Page 46 of Land of Monsters

Snow crunched underfoot as we made our way to the door. Voices from below could still be heard, but the commotion was no longer a distraction. They were on high alert now.

Reaching the door, I cast my senses out, trying to hear anything on the other side. Met with silence, I put my hand next to the lock, nodding for Opie to climb up to my arm.

Not even a minute later, I lifted the handle, gun pointed forward, opening it gradually so as not to make a sound. I stepped inside, my finger twitching on the trigger, ready to find a troop of guards waiting for us. My gaze and body darted around, scanning the larger corridor we moved into.

Opie, returning to my shoulder, gripped my hair as if he sensed something wrong like I did. A sick, sinking sensation dropped into my gut.

Firebulbs flickered on as we moved deeper into the large underground tunnel. The remains of old tourist displays were scattered around, giving information on the castle and mythical vampire, but they weren’t the most recent additions to this ancient place.

“Fuck. Me.” The gun almost dropped from my hand. Hot-cold sweat dampened my skin at the memory of seeing this before, knowing exactly what it was.

A factual horror was being written here.

“What the fuck?” Dzsinn’s tone shivered up my spine, his eyes wide, not understanding what he was seeing.

The wall was lined with several dozen tanks, each filled with a body suspended in liquid. Humans.

My stomach heaved when my eyes landed on the person inside the first tank.

Iacob.

“Oh gods,” I muttered as my gaze drifted down, recognizing a handful more human men from the pagan encampment.There were ones I didn’t recognize, and I assumed the rest of the men were from villages around here.

Unconscious and naked, they were submerged in a clear substance, a mouthpiece breathing air into their lungs as they waited.

This was their priming station, the first step in their change to becoming fae-like.

Volunteers or not, most of these people would die in the transition.

“Seriously, what the fuck is this?” Dzsinn asked.

“Frankenstein’s lair.”

The rumors about what Istvan had been doing leaked out with dime-novel absurdness. Most never got close to the truth of the chilling things he achieved, even worse than the stories. Many did not want to believe it, even when they saw the soldiers he created with their own eyes.

I had seen it all. Experienced the truth of every rumor.

Dzsinn would’ve heard all the tales, his ear close to the ground, but seeing it was different than experiencing it.

“This is the first stage.” Air battled in my lungs at the knowledge that soon a fae would be hooked up to them, dumping their essence into the human body, changing their human DNA forever. If they survived it.

Caden was the first successful case done this way. His own father hooked him up to Warwick, ripping the Wolf of his magic and placing it in his son, turning his son from human to fae.

Caden and Warwick now shared characteristics and traits, bonding them like twin brothers, while they continued to resent each other, disliking the link tying them to each other for infinity.

“They are being prepped to be connected to a fae.” Sonya was replicating Istvan’s work. Taking what he did and making her own mindless drones. To do this, she would need a lot of faeto use as donors, fae that were at her mercy. Like others from the encampment, like Vlad and Codrin.

A growl formed in the back of my throat. My determination to find Raven grew like weeds taking over my body.

“Ash!” Dzsinn hissed as I bolted down the corridor, my fury ready to level everything that got in my way. If one strand of hair on her head had been hurt, I would rain hell on this fortress.

The firebulbs flicked on when I passed, my feet clipping the paved floor, my soles squeaking when I came to the end in front of an out-of-use elevator, cutting off our path to reach the castle.

Every second I wasted, she could be tortured, could already be losing herself to Sonya’s mission. Warwick was lucky; death seemed to stay clear of him, but most fae were not. They didn’t make it after all their power was drained from them.

“No.” I tried to rip open the doors, but the doors were jammed firmly together. “No!” I bashed at the frame, prying and pulling, noises burning the back of my throat.

“Ash?” My name drifted to me, but I couldn’t stop, my frustration snapping into pieces. “Ash!”

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