Seducing Destiny (15 page)

“I don’t know what wards are left, but there really can’t be any if you are all inside the Guild,” he said wryly as he cleared his throat of the emotion that he’d just felt, shedding it like a second skin. One minute he’d been broken, and in the next he was back and fully in charge of his emotions. “They’ve got a guy with them, scary as shit. Not Human, and not Fae. The way he moves…it’s not normal. Shit, damn thing doesn’t even pretend to be Human.”

“We can handle him,” I whispered as I helped Alden as he tried to get up and failed. Asrian was right behind him and scooped him up as if he weighed nothing.

“Leave me here and go save the Demon,” he whispered brokenly.

“Never,” I answered and looked up at Alden.

We waited for them to sift out before I stood and looked at Ryder and his men. I knew that if Ristan had screamed, something had been horribly wrong. He was a born fighter, as were all of these men. They didn’t show weakness to an enemy, ever.

“They’ve got God bolts. That’s the only way—” I announced, and then I felt power, immense power unchecked in shielding itself. I turned and watched as Danu shimmered in, and then the feel of power was gone.

“It’s a trap,” she announced and I noticed she was dressed for war.

“We kinda figured as much,” I said, and then tilted my head. Well, I had figured it was. Why else bring Alden upstairs where we would find him and keep him separated from Ristan?

“No, Synthia, Bilé is here. Not even Ryder can stand against him. He’s helping the Mages, and he’s close. I can feel him.”

“We’re not backing down, period. Ristan is alive, and down in the catacombs. I won’t believe otherwise unless I see his corpse,” I seethed. I was serious; I wasn’t leaving without him or his bloody heap of remains. I owed him that much.

“I can’t challenge the Mages, but I can help with Bilé. He’s crossed the line, and he’ll pay for what he’s done. That I can do without repercussions,” she said, and I turned to find the entire Elite Guard staring at me like I was insane, except Ryder.

“Mother, show yourself, at least enough that they can see you,” I groaned.

“You think it wise?” she asked Ryder, instead of me.

“Yes,” he said. “My brothers know her secret already. I trust them with my very life.”

I heard them gasp, and knew the moment she revealed herself.

“Shit,” Aodhan whispered and then kneeled at her feet, as did the rest of them.

“Get up, fight now, worship later,” I said and turned back to Danu. “If Bilé is here, that changes everything. Zahruk fashioned some of the bolts that Joseph used on me into daggers, he showed them to me the other day. Will they work on him?” I asked, and then almost groaned as her eyes grew wide with pleasure.

“Yes, they should. He created them to use on me. He and his men tested them on another God who had displeased him first. We can’t touch them though,” she admitted.

“Actually, we can. The guard, grip and pommel of the daggers are bronze wrapped with leather. He’s pretty bad ass with knives and daggers, and I should know, he stabbed me once.” Zahruk rolled his eyes as he glamoured the sheathed daggers and gave them to us.

“Then let’s go take their God, and see how tough they are without him fighting at their side,” Danu said with a little bit too much enthusiasm for my taste.

Chapter Twenty-Three

We were back in the main hall, deciding what would be the smartest route. Ryder had dispatched part of our group to search for the living and the dead in the upper and central areas, keeping the main body of Fae with us. I had showed them to one of the many hidden ways into the catacombs that lay just beneath us in the Guild’s lower levels. We couldn’t hear anything, and Danu couldn’t sense Ristan, or feel him either.

She’d gone back to being hidden from the men, which was how it should be, considering the way some of them had looked at her.

Ryder had decided it best that we not sift to the catacombs, since I knew the Guild had spelled it for sifting, and we didn’t have the time it would take to undo the spell if it was still in place. That meant we had most of the Horde’s Elite Guard stealthily sneaking into some trap.

I waited as Zahruk and Ryder whispered intensely over which would be the best course. Zahruk wanted Ryder to sift out, and I understood his fears. There was only one thing the Mages wanted, and that was to kill the strongest being in Faery, which was Ryder. I wanted him away from here as well, because I needed to focus, and the idea that there was a
God
down there, waiting to help the Mages hurt him, left me mindless.

“Forget it, not going to happen. I owe Ristan, and I’ll be damned if I hide from a fight.”

We both stared at Ryder, and I got it. It sucked, but I understood his need, and knew how it felt to know someone you loved was in trouble, and the almost suicidal need to sacrifice yourself to save them. Not that Ryder was thinking he’d need to, but he wasn’t going to back down.

“Ryder will be fine. He’s the King, and for all we know, they already know we’re here. If he leaves, who’s to say they won’t just kill Ristan?” I asked; and yes, my heart was in my throat, and I knew they could see the anxiousness in my face.

“We’ll be fine,” Ryder said as he finally agreed to fall back and let his men go before him.
“Synthia,”
his mental voice flashed across my mind as we fell in behind Aodhan, Savlian, and Zahruk
. “I need you to stay back, so that my focus is on Ristan and what is happening when we get there.”

“Don’t do that,”
I said not bothering to meet his eyes.
“You didn’t leave so your men could focus, so don’t even think of asking me to stand back and wait this shit out. Maybe I should be asking you to stand back, so that I don’t worry?”

“Yes please,” Zahruk growled from the front of our line.

“Shut it,”
I snapped at Zahruk’s back, hopping on Ryder’s mental path to his men and watched with an angry glare as his shoulders moved with his silent laughter.
“We are facing a God, and neither of us knows how to handle that, but if we get him, Ryder, if we can take away their advantage, we have a huge chance of ending this war before it even begins.”

“Then I want you beside Danu, and we go with her plan,”
Ryder said.
“I’ll stay with Zahruk and my men, and we both win.”

“I’ll agree to that.”
I slipped my hand into his and twisted my fingers around his larger ones.
“I just hope we’re not too late.”

We stopped in front of an old tapestry and Zahruk shot me a questioning look.
“That’s not it,”
I noted, and moved closer to it, as I pointed out one of the other tapestries further down the hall.
“The steps at the bottom of that one are in shambles, but we can get to the catacombs faster that way. They also wouldn’t think we’d use these ones. From the bottom it looks like it’s completely destroyed.”

I passed the one we’d been standing at and headed to the secondary one which was never used because of the mishap of a young Warlock who’d accidently blown most of the bottom steps into pieces. I slid the Plexiglas out of the way, and slipped through before holding it open for the rest to make it through.

The staircase was rounded, and the upper half wasn’t as damaged as the bottom. I made sure to overstep the large pieces of stone that would alert anyone with clear hearing of our arrival. At the bottom, I paused and listened. It was eerily silent, and that worried me. The rest of the men followed my lead, and then I fell back to Ryder’s side, and continued to listen.

Ristan was a fighter, and a damn good one at that. He was powerful, and the only thing that I knew of that was strong enough to slow the Demon down, would be God bolts. Luckily Zahruk had the foresight to make weapons out of those things that we could use when they couldn’t figure out how they worked.

As we grew closer to the large open room that served as one of the reception rooms for the library and archives, I stopped and paused. So too, did everyone else. Not far away from us, we could hear soft crying that sounded like a female. I couldn’t tell who it was, but I figured it was a start at finding where they’d placed Ristan.

I didn’t make a foot before Ryder grabbed me and pulled me back to him. “Wait,” he whispered against my ear.

“Stop crying. Stupid girl, what are you crying for? Huh?” An angry male’s voice sounded from less than a few steps away from us.

“You killed innocent people. You didn’t have to kill them. They wouldn’t have told anybody!” the woman cried, and my spine straightened. My hands itched, and I moved forward. I had to get closer, and Ryder knew it.

He and his men followed me as I snuck up and ducked beneath one of the massive shelves that housed part of the Guild’s history. I couldn’t make out who was crying, and who the men were, but I could feel the hatred pouring off of them. My guess was at least the male was a Mage, and the woman was from the Guild.

Mages.

I felt them in the space now; felt their anxiety and their cocky self-assurance that they’d be successful today. Joke was on them. I’d learned that lesson the hard way, which they’d learn as well. You never got cocky when you hadn’t been dealt your hand yet.

“Shut her up, the Elder is gone. The Fae are in the building,” another male’s voice ground out and I stopped breathing.

I felt the others go still around me as well. We all watched as one of the Mages walked over to where we were, his eyes searching up and down the aisle, and missing us completely. I released the breath I was holding, and thanked the stars that he couldn’t actually see us while we were cloaked by Ryder’s invisibility veil.

Danu looked down at me and shook her head.
“I can’t feel Bilé; not yet anyway, which means he can’t feel us, either.”

“That’s good,”
I replied and watched as the Mage moved around, heading back in the direction he’d come from.

“You feel that? It almost feels as if we’re being watched,” he said to the others in the room.

“If we were being watched, Bilé would tell us,” another said. We stood up and moved further down the room until we rounded the corner, and the smell that met us, was nauseating. Dead bodies had been piled together.

I had to stop, close my eyes, and seal off my heart at the sight of people I had once known, people who had been killed recently, from the looks of the remains. I moved away from them without bothering to see if anyone followed. I couldn’t stand the sight of it, or the guilt that gnawed on me.

I knew I couldn’t have changed it, but it was a different matter getting my heart to accept that. I entered another room and waited at the threshold for the rest of the group. Inside the room was dark, but I could almost make out a silhouette. Whoever it was had their back to us and their head down.

I used the senses I’d been given, and tried to see through the darkness, but it was as if the darkness was a thick mist, and no matter how much I tried to, I couldn’t see through it.

“That’s not Ristan.”
Ryder pulled me back.

“Whoever it is needs our help,”
I growled.

“No, they don’t. They’re beyond our help, Pet,”
he replied and pointed to the floor where even I could make out the thick dark pool of blood.

“I’m really going to enjoy killing these bastards.”
I accepted his outstretched hand as we headed down the hall to where the library was. It would be the ideal place to create a setup, because it had the most unused space.

“You and me both, Syn,”
Zahruk said as he moved in front of us.

As we rounded the corner, we all stopped. Ristan was there, and he was tied to what looked like a mediaeval torture device. His arms were tied to one end and his feet were tied to the other. His eyes were vacant, and he had been brutally tortured. His face was a mass of slashes and angry looking bruises and his body had fared no better. His shirt was missing so I could see that his ribs were sunken in, and he had at least six God bolts in his shoulders and upper arms. I could sense there was more damage that we couldn’t see. I couldn’t stand to see him like this.

“He’s not coherent,” Ryder growled.

Inside the room with Ristan was a large number of Mages and quite a few Guild Warlocks I recognized, but they weren’t who I was worried about. Bilé was somewhere in this place, hiding as he waited for us. I stepped further into the room, noting that if I didn’t, Ryder would. It didn’t matter though. Danu passed us, and stopped everyone as she took the lead.

“Bilé,” she whispered.

I watched as one of the larger Mages turned and looked at her, and then transformed. He was over seven feet tall, and beautiful. He had silver hair, and eyes of the clearest summer sky. His mouth was soft, and yet as I watched him, it grew tight with emotion.

He paused, his eyes raking over her and for a brief second, I saw raw need in his eyes. He growled her name, and the entire room shook.

“Husband, it’s been awhile,” Danu purred, and I turned to look at her. She was beautiful as a pure Goddess; her inner beauty was alight with a glow that created a halo of blonde curls that framed her face. Gone were her leather pants, and in their place was the Goddess attire. This was the Danu that Ristan had described to me in the Maze.

She held her hands palm up, her face tilted, pain in her eyes. It was raw, emotional pain that this man had created, and it was strong. They’d held true love at one time, until years of competition had created strife between them. I reminded myself why we were here, and turned back to find Bilé watching me with open curiosity.

“Is she yours?” he asked as his eyes slid down my body.

“Yes,” Danu answered him softly.

“She’s beautiful, just as our own child would have been, had she survived,” he whispered as his eyes moved back to Danu’s.

I looked to where Ryder and his men stood, silently watching what was occurring. They’d remain invisible until Danu made a move, and then they’d become visible to the Mages, to keep them engaged.

I blinked and almost looked away, but Ristan let out a strangled bellow of pain and I turned my attention to where one of the Mages had stabbed yet another bolt in his chest. “Don’t,” I warned as he pulled yet another one up and readied it.

“What are you going to do?” he sneered, which made his features pinch and I was reminded of Joseph, as he removed Larissa’s heart from her chest.

“I’m going to rip your guts out, and I’ll do it while you’re still using them. Then, after I’m done, I’ll show you your insides, and give you a fucking anatomy lesson.”

He blanched, but regained his composure. “We have a God on our side!” he shouted defiantly.

“So what’s your plan, wife? Kill me for what I’ve done to your children?” Bilé asked as he tilted his head, and watched her.

“I’ve no intention of killing you, husband.”

“Ahh, then this newly hatched Goddess must be the one who’s planning to end my life,” he said with a narrowed look my way.

“She’s not a part of this, Bilé,” Danu warned. “She’s mine, of my womb.”

He swallowed and narrowed his eyes on me and for a brief moment, I felt him inside of me, searching my DNA until he found what he wanted, and then pulled back. I felt slightly violated, but something in his demeanor changed and he snapped.

“You mated with those vile fucks!?” His entire body shook with anger and his head swiveled to look at Ristan with an evil glare. His voice actually shook the ancient stone columns of the catacombs, and new leaks appeared and started to fill the floor with water.

It had always been damp down here, but new cracks were forming and water was leaking from the walls of the catacombs. Bilé was coming undone. He was actually glowing with hatred, and I could hear the Mages that were hiding in his cloaking field.

“I lay down with no Fae, I only placed my egg where a seed could plant it,” she sneered angrily. “After all this time and you’re jealous of my children.”

“I’m not jealous. You are mine! You’ve always been and will always be mine,” he growled.

I blinked and then chanced a peek at Ristan, who was glaring at me with a look of sheer hatred, but I knew it wasn’t for me. He was glaring at Bilé. I smiled. He glared. He was glaring, so hell yes I was smiling! If he could glare, it meant there was hope for him yet. I waited until Bilé moved closer, his angry arms swung out as if he was going to hit me, and I paused.

Danu shoved me, because I was trying to sift and we both knew it. She brought her fist up and slammed it against Bilé’s lips, and blood exploded from his nose. Oh yeah, that relationship was toxic! The Mages stood rooted to the spot, watching and waiting to see who would win. I wanted to, but I had a job to do.

I waited until she sifted behind him and Zahruk’s daggers materialized in her hands as she drove them into Bilé’s back while the Mages called out warnings. Two seconds later, I was left in the room with close to twenty Mages and Warlocks, and one bloody heap of Ristan.

I smiled, and felt a level of pleasure I shouldn’t have at the knowledge that I could now slaughter these sick bastards. I felt the moment Ryder and his men became visible, because the Mages turned a pasty shade of white. I pulled power from within and my brands lit up.

“Showtime,” I growled as I moved toward the Mages. The first one started chanting, and I punched him, right in the teeth, and enjoyed the burn as his teeth cut my knuckle, and then his scream as he choked on them. I dropped low and swung my foot out, catching his feet and taking them out from under him.

I stood up and kicked out with the other foot, catching one in his cheek, and another in the nose. I kept kicking, swinging, and slicing through them with the wicked iron blades Zahruk had been overly willing to part with since he was basically allergic to the metal they’d been formed out of.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ryder and the rest of the men engaging the balance of the Warlocks and Mages. Seeing Fae fighting is a frightening, barbaric thing to witness and I was glad I was fighting with them, and not against them.