Elijah (41 page)

Jacob pulled away this time, listening to yet another warning from a source he could not dismiss as being overprotective. He jumped off the ledge even as Siena pushed forward toward it. She sprang up easily, feeling Elijah’s hand guiding her up with absent habit.

It made her smile even as she dusted her hands across the skirt of the dress Legna had loaned her. Magdelegna had a more conservative style, so the skirt was longer and more cumbersome than the Queen would have liked, but she simply pulled it out of her way as she knelt to inspect the suspicious grooves.

“There is a legend among my people about the times before we ventured out of the caves and into the world. Like my castle, whole cities were supposedly built underground. In those times, it is said we never went into the light of day.” She peered closer at the wall. “We have only found small abodes that hinted at this truth. Otherwise, our only other proof was the stories we handed down verbally and the odd scrap of written lore.”

“So what does that—?”

“The legend said all the entrances to this city were disguised and trapped to keep out accidental
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as well as purposeful intruders. If the curious person did not know how to harmlessly bypass the trap, it was tripped and the intruder would be killed.”

“You don’t believe this is a city,” Bella said with clear disbelief.

“No. I do not,” Siena agreed. “But I do believe this could be an entrance fashioned with those same traps.”

“Tell me you know how to disarm it,” Jacob encouraged her.

She didn’t have to. She touched both grooves simultaneously, a loud click echoing around them, making them start with surprise. Then, after a brief, studying search, she placed both hands on the wall and shifted her weight and the pressure of her touch slightly to the right. The wall dropped away so suddenly that it startled the Queen, who stepped back into Elijah’s steady frame as he vaulted onto the ledge in a heartbeat to prevent her from falling off it.

“Nice reflexes,” she murmured to her husband.

“Thank you,” he chuckled, drawing her to his back as he peered into the pitch black of the entrance. “Noah?”

“Consider it done,” the King responded. Reaching out with his refined senses, he felt the presence of tarred torches and lit them in a brilliant surge of light. Everyone winced as the rows of the torches blinded them momentarily.

“Whoa. I think I know what Ruth is looking for,” Bella said with eager awe, having recovered before the others because her eyes were not as sensitive to dark and light theirs were.

Eyes cleared and a chorus of gasps came out of the group as they hurried to crowd around the entrance of the hidden room.

“Told you it was books,” Bella murmured.

It was an understatement. It was actually an underground library. It was a bit worse for wear because of the years it had spent being ignored—the damage of water that had changed course over the years of erosion ran down walls that had been meant to be dry—but it had at one time definitely been a well-appointed library. It had red runners between every set of shelves in the corridor, the embroidered ruby velvet of it clearly once very rich and very fine. The torches lit up study tables as well as podiums that held singled-out tomes of enormous size.

And, of course, along both sides of the corridor were shelves and shelves of books reaching well beyond what even their keen sight could see.

“Wow,” Legna said, at a loss for any other reaction.

“Okay, how would Ruth, of all people, know this was here?”

“Clearly she doesn’t know it’s here. She thinks it’s up there,” Siena said, pointing above herself to the stone that would block Ruth’s progress even had she suspected something beneath it.

“True. Mary does not have the power to burrow through earth and stone. That is a male Earth Demon trait,” Jacob said, his eyes as wide as everyone else’s as he scanned the library slowly.

“Do you think it is safe to go in there?”

“I think so,” Siena murmured, “but I wouldn’t put money on it being completely harmless, so keep alert.”

The battle they had been headed for was completely dismissed, all of them understanding that this was a more critical task. They moved into the isolated cavern, males linking hands with females, everyone wary as they prepared to take whatever forms they needed to in order to escape damage and carry those with them to safety as well.

Siena preceded them all, wide golden eyes skimming over the titles of the nearest volumes.

Elijah was close behind her, so close that when she stopped, he bumped into her back and then remained there until she continued on.

“Siena, this is the Treasured Tongue,” Syreena whispered, her sense of reverence coming through loud and clear as she reached to take a book in her hands, holding it as if it were a precious gem. “The historic language only the members of The Pride now know. It would be lost to them as well if not for the fact that they spend so much time maintaining their knowledge of it.”

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“That means this is a Lycanthrope library?” Elijah asked.

“No.”

Everyone turned to see Bella pull another book down.

“Jacob, this it the ancient language of Demonkind.”

Heads turned from one woman to the other. They crossed to meet each other and inspect the books.

“They aren’t the same,” Bella informed them. “Let’s see if there are others.”

There were. Books in languages both known and unknown to those in the room.

“The language of the Vampires,” Gideon said, shaking his head. “This looks like Shadowdweller print. These are those bold, picturesque characters they use.”

“It’s a Nightwalker library,” Siena said, her whispering voice echoing off the ceilings high above them.

“A lot of them are ruined,” Elijah remarked, dropping a saturated book onto a table, where it immediately disintegrated.

“Noah, have you ever heard of anything like this in your history?” Siena asked the King.

“Nothing. This…this is beyond anything we would ever know.”

“I never heard about this from The Pride, and they have a knack for telling some pretty primordial tales,” Syreena said, continuing to inspect the shelves with skimming fingers. “Is it possible this precedes even our forbearers?”

“And none of them thought to tell any of our historians about it? I find that hard to believe.

Surely some kind of story or legend about it would have survived…some written proof or mention of it somewhere,” Noah insisted.

“Oh yes,” Bella said, her eyes rolling and her tone dry, “just like you were aware of that happy little prophecy I found that said we were all about to get tossed into a clothes dryer, tumbled around, and literally spit out just to see what comes out in the wash.”

“Good point,” Elijah chuckled.

“Jacob, look at this.” Noah beckoned the Enforcer. Jacob came to peer at the book over the King’s shoulder.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“What?” the others asked.

“Spells,” Noah answered, his dark eyes serious and weighted with concern. “Magic-user spells.”

“In a Nightwalker library?” Isabella pushed through them, inspecting the huge volume with sharp eyes. “Latin. Italian…this is…I don’t even know what this is,” she said shaking her head.

“But there’s even Egyptian hieroglyphs in here. This is, like…the unabridged spell compendium of the whole world! This is what Ruth and Mary are looking for. I would bet my stash of chocolate bars on it.”

“I think she is right,” Noah agreed, leafing through the pages gingerly, but finding them all too sturdy. “We have to destroy this.”

“Absolutely not!”

“Bella,” Noah warned.

“Don’t even think it, Noah. There’s a reason this is in a Nightwalker library, and maybe you should figure out what that reason is before you go around willy-nilly playing Fahrenheit 451.”

“Bella, do you know how dangerous this book would be in the wrong hands?” Noah argued.

“But it isn’t in the wrongs hands, Noah. It’s in yours.”

“Noah, I think she may be correct,” Gideon spoke up, his silvery eyes suddenly flicking to the King’s so the monarch understood how serious his opinion was. “We have been looking for ways to block the Summoning and Transformations for centuries…for millennia, even. Maybe this book or these others hold those answers.”

Noah immediately appeared to take that into consideration.

“There is one thing we can all agree on.” Siena spoke up suddenly, her voice deepening with grave seriousness. “We must keep Ruth and Mary as far from here as possible. That volume is
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probably only a scratch on the surface of what this place holds. The power that they would potentially have access to if they discovered this library is immeasurable. And I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think they’ve had more than enough advantages since they defected.”

“Agreed,” Jacob said shortly. “Noah, Bella…I know the temptation of all this knowledge is overwhelming to you both, but we had best deal with our traitors and their compatriots before we let ourselves be distracted any further.”

“Also agreed,” Noah said with a sharp nod. “But I do not feel comfortable leaving all of this open like this.”

“It has gone undisturbed for untold centuries, Noah,” Siena reminded him gently. “I will return the seal and locks to what they were when we first arrived. Once we have dealt with Ruth, we can worry about guarding this place any further than that.”

It took a long moment, but eventually Noah nodded his acquiescence. The powerful group immediately backtracked out of the library, leaping down from the entrance so the Lycanthrope Queen could reseal the tricky door. It took some effort and a little helping counterbalance from her powerful mate to reseal the ancient mechanism, but eventually they too were able to leap off the ledge and into their party of companions.

“Come on, let’s kick ass,” Bella offered with irreverent enthusiasm, grabbing her husband’s hand and hurrying him into the deeper recesses of the caverns.

Mary was marching restlessly up and down the side of the dig site, her arms folded around her waist, chewing her bottom lip as her nervous energy radiated off her in waves. Her mother had not yet joined her, making her more than a little concerned for her safety should something suddenly go wrong. However, her mother had remarkable power, and that included the ease and speed of her teleportation abilities.

Her mother had sufficiently frightened her, mentioning the powerful men and their mates who were potentially out for their blood. Mary had been raised in perpetual awe of those names, even in spite of her mother’s constant derision.

Noah. Elijah. Jacob the Enforcer.

Especially Elijah. Mary had once followed her mother to the training grounds when she had still been a warrior under the fierce Captain’s command, and had seen for herself how brutally cold and powerfully calculating that Demon could be even when only practicing. When she and her mother had stood over the warrior in the Russian forest not too long ago, watching him die with a seemingly baffling simplicity, Mary had still been awed and afraid, in spite of his apparent weakness and their apparent victory. It came as almost no surprise to her when she had discovered the warrior had somehow managed to cheat a so clearly imminent demise. She had always believed him undefeatable, and that was reinforced now more than ever.

Her nervous gaze twitched over the rows of women working patiently on the hard, cold ground that supposedly concealed the Black Tome her mother was searching for so desperately.

According to the scroll, it was supposed to be the centerpiece of an ancient library that had existed long before even Gideon’s time. It was a concept hard for one as young as she was to wrap her mind around. That such a thing would even survive all that time seemed impossible, but her mother had already discovered a companion book, so it must still be possible for the Black Tome to have survived even all these ages.

According to her mother, that book would have the power to destroy even the most powerful of enemies. Even Noah, the extremely potent Fire Demon who could probably destroy the entire Earth if he put himself to the task.

But Mary didn’t think they needed it. They had just destroyed Gideon, the most Ancient of their kind. If they could do that, they could do anything.

“I would not rest so comfortably on that assumption if I were you.”

Mary jolted out of her private thoughts with a gasp, whirling to face that low, cold statement’s birthplace. She found herself staring up into fearfully cold silver eyes, the mouth beneath them
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twisted into a sardonic smile of cruel confidence that she would never hope to know the meaning of.

“Uh, uh, uh,” asked a soft, warning voice behind her, making her about-face once more with speed and terror to face a matching set of silver eyes. “I know what you’re thinking,”

Magdelegna warned with a cruel smile of her own. “Your mommy cannot help you now.”

Mary’s heart pounded with violent speed as she realized she was telling the absolute truth. The young Demon was surrounded by all those Demons whose names and legends she had so feared for all of her life.

“Jacob, Bella, concentrate on keeping this little brat under wraps. Ruth will come for her soon enough.”

This order was given by the Demon King as he and the others turned at the sudden shouts of warning coming from the churned-over field full of magic-users and hunters.

“As a Druid I know once said, let’s kick ass!”

After that gleeful statement, the next thing to exit the Lycanthrope Queen’s mouth was the chilling scream of the cougar.

Ruth was jolted out of her study of the open book before her by the loud sound of startled, urgent voices outside of her tent. She stood up so fast that she knocked back her chair, and, grabbing protectively at the heavy, old volume before her, she reached out with her powerful mental senses.

She abruptly realized she was under enormous threat. Worse still, her daughter was being threatened. Frantically, the Demon traitor pushed back the knee-jerk fury and blind urge to react that her mothering instincts demanded. Luckily for her, her centuries of training as a warrior reminded her that fighting under duress of emotion was the surest way to lose a battle. It was, in retrospect, exactly how Gideon had managed to obtain the upper hand so unexpectedly in her attack on him. A mistake she was apparently still going to pay the price for, she realized as she sensed the Ancient’s presence close by. Angry fingers wrapped around her slender throat, gripping at bruises that were no longer there except in her memory of how Gideon had made them and almost killed her in the process.