Page 35 of Wicked Savior
When we emerge, we’re in some kind of market. My body starts seizing up, and the breath rushes from my lungs. I frantically grab Cormal’s arm and dig my fingers in to alert him.
“Shit. I didn’t realize,” he stutters. Quickly pivoting, he pulls me back through the shadow.
We land in a cave deep in the mountainside. I fall to my knees, and he immediately places an oxygen mask over my mouth. I guess he conjured it when we got here.
Breathing deeply, I glare up at him. As the oxygen hits my blood, my muscles slowly unlock, giving me back control of them again.
I pull the mask away from my face. “What the hell?”
He looks uncomfortable. “Underworld doesn’t tolerate humans in its domain. I thought you were a goddess.” Blue eyes look me up and down. “I’m confused. Was Viridis your mother or not?”
“I can take either form. Goddess or human, after my father,” I say wearily. “If I’d known where we were going, I’d have informed you of my limitations. Maybe share your plans with me next time.”
He looks relieved. “This cave was designed by your mother to provide Druids with a protected place. She knew we would need a bolt hole when the angels realized we could kill them.” A harsh chuckle escapes. “It didn’t do us any good. In our arrogance, we thought ourselves invincible and never used it.”
I tilt my head to study him. “You’re a Druid?”
“Sort of. A long time ago, I was human, but sometimes events force you to become something else. I exchanged my Druid powers and mortality for something more powerful,” he admits, eyes flashing to black.
With care, I set down the mask and stand up to face him. While I can’t feel his power, the hairs on my neck are standing up. “I only want to know what happened to my mother.”
His eyes return to their original blue color. “I’d never hurt Viridis’ daughter. You can relax.”
Puzzled, I walk around the cave to get a better look. “Are there any sconces in here?”
With a whoosh, he lights the ones on the walls without moving a single finger.
“Thank you,” I murmur, my attention completely focused on the words written on the walls. “This spell hides you from your enemies. I recently wrote a similar one for an amulet.” I point to the spell written around the entrance to the cave. “That one provided for my mother’s protection.”
Farther back in the cave, I see an altar and another spell written around its base. “This is a containment spell for something called the brùid,” I inform him, circling the stone to read all the words. “I thought brùid was a Gaelic term for beast.”
“It is,” he says grimly, stepping away from the altar. “Brennus had four children from a previous wife when he was changed by your mother. He thought if he gave them his blood, he could change them into Druids. It didn’t work out that way. One died immediately. The other three were seemingly fine. Until the night they changed into dark beasts, full of nothing but hunger and attacked the village.”
“Your mother used her powers to trap them. Then, she called for a portal and swept them up inside, away from this world,” he says, thrusting his hands into his pockets.
Shocked, I reared back. It’s the same experiment I’ve been conducting, and yet all of my subjects have died. Except for one. John.
“How long did it take for them to change into these beasts?” My voice is strained with worry when I finally manage to spit out the question.
“A week,” he informs me.
I count backward. It’s been three days since I gave John the first transfusion. I sigh with relief. I’ve still got time to get him into a cell of some sort.
“Unfortunately, the moment your mother used her goddess powers to open the portal, the angels came to Earth to search for her. It wasn’t exactly populous back then, and it didn’t take them long to find her. She was in the village with Brennus when they descended. As a warrior, he immediately went into fighting mode.
“She tried to stop him, but instinct had taken over, and seconds later, an angel lay dead on the ground. Killed by a human. The angels with him immediately stopped fighting and disappeared,” Cormal explains, his voice full of memories.
“It sounds like you were there,” I state softly, puzzled by his tone.
“I was, and I wasn’t. Brennus was my father, and I was one of the four he tried to change,” he admits gruffly. “Your mother should have left as soon as the fight ended, but instead, she went into the portal and captured one of the beasts. She needed to know why the blood changed us the way it did.”
“Knowledge is like air to Viridians. We must have it to survive, I think,” I joke, but it’s a sad kind of humor.
He nods vigorously, as if he understands exactly what I’m saying. “She captured me. Her experiments went on for days. Finally, she drained my entire body of blood and slowly replaced it with a mixture of her blood and Brennus’. The purity of her blood overrode the impurities in my human blood. It worked. Mostly.”
He flashes me a wry expression. “There were a few side effects. Determined to fix all of us, she returned to the portal to get another beast. When the portal opened, there were a hell of a lot more than two beasts on the other side. They had replicated or procreated. And fast, too. She managed to wrangle one of them to this side. It was my sister. She saved her, although she was also a bit different from your typical Druid.”
“She quickly sent word to all the other families, but it was too late. Three of them had done the same thing Brennus had done. They managed to kill most of the beasts, but a few escaped.
