Chapter Twenty Two:
Thea opened her eyes, blinking in surprise. She slowly rolled over onto her rear and looked about cautiously. Thierry was stirring not too far away, Nissa shaking Winnie. The four dark witches were unconscious, spread apart, and there was no sign of their barrier.
The wall where Cassandra had been pinned was gone, a large hole in its place looking into another room. Bone peeked out from the rubble, Chime's two knives shining in the misty sunlight. The opposite wall was gone, too, the wall behind Rayne's tomb. And there was another room there.
"Chime?" she called shakily, scanning the hall. She was almost sure she heard remnants of Chime's shriek echoing in the hall.
Overhead, rock fell, dust floating in puffs. Thea stared at the ceiling, studying it critically. The whole side wall had been blown away, sunlight peeking in. And pebbles continued to clatter, rolling about.
The First House had been weakened.
"Chime!" Thea shouted, rising uncertainly. Then she whirled back around as realization struck her. "Damn it! Blaise! Blaise?" and she began to push rocks aside, looking for her cousin. She had been hurt before the wall had exploded. Thea dreaded what she would find.
"I got her. I got her." Thierry called over, pushing aside rock and grabbing hold of a struggling hand. He wrapped all his fingers around the flailing hand and wrist and then he pulled roughly.
Blaise came out coughing, shoving rock aside to crawl free.
Thea sighed in relief. "Is she ok? What about Winnie? Nissa?" she whirled, catching sight of the red-curled witch and continuing on as the witch gave her a thumbs up sign. "Mother Cybele?"
"Right here." Cybele called, staggering forward from the back of the room. "Quite a punch that dragon packed."
Thea spun back around, stumbling over pebbles. She scanned the hallway of coffins. "Chime!"
Her voice echoed rather eerily in the silence and no one answered her. She looked toward the spot Rayne had fallen and there was a large landslide of stone there.
Something creaked and rumbled all around.
Thea looked about again but staggered toward the landslide. "He's under there, you guys. We have to get him out. Chime might be there, too-" she looked over her shoulder as she pleaded.
And relief swept through her as Thierry and Winnie moved to follow, Nissa rising also.
She dropped to her knees before the pile and began to dig frantically, scraping her fingers and hands as she pulled at stone. "They might not have air, we have to-"
"It isn't necessary." A masculine voice said from below her and as she recoiled the rocks slid away and a hand broke out. The debris fell as a figure rose out of it, cradling another form closely.
"Rayne?" Thea asked hoarsely, wide brown eyes raised to stare at the figure before her.
The amber eyes gazed back, face grimy and all the more beautiful. He took a step to balance himself and pulled on the person he held, lifting the figure carefully. A hole gaped from his uniform, the skin healed under.
"Is it Chime?" Thea asked him but the question fell away as the figure groaned, small hands clutching at Rayne. The hair was blond and thick with dirt, a fine layer of dust on her cheeks and forehead.
"Come on, love." Rayne said quietly, holding her up against himself and lifting her arm to wrap it around his neck. "Easy…"
The First House rumbled once more.
"Uh, we don't have time to go easy here." Winnie coughed, stumbling up beside Thea, eyes raised to the ceiling. "This place is going to go."
"I feel…weak." Selena whispered, head resting against Rayne's collar. "Worse than before…with the spell…I feel like I used up everything…"
Rayne stumbled down the pile with her and merely looked at Thea blankly as she came up on the other side of Chime to support her. Then he looked down at Chime, eyes narrowing as he smiled, and he kissed her forehead tenderly. "Trust me, Chime. I think you did use everything you had."
A warm spark seared her skin from their contact. It was almost painful, the extreme heat branding her from the slight contact.
Soulmate.
She looked to her other side and gazed into the wise brown eyes that resembled Hellewise's eyes. "Thea." She said quietly and the name sounded right. Hellewise no longer existed, no longer lived. But she had done right. At last.
"Come on." Nissa said and she grabbed Mother Cybele's elbow, propelling her along. She headed for the front double doors and shoved them open roughly.
The section of the ceiling over the doors crashed down.
Winnie shouted in alarm, Thea's jaw dropping open. And then the rest of the ceiling was raining down over them in chunks and pieces. Thierry ducked his head, shoving Blaise down under him and Winnie backed away from the front doors, still screaming. "Nissa!"
"The ceilings are weak!" Rayne shouted and he pushed Thea aside, lifting Chime into his arms almost impatiently. "We can't stay! We have to get out!" and he hopped forward, over the remaining pile, and began to move toward the hole where Cassandra had been suspended.
"What about Nissa and Mother Cybele?" Winnie yelled toward him, ducking a sharp stone as it clattered down. She rose a bit, looking up. And then she stopped altogether.
The pillars were falling, deteriorating. And taking the walls and the rest of the ceiling with it. "Oh, Goddess." She uttered, staring in growing horror.
"Come on!" Rayne ordered from the gaping hole. He backed away, whirling and placing his back against a pillar as it crashed to the floor with a deafening sound. He looked toward them over his shoulder, eyes narrowed against the dust, and the amber of his eyes seemed to glow for a moment.
"We have to get Nissa and Mother Cybele-" Thea shouted at him, hunched a bit against the pebbles and stones falling around her.
And then Nissa came up behind Rayne, motioning to the group frantically. "Mother Cybele is outside! There's another door through this way! Come on!"
Chime stirred, seeing everything in blurry vision. The witches were heading their way, hopping over fallen pillars and pieces of wall and ceiling. Thea was with them, pulling on Blaise and Thierry was carrying two bodies over his shoulders. Nissa was racing toward Winnie and then they had the remaining two dark witches with them, dragging their unconscious bodies toward the exit.
She looked up, feeling a wonderful warmth and she realized that Rayne was holding her, glancing about with a reflexive quickness.
And then he was moving, lithe muscles carrying him, and he was taking her with him effortlessly.
"Where are we going?" she asked as the room flew by her. She remembered that this was the room that Dayra had been taken from. She could still see the fury on the Prince's face. Felt the tingle of crackling witch magic.
"Out of here." Rayne answered her, ducking out another door. He stood in the front halls, a pile of rock blocking his view back into the original room. He began to move toward the front doors once he saw the witches keeping up.
"Go! Go!" Thierry shouted, his hand coming down on Rayne's shoulder.
Thea and Blaise squirmed passed and threw themselves upon the doors, shoving them open.
Chime pressed her cheek against Rayne's chest, her cheek coming into contact with his bare skin through the singed uniform. The spark felt so warm, blazing, and it brought on the warm hue of pink. She felt as if a poker had been pressed against her cheek and it was a sensation that bordered along the line between pleasure and pain.
We can make it. We can get out of here. The both of us. All of us.
Rayne hunched forward, heading for the doors, carrying her. He was like the wind, he felt like it. It was almost like running through the cool night, feeling the breeze flow through her hair, the soft night air brushing her cheeks. Only she wasted no effort. Almost like flying.
Please don't remember the Prince. Please, just get out. Get out and come with me.
She begged, pleading with the Goddess to allow them to escape.
Rayne came to such a dead halt Chime could almost swear she heard tires shriek. She looked up at him and his eyes were lowering, pulling away from the path ahead to gaze down at her, stricken. "Please don't what?" he asked hoarsely.
Chime stared back at him, stiff.
He swallowed and then his expression closed over. "Where is he?" he asked her and his voice was cold. Unfriendly.
Chime could only stare, thinking furiously. He had heard her. He had heard her thoughts.
"Where is he?" he demanded again and his face didn't register anything when another pillar came down with a loud crash behind them.
"Rayne! Come on!" Thea shouted from the doors, waiting for them. The other witches were outside, black figures against bright sunlight.
Chime shook her head. "No, Rayne. No." she whispered up into his hard face. "Please don't."
The arm wrapped around her shoulder shifted down a bit and his hand caught her cold, bare fingers. The scorching heat between them erupted from the contact, momentarily blinding Chime with brilliant color. She shook away from the contact, avoided showing him anything but he was already inside, a black figure in the bright landscape that was their bond. He flew forward, growling, enveloping her in his blackness and digging into her mind from the outside in.
She was screaming, she realized. Shouting and fighting mentally from being overwhelmed. But his essence was like oil, a shimmering darkness that slipped through barriers, that covered any light that may have been there.
And then he was seizing her memories, was there with her as she looked at the coffins of the Prince and his family. He followed her as she moved forward and tried to open the coffins.
Without warning he suddenly pulled away. Away from the coffins. Away from the memory. Away from their link.
Her vision came into dizzying color once more as he pulled his hands away. And he lowered her to the floor as he reached Thea, shoving Chime into the blond witch.
"Get her out of here." He ordered and he whirled, heading back into the weakened First House.
Chime pushed at Thea as the witch moved to embrace her. "Rayne, no…No! Rayne!" she shouted. She took a step after him and her legs melted under her.
"Chime, c'mon. C'mon!" Thea said, pulling frantically.
Chime shook her head as he disappeared back into the rooms. "I know where he's going…I know…but he doesn't! He doesn't know!" she freed one hand, looking at the blond witch with a glare that could melt ice. "Let go of me, Thea! Let go!"
"Chime!" Thea shouted, anger beginning to redden her face.
Winnie came up behind Thea, panic written on her face. She looked at the stone ceiling and the remaining pillars that threatened to fall. "You guys-"
Chime looked at the witches standing outside the First House, at the two vampires with them. And when she whirled back around she knew she wasn't going to be seeing Rayne's figure.
"Stop it, Chime! Let's go!" Thea pulled once more, roughly.
She stumbled to her feet, finally following. "All right. All right." She whispered to herself reluctantly. "He'll make it. He can make it." She floated as Thea's grip on her loosened a bit. "He's full dragon. He can survive it."
Thea began to nod. "Yeah, Chime. Come on-"
And Chime chose that moment to pull free at last, shoving Thea into Winnie. Without a word she spun and ran on wobbly legs, racing back into the darkness of the First House.
Thea shouted from behind, calling for her.
But she couldn't go back. She could only go forward. And if Rayne wasn't there with her she didn't want to be there either. That included the future. She ignored Thea's dimming cries, ignored the devastation all around. She shut her eyes to it, shut her mind to the danger. The path Rayne had taken was littered with rubble and debris. But she didn't need signs to point the way. She knew where she was going. Where she would find him.
She had made it back into the room where she had killed Cassandra when the remaining pillars fell. And all she saw was flash of white stone, then pain, a blood red streak before her eyes. And finally a blessed darkness.
He knew something was wrong. Very, very wrong. And different. Everything was different. Something had woken him back there and he didn't know what but his weakness was not comforting.
Rayne Endymion hopped down the remaining steps of the stone staircase and skid to a stop as he saw the three coffins.
He was here again, this time without hanging over Selena's shoulder. A groan from above told him he had to hurry. He raced forward, cloak floating behind his frame and he circled the center coffin.
Kinshiro Rayden.
"Kin." He whispered and he touched the coffin cautiously, a quick darting movement.
When nothing shocked him or stunned him he bent, put his shoulder to the lid and pushed. "Come on, Kin. Help me out here." He said through clenched teeth.
The lid slipped away with a shrieking scrape and he looked into the coffin expectantly.
He was not, however, expecting it to be empty.
For a moment he stood there, struck dumb. The coffin was empty. He knew from Chime's memories that this was to be Kinshiro's coffin, that he should have been resting inside, asleep. But he wasn't. He wasn't there.
Pure anger flooded his body. Like lightning streaking up his figure, as if he were the rod attracting it. With a furious growl that rumbled in the room he grabbed hold of the lid and tossed it with superhuman strength, flung it across the room. The shattering of stone across the far wall did nothing to calm him. He whirled to the coffin behind him, Zhadayra's coffin, and he shoved that lid a bit to discover the coffin empty.
He only had to touch Damien's coffin to know it was empty.
And as the ceiling slowly began to crack he found himself wanting to slip to the floor and cry in helplessness. He felt wounded and somehow lost. Just lost. Didn't know what to do, or where to look to find him.
'Chime…why didn't you tell me?'
He ran a hand over his eyes, down his face. Nothing made sense in the least. This didn't match the scene that had been taking place before he had lost consciousness. What had happened?
A deafening rumble from above suddenly told him something else was about to go wrong. Pain, not his own, flashed down his spine and he looked toward the ceiling, wide-eyed. "Selena." He whispered. And he whirled to race back toward the staircase. "Selena!"
"Any second now they are going to come out of there. Both of them." Winnie was saying aloud, as if to convince herself. She looked at Thea and nodded, even throwing in a wink. "Trust me. Any second now…"
Blaise came up behind her cousin, squinting at the First House. "How badly hurt was Chime?"
Thea swallowed, arms wrapped around herself. "Pretty bad, Blaise. She was weak. She used it all on Cassandra." She said shakily. "Rayne might make it but if Chime is alone…" she glanced at her cousin and shook her head slowly.
Thierry had his hands on his hips, his hair blowing in the sandy wind of the ruins of Persepolis. "She'll make it. She has to. She didn't spend all those years looking for him to fail now that she has-"
A deep rumbling stopped him cold. All eyes flew toward the First House and for a moment the House seemed to tremble. Then the pillars outside were falling, one after the other, the walls following.
And the rest was silence.
