Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) (19 page)

“N
o!” I shouted, palm out. “Do not bring the stone here. I will come to it by day. Take it to the Council Hall.”

The thought of Sabine’s anchorstone here in the Eyrie, in the place where I had taken Skylar in my arms and forgotten all else, seemed a sacrilege to me. I could subject neither of them to such a trespass. I fumbled with the last button, hiding my body from Daneo’s stare, and walked to Skylar.

Her body was tense, electric—static with my nearness.

“It is in Cascadia,” Daneo said. “We flew for it late last night. You enjoyed the Cygnus Amoratus, Skylar?” His sharp eyes darted between the two of us.

Skylar answered his question with one of her own, “Why there?”

“For safekeeping.” His lip curled as he added, “I bring bad tidings. We may soon have need of his Sphinx lover.” The word seemed as sharp as the teeth in his mouth.

Skylar crossed the room in an instant and snatched up a javelin off the wall. I had not noticed it there, where it lay on a high shelf. It seemed almost a natural part of her as she carefully balanced its weight in her hands. Propping it against a wall, she then turned to the shelf again and took down a quiver of arrows, all silver-tipped and fledged with swan feathers. As she strapped on the quiver, she said, “Daneo, there is death in your tone. Tell me what has happened.”

“Xanthos.” Daneo bowed his head. “The rumors the wind has been whispering to the Silent Sisters are true. They have learned how to kill us.”

Skylar’s gasp was interrupted by Daneo’s command. “Shintaro and Samea will speak to you both. In Cascadia. Immediately.” He nodded curtly, spun on his heel, and left.

S
he had masked her thoughts, I knew, as we hurtled down the cliff face, avoiding the balconies that jutted from each Eyrie. We landed at the bottom near a strong door decorated with carvings and filigreed silver. Like most things in Silvenhall, it seemed alive, and I thought I saw snakish movements in the silver in the seconds before Skylar pressed her hand to a hidden cleft in the stone and the door ground open.

“This will be the quickest way,” she said. “And the safest with night upon us. With Xanthos’s death, you will have made more enemies here.”

I scoffed. “Daneo is the worst of them.”

She threw me a look that commanded silence, and I followed her into the passage beyond. It was musty and dark, wending downward, ever downward, in a great spiral that soon made me dizzy. The comforting glow of worms wriggling in the rock was the only light; their luminance highlighted veins of precious metal, and I ran my hand along one as we circled down. “What is this place?”

“Militra Mine,” Skylar told me. “The source of Silvenhall’s wealth and our path out should we ever be attacked. It burrows down deep, below the cascades.”

When we had corkscrewed so deep into the mine that I felt small and stale and longed for the light like a moth, the passage terminated in a small chamber and began to wend up again. Up and up we flew, my wings battling gravity, my brain shaken by the speed of our flight. When I saw the blue gleam of night above, I rushed to it as if from the ocean’s depths and found myself in a dazzling cavern of white.

Stalactites dripped light from the roof, and steps of ice, blue with cracks and runnels beneath the surface, climbed up to an altar of enormous wings carved of ice. A million candles set there dripped sizzling, fragrant wax into the cold air.

“Welcome to Cascadia.”

I recognized Samea’s voice. Still dizzy, I whirled around to seek her out and nearly lost my balance. She sat on a great white throne, her legs covered by a white bearskin and her hand clutching a crystal scepter that reflected the icy shades. Braids pulled her hair back from her forehead, and her skin seemed almost as pale as the marble pillars that propped up the ice.

“In some months, the cascades flow.” She gestured towards the steps as she came toward us.

“It is beautiful,” I said, awed.

“Yes. But like all that is beautiful, it is also dangerous.” Her eyes alighted on Skylar, then her head swung towards the foot of her throne, where Sabine’s anchorstone—the head and breast as lovely as a mortal’s and then the crumbled, eaten-away torso—had been laid.

“A stranger sees danger all around,” I offered, wary now of what I might be accused of in this palace of ice.

“And is well to.” Samea nodded. “But you are no stranger now, Amedeo. You have drunk the blood of Silvenhall.” She pointed to the marks on Skylar’s neck. “You have made your blood-troth.”

Shintaro stepped from an icy alcove where the pale tones of his cloak had obscured him. Kisana, her gown hidden by a white fur, followed him.

“Let us not waste time with pleasantries,” Shintaro said. “Tell me, for I must know, what do they know about us, Amedeo?” One of his hands clutched at his stomach.

I blanched. “I know not what you mean.”

“Do not play coy.” Daneo flapped toward me, eyes gleaming like a harpy’s. “They attacked us at Delphi. Hundreds of them, led by the one they call Beltran.” His eyes narrowed. “Do not pretend you do not know the name well.” He flung a hand towards the inert marble. “Xanthos was burdened by the weight of the stone. They overpowered him.” His voice broke, and he stalked towards me, his eyes colder than the ice. “Tell me, traitor, why is it that they all wear this?”

Something smashed against the ice at my feet, staining it a deep crimson.

“What is it?” I stepped back from the spreading scarlet.

“A vial around their necks, filled with human blood to force down our throats once they have weakened us with their sheer number! Human blood, like the blood injected in your veins. The blood that, this morning, has sickened both Shintaro and myself to our guts following your blood-troth.” Daneo pointed to what was left of the pendant. “Some of them wear many. Tell me how Beltran learned of our weakness!”

I shivered, considering the danger, the power of a million Vampires, each bearing the one weapon that might destroy Cruximkind. “I do not know how he learned of it, only that he has long suspected. Twice he tried to force me to drink from a mortal, and twice he failed. I told no one, except Sabine.”

“The Sphinx.” Daneo’s nostrils flared. “You should have never let the words cross your lips.” 

“Even I did not know!” My voice flared angrily, and despite myself, I flapped back at him. “How could I know whether it was true? I knew not. Even after he injected me with the boy’s blood, I lived. I knew nothing about Cruxim, not even whether any other like me even existed, apart from my sister, her father and the one they call Monsieur LeRay. Do not blame me, Daneo. You do not know me.”

Skylar stepped forward and put her arm on Daneo’s own. “I had hoped that when Amedeo survived the Haemacra, they might forget it. Or consider it a lie.  Do not blame, Amedeo. He has done more to dispel it than to encourage it. Any one of us might have betrayed the secrets of the
Cruximus
. Any Cruxim, under torture, might have betrayed that knowledge. But he did not. He revealed it only to a Sphinx, a creature so secretive we know not where to find one, let alone how to rouse one.”

Daneo stared at the smashed vessel at my feet. “Well, they know now. Xanthos’s death will only incite more attacks against us. What can you do to prevent that?” he spat at me. “What can a half-eroded Sphinx stone do to prevent that?”

“I know not, but I am prepared to find out.” I spread my hands imploringly before Samea and Shintaro. “Let me hear the Sphinx’s riddle. Help me understand what is meant by the Cruor.” I took a step forward and raised my voice. “Let me hunt! Let me fight!”

Daneo gave a low, bitter chuckle. “You want us to trust you. You want us to share even more of the
Cruximus
with you—who has half-poisoned us with traces of a dead boy’s blood still in your veins. You ask us to overlook what you have already revealed and to whom you might reveal our secrets. You are just like your mother! You cannot be trusted!”

“Trust!” I scoffed, thinking of the falsified Swan at the back of the
Cruximus
. “Your own lies make you afraid of what I might reveal.”

“I am afraid of nothing you tell her,” Daneo said, pointing to Sabine’s anchorstone. “Only what you tell Beltran.”

It was all I could do not to fly at him. “You insult me. I hate Beltran most among all who walk the Earth. If I met with him, it would be to tear him limb from limb.”

Daneo growled suspiciously. “A task you have failed before. You should never have been brought here. You are an abomination. An insult to all Cruxim.”

Kisana interrupted with a sigh. “Perhaps Amedeo’s place is not here in Silvenhall,” she said. “It does not matter. He is here, and so now is the Sphinx. The time for blame has passed. The time has come to determine what it means and to act upon it.”

“It means he should be cast out immediately,” Daneo insisted, “and the stone with him. No good can come of this union. We have seen what happens when beauties meet a beast.”

“You would condemn Skylar then too,” Samea cautioned, “for she is entrusted with his guardianship. Where he goes, so too will she.”

“Damn her too,” Daneo snarled. “She sought out her trouble.”

“Trouble you and I both tried to hide,” Samea reminded him in a whisper, “yet could not.” She moved to examine the stone at the foot of her chair. “Why do you think it refused to be hidden, Daneo?” She clapped her hands together. “Come, Amedeo. Rouse her. Let us hear what the Sphinx thinks. The guardians are old and wise. Let her tell us whether your coming here was fated.”

“I cannot.”

Daneo spat upon the ice. “He is useless.” He flung a hand toward Sabine’s stone. “And she is the millstone that will drag us all to Hell.”

“Quiet, Daneo,” Shintaro cautioned. “Be still your warring, and let us hear him.”

“I cannot,” I repeated. “Not while it is still night.”

Samea’s laughter echoed around the icy chamber. “Of course. By day only are Sphinxes stone. Tell me, where is your Sphinx by night?”

I growled. “On the floor of the ocean, in a gilt cage.” I declined to tell them of the true tortures Beltran had subjected her to, encasing her body in searing, molten gold.

Samea’s violet eyes squinted. “How did she come to be there?”

“The Vampire Daneo speaks of put her there. Not for that alone would I see him dead, although it would be enough. He is a tyrant. A rapist. A monster.”

Samea put up one hand and tugged the fringed hood of her long, pale gown up over her hair. “It is always cold in here.” She walked to me and rubbed at the gooseflesh on my arms. “And lonely sometimes, too. What you speak of is abhorrent even to one used to cold and to loneliness. Accept my anguish that we did not bring her to you earlier.” Her eyes were kind, but there was a further question in their depths.

“Tell me,” she continued. “How did you learn that you might rouse a Sphinx with a kiss?”

“She told me ... before ...” From the corner of my eye, I saw Shintaro pull Daneo aside. Shintaro’s face was contorted, as if in pain. Their muttering thrummed in my head as I continued. “Before she was lost to me.”

A high, arched door at the rear of the cavern swung open with a creak, and the thrumming became the stomp of boots on the ice, resounding like the beat of a thousand galloping hooves. The clamor grew as a phalanx of armed Cruxim entered, two Silent Sisters at the fore. They shone so silver in the brilliance of Cascadia that I shielded my eyes. In formation, they marched right up to stand before the winged throne. A line of them stretched away through the door. Here and there, crimson marred the white and silver, a smear of scarlet on a wing or a crumpled body curled into another’s arms.

The one leading them, whom I recognized as Rosario, Proxim of Argentil, flew straight to my sister, dropping to one knee.

Kisana’s complexion paled as she saw the line of wounded Cruxim behind him.

“My lady.” He bowed to her. “We bring sorry news of Dusindel.”

His gaze left hers to stare up at Daneo and Shintaro. “Shintaro, we have lost many. Even the Aspis has...” He shook his head. “The council must convene immediately, and we require Silent Sisters to tend to the injured.”

Skylar’s eyes lingered on the soldiers, as if she were silently counting their number in her head, seeing the missing soldiers like gaps in a row of teeth.

“How many have fallen?” she asked, her cheeks already stained with tears.

“Eighty.” Rosario’s eyes were haunted. “But it is worse than that.”

Kisana’s hand flew to her mouth. “There are no red cloaks,” she cried. “Rosario, where is the red of Dusindel among the injured? What has happened?”

“Lady Kisana.” Still on his knees, he took her hands in his own. Blood caked his fingernails and he licked at where it had dried black on his lips. “Dusindel ... has fallen. We did not reach it in time to save any but three and those still only fledglings who had hidden in the woods.” He gestured toward a huddle of shivering children being comforted by a tall female Cruxim who wore the yellow cloak of Luminil. I recognized her as the Proxim Illysia, from the Council.

“But ...” My sister lost all words. “My ... my father. Jiordano?”