SWNOVELS Chapter Medallion
Alena’s return broke the uncomfortable silence Marcus had intentionally allowed to grow.
It spoke of too many unsaid things and grew pregnant with unvoiced emotions that broiled beneath the surface and added to Rowan’s tension.
The cold, damp cave and its too-quiet hollowness didn’t help.
One could not resist acknowledging the passing of the ages in this place or the awareness that so many took shelter here. Yet time buried their memory and lives in the dust.
Someday others would sit here, and the memory of the three of them would be gone too.
“The prophecy said:
~From the night of blood
the one will come,
summoned by naught but one,
and by way of will be done,
escape death where it had come.~
~Enemies at common mercy lay,
to stand as one,
and fulfill that which must be done.~
~Follow the rules of creation
to slay the dragon,
and you will have won,~” Alena quoted without Marcus saying a word.
“It made little sense until last night. The blood moon rose, and our men perished. You came and should have died.
“Marcus summoned you on his own, and we are enemies against a common foe who must stand together. The rest we don’t understand yet,” her sister admitted.
***
Alena wanted Marcus to explain and make it sound more credible, but spitefully, he let her suffer. He wanted her to bridge this divide with her sister, and she dared not fault him for it, especially after she had resisted him at every turn.
“But?” Rowan asked with their father’s acute perception, and Alena nodded.
“There are a lot of disjointed pieces of text bound with clues,” Marcus revealed and then neglected to continue.
Alena didn’t have to look at him to realize he expected her to speak.
“The next clue read only one and two,” she supplied cryptically.
****
Rowan frowned at her sister’s apparent reluctance to share her conclusions.
Did Alena feel uneasy, or did she not want to divulge their knowledge?
“This made sense in many ways until we found the next piece: ~One to rule and one to sway, so one may live another day.~”
Alena allowed her to draw her own conclusions.
“That makes no sense,” she countered, not wanting to be difficult.
It was just her opinion.
She intended to play their game until sunset and leave, but some part of her rebelled against her “cowardice.”
“And if I add: ~One to rule and two to sway. These are the rules you must obey.~” Alena added, seemingly curious about what conclusion she would draw from this scant information.
“The last part implies that those are the rules of creation, but it still makes little sense. You don’t need two to sway,” she murmured, noticing how Marcus and Alena glanced briefly at each other.
Was this a riddle to them as well? At least she made the same connections and came to similar conclusions.
“What if all of this means nothing? What if it’s a deception?”
Her question furrowed both their brows, and she’d wager it hadn’t occurred to them. When one looked for meaning in things, one often assigned it to random things that seemed to fit.
“I would rather die trying; than just wait to die.” Alena’s gaze turned vampire blue, and the tightness of Marcus’ manner told her he agreed with her sister.
“How do you know it’s this creature?” she asked. “How do you know this is the right prophecy and that you’re not just making massive leaps in deduction?”
Alena looked at Marcus before withdrawing something from her bodice and offering it to Rowan.
The interaction gave her pause before she took it, unfolding the aged leather with something cold and slimy slithering through her abdomen.
She stared at the familiar symbol she saw on a medallion lying in the mud, churned beneath the hooves of many horses in a village the raiders had destroyed.
Impulse had compelled her to pick it up and wipe it clean, both drawn to it and repulsed, yet she kept the small piece of gold for some unfathomable reason.
It had little value, and she wasn’t sentimental, but something prevented her from discarding the trinket. Perhaps because it must have had meaning to someone, and if she kept it, the memory of that person would not vanish.
***
The creatures had destroyed that village with every man, woman, and child in it, and it was the first time she encountered such complete and heartless destruction.
The violence of that day lingered in the atmosphere, and she knew that place would retain the memory of what occurred even after a thousand years.
The blood of so many didn’t just run into the ground and disappear.
She once visited the battlefields of Old Har, where the king’s army fought the most significant and bloodiest battle of all time, and even though it had become fields where cattle grazed, it had affected her.
The echo of blood spilled, lives and dreams lost to the throes of violent and horrible death, remained as if the earth preserved their memory.
She would have recognized the sensation even if she hadn’t known the history of that area.
***
“I saw this on a medallion in one of the villages they plundered,” Rowan murmured, staring at the depiction of a dragon’s head on a pennant with strange writing embossed around the edge.
She fetched her satchel, containing all of her worldly possessions, and removed the medallion from a small bag.
Marcus took the coin she offered and briefly studied it before handing it to Alena.
“I doubt if a Daywalker wore this, but I noticed a similar symbol on the floor of a hollow, partly destroyed shrine in the village. Price told me that villages created those to hide things of great value.”
Alena offered the coin back, but Rowan no longer wanted it; shaking her head and her sister placed it with the scrolls.
“What if these are not random, and he’s searching for something?” Marcus suggested thoughtfully, and Rowan glanced at him.
This was pure conjecture, she thought, and although she said nothing, Alena noticed her expression.
Marcus was far too distracted.
“They destroyed one of our villages in the same way. There were no medallions, but a shrine near the well was damaged so badly one could barely see the symbol. It was hollow, but we didn’t realize something might have been inside it,” Alena said and stared at her.
“The more I hear, despite how plausible everything sounds, the less I believe any of it. The tale gets stranger and stranger, like the musing of a drunk madman.
“This prophecy of yours is thousands of years old, and they didn’t construct that shrine yesterday or a hundred years ago. The ages wore the stone down,” Rowan said. “How can events from so long ago affect our lives now? Why is this all happening? What did he wait for? If he exists or ever existed?”
Marcus caught her glance.
“He waited for something to fulfill the prophecy and expected your birth. He needs something from your bloodline—his bloodline. He killed vampires from your line for a thousand years, stealing their essence and lives from them.”
The sick sensation in her abdomen became even more intense.
“Why doesn’t anyone know about this?” Her question caused another one of those meaningful glances between the two of them.
“He made them disappear without a trace, and until Victor disappeared, no conclusive proof existed. This creature wrote twenty-six on the wall with Victor’s blood in an ancient vampire dialect.
“It is the exact count of how many vampires of your line have gone missing over the years, and yes, we keep extensive records,” he admitted.
“When he killed Zara, Victor’s niece, he wrote ’~Two to go~’ on the floor with her blood and recreated this symbol beneath the message. When Phillipe had disappeared just before her, he wrote ’~they are mine~’ and left this piece of leather made from Victor’s skin.”
The graveness of his tone only added to her stunned horror.
If this creature wasn’t doing all of this, someone was. Someone had hunted Victor’s line into extinction, and they were the last two.
Her eye caught on the piece of leather, and her heart stilled. She glanced at Alena, who avoided her gaze, and found her gaze inexorably drawn back to the awful thing. She had paid little attention to it before and didn’t realize its scent matched hers and Alena’s.
She almost reached out and touched it but couldn’t curb her revulsion.
All that remained of the man who fathered them was that small piece of his skin, and she couldn’t even understand how it existed.
It should have turned to ash and inspired a sense of dread reaching out to her like dark smoky tendrils.
How much hate must one have to do such a thing? To murder so many in cold blood, and why the games? Was he messing with them and making them chase after shadows for his amusement before he killed them, too?
She shuddered, and as if he noticed her unease, Marcus put the thing away.
Her eyes followed his hands out of their own accord as she struggled to contain her emotions.
***
Discovering it must have been a horrible shock to Alena. Her sister was a beloved daughter, and losing her father must have caused her suffering, but only having that gruesome reminder of him must eat at her.
It hit Rowan much harder than expected, and no fondness softened her heart toward him, yet no man deserved such a fate, not even Victor.
She dared not look at Alena, not wanting to acknowledge the pity and sympathy fighting against her reserve.
People should not suffer such horrors for the entertainment of a killer.
A cold shiver ran down her spine.
If she stayed and continued on this journey with them, would she experience far worse and endure things the mind dared not ponder?
Why couldn’t she shake the sensation of some unseen, malevolent presence lurking in the shadows?
As a rule, she didn’t sleep much, but of late, nightmares tormented her.
Rowan hadn’t suffered from them since she was a child and never remembered them once she woke. Only recalling the aftereffects—a deep-seated sensation of dread, fear that chilled her to her bones, horror, and a sense of impending doom.
All of which she experienced right at that moment.