Page 33 of These Unhallowed Halls (Equinox Seasons Duet #2)

Twenty-One- From His Follower’s Tongue The Prophecy Will Spill Free

Caleb

T he ground was cool beneath me, a gentle dew clinging to my skin, and then I was suddenly aware that I had control again.

I sat up, wincing as my muscles protested the abrupt movement.

The sun was just breaking free of the treeline, the sound of birds chittering back and forth filling the space around us.

Us. Lizzie and Temps. I—

Looking down, I saw them both huddled into each other, sleeping in the flattened patch of fallen leaves and mossy grass.

We were beneath a large oak that hung over the cemetery.

Wind shuffled through the gravestones, finally extinguishing the ritual candle that had been burning all night.

The last remnants of the spell faded; it’s working successful.

I touched my bare chest over my heart, rubbing idly. I could feel him. He was still there inside me.

I am, sage. And there is much to be done if we wish to rid the worlds of that heinous malice.

A little thrown, I stared down at nothing. Cerberus was talking in my head, this other part of me now, and yet something so beyond me that I couldn’t believe he’d even allowed the soul weaving to happen.

The spell was merely the door. I was always to be with you, to be with you all. Since before my rebirth through the Queen and long after.

Sighing, I shook my head. This was going to take some getting used to.

It’s extremely strange to be having a conversation with an elder being in my head, you know that?

I suppose for a mortal it might be odd. I speak to my mother this way in most circumstances. However, that is when I am in wolf form. Even with three mouths, speaking is not available to me then.

Chuckling lightly, I rolled my eyes, sitting up straighter in the grass, which made my back crack. Did you just make a joke?

I’ve been known to—on occasion. But it does not change the fact that we must hurry. The malignance is stirring. It is almost at full strength.

Wait, have you fought this thing before? Lizzie shifted near me, and I traded looks between her and Temps. They looked so peaceful like this. I hated the thought of waking them.

Its last vessel touched ground in the World of Below.

My father and mother, though notably more so Mother, were forced to defeat him before it took hold of our entire realm.

It was hardly the first time the malignance had affected one of our realms, but Father Paine nearly destroyed us. Destroyed me.

Paine? I know that name. We found it when we were researching the carnival. His son, I think. Jebediah Junior. He’s the Ring Leader, the new vessel, it sounds like.

Tension ratcheted up my spine. I didn’t like this. If whatever this thing was almost destroyed Cerberus and his mother before, how the hell were we supposed to stop it now? It was surely going to be stronger now that it had a fucking circus cult feeding victims to it on the regular.

I am uncertain what a carnival is or a ‘circus cult,’ but while you are right to have concern, do not lose faith in our mates. There are four of us now, bound and emboldened. We will stop the false-god. We have no choice.

Sighing, I pinched the bridge of my nose. Amazing pep talk, Cerberus. Ugh, we’ll just…we’ll just have to, I guess, huh?

We need to wake them.

I looked at the girls again, our mates as Cerberus liked to call them, and I hated this all over again. They were in their twenties. They should be nursing hangovers and watching horror movies till four in the morning, not fighting the manifestation of evil.

But life was rarely fair or easy. We didn’t get to pick what was demanded of us, and more times than I wanted to think about, people just like them had suffered and died because of this thing.

Relishing one more moment, soaking it in so that I’d remember it forever, I nodded to myself and then squeezed both Temps’ and Lizzie’s shoulders. They jerked, looking up at me with groggy blinks until twin smiles spread over their faces.

“You’re you again.” Temps sat up, holding her arm around herself as she reached for my cheek.

I let my face drop into her palm, closing my eyes for a second. “Yeah, I’m me. But Cerberus is still in here.”

Hello, little witch.

“He says hi.” The girls giggled, and then Lizzie stretched, reaching her arms over her head, which just made her pert tits press up, her nipple hard and delectable.

My cock kicked slightly, and I was getting harder by the second with all this skin on display. Waking up naked with Lizzie and Temps was certainly among my favorite memories, but it was going to be real damn hard to do anything more than fuck them again at this rate.

Your body needs to recover, sage.

Yeah, yeah. Did you have to shred all our clothes? How are we supposed to walk back to the dorms like this?

“Are you okay?” Lizzie put a hand on my shoulder, leaning into my field of view as I pulled my stare away from the ground. “You’re like zoning out or suddenly real interested in leaves.”

I shook my head with a sigh, dragging a hand through my hair. “No, sorry. I can talk with him in my mind. I was complaining about the clothing situation.”

Temps nodded vigorously, her teeth starting to chatter now that she wasn’t curled up next to Lizzie. “I second the annoyance about the clothes. I’m freezing. And we can’t walk back like this.”

See .

Ugh, very well. Have them hold out their hands, and I will direct them to their lodgings. We can travel to yours next .

Unwilling to argue with an elder god, I nodded once and relayed the instructions to Lizzie and Temps.

“I’ll make sure to message once I’ve sorted things out at my apartment. With the very impending rise of this ‘malignance,’ again, Cerberus’ word, not mine, I want to make sure we have everything prepared. I’ll craft a few more tonics and such, and we can regroup tonight. Sound like a plan?”

Lizzie stepped up to me, sliding her arms around my waist for a hug before craning back to look up at me.

“It would be a better plan if we could all be together, but yeah. It’ll do for now.”

I laughed, stroking her cheek and pulling Temps in, too. “I know. Maybe…maybe after all this we can find a way to all stay at my apartment, at least secretly if nothing else.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble, Caleb. We can handle a short walk across town if it saves your job.” Temps leaned up onto her toe, kissing my cheek, which made Cerberus growl hungrily in my head. “But bamf us or whatever. I’m freezing. My nips are going to pop right off at this rate.”

My brow shot up as Lizzie scoffed and said, “My, my, now who’s got the potty mouth, Ms. Montgomery?”

Temps knocked her with her elbow, and damn, I just want to go back to my apartment with them, snuggle and kiss and fuck until they couldn’t walk, forget all this end of the world shit. But I wasn’t that horrible of a person. I saved that level of darkness for the bedroom.

I would very much like to see that next time.

That took me off guard, and I coughed slightly as I took the girls’ hands, swallowing hard. Was the ancient deity in my head flirting with me?

“Alright, Cerberus, do your thing.”

With that, I felt magic rush to the surface of my skin. It was an inferno, just this side of painful as the heat swelled, and then a layer of swirling flame surrounded Temps and Lizzie, blinking into nothing and leaving me holding the air.

They will arrive inside their lodging. I would see no one else look upon their naked form.

Ditto, big guy. Let’s go.

And sure enough, using that same pull, Cerberus whisked us through the air, heading back to my far less appealing apartment. Spending a night under the trees as a wolfman truly spoiled me.

C arpet came up under my feet, and I steadied myself, throwing my arms out to catch my balance.

The landing was a little rocky, but I couldn’t argue with the results.

We’d made it back to my apartment in a literal flash, and that certainly beat doing the “Walk of Shame” down Main Street in the buff.

“Well, thanks, buddy.”

I cocked my head, still trying to digest everything that’d happened in the past few days, especially last night.

Though I’d be lying if I said I wanted things to go back to how they had been before the semester started.

Darkness and death to be sure, but having Temps and Lizzie in my life, and now Cerberus, who felt odd at home within me, was something I wouldn’t trade.

And would certainly kill for.

Your home feels off, sage. Be wary. I sense something.

Looking around, I couldn’t spot anything but the usual pile of books and various folders and printouts I’d left on my coffee table from the other night. The studio was cramped, a single bedroom and bathroom at the back, my open-plan kitchen, living, and dining room seeming untouched.

I don’t see anything. Are you sure that—

There!

I turned just in time to see something pull itself out of the shadows, as if it had been a part of them, and leap toward me.

Holding out my hands, I gripped the fabric below the neck of this masculine figure, rolling back to absorb the momentum and land with me on top of him, pinning him to the floor.

Cerberus’ honed instincts flared through me, bolstering my own, and a menacing growl tore from my throat. Claws extending from my fingers, I held them poised over the man’s face, one lined up with his pupil.

“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?”

Realizing what I was looking at, I sneered as the man, dressed in a shabby, striped clown’s outfit, grinned up at me. He laughed, eyes flaring wide, and the sound was empty and wrong, this discordant, warped recording of a laugh, not the real thing.

“Well, I gotta say I figured getting the drop on a guy in nothing but the breeze would be a bit easier.” His voice was squeaky, a dull whine that was low on some words and horrendously high-pitched on others. “You got some tricks there the circus could use. Too bad you gotta be dead, witch .”

He uttered the word with such disgust that I immediately tightened my hold on the grubby, red and white striped shirt, my claws inching closer.

“I promise you, the only dead man talking right now is you. So make your last words useful. What is the carnival doing? Has Paine been sacrificing patrons to this false-god of yours?”

Like flicking a switch, the man snarled at me, bucking against my hold and snapping at my hand with his crooked, rotten teeth.

The smeared makeup on his face cracked as he growled, thrashing this way and that.

From someone who might have appeared cognizant, this demented clown was all that was left, a thrawl offended for its master.

“ He is the one! The only path to power and glory! You will be chewed for eternity in his holy maw!”

The fucker dug his nails into my forearm, and without even asking, Cerberus surged inside me, pressing more of himself to the surface.

Fur pushed up through my skin, coating me from head to toe, and I watched as the clown’s mouth dropped open, his stare wide with terror.

Where I gripped his costume, claws lengthened, slicing into the skin of his chest. He hollered out, and I swept a hand through the air, channeling my magic to create a soundproofed bubble.

“ Misguided fool, ” Cerberus spoke along with me, a growl that passed through fanged teeth. “ Tell me. Tell me what your ‘omniscient’ being is up to, and maybe, I’ll end you quick. ”

Eyes wild and unfocused, the asshole laughed, a shrieking wail of unhinged dementia. “Do what you will, heathen. I will live in eternity, taken into his welcoming embrace. I will sing in the heavens as his might tears you all limb from limb!”

Rage bubbled over in my blood. This was the same type of bigoted fool as those who had killed my parents.

He was giving up his ability to think logically for some promise of power.

And what a fucking hypocrite to boot, thinking that he was following some higher being when in reality he was just the pawn of some dark evil.

Could he not even see that his own “church,” the carnival, was killing innocent people?

What kind of ‘holy’ fucking god did that?!

Throwing my hand back, I let the full length of Cerberus’ claw jut through my fingers, pain flaring but no brighter than the fury roaring in my veins.

Towering over the pathetic man, a farce of a missionary for some fucked up cult, I channeled all my inner reserve to give the man one last chance, Cerberus right there with me.

“ Tell me. I won’t ask again. You spill about your god’s plans, or I spill your guts across the fucking floor. ”

“It is already too late!” The clown didn’t even look at me now, his eyes tracking up as he pressed bloody palms together over his bleeding chest. “None of you are long for this world because our god has his final sacrifice. He will walk free this night!”

His eyes found me, bloodshot and peering out from the depths of madness.

“And he’ll start with those fucking sluts of yours.”

Without thinking, I jabbed my claws forward and into the soft spot beneath the man’s ribs, hooking them upward before yanking them free with a loud tearing sound.

Blood spurted out of his mouth in seconds, followed by gargling sounds as he choked on his own lifeforce.

All I did was watch, watch until the lights of his eyes finally extinguished.

Temps and Lizzie. The carnival will—

It won’t have the chance. We will rend them all from their foolish beliefs…our claws finding purchase in their weak bodies.

But despite Cerberus’ words, panic infected me.

Their god was ready to come out and play; the final sacrifice apparently a done deal.

We needed to get the fuck out of here and to that carnival before the big show.

I wouldn’t lose them. Temps and Lizzie were the best things that had ever happened to me, and if I needed to, I would die making sure they lived to see another day.

Without hesitation, sage.

“Fuck. This is bad. We need to get down there. We need—Fuck!” I drove my fist into the wall near me, aware now that I’d gotten up and started pacing.

“The carnival. We need to get down there, but we can’t go like this.

I need you to back off for just a bit. I’ll get dressed, and we’ll see if we can sneak inside again.

And no snooping this time. We get in, we kill anyone in our fucking way, and we make sure whatever this fucking thing is, there’s nothing left to try to raise again. ”

The transformation eased off, leaving me naked again, and I beat feet to my bedroom, grabbing the first pair of jeans and a shirt that I could find. Dressed, I stuffed a handful of random vials into my pockets. There’d be something valuable in there that I could use when I got to the carnival.

“Alright, you with me, buddy?”

Always, sage. Let’s go kill ourselves a cult .