Page 58 of Dark Fae's Destiny

21

NIGHT

Quinn, Lucca, and I have been trapped by the Vampire Council of Rome, and some part of me can’t help but wonder if we’ve truly lost this time. As we try to raise the Music between us, finding that we can’t inside this dome of magic the Council has caught us in, I fight my temptation to go black, deep inside.

There has to be a way out of this; being trapped inside that hellish still-point with all those monstrous Descendant Revenants was far worse than our current situation. But sometimes, the devils we know are far worse than the ones we don’t.

And they’ve caught us now—snared us up nice and tight, right where they want us.

The Council doesn’t even bother to leave any of their own here to guard us as they depart. They’ve disappeared completely, now that they’ve caught us; they’ve left only a ring of a hundred Societas Sanguinis in their forbidding, archaic black armor to watch over us, standing inside a ring of sorcerous torches.

Those torches burn violet-blue in brackets the Societas have thrust into the ground between their ranks. As those Societas guards stand in their perimeter with their long black Vampire spears planted before them, Quinn, Lucca, and I try one last time to raise the Music beneath the barrier.

We get only silence again, thanks to whatever ancient Vampire relics the Council linked their power to, far beneath the earth. Even Staphylogenes’ heart does nothing now, only beating on as if it hasn’t a care in the world about our plight.

As severe worry takes us.

“Fucking useless!” Lucca snarls now as he tosses the heart’s crystal case aside on the grass. He flops to a seat beside it as Quinn and I settle down next to him. “You’d think an ancient object this powerful could lend a little help to get out of this situation right now.”

“Staphylogenes’ heart has a mind of its own.” Quinn gives a wry smile as he moves his long fingers over the crystal case containing the heart. “It must have needed to get itself out of the still-point we were all trapped in, where it was threatened by those Descendant Revenants the moment its tomb shattered. Using our internal Music, along with its own, to rip open a portal was the only way to do that. Now that we are ensnared to a lesser evil, which will most likely not affect it at all, it no longer needs to escape danger. And so it does nothing. While we are content to wait and see what the Vampire Council will do with us.”

“Content to wait, my ass,” Lucca snarls as his eyes flash a terrible dark blue in the ring of torchlight all around. “There has to be something we can do to break this prison.”

“We have tried the Music.” Quinn shrugs. “I have likewise tried sending a message of our plight through to Devi and Curio, but this barrier not only silences our Music, it also cuts off our bonds with our people. The only reason we still feel our bonds to each other is because we’re trapped inside the barrier together. Everything else… is just broken.”

“Still, we can’t give up,” I say as I process our situation. I feel how none of us wants to give up, but we’ve been cut off at the knees by the Council’s swift move.

Something we walked right into—directly into their clever little trap.

“They made this for us because they knew we’d come to Rome.” Quinn gazes up and around our barrier, swirling a dark, smoky grey by the midnight torchlight. “They understood we were gathering our forces for an attack; they meant to let us, then seize us inside this barrier when the most opportune moment came. Removing all our Music and bonds, the things that make us strongest… then decimating us with their warriors.”

“What do we do?” Lucca asks as he watches Quinn. “We can’t contact our people, we can’t raise the Music to escape, and the heart is doing nothing. We can’t just sit here waiting to be killed by the Council, Quinn.”

“You’re right, Lucca.” I see something clever and diabolical shine in Quinn’s dark eyes. He looks up and around our dome again as I see him think a hundred miles a minute now about our current situation.

“Night magic created this dome,” Quinn says as he talks through his glimmer of an idea now, and Lucca and I listen. “The Council told us it’s tethered to ancient Vampire relics beneath the city; I assume the Council could only tether this Music-nullifying barrier to relics that hold pure Night magic, rather than those that hold Light, like any Summer Fae or Dark Fae relics would.”

“So, what are you thinking?” I ask as I place a hand on Quinn’s knee.

“I’m thinking…” Quinn takes my hand, stroking my fingers. “What if we could expand this barrier? You heard Master Cabrakan: this dome prevents magical contact with anyone outside of it. If, however, we could get all our people inside…”

“Quindici DaPonti, you are utterly mad.” Lucca’s grin is everything as he beams now at Quinn. “You want to do something to push our Night magic, hard. You want to see if you can take over the power of this dome and push it outward, maybe even hundreds of miles, to restore our bonds to our people… after they come under it.”

“We still wouldn’t be able to use the Music, not until we could find a way to untether the dome from the relics that anchor it,” Quinn says as a reckless glint comes into his eyes, diabolical in the torchlight. “We are Dark Fae, though; we all have Night magic. So far, we have been fighting to amplify our Light. I believe what we need to do now is amplify our darkness… in order to fight like with like.”

“Until we can somehow get free of this dome and get our Music back. Then it’s time to blast the Council’s asses with the power of our purest Light,” Lucca says darkly now, brutal. “Char those fuckers six ways to sundown.”

“Precisely,” Quinn says with a vicious look as he and Lucca nod.

“I’m game,” I say as I look back at Quinn. “But how do we raise our purest Night magic, Quinn? We’ve only ever focused on our love before, to get the Music to rise between us in its brightest Light.”

“We do something me and my kind excel at,” Quinn says, regarding me like he wants to devour me. “We revel in debauchery and the pleasures of the flesh. We do it not for love’s sake, but for the rut, and the fuck, and the high. We indulge in every darkest fantasy we’ve ever wanted to have with each other… then roar up in a tower of lust and seething darkness… and Night.”

“Reveling brings the Light. Devouring brings the Night.” I understand as a sudden thrill spills through me to do all my wildest fantasies with Quinn and Lucca—not reveling in them like a Fae would to build Light, but drinking from them in a kind of hedonistic, crazy orgy as they drink me in return.

To superpower our Night.

“Fuck.” Lucca shivers now with hot tension and eagerness as I see his blue eyes darken six shades in an instant. “I don’t even know what that would entail, Quinn.”

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