Royal Academy: Hellfire's Fury

Chapter 11

Annalise's POV

I flip through the mountain of scripts in front of me while Stefan, Killian and Alexis tackle their own heaps on the floor of the study. Liam graciously offered to take the kids, including Reed, to the Academy with him for a few hours while we tried to sort through the piles of paper.

"I'm calling Seraphina in a bit to let her know that her husband is an epic waste of time," Alexis growls as she swipes through a few scripts and then sneezes repeatedly when the dust between the sheets puffs up in a cloud into her face. Killian chuckled beside her while handing over his cellphone. Alexis grinned and then quickly dialed the number, putting the call on speaker. The phone rang two times before we heard the click of it being answered.

"What did he do this time?" Seraphina asked as the sound of a group of people shouting and scuffling in the background filled the air.

"You know he's like the big kid of the group. He tagged along with the lot when Liam offered to take the kids to the Academy to see the new pool." Alexis grumbled as we all heard Seraphina shout out orders for some technique to be repeated.

"Sorry, I'm overseeing the training camp today. Orion and Rosa had to go run an errand. And by that, I mean Reed's influence has sunk in too well with them," Seraphina groans when a loud crash is heard and people are heard scrambling to fix the issue.

"You get back to what you're doing. We'll handle Reed." Stefan says to the phone as Seraphina chuckles.

"If he refuses and uses another excuse, just tell him I said I invoked rule #4 in our agreement. That should do the trick."

"Rule #4? Do we even want to know?" I shouted from the desk, and we all heard a hearty laugh on the phone.

"Fae warriors were trained by our King with a strict code. Let's just say, I have a few rules I can invoke on my hardheaded mate when he's being unreasonable. If he doesn't stick to them, he knows there will be hell to pay, especially now that Damian takes my side when we have a disagreement."

"That must be something of a bargaining chip. Maybe I should come up with a few rules? What do you think, hun?" Alexis looks over to Killian, who has his head buried in his pile of scripts, pretending that he didn't hear her.

The sound of more shuffling noises filled the room from the phone and Seraphina shouted out instructions once more. "I have to go, but Orion told me to let you know that the scripts have a color key to follow. He told Reed, but he wasn't sure he was paying atttention. The blue borders are witchcraft, Green are Fae, Yellow are vampire, Silver is werewolf and Red is everything Hellbound. His grandmother had a journal in one of the boxes where she wrote about her talks with an elder who had once encountered a Hellhound half-breed. It's a white journal with gold inlay. Call me if you guys need anything else, or feel free to send my husband back home where I can deal with him."

"Thank you, Seraphina. We'll let you know if anything comes up. And don't worry about Reed, we'll handle him." Stefan said, before Seraphina disconnected the call.

Alexis moved over to a box near the bookshelf and rummaged through the contents before producing the white journal Seraphina mentioned. "I knew I saw it the moment she mentioned it." Alexis walked over to hand me the journal and I shifted the scripts in front of me to gently lay the old book at the center. The thin gold binding thread linked away as I released the gold clasp at the side. The neat and cursive handwriting of Claudia Rostover filled each and every page. Some had small drawings based on what the entry focused on and some spanned pages upon pages of memories. I keep skimming the pages until something catches my eye. The top of the entry had a symbol drawn at the top right corner. The symbol was that of three hounds standing guard in front of the silhouette of a woman on a throne. They were all encircled by a ring of fire. I read the entry.

June 3rd 1953 Bellagio

I happened upon a small village on my way to visit my great aunt in the countryside. The people here were living in fear of a curse that their ancestors carried with them. The elder of the village spoke of their people being cursed by the demon God himself because their very first leader of the village chose to drink from an ancient fountain that the Gods proclaimed as sacred. The elder tat hat time was seeking eternal life, for he had no heir. Troubled by what his people would face if they had no one to lead them, he set off to find an answer to his troubles. On his journey, he came upon a young boy, who told him about a fountain that processed the water to stop the process of life itself. "Drink the water, and remain young forever."

The elder followed the boy's directions and came upon the fountain. But it was guarded by a menacing looking hound. Embers shot from its eyes and its chains smoked as though heated by fire. The elder thought long and hard about how he would be able to go past the hound and remembered that he carried with him various herbs and medicines. Mixing together the herbs with the dew of the surrounding plants, he took out his last feeding of bread and soaked it with the mixture. He then threw the bread to the hound, who gobbled it up greedily. Within seconds, the hound began to choke and gag, falling to the ground lifeless.

The elder ran over to the lifeless animal and leaned down to stroke a hand over its opened eyes. As he stood to his feet, the sound of booming thunder and streaks of lightning filled the sky. Dark gray clouds came together as a heavy rain suddenly fell from the sky. The elder thought nothing of the immediate change of weather and proceeded to move closer to the fountain. Once he reached the brick edge, he immediately scooped a handful of the water in his joined hands and lifted it to his lips. Lightning suddenly struck the ground where he stood, and he fell to the ground, the water never touching his lips.

"This fountain is sacred to the Gods. Who dared to kill a sacred guardian?" A voice boomed from above and the elder suddenly found himself face to face with Echidna, a half serpent, half human woman. Echidna descended to the ground and wrapped her arms around the fallen hound, while another hound stood by her side, drool falling from its lips as it bared its menacing teeth. Echidna stood with the dead hound in her arms, tears falling from her eyes as a dark mist encircled her.

"Cursed! Your people will never be at peace! Your bloodline will forever be tainted. Cerberus will one day enact his revenge for this travesty!"

And with that, Echidna vanished, leaving the hound that stood beside her to deal with the elder on its own. Days later, that same hound was said to have returned to the elder's village, leaving in its tracks the bloodied and mangled remains of the old man. The people said that in the days to come, hounds appeared at night, and only left when they were offered food and vessels filled with the blood of the purest kind. The village was never at peace again because the curse of Cerberus had been placed upon them.

Years later, a young man came to the village looking for a relative, and on the night that he arrived, he challenged the hounds. He offered to give his life serving the hounds so that the people of the village could live freely, without debt to the Gods. The hounds agreed, and took the young man with them, thus beginning the line of Guardian Hounds who served the mark of Cerberus and retained peace between both Gods and humans.

The entry ended, and I turned the page, but there was nothing more about the curse or the Cerberus bloodline. I leaned back in my seat as Stefan came over to place a warm hand on my shoulder.

"Anything helpful?" he asked as he leaned over to skim the entry of the journal.

"It mentions a curse and how the guardian hellhound came about. But it doesn't say a name I can follow through with. All I have to work with is a village in the mountains. Claudia never mentioned the name of the village, just that it was the countryside of Bellagio. Where is that anyway?"

"Italy," Liam says from the doorway of the study and everyone turns to look at him.

"Have you been there?" Stefan asked as Liam walked into the room and handed everyone a glass from the tray he was carrying.

"Yup. Backpacked along the coast and then stayed at this little Inn where the cutest little redhead with dimples kept me company---"

"You can skip the romantics bud. Give us the specifics." Killian chuckled as Alexis giggled beside him.

"Bellagio was known to be the birthplace of Typhon, some giant who wooed a snake lady," Liam explained as I shot from my seat and grabbed the journal on the desk.

"Echidna," I whispered as Stefan and everyone else in the room looked over at me.

"Yeah, it was a weird name like that. Funny how I assumed she was a spider lady because, you know..." Liam is shushed by Alexis as Stefan watched me closely.

"What are you thinking, Anna?"

"I'm thinking, we need to go to Italy."

"What?" Alexis and Killian echoed and Liam ran up to my side beside the desk.

"I'm going with you! I know Bellagio like I know that brunettes hate to be stood up."

Stefan sighed as Alexis and Killian stepped in closer as well. "We'll watch the kids. Go. Find out what you can."

I turned to Stefan, who nodded with a small frown on his face. Liam whooped and jumped in the air before scattering out of the room saying he needed to pack. I looked again at the drawn symbol on the page of the journal entry as my mind once again wandered to that night I lost my mother. I was worried and at the same time....intrigued.