone is gone; the decimated amphitheater around us is empty as that unfathomable surge of power dies from me, curling out. There is nothing now where that power was; a devastatingly dark void fills me as everything I am feels utterly spent.

My vision flickers; I’m a moment from passing out and going I don’t know where, when I feel Lucca rush to my side, portaled in to the center of the Colosseum somehow to where Quinn and I lay.

He pours a tirade of love and his remaining Light deep through my bones, keeping me from crossing over. It’s enough. I come back as I feel Lucca pour everything he has into Quinn as well.

Beside us on the ground, Quinn is flickering in and out of existence. Terrible curls of wraith-smoke seethe all around him, trying to take him as he lays there on the ground on his side, motionless.

His eyes are open, though—and I realize then what Lucca’s seeing as he fights to keep Quinn and I with him with his last remaining Light. Because Quinn’s eyes are seething red, then black, then vividly red again.

Red like a Revenant—with no Fae Light left in them.

“We have to get him back to the Hotel. Quickly!” Eiseth’s voice barely registers as I watch her shore up Quinn from the ground. As Alleno gets the exhausted Lucca, Arturos heaves me up to standing. I can’t find my feet; everything inside me trembles with a palsy now as I feel powerless.

I’m devoid of my Light; I spent it all on that massive, unconfined surge of power that just ripped through me and decimated the Colosseum. I’m missing Quinn’s Night, as well; close to passing out, I’m still slipping towards the brink of all that’s holy as I cry out softly.

Though Arturos heaves me into his powerful arms, I reach out for Quinn and Lucca—feeling their Light and Darkness both dim now as we are all separated, needing touch to restore it.

But that’s impossible now, as Council members pop back in through portals all around—disastrously close on the main floor of the Coliseum now that both the Revenant is gone and the threat of my unbalanced power has flashed out.

They’re coming for us, rushing towards us in terrible heaves of roiling Night as I hear Florian’s wrathful snarl, Catch them! Let them not escape! Eiseth, Alleno, and Arturos are raising their powers hard, flighting back with terrible drives of their own magnificent magics. Our allies summon their own portals now, popping out through them.

To get us the hell out of there.

I don’t know where Arturos and I are, as we re-materialize somewhere far away, in a dark, musty-smelling catacomb. I only know someone’s chasing us as Arturos pops through another portal, then another, and even another, playing a terrible cat-and-mouse game with the Council member—or members—chasing us.

At last, he seems to have outrun them. As he jerks to a breathless halt in a catacomb so dark I can see nothing, he shudders like he’s just sprinted ten miles. Arturos lights a watery blue globe of magic in the air so we have something to see by, letting me slide down his body as he pools to the ground inside a dark catacomb gods-know-where.

Even though I feel safe from the chase now, I also feel that Quinn is in terrible danger. I feel his sanity and grip on life have fractured from that cacophonous blast of the Music he was controlling with his singing—not to mention everything the Revenant did to him after that.

I feel that utterly empty darkness inside our trio devour him as he sinks into that deep, void-like place. It’s inside all of us, but Quinn is the most drained right now from how the fracturing Music damaged him, and what the Revenant did to him, triggering his most awful memories of Emiliana so it could punish him for capturing it.

I know Quinn can’t come out of this on his own as he falls into that endless chasm. I feel him get trapped in his memories of Emiliana now, with Lucca and me too far away to stop it.

His Light gutters out; his Night disappears also as something else opens inside him. Disastrous, it’s empty like the furthest chasms of the void as it takes him over, to stop the agony of his memories.

And Quinn’s gone—as the Revenant takes over at last.

“NO!” I shriek in Arturos’ arms as I feel Quinn leave us.

Arturos pours a wave of his darkwater energy through me now as he holds me in his embrace. As he crushes me close, shushing me and using his powerful mesmeric magic to stop me rushing off to Quinn, I am rolled by his fathomless oceans. Even as I use the last of my strength to struggle, rabid to get to Quinn, he pours his magic deeper through my bones.

“He’s gone, Ariana! Quinn’s gone,” Arturos says. He breathes hard by my ear, his body shaking now as he uses his spent power on me. “You can’t help him. No one comes back from going Revenant that deeply! Even by the power of the Music.”

“You don’t know that!” I shriek at him now as I fight with everything I have left to foist off his inundating magic and get back to Quinn. “Lucca and I can fight this! We can get him back! We can?—”

“You can get killed, is what will happen!” Arturos is yelling now even as he chokes, clutching me close as if I’m his salvation in this terrible outcome that’s just happened, rather than him mine. “If you go back to Quinn now, he’ll devour you, and you’ll suffer until you die! That’s what Revenants do, Ariana! He won’t care who you are, or how much he loves you, or even Lucca. What you can do now is save yourself. Get far away from Italy; go to one of the hidden Dark Fae citadels with Lucca. Eiseth can get you there. Forget this whole damn thing, and Quinn, and live. Please! I’m begging you.”

The way Arturos says this has me turning in his arms, though. Looking at him, I suddenly see a new side of him I’d never seen before—as what’s left of my deepest truth-reading ability feels remorse twisting all through him.

And then I see those terrible red-black Bloodsigns, written throughout his magic and flesh.

“You. You betrayed him.”

My words are hardly a breath as I realize what’s happened, and what Arturos did. “You made a deal with one of the Council members, didn’t you?” I say as horror crashes all through me now—with rage. “To deliver Quinn to them, to fuck things up with our Revenant demonstration so they could get rid of him, once and for all? Someone wanted him gone, and you made a deal with them. And allowed yourself to be taken over by their Bloodsigns, so they could communicate to you what they wanted to have done, and no one else would sense it. That’s why the Revenant we caught was too strong, wasn’t it? And why the assassin knew just where to wait for us in your hedge maze to get the best angle on Quinn. You orchestrated both events. Hamstringing us… and making everything go haywire tonight, just as Quinn’s enemy planned. Was it Florian? Did he plan all this?”

“It wasn’t Florian. Please, Ariana, you must understand—” Arturos says, desperate.

But then a smooth, dark voice interrupts him.

As gold eyes shine out from the black.

“It was me.”

As a terrible gold firelight flares in a ring around us, darkness coalesces. In that darkness stands a man, a tall spearman made of shadows. Nothing about him is substantial, except his eyes, as they pierce out of that darkness. As his evil golden firelight flickers, the Gold Eyes stares down at us from his magnificent height.

Now standing inside his ring of fire with us.

“It was me, little belladonna of the Fae. I made him do it. Or rather, he agreed to my offer. Which was more than he could refuse,” the Gold Eyes says now as he hunkers before us, practically smiling with glee as I see its shadows swirl in its man-shape in a shockingly similar pattern to what my oilslick rainbows do when my magic rises. Though I feel more than hear its voice in my mind, I also hear it in my ears for the first time.

A terrible, haunting voice like ancient angels mourning as it sings with power in the night.

“What did you do?” I ask, glaring at Arturos and feeling that terrible, void-dark place open up inside me now as I understand he made a deal with our worst enemy.

A deal that undid us—before the Vampire Council and all the world.

“He offered me a Dark Haven, Ariana,” Arturos says, as I watch something die inside him. “The Gold Eyes came to me and offered me the power to Sire other Vampire-Sirens, just like me. I could have become Master of my own Dark Haven. I could have Sired and re-established the Dark Haven of the Deeps as it was long ago when it lived in glory. I could have made my own kind… and not lived like an outsider, even among all the other Vampire Masters, who never could or wanted to understand me. And my own Mistress… who never gave a damn, except for using me for her aims when it was convenient.”

“You sold us out. Quinn, me, the entire Dark Haven of Florence. Your family. For your own gain,” I say, wrath blackening my heart for Arturos. I feel that terrible place Quinn went churning inside me, though I still have enough Light to hang on and not let myself fall into it.

Yet.

“I want to rescind our deal,” Arturos is abrupt as he glances up at the Gold Eyes who towers over us both in his hunker. “I will no longer do your bidding. Return Quinn to his rightful form and take your bonds out of me. And I will give up what I would gain; the power to Sire more of my kind.”

“Though your offer is noble, it is too late, I’m afraid.” The Gold Eyes shrugs, though it still seems to grin diabolically as it glances from me to Arturos, contemplating his statement. “For I do not have the power to return a Revenant to its rightful mind and shape. If I had, I would have returned myself, long ago. Alas, I am a thing of shadows now… and so is your friend. Forever, I think, since he is one-third of the bound trio that makes the Music you so long to create. Too bad.”

The Gold Eyes looks at me now as its terrible glee grins through my very soul. As it reaches out with a hand of swirling shadows, however, it seems to become somber. I feel the darkest void of the cosmos as it touches me.

And I recoil from its terrible emptiness.

“I had hoped you would do better, little Animante .” It uses my Dark Fae type now, as if it knew all along what I was. “I had such high hopes when I Made you. For a Dark Fae is not Sired when it is bitten; it does not die from its Fae magic and rise only with Vampire might. It is Made—a new creature formed by the power of both. Like I was long ago… Light and Night, as One.”

“You were Dark Fae? You were the one who bit me as a baby?” Shock riots all through me. I know with the deepest truth-telling ability of my power that the Gold Eyes is being honest. It’s my words that make little sense to my power.

Somehow, this creature never was Dark Fae.

But something else.

“I was Ascendant. And yes, I am your Maker,” the Gold Eyes says, breathing down at me now as it strokes my face with one finger again, and I recoil. “I was glorious before I Descended and became enraptured with this life of emotion and flesh. For a time after I Fell, I was still glorious; a lover of art and music, passion, and all good things that come with the Night and soft flesh. I was so in love with this world that I wished for it to stay this way, passionate with art and love for all eternity. Which is why I committed my heart to it, to the place where I Fell, sinking the Light of my eternity into the land I so loved. I changed then, into a creature I could not fathom. But that is life, I suppose. To regret. And live on, empty…”

“You lost a part of yourself when you committed your Light to the land.” I understand now as something terrible and incredible makes sense to me. “You lost your center when you separated from your heart and left it in Rome.”

“No. For I left my heart in Florence, little one,” it says back, as it corrects me with a dark gleam in its vivid golden eyes. “And the generations have passed, as all there benefit from my love of art, music, and desire. Except me. Condemned as I am now, to walk the earth like this.”

It motions to its flowing, insubstantial shape of darkness as shock riots through me.

Because I know this creature’s name now.

And I speak it—removing its mystery at last.

“Staphylogenes. You’re the Descendant Staphylogenes—the first Sire of the Florentine Vampire bloodline.”

The Gold Eyes’ vivid orbs light at my words—then sear terribly.

“You know my name. Congratulations.” It nods genteelly now, though its gaze is nothing but terrible. “You should also know that I am not just Sire to all your dear Florentine Vampires, but to your beloved Light-Dark duo as well. For who do you think orchestrated a pit of Revenants to open up and swallow your beloved Fae princelings when they went seeking their doom? It was an opportunity I could not pass up, to create two of the most powerful Dark Fae the world has ever seen—one Cuorante and the other Mentale in their might. For the two of them were ever opposites, even as they were the same. One so hot-bright in his love and passion for the world; the other burning so deadly dark with his perfect mind for plots and intrigue.”

“Only waiting for the perfect Animante to balance and combine their power together.” I see the Gold Eyes’ horrible centuries-old plan come together at last.

“You.” It grins at me, full of terrible glee. “I must say, congratulations are in order for your trio. Though one has Fallen into darkness, becoming Revenant, you have accomplished your goal. Several seats are now available upon the Vampire Council of Rome—if you can return the third of your bound trio to sanity, and ever get the Council to trust you again enough to join them. I would say good luck. But luck is not what you have, when your trio’s magics are wielded as one. What you have is power . And power is ever what interests me. Goodnight, Ariana Summers of the Dark Fae. When the time is right, and your trio’s power is ready, I shall come for you again. Look for me.”

With that, the gold-eyed Revenant Staphylogenes swirls out. It takes its terrible golden fire from the catacomb as it disappears, leaving Arturos and I in darkness as I shout after it.

“ What do you want from us?! ”

But it’s gone.

To leave me with only questions, as a terrible void darkens my heart.