Banewolf (Dark Siren Book 2) (29 page)

Time stretched on forever as they descended an unending staircase. With no source of light to feed on, even Rhane’s evolved sight couldn’t pierce the pitch of emptiness. They’d traveled seventy feet or better below the surface. That much he could tell from the change in pressure. And the vertical drop only continued.

The stairs fit as if cut into the passageway, held to form by wooden panels lining the base of each step. Reaching out to either side of him yielded nothing. The walls were not within reach. There was no railing. One misstep meant a free fall with an extremely sudden and painful stop.

Rhane wanted to ask Ian if he knew anything about where and when the passageway would end but was afraid an enemy could be hiding anywhere at that point. Around a hundred feet down, the darkness finally lifted. There still wasn’t much light. But it was enough to make out faint details in the surroundings.

He had been right about the walls not being within reach. And the stairwell did make a nearly vertical drop down a single a wall. Darkness swallowed everything on the other three sides. The bottom was close, and Rhane was anxious to reach it. Their current positioning left them out in the open and at a serious disadvantage. He unsheathed Bellefuron.

Just as his feet touched the hard packed dirt of a well-worn passageway, Rhane heard movement to his left. He swung the sword, and a rogue dropped into a writhing, hissing hump. Rhane struck again, and the creature moved no more. Trusting Ian to keep an eye out, he knelt to examine the body. Its appearance was completely human. Lifting the pewter mask revealed the average face of a young man. A long braid of dirty blond hair ended near his waist. Rhane’s first blow had glanced the neck. From there, the blade cleaved through, splitting the shoulder, damaging the heart. It had still taken a second thrust, aimed straight through the chest, to kill it.

Rhane stood again. Ian crept forward in
a slow crawl. His coloring was the perfect camouflage in this abyss. The alpha glanced back at Rhane over his shoulder. “Expect many more sentinels like this one from here on. They protect the court.”

The court? Rhane echoed in thought. This was his first time in a rogue lair. The wars between Warekin and
these creatures had always taken place on the surface. And he had been very glad for it. Figuring he’d find out soon enough what Ian was talking about, Rhane ventured deeper into the passageway. Small fires burned on even smaller torches, lighting the path at their feet. Every few minutes, the fires died and new ones lit, changing the shadows of the landscape. As Rhane followed Ian through a bend in the passage, all light disappeared. A skirmish erupted somewhere directly in front of him. Rhane stopped. He heard a growl and then a hiss that ended abruptly. The light returned. Ian had torn off a rogue’s chest armor and was eating the fresh kill. Fresh was actually an understatement. Dark blood spurted as the alpha bit into the still-pumping heart held between his hands.

So focused Rhane was on Ian’s primal behavior, he almost didn’t hear the step, almost missed the whisper of warmth against his skin. He spun, leading with his sword, and took the sentinel’s head from its shoulders.

Ian watched him with shining eyes and a blood stained smile. “Here they come,” he whispered. As his truer form began to emerge, he nearly tripled in size.

A dozen pair of footsteps sounded from within the darkness, and suddenly the passage was full.
Mentally counting the seconds from the last blackout until the next, Rhane dropped into a low guard and readied for the fight ahead.

Rogue after rogue met his blade and fell. Their deaths were clean and quick. Just as he engaged the last sentinel, the lamps died again. But he was prepared and quickly switched to sonar vision, using every sound to project a three dimensional image of their enemies. Twelve rogues had attacked. Twelve were dead. Hearing the distinctive crunch of bone, he locate
d Ian. The fires relit. The alpha was human again, leaning against a wall and busily gnawing the fingers off a dismembered hand. Rhane debated the rudeness of asking Ian to stop snacking and decided against it. Kindred obviously came from a wildly different world. He had to respect that no matter how strongly his stomach felt the opposite. 

“How far now?”

The alpha stuck a forefinger into his mouth and chewed as if mulling Rhane’s question. Flinging the remainder of the appendage aside, he said, “Most likely, we will encounter three more groupings of sentinels. Then you will see their court.”

Ian couldn’t have been more correct. Bellefuron’s sleek surface was coated in blood after battling through wave after wave of rogues. Rhane drew the blade across the rubber sole of his boot. Taking a handful of dirt, he rubbed any residual blood clean. Stalking forward,
this time Ian didn’t return to human form. The court couldn’t be far. Rhane could feel the change in the atmosphere. It was less drafty, warmer. And his ears picked up a lot of noise coming from behind the walls. 

Soon, they had reached the end of the passageway. An open doorway led into a large chamber. On all sides, lamps lined where walls met carpeted floor. More lamps burned within recesses of the dirt walls, making this room the most illuminated area he and Ian had encountered thus far. Beyond the chamber, lay another. It was bigger but equally bright. From where Rhane stood, he could see a large golden chair, six feet in height, encrusted with gems. The frame and its heavy engravings shone dully in firelight. In the chair sat a rogue female. She held a goblet in her right hand, sipping leisurely at the contents. Jet black hair erupted from the center of her head in short, gelled spikes. The rest of her hair flowed downward and
well past her shoulders. The rogue’s eyes were clouded with desire as she watched her audience.

The chamber was filled with rogues, but none of them had noticed Ian and Rhane’s entry. They were too preoccupied feasting in
carnal pleasures. Tangled, writhing masses of flesh moved at every turn. Sighs, moans, and laughter emerged from the masses in a rather unsettling symphony.

The first shot changed all of that.

Leading with the magnum, Rhane continued to fire. Fifty caliber bullets ripped through unarmored bodies with ease. Bane silver linings melted though flesh, blackening rogue skin with the potency of its poison. Those not killed in the first barrage of gunfire abandoned the throes of copulation to transform into the snarling demons Rhane was more familiar with. Slamming a second clip into place, he leveled them like dominoes.

Somewhere behind, Ian was having his own little party. The alpha was especially ruthless, seeming to deliberately inflict fatal wounds to kill slowly instead of instantly. One rogue was ripped limb from limb until the creature was reduced to only a torso an
d head, shrieking with agony. The alpha’s brutal power reminded Rhane a lot of Ander.

The next three shots
tore through heads. The female on the golden chair began to scream, her wail fittingly sounding like something that should have risen from the depths of an abyss. Her face began to shift, shedding its human skin to reveal a mottled and leathered hide. Seeing the rogue rise from her throne, Rhane reached behind to grab Bellefuron’s hilt. The sword flipped twice as it hurtled through the air. Hitting rogue’s shoulder, the weapon drove the creature back, pinning her to the chair. The female shrieked,
“Halt!”
And almost as a single entity, the rogues froze in place.

Rhane
kept a finger near the trigger but stopped shooting. Ian had also ceased his carnage for the moment.

The hand of the female’s injured arm contracted into a blackened claw as bane silver infiltrated her bloodstream. But she gained composure, drilling her yellow eyes into Rhane. “I am Erebus, Keeper of this hive. Why have you trespassed here?”

Rhane approached the creature cautiously, keeping the gun raised. “You took something that belongs to me. I want it back.”

“I do not know what you speak of.”

Seeing an almost imperceptible flicker in her glare, Rhane turned and fired. The attacking rogue dropped dead. Pressing the muzzle of the gun flush against Erebus’s skin, he hammered a single bullet into her uninjured shoulder. Her body thrashed violently against the chair, making good company to the agonized scream that tore from her lips.

“The next one goes through your skull. Give me the boy.”

Erebus was breathing murder. “They warned you would come but failed to mention your lack of humanity or the baseless dog you keep for company.”

Without a word, Rhane moved the gun to the rogue’s head.

“Wait,” she said quickly. “I do not have him, but I can tell you where he is.”

Rhane felt his patience slipping away. But he couldn’t pull the trigger until he had the information he needed. “Speak.”

“The boy was delivered to your Primes. It seems that your father, Jehsi, yearns for your return to Golden Mountain.”

Firing
the shot at such close range essentially exploded most of Erebus’s skull into an unrecognizable pulp. At the instant of the Keeper’s death, the remaining rogues threw back their heads, lamenting a unified wail for her defeat. Their howls resonated throughout the lair, rebounding and repeating a single note of sorrow. It was easy work to finish them off. And when the job was done, Rhane sank to his knees in the silence that followed.

THE END

AUTHOR BIO

Born and raised in a small sunny town in South Carolina, Eden thinks that thunderstorms are really inspiring. There are few things she loves more than curling up with a good book and a cup of coffee on a rainy day, (except maybe chocolate cake. She loves cake.) often reading into the wee hours of morning when something really grabs her.
Banewolf is her second full length novel.

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Coming Soon

BLOOD CHAINED

The saga continues in 2014…