Rise of the Magi (5 page)

“They’ll be nearest whoever has the Goddess’ favor, and that’s Lila.” Brígh said it through a curled lip.

I had to bet my face did that whenever I mentioned them, too. I shook my head, anxious to get back to planning. “For now, Brígh and I will go to them.”

“Agreed.” Liam’s agreement shocked the hell out of me considering his narrowed eyes betrayed his conflict.

I tried pushing into his thoughts and found them furious and dreary, but he knew I had to go. Wasn’t he just sweet enough to rot my soul by not making it harder for me?

It took Cas a few moments before he gave a curt nod and said, “Fine,” with the sincerity of a devil promising to pray.

“Good. Now when can we leave?” I clapped my hands together, glad to finally have something to do instead of sitting around, waiting for the Magi to make their move.

Brígh winced and gripped the table as if it was the only thing preventing her from falling into the jaws of the apocalypse.

Cas rushed forward and put his arm around her. At my gaping mouth, he said, “She’s having a vision.”

I’d never actually seen her have one before. Judging by her moon-sized eyes, it wasn’t good.

“Laerni,” Brígh whispered and jerked to her feet, still staring into her inner world. Her china cup tipped over and sent a spill of brown liquid across the wood. She cried out, holding her stomach and screamed, “Oh, Goddess, Laerni!”

A jolt of fright blasted to the top of my skull. I rounded the chair and grabbed Brígh by the face, forcing her to look at me. She rubbed at her arms, clawing at some unseen attacker in her imagination. “What’s wrong? What’s happening to the elves?”

Her gaze slowly returned to me, emerging from her waking dream, her chest rising and falling like a marathon runner’s. “Freymoor Wood is about to fall.”

4

As the four of us sprinted toward the portal, Gallagher, Neve and Andrew joined us. I gave them the quick and dirty version of Brígh’s vision of Laerni being attacked by something Brígh couldn’t identify.

After a stumble—in shock, if his tight expression had anything to do with it—Gallagher took off ahead of us as though a rabid mountain troll cracked a whip at his rear.

When Liam and I made it through the portal, we found Gallagher kneeling beside Laerni, who lay curled in a fetal position on the stone just outside Seven Gates. Her tall, thin body shook in violent fits. Angry red wounds sliced through the white cloth she wore around her hips and breasts.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach. What appeared to be rope burns weren’t from ropes, but vines like the ones that had attacked us outside Talawen’s little cave five months before.

More concerned with those Laerni left behind, I shouted a frantic, “Is it too late? How do I get to Freymoor?”

She lifted her head, white hair tumbling around her face, the ends stained red. “You would help us, Lila Gray?”

I knelt, afraid to touch her. It took every ounce of effort I possessed to resist shouting again. “Of course we would. Can you send us there from here?”

Large silver tears formed on her lashes as she extended her shaking hand, opening her filleted fingers to reveal a shiny black stone. “Take the stone and think of Freymoor, and any who touch you will be taken. Goddess forgive me for being such a coward. Save them, Lila Gray. Save us from our own stupidity.”

Nodding, I snatched up the stone, walked a few feet away, and stared at my company. Gallagher remained by Laerni, speaking quietly to her, while the other five sets of eyes all faced me.

“We’re not going.” Liam stared first toward my belly, but lifted to my face, his Light flaring angry blue. “The Magi are trying to lure you out.”

“Yeah, I say fuck ’em.” Andrew eyed me with such steel I almost took a step back. “They turned tail and ran when we needed them.”

Cas glared at his brother-in-law, Brígh by his side. “Lila won’t turn her back on them. You have to know that. She can’t because she isn’t like them. She’s better than them.”

Glowing a little at that, and even more resolved to go than I’d been a moment before, I stared at Liam. He shook his head.

“You know we have to go.” I touched his face, while he vibrated with worry. “Even if Laerni hadn’t been helping me these last few months and I hadn’t started to care about her, we’d still have to go.”

“Then you stay, and let us go,” Liam said, his tone desperate and pleading.

I stole away some of his anxiety into myself and soothed him with my quiet voice. “You said whatever happens in the future, we are in it together. Lock stock. We gave our oaths.”

His gaze fell again toward our son. “I know, but … things are different now.”

I understood, but I couldn’t do nothing after the gains I’d made with the fae. With myself. Not to mention that to do so was just plain wrong. “I have to face them sooner or later. The Magi, I mean. I will not stand aside and watch the elves fall while I’m capable of doing something about it. Nor will I let them hurt our son. I need to know you’ve got my back on this.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Liam drew in a sharp breath, let it out, and stepped in close. “You know I do. Know this, though. I will not hesitate to kill or die to protect my son. And my wife.”

My heart throbbed and tears pricked my eyes. I’d never heard him call me that before. With not a clue what to say to that, I kissed his chin. “For now, pull any heroics on me, and I’ll knock your head in. We get in; we fix this; we get out.”

When I focused on Brígh, she glowered at me, but I forced my Will into her, having no time for an argument. “Go back inside. I told you I’d hide you under my bed if I had to, and I meant it.” I turned to Neve. “Would you please stay and make sure she doesn’t do something stupid?”

After a longing glance at Andrew, she straightened. “Sure thing.” Her eyes said,
keep my man safe
.

I nodded and hoped she’d read my unspoken promise: I would bring him home, or else.

Cursing up a storm, Brígh made a few nasty gestures to me but returned to the portal—Neve on her tail.

I thrust out my empty hand. “Everyone touch me.”

Three hands reached out and gripped my arm, their owners’ eyes glimmering with the same fear I imagined mine did.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Do it,” Andrew said in a near snarl, his gaze locked onto me with intensity I couldn’t read. Fury, maybe. Or fear. I wasn’t sure. Some emotion that came from deep within, gaining momentum and power as it rose to his surface.

A deep breath centered me as I squeezed the cold stone and summoned an image of the light fountain in the town square of Freymoor Wood. Instead of making me feel like a ball in a bingo mixer, the way the transporting medallions had, the sensations washing over me were more like being pushed face first through warm honey.

I emerged to cool air and a din of bone-rattling screams. Not just fear. Agony. I clamped down my senses, so I could still hear but not feel what went along with those cries.

“Fuck me sideways,” Andrew said, as Liam tugged me closer. Prickles of magic danced along my skin. “Is it supposed to look like this?”

“It is most definitely not supposed to look like this,” Liam shouted, crouched and tense at my side.

Everywhere, oak trees littered the ground, having erupted through stone paths. They dwarfed all of the strange metallic trees that were there before. How had they grown up so fast? Not naturally, that was for sure. I had a fleeting thought that we stared into our own future before shaking it off.

One thick willow grew up out of the center of the fountain, destroying the flow of light. Its wispy branches coiled and floated around its head like Medusa’s snakes. Instead of water in the stone trough around its base, a crimson pool shifted with the giant moons’ tidal push and pull. Around the perimeter, the large trees, where we’d first met and been entertained by Alogason and Laerni, were all dark, not even a flicker of candle or moon-pixie light seeping out under the closed doors. Vines encircled them, strangling all the way up to the high branches.

It took a few painful moments for my mind to process the scene before I snapped out of my shock. “Find them!”

I dashed off toward a woman’s high pitched squeal. Liam shouted after me, but I couldn’t break my focus to hear what he said, and our connection was fuzzy, probably because of the dark magic nibbling at my skin. Old magic. My body knew without my brain having gathered the knowledge through any means I could recall.

The sound grew louder as I approached a trunk thick enough I wouldn’t have been able to link my arms around it. The bark appeared lumpy. As I focused, the shape of an elf appeared, her pink mouth wide in a scream—the only part not yet covered.

A roar launched out of my throat as I tore at her prison, ripping away the bark. Tendrils of wood invaded the woman’s body. One thick piece entered under her jaw and came out the corner of her eye. Red tears washed pale cheeks but her eyes held only the tiniest glimmer of life’s spark. For a few breaths, I gaped at her, wrestling with wanting to save her and knowing I couldn’t. Ripping apart her brain went beyond my skills. “I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s too late.”
I am too late.
“May the Goddess bless you.” It sounded inadequate, insulting that I couldn’t come up with something better to say to her, something more profound to ease her passing. Nothing would be enough.

My skin burned as I let Light flood my body, concentrating it at my fingertips. Pressing my palms on either side of her throat, I searched for where her spine met her skull. I absorbed her pain, her fear, and crushed it into a corner of myself as I severed her spine with a thought. Cries built in my throat, but I held them there. The absence of her screaming clawed at me worse than the sound had.

“There’s another here,” Cas shouted from my left, and Liam had found two more to my right.

“We’re too late,” Andrew said from behind me. “Something’s preventing me from stopping time. We’re too few, and they’re too many. Just burn it to the ground so we can get you out of here. I can’t protect you here!”

“It’s not too late. Not for everyone!”
It can’t be.
I plowed a fist into Andrew’s chest, a jolt of my energy knocking him on his ass. “There have to be survivors. Find them!”

Coughing from my blow, he scrambled to his feet and resumed the search.

I went from tree to tree, killing elves, swallowing their fear so they wouldn’t die in terror. My mind swelled with it, threatening to tear me apart and make me flee, rattling like old rusty chains in my dark places. I held myself together by sheer will. The fact that ending their lives was the merciful thing to do didn’t make it any easier to take. I’d seen a large number of them before, happy and well, eating, laughing, dancing. Desperate, I pushed out my senses, looking for minds that held no agony, only fear, hoping most of the population had holed up somewhere. My senses fizzled and died the instant it touched whatever hung in the air. I couldn’t reach more than a three foot radius around myself.
Shit.

Liam reached out to me through our static-filled bond, his thoughts somber.
“I think Andrew’s right. Jesus, this is heinous.”

Shutting him out with gusto, I burst into my energy form. My flesh and clothing turned to white pulsing Light as I passed into dwellings to search with my eyes and ears. Ten. Twenty. Forty. All empty. Farther up the valley I went, sailing through walls, smelling, listening. Nothing. Not a peep or a whisper of breath. No sign of anything other than overturned furniture from hasty exits.

Nearly hyperventilating from the pool of terror eating my guts, I returned to the fountain and to my flesh form. Bent over, shaking, I propped my palms on my knees and allowed a few tears to pass my lashes. Most of the shrieking had ceased, leaving only a few scars of sound ripping across the otherwise deadly silent night.

“Oh, no,” Cas said from beside me. “Why?”

When I turned to look at him, he faced the sky as if asking the question to the Goddess herself. “Why what?” Other than the obvious, of course.

His focus lowered to the trunk of the willow tree in slow motion, squinting as if trying to stare at the sun. I followed his line of sight. It took a moment for my mind to catch up to what my eyes saw. Imbedded beneath the bark, dozens of forms writhed all the way up to the highest branches. The lowest one hadn’t yet been consumed completely.

“Alogason.” I breathed his name.

Blood sprayed from his lips as he coughed. “I beg of you.” Another coughing fit choked him. “End this. All who remain are lost.”

I brought my hands to my throat to loosen the noose that wasn’t there. “Galati?” My heart already knew the answer.

“Be-beside me.” His raspberry-red eyes, looking more like open wounds, beseeched as they glassed over. “Laerni?”

“Alive and at Iress.”

He let out a cry I took to be relief. “She will help you. Please help us. Even when we are fully consumed, our mind remains. Sensation remains. Pain … remains. We are all connected. Feel everyone’s pain. Set us free, Lila Gray.”

I held my belly, the surge within threatening to raise my gorge. “Liam.” I cried his name, unsure what I wanted him for. To take the task away from me? To undo it? To do something so I didn’t have to destroy an entire race of people?

“I’m here. I’ll help you through this,” he said from behind me.

Furious that he had no other solution, I held onto my darkness and tried to convince myself that was all he could offer. What could I do? What could he do? What choice did we have? Let them suffer? Or set them free to find peace? There was no choice. Only bad and worse.

A holler from behind snapped me around to find Andrew’s upside down form flying up one of the giant trees, pulled by a thick strand of ivy wrapped around his leg. His fear blackened my mind.

Oh, no. Hell, no
. He was mine, and God dammit, I would take him home to his wife.

One look at Liam, and he sprouted feathers, giving me his silent promise to find Andrew. “Get off the ground!” He pushed upward and took flight.

It took a monumental effort to let Liam leave, not knowing what might happen to him. It might very well have been the last time I’d see him, but I had to end the suffering, and I wouldn’t stand before Neve and tell her we’d lost her mate, too. A quick glance around revealed no more of the evil green snakes coming for Cas or me, and no one who might have been controlling them, either. Had the Magi dropped some sort of spell and fled?