A Meet of Tribes (A Shade of Vampire #45)(31)

“Even if he does find out, he won’t be able to find us here. We are under the Daughters’ protection. The shield is impervious to any attack, and we are virtually invisible beneath it, as you know already. The problem isn’t that he’d know about the mansion. He can’t do anything about it anyway. It’s that if he finds out I exist, he’ll add me to his list of enemies, and that means I’ll be a new chapter in his strategy to gain full control of Eritopia. When your enemy knows who you are, you are that much more vulnerable.”

The Druid straightened his back and nodded, as if having just found his resolve.

“It’s fine, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he continued. “Tell me about your third vision, Aida.”

Feeling as if I’d saved the best for last, I told Draven about the dungeon and all the creatures held captive there.

“There were dozens of them, from all walks of life. There were even some fae with tattered formal dresses, as if they’d been snatched in the middle of a banquet. There were plenty of incubi and succubi and I think some female Druids, if you have those.” I remembered the beautiful women with exotic scales, serpent tongues, and fangs.

“I don’t think there are any left, from what I know. What did they look like?”

I described them in full detail, down to the color of their scales and their eyes.

“Those are Lamias,” Draven explained. “They’re often confused with female Druids, but they never take the full form of a serpent. They look like what you might consider to be regular women, but they have a developing snake skin that gradually covers their entire body. Once they’re fully covered, they shed it and emerge with a different appearance and different physical features, as if they are different women altogether.”

“That sounds pretty cool, actually,” Serena mused.

“They only feed on incubus or succubus flesh,” Draven added.

“Oh. I take that back, then.”

“Many millennia ago, they were once relatives of the Druid species, like cousins, you might say. But they were banished to the darkest corners of the jungle for their horrible appetite. I can tell you more about them later,” the Druid said, then turned his attention back on me. “Go on, Aida.”

“Yeah, so there were all kinds of creatures in that dungeon, and judging by the color of the walls and the lights, they were in the same building as Azazel—black stone and green fires. They all had heavy iron shackles around their wrists and ankles and were stuck in individual locked cages.”

“Shackles and cages. Only one of the two is used for imprisonment. The other must be a suppressor of the captive’s abilities, like the fae, for example,” Draven concluded, then waited for me to continue.

“Then I saw a Destroyer come in, dragging an incubus and throwing him inside one of those cages. Thing is, I’ve seen that incubus before. It was Kristos’ brother, and he’d been severely beaten.”

“Sverik is a prisoner of Azazel? How could that be? His father swore his allegiance to Azazel,” the Druid asked.

“He was telling the Destroyer the same thing,” I explained. “But then the Destroyer said that Azazel had decided to keep him caged to make sure that his father didn’t think of doing something stupid, like turning against them.”

Draven nodded and crossed his arms on his chest, bringing one hand up to support his chin while he processed the new information. I further relaxed into Field’s arms. His heart beat against the back of my head. With everything going on, his presence seemed to be my anchor to sanity.

“Azazel must be holding all those creatures there, including Sverik, for specific reasons, then. Knowing him and his strategies so far, I’m willing to bet these reasons include blackmail, ransom, and even experiments, since he draws his dark magic from living beings. He uses the volcanoes for high-powered spells during war campaigns and to corrupt his Destroyers, but the creatures are the core source for his black arts,” Draven concluded.

I felt sorry for all those creatures. A pang dug into my heart. Imprisonment seemed like a fate worse than death when your captor was Azazel. They must’ve felt hopeless in there, while the life was gradually snuffed out of them, as if they were just batteries that could be discarded once he was done with them.

The more I thought of the vision of the fae stuck in those cages, with their blank gazes and livid complexions, the more determined I was to help bring this half-snake ass down. By comparison, the disappearing runes on my skin seemed trivial. At least I wasn’t shackled in some filthy basement at the whims of a megalomaniac with no honor or respect for life.





Phoenix





I woke up with a start and immediately sat up, as if pushed out of my vision and right back into reality. I shook my head and blinked several times, taking in my surroundings and the voices around me. The dark green tiles below, the dim lights from the oil lamps, the cool air, and the off-white sheets of my bed immediately fell into place. I was in the basement.

My eyes caught some kind of movement on my body, and when I looked down, I froze at the sight of thousands of black runes moving across my skin in strings along my torso and arms. I tried rubbing them off as if they were the ballpoint pen smudges I used to get back at school in The Shade, but they lingered for a while before dissipating on their own.