Dark Carousel (Dark #30) - Christine Feehan Page 0,90
men could do with a few rocks.
Their hands began to weave an intricate pattern over the stones. As they moved their wrists and arms to a rhythm only they heard, they added their voices. The tone was pitched very low. So low, Charlotte felt the earth vibrate beneath her feet. She didn’t take her eyes off the rocks. The largest twitched, as if feeling the vibrations in the earth.
She felt the chanting right through her body. Shaking her up. Making her tremble. The notes were low and clean and uttered with tremendous force. The sound vibrated until the stones began to break apart. Chips at first, then larger pieces until forms began to take shape. All the while, the three men chanted, their hands never faltering as they created what were fast becoming several dragons.
Charlotte couldn’t believe how detailed each creature was. The blue one was large, its body and tail growing fast. It was all stone, and its various shadings gave it a striking appearance. The gems were the eyes. The stones took on the visage of fierce dragons quickly. The commands in the voices grew as well until the tunnels vibrated with the demands. Once the dragons had taken shape, once every detail was done to the men’s satisfaction, the tone of command changed, became even more demanding.
It was so fascinating to watch the rocks grow in size and take on the shape and look of dragons that she didn’t notice anything else until she heard Tariq let out a low warning hiss between clenched teeth. Startled, she looked around her. Rocks in the tunnel walls as well as on the ground either shook apart or grew in size. It wasn’t only the chosen rocks reacting to the notes the three men produced.
She realized the combination of their voices and hands formed the dragons, but the actual low notes shook the rocks and changed the properties in them. The ceiling could come down on them, or the earth might open if they continued much longer. As it was, there were several cracks in the ground, the walls, and the ceiling. Dirt trickled down on top of them, but Tariq waved his hand and it stopped. She noticed the other Carpathian hunters were moving their hands toward the walls as well as above and below them. Clearly they were shoring things up.
Abruptly the voices of the triplets rose in perfect harmony, no longer shaking apart the ground and the walls of the tunnel as she’d feared. Charlotte had no doubt that if they chose, the three men could have taken down the entire city beneath the one above it. They had a remarkable gift, one she wouldn’t mind having. It made her wonder if all the strange shapes formed in stone throughout the world hadn’t been made by them rather than what the history books proclaimed.
Fire burst through the rock, the dragons glowing orange-red through cracks. The rock itself turned molten. The chanting slid into a softer harmony and the rock bellies of the dragons began to cool, the cracks no longer glowing, finally turning dark.
The notes turned coaxing. She watched the small segments of straggly green plants shudder on each of the dragon backs. Charlotte held her breath and tightened her hold on Tariq’s shirt as the green segments began to shred into fine hairs. Each individual hair floated up above the dragon the plant had been sitting on. The chant went from coaxing to pure, steely command and suddenly, as if they were spears, the separate pieces stiffened and slammed hard into the stone, so hard they buried themselves deep. Each dragon absorbed at least a hundred separate hairs of the plant.
The three men dropped their hands and their voices went still. The tunnel was so quiet Charlotte could hear her own heartbeat. It drummed loudly, but even that couldn’t distract her from watching the stone dragons intently. There was the blue leader, a large one so detailed now that she wanted to touch his scales to see if he was alive. Behind him were four smaller dragons, red, green, brown and a striking orange.
Abruptly and simultaneously, the three men clapped their hands, a single word bursting from them. The blue dragon shuddered. His great sides heaved and then moved in and out like a bellows. Very slowly his head turned first one way and then the other. His tail switched. The slightly smaller dragons began to move as well, twisting their necks and shaking their heads,