"You will take the White."
"No," Elyssa said, her voice low with horror. "You wouldn't dare. I'm your daughter for god's sake! Your own flesh and blood!"
Thomas slammed a fist against his chest. "And that is why I cannot allow this insubordination, child! You will take the White, your mind wiped of the taint of Justin Slade. You will retrain and make yourself fit for duty. You were so close to the Cho'kai, daughter. So close to being the youngest to have taken and passed it."
"I guess you don't get a trophy then, Father." She spat the last word like a curse.
Kassallandra snatched Elyssa by the arm and drew her close as the hellhounds tightened the protective barrier around their mistress. "I cannot let you do such a thing, sir. Your daughter can be a salve for the wounds that separate us, Templaros Borathen. Together we can mend the errors of the past and uncover the truths hidden for too long."
Thomas narrowed his eyes. "I have enough Templars with me to kill your hellhounds, demon spawn, and if you think I'll hesitate to end you as well, then you're sadly mistaken."
"I had no idea you were so eager for open war between our houses, Templaros. Surely—"
Thomas slashed his hand through the air. "I would like nothing better than direct hostilities after dealing with the hide-and-seek politics you creatures employ to deny me justice. Test me, spawn, and find out."
Elyssa stepped from the protection of the hellhounds and went toward her father. Tears sparkled down her cheeks, caught in the bright orbs of light hovering above them. "If that happens, our factions will plunge into a war and destroy the Conclave. I can't let that happen, Kassallandra."
And neither could I. They might outnumber me. They might kill me. But stealing the girl I loved by wiping her memory was worse than death.
I stepped for the gate.
Streaks of white and black energy lanced from the obsidian structure and arced against the silver circle. Jagged bolts erupted in a dazzling array of light. I knew in an instant something was wrong. Without hesitation, I flung myself for the gate and Elyssa.
I landed stomach-first on a slab of slippery rock with the river just to my right and the others yards away. "Elyssa!" I yelled, scrambling to my feet and falling again as the slick moss stole all traction from my bare feet. I'd totally forgotten I was clad only in my boxers, my clothes still secured in the waterproof rucksack on my back.
Elyssa spun toward my voice, eyes glowing with hope. "Justin! Oh my god, you're alive!"
"Get her out of here," Thomas said, drawing his silvery sword and turning for me.
"I love you!" Elyssa screamed as three figures in black dragged her away.
"Stop!" I yelled and tried to run after her. But the world five feet beyond me warped as if I were in a bubble looking out. I moved my feet against the slick surface of the rock but something else had me and drew me back like a taut rubber band. An arc of pure white energy lanced and crackled against the ground. Blinding bolts of black and gray shattered my eyesight.
Flicker.
A void surrounded me and I floated in freezing nothingness. Moisture on my scantily clad body flash-froze to ice, stiffening along my arms and burning my lungs with frost. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I couldn't see.
Flicker.
I lay on polished black stone similar to the material I'd seen around the other arches. The air still felt freezing cold but not absolute zero like before. Ice shattered and cracked off of my skin as I sat up. Beings with human features but an unearthly, soft white luminescence to their bodies gathered at the edges of the polished stone, apparently unable to cross the circle. Their ethereal beauty caused my heart to ache for the simple touch of their hands.
One of them shouted in a hauntingly familiar tongue and held his arms high, his face jubilant.
Flicker.
I sat on another black slab. Twin moons hung above a landscape of purple sky dusted with stars. A hot wind grazed my skin, drying it and my hair within seconds. Babbling noises echoed from the darkness around me. Beneath the cone of yellow light streaming from somewhere above the black arch, tiny black figures emerged, each one wobbling and screeching.
Horror burst from my lungs in a panicked shout. My guts clenched and ice-cold fear left me shivering with sweat. I scrambled to my feet, shrinking back against the arch as the circle of pitch-black cherubs tottered for me with outstretched hands. They had no better luck crossing the edge of the polished stone than the beings in the last place, bouncing off and landing on their backs, terrible screams ripping from their throats. I clamped my hands over my ears, willing the horrible racket to stop.
Flicker.
I fell several feet and landed hard on a crushed jumble of black stone. Half an arch stood a few feet away, pale white and black strands of energy flickering in it before dying out and leaving me night blind for a brief moment. Once my eyes cleared, I looked up at the sky, found a familiar white moon, and prayed I was back on my own plane of existence. I ran from the circle, threw myself onto the hard-packed earth beyond, and lay there for a moment, breathing heavily as bowel-clenching dread eased slowly from my body.
After a few minutes, I pushed myself up and brushed the dust off my skin before pulling the clothes from the waterproof backpack and putting them on. I dug my phone out of the front pocket. No signal. The area around me buzzed with life. Birds called to one another, insects chirped and hummed, and I even heard something sounding suspiciously like a monkey.
I took further stock of my surroundings and saw what appeared to be the ruins of an ancient city. I walked a few feet and found a placard near the corner of a huge stone structure reminding me of something out of an Indiana Jones movie. The writing was in a language I couldn't speak, but knew enough of to identify thanks to my Spanish teacher. That's when it hit me. I had some idea where I was—the same place Underborn had ended up after the massacre at Thunder Rock. Part of me felt relief. Another part filled with dismay.
I was on Earth. More specifically, I was in Colombia.
The love of my life was about to have her mind-wiped. Thomas Borathen was ready to start a war with the spawn. Nobody knew where I was, nor could I contact anyone.
And it was a long walk home.
Chapter 8
The first sign of trouble was a whisper on the wind. The calls of wild animals filled the warm, Colombian night. Crickets chirped, a bird made a funny whooping noise, and another answered with a screech. But the whispers made me stop dead in my tracks, heart pounding with fear and thudding against my chest so hard I thought it might blow a hole through the bone and scamper away to join the native birds and monkeys in a tree somewhere.
I was thousands of miles from Atlanta, stuck in a jungle somewhere in southern Colombia after a freakish ride through an ancient arch, which hopped across god only knew how many planes of reality. The crumbling remains of that arch stood adjacent to the massive moss-covered structure before me now, and I knew of no way to activate it and get back home.
I had never felt more alone in my life.
Another whisper drifted into my ears. I listened hard, trying to make sense of the words. Was it saying that's nice, or you die? I decided the words didn't matter. The mere fact a creepy whisper was emanating from somewhere in the pitch black beyond my blue-tinged night vision sent another chill creeping down my back and panicked my already racing heart.
Animals, as far as I knew, couldn't whisper. By default, that meant it had to be a someone and not a something whispering. Though an occasional breeze rustled leaves and combed through my sweat-dampened hair, I could tell it had nothing to do with the whispers.
"You're imagining things, you nitwit," I said aloud, hoping the sound of my own voice would somehow make me feel a bit braver. It didn't work.
I pulled out my cell phone and checked the signal meter for the tenth time. Still nothing. Even if there were people whispering in the dark, I could outrun them. Provided they were normal humans, I could whip them in a fight, no problem. There was absolutely no reason for me to stand here ready to poop in my pants all because some bored native wanted to scare a tourist by whispering.
A lone whisper sounded from ahead. Another responded from behind. Yet another and another hissed from all sides until it was a constant susurrus.
"Who's there?" I yelled into the black of night.
Something shimmered in my night vision. Something humanoid and hunched. It shuffled from the dark and into the range of my night sight. Clouds of oily black smoke drifted from it, but it wasn't on fire. It was almost as if the thing leaked shadows from its skin, its eyes, and any other visible orifice. A twig snapped behind me and I spun to find another of the things encroaching. It didn't take my brain long to calculate the possible existence of similar creatures to all sides.
I stared in fascinated horror at the sickly pale flesh of the nearest of the beings. He, she, or it wore ragged clothes barely hanging by rotted threads. Beneath the mop of filthy matted hair, darkness oozed from the eyes, two smoking craters of malevolence.
"Who are you?" I asked. "Who in the hell are you?" My limbs trembled in fear and revulsion.
The nearest creature stopped and regarded me, tilting its head slightly to the side like a curious animal. Then it whispered. As it did, writhing darkness poured from its mouth like a foul cloud of pollution from burning oil. I almost expected to smell that very odor, but sensed only a cold sterile absence. I tuned my ears to the whispers but couldn't understand a thing.
"You're not making sense," I said, trying to calm the rapid-fire beat of my heart. I spun, keeping an eye on the thing's companions. They reminded me eerily of the cherubs, though those little creeps didn't whisper. Cherub voices sounded like a mix between a wet cat and a screech owl and their oily skin seemed to emanate a dark ultraviolet light of their own as opposed to throwing off black smoke like my new friends.
These things were also adult-sized with flesh of various sickly shades: white, olive, and ebony. The ragged remains of a dress hung from one. Another wore the barest remains of what might have been a pair of shorts and a hat. They couldn't be vamplings. The stench from the putrid flesh of one of those zombie-like creatures would have alerted me well before they even got close. And their skin wasn't rotting, unlike most of their clothes.