A Shade of Vampire 41: A Tide of War(20)

“Yelena fell into a pit,” I replied.

Julian stifled a laugh, and Aisha glared at him.

“You tease that girl too much. Why didn’t you get her out?” the jinni snapped.

“We were waiting for you!” I exclaimed.

Aisha tutted loudly, and in the next moment she had vanished, leaving us standing with a frowning Horatio.

A second later, Yelena was back up at the top, covered in dirt and looking furious.

“Thanks for your help,” she said, with as much sarcasm as she could muster.

“Horatio”—Aisha ignored us all and looked to her husband—“come back down with me. There’s a path leading from the bottom of the crater… I think we should look into it.”

I turned to the jinni in surprise, but before I could comment, she and Horatio had vanished. I looked over the side of the pit and saw them floating toward the same edge we were on—the path must be leading beneath us.

“Come on,” I said to the others, drawing them around to the other side of the pit so we could get a better view.

I moved as quickly as I could, my feet sliding on the softer mud of the edges, smacking down the brambles with my boots.

Just as we reached the opposite side, I heard voices echoing from the path they’d just followed. It was small—narrow enough that a single person could get through, but low…I doubted sentries could pass without some difficulty.

“Horatio, Aisha?” I called down.

The voices continued, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

“Do you think we should go down?” Julian asked, already testing that the slope would hold us without creating a landslide.

“Uhh…Okay.” Had they found the jinn? It was certainly a good hiding place—there was no way they would have been found unless they wanted to be. The path looked as if it had been created naturally. Had anyone other than the jinni come down here, they would have dismissed it as a natural formation caused by the crater.

We started climbing down—with difficulty. The soil was soft, but it kept crumbling away beneath us, and we ended up sliding most of the way.

“I’m glad I got out of this place just to go right back in,” Yelena grumbled. She kept wincing when she put pressure on her ankle, and I was starting to worry that she was genuinely hurt.

“We should splint that ankle,” I commented, glancing at her shoe.

“I’ve got bandages in my pack,” Julian added. “I’ll fix it when we get down.”

But as we reached the bottom of the pit, Horatio and Aisha came into view. Looming behind them in a dark red robe was a familiar face.

“Zerus?”

What’s he doing here?

My eyes widened as I came face-to-face with my kidnapper.

I hadn’t seen him again after the night of the imperial trials, where he’d let the nymphs take him under their spell—I’d been left to wander the labyrinth in a daze, trying pointlessly to find a way out. I hadn’t thought about him much after that, to be perfectly honest. I’d assumed he’d closeted himself away in Hellswan castle somewhere, keeping out of the way of his competitive brothers—I’d never really got the impression he was as desperate to win as Jenus or Tejus.

“Human boy,” he replied, his expression indicating that he recognized me, but only vaguely.

“He’s been living down here for a while,” Aisha said.

I looked more closely at Zerus. He certainly seemed to be a bit out of it—not really all there. His eyes kept darting about the place like a trapped rabbit’s, as if he might scuttle away at any moment.

“Did you come here to get away from the Acolytes?” I asked.

He looked at me with confusion, and shook his head.

“The entity?” I pressed.

“There’s dark work at hand here, dark work,” he muttered, his eyes shifting from mine to stare at the floor. He started to rock slowly, shifting from one foot to the other.

Aisha motioned us all to move away.

“He’s obviously not well—mentally,” she hissed. “I can’t get a straight answer out of him. Is he Tejus’s brother? He keeps mentioning that he’s a Hellswan and that his brother’s calling to him for help.”

“Do you think it might be a trick?” I asked. “Why would Tejus call to him? And how? Can they communicate mentally at this distance—could Tejus reach him here?”

The jinni shrugged, but her eyes softened when she looked back at him.

“I’m not sure this is a trick. He certainly didn’t want to be found—he didn’t want Horatio or me anywhere near him.”

“All right.” I sighed. It wasn’t like he could do much damage that hadn’t been done already—we’d get him back to Tejus for him to deal with. “Let’s question him on the jinn first, though. He might have seen something,” I said, making my way back to Zerus’s trembling figure.