"I love you, sis." He gripped her hands as his eyes misted up. "We'll get through this together."
"Thanks, big brother." She hugged him, feigning gratitude and fighting the desperation coiling tight around her guts.
The cell was much like the corridor outside, a sterile titanium box with a windowless door embedded in the reinforced frame. Titanium, in and of itself, wasn't strong enough to contain some supers which was why each plate was also woven with diamond fibers, the same material used to make nearly indestructible diamond rope. Not even a sorcerer could melt through them.
On the bright side, the room had no cameras, only a bunk bed, a toilet, and sink, all made of the same material as the cell. At least the mattress was normal. And the good thing about no cameras meant nobody would see Elyssa attempt her last desperate bid to keep her memories.
She pulled Jack's cell phone—which she'd stolen during their hug—from the back pocket of her night-camo outfit and was relieved to find he hadn't password-protected it. She put it into airplane mode, which turned off the GPS and cell signals since the walls blocked those signals. She needed all the battery life she could squeeze from this thing. Flicking through the menu, she opened the video camera app.
Rather than sleep, Elyssa spent the entire night reciting history. How she'd felt the first time she'd met Justin. What she'd done after finding out what he was. Who he really was despite his half-incubus side. How, despite all her fears and built-in prejudices, she’d been unable to deny the love she felt for him.
"I know you don't remember this, but it's important, not just for the sake of love, but for the survival of us all. Trust Justin with your life. He may be half spawn, but he's a hero to the core and will do anything for you." Tears clouded her eyes and her voice choked on the lump in her throat. Deep breaths didn't help overcome the despair. But she soldiered on, determined to record every last thing she could remember before her cherished memories were burned away like old photos in a house fire.
She watched the video once more and realized there was nothing more she could say. On a whim, she turned on the video recorder a last time and said, "He is your Westley, and you are his Buttercup. Death cannot stop true love." If a quote from the Princess Bride couldn't shake up her memory, nothing would.
After powering down the smartphone, she removed the tiny memory card from the slot on the side and stared at it. It was such a tiny fragile hope for all her memories to be riding on, but it was all she had. The second part to her plan would be much harder. She had to hide it somewhere she'd eventually look because remembering she'd even made this recording wasn't an option. First, she crushed the phone to tiny bits and flushed them down the toilet.
The few places to hide such a tiny memory card reliably were also unpleasant to think about. Before taking the White, they would strip her and bathe her by hand in blessed water as ancient custom dictated. Then they would dress her in a white gown of silk and lead her into the chapel communionary where a Templar would light the White Torch and bar her inside.
Beyond the ritual, nobody knew what happened inside.
Every Templar compound had a chapel with a White, Black, Novice, and Blessed Torch. The first wiped away memories. The second took away life. The third was used to give recruits a temporary blessing, while the fourth added the permanent blessing of the Divinity, granting immortality and strength among other abilities.
The problem with hiding the tiny chip on her person would be the stripping and bathing. Her old clothes would be burnt and she couldn't conceal the chip in her hands. This particular card was weatherized to protect it from extreme conditions since the phones they used were often subjected to extreme situations. It might survive if she swallowed it.
But then—
She shuddered at the thought of recovering it. And why would her freshly-brain wiped self even know to search for it after…after doing her business?
Gross.
She could hide it in her mouth, but what about after she was mind-wiped? Would she spit it out and forget it? Elyssa cursed and paced the floor. She didn't have much time to decide and the last remaining place she could think to hide it made her shudder again. It wasn't ideal, but she had no other choice.
The sound of a door sliding open awoke her sometime later. She hadn't even realized she'd fallen asleep.
Jack smiled at her. "It's time."
Elyssa went with him and three other guards meekly, hoping against hope she could convince them she was no threat and manage escape at some point. As they stepped outside the barn and headed for the large stone chapel nestled in the trees behind the huge manor house, her senses picked up a white-hot blip, absent only a moment before. Jack and her guards sensed it too.
And all hell broke loose.
Chapter 10
I could hardly believe my eyes but there was no denying how familiar the image on the massive stone slab seemed. The dark and my night vision had to be playing tricks on me. Though I could zoom in, the oily wisps of darkness drifting from the shadow people around my circle made it hard to stay focused, like staring through a thick haze of gasoline fumes.
My eyelids felt like lead weights and it was all I could do to stay awake. But I couldn't sleep knowing a thunderstorm, a wild animal, or anything might blot out a part of my hastily-drawn chalk circle and destroy my only protection. There was no way in hell I was shutting my eyes for a second around these monsters.
I woke up as the first rays of dawn caught my eyes. Panic swept over me in a wave. I leapt to my feet, pivoting on my heels and searching for any signs of the dark creatures from last night. But they were gone, vanquished, apparently, by the light of the sun. I dropped to my knees and blew kisses at the great pinkish hue spreading across the horizon. I was so happy to see it, I swore I'd never complain about it being in my eyes again.
After gathering up my things and stuffing them inside the backpack, I walked over to the engraving I'd noticed last night. By sunlight, the engravings were even more impressive, their dappled hues sparkling in the light. From a distance, they could pass for paintings. I realized then they weren't simply engravings, but intricate mosaics, inlaid with what looked like crushed colored stones or maybe even jewels, rather than painted. Then again, there might be some magic involved in their preservation—nothing I had the skills to detect.
Aside from the strokes of yellow indicating blonde hair and the pale color chosen for her skin, this woman looked so familiar and so much like someone I knew, it had to be more than coincidence. I thought back to the small olive-skinned girl with slanted green eyes and black hair I'd met just days ago, only to find out she was Nightliss, formerly just a cat as far as I knew. This blonde woman could be her sister. Maybe even her evil mirror universe twin.
Where the other engravings showed horrendous variants of human sacrifice at the bottom, this one illustrated what appeared to be throngs of people kneeling, hands outstretched over their heads, threads of white connecting their fingers to the fingers of the woman. Whoever this chick was, she had been a bigwig back in the old days.
"This is crazy." I shook my head and stared harder at the mosaic then at the others situated around the square. None of the people in the others looked vaguely familiar, though they all had a similar ethereal beauty about them. I couldn't imagine how long it had taken someone to create these masterpieces or why I'd never seen them on Discovery Planet. They might not be members of the Seven Wonders of the World, but they had to be in the top twenty.
My gaze caught on the last mosaic and stuck, taking in the long silvery mane of hair, the haughty cast of the face, and most importantly, the crowd of gray-robed men depicted at the bottom, standing and looking with emotionless expressions toward whoever viewed the image. When I thought none of the other effigies looked familiar, I'd been wrong. The hair was longer and he wasn't wearing spectacles, but this guy was—no it couldn't be—it simply couldn't! I stepped closer, peered up at the monument, and saw the cruel cast of those gray eyes staring out at the world.
This man was no other than Mr. Gray. The man whose gray-suited abominations had attacked me once in the Grotto, and again with a garbage truck.
I closely studied the other engravings, but aside from Nightliss's Barbie wonder twin, none rang a bell in the slightest. What was this place and why in the hell was Mr. Gray's mural in the mix?
It was enough to make my head hurt. I reached a tentative hand toward the slab. My fingers met a slick surface a few millimeters from the eye of one of the gray men. I pressed my palm to the surface and ran my skin against it. It felt slicker than a greased pig. I looked around in case a security guard or someone had arrived to start daily patrols. Seeing no one, I turned back and spit. The glob didn't even run down the side, instead dropping straight to the ground without leaving a mark.
Yeah, definitely magic.
No doubt, I should investigate this place more thoroughly, but I didn't want to stick around. If those shadow creatures returned at night, I wanted to be a long way away. As I traveled along the paths, eventually retracing my steps back to the broken arch where my night of bowel-churning panic had started, I realized, despite the mid-morning hour, there were no tourists, guides, or guards wandering the paths. Surely this was a hotspot for tourism, considering the ancient buildings and amazing mosaics.
Or maybe I was missing something important.
It was too late to stop my palm from slapping my forehead as I remembered an app I'd stuck on my phone some time ago to combat my terrible foreign language skills, namely Spanish. I turned on my phone and pulled up the Spanish-English dictionary I'd downloaded and translated a placard near the broken arch, which had unceremoniously dumped me in this hellhole.
It read: A broken Obsidian Arch, presumed destroyed by whatever calamity killed the inhabitants this marvelous city many centuries ago.
"How would noms know about Obsidian Arches?" I wondered.
I found an area map entitled, El Dorado, An Overworld Historic Reserve. The map offered a tiny stick figure to show me where I stood on the path, and an arrow to show which way I was facing. When I took a few steps in the real world, so did my little partner on the map. I turned around a few times, keeping my eyes on the map and watched the arrow spin with me.