Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series
Chapter 23

Where had Ember gotten to? April wanted to talk to her before the girls headed out to the mountains. She understood why leaving her four ‘friends’ behind was so hard on her in a way the others did not. The Hellhounds were young, and like all children, they got anxious when their mother went away. Unlike a mother with a human toddler, Ember felt their panic and anxiety – felt it build up until it overwhelmed her own emotions. The bond created a biofeedback loop that impacted her mood. Fifteen was already tough enough without having to deal with the emotions and stressors of four other creatures. And for the most part, the young girl was handling this all on her own.

Now, where had she gone? April looked in all the usual haunts, or as usual as anyone in a strange location for only four days could develop. The cafeteria, the few ruined buildings she and her four friends liked to explore, even her bunk in the room she shared with the other women. Nothing. Once again, her search came up empty. Given her habits of late April should be looking for Ember out amongst the Vampyres’ siege line. With a sigh, she gave up and went to replace the others, and if her questions were answered in the negative, April would set them all to searching. Maybe one of them would have a better idea about where they should be looking.

Alvaro, upon hearing the Ember was missing again, rolled his eyes. “Have you looked in the village?”

“Village? What village?” April asked, startled. She had been too busy since coming here to take a close look at her surroundings.

“Alvaro, you and Aiko come with me,” Cantara sighed. “God knows what kind of trouble she’s found, but whatever it is, it’s going to hurt.”

“Take Crystal and Gwen with you,” April suggested. “If she’s still in a snit, they can help you calm her down.”

“Not this time,” Cantara shook her head. “We’ll be moving too quickly for them to keep up. It will be dark soon, and we need to get back, just in case.”

April nodded her head and relented.

Kitting up, the three met back at the compound. It was almost noon, only six more hours of daylight remaining. They shouldn’t need that much time, not if the girl and her beasts had gone for a walk around the old ruins. Beyond that was only the mountains, and not even Ember would head up their alone. Despite what she might think, dogs didn’t climb. It took hands, with opposable thumbs, Cantara kept trying to convince herself, because she was damn if she wanted to climb any mountains until she absolutely had to. And Ember, she insisted, had only gone for a walk – and not taken it into her head to attack the entire Vampyre army as Alvaro kept insisting. Why couldn’t she replace her daggers when she needed them?

At the village, they began to quarter the area, looking for tracks. Unfortunately, Ember’s dogs had been everywhere in the last couple of days – and with a puppy’s energy and a demon’s ability to forgo sleep, Cantara meant everywhere. At least a dozen set of tracks led up into the foothills, another score back towards the fortress. Others crisscrossed the village, often leading into a building through narrow openings one would think something the size of a small car could not fit.

Aiko was following the trail that led up to a stairway in a collapsed building. Only a shallow line of rocks marked where the walls might have stood, and it looked to be standing in the middle of nowhere. From the layout of its walls, she thought it might once have been a temple or a mosque, perhaps both.

“Cantara,” Aiko called. “Is this the temple we were told to avoid?”

Cantara walked up to the vampyre and then paced the perimeter of the ruins. “I’m not sure.”

“It leads down,” Alvaro added, “and it’s dangerous. Ember and her brood went that way.”

“How can you be so sure?” Cantara demanded, and then answered her own question. “Never mind, I should have known better.”

The three looked at each other and then shrugged. As far as any of them knew, the basement of these ruins was only off-limits because of the danger of cave-ins. No chance the vampyres had gotten past them in the last few days and were waiting down there to take the fortress from behind. And still, each loosened their weapons in their sheaths before their foot hit the first step. They were learning that when it came to following Ember, you could never tell. It was better to be safe than very, very sorry. And lately, that girl had a way of making all the specialists feel sorry.

It didn’t look too bad. Dark and dry, but the walls seemed stable enough with little or no signs of recent cave-ins. At first, they travelled without light – none of them needed it to see. And then Cantara flicked on her lamp to study the dusty floor for tracks. No point travelling too far down here if the girl had not come this way.

“What’s that on the wall?” Alvaro asked.

“Where?” Cantara replied, pointing her lamp at the wall.

“There,” Alvaro replied, adjusting the beam of light slightly.

All three would have sworn the frieze was a perfect replica of Strawberry, looking back over her shoulder as if waiting for something or someone. And that someone had to be Ember. Aiko and Alvaro flicked on their lamps and began to study the friezes on both sides of the wall. They separated, covering three or four panels in either direction.

“Hey, look!” Aiko laughed. “Cantara, it’s you!”

Alvaro and Cantara came back to join her. Alvaro’s lamp caught and held an image that could only be his lady love. She seemed to be creeping through a dark corridor, a furtive look thrown back over her shoulder.

“There’s something familiar about all this,” Cantara scowled, “but as long as it’s being so helpful… Keep an eye out for images of Ember or any of her brood. We’ll follow them and hope it’s not some sick coincidence.”

Three beams of light flashed back and forth like windshield wipers as three sets of eyes studied the friezes on the wall. At each intersection and cross corridor, they paused, searching the images until they found one of the four familiar shapes they were following. It was slow going, but faster than trying to follow tracks in the dust that seemed to blow back into their own trail every few minutes. Plus, any that did remain often became a confused tangle, as if a crowd had walked through here a moment before. Alvaro thought the image he was following was a small, pagan god mounted on a wolfhound. It struck him that he had often seen the imp riding Huckleberry without really noticing – Ember’s brood tended to blend into a confused tangle you were always chasing away from somewhere and something. And occasionally chasing after.

They came to a manifold, a round chamber where six passages merged and branched out like the spokes of a wheel. Here, they were delayed as they searched for any signs of the girl. The images were growing darker, as they had been for the past twenty minutes. Something about all this struck Cantara as familiar, a strange sense of déjà vous that had swept over her when they had first discovered the stone images. She knew she was forgetting something important, and it was making her feel edgy. The only places her memory ever failed her was those moments from her life back in her home plane. For all its beauty, the djinn world could be dark and dangerous, and it was something from this darkness that was now haunting her thoughts.

“Cantara?” Alvaro asked gently, “are you okay?”

“What?” She had not realized she had stopped and was standing there staring off into space. “Yeah.”

She shook herself, pausing only long enough to draw one of her daggers. Seeing her draw her weapons, Aiko drew both of her swords. Something had spooked the djinn, and the only thing the vampyre knew that frightened that one was April. Alvaro shook his head and took the lead. He was too old a soldier to be spooked by shadows or memories. Time enough to draw his weapon when the bloodletting began.

The nature of the corridors changed. They had been following the images on the frieze for so long that they were deep underground before they realized they were in a maze. The images grew darker still, often depicting death, many of these brutal, some slow and lingering. They still followed the girl, but all three began to wonder if this were not a cruel trick of whatever malevolent spirit ruled this place. At each crossing, they began to search the floor for tracks – unique tracks like the paw marks of the two Hellhounds – before making a choice. Often they were blurred, half-buried by the ghostly dust, or obscured by half a dozen others, but always they were there.

And suddenly, the images on the wall disappeared. The passage ahead was lined with sandstone blocks, each carved into an octagon and carefully fitted. Cantara froze in the entrance of the passage, suddenly gripped by a sense of déjà vous so powerful she found herself hundreds of years in the past.

“Cantara!” Alvaro called sharply.

“There is something about this that reminds of dark times from home,” Cantara replied. “Go slow and sharp.”

‘Slow and sharp.’ Sharp eyes and sharp swords. Now Alvaro drew his own sword. He had never seen this woman back down from anything short of babysitting teenagers. Whatever lay ahead had spooked her enough to volunteer for an extended babysitting tour. They continued up the passage, Alvaro dropping back to cover the rear. Cantara was following the tracks in the dust alone, Aiko watching her back. The girl had come this way, they did not need the wall to tell them that. At the moment, they were following a trail of half-chewed, fist-size cockroaches. One or more of her brood had over-eaten and was coughing up carcasses at regular intervals. The way those legs were still wiggling Alvaro imagined they were tickling the back of their throats in such a way that even he felt the urge to vomit.

The trail led to a brass door that was currently ajar. On either side, a row of bronze statues guarded the approach. Cantara recognized them immediately.

“Black Djinn,” she spat.

Black Djinn were to Djinn what vampyres were to humans. Soul suckers. The three did not hesitate. They leapt through the door, blades at the ready.

Ember and her brood were squared off against a dark figure. With upswept eyebrows and painted beard, black chainmail and twin black curved blades, he looked like the villain from every Arabian fairytale. At the moment, Ember was picking herself up off the ground, and she was pissed. Her intended victim, seeing the newcomers, started to grow until his figure filled the chamber.

“That’s cheating!” Ember screamed.

“Hells bells!’ Cantara cursed.

“What?” Alvaro asked, not sure who he wanted to laugh at more.

“I forgot I could do that,” Cantara shot back.

Suddenly she loomed over them all, growing until she towered even over the dark djinn. Scowling, he rose to match her. It had been a long time since he had enjoyed a home-cooked meal. The sight and scent of her brought back dark memories. It was her kind that had locked him in this maze for the last four thousand years, and the memories of the hunger and frustration ate at him. His rage towered as tall as the two djinn. And at the moment, the two filled the sky, having outgrown the underground maze, the temple above it, and the village.

“Daughter of Iblis,” its voice boomed, “long have I dreamt of this day. I will suck the marrow from your bones!”

“The only thing you will eat today, you waste of skin,” Cantara grated, “is the steel of my blades!”

While the two djinn were locked in their duelling gazes of hatred and steel, Alvaro and Aiko collected Ember and her brood. Still spitting like a hellcat, Alvaro was forced to pick her up and carry her bodily from the chamber. Or at least until they suddenly ran into the animated bronze statues blocking their path. As soon as Ember reached the door, her hounds turned to follow. All four sets of eyes were red with rage, and their anger and fear were feeding hers, returning to them fourfold. Bronze statues did not know what hit them. Hellhounds, imps, swords and feet struck in a whirlwind of violence. Alvaro and Aiko joined the fray, both wondering how in hell Tangerine had manage to swallow one?

As darkness fell on the surface, vampyres in traditional Japanese lacquer armour marched out of the head of the pass. Rank after rank, with black flags flying from the heads of their pikes and from poles tied to their back, they filled the hilltops before the fortress. Soon they covered the approached from one end to the other, and still, they kept coming. Gwen took one look at their numbers and drew her vampyre zinger.

“Oh no, we’re not doing this again tonight,” she swore. “If I’m climbing a mountain in the morning, I am getting some sleep.”

“I don’t think scolding them is going to cut it,” Crystal teased.

“No,” Gwen replied. “But a taste of my new zinger will. Mom, go get all the Wiccans. Have them link to Crystal, Alex and you. I’ll pick up the links from you.”

“Honey,” April warned, “you’ll burn yourself out.”

“Woman!” Can you just do what you’re told for once in your life?”

At that moment, Gwen had sounded so much like her father that April was left sputtering. Gwen pointed, and she turned, still wondering what had just happened.

The Wiccan were a disciplined lot, a characteristic developed over long years of dealing with medical emergencies. While the vampyre forces were still mustering before the walls of the fortress, they gathered in groups of thirteen behind one of the three lead women. Their crystals lit the dark compound like a field of stars, and as each thirteenth passed the link on, those crystals held by April, Alex and Crystal grew as bright as a sun on the verge of going supernova.

Gwen carefully took up the link from April, realizing that her mother might be right. This once. The amount of energy her new vampyre zinger was capable of channelling was easily enough to burn out any ten Wiccans. Gingerly, she touched the link held by Crystal. With the kick the Raven and the Wiccan Apotropaic were adding, balancing the three channels of energy was as ticklish as juggling chainsaws while tap-dancing on a tightrope. One misstep and they would be spinning out of control like a fire hose without a crew, leaking energy in all directions.

Finally, only Alex’s channel remained. As Gwen took it up, she began to weave the three into a single strand. Some part of her consciousness remained aware of the vampyres as they began their assault. She had no concentration to lend the arrows that blotted out the stars or the two massive djinn warriors who appeared before the fortress, locked in a death grip. She raised her cathode and fired.

“Oh shit!” Gwen moaned. “Cantara is so going to kill me.”

Thunder shattered the sky as the Wiccan energy detonated. Everything on that side of the cathode was met by a hurricane wind of force. Arrows, djinn and vampyre flew into the night sky. The rain of weapons and bits of armour littered the fields and hills as far as ten miles away. The concussion broke the sound barrier, a sonic boom that deafened everyone and knocked several people in the fortress from their feet.