She hissed as she realized she was walking among the remains of long-time friends. Friends who had now given their lives protecting that which she tried her damnedest to keep hidden from the world. Just the thought of the excruciating pain they must have endured being crushed while in their stone form sent chills up her spine. No more would they sail the skies, nor would they protect what lay behind these hallowed walls as vigilantly as only a gargoyle could. What truly made her cringe was imagining what creature could have wielded such power to crush these gargoyles to nothing more than piles of broken rock. And the fact that the being now had Jelissa in its clutches.
Just as the Queen began to enter, flaming with rage, quite literally—flames swirled around her irises—she heard a faint hiss off to her side. Turning and crouching slightly, Queen Tialanna let out a hiss of her own, ready to attack at the slightest provocation. Focusing more closely on the rubble, she caught a slight movement.
“My…Queen.” The faint whisper came from the direction of the debris. “…please. Tia.”
As badly as she wanted to hope that hearing a voice meant there was at least one survivor amongst the carnage, she knew better. There was far too much rubble littering the ground for a whole body to be intact. And while this dimension might have many beings with the ability to regenerate a limb, a gargoyle was not among that list. Stiffening her spine, Queen Tialanna made her way towards a voice she knew all too well.
“Dear Goddess, why?” she seethed from between her fangs. Walking slowly at first, Tia picked up her speed with the last few steps, knowing she could not avoid the inevitable. “Ebrahim, how could this have happened?” she asked more to herself than anyone else as she knelt beside the gargoyle who had once stood sentry on her own childhood home.
“End. Me. Please…” he rasped from lips that were part stone, part flesh. Peering more closely, Tialanna realized to her sheer horror all the gargoyles had been destroyed mid-shift. Severed arms and legs interspersed with wings and talons of stone were strewn about, some bodies still writhing in agony while most had mercifully moved on. In broken words, he begged, “I cannot…shift. Too much pain. Nor…can I heal. Nor…move on.”
Knowing what was being asked of her, yet dreading it all the same, Tia knew this was not something she would be able to do alone. “Elyssia!” she bellowed to her sister, a sister who—she prayed to the Goddess—could shed some light as to what had happened, and how.
Elyssia flashed to her sister’s side, trying and failing desperately to contain her own rage. She could feel her ebony skin frosting over by the second. Princess Elyssia had been hiding who and what she was, an elemental witch from the House of Sekhmet, for the past twenty years. Baby sister to the Queen, as well as Leader of the Royal Guard, her true element water. While her sister’s fire flamed when she became enraged, Elyssia frosted over with ice. Her dark skin cast a pale-blue luminescent tint, and her eyes turned to glaciers with swirling diamond flecks. Her smooth and gentle waters turned to an ice she could wield as a weapon deadlier than any blade.
Elyssia had been sent here to build this orphanage so she could aid the Queen in hiding their family’s biggest secret, and their greatest treasure. Doing away with her “seer’s” robes, she flashed into her war gear, a black and metallic silver leather jumpsuit with an insignia of her sister’s circle of flames crest, steel-toed, knee-high combat boots with throwing stars strapped to the sides, arm sheaths carrying her athames, and a belt hung diagonally along her hip which held her leather barbed whip.
Whipping her long blue hair into a high ponytail before kneeling beside her sister, she heard gasps coming from inside the orphanage and knew the other “seers” would soon be joining them. The time for hiding was far from over. A slight twitch came to her lips as she pictured the alarmed and surprised looks of the caretakers and children when they saw her two cohorts for the vampires they truly were. The vampires were family members from Tia’s other side.
Despite the dire situation they were facing and the gruesome scene before her, she chuckled to herself at the thought of her father turning in his grave, aghast that she was cavorting with the “blood-sucking cretins.”
“What would you have of me, Your Highness?” Knowing how much it irked Tia to be called that, she couldn’t help the jab. Even though trying to lighten the mood was a futile and more than a little immature attempt.
“Cut the bullshit, Elyssia. They have her. What the fuck are we going to do?” Fire gleaming in the banks of her eyes, Tialanna did her best to rein in at least some of her anger as flames licked up her arms. “Ebrehim protected us for most of our lives, and how do we repay him? By allowing his family and friends to be slaughtered. A truly royal way to show gratitude. If whoever took her is capable of this type of destruction, what could they be doing to her right now? This is all my fault. She doesn’t even know who she is, nor any idea why she’s been taken. As far as stupid plans go, this one was epic.”
“What else could you have done? Seriously, Tia. Not a damned thing. She wouldn’t have stood a chance at surviving even this long had we not secreted her away. We’ll find her.”
“Oh, yeah? Why don’t you enlighten me on exactly how we’re going to do that?”
“Where’s Grimm?” At the mention of her former mentor and one of her husbands, Tia turned away from her sister, unable to make eye contact. “Tia, please don’t tell me you still haven’t—”
“No, I haven’t! When
