A Race of Trials Read online

  I spun around, angry at the intrusion, before my eyes lighted on Commander Varga’s familiar silhouette. He was dressed in the full uniform of the Royal Guard, a sight rare for the commander, who preferred to dress beneath his station, always claiming that the battlefield held no regard for rank – a dead man was a dead man.

  “Not at all,” I replied, dismissing my somber thoughts. “What of the boundaries?”

  The commander shook his head. “They have already been lifted around Hellswan. But there is a problem. The ministers of the other kingdoms have been trying to remove the larger barrier around Nevertide, and thus far have been unable to lift it.”

  “Was it our ministers who put it in place?” I asked swiftly.

  “Acting on your father’s orders, yes,” he replied grimly.

  “Perhaps they are needed to remove it, in that case.”

  This was far from ideal. For my own personal reasons, which I didn’t want to divulge to Varga, I wanted the barriers removed tonight. I couldn’t have Hazel around Hellswan any longer. It was time to set her free, before I willingly lost myself and destroyed her in the process. I idly wondered if she and the other humans could be moved to another kingdom. But I quickly dismissed it. It was far too risky. She needed to get out of Nevertide.

  “Are our ministers making their way to the Nevertide border to investigate?” I asked.

  “Yes, along with a few guards”

  I nodded. “Good. Let me know the moment the situation is resolved.”

  “Of course. In the meantime, new king, enjoy tonight. Were you just talking to your human – what was her name, Hazel?” Varga continued, his tone implying that he was just making conversation, but I bristled at the idea that anyone might have witnessed our exchange.

  “Hazel,” I confirmed. “I was.”

  “She’s quite impressive,” he replied mildly. “I saw her in the trials. She must have been a great help.”

  I nodded curtly, wondering why the normally perceptive Varga wasn’t abandoning his line of enquiry completely.

  He smiled. “I thought that perhaps, you and her might…”

  “Don’t think on it.” I glowered at him, daring him to further the conversation.

  “Tejus, you need a wife,” he pressed. “The ministers would be in uproar, of course, but I thought that might please you, perversely … as long as she was willing to pay the price, of course.”

  “Not her,” I snapped back.

  Varga looked at me questioningly, but then remained silent. I turned to look out over the balcony, watching the flames of the bonfires roar below.

  “Then perhaps you’ll take back Queen Trina…” Varga continued, a touch of hesitation in his voice.

  “Perhaps. Why this incessant line of questioning, Commander?” I asked, belatedly realizing that he wouldn’t be so insistent with the conversation if there wasn’t a true need behind it.

  Varga sighed. “It’s the ministers, and the imperial trials. You know how biased they can be – you saw it for yourself during the kingship trials. If you took a wife, the ministers would favor you more greatly. Both King Thraxus and Memenion are your age, and are already wed. They will be your stiffest competition for the position of Emperor.”

  I snorted with derision.

  “Those men are inadequate. Queen Trina even more so – but she is more devious, of course,” I replied with a smirk.

  “Will you let your arrogance rule you, Tejus?” Varga retorted.

  I smiled at him slowly.

  “Be careful how you address me, old friend,” I warned.

  “Forgive me, Tejus,” Varga sighed. “I only want to see you at your father’s thrones – both as king and Emperor.”

  I nodded, we both knew he was forgiven. There were few in Nevertide that I could trust – fewer still that I could bear to exchange more than a few words with, but Commander Varga was the exception. He had grown up in this castle, his father a great friend of my own. At first we had been united by our hatred of Jenus, and later our friendship, if I could call it that, had grown out of a mutual respect. We were an unlikely pair, even I could see that. Varga was generous and open-minded, whereas I knew my shortcomings enabled me to be anything but.

  “I will leave you in peace, but think on what I’ve said. You were born for this Tejus – no matter what your father may have thought.”

  He turned and left the balcony, and I remained alone.

  What was it that Hazel had said, that I was ‘afraid’ to make choices? I laughed into the darkness. There wasn’t one in the entirety of Nevertide who would have dared insult me so thoroughly to my face.

  But perhaps she had been right. I had spent years training and preparing myself for the trials in every way imaginable, ignoring the fact that my father preferred Jenus – knowing full well that my odds of besting him with my father’s aid would have been slim. Not once had I questioned whether it was what I truly wanted. Not once had I considered what another life might be like, one where the pollution of Nevertide’s politics and scheming wasn’t ever present.

  Was I shutting out Hazel because I was afraid? Afraid to choose the uncertainty of love – a concept I knew little to nothing of, afraid to hear the scorn and refusal of the only proposition I could ever offer her – in preference for what I knew, what I had been born to do?

  Does it even matter?

  To love Hazel would be to literally destroy her.

  As selfish and beastly as I was, that was something even I could not allow.

  Rose

  Another sunny day in Crete had begun, but despite the blue skies and the twinkling sea below our camp, I felt despondent. We weren’t any closer to finding the missing people, and the endless twists and turns in the mystery were doing my head in. We now knew of four people who had disappeared from the island: the great uncle of the Bouras family, who were natives to the island; Lily Anderson, a young girl who had been taken from her room at a nearby luxury hotel; and two prominent archeologists who had also disappeared—but we didn’t know the specifics of their case, and I didn’t know if it was a red herring or not.

  I was sitting with Ashley, Claudia and River outside my brother and River’s tent when I spotted my father, brother and two uncles—Lucas and Xavier—approaching.

  “Corrine and Ibrahim have some thoughts regarding what kind of creature would get through a sixth-story window without being seen,” my father said. “We need to hold a meeting.”

  I leapt up and returned to Caleb’s and my tent to find my husband. He was sitting outside it, looking over a map of the island and making marks with a red pen. He looked up as I approached.

  “I’ve been trying to see a pattern between the disappearances”—he waved the map—“but the only thing that’s clear is that they all happened near the excavation site—the old man’s hut isn’t far from there, and neither was the hotel resort.”

  Reaching down for his hand, I pulled him to his feet. “C’mon. My dad’s calling a meeting.”

  We headed to the center of the camp where we found the rest of our gang sitting among a cluster of rocks, Ibrahim and Corrine in the center. Caleb and I took seats in between two other couples: Arwen and Brock, and Shayla and Eli.

  “So,” Ibrahim said, crossing his arms as his eyes passed over the group, “I think we have quite thoroughly concluded that the only type of creature or creatures that would have been able to take Lily from her hotel room would have been one that had shape-shifting abilities—to make them very small, invisible, or perhaps take on the form of something else entirely, something that wouldn’t be suspicious.”

  “So we can’t rule out fae,” Ben muttered.

  “Or even ghouls,” Lucas added, his voice a tad hoarse as he exchanged a glance with Ben and Kailyn.

  “Oh, that’s right, Novak.” Corrine nodded, a slight smile unfurling on her lips as she eyed Lucas. Like Kiev, Lucas was another man whom Corrine had a penchant for winding up whenever she got the chance.

  “Nor mu
st we rule out some kind of creature that could tamper with memories,” Ibrahim went on, “either erasing them completely, or persuading someone that what they thought they saw was something else entirely…”

  Ibrahim was cut off by the loud ringing of my father’s phone. My father stood up and pressed it to his ear, his face growing more serious by the second.

  “Hm,” he murmured. “Yes. Okay. We’ll be right there. Do ask the family not to go anywhere.” He hung up and looked at us. “Another lead,” he announced. “Another person missing—a woman, a mother. We need to head to the Kostas Plaza.”

  Everyone hurried to their feet and gathered around the witches present among us—Shayla, Mona, Corrine, Ibrahim, Brock and Arwen—before they vanished us from our camp.

  When the ground became solid beneath our feet, the location we’d arrived at took my breath away. The place looked like a palace, a vast place made from beautiful domes buried into the hillside, with countless gardens and swimming pools dotted about. This family was obviously wealthy, like the family that had been staying in the luxury hotel.

  The witches keeping up a spell of shadow over us vampires, as always, my father led us to the plaza’s entrance. On arriving in the lobby, we were greeted by a bushy-mustached local policeman who looked like he’d been expecting us.

  He gave a brief nod to my father and began to explain in a thick accent. “I spoke to the family already. A father and a son, they’ve been staying here for a week. The mother was discovered missing this morning. She went back to her accommodation to take a rest while the others went to the golf course.” He dangled a set of room keys. “These will get you into the room.”

  My father took the keys and held up the keys to the group.

  “Seventh floor,” my mother muttered, eyeing the numbered key ring.

  “And let me guess,” Ben added, “there’s no sign of damage to the building?”

  “None whatsoever,” the policeman replied grimly.

  The witches magicked us up to the seventh floor. On reaching the large suite that was the family’s residence, we were faced with complete havoc. Tables were overturned, curtains hanging drunkenly off their rails, and an expensive TV set now sported a huge gaping hole in the middle of it.

  “Hm… Where’s the master bedroom?” Lucas asked, wandering off.

  We—or as many of us as could fit—followed him to the end of a short corridor, littered with glass from frames that had smashed along the walls. When we entered the bedroom, we were met with a similar sight—clothes pulled out of drawers, mirrors smashed, and the closets broken and open.

  “Look at this.” Claudia was pointing at something on the floor. I peered past an overturned dressing table and saw that a pot of face powder had been spilt over the carpet. Right in the middle of it was a huge hoof print, cut perfectly into the powder.

  I almost laughed. “That’s the most blatant plant I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah,” my mother muttered, arriving at my side. “These ‘minotaur’ tracks are fast losing their effectiveness.”

  “All the valuables appear to be gone,” Eli reported from behind us. “Likewise at the Andersons’. The pattern emerging is the targeting of wealthy families, staying at the island’s best resorts. According to the research I did earlier, the missing archeologists were staying in a gated villa complex, so they count as another wealthy target. The only one that doesn’t fit the pattern is the uncle… Let’s all go down to that old beach house.”

  We made our way back down to the hotel lobby, where my father handed the keys back to the policeman who was waiting patiently for us by the door.

  “We’ll be in touch,” my father told the man before we exited the building.

  We stood around for a few minutes, studying maps to see how far away we were from the uncle’s beach house. Eli was right—there was something odd about the nature of the uncle’s disappearance, and so different from the rest. He would have had nothing of value to take, and was a local resident, which indicated to me that he hadn’t been specifically targeted like the others had…which perhaps meant that he’d seen something that he wasn’t meant to, or done something to warrant a punishment.

  What on earth is behind this?

  “Okay, got the location,” Ibrahim said. “Gather round, crew. Gather round.”

  A few moments later we were crowded around the witches again, who vanished us to a pristine beach that appeared to be deserted. The sun was starting to set now, turning the sky a beautiful pink and gold. As we moved along the sand, we spotted our destination: a small beach house at the bottom of a cliff, which looked out onto a rocky cove.

  As we drew closer, I realized just how ramshackle the house was—more like a rudimentary hut than anything else. Reaching its porch, my father and Ben moved to the entrance first, followed by Lucas and Jeramiah. The rest of us circled the hut to investigate.

  I told Caleb my theory about the old man perhaps seeing something he shouldn’t have, but as we walked down to the water’s edge and the jetty that backed into the sea, I just couldn’t imagine what it had been.

  “Hey!” Griffin called out. He was crouching down in the sand about five feet away. A bunch of us hurried over and saw that he was pointing to a set of footprints—small ones, smaller than my hand.

  “These are weird,” Griffin murmured. “Doesn’t look like somewhere that kids would play.”

  I agreed. The area seemed too hidden away to be particularly attractive to holidaymakers, and the way the sea smashed at the cove rocks made it seem too dangerous an area for swimming.

  We followed the footsteps toward the other end of the cove, where the rocks became larger and more cavernous. Soon the one pair of footsteps became a dozen—like an entire horde of children had been marching across the beach.

  “Calida and Silvanos had lots of kids,” I remarked doubtfully, recalling the niece and nephew of the missing man.

  “Uh… were they all the same age and the same size?” Griffin replied, furrowing his ginger brows. “All these prints are practically identical.”

  We came to a stop in front of a large cave, and this was where the trail ended. Our group—which Derek, Ben, Lucas and Jeramiah had now rejoined—entered the dark cave. It took a split second for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, a bonus of vamp sight, and then… I gasped. Almost every one of us gasped.

  At the back of the cave, jewels and trinkets glittered in great big piles. I took a few steps closer, noticing that some of the objects also looked very ancient…as if they might have come from a museum or an archeological site.

  A muffled cry made me jump, and I turned in the direction of the noise.

  “What the…” Caleb muttered, as we all laid eyes on five humans tied up against the wall, all gagged and eyeing us with desperation.

  “Oh, my…” my mother said faintly.

  “We’re going to get you out of here,” my father said, stepping forward to reassure the humans. He extended his claws—which only made the humans whimper more—before stooping to slice through the ropes that bound them. But just as he severed the first knot, footsteps echoed at the entrance to the cave.

  It wasn’t any of us. We were all already inside.

  “Who the hell are you?” a voice demanded in a high-pitched squeak. A small creature stepped into view, no taller than a five-year-old.

  “A fairy,” Corrine gasped.

  Seriously?

  Fairies were something I had never seen before in my life, but had been informed about by our witches in The Shade. This one was a female—her face fleshy and disproportionately large compared to the rest of her body. She was wearing a brightly colored polka-dot dress she’d obviously stolen from someone much larger and her skin beneath it was a coarse, ruddy brown. She had thin white hair that clung to her scalp, while her features were both sharp and round, her ears pointed and nose bulbous. Her face was scrunched up in a hateful scowl.

  “A brownie, to be exact,” Ibrahim added beneath his breath.r />
  As far as I understood, those were the more meddlesome type of fairy.

  Within the blink of an eye, the childlike creature was joined by several more of her kind—four more females and two males. They quickly barricaded the entrance and, hands on their hips, glared at their intruders like an evil kindergarten class.

  Well, this could have been a lot worse. On catching Caleb’s eye, I had to fight to suppress a laugh.

  During GASP’s years of operation, we’d had to deal with a multitude of dark, foreboding creatures. Fairies certainly made for a surprising—and not unpleasant—change.

  We could finally return home to The Shade. After days spent in a tent, it would be nice to be back in the luxury of our treehouses. It would mean that I missed my children more—our house felt much quieter without them—but I was sure that Caleb and I would find things to fill our days with until they returned.

  We had arrested the band of brownies, escorted them back to The Shade with us, and stuffed them in The Black Heights in a spare storage chamber where they had been kept spellbound, literally, by Corrine and the rest of the witches. We had to decide what we were going to do with them.

  After a brief rest, Caleb and I visited the mountains to see if any progress had been made. We bumped into Corrine as we neared the interrogation quarters.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her.

  She rolled her eyes at me, rubbing her temples. “We’ve isolated the little white-haired monster from the rest of them, since she seems to be the ringleader.” She gestured to the wooden door grimly. “Be my guest.”

  Caleb and I entered to find Ibrahim still in there with my parents. Sitting on top of the interrogation table, with her legs dangling in mid-air, was the first brownie we’d come across. The “ringleader”. Her pink polka-dot dress looked much more distressed than a few hours ago. When she laid eyes on Caleb and me she exhaled with a loud huff of disdain.

  “More intruders!” she said crossly.

  I smirked, making my way over to Ibrahim and my parents, who sat at the opposite end of the room.