An End of Night (A Shade of Vampire #16)(21)

Mona gasped.

“Are you sure?” Micah asked.

“Yes,” Derek replied. “He has cast a spell on the entire pack, except, it seems, for the chieftain. The chambers are filled with sleeping werewolves.”

“What would Rhys be doing here?” Ashley asked.

I didn’t know if Ashley’s question was meant to be rhetorical or not, but we all concluded the same thing at once.

“He must be after Magnus too,” Mona said, her voice unsteady. “He must want him for the ritual.”

Her words were both panicking and comforting. If Rhys really had come here for Magnus in order to complete the ritual, then it meant they hadn’t carried it out yet. It had been so long since we’d left The Shade now, the thought of the black witches having already completed the ritual had been nagging at the back of my mind. If Rhys too was on the hunt for Magnus, then it meant that we might have time. But it also meant that we couldn’t afford to let him find Magnus first.

“We have to knock the bastard out of the race,” Kiev said.

“You forget that he is far more powerful now,” Mona replied. “I have no idea how we would be able to pose a threat to him. We don’t even have dragons.”

“He has no idea we are here,” Micah said. “Rose, Derek—is that right? He didn’t see you?”

“No,” Derek said. “We just listened in at the door. As far as I know, he is not aware of our presence here.”

“Well,” Micah said, “if he doesn’t know that we are here, at least we have some advantage.”

“Hardly,” Mona said.

“Let’s just get up to the mountain,” Rose urged. “We have no idea how long he’s going to spend with the chieftain. We can’t let him get away. If he finds Magnus…”

We all knew the consequences.

Ibrahim, Mona and Corrine wasted no more time and transported us halfway up the mountain. The sheer height at which we were standing took my breath away. Rose and Derek pointed toward a tunnel and we began racing into it after them. We traveled through several tunnels and chambers, passing sleeping werewolves along the way, until we finally arrived in a room surrounded by wooden doors.

“That one,” Derek whispered, pointing to the largest door a few feet away.

Derek and Rose vanished from sight—I was grateful that one of our witches had taken the initiative to do it.

“Let me to the front,” Mona said. “I need to listen… It sounds like they are still talking,” she whispered after a pause.

I didn’t need to press my ear against the door to hear what was going on. Yes, they were talking, but it didn’t sound like the conversation was going to last much longer.

“Because you know where he is,” Rhys was saying, anger and impatience surging through his voice.

“I told you already,” another male voice replied. “We have never come across a vampire named Magnus.”

“You know what I will do to you if I discover you have lied to me,” Rhys hissed.

We barely had time to formulate a plan before the door in front of us blasted open. I feared for a moment that Rhys had done it, but since he was nowhere in sight it must have been one of our witches. The sound of running filled my ears as we all dashed inside the chieftain’s chambers. I barely took in the interiors of the wolf’s quarters while we hurtled forward. We passed through a long passageway lined with doors and headed straight for the room at the end where the two men’s voices were emanating from.

Rhys whirled round as a burning ball of blue fire shot straight toward him. A curse from Mona, I assumed. Rhys’ face fell in shock, and then he vanished before the curse could hit him.

Oh, no.

A visible Rhys was terrifying enough, let alone an invisible one.

Where is Rose? Fear filled me as I realized I didn’t even know where she was. The warlock could have been standing right next to her for all I knew.

The minutes that followed were harrowing. It seemed that none of us knew what to do. Spells hurtled around the room, and I kept expecting someone to be hit by a curse from Rhys and cry out in pain. The chieftain—a tall man with broad shoulders and flaming red hair—had spread himself out on the floor to avoid being hit by a spell.

After what felt like ten minutes had passed, I wondered why nothing was happening.

Mona spoke up. “I think he’s gone.”

“But why?” Aiden asked.

Mona appeared and then everyone else’s invisibility spell lifted too, except Micah’s. Since he had requested to be kept hidden at all times, I guessed our witches were being respectful of this.

Mona’s face had paled and she sounded even more anxious than when she had first found out that Rhys had taken the chieftain hostage.

“Perhaps he has gotten what he needed,” she said. Her eyes shot to the werewolf, still crouching on the ground. She hurried over to him and gripped his shoulders. “What did you tell that warlock?”

The wolf stood up, anger in his eyes. “Who are you people?”

“Not your enemies,” she replied. “Just answer my question, or we will all be sorry.”

“He wanted to know about Magnus,” the chieftain growled, brushing Mona away from him. “I’ve never heard of such a vampire. And believe me, if I had, I would have revealed his location to that warlock. I despise vampires almost as much as I do black witches.” He scowled, casting dirty glances at me and the other vampires present.