Incubus Moon (38 page)

The two vampires with burns looked as though they wanted to bolt. I didn’t blame them. The others offered questioning, if not uncertain, glances to their leader.

As the amber glow fanned out, mobility returned to my legs and feet. Its radiance penetrated my skin with energizing heat. Gone was the paralysis and stench of the grave. I was filling with glorious new power and wanted nothing more than to strike out at the trio above me, to reach up and rip their throats open.

“Temperance, child,” the dark voice warned. “Vengeance will be yours.”

“Part the gates and permit us passage!” Haemon commanded.

My body jerked, as did Niko’s. It was as if we were being pulled in multiple directions from the inside out, not unlike the hell dimension Haemon had conjured for me.

Kassandra looked questioningly to her consort, but Haemon remained impassive, his gaze fixed on the glowing amulet and its
expanding halo. Conversely, Mark and the other henchmen had grown borderline panicked.

The vibration in the small chamber intensified. The ancient walls strained under the pressure, until they began to groan, then crack, sending dust particles and small bits of mortar to rain down on us. The exposed light bulb suspended from a thin wire in the ceiling above us grew brighter, then exploded, sending sharp fragments of glass in all directions.

Haemon took in the spectacle with all the wonder of a zealot, his mind touching my own, his thoughts a jumble of eager anticipation. He truly believed that whatever he’d awakened, whatever he’d summoned from that primordial pit, was here to serve him and him alone, as the glow from the amulet expanded to encompass everyone in the cell. It poured over and around us, and I wrapped protective arms around Niko still on top of my chest in the same instant that a perfect silence swallowed the sound of fracturing stone and metal.

Haemon and I shared one final, knowing glance before the tugging and stretching at our insides grew too intense. Kassandra, Mark, and the others were shouting, their words falling hollow. The light had struck us all deaf.

That was when I saw it, a tiny green spark from the pocket of Haemon’s trousers.

I didn’t have to think twice. Taking Niko with me, I jerked forward and up to seize the leading edge of his front pocket and tore it away from his hip. The emerald from the amulet flew from its fabric prison to land on Niko’s stomach.

Haemon’s face contorted with rage, his mouth working furiously in a volley of commands (or curses) that I couldn’t hear.

Mark lunged for the glittering gemstone, but I was quicker. Snatching it up, I did what instinct dictated: I swallowed it.

The amber glow enveloping us discharged a blinding shower of orange, gold, and copper light. The concussion blew everyone’s bodies outward in a bizarre slow motion, where we all hung in mid-air for a few seconds, before being sucked back into the center of the explosion, toward the amulet itself.

I hugged Niko to me, wrapping protective arms and legs ever more tightly around him.

“At last!” the dark voice exclaimed. Only this time it was no longer in my head.

Haemon was searching frantically for us, but the shimmering light shielded Niko and me from the others. We were hardly free of him, though; only hidden for a while.

“Praise to you, child!” the ancient and powerful voice extolled. “I am born again!”

Above the turbulent light storm, the scent of rotting citrus intensified, but then softened to that of fragrant orange blossom. The thick layer of grime coating my skin began to dissolve under the heat radiating outward from my extremities. Even with Niko across my chest, I could feel the sticky soot loosening and melting away.

A loud sucking noise, followed by a thunderous clap, dimmed the eddying mass of crystalline light to reveal that we were no longer in Haemon’s castle.

Hell, I wasn’t even certain we on the planet Earth anymore.

“The Age of the Vampire is past,” the voice said. “Behold the Age of the Incubus!”

CHAPTER 39

We were standing at the center of the vast temple complex Shayla had once shown me in a dream vision. Except this time it was devoid of beautiful, smiling worshipers, its adornments of precious metals and gemstones absent, too, as were the set of double-thrones. Monolithic pillars still encircled a space large enough to accommodate thousands and soared to meet a ceiling so high it seemed endless. The design and scale evoked the Pantheon in Rome, albeit a less ornate version, which made it no less impressive. Countless crystals decorated the rock walls between columns and winked back at me from within the gloom, capturing the light from the dozen or so fires burning within braziers suspended from the massive curved walls. The reflection from their flames danced on the black granite floor, lending an eerie grandeur to the room.

“Where are we?” Niko asked in a husky voice.

About to answer him, something solid connected with the side of my face and the temple went dark.

“Vampires!” Shayla paced the length of my Los Angeles living room. “Immortality isn’t enough for you any longer?”

The familiar setting and its contents were exactly as I’d left them. My packed duffle bag and suitcase still waited by the front door for a departure that didn’t happen at all the way I’d planned it. Psychic Joy and my best friends were dead, and God only knew what fate awaited poor Niko. And while Mark Gold may not have physically died, the person I thought he was had.

He was just another monster to me now.

Dimitri’s face darkened with anger. “I tire of your questions. Get on with it.”

“The Haemon Beast has invoked the power of the amulet and taken Austin to
Scáth Talún
, along with your manservant and a cadre of vampire guards.”

She produced a silver sword from within the folds of her robes, which Dimitri eyed warily. This appeared to please her, because she moved her fingertips ever so slightly across the jeweled hilt to toy with him. I was beginning to see another, more unpleasant, side to Shayla.

“Don’t you mean the Emerald City?
Scáth Talún
is pure myth.”

“As are vampires, and yet here the Great Blood General stands after more than two thousand years.” She offered him a wry smile. “Rest assured, it is as real as you or I, and we will need a weapon such as this once we gain access to it.” She gestured to the sword, and then pressed the ornate handle into the folds of her dress robes, where it vanished into the creases of shimmering bronze fabric. “And this will do just that.” She touched a similar medallion hanging around her neck; a nearly identical piece to the one Haemon possessed. “But we must move with haste. Your lieutenant isn’t the only danger to my son in
Scáth Talún
.”

Gain access to it?
I couldn’t help smiling. They were both coming for us!

“What is it you aren’t telling me?” Dimitri took a few menacing steps closer to her.

Shayla’s hand neared the area of her gown where she was concealing the sword. “It is a private matter and none of your concern, vampire.”

“Except that you ask me to risk my life to accompany you there,” Dimitri hit back.

The scent of orange blossom cut short my joy and relief. I turned to see that terrible place rise up beyond the balcony to my guest house. It was calling to me, telling me to come home.

I opened my eyes to the vast temple complex once more and to what had to be the bruise of the century decorating the right side of my face. It was swollen and tender as I worked my jaw back and forth. Although not half as tender as the sting of humiliation upon discovering myself chained to a hollowed-out, circular stone wheel in a semi-naked, spread-eagle.

On the upside, it was day.

Sunlight poured over my body from an opening in the tall, domed ceiling. Oddly though, the light offered little warmth, despite its intensity, and created long, dramatic shadows around the outer-most edges of the temple.

I tugged at the metal cuffs biting into the flesh of my wrists and ankles, which had been secured to four sizeable bolts at the top and bottom of the circular apparatus of which I was the heart. Apparently, they’d been designed to be incubus-proof.

A black granite altar sat ten feet in front of me. I remembered it from my dreams and wished I hadn’t. Devoid of embellishments, with the exception of a carved niche at one end of the slab and two thickly grooved channels running the length of the altar and emptying into this
niche, one on either side, the drainage slit in the floor beneath it left little guesswork as to the altar’s primary function.

Dimitri and Shayla had better get a move on, because this whole setup screamed bloody sacrifice. And where was Niko?

“Why so troubled,
tesoro
?”

Kassandra approached the wide ring of light and paused at its edge, her hands resting on shapely hips. She was closer to it than I thought possible for a vampire.

As usual, she was runway-model-perfect in a brown, tweed pencil skirt, gold silk blouse, and a pair of stiletto pumps. Her long, dark hair dipped over the left side of her face in the same
femme fatale
fashion I’d seen back at the castle.

Good thing she couldn’t get anywhere near me. Not unless she was looking to become vamp flambé. Fortunately, some of the old book and film clichés held true when it came to real life vampires—silver and sunlight was anathema to them.

She shot me a wicked grin, and then walked directly into the light, her high-heels making clickety noises against the black granite floor.

Kassandra stopped directly in front of me, took a beat to revel in my stunned expression, stepped up onto the lip of my rock prison, and with a quick toss of her hair revealed the ghastly line of scars riddling the left side of her once beautiful face. They pulled at the corner of her eye, drooping it, before running down her neck to disappear beneath the fabric of her blouse.

“Like what you see?” The question came out a hiss, her coppery-sweet breath a sign that she’d recently fed. When she leaned in closer, fingernails biting into the bare flesh of my shoulders, the ruin of her face was so near that she appeared to have only one hostile, amber eye. “That was some
spettacolo
you gave us.” She had to mean the explosion I caused in Haemon’s bedroom. “
Esattamente!
And now I have a little
spettacolo
to give to you…”

I braced myself for the serious bodily harm Kassandra undoubtedly had in store for me, but she whipped her head toward the deep shadows beyond our circle of light and scanned them.

Yes, I thought I’d glimpsed movement there, too. I’d also felt the unnatural drop in temperature. Some
thing
had come among us. Unseen and powerful, it glided silently in and around the giant granite pillars. Watching us.

No sooner did a smile begin to form on my lips than icy tendrils brushed against the surface of my semi-naked skin. They snaked along my extremities to coalesce in the bloated and bruised flesh of my wrists and ankles, cooling the painful swelling caused by the tight metal cuffs.

On an instinctive level, I knew that I could now break free of these restraints. I could finally repay this bitch for what she’d done to me and the people I loved.

“Patience,” a voice inside my head instructed. “It is not yet time…”

The golden light enveloping us brightened, forming a dramatic spiral of swirling dust motes. Kassandra and I followed this column of particles up to the dome’s opening and to the sun sitting exactly at its center. How odd. It didn’t blind me to stare into the radiant disk.

When our eyes met again, hers were aglow with an amber fire that burned from within, a fire fueled by hatred and hunger. She didn’t care about Haemon’s plans for me. This was her moment, her one shot at revenge.

“Kassandra.”

That one word reverberated throughout the temple. It had been spoken with enough menace that she stepped down and away from me, but I could see that her fury hadn’t diminished.

Haemon approached us with slow, methodical steps, the effect of his smile under the dazzling light a chilling display. But I had my strength back. The amulet he was wearing didn’t control me any longer. What had once given rise to its formidable power no longer resided within
the ancient talisman. It had been freed. It walked among us even now, concealed.