Chapter 10
TEN
The second I walked out of the greenhouse, Ilara crossed from where she was, on the side of the cottage, near the snow-covered hydrangea bushes, and stood there staring at me.
It was like a nightmare come to life, her wolves gathered around her in the deep snow.
It was hard to turn away—it seemed insane not to have eyes on her—but I had no choice. I needed to commune with the land.
Putting my faith in Lorne to keep me safe, I trudged through the snow toward the now frozen stream. I used the elemental magic that was always mine to call upon, and between the wind and a bit of fire—the ground was rock hard now with frozen snow—I cleared a place to sink down into.
As soon as I was on my knees, I heard the shotgun, and quickly shoved my hands into the earth and closed my eyes.
The cacophony of voices in my head, screaming and shrieking over one another, was heartbreaking.
Under the quiet snow, Corvus was vibrating with anger and confusion and betrayal, not understanding what had been done or why.
The calls were a constant jumble of pleading and hatred, hope and fear.
I reached deeper, calling to the wards, calling on the blood of every guardian who had sacrificed to keep the land safe, and then reminded Corvus of their spouses and children, of generations living on the land, raising families, and the joy and love and grace that had been bestowed.
I filled my mind with fireflies and fairies, long walks in the woods talking to the trees, gathering flowers for my wedding, of vegetables grown in the garden, of the passing centuries and people laid to rest in the earth.
I thought about my grandparents lying in the meadow together, counting stars in the fall, and later, of my grandfather taking walks in the misty mornings talking to Corvus, and me, about her.
My sigh was long, because my happiest memories were here, in this place, on the land I loved.
I thought of my best friend’s kids growing up here, running in the tall grass, listening to the wind, their laughter and love, of all of life’s small moments, of contentment and ease, and the ebb and flow of time.
And finally, of Lorne, holding my hand as we walked together through the trees in silent communion with the forest.
When I was done, I listened, hard, and when there was only deafening silence, I despaired, but then Lorne crouched down beside me. We were facing opposite directions—he clearly didn’t want anything running up on us—but our shoulders touched, and that comforted me.
Turning my head, I saw concern on him, as well as resignation. “Are they dead?”
“No,” he husked. “But they have to heal before they get up, and that’s made the others wary of getting too close to me.”
“Where is she?”
“Giles arrived, and she went to join him.”
“Great,” I whispered.
“It’s gonna be all right,” he promised me.
I leaned my head on his shoulder, felt the love there, in him, and so let it flow through me, down deep into the earth.
“Corvus is no more,” Giles called out to me as he and Ilara landed about thirty feet away from us. I had no idea he could levitate, but it didn’t surprise me. “And your precious family will now scatter to the wind.”
Lorne would not take his eyes off the wolves. It was understood he would deal with them and I would handle Giles. I hoped I was up to the task.
Lifting my head, I looked more closely at him, and was surprised at how much older he appeared, even from earlier in the morning.
“You need to jump to another realm before you die,” I warned him. “Your companion kept the truth from you, but you’re aging. Fast. By destroying Corvus, you broke the only thing that could sustain you here.”
He laughed. “I always planned to destroy Corvus. I just needed to wait until the guardian was weakest.”
I didn’t take the bait. “Do you not care that Ilara put a spell on the mirrors?” I asked to give myself more time with my land.
“She thought I would actually teach her to be any kind of a hedge-rider,” he said, laughing, mocking Ilara as he walked away from her. “As if it were possible to impart anything to an enchantress from such a primitive realm.”
Ilara gasped. “You lied to me!”
“Of course I lied to you. It was easy. You’re so consumed with rage and revenge that you couldn’t even see that I needed you, your energy, your power, to fuel my flight from your home.
That wraith would not stop, and there was only one place I knew that could absorb that much evil and do no damage. ”
“You expected Corvus to kill the wraith.”
“Of course,” he said, moving closer. “Your daemon was a lovely surprise.”
“You remember?” I was astonished.
He smirked at me.
“Oh, I see. This is the night in front of the fireplace all over again. You really do play dead well.”
“Whether it be body or mind,” he said and turned to Ilara, holding his hand open, and then made a fist.
Instantly, she was clawing at an invisible hand around her throat.
“Why kill her?” I asked, hoping to buy her some time. “Instead why not return her to her primitive realm?”
“Because she lied to me,” he said, and her eyes started to bleed.
“The wolves are gone,” Lorne said under his breath.
“Please don’t kill her,” I implored him.
“Whyever not?”
I had to think. “You lied to her first, Giles. You promised you would instruct her, but you just said you had already decided not to teach her about any part of being a hedge-rider.”
“She tried to kill me by putting a spell on the mirrors.”
“But you apparently knew that, so why do you care?”
“Because if you can’t trust your companion, who can you trust?
” he asked so calmly, even as Ilara’s eyes widened and her face went gray a moment before her head was severed from her shoulders.
The spell hand had squeezed through her neck, and when the pressure was released, her head fell, followed by her body.
The gush of blood made a pool of red in the stark white snow.
I stared at him.
“I can feel your disapproval,” he said patronizingly. “But what was I to do? She wanted more than I could possibly give her.”
“You should have left her where she was.”
“I couldn’t do that. I already explained to you that I needed her power to make my escape. It happens so much faster now. I used to be able to stay for weeks anywhere I wanted, exploring and learning, but now it’s merely days. I’m having to run through my life.”
“Then why would you change Corvus, why hurt it if it could sustain you?”
“I hate Corvus,” he yelled. The force of his anger hit me like an electromagnetic pulse and tore Lorne from my side, throwing him ten feet away from me.
Checking frantically, looking over my shoulder, ready to stand up even if it cut off any fraction of a connection I might have made with Corvus, when Lorne lifted a hand, I could breathe. Immediately, I turned back to the slowly advancing Giles.
“Corvus could have sustained you,” I told him.
“Yes, but at what cost? To be here, yoked to the land like a dumb animal for the rest of my life?” he bellowed, and this time, he brought the wind up, and the arctic gust blew all around us, loud and whistling.
Lorne stumbled back, and when he fell to his knees beside me, I noted the blood on the right side of his head trickling down behind his ear.
“Can you make it to the house?” I asked him.
“I won’t ever leave you,” he said, lifting the rifle, taking aim at Giles.
“This devotion to the land, to guarding the rift, is obscene,” Giles ranted on, and I saw something in his hand a moment before he flung it at Lorne.
I screamed, but instead of it hitting the man I loved, it impaled Argos. He had changed into his daemon shape, so he was as big as a grizzly bear, but the six-foot icicle skewered him and flung him back into the snow.
“No!” I cried out, the pain in my chest instant.
“Argos!” Lorne gasped, charging unsteadily over to his pet and dropping into the snow next to him, hands in the daemon’s fur. “No, buddy, please. Use your magic and stay with me.”
“You see!” Giles roared, lifting both arms, hands above his head, before pulling both down hard.
Lifting my hands from the earth, knowing I had to use everything in me save the man I loved, to not let Argos’s sacrifice be in vain, I was stunned when the earth rose to keep the contact with me.
Save my love.
Save my pet.
Nothing.
Please.
Save the guardian, came the reply.
Everything moved at once. Snow, ice, and earth, and both Argos and Lorne were gone from sight.
Save the man, restore my pet.
They will rest with us.
I didn’t like the sound of that at all, but it was possible we were on the same page; it was just hard, as the communication was disjointed.
“This won’t work,” Giles yelled at me. “I will kill you here and now, Xander.”
I had no doubt he could.
“I’ve seen other timelines, Xander, and we Coreys were not meant to lead little lives in this tiny town. We were meant for greater things.” He was close now. “It’s not you. You didn’t begin this travesty. You were indoctrinated into this hiding of who we truly are and what we could do.”
“I’m not that bright,” I said when he was five or six feet from me. “You’ll have to be clearer.”
“A witch of the woods,” he spat at me. “A healer, a gardener, one who makes candles and spell bottles, one who is a part of the community…it’s all a defilement. This is not what our line was destined to be!”
“Tell me, Giles, what are we supposed to be?”
“Feared,” he answered, in a tone that sent a chill down my spine.
I had never thought Giles was actually evil, simply misguided.
And being alone all the time with no one to trust or bounce ideas off of, it was possible he got really confused about who he was and his place in the world.
It was why people needed homes, spaces that were their own.
Without the grounding of a single space, without being tethered anywhere, belonging anywhere… it was easy to get lost.