Xenoth stalked further into the silvery light, dirtied and disheveled and panting with exertion. Perspiration ran across the hard planes of his face, drawing veins of flesh in the dust there. “Now you die, fiend,” he said in a low growl.
“You call us monsters, Adept, and yet it is not we who have destroyed worlds to sate our appetites.” She tilted her head toward him in a hideous grin as dark green ichor seeped between her fanged teeth. “At least, not yet.” The Nar’ath queen convulsed with harsh, gurgling laughter.
Xenoth’s jaw clenched and he shot both hands skyward. Another huge pair of spikes erupted from the ground and met at the queen’s chest, and the laughter came to an abrupt end. The giant form sagged and went still. The Adept eyed the motionless creature for a long moment before turning toward them. Thalya felt a chill play along her spine at the murderous rage writ plain upon the man’s features. Xenoth stabbed a finger at Amric.
“You, wilding, are coming back to Aetheria with me. The Council needs to hear of this new threat, and I will bring them all that you know on the matter.”
“That,” Amric replied, “will be a disappointment to all involved.”
Xenoth’s eyes narrowed. “Nevertheless, before you die, you will do this service for the world that birthed you. Come here, boy!”
He made a sharp beckoning gesture, and Amric stiffened. Torn from the grasp of his comrades, he hurtled through the air to hover before the Adept. Steel rang as the two Sil’ath warriors drew their swords and started forward, and Syth crouched and clenched his gauntleted fists, preparing to launch himself as well. Thalya raised her bow, reaching over one shoulder for her quiver.
“No, wait!” Amric shouted, halting them in their tracks. Thalya’s hand froze with her fingers brushing the fletching of an arrow. “He will burn you to cinders, as he did Innikar!”
“Listen to the boy,” Xenoth warned. He made a gesture, and a brilliant seam of light parted in the air behind him. The huntress caught a glimpse through the aperture of another sliver of night, elsewhere-of murky grey mists curling about tumbled masses of bleached stone. “There is no need for me to slay you all. Not when someone else is so eager to do so.”
Something about the Adept’s dark chuckle made the hair at the nape of her neck stand on end; it was a sound laden with both malice and conviction. Then another sound caught her attention, a dry rustling at the edge of the darkness. She turned her head toward it, and her flesh turned to ice.
Something blacker than the night was pooling there, and shadows rippled from it in waves that lapped hungrily at the meager light. A figure rose at the deepest heart of the shadow, powerful and timeless, and twin pinpoints of scarlet swung toward them. A wave of cold washed over her as that unblinking gaze settled upon her, pushing at her like a physical thing, peeling away her defenses and leaving her trembling like a child. Then it slid across her and was on to the others. The huntress heard their startled gasps and knew they felt it as well, but she could not turn away from the thing in the shadows. She realized her hand, still hovering at her quiver, was shaking so much that the arrow she touched was rattling among its fellows.
The dark figure rose in a slow, silken movement, and the caressing darkness flowed to it and enfolded it like a mantle. The mantle of the Vampire King, the Lord of the Night.
Bellimar the Black had returned.
CHAPTER 25
Thalya stared, unable to move, the very breath frozen in her throat.
“What have you done?” she heard Amric demand.
Xenoth turned his head a fraction but did not take his eyes from the dark figure at the center of the gathering shadows. “I promised a surprise for these lesser creatures, wilding. Look on a moment, before you and I depart, and witness what I have prepared for your companions.”
Bellimar-or rather, the monstrosity that now stood in his place-shifted his gaze over to the Adept. Bloodless lips parted in a smile too broad by far to be human, revealing long, curving fangs beneath. “And where will you flee, Adept?” he whispered. Thalya flinched as the velvet words, vibrating with insidious power, caressed at her ears.
Xenoth lifted his chin. “I flee from nothing and no one.”
Bellimar made a deep inhaling sound, and the silvery light from the globe above dimmed for a moment as tendrils of shadow slithered across the sands. Xenoth flicked a glance at the tiny ball of light, and then back to the vampire. “And yet you are fearful, Adept,” Bellimar pressed. “I can taste your fear, and it is a heady thing to one so long denied his appetites.”
“I do not fear you, fiend,” Xenoth sneered. “My concern is for Aetheria alone. The Nar’ath filth must not be allowed to cross over into my world.”
“By the queen’s own words, many already have. You are too late.”
“Then I will prevent any more from crossing over.”
“And how will you accomplish this, Adept?” Bellimar asked in a chiding tone. “The magic you expended on the wilding and the Nar’ath queen has left you more drained than you wish to show. You are weary, and you have faced but one of the Nar’ath.”
“I have no need to defeat them all myself, fool. When I bring word of this threat to the Council, they will authorize me to activate the Gate, and this wretched world will be drained of its Essence. The Nar’ath will perish along with everything else. We can then hunt at our leisure whatever smattering of those creatures already made it through.”
Thalya felt a new chill at the Adept’s words. This, then, was the destruction of their world he had been referencing in that cold, vindictive manner. Worse, it appeared that the night’s events had only served to accelerate the dire fate of her world. Her gaze darted between Bellimar and the Adept. They were intent upon each other, while she and the others were all but forgotten for the moment. Her fingers closed upon the shaft of the arrow and began to remove it from the quiver in a very slow, deliberate draw.
“Come, wilding, it is time for us to go,” Xenoth said. He half-turned toward the glowing rift in the air and made a peremptory gesture that brought the suspended form of Amric drifting after him.
Bellimar moved. So sudden and silent was the motion that the huntress blinked in momentary disorientation as her eyes struggled to follow it. She was struck by a memory from her childhood, one of many occasions when her youthful exuberance had shrugged free of the limits imposed by her father’s cautionary words. Playing in the forbidden territory of his study, she had knocked over a large inkwell on his desk, and watched in dawning horror as the jet-black ink raced in spreading rivulets over the papers scattered across its oaken surface. Bellimar’s movement was like that, quick and liquid. One moment that heart of darkness was seething at the edge of the light twenty yards away, and then it simply flowed a dozen yards closer in the span of a breath. His eyes never left the black-robed Adept, and his fangs were still bared in a terrible grin.
Xenoth spun around with a snarl. “Do not think to pit yourself against me, vampire! I freed you from your binding so that you might enjoy a brief return to your former glory, but do not forget your place.”
Bellimar drew back into the roiling mass of shadow until only his eyes were visible as scarlet pinpoints burning with feverish intensity. “Fear not, Adept, I will never forget what your forebears did to me. Still, they demonstrated might on a scale to dwarf your own. Perhaps the Nar’ath queen was correct, and the Adepts have grown weak and complacent over the centuries. Perhaps you are indeed but echoes of your former glory. Perhaps the time of the Adepts is nearly past.”