Page 51 of Mantle (IMMORTAL FLAME #3)

~Vorzyr~

The place was a nightmare come to life.

It actually had me shuddering. Me.

The magically-generated light that the Guardian members leading the charge ahead of us were using unfortunately illuminated all the many horrors surrounding us.

I heard Lucian choking, on the verge of retching.

It was the stench of death and rank blood every fucking where. With my animal senses, I could scent it strongly too. But Lucian’s senses were far beyond even mine and he was extra sensitive as an Ancient Vampire to blood. It had to be killing him.

Ryker had sent him in his stead while he dealt with Ketheron and enacted a massive, temporary lockdown of the supernatural world—one that far exceeded even Blackline Protocol—in preparation for the expected Celestial Plane response to the Severance spell beginning at any moment.

There was no point suggesting he wait outside, he wouldn’t leave.

Speaking of determined bastards, I looked out at Kai.

He was barely reacting—on the surface. He was in his near-obsessive state of being so completely on course with a mission that nothing could impact him.

As we continued making our way through the subterranean crypt, the walls lined with vertical alcoves holding preserved bodies frozen in glass-like stasis almost like sleeping fucked-up art installations, I gritted my teeth as our boots continued to crunch on the thousands of skulls and bones lining the floors.

“I can’t locate him through the rancid blood interference,” Lucian told us.

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing either,” I admitted.

“Doesn’t matter,” Kai finally spoke. “We’ll find him. The Guardians are splitting up to cover the expanse of this death space, and he can’t escape now anyway, they warded the place when we arrived. It’s just a matter of finding the rat through these tunnels.”

A commotion sounded a couple of hundred feet ahead of us, deep in the heart of the hellhole. Magic flared, vampires slammed into stone, decimating the walls at the impact of clearly being thrown with Corvin’s magic.

And then I saw a figure dart down a narrower tunnel right near us.

Lucian took off in a burst of speed.

I grabbed Kai and took him with me as I used my dragon speed to follow. Even with that, I was nowhere near as fast as Lucian and it took us seconds, not split-seconds, to arrive in another cave-like space.

And there Lucian was being held several feet off the ground, his body rigid and paralyzed by Corvin’s magic encompassing him.

“You’re using remnants of the necromantic magic you stole from Sylas,” Kai hissed.

“Ah, very good, magic-wielder. Kai, is it?”

“Release him,” I rumbled. “You’re done. There’s no way out for you.”

“Then I best have my fun while I can, yes?”

I snarled and went to move in, but Kai grasped my arm. “Something is wrong.”

“What? What is it?”

“He’s going to be sentenced to The Void , yet he’s not reacting like he’s been defeated.”

Corvin chuckled creepily. “Very astute, sorcerer. Now it makes more sense. You trained Ariana in those ways.”

“I didn’t train her. She just progressed naturally. Once she stopped allowing pieces of shit like you to impact how she lived and how she thought of herself and her power.”

“Then she became fucking unstoppable,” I threw at him.

“Something you can only ever hope to be,” Kai finished for me.

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

Kai was dead on—something was very wrong.

There was more to this.

Corvin wasn’t responding like a man on the verge of defeat.

I saw Kai’s fingers twitch with the urge to call his magic, free Lucian, and finish this.

But he stopped himself.

Corvin wasn’t just a sorcerer—he was an Ancient Vampire.

There was no way either of us could fire our power at him without him seeing it coming and simply dodging it.

I caught myself.

See it coming. Of course!

I mind-linked Kai.

“That time in your lab where I had you pinned and you still managed to overwhelm me with your magic—”

“Got it.”

I smiled inwardly as I closed the mind-link. Of course he did.

It took barely two seconds before he managed it, a violent explosion of his rose-gold power detonating all over Corvin, blowing him back into the rough stone wall with absolute brutal force.

In the process, the spell holding Lucian broke, and he fell to the floor, landing in a primed crouch.

Corvin snarled and fired his own power at Kai, but I was already there, my flames exploding across the chamber and decimating his magic upon contact, forcing him to shield his face in the process.

Lucian cut across the space in a blur and delivered a blow so brutal, it ripped Corvin off his feet.

As he landed on his back painfully, Lucian was there, wailing on him with his vampiric strength, then wrenching him up, seconds away from breaking his neck which would knock him out for some time.

But then Corvin blasted him away with a bolt of his power at the last second.

I grimaced as Lucian went careening across the chamber and slamming into a wall, taking a massive chunk out of it.

He recovered incredibly quickly, then burst toward the way we’d come in.

“Now!” he called out down the tunnels. “Commence the transfer spell to The Void !”

A deranged laugh sounded from Corvin. “Yeah, they’re not coming.

” He smirked out at us. “My black magic users those foolish Guardians took away came in handy for a lot of things. Of note right now is that I was able to infuse their magic into an illusion spell that doesn’t just distort the reality all around, it also severely distorts the perception of those afflicted with such a spell, meaning they cannot sense the difference, nor register it even existing magically.

So, all your backup and those who can actually perform that secretive transfer spell are off deep in the tunnels here, completely unaware that you’re here with me.

In fact, they can’t even see this little chamber at all. ”

“You think you’ve thought of everything,” Kai spoke, stepping forward a little as that eerie tone of his echoed through the place.

“I know I have, youngling.”

“Every move you make can be countered. That’s already played out. You’ve seen your failure.”

“Shut the hell up!” Corvin roared.

“Hmm. Not as Machiavellian as you believe yourself to be, are you? And, fuck, that’s with years of planning. How incredibly disappointing.”

He went for Kai.

Lucian and I were both primed to react.

But Kai responded, already expecting it, his magic blasting from both his palms and forcing Corvin back.

Corvin hissed and pushed against it, then raised his hands to call his, but Kai snapped his wrists with just a fucking flash of his power through his eyes, making Corvin shriek.

In the next second, he thrust his palms forward and rose-gold lightning erupted, tearing into Corvin’s entire body, making him convulse uncontrollably.

Motherfucking shit.

“Mmm, magical evolution. Happens once in a while to a dedicated few. A brilliant dedicated few. Just like me. It’s really something, isn’t it?” he taunted Corvin.

Corvin’s jaw clenched. “Ariana… will… perish.”

Kai’s lightning intensified and Corvin crashed to the ground, writhing and screaming.

Through it all, he laughed insanely. “You’ll watch… her die… fucking cunt that… she is.”

It took everything for me to reel it in as Kai was already losing his shit.

Firing and firing mercilessly.

Using so much power—too much power.

“Take it down,” Lucian called to him in that smooth and collected way, despite what had just happened. And it being his daughter that Corvin had just threatened with death and called a cunt.

“Kai,” I pushed. “You’re gonna kill him.”

The lightning wasn’t just hitting Corvin anymore.

It was shredding the floor beneath him, cracking through the stone in jagged veins of molten fury. The chamber shook with it.

Corvin’s screams were drowned out by the roar of raw magic.

“Kai!” I shouted again, stepping closer.

He didn’t hear me.

His eyes were burning rose-gold. His expression was locked in that emotionless, focused rage, that dangerous state where there was no line he wouldn’t cross to do what needed to be done, to protect us all.

I burst forward and grasped his shoulder in a harsh grip.

He blinked.

“She wouldn’t want this. You don’t really want this. I know you too well to believe that. Don’t let him push you to become this when you’ve come so fucking far with us. It would be a fucking tragedy, Kai.”

He hesitated.

A growl escaped him.

And then he pulled his magic back.

The chamber fell into a heavy, aching silence.

Kai’s chest rose and fell fast, his jaw clenched so tight it looked like it hurt.

His hands dropped to his sides, still twitching with the residue of what he’d unleashed.

Lucian stepped past us, walking slowly toward what remained of Corvin Morvain.

The bastard was smoking, bloodied, half-conscious, and glaring up at us with whatever rage he could still summon.

Lucian crouched beside him, calm as ice. “It’s over. Cunt.”

I looked at Kai. “I’ll take that portion of his blood and magic that we need for Sylas.” He’d only just calmed down, he needed to hold on to that.

I crouched down the other side of Lucian and called my power to my right palm, then levitated his blood that had already spilled, and collected it in a vial.

Next, I pressed my red power to Corvin’s chest, ready to draw out some of his magic, to complete what we needed to help Sylas.

The moment it made contact and the spell tried activate, it repelled, like a static shock making me jerk back.

I frowned and tried again, but the same thing happened.

Corvin choked out a laugh. “Think I didn’t see this coming? I knew you were helping Morgrave, knew you’d come for my magic at some point. You can’t . It’s locked down. Nobody can take it.”

“Fuck,” Kai uttered, emotion swimming in his eyes for Sylas.

“Best get back to the drawing board with that one, almighty sorcerer. It could take years to find an alternative way to cure him without my power—the power of the one who afflicted him with that curse in the first place. You think he’ll last that long?

I wonder. That serum was an impressive creation, but his body can only endure so much. ”

Kai roared and I threw out my arm to block his path, but then a blast of blinding white light tore into the chamber, coming from the earth above the crypt dwelling.

It decimated the roof and everything above.

I fought to blink through it, and what I saw had me fucking shocked to my core.

There twenty True Celestials were hovering, wings outstretched, each of them in full battle garb.

“That’s my cue,” Corvin said, thrusting his hand up toward them.

One of them swept down, scooped him up in the blink of an eye, and then they were tearing away into the sky.

Motherfucker.

We were out of time.