“So it floats like a ghost, but takes on some kind of corporeal form when it attacks?” Lysander asked. “This is sounding less and less like a standard ghost. I would venture a guess and call it a disembodied spirit.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” I asked.
“Yes and no,” Nicholas replied.
“A ghost is someone who has died, but their spirit remains. They are usually looking to complete something, like a task. What I am suggesting is a spirit that was separated from its body, not necessarily in death.” As Lysander said the words, his eyes zeroed in on the box sitting next to me. “What is in that box?”
“That was on the doorstep when I got back from the store,” Fallon answered, without turning away from the computer screen. Her fingers were still busy at the keyboard, continuing the search.
Lysander walked over to me and peered into the cardboard box. “Do we know how it got here?”
“No clue,” I said with a shrug.
Lysander dug inside and pulled out the smaller wooden box. He turned it over in his hands as if reading the markings that covered it. He gulped and his hands began to tremble. “Who opened it?” His voice cracked.
“We both did,” I answered, trying to cover for Fallon. “It didn’t look like anything dangerous. Just a pretty box.”
“Those are the things you should most worry about,” Rozaline said.
I looked up to find her staring at me from the doorway with her arms crossed in front of her chest.
I should’ve known better. I should have tried to stop Fallon.
“I opened it. I couldn’t help myself. It was like the box was speaking to me, begging me to open it,” Fallon said, her face awash with guilt.
“I found the box just after the kids opened it,” Nicholas said with a sideways glance at me. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t read the symbols. I assumed it was a warning of some kind.”
“These specific symbols pre-date me as well, but I might be able to decipher some of it,” Lysander whispered to himself. “It is old. Very old.” He turned the box over, careful to keep his hands on the top, preventing it from opening, while silently studying the markings. “I believe this is a warning here. It speaks of… death… and a prison sealed from the inside.” His shoulders slumped and dread widened his eyes. He collapsed onto the futon. “It is a Pandora’s box.”
“And we opened it,” I said with a devastated sigh. I dropped my head and focused on the ground, not wanting to look anyone in the eyes. You didn’t need to be a history major to know what Pandora’s box was. Even if this wasn’t
the
Pandora’s box, calling it one meant we never should’ve opened it.
“Yes,” Lysander growled. “And you… both of you… let whatever was trapped inside, out.”
The sudden and overwhelming weight of guilt came crashing down on my shoulders. We’d just loosed some ancient evil that had probably been locked away for thousands of years—setting it free to wreak havoc on our home and city.
“I’m so sorry. So… so … very sorry.” I doubted there were enough
so’s
in the entire world to account for how bad I felt at that moment.
Fallon echoed my sentiment with her own stream of apologies.
“Save the apologies for later,” Lysander said sharply. “We need to find out who or what was trapped inside. Who sent it to us? And how, if possible, to put it back inside again.” He let out a very deep sigh. “And we need to do this before the attacks become worse.”
Fear tightened my chest. “Worse?” I felt each frantic thump of my heart. “You mean this is just the beginning?”
“If this thing has been locked away for centuries, it might have to build up its strength again,” Lysander said in a carefully controlled tone.
That spurred me past fear, right into action. We needed answers… fast.
I grabbed the cardboard box it had been sent in and hunted for any sign of who might have sent it. Just as before, I found nothing—no identifying marks, except for the strange red symbol on the box. No shipping stickers or crossed out addresses either. Whoever sent this must have hand delivered it.
“Fallon, when did you say you found it?” Rozaline asked.
“I dunno, it was here when I got back, around seven. But the sun had already set.”
“Sunset was at five,” I said. In the fall, especially right after daylight savings time, the sun sets very early. “That means it’s possible another vampire left it for us.”
I hadn’t had much interaction with vampires other than my clan, the Peregrinus. Any others I’d met had been destroyed by the Acta Sanctorum during their raid on Kallisto’s coven. This didn’t feel like the work of the Acta Sanctorum, though. They sent hunters after us. I couldn’t really see them using an unpredictable supernatural force to harm us… unless they knew how to stop it.
If it was another vampire, then it was one unknown to me. I’d never heard of any other vamps or clans that had issues with us. We kept pretty much to ourselves.
“Maybe Crystal or Drew saw something?” Fallon said. “They were gone when I got back.”
“We’ll speak to them as soon as they arrive home,” Rozaline said. “For now, let’s focus on what we know.”
I held the cardboard box upside down in my hand, still studying the red symbol. “All we have to go on is this. Could it represent another clan?”
“No, I doubt that,” said Rozaline. “That symbol is ancient Greek. Kallisto’s coven was the last of the ancient ones, and they were destroyed months ago.”
“This warning carved into the wood,” Lysander mumbled as if speaking to himself. “I know I have seen some of this before, but where?” He left the room, heading for his bookshelf.
“Fallon. Look up this symbol,” I asked, showing her the bottom of the cardboard box.
“Ummm… okay. What do we call this? A circle with a horizontal letter I? Ancient Greek, right?” She clicked a few keys and after a few moments thousands of results appeared on the screen.
“Okay, that’s theta. Letter number eight in the Greek alphabet. In classic Athens, it was an abbreviation for … um… ok, I can’t read that word … In parentheses it says, ‘Thanatos, aka Death. It vaguely resembles a skull and therefore was used as a warning of death.’ So what we have here is the ancient equivalent to a skull and crossbones. Nice.”
“Yeah, you can say that again. Next time some strange package arrives with funny symbols on it, don’t open it.”
“I told you before that this had to do with Thanatos,” Nicholas said gruffly.
I turned toward him. “But you didn’t tell us the symbol basically said ‘Do not open.’”
“I don’t read Greek, ancient or otherwise,” Nicholas said in defense. “I told you what I knew, not that I knew everything about it.”
“Wouldn’t have helped anyway, Lyss, I’d already opened that box before he showed up,” Fallon said dismally.
“Sorry,” I grumbled. She was right. I was trying to shift blame. Even if I did manage to push blame on Nicholas, it wouldn’t help. What was done couldn’t be undone, and the only thing that would help now was finding the solution. “Okay, what can you find out about Thanatos?”
“As I said before, I don’t believe it’s the actual Thanatos we’re looking for,” Nicholas said, sounding very annoyed. “The symbol means death. That was the ancient name for it, but that may not be what is inside.”
Lysander’s voice boomed in from the living room. “Can you perform a search on Arcadius?”
Fallon’s fingers flew to the keyboard. “From Arcadia. King Lycaon. Werewolves. Festival of Lykais.” She read off snippets of various links. “Kallisto. Any of this sounding familiar?”
“Did you just say Kallisto?” Nicholas and Lysander said it in unison.
“Kallisto, yeah.” She clicked on the link. “Princess of Arcadia, friend of Artemis, secret lover of Zeus. Oooh…” Her tone perked up as if she had found a juicy piece of gossip to share. “Says here, she was punished when Hera found out about her and Zeus and ordered her death. She was sent to the stars.”
“Not to the stars. She was sent to the night.” Lysander returned to the room carrying the box in his hand. “She was my mate. How did I not know this about her? That means this must have belonged to her or her family. I could be wrong, but I believe this symbol stands for the territory of Arcadia.”
“But why would she have a spirit locked in a box?” I asked.
“She was a devious woman, and didn’t like to tell her secrets.” Lysander replied solemnly. “A bigger question might be, who would think to send this to us?”
“What else can you read from the box?” Nicholas asked.
Lysander turned it over in his hands and studied the symbols. “Much of this pre-dates my knowledge. I remember seeing some of these symbols before but I’m not sure where. I may need my older writings to accurately translate.” He squinted and traced a line on the box. “It looks like there is a name here. Aniketos.”
The air turned cold again. A hard rush blew between me and Fallon. Curtains at the window lifted with the air. If there had been pictures on the bare walls, other than the one already knocked down earlier, they would have surely fallen in the wake of the sudden gust.
“I think you’re onto something, Lysander,” Nicholas said. “Say the name again. Maybe that’s the spirit that was trapped in the box.”
Lysander nodded and spoke slowly, annunciating every syllable of the name. “Any-key-toes.”
Again the wind blew through the room. The temperature dropped, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I felt the brush of rough hands running up my body.
I looked down to find a hideous man staring straight at me. He was bald and pasty-white. Large caterpillar eyebrows crawled across his forehead, meeting in the center to form an enormous unibrow. His eyes and cheeks were sunken in against the bones of his skull, and jagged, razor sharp teeth filled his mouth. It was then that I felt the pain, like a thousand pin pricks.
I screamed, but before the sound completely escaped my mouth, he was gone.
Lysander was at my side in a flash, pulling me into his arms. “Sweetheart, are you all right?”
“I don’t think it likes that name,” Fallon said in a breathy whisper. “Did you see how fast it attacked?” She stood above Lysander, looking down at me with apprehension. “You going to be okay, Lyssa?”
I felt fine, physically. The wounds were already healing, but the blood loss had awakened my hunger—a dangerous thing when mortals were around. As if someone had turned up a dial, I smelled Fallon’s fear more potently than I had before. It was a richer, thicker smell that tempted me like warm apple pie at Christmas. My stomach ached with emptiness as the beast inside begged for a small sample. “I need blood,” I said, trying to hold back the desperation in my voice.
“Of course,” Lysander said without hesitation.
Fallon took a quick step back, though I knew she had no real fear of me. We’d already been through some trying situations, and even at my worst I’d been able to hold back the urge to feed on her. I believed she was doing it out of respect, to give me privacy to share blood with my mate. Lysander was already unbuttoning the cuff of his shirt as Fallon took her seat at the computer and resumed the search.
“Hey,” she said after clicking a few more keys on the keyboard. “I’m not finding any historical references, but the name means ‘unconquerable.’”
“Must be some immortal spirit then.” Nicholas stood next to the desk and peered over Fallon’s shoulder.
“Aren’t all spirits immortal?” she asked, sounding as if she were about to call him Captain Obvious.
“He means a spirit belonging to a supernatural creature.” Lysander’s face contorted in confusion. “I’ve never heard of an immortal being trapped in spirit form. Though it might explain why this thing has not attacked Fallon.”
“I found that odd as well,” Nicholas said. “I didn’t want to alarm the human by saying it, though.”
“The human is still in the room,” Fallon muttered.
“Then you should feel lucky,” Nicholas retorted. “It might only be a matter of time before that thing you let out turns on you.”
“I swear, I didn’t mean—”
“Leave her be, Nicholas,” Lysander growled, interrupting their pissing match. “Pandora’s boxes were known to tempt humans. Fallon is not completely at fault for this. But you may have one thing right. Immortal blood is very potent. If this thing needs to regain strength, it would go for the richest source first, not the weakest. Ours would be much more of a draw than human blood.” Lysander offered his bare wrist to me. “Drink, love. I don’t want you becoming weak.”
I took his offering without any hesitation. As my sire and an ancient vampire, Lysander’s blood was like candy to me—sweet and thick. It brought with it more power and energy than any other blood I could find, and it strengthened our bond, both as mates and as master and fledgling.
As soon as my teeth sank into his tender flesh, before I could savor the first drop of blood, a wild swarm of air encircled us. The temperature dropped again. A force like a speeding truck slammed into me, knocking me backwards. I crashed into the metal arm of the futon, and pain erupted behind my eyes.
“No,” Lysander yelled.
I shook off the pain and jumped to my feet, but the thing had already attacked. I watched Lysander’s arm being jerked upward by an invisible force. His normally flawless face was speckled by small red dots—blood.