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Ella Noran stared down at Master Griffin. His hair had turned white, his face weathered and more wrinkled than it had been before. His eyes were glassy as they stared up at her, yet their faraway gaze looked almost accusing. Five tiny red incision marks lined his throat where Esme, the Esrac queen, had grabbed him, pierced his skin with her barbs and drained him.
Ella stared down at him, feeling numb.
Luc was the first of her unconscious friends to wake up. “Ella? Ella, what happened?” His eyes darted around the room. He leapt up and rubbed the back of his head.
“He—” She tried to explain what had just happened, how she’d gone in search of them after Esme had tried to lure her into opening the gate again. But no words would come out. She couldn’t believe it, Griffin had been her mentor, her friend, yet he’d done this, released the age-old enemy of her people that had been locked away in a hell realm.
“Ella?” Luc gripped her shoulders. “You need to tell me what happened. Did you let Esme through?”
She nodded, still unable to speak as she stared at Griffin.
Fidget, her dust bunny, scurried up her arm and wrapped his long, fluffy tail around her neck to comfort her.
“Griffin...” she whispered.
Luc knelt and touched Griffin’s neck. “He’s dead. Damn it, he caught me off guard and stunned me earlier!”
“He...he opened the gate.” Ella finally found her voice and swallowed hard as bile rose in her throat. Despite her time working with the bones of the dead, she’d never seen anyone die before. “He wanted to use Esme. He said with her help, magic could come back into our world and its users wouldn’t have to fear persecution anymore.”
Luc shook his head. “Griffin was one of the Valan. His sole duty was to make sure this never happened,” he said.
Ella moved over to Sara and Eric and huffed a sigh of relief. “They’re still breathing.”
“Griffin must’ve stunned them too,” Luc said. “How did he force you to open the gate?”
“He didn’t. He tied me up and broke through the runes, using his own blood. When he tried to open the portal, I got free. Fidget came to help me and bit him. When they were struggling, he fell into the gate and somehow opened the portal. I tried to reactivate the runes and close the gate before he fell through it, but Esme grabbed him and came through instead.” She glanced over at the darkened symbols that had once held the power to keep the gate shut. “Griffin said he could use me to control the Esrac.” She straightened. “What are we going to do, Luc?”
The one thing she and Luc had to prevent in their past lives happened while they were helpless. The queen of a vampiric race had been unleashed into their world once again.
Ella felt tears prickle her eyes at the thought. But now wasn’t the time. They would do nothing to cast Esme back into the other realm or ease the sting of Griffin’s betrayal.
Luc ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “We’re going to have to contact the Senate and report what’s happened.”
“How are we going to explain this?” she said. “If we tell them the truth, we’ll have to admit I have magic.” Ella left the death sentence that would come as a result unmentioned. Magic was forbidden, and anyone suspected of having it was burned alive.
“We don’t have a choice. We can’t hide this.”
“Do you want to watch me burn?” Ella cried, her hands clenching into fists.
She couldn’t believe he was even entertaining the idea! Despite their recent breakup, she had hoped he still cared about her on some level, at the very least as a teammate on the same expedition.
“Of course not!” Luc snapped. “I’ll contact the Valan. If we could get you across the border—”
“Why should I trust the Valan? I trusted him.” She motioned to Griffin. “Look what happened. How do I know the Valan won’t try to kill me, or worse, try to use me like he did? Even Griffin said they fear avatars.”
Someone groaned, and seconds later Eric scrambled up. “What the hell happened?” He glanced between them, then down at Griffin. “What...?”
“It’s a long story,” Luc said.
He turned back to Ella. “We need to work out what we’re going to tell the chancellor.”
Sara woke up next, letting out a horrified gasp when she spotted Griffin.
“Griffin attacked us. He tried to use me to open the gate...and Esme, the Esrac Queen, came through,” Ella explained what had happened.
“Griffin did this?” Sara asked in disbelief. “But he...”
Ella watched as puzzlement overtook her features and felt a pang of sympathy for the other girl. She knew Sara had idolised Griffin.
“What are we going to tell the Chancellor?” Eric asked. “Ella has magic but couldn’t fight off the thing that got Griffin? That’s a one-way ticket to a death sentence.”
Ella released a breath in relief when they moved into what had been Griffin’s makeshift office, which still had papers stacked up in neat piles on the desk. She tried to ignore the fact he would never leaf through them again. At least here she wouldn’t have his glassy eyes staring up at her.
“We need a cover story,” Ella said as she watched Luc pace up and down. It was something he always did when he got anxious. “To explain to the chancellor what happened without exposing our magic.”
“Wait, you have magic too, Luc?” Sara remarked.
“Yes, but not in the way Ella does. She’s an avatar, I’m a Valan knight,” Luc replied. “There’s a big difference.”
“Why can’t we just dump Griffin’s body somewhere?” Eric suggested. “That’d solve all our problems.”
Sara glared at him. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”
“Why? It’s no more than he deserves. He released the queen of those green skinned freaks!”
Luc shook his head. “No, it would only create more problems. Griffin is too well-known to go missing, they’ll have people searching everywhere for him.”
“We should be as truthful as possible,” Ella suggested. “Lies always unravel.” She gave Luc a pointed look.
“Why not just say we found a strange device, the green thing came through it and killed Griffin?” said Eric.
“I suppose that could work,” Luc mused, as he ran a hand through his hair. “I still think Ella should leave, though. It’d be safer—”
Ella took hold of his arm, glancing at Eric and Sara. “Excuse us for a minute.” She dragged him out into the hallway before he had a chance to protest and let go of his arm as she frowned at him. “I know what you’re trying to do,” she said. “You think me leaving will protect me from the curse that will strike us down if we fail to stop the Esrac this time.”
Luc looked away, and she knew she had been right. “You’d be safer.”
“How? Even if the curse and the Senate don’t get me, Esme will come after me,” she pointed out. “I’m the last avatar, she still wants revenge for what I did to her a thousand years ago.”
Luc sighed. “I don’t want to watch you die.”
“This time is different. We are different,” she said. “We know we can find a way to stop Esme, we just have to work together to do it.”
He ran a hand through his hair again, something he always did when he got anxious. “I can’t believe Griffin betrayed us. He was my mentor, he trained me to be one of the Valan knights.”
“You’re not the only one he betrayed, but we can’t think about that now. We have to come up with a believable cover story, one that won’t give the chancellor or the Senate any reason to doubt us.”
Luc pulled back. “It’s not just that. Esme is free and I’m afraid they’ll either ignore the problem or hold us responsible for it, even if they can’t prove it. Either way, we need to tread carefully.”
“We will, but I’m not leaving. I’m the one who found the gate, the one who first created it. One way or another, we’ll find a way to stop the Esrac.”
“I need to contact the Senate. We can’t leave Griffin’s death unreported for too long without it raising more unwanted questions.”
After some further discussion to finalise the plan, they moved back into the office.
“Okay, our story is Griffin called us all in to show us an area of interest he found, and there was an accident,” Luc said.
“How do we explain why none of us are hurt?” Eric folded his arms.
“We should say Master Griffin stumbled upon a device and accidentally triggered it,” Sara suggested, then bit her lip. “Although he’d record the finding and make notes first.”
“He’d also have you or I there with him.” Ella pushed her long black hair off her face. “Can we really get away with this?”
“We can, and we will. We’ll say Griffin stumbled upon the gate and must have used forbidden magic to bring something through,” said Luc. “Upon hearing his screams, we all ran up and found him dead. I’ll be the one who found him first.”
“You want to tell them Griffin used magic?” Sara gasped. “That would make him a heretic.”
“He did use magic to open the gate,” Ella pointed out. “Just not his own. We wouldn’t be lying.”
“We have to keep the suspicion off us,” said Eric. “So we’re clear. We heard Griffin scream, and rushed here. Luc found him, and we arrived soon after.”
“We have to tell them about the Esrac,” Ella insisted.
“That insinuates we have some knowledge of the gate, and magic,” Sara remarked, playing with a strand of her long blonde hair.
“No, not if we’re careful. I’m the only one who saw Esme come through,” Ella replied. “We’ll say I came in next. I saw a glimpse of Esme as Luc tended to Griffin. Then she vanished. That sounds reasonable enough.”
The sound of heavy footsteps cut off their conversation as they echoed down the hall.
“Master Griffin?” a voice called.
“What’s that?” Ella gasped, glancing at Luc. “I thought you hadn’t called anyone yet.”
“I haven’t!” he hissed back.
The footsteps stopped and seconds later a man dressed in white armour came in, alerted by their whispering. “I’m Commander Ronin of the Celestus troopers. We received a distress call from Master Griffin’s link. What’s going on here?”
Ella’s heart started pounding in her ears, and she swallowed hard.
Luc stepped forward. “Griffin is dead. He triggered an ancient device and a strange creature inside it killed him.”
The trooper glanced between the four of them, then walked into the next room where Griffin’s body still lay. When he returned, his expression hardened. “You are all to be taken back to Celestus for questioning,” he told them. “If any of you are responsible for this, I will find out.”
