Chapter 3

When the world finished shifting, the tunnel was gone, as was Rose. I found myself standing with Anya in a dense forest, the canopy overhead blocking whatever light the stars and distant sunrise might offer.

"Calya," I whispered as I touched the bridge of my glasses.

With the command, the spell in the lenses ignited, brightening my sight as the black surrounding us took on a green hue. The night vision spell helped reveal some details from among the shadows, and left Anya shining in her all-white get-up.

The vampire gave me a soft smile and a chrome wink, reminding me that she needed no such trick to see in the dark.

We quickly discarded our bags and checked over our weapons one last time. Anya had her two Desert Eagles still holstered, each loaded with a hundred round drum. More traditional nine-round magazines were tucked into the holsters on her thighs as spares. I'd glanced in her bag back in the tunnel, and had seen two more of the rounded drums within.

I hoped we wouldn't need all of that, but it was better to have than want.

Her short straight swords were both sheathed across her back, and a variety of other blades were tucked about her person. She'd brought her motorcycle helmet, and donned that rather than going bare-headed.

"Which way?" I whispered as she snapped the wind visor up.

"Can't you mojo it?" she replied softly, the quirk to her lips barely visible beneath the padding of her helmet.

Truth be told, I probably could. I had the bone-white ring, which I could use in a tracking spell to locate the torch it had originated from. But setting up the spell would take time, which we were short on.

Besides, I wasn't talking to her.

Sal leapt from the front pocket of my coat, taking in power from all around us as he dropped toward the turf. The air seemed to shimmer around him as he grew. By the time he hit the ground, he was the size of a doberman, albeit it a squat one with flames licking here and there along its yellow and orange skin.

The fire elemental lifted his head, sniffing at the air. He wasn't great with scents, but fire and flame were his thing. He could track a cigarette across the city if he had the scent of it. And he'd had plenty of occasions to learn the scent of Violet's torchlight.

After a moment, the salamander pointed with his triangular head, and the three of us set off. The other two moved all but silently, and I did my best not to sound like a bulldozer cutting through the woods.

As we went, Anya led us in a wide loop, rather than approaching the scent directly. When I cocked my head quizzically, she'd simply put a finger to the side of her nose. I reasoned that she wanted to get upwind, so we circled around to approach our targets unawares.

It took us a few precious minutes, but eventually we reached the edge of a clearing, where we looked out over a simple graveyard.

The sky overhead was dark with heavy cloud cover. Here and there I could spot the last smattering of stars peeking through before the day began. To the east, a very faint light could be seen, the coming dawn threatening to overtake the hills and mountains between us.

A eerie mist had settled across the graveyard, a thick purple fog that was laced through with tendrils of green smoke. The supernatural vapors spread diffusely between the headstones and crosses. They rolled over each stone, slowly curling up and around before spreading further. The light breeze seemed to have no effect on its journey; it moved over the graves as if it had a purpose of its own.

It very likely did.

A short distance away, perhaps thirty yards or so, a trio of figures stood at the center of the graveyard. The mist was thickest around them, with the green tendrils swirling gently around the central figure, while the purple fog slowly rolled down from the torch the shortest one bore in her right hand. She was facing away from me, but there was no mistaking her.

It was Violet, holding her Lampad torch aloft in the dark.

Her mulberry tresses hung loosely around her head. She was clad in the robe she'd worn the first time I'd seen her, with the hood hanging limply across her back. In our time together, she'd updated her fashion sense, joining those of us in the twenty-first century. But it seemed that she was back to her ancient ways, with her figure shrouded in the dark cloth.

My breath caught at the sight of her, and I barely stopped myself from stepping into the clearing. But the soft chant from the central figure was enough to give me chills, and reason prevailed.

Instead, I focused on the torch, and the odd, heavy smoke emanating from the flames atop it. I'd never seen Violet do anything like it, but then, I had very little understanding of her abilities. The torch burned low, emitting more purple haze than light. The former spilled around her uplifted arm like a translucent waterfall, falling slowly to her feet, where it then billowed out and across the ground.

My heart thundered in my chest at the sight, knowing that the wizard was using her against her will. I forced myself to look away from her, hoping to settle the outraged pulsed that pumped within my veins at the violation of her free will.

I looked over the other two figures standing with her, observing what I could. The farthest figure was a mountain of a man, easily half a foot taller than my average height. He wore a gray cloak that did little to hide the slabs of muscle across his upper body. The man turned about slowly, his eyes trailing over the clearing. When they focused our way, we made sure we were well out of sight.

His gaze didn't linger, and once I was sure his attention was elsewhere, I lifted a hand to my glasses.

"Agor," I whispered, so softly that it might as well have been only in my head. As I spoke the command, I ran a finger along the right side of the frame, sliding it forward.

As the gloved finger rode along the wood, my vision shifted, zooming in on the man. The telescoping spell allowed me to observe more details from a distance, but it didn't make what I saw any better.

My first observation about the man proved to be correct. As he continued turning, I saw that his chest and arms were thick beneath the gray cloak. He certainly didn't look like any wizard I had heard of. Weren't they supposed to be lazy basement dwellers, casting spells to make their lives easier rather than doing any honest work?

If so, nobody had told this guy. I'd seen warriors before, and had no doubt the man I was looking at was a seasoned veteran. He looked to be older, perhaps in his late forties or early fifties, but he carried himself like a much younger man. His short cropped hair was going gray, and his neat beard had already started fading to white. His skin looked to be tan, but also somehow seemed sickly. There was something off about him and his slack expression.

Maybe it was a side effect of my night vision, but as I looked over his face, I thought I detected a glint of green in his eyes. Before I could be sure, his survey of the graveyard continued, turning him away.

He bore a sword on one hip, and a twisted and gnarled club on the other. His hands were bare, but were close by each weapon, no doubt ready to draw either at a moment's notice.

As he continued looking around the clearing, I shifted my gaze to the shorter man beside him.

Whereas the first was well over my own six foot frame, the second man looked to be slightly shorter. His arms were raised slightly before him, his palms down as his fingers played slowly through the air. He wore his own gray cloak over what looked to be normal clothing. Nothing flowery or pleasant, mind you, but it wasn't the solid black, Darth Vader-wannabe wardrobe I assumed every dark wizard wore.

His tangled hair was dark with streaks of silver lancing through, and hung hung limply down to his shoulders. I could see a little bit of his own beard, somewhat overgrown and unkempt, but the rest of his face was turned away.

A sword hung on his hip as well, a thinner blade by the looks of it. A long spear had been thrust into the ground beside him, easily within reach should he need it. I could barely detect a gentle thrum in the air, which seemed to coincide with a soft light pulsing around the spearhead. I wondered at it, and what purpose such a steady beat could serve. Was it tied up in the magic he was working?

The green haze I'd seen blending with Violet's power seemed to emanate from the wizard's outstretched hands, green tendrils of smoke coiling down toward the ground. Unlike Violet's working, the man's magic felt wrong. I didn't have much in the way of magical sensitivity, but I knew dark magic when I saw it. Rather than cascading down, the green smoke twisted and turned in a serpentine manner, branching out across the graves and digging into the turf.

The fog didn't reach us in the trees, but there was a chill in the air that seemed to come from the mists swirling through the tombstones.

This was definitely our dark wizard.

I sub-vocalized the command to release the telescoping spell. My night vision remained on, and I turned to Anya. I motioned to the two men, and made a shooting sign with my fingers.

The punky vampire nodded, and moved in silence to draw one of her Desert Eagles. I shifted to do the same with my Beretta, and then gestured to the two again. Indicating that she should take aim at the big guy, I crouched at the edge of the clearing, sighting along the gun.

I may not be able to sling lightning with my fingertips, but having a cop for a mother meant that I could shoot with the best of them.

I took aim at the dark wizard casting the green fog, sighting the back of his head. I trusted that Anya would fire just after me, her enhanced reflexes ensuring that her own shot would be almost in tandem with mine. My crouch meant that I had to aim over a headstone, but my line of sight was clear. I exhaled, my finger tightening on the trigger.

And as I prepared to shoot, a dark form simply appeared in front of me, not ten feet away.

My breath caught as flaming crimson eyes stared at me from a nightmarish face. The glowing orbs faded to an emerald color around the edges, where green tendrils of smoke seemed to drift from the corners. The beast's lips were curled back into a snarl, revealing a trembling maw of razor sharp teeth. A foamy drool dripped from its mouth, sizzling like acid where it struck the ground.

Its size was more ursine than canine. The Hound was easily four feet tall at the shoulders, and muscled unlike any natural beast. Its muscles rippled beneath its dark skin as it leaned forward, the obsidian coat shifting like shadows. Dark, gray smoke rose from beneath its paws, and I could faintly see where the ground was singed under its tread.

I felt more than saw Anya tense beside me. Sal was just behind us, and had no clear path to the beast. I knew he could probably leap over my crouching form, but I wasn't sure how fast the Hound was. There was also a part of me that worried that we might accidentally kill it in self defense, thus failing half of the mission before we even got started.

Had I truly understood the nature of the beast staring at us from a few feet away, I would have realized how ridiculous that concern was.

The Hound emitted a low growl, causing the air to fill with tension as I desperately tried to think of what to do. And as we waited, the larger man finally noted the attention of the dog, and shifted his gaze toward us.

In the same breath that he noted our presence, the smaller man's mumbled chant grew, and the mists all around the graveyard swirled into a dizzying tizzy, an unnatural light growing from within the fog as it sank into the ground. The green tendrils undulated in time with the pulse from the spear.

A second later, my heart stopped, as I watched the earth above a hundred graves begin to churn.

And as the first of the undead began to rise from their tombs, the Hound of Hades burst into motion, flinging its massive form at us before we could respond.