The Failsafe Prophecies (2 page)

He could see the woman’s soul being
stretched out of her body, sucked into the roahn-ami’s
canister.

Hayden seemed as though she were
encased in glass. She roared in pain and frustration as the soul
slipped further away.

This was hell unlike he’d ever known
it. To have all the power of the lion, all the magic endowed him,
and not be able to do a damn thing.

He’d never known a roahn-ami to cast
magic, so what was this?

As he moved slowly through the time
distortion, he watched the girl, clearly caught in the same
anomaly. The time distortion seemed to affect the roahn-ami’s
technique, because unlike the victims he’d witnessed before, this
girl wasn’t in a trance. She turned, drew a sword from the folds of
her skirt, and slashed the roahn-ami’s hand that was pulling her
soul. The hand fell to the ground and the soul snapped back to its
owner. When it did, the time distortion melted and they were able
to move again.

In the next second, Hayden
pounced on the creature. Rigo took a risk and shifted back into
human form, grabbing for the skull-shaped metal canisters hanging
from a belt around its waist. He wrapped his hand around the
leather straps and pulled
hard
, wresting them away just as the
monster vaporized beneath the claws of his friend.

With his other arm, he grabbed for the
girl who was in mid-collapse from the ordeal. As she fell into his
arm, she dropped a jewel encrusted blade to the ground. He caught
her just in time to soften the fall as her unconscious body fell
into the grass beside the blade.

He grabbed for his cell and punched in
three numbers.

“I need containment and
restoration in Tanzania.
Immediately
.”

Though he knew the watchers would have
already alerted the containment crew, he was feeling helpless and
defeated from the loss of the first woman. Somehow, shouting out
orders at a faceless voice over his cell phone made him feel
better.

Hayden transformed back to her Latina
form and knelt beside him.

“Did you call it in?”

“Yeah, but I’m sure the watchers got
to it before I did.” He turned to look at her. The scene in the
background was already shifting from screaming and running, to calm
and oblivious once more.

“What the hell was this? I’ve never
known the roahn-ami to attack humans that weren’t extraordinarily
inebriated.” She tucked long black strands of hair behind her ear
before gently reaching out for the woman lying in Rigo’s
arms.

“She’s not human, Rigo.” She lightly
brushed back the hair from the face of the woman he was holding.
She was very young with porcelain skin, almond eyes and perfectly
shaped lips. “This is Fa Zhen, one of the Royal Seven.” Her tone
held the appropriate awe.

He looked down at the dainty woman. In
the moments he’d been able to observe her, she had appeared
delicate and demure… until she pulled out the sword.

“How can you be sure?”

She laughed and moved a tiny bit
closer.

“Because I’m serahn. It’s the
responsibility of my people to protect the royals, the same as it’s
your people’s responsibility to protect the sacred seven. I’d know
her anywhere.” She inhaled deeply. “I can smell her.”

“That’s your cat senses
still online.” He tried to play it down because he
knew
, if this were true,
if the roahn-ami had come after the royals, war was on the
horizon,

“So what?” She answered defensively.
“This is Fa Zhen. I don’t know who the other woman was, but if the
roahn-ami are after the royal seven…”

“All hell is about to break lose.” His
mind reeled with what this could possibly mean, for himself, for
his people, for the human realm.

“Well, yeah, that, but someone had to
have sent those creatures, Rigo. They don’t act on their own and
the only ones who’d care about the seven…”

“Is someone from the Dark Marrow.” He
spoke over her as his mind kept even pace with hers.

“Meaning there’s a breach in the
wall?” For the first time she seemed confused.

He thought about that for a long
moment. The wall between realms was his brother’s charge. He’d
admit Wraithe hadn’t been himself for the past fifty years or so,
but he couldn’t imagine something like a breach in the wall had
gotten past him.

“Not necessarily. The roahn-ami can
transcend realms, they move through the gates same as any other
creature. They could be taking orders from anyone. And even if they
are taking orders from someone in the Dark Marrow, that doesn’t
mean the border between realms has been breached.”

There had to be some other answer than
that. He looked up and saw the containment team had arrived and was
briskly at work wiping memories and removing any paranormal trace
left in the area.

“We need to get her back to Elethiya.
Then we need to call a meeting of my people and yours.” Rigo
slipped into taking charge. They needed answers and they wouldn’t
be getting them lolling about in the grass.

“What about the other woman they took,
and…” She looked down at the soul skulls lying beside his knees.
“What about those?”

She shuddered slightly.

“I’ll take them with me. I think I
know someone who may be able to free any wronged souls inside.” He
hoped.

“They won’t have bodies!” She lunged
backwards away from him.

“What do you want me to do, give the
souls to the demons?” That was the only other choice he was aware
of, and while some of the demons may have done right by whoever was
in those jars, he didn’t trust them enough to chance it.

She chewed on her lip, looking
unnerved.

“No. I guess not.”

“Rodrigo, we have ninety percent
containment. Do you need transport?”

Rigo looked up to see a woman dressed
in black leather, whose long black hair was slicked back into a
tight, high ponytail. She seemed calm and professional and she used
his given name, which almost no one did. He didn’t have any
recollection of her. But with how the containment crew worked, that
was to be expected. It was most likely that he’d met her on dozens
of occasions and there was simply no memory of it.

He grabbed the leather straps of the
skulls and scooped Zhen off the ground into his arms. Hayden stood
beside him. There was only one thing they could do at this point,
one place to go.

“We need to get to one of the portals.
We need to get back to Elethiya.”

* * * *

The moon lit the wet pavement beneath
Wraith’s feet as he strode the fairytale lane where sweet houses
and old fashioned stores lined either side. He inhaled deeply of
all the scents that made up the early morning darkness and took
comfort in being alone in the place he loved more than any other.
There were sounds in the distance, night workers, cleaning and
testing, painting and pruning. The scent of the pavement, scrubbed
clean by the night crew, and freshly watered shrubbery danced
together, while in the background he could smell the bakery
preparing treats for the day ahead.

He walked down the abandoned Fairy
Book Lane that was designed to look like small town America in
another time, only with a twist. This town existed in a time when
princesses lived simple lives and magic rested around every corner.
His theme park was so like another just on the other side of the
forest, that most would never know it had been designed long before
Walt dreamed of building in Florida. It wouldn’t matter to most
people that his park had come from a vision, an angel that appeared
to him one night while Walt was still building in California. All
he would ever be in the world of theme parks was a lesser imitation
of the great Kingdom of Walt.

That
, he could live with, what he couldn’t live with was
that
Walt
thought
it. That Walt, in his dying days, thought Wraith had betrayed their
friendship.
That
mattered… and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to fix
it.

His heart was weighed down with guilt,
all the memories swimming around him until he could drown in them.
There were many nights he wished he could just simply slip below
the surface of it all and never arise again.

His morose thinking left him alone
when he suddenly felt the pull on his right hand. The sensation was
the same as that night, the night of the vision. It all began with
the very clear sense that someone was tugging on his hand, yet
there had been no one in the room but him.

He closed his eyes for a moment and
accepted the brush of the memory, the sense that the angelic
creature who’d given him that vision was there, touching him now.
He always assumed the repeating memory mixed with the sensation was
meant to be a comfort, and he took its warmth that way. But his
heart was broken, and there was no healing it.

He walked towards the Bavarian style
castle. Set on a hill, it rose up out of the ground before him. In
his mind, it had been an architectural feat to so perfectly
replicate that castle from the vision.

He looked again to the
centerpiece of his kingdom and wondered, for not the first time,
about its appearance. The angel had been so clear in her
descriptions that he saw it in his mind as she spoke. How he’d ever
been able to describe it to the architect so that it had turned out
exactly right, though, he’d never know. He would never tell another
soul, but every time he saw its half curse appearance, the
tentacles and vines growing on just one side while the other side
looked like a child’s dream, he welled up just a bit with pride,
and thought
that
was what Walt felt all the time.

The castle was an architectural
masterpiece. The sight of it spoke to the deepest parts of himself
and felt like a reminder, or perhaps a warning. If only the angel
had told him more.

The whole park was the realization of
the vision she gave him that night… and the best kept secret in
Orlando, but he liked it that way. It served his dark
secret.

His heart lay heavy in his chest over
the memory of so long ago. It was his nightly ritual to remember.
Self-inflicted torture, he supposed. He would walk the empty
streets of the park, breathe in its magic, and torment himself with
the memories of the friend who died thinking he’d betrayed
him.

It was a memory that still seemed as
fresh as five minutes ago. It was the look in Walt’s eyes when it
became clear that Wraithe really wasn’t selling Walt the land he
wanted.

“If only I could have
explained. If you’d only known. I never wanted to take your theme
parks, Walt. I needed this to protect the falls, my people,
your
people.”

“Wraithe.” A firm voice sounded behind
him that he recognized instantly, Thornton Wolf.

He turned to look at his friend, even
as a chill ran down his spine. There were only so many reasons
anyone would disturb him in this place, at this time of day, and
none of them were good.

“What is it?”

Thornton’s dark eyes held a deep level
of concern, even as his body language spoke of calm control. The
man dressed in a dark suit, his long black hair pulled into a band
at the base of his neck, all combining to make him look like
someone assigned to presidential detail, or possibly an
assassin.

“Your brother is on his way here
through the portals with Hayden and one of the royal seven, Fa
Zhen.”

He heard words that made a sentence,
but made no sense. His mind tried to put those pieces together, but
nothing about that should have been.

“How is that
possible?
Why
would they do such a thing?”

Aside from the risk they’d be exposed
to from using the portals, bringing another of the royal seven to
Elethiya breaks the treaty. He honestly didn’t know what set off
more alarms, that they were using the portals, or that they were
bringing a royal to Elethiya.

“I have no other
information than that, and that they’ve requested a summit with the
high council of immortals,
and
shifters.” Thornton held steady, showing no
emotion.

There was a clawing in Wraith’s
immortal soul that a human would have described as
dread.

“Have you put out the call?” He asked,
though he already knew the answer would be yes.

“I have.” Thornton nodded. “Everyone
should be here within the hour. I waited to the last minute to
disturb you. Everything is arranged. We just need your
presence.”

Thornton’s darker skin and dark eyes,
with the slight slant on either end would mark him as Asian in most
circles, but truly within their kind, there was no race. The only
thing that divided the immortals was whether they chose the light
or the dark.

“I’ll be there.” He drew a breath as
he made his decision. “Thornton, have Bala and Luxe
attend.”

Thornton looked at him strangely. “Are
you certain?”