Chapter 6 #3
Aisling dropped out of sight, and he cast the witchmark in the direction of the display case, desperately wanting to build a shield between his sister and the creatures after her.
Bran thought he was fast enough, that Aisling would get below in time and he could follow, but even as the shield anchored itself to the floor in a glittering wall of light, the creatures at the windows broke through the barrier, helped by way of insidious magic not of this world.
Glass shattered, the screaming nightmares writhing their way into the Shoppe, and Bran swore, heart beating loud enough to make his ears ring.
More of the creatures forced their way into the Shoppe behind the first two, the magic in the walls bleeding out faster than he’d ever be able to replenish it.
He didn’t know why the witchmarks were being subverted now when they never had before.
Bran backed up toward the display case, wrenching one arm around to expand the shield around his position and connect it to the back wall.
He got it up just in time as the creature who’d come through the trifecta stained-glass window lunged at him, knocking over tables with its many spindly legs.
It reminded him of a spider—if a spider resembled a demon-like creature that had dragged itself out of the hell that was the wyrding.
It crashed into his shield, clawing at the magic, and Bran reared back, nearly tripping over his own feet.
The creature at the door abruptly pulled back, its antlers breaking through the top part of the doorframe as it did so.
What streaked through the damaged opening was a flock of things shaped like bats, but nothing about them would ever be mistaken for that animal.
These were things that were little more than teeth and wings, more mouth than anything, meant to rend flesh from bone.
Bran wondered which of these creatures had murdered his mother—which one deserved magic shot through whatever passed as their heart, beating or otherwise—but the thought was a fleeting thing, there and gone.
He drew a pair of witchmarks in the air using both hands, the last finger curl tying it together with a burning knot of magic.
He threw it forward with all the intent he could muster, return to the earth heavy in the making of it.
The witchmark slammed into the creature with the crescent moon–shaped horns, throwing it backward through the Shoppe.
The creature crashed into a bookcase, destroying the furniture and sending all the antiques to the ground.
The way it screamed and writhed from the attack told him at least some of his magic was working.
Bran was halfway through sketching out another witchmark in the air when a hum vibrated through the air, like an oncoming freight train.
He only got one more line twisted into place before a force unlike anything he’d experienced before slammed through the Shoppe and shattered his shield, picking him up off his feet and tossing him backward.
He slammed against the back wall near the utility room door, head cracking against wood hard enough that everything spun.
In that moment where the world tipped sideways and magic flowed just out of reach, something stepped into the Shoppe.
Its presence was ancient, filling the Shoppe with a malevolence that told Bran this was a thing humans had once hidden from during the night before their iron cities grew into a bedrock of defense that rarely could be crossed.
But out here, in the forest far from a city, where the trees seemed to stretch forever if you looked just right, this was where the wyrding slipped through.
Where the Fae hunted.
And Bran was nothing but prey in that moment, the only witch for miles around, his mother not even buried yet.
He struggled to get an elbow underneath him, to get back on his feet as the entire room seemed to lurch with the motion, stomach roiling like he was on a rickety roller coaster.
He lifted his head, wincing from the harsh glow of magic gathered around the Fae like a halo.
“I had thought all the witches of Pelham were dead,” the Fae said, ancient voice like the rumble of an earthquake.
He was beautiful in the way all the stories said the Fae were, tall and broad-shouldered, the antlers that protruded from his head adding to his height.
His face was perfectly handsome in its symmetry, eyes honey-gold in color and reflecting the light from magic, framed by long brown hair.
Bran half wondered if the Fae was the thing that had tried to get through the Shoppe door, but he couldn’t be sure.
This Fae didn’t look like a nightmare with its deer head and strange eyes, more like an uncannily beautiful man dressed in elegant dark green pants and a brocade tunic picked through with shining gold thread.
A small glass sphere hung from a gold necklace, shining from sparks held within its delicate casing.
The iron beads on Bran’s bracelet would keep the Fae from reading his mind and the intent there, whether a lord or not.
Only Bran couldn’t count on that right then, not after the Fae had broken through the witchmarks in the Shoppe.
Not with the antlers on his head he’d seen on a monster and the insidious magic that pressed against Bran’s own.
No, this Fae might be a lord, but they were dangerous, and Bran knew better than to name him, to give him power. He had enough already.
Bran’s attention snapped to the blue flowers tangled like a garland through the Fae’s antlers, and he knew, in that moment, this was the Fae responsible for his mother’s murder.
“You bastard,” Bran ground out, fingers moving against the hardwood floor, magic filling the witchmark with nothing but force.
Before he could release it, the bat-like creatures dived through the entrance of the basement, and Bran cried out wordlessly, trying to get to his feet, even as his head wanted the rest of him to lie still.
He scraped the witchmark off the floor and tossed it in the direction of the Fae who’d come through the door, but like with his shield, the Fae broke that, too.
The backlash was like getting shocked with an electric jolt over and over again.
Bran’s teeth clacked together as he forced himself to his feet.
He’d barely made it upright before the bat-like creatures returned from below in a swirl of wings and teeth and talons, Aisling held in their many-clawed grips.
She struggled, but they held her fast by her clothes and arms and hair.
She kicked against them, mouth open in a silent scream as she tried to reach for Bran with desperate fingers, and he would always remember that moment when he couldn’t save her.
“No!” Bran yelled, lunging for her, feet sliding on broken glass and jagged bits of wood and other broken things. But he was too far away, and the creatures were too many. They flew for the door, out into the dangerous night, taking his sister with them.
Bran let out a guttural yell of denial, fury and fear leaving an acidic aftertaste on his tongue, fingers clenched around glittering motes of magic as he faced off with the Fae. “Give her back!”
“She was never yours to begin with,” the Fae said in that rumbling voice of his.
“Bullshit. She’s my sister.” He’d lost his mother. He would not lose Aisling, not like this.
The Fae smirked at him, a terrible expression for a beautiful nightmare. “You know nothing of the Fae, witch.”
The witchmark burned against Bran’s palm, a force filled with all his rage and grief. “And you don’t know witches. This is not your land.”
“It was, once. It will be again. You witches cannot hold us back forever.”
The Fae resided in the Otherworld, the way to it found at the end of forest paths, in the fringe of the wyrding, through hidden mounds the stories taught people never to approach.
The mortal world wasn’t theirs to claim, not anymore.
Witches had stood against their encroachment since the Fae were banished from Ireland millennia ago, magic cultivated amid a history of fighting.
Iron would always hurt the Fae, but witch magic could be just as damaging. Except it usually took an entire coven to eradicate the Fae and the lights when an incursion happened upon a town, and here, it was only Bran.
Somehow, he would have to be enough.
He cast the witchmark with furious intent.
Magic exploded away from him in a concussive blast that drew on the remnants of witchmarks carved into the Shoppe’s foundation and the circle in the basement, all of it anchored in iron, and channeled it like he was a river.
Bran focused on the Fae lord—for the antlered Fae could be nothing else—wanting the bastard out and gone from his home.
The Fae lord skidded back from the force of the attack, his own magic deflecting Bran’s with an ease that made his fear deepen. The creatures that had followed the Fae into the Shoppe fought against the force of his magic, screaming all the while in hideous voices.
Then a sound cut through it all, high and angry, Jupiter’s caw echoed by the sound of others. His familiar flew into the Shoppe, followed by dozens of ravens and crows, awake outside their normal daylight hours, their eyes glowing the same glittering gold as his familiar’s.
Never before had he seen other corvids afflicted with magic in such a way. It wasn’t Bran’s doing. For a moment, Bran thought it was the Fae. Then Jupiter opened up the bond between them, her presence awash with the power of Nature and something else that lurked deep he’d never felt before.
Bran didn’t have time to question it, and in the end, it wouldn’t matter.
There wasn’t a world where he could repudiate her, not now, not after they were bound.
So Bran took the support offered, took the power of Nature and that thread of something darker, and clawed another witchmark in the air, this one a mix of trespass and hearth.
When he cast it, he let it tap his reserves with no restrictions.
This was his home, and he didn’t want the Fae in it.
The Fae lord retreated before the spell could take effect. Magic ripped away from Bran, but it didn’t touch Jupiter or the corvids, the essence of Nature passing harmlessly through them. Bran stumbled from the effort, witchmarks burning in the air before disintegrating in seconds.
The lights outside suddenly vanished, and he let out a wordless, frantic cry of protest and scrambled toward the door through the debris in the Shoppe.
Bran staggered outside into the warm summer night, finding the road empty and the forest dark, the only light to be seen that of the full moon in the black, starry sky.