Chapter Thirteen
Nicole
NICOLE CUT THROUGH THE SHADOWED MANOR WITH A SPEED she hadn’t expected. Hundreds of mythological creatures and paintings swirled through her mind with theories on why the Banshee was here, and what she was becoming in response.
But right now, she didn’t need to know, she just needed to let her body take her.
Nicole reached up and back as she skidded into a grand living space to tear her shredded satin pyjama shirt, allowing her body what it needed: the freedom to release the new wings peeling from her skin.
They were paper-thin and delicate, despite the new architecture of muscle and bone swiftly developing around her chest and ribs to support them.
Then she felt the magic, like a midnight whisper beneath her skin.
She was a Darksprite, she realised, as darkness leached from her in an inky sparkle and she shimmered in and out of visibility. Despite the name, they were often the same height as the average human – if a bit smaller.
Abilities: flying, night-vision, invisibility, mischief-magic.
One of the perfect predators for a type of screaming Banshee – the Ban-Sìth.
Nicole shuddered with invisibility, but the sound waves of the Ban-Sìth’s scream slammed into her anyway.
The ground lifted away as she was thrown forward, bone near splintering at the force that blasted her into the decorated wall.
She staggered back, her teeth singing, her body feeling so much smaller and more breakable even with the fizz of new magic in her blood.
She needed a logical location to dispatch the Ban-Sìth, and out in the manor’s sprawling grounds wouldn’t be it.
So Nicole tore through the rooms in this strange new body, her feet barely skimming the floors, and headed for the most wickedly exquisite room in the whole manor.
The Hell Staircase.
The rectangular room was built over three storeys and consisted of two large staircases that descended to a lower level where another set of stairs went down again. But the steep and sudden drop wasn’t the only thing that would give her an advantage. The artwork was.
Because the painted ceiling would stop anything in its tracks.
Nicole sped right through the Heaven Room’s gods and creatures and into the Hell Staircase.
She let her body disappear as she skidded to a stop before the right-hand stairs.
She shuddered with the unfamiliar sensation, but it allowed her to dart to the side as the Ban-Sìth burst in after her and looked up at the flame-licked anarchy of the fresco, spilling from the ceiling and down the walls.
When Nicole had first seen it, it had reminded her so vividly of the lawless legends of the Dark Ages and apocalypse paintings.
The great beast at the centre of the ceiling was swallowing, or perhaps discharging, chaos.
It looked more like something out of Howl’s Moving Castle than other depictions she’d seen.
The creatures streaming around it weren’t the twiggy, nefarious beings of Hieronymus Bosch or the animalistic creatures of Italian altarpieces.
She hadn’t been initially unnerved by its gaping, fiery mouth and dopey eyes, so much as fascinated by all the other details and the sheer scale of the double-height frescoes that blazed throughout.
Now, the strangeness of the creatures streamed into her mind: serpent-tailed men with silver hair, a Gorgon grasping her own snaky tresses, a flying woman that looked half kangaroo, and various creatures of the classical Underworld clawing at the walls.
The Ban-Sìth scanned the staircase, confused by the sudden array of creatures.
With her new power, Nicole’s vision had morphed, so the floating Ban-Sìth stood out like a glaring beacon against the infernal display above them.
Muscle shifted in her back and torso as Nicole willed her body to fly upwards.
Her bare feet left the floor and the room dropped away as her clear, slightly iridescent wings took her up into the ceiling.
Invisible, she let herself blend into the many painted creatures, her feet skidding softly against the cool fresco, her fingers stroking over monster and myth as she scanned the room for something she could use.
‘Come out, Empyreal,’ the Ban-Sìth rasped.
Darksprites weren’t as strong as Empyreals, so the sudden lack of strength in the rest of Nicole’s body would make her useless in a physical fight. But Darksprites were prone to mischief, which meant their powers were more tailored to manipulating or confusing people.
When Nicole spotted the suit of armour by the doors, she dropped to it silently.
It was harder to rip the spear off the suit than expected, and while the first pull on the cold metal was near silent, it wouldn’t stay that way: the lance was heavy, and secure.
So, using her new night-born swirls of magic, she thought of the ‘please don’t touch’ sign on one of the tables a floor below and imagined it being shoved off onto the stone flags.
The corresponding clatter jolted through Nicole.
The Ban-Sìth’s head whipped towards the noise and she immediately drifted down to investigate.
As she did, Nicole yanked on the spear and the armour clashed like thunder.
The Ban-Sìth launched back upwards as Nicole’s Darksprite magic formed a spectral claw, cinching the creature’s throat and cutting off her scream before she could blindly attack.
Smothered, the Ban-Sìth threw herself higher to dislodge Nicole’s phantom grip, suspended for a moment against the backdrop of the hell fresco.
Giving Nicole the perfect shot.
She ran forward and flung the spear limned in glittering magic.
It met its target with a crack, piercing the creature’s chest and throwing her back, up towards the mythological ceiling of painted monsters, and pinning her into the maw of the hell beast in the ceiling.
Nicole’s breath sawed out of her at the sight of the Ban-Sìth’s shocked eyes.
Before her new powers faded, Nicole’s logical mind broke through. She needed answers, and therefore she needed the body down from the ceiling.
Those night-made hands dragged the creature free as Nicole let her wings lift her up and over the rail of the double staircase and down onto the floor below.
Blood streamed for a moment over the steps in a lurid slash of red, spattering Nicole’s shoulder, but she laid the dying Ban-Sìth on the cold stone, keeping her pinned just in case.
‘Why are you here?’ Nicole demanded. She’d wanted it to be forceful, but her voice in this form sounded more like a raspy whisper.
Still, the creature heard her.
‘Your mate … killed … my cousin.’
The Ban-Sìth Kyan had killed back in Estwood to protect her, the one that had planned to kill Nicole after being drawn to her newly-transformed scent … He’d taken care of it, and that night they’d spent their first evening together.
Though this Ban-Sìth had planned to kill her, it didn’t stop the guilt puncturing the memory.
‘I’m sorry,’ Nicole managed.
She glanced up as Bells rushed into the room, standing breathless in the dark doorway that looked, for a jarring moment, like a portal to the afterlife.
‘How did you find us?’ Nicole asked. ‘Did the Wake send you?’
‘The Wake.’ The Ban-Sìth laughed a broken sound, blood gurgling on her pale lips as if she wanted to spit at the thought. ‘No. I just – followed the scent of death.’
Nicole met her sister’s stricken eyes.
‘What does that mean?’
‘You all reek of it.’
‘Why?’ Nicole demanded.
Was it her Empyrean powers, and the fact that to protect she had to kill? Or the visions Bells had every night, the deaths of all kinds of creatures and humans?
‘It’s coming,’ the Ban-Sìth said. ‘The Hunt … is coming—’ Her white shift whipped about like a cursed gothic heroine’s as the creature sucked in her last breath.
And as it stilled, so did the Ban-Sìth.
With the creature’s death, Nicole’s Empyrean power was satisfied.
It spooled back through her with such a rush the wicked paintings on the walls danced and jeered as her body unmade itself and returned her to her normal state, shedding the borrowed wings until they slid off her back to disintegrate and her limbs regained their strength.
But as her Darksprite magic leached into the air, fear bolted through Nicole. She braced for the pain to come next, feeling a short but intense rush of grief that Kyan wasn’t here to hold her through it like last time.
Instead, the hunting urges that had been building for months finally quieted and her mind cleared with a cool, blissful calm.
The last thing she saw was Bells rushing towards her as she slumped over the Ban-Sìth’s blood-slick body, and the world inked with black.