Flamebound (10 page)

“W
hat. The. Hell. Is. That?” I demand, pointing to the gaping hole in the ground. “And how the hell has no one called the police on us yet?” Yes, it's the middle of the night and this part of downtown is just about completely deserted. But still, there are a few people around. A few cars on the street. What I just witnessed is abnormal enough to have attracted the attention of anyone in the vicinity.

“They can't see us, right?” After clearing her throat a few times, Lily finally manages to get her vocal chords working again. “Because of the safeguards.”

“I thought Declan unraveled the safeguards. Isn't that what all this fuss was about?” I pull against the strength of Declan's arms until he finally gets the hint and lets me go reluctantly.

“There are different levels of safeguards. Those meant to keep humans from discovering this place and those meant to keep witches out.”

“You left the human safeguards in place.”

“I did.”

Now that all the excitement has died down—and now that there's a clear path laid out in front of me, the compulsion is stronger than ever. I walk straight up to the opening in the earth.

“Xan, wait,” Declan cautions. “You don't know what might be waiting for you down there. Let me go first.”

What he says makes sense. I'm not one to hide behind a big strong guy, but these are extenuating circumstances. Goddess only knows what we're walking into—especially considering the only thing I know for sure is that somewhere down there, somebody is dead. And not from natural causes.

I open my mouth to tell him to go ahead, but what comes out is, “No, I need to go first.”

There's a long, narrow staircase leading down into the hole, and I head down it without another word. Behind me, Declan and Lily curse. But Declan, who has seen me in the throes of these compulsions before, knows there will be no arguing with me, no turning me from this course until I find what must be found.

“Aren't you even going to ask what this place is?” he demands as he follows so closely behind me that I can feel his breath on the nape of my neck.

“Headquarters for the Arcadian Council of Witches, Wizards and Warlocks,” I answer.

There's a stunned silence. “How do you know?”

“How do you know? More importantly, how did you get this place open? I'm not sure even my mom or dad could have done it.”

“They've done it before. This is where most ACW meetings take place, after all. Although, in those cases, getting in is a little different.”

“You mean because they're invited instead of breaking in?”

“Pretty much.”

“Speaking of which,” Lily says from where she's pulling up the rear. “Our entrance isn't exactly what I'd call subtle. What's going to be waiting for us when we get to the bottom of this staircase to hell?”

“It wasn't subtle for us,” Declan answers, “because I invoked a couple of very powerful spells. But down here, they probably didn't even notice.”

“How is that possible?” I turn to look at him. The light is dim down here, but there's enough for me to see his eyes—and the grim smile he's wearing.

“Because the ACW is nothing if not arrogant. They believe firmly in their own supremacy, so they can't imagine that anyone could breach their security without them knowing.”

“Even you?”

“Even
you
, Xandra. You're the reason we're here, after all.”

I don't really agree with that, considering he's far more powerful than I will ever be. Still, the compulsion is riding me hard, making me walk faster, so I move on to other questions. It feels like I have a million of them, after all, and I'd like to get the most important ones answered before we get to the bottom of the steps. If we ever get to the bottom. We've already done about a hundred steps and there's no end in sight.

“What about this staircase? They don't know when it's been activated?”

“This isn't their staircase. It's mine.”

“You mean, you built this?”

He inclines his head. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Huh.” I walk even faster. Without the compulsion, I never would have stepped foot down here—I don't know how Declan and Lily are doing it—but knowing that Declan created this never-ending staircase somehow makes me feel better. It's still a little terrifying, but I know—despite his darkness—that he'd never do anything to put me in jeopardy.

“How do
they
get down to the pits of hell?” Lily demands. “Their broomsticks?”

Declan laughs. But the sad thing is, I'm not sure she's joking.

“Do you want to go back up?” I ask. “You don't have to come down with us if it freaks you out.” She's done more than enough for me tonight. I wouldn't blame her if she decides that enough is enough.

But Lily just snorts. “Yeah, because what I really want to do right now is brave the Little Garden of Horrors all on my own. No thanks. You're stuck with me for the duration of this.”

We continue on in silence. I started counting the steps a couple of minutes ago and we're on step one hundred forty-three, not including however many we did before I began ticking them off in my head. But if I were to guess, I'd say we're closing in on two-hundred and fifty steps. Maybe Lily's right and this really is the stairway to hell. Goddess knows, I expect molten lava to start spewing around us at any moment.

“Not to be a party pooper,” I say into the pensive silence, “but how the hell are we going to get back out of here? I mean, does either one of you know how to create a magic elevator?”

“How hard could it be?” Declan asks. “A little steel, a few cables—” He winks at me when he sees me staring back at him over my shoulder. “Just kidding.”

“Yeah. You're a freaking riot,” I deadpan. “How much farther does this thing stretch?”

“I don't think it's much farther,” Declan says, wrapping one large, warm hand around my upper arm and pulling me to a stop. “Let me go in front.”

There's a part of me that still wants to argue with him. While I understand his fear, even sympathize with it, I'm still annoyed with how he left me. He seduced me into sleep and then took off to do goddess knows what. I don't care that he had something to do on his own—it's not like I want to be joined at the hip with him. But what he did smacks of secrecy and that I don't like. All he had to do was be honest with me and everything would have been fine.

“I've got it,” I answer, and even I recognize the snap in my voice.

“You don't know what you're going to be dealing with when you get to the bottom.”

“And you do?”

“I have a pretty good idea, yes.”

“And why is that? I wonder,” I demand archly. “Are you leading an entire secret life that I'm not aware of?”

“You're being ridiculous.”

“Maybe. But you're hiding something and I don't like it.”

He grinds his teeth. “Get behind me, Xandra, or I will pick you up and put you there.”

The threat rubs me the completely wrong way. “I'd like to see you try.”

“You sure you want to go there, baby?” he asks, one brow lifted in that ridiculously hot way he has. He looks like a complete badass standing there, an impression that is backed up by everything I know about him and every action he's ever made in front of me.

Despite the anger that still seethes inside me, a shiver of awareness sparks. I can't help it—he's looking at me the way he does in bed, right before he does something completely delicious to me.

Right now he looks like he wants nothing more than to push me up against the wall and prove to me and everyone else that I belong to him, that he can keep me safe. And under normal circumstances, I might have been willing to let him. But the timing couldn't be more inappropriate for this—on both our parts. We don't know what awaits us in the depths of this place. Besides, Lily's right here, her eyes wide as saucers as she takes in the exchange between us. Guess my BFF didn't realize just how volatile Declan is—or how volatile I am when I'm around him.

I send her a reassuring smile along with a bunch of this-is-no-big-deal vibes, then turn and start heading down the staircase once more. The second I'd stopped, the compulsion started burning hotter and hotter, until every breath became an agony.

And still I can't let my conversation with Declan go. Not if our relationship—excluding the whole soulbound thing—has any hope of working. “And don't call me
baby
,” I toss over my shoulder. “I'm not a child.”

“Then stop acting like one.” He's seething at the challenge, something that makes me aware of just how often I've let him have his way in our partnership. Normally, it makes sense—he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, not to mention that he has more magic in one flick of his hand than I can imagine possessing in my whole lifetime. But not this time. I'm the one who knows where we're going. I'm the one who—

I freeze as I circle around what turns out to be the last bend in the staircase. Lying on the ground right in front of me are two wizards. I note two things about them immediately.

One, they're obviously security for the Council.

And two, they are obviously dead.

“W
ell, it looks like you've found your bodies,” Lily tells me so flippantly that I know she's fighting her gag reflex with everything she's got. The more she's upset by something, the less she lets it show.

“Looks like it,” I answer, but I'm not so sure. The compulsion, while it's let up a little, doesn't seem ready to release me quite yet. It's pushing me to pass these two men who are lying in pools of their own blood, eyes staring sightlessly, throats cut. Normally, I'd be down there, checking for pulses, reliving their deaths whether I wanted to or not. But while I feel a small tug toward them, a need to do just that, most of the pull I feel is for somewhere else. For
someone
else.

“You okay?” Declan asks, rubbing a hand down my spine, a gesture that is both soothing and supportive. Our spat, if you can call it that, is completely forgotten in the face of what we now have to deal with.

“I don't . . . This isn't . . .” I shake my head, at a loss to put into words the feelings ricocheting around inside me.

His eyes narrow with sudden concentration. “This isn't what, Xandra?”

Just then, a new wave of compulsion slams into me. It bows my back, sizzles along my spine. Then wraps itself around me like an invisible cord. For all of its invisibility, this compulsion is the worst one yet. It feels like the sharpest razors are cutting into me wherever the cord touches—my arms, my upper torso, even my neck.

It must look like that, too, because Lily suddenly gasps. “Xan, you're bleeding!”

I don't answer her, I can't. Not when I'm nearly jerked off my feet by the force of this magic. Knowing it's no use, I give up trying to fight it and simply let it pull me along—out of this huge room and down a dark and winding hallway.

Declan moves swiftly, positions himself in front of me. He doesn't try to touch me—he knows how dangerous it is at times like these. But he's determined to be in front. Determined to face whatever threat might be waiting for us around the next bend first.

In some distant part of my mind I'm aware of Lily following us, her phone the only thing illuminating the path in front of me. Though to be honest, I kind of wish she'd turn the damn thing off. This place is creepy enough in the dark. Being able to see the magic carvings in the ceiling—not to mention the cobwebs hanging from wall sconces that don't look like they've been lit in a hundred years—is not exactly making this any easier. Especially when there's a new, uncomfortable facet to this compulsion that I've never felt before. And it is really freaking me out.

I'm always cold at times like this, on a physical and soul-deep level that just adds to the misery of the experience. Tonight, that chill is still there, but with a little something extra. Frigid air blowing against my left ear and the back of my neck like the iciest of breaths. With every step I take, it gets more noticeable, more overwhelming, until the hair at my nape is standing straight up.

Every ghost story I've ever heard is running through my head, but I refuse to go there right now. If I do, I'm afraid I really will lose it and that's just not an option. Not now, when I've just fought Declan for my right to do this without his interference. And certainly not when losing it will get me nothing but a one-way trip to the local mental hospital. I can't leave—there's no way the compulsion will let me go until I find what it wants me to find—and if I let my imagination get the best of me, I'll never be able to do what needs to be done.

Locking everything down deep inside me—the fear, the pain, my evolving magic—I force myself to keep going, to put one foot in front of the other. Whatever is down here can't be as bad as what will happen to me if I don't keep going. I just need to remember that.

We come to a fork in the passageway and Declan steps to the side, where he waits. I know he thinks it will take me some time to figure out which way to go, but I don't even hesitate. The body at the end of this trail is practically screaming for me to find it, the compulsion so great that I take off running.

Behind me, both Lily and Declan curse, but I have no time to explain—and no words to give them anyway. Everything I am, everything I have, is focused on getting to the end of this trail.

The floor is slanting downward now, and it's rougher than it was up above—as if I'm sprinting along barely paved rocks. Somewhere close by I can hear the sound of rushing water, like a waterfall, but that makes no sense, so I don't bother worrying about it. Not now, when I'm so close. So close . . .

We meet a dead end, with the choice to go left or right. I go left, then make an immediate right followed by another left. And then I'm there, right there.

It's dark, so dark that I can't see three feet in front of my face, but I know that I've found him. And it is a him. I don't know how I know that, but I do.

I stop short so suddenly that Declan and Lily, who were hot on my heels, end up slamming into me. The impact knocks me forward and I start to fall. Declan snags me and pulls me up against his chest.

Lily's flashlight app is doing its best to light up the room, but the place is huge, cavernous, and her little iPhone can only do so much. I want to keep moving forward—the compulsion is pushing at me even though I know how stupid it is to go any farther until I can see—but Declan keeps a tight arm around my waist, refusing to let me move so much as an inch away from him.

Then, his breath hot against my ear, he mutters one of the most basic Hekan incantations there is—the one for fire that most children master before they're a decade old. I was twenty-seven before I could use it to create so much as a spark, and then I nearly burned my entire house down. Just one of the many, many reasons this Heka thing is not for me.

Fire flares to life in Declan's open palm, caressing him like a lover. He bends his fingers—works it, shapes it, until it's a glowing sphere of light. It takes a minute or so, but once the orb is created, he sends it spinning out into the middle of the room, where it grows and grows and grows.

Within seconds, the entire room is bathed in the warm, soft light of Declan's fire. And that's when I see him, when we all see him at the front of this plush, well-appointed room that is very obviously a Councilor's office.

In the very front of the room, over what was once a desk but now has very much become an altar, is what is left of ACW Councilor Viktor Alride. And it isn't pretty.

His first glimpse of the murder scene has Declan cursing, low and long and vicious. Lily gasps, and then it's her turn to be sick. Declan conjures up a container and hands it to her before she can make a mess.

I know I should be shocked, repulsed, horrified, by what I'm seeing, just as they are. And there's a part of me that is. But that part isn't in control right now. Instead, the compulsion still has me and it's dragging me across the floor until I'm inches from the desk. And inches from the body suspended in midair over it.

Councilor Alride did not have an easy end.

“Xandra.” Declan comes up behind me, rests his hands on my shoulders. “What are you doing?”

“I don't know.” I sound lost, confused. I don't feel that way, but then I'm not feeling much of anything right now. The compulsion has finally eased and now I just feel . . . empty. Like I don't have anything to fill up the void it's left behind.

“Fuck!” he mutters under his breath, then turns his voice low, soothing, as he addresses me. “Come on, baby, let's step back a little. You don't want to mess with the integrity of the scene.”

Oh. Right. The integrity of the scene. So that Witchcraft Investigations can get to work finding out who did this to a mighty Councilor.

“We need to get out of here. Xandra, please.” Lily looks at me with pleading eyes. “We have to leave.”

I look at her in surprise. She knows I can't leave until the body has been taken care of. Until it has left the scene.

“We should call someone,” I tell Declan. The only problem is, I don't know whom to call. Austin's Witchcraft Investigations department? Though Austin is a lot bigger than my hometown of Ipswitch, the WI department here is pretty much a joke. Except for the Council—whose headquarters most people don't even know are here—Austin is pretty much a witchcraft-light city. In fact, I know only about ten members of my coven who actually live here. Which means Austin is not exactly a hotbed of witch-on-witch crime. No crime, no WI.

“They must have security headquarters down here somewhere.” I walk closer to the desk, reach for the phone. “There must be some kind of internal—”

“Don't touch that!” Declan's voice cracks like a whip. “We can't call anyone, Xandra.”

“We have to. We can't just leave him here. There are things that need to be done.”

Things like cutting him down. Things like—

I freeze as a new observation penetrates my shock. I stare at the body, horrified, even as I allow Declan to guide me a few steps back. Only then do I ask him, “Do you notice anything strange?”

“You mean, besides the fact that there's a man spread-eagled and strung up in the front of the room? And that he's been completely eviscerated?”

“Yes. Besides that.”

Declan looks at me like I'm insane. And maybe I am. Goddess knows, I'm not sure where this bizarre sense of calm is coming from. There's a part of me that's freaking out, that's screaming. I'm staring at a man whose abdomen has been so deeply sliced open that his internal organs have fallen out of his body—all thanks to gravity and the heavy-duty hooks and chains that are keeping him suspended from the ceiling.

Yet there's another, darker part of me that looks at this as karmic justice. Maybe I should have more pity for him, because, goddess knows, he suffered. But as I stare up at Councilor Alride, all I can think is that he still didn't suffer as much as Lina did. Or Amy. Or the other two girls Kyle tortured, raped and murdered at the Council's behest.

Why shouldn't he have died like this?

Why shouldn't he suffer the way he ensured others did?

The thoughts are so black, so unlike me, that I feel a little nauseated just having them roll around in my brain. Nobody should die like this. Nobody should suffer this way.

And yet, there's a righteousness about it too. . . .

The two different feelings war within me, until I'm confused, conflicted—like there are two separate people inside me taking this all in. Two separate moral codes that are making very different judgments.

That makes no sense, especially considering I don't suffer from multiple personality disorder. Or at least, I never have before.

“Xandra, darling.” Declan's voice intrudes on the strange fog that seems to have enveloped me. As it does, it snaps me back from the edge of whatever crazy cliff I'm standing on.

Horror overwhelms me—at my own moment of callousness as much as at the sight of Councilor Alride—and I stumble backward, hand pressed against my mouth.

“Are you going to be sick?” Declans asks.

“No.” But I bend over, let the blood rush back to my head. Better safe than sorry.

He's right there, rubbing my back, all concerned eyes and worried voice. As I struggle to pull air into my tortured lungs, it occurs to me that this is the reaction he's been looking for. What he's been expecting all along—a minor freak to show just how incapable I am of handling the darker aspects of this gift he's brought into my life.

Once I can breathe, I look up. See the guilt shining in eyes as dark as obsidian.

It straightens my spine, pulls me back from the edge in a way nothing else could have right now. “It's okay,” I tell him, running a hand down his back.

Then I turn to my best friend. “Lily, are you okay?”

She stares at me with haunted, incredulous eyes. “Are you kidding me?”

“Take her into the hall,” Declan tells me. But even as he says it, we know it's not going to happen. I won't be able to move from this room until Councilor Alride has been cut down.

“I'm fine,” she tells us. “Just do whatever you have to do so we can get the hell out of here.”

I don't bother to tell her that it doesn't work like that. I'm too busy staring at the body at the front of the room again. Now that I have my feelings under control, my earlier impressions are all ricocheting back—one thought chief among them.

“Declan?” I ask, looking over the carnage with the most impersonal eyes I can manage.

“Yeah, baby?” I can feel his resistance in every breath he takes, every word he doesn't say. He wants nothing more than to gather me up and take me as far away from this place as we can get. The fact that he can't—that it simply is not possible—is ripping at him the same way the compulsion ripped at me earlier.

It's another realization, another by-product of our relationship that I'll have to think on later. Because right now, my mind is occupied by just one thing—the bold and terrifying truth staring back at me out of Councilor Alride's unseeing eyes.

“There's no blood.”