Shadow Rising (Dark Dynasties #3)

Vlad looked at his watch and narrowed his eyes. “I have to agree with you, Arsinöe. He isn’t coming. Which makes our task even more urgent.”

Arsinöe seemed satisfied, and Ariane wondered how Vlad could stand to be cordial to a woman who’d openly tried to destroy him not long ago. Politics, she guessed. But it was no wonder Lily looked edgy and Ty was so tense. The undercurrents in this room were pure poison.

“Perhaps we should discuss the Empusa’s urgent matter first,” Arsinöe suggested, looking hungrily at the small contingent of Empusae. “I would hate to deprive her of any counsel she might wish regarding her… decision… should the divination tire her.”

Diana lifted her chin and leveled a glare at Arsinöe. “My mistress feels the matter of the Grigori is more important this evening. She says she’ll address this matter you’re so interested in at a later date.”

Ariane watched as Arsinöe’s lip began to curl, wondering whether they would even make it to the divination before a fight broke out.

“Let Ariane come out, then,” Lily interjected, drawing everyone’s attention. She looked directly at the tapestry. “It’s all right. I think it’s clear you’re going to be the only Grigori here.”

Ariane took a deep breath and pushed the tapestry aside, stepping out with every eye on her. She tried to focus on the encouraging smiles, rather than the heated glares she was getting from the Ptolemy contingent.

“Foolishness,” she heard Arsinöe mutter. “This is a waste of time.”

Vlad indicated the empty bench. “Please.”

Ariane moved quickly to settle herself, feeling awkward about sitting alone. That was quickly forgotten, however, when Vlad looked toward the doorway and relief relaxed his features.

“Ah. We’re ready to begin.”

The lights flickered in the chandelier and went out, plunging the room into darkness. But a vampire’s eyes could see well in the dark, and Ariane had no trouble watching the woman in the white robe walk in.

She seemed to glow with a light of her own, and Ariane watched her, fascinated. She had never seen a vampire like this, one who seemed both old and not old at the same time. Her hair was snow white, far whiter, even, than Ariane’s. It spilled over the shoulders of a robe made of white silk. The woman’s skin was pale, but not the shade that denoted health for a vampire. It was sickly, almost ashen. Her face was beautiful… or it had been once. There was something ruined about it, something off, as though it were a mask that was concealing some terrible decay beneath it and was about to slip.

And yet there was power here. Ariane could feel it in the air, with every breath she took. It fairly radiated off this woman, Mormo, Empusa, leader of the Empusae, daughter of Hecate. Ariane smelled incense and oils and the faint, sweet scent of leaves long dead.

As Ariane watched, Mormo came to stand in the center of the room, lifted hands that looked more like old, hooked claws, and extended them out to her sides. Her eyes, milky white, glowed nonetheless. With a jolt, Ariane realized the woman was blind.

She cried out in Greek, a musical torrent of words that Ariane could barely decipher. She heard fragments, understood “Grant me wisdom” and “Grant me sight.”

The glow from Mormo grew brighter, and her attendants rose, chanting in Greek. One came to stand before her, one on either side of her. Diana carried a simple golden chalice, which she handed to Mormo. The attendants then dropped to their knees in unison, and Ariane saw the flash of small knives that must have been tucked into the folds of their chitons. One after another, the women made a single cut on the underside of her wrist and let the blood fall to the ground. The instant the drops hit the floor, an intricate pattern, like a spiderweb, began to glow beneath all of their feet. In the center was a circle. And completely inside the circle was Mormo.

One by one, Arsinöe, Vlad, and Lily rose, moving to surround the leader of the Empusae, who extended the chalice to each in turn. Each gave a few drops of blood, crimson spattering against gold. Lily extended a claw. Arsinöe used a dagger. Vlad drew his wrist across his fangs. Ariane stood quickly, nearly forgetting her part. Her blood would play the most important role in this ritual, from what she had been told.

The cup pulsed with the power that had collected inside of it, lifeblood of the strongest vampires. Mormo held it out to Ariane, seeing her, Ariane was sure, with her strange blind eyes. Ariane fumbled a moment with her dagger but got it unsheathed quickly enough. She held her wrist over the chalice, slicing a thin, shallow line in her skin. Her blood, so dark as to be nearly black, dripped slowly out to mingle with the crimson.

Ariane stepped back quickly when it was done, feeling interested eyes watching her. She knew they had seen the dark blood, so different from their own. Still, she managed to look at everything and nothing, lifting her chin and moving quickly back to her place.

“Grigori,” Mormo said, drawing out the word. It seemed to echo, filling the chamber.

Then she began to chant.

A haze grew around the Empusa, a swirling cloud that was at first bright white, then faded to dusky gray. Within, she continued her chanting, though that sound began to be drowned out by others. Screams. Hooves hitting the hard earth. The flutter of wings.

Ariane blinked, suddenly disoriented. The world around her began to go dark, and images started to flicker through her mind, disjointed at first, then more cohesive.

Beautiful beings falling from a war-torn sky, some with wings of ebony, others with wings the gray of the sky at morning. Sammael’s wings, she thought. Some of these beings vanished as they hit the earth, crying out in pain to an indifferent moon. Others crawled into caves, fleeing underground from the burning sun. Still others stayed above, creating a fortress in the sand, hiding from the light and feeding by moonlight. Ariane saw the white hair, the burning violet eyes, and knew them… even Sam. He was one of nine, and Ariane knew all the faces, even Lucan’s. All, save one.

For a time, the men Ariane knew as ancient ones did nothing but hunt their black-winged brethren, those even more cursed than they. The fortress in the sand grew, and in time, most of the dark wings either vanished or were killed. All but the strongest, whose torment of humankind became the sole focus of those who could sense them. Watchers. Grigori. One by one, the dark fallen were destroyed. But while the Grigori studied books, watched the sky, and tried to maintain some tenuous connection to wherever they had fallen from, one of their own had wings turning pitch-black.

The images flickered faster through Ariane’s mind. A village of broken human bodies. And another. And another. A beautiful, masculine face with eyes full of hatred and madness, screaming in pain and fury. A pit so deep it seemed to go to the center of the world, and at the bottom, chained to the wall, weakened but dangerous yet, was the beautiful creature who had become something other, something twisted and violent.

A demon, Ariane thought. A fallen angel gone mad. And when he sank his teeth into the offerings his brothers gave him, he drank more than blood. He drank the soul.

There was the briefest flash of Sariel standing before the demon, hands extended as though for an embrace, before Ariane felt herself plunged into blackness so ice-cold that she thought she would never be warm again. Faintly, she heard Damien calling to her.

Be careful… I’m on my way…

Her eyes flew open and she gasped in a breath, utterly disoriented for a moment until she remembered where she was. She’d slumped down on the bench, barely upright.

With hazy vision, she looked around to see the others rising from their places. Someone shouted as they gathered around a figure curled into a fetal position, motionless, on the floor. Ariane forced herself to her feet, starting toward the knot of people, when Vlad looked up at her, his eyes still hazed with shock. “Ariane. Get Ludo. Get someone. She’s not breathing.”

Ariane nodded and rushed to the door. She ran down the damp, quiet corridor on her way to the stairs, still reeling from all she had seen. Sam wasn’t truly a vampire. None of the ancients were. And their brother in chains… what he had done… what he could do…

He still whispered through her mind, in a voice dark and seductive.

I am Angel-No-More. I am Nothing. I am Everything. I am Chaos.

And I am Rising.

She didn’t see Ludo until she reached the bottom of the stairs. He lay sprawled across the bottom steps, unconscious. Above, all was silent.

The single breath she drew in was sharp and eerily loud in the utter absence of noise. Then she was grabbed from behind and dragged backward, one hand covering her mouth, another wrapped around her waist. All the air left her lungs in a rush, far too quickly to scream. A voice filled her head, so loud that it shot a sliver of bright pain right above her right eye.

Do not struggle, Ariane.

A strange, sweet smell wafted into her nostrils, drugging her, taking her down into a dark place where she could rest, forget. She tried to keep her head above water, but the currents were too strong, too deep.

You will help him rise.

From far away, she thought she heard a feline roar, the rustle of wings.

Then everything went black.

Chapter Twenty-Four

WHEN SHE OPENED HER EYES, at first all she saw was shining silver.

The she realized she’d been sleeping with her hair in her face. Still, it took a moment for Ariane to move. She felt groggy, a little sick, and stiff from sleeping on the cold, hard floor of wherever she was.

She had a bad feeling that she knew the answer to that.

With a soft groan, she pushed herself up, despite the shooting pain that went through her head. With a tentative hand, she pushed her hair out of her face and blinked slowly, looking around the small cell she’d been placed in. Ariane breathed in and smelled sand and spice, desert wind and… something wonderfully familiar.

It was only then that she realized what had wakened her.

A big, sleek black cat watched her steadily from the other side of her cage.

At first she thought she was hallucinating. But no matter how many times she blinked, the cat remained, its blue eyes fixed on her face. Damien’s eyes. Somehow, he had come for her.