Chapter 36 #2
She shrugged and leaned in harder to her knees. “Maybe…maybe there was something she wants, or wanted from you? Would you have given it to her?”
“Probably not.”
“So maybe that’s it. She tried the ring first?”
Damn, the kid had seen right through. “Stole my memories, and when I wouldn’t do or give her what she wanted, decided to kill me?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know, Mallory.”
“Sorry. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have burdened you with this.” I patted Thren on the head and she rose, stretching. I offered Rana a hand and started us back to camp, daylight peeking at the edge of the horizon.
“I don’t mind,” she said softly. “I wish I could help you understand but…”
“Don’t stress, we will get to this Alex today and then…maybe he will have something to say about all this.”
She ducked her head and pulled her hand from mine. “I don’t think I want to see a man raised from the dead. Not when he is probably happier there.”
Her words caught me off guard, but then again, her parents had been killed by the undead. Fuck, I should have thought that through better.
Thren at my side, and Sorrow circling above, I woke the others up. “Come on boys, time to go.”
It was late in the day when I found the place.
None of us moved, standing on the outskirts, as if we didn’t quite belong.
“Is that it?” Veyyr didn’t step forward.
“In the center,” I pointed, the connection to Alex stronger than ever.
A ring of five ancient stones rose from the forest floor, uneven and weather-worn, their surfaces dark with age and thick with moss.
They were not tall or imposing, maybe only four feet at the highest. Yet they drew my eyes and commanded the space as though they had never not been there.
Each stone leaned at a slightly different angle, not careless, but intentional—four directions and a fifth straight up.
“What now?” Harrison whispered. I knew why he was quiet.
Mist coiled low across the ground, drifting between the stones in a slow, deliberate breath, as if the clearing were breathing on its own. The whole place a living thing.
Figure it out, take it in. This is what the quiet had been leading to. This place is danger…perhaps more than any other.
“Just wait,” I said and then took a deeper breath. The air was cool and damp, heavy with the scent of pine, loam, and rain.
I realized that none of them would step over the invisible line until I did. And I let myself take it all in. If there was a threat, I had to identify it.
The trees encircled the clearing at a careful distance. Tall, straight trunks rising like sentinels, their branches knitting together overhead but never closing completely. Pale end of day light filtered through the canopy, lending the space a hushed, twilight.
The whole place felt ancient, like it had been her since the beginning of time.
At the center of the stones, the ground dipped slightly, an unnatural hollow.
Where the body had been lain.
Rana sucked in a sharp breath.
“His body is there, in the heart of it,” I said.
Veyyr nodded. “That is where offerings would be laid for a coven. Where blood would soak in, and now…where breath might be called back into lungs that have forgotten how to draw it.”
Lucky clapped his hand against his arms. “If the dead are willing to return, this is where they would hear the fucking call.”
I took a step and the moment shimmered, the ancient feel sliding away.
“Fuck, there was a spell around this place.” I looked back at the others.
Veyyr nodded. “At least your immunity is working today.”
It was the most he’d said to me in one sentence since we’d slipped though the doorway.
Rana stood back and wrung her hands, pacing as Lucky, Veyyr, and Harrison began to set up the ceremony.
I stepped so I was between her and the view. “Rana. I didn’t think about how this would affect you, because of your parents. Maybe you should not be here? Thren and Sorrow could go with you, just over there.” I motioned to the trees that were about thirty feet away from the ceremonial grounds.
She gave a slow nod. “Yes, I think…I think that would be best.”
Thren bumped her head into Rana’s hand and led her away. “Sorrow,” I called to the bird who was watching from above. “Go with her. Please.”
He clucked his beak. “Sad lady.”
I smiled, not bothering to correct him that she was scared and a girl, it was close enough. “Yes. Go with her.”
He flew off after Rana and Thren.
It didn’t take long for Veyyr to set everything up.
To spread the five ingredients on each of the stones. To go to his knees in the center of the space. “Harrison, Lucky, out.”
“What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t,” Veyyr said quietly. “It won’t go wrong, not again.”
Not again? Had they tried this before? I bit back the questions, feeling the weight of what Veyyr was doing even this far away.
Lucky stepped back and I grabbed his arm.
Veyyr began to weave the spell, his hands and his voice working in tandem as his magic rose around him.
Not elemental magic, or at least not only that. This was older. Stranger. The air thickened, as though the trees leaned closer to hear him.
The ingredients lifted one by one from the circle etched at his feet, most of which I hadn’t helped him gather.
Powdered seamstone first, ground so fine it smoked when it met the air. It shimmered silver-blue, flecks of raw Rift embedded in it.
A vial of phoenix ash spiraled upward next, burning without flame. It pulsed a deep ember red.
The first milk from a veilrunner followed, bright as spilled sunrise, each droplet suspended and turning slowly in the air. Healing and vengeance bound together in liquid form.
Bones of the hydra, black as a starless sky floated upward, spinning, cracking apart.
And the final piece. Water from the Heart of the Veil.
Veyyr’s words intoned deeper, thrumming against my chest as the water from the flask swelled up around his head, individual droplets that gathered the other items into a swirling vortex.
They began to spin around Veyyr’s head, faster and faster, glowing brighter with each pass until they blurred into a crown of light. Wind tore at his hair, at his coat, at the hem of my shirt. The ground beneath us trembled, answering him.
His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear the words over the maelstrom that ripped around us. But I’d seen the spell, and knew the words.
From the dark, I call the soul.
The syllables scraped across my ears, steel on stone, grating. Each one seemed to hook into something unseen and pull.
The seamstone flared, lines of silver lightning racing outward across the ground, forming a web.
The phoenix ash ignited in earnest now, spiraling down his arms, not burning him, but branding him in light.
The veilrunner milk split into threads, weaving through the silver lattice like living veins.
The hydra bones cracked with a sharp retort and opened a thin vertical line in the air before him.
The Water from the Heart of the Veil continued to spin creating something else, an impossible image.
A doorway.
I didn’t know if I should be hoping it would be fine, or if I should be dragging him out.
Veyyr braced himself as the magic surged higher, his jaw tightening. This was costing him. I could see it in the way the veins stood out at his throat, the tension across his shoulders, the tremor in his hands.
“By breath and by bone,” he said louder, voice ringing through the rising storm. “By blood remembered and name reclaimed. I bind the broken. I call you back.”
The spinning crown snapped inward, collapsing into the line of darkness the obsidian had carved.
For one terrible heartbeat, nothing happened.
The wind died.
The light vanished.
Then the seam split wide with a thunderclap crack, and something answered Veyyr’s demand.
Light poured out, not soft, not gentle, but blinding and fierce. It carried the scent of ash and rain and something impossibly clean. New.
The web of silver on the ground flared white-hot, and the threads of veilrunner milk pulsed like a living heart.
A shape formed in the doorway. Not shadow or a ghost.
Solid and breathing. Veyyr barely stayed upright as the magic tore free of him and slammed back into the earth, sealing the opening with a sound like a final, decisive blow.
The light faded.
The ingredients were gone, consumed by the spell.
And at the center of the circle, where there had been nothing but empty air—was a body.
A cry came from Rana—even not seeing this, she no doubt knew and felt the earth shifting, the power being cast out to call a single soul back.
I let go of Lucky but didn’t take a step into the circle. I cast out my Tracking ability to Alex, and…the ping back was immediate. The man in front of us was the one they had fought so very hard to bring back.
“Where am I?” Alex said.
He lifted his head slowly. Harrison let out a little cry. “Dad?”
Alex smiled, a wolfish quality to his lips that reminded me of my own father. His eyes went to Veyyr first and the smile slid.
Fear—not for myself, but for Veyyr—cut through me, stealing my breath. Alex moved to stand beside Veyyr. He put a hand on his shoulder and dropped to his knees, pulling him into an embrace…I lowered my eyes, tears dripping freely.
Because I’d had that embrace with my own father not so long ago.
“You shouldn’t be here, Veyyr,” Alex said, his voice rough from unuse. “You know why.”
“We couldn’t leave you there, caught in limbo,” Veyyr said. “You saved me too many times to just leave you. You weren’t fully gone, you know it.”
I looked up to see Alex’s shoulder’s shaking. “I should have…I wasn’t strong enough, I’m so fucking sorry my boys. My sons.”
Harrison broke, running to his father. Alex caught him with one arm but neither did he let go of Veyyr. From what I could see, Alex didn’t distinguish between a child of the heart, and a child that shared his blood.
This moment was worth all the fear, all the pain, all the uncertainty. To see them with their father, to see this reunion…I slid an arm around Lucky’s waist. “This was good.”
He put his chin on my head. “This was fucking awesome.”
It seemed too easy. After everything we’d faced, all this time, I didn’t understand how we weren’t facing a giant that climbed out of the Rift instead of their father.
Or something worse.
“I don’t have long,” Alex said.
That caught our attention. “Wait,” Harrison choked out. “What do you mean, this is a resurrection spell.”
Alex caught his son’s face gently with both hands. “There is no such thing, Harrison. Thorn sent you on this quest?”
“No.” Veyyr shook his head. “No, she didn’t want….” I saw the flash of understanding in his eyes. Too late, he understood whatever it was too late.
And the fear I had of something else, of something more dangerous stepped out of the woods, dragging Rana with her. Her magic circled around us, driving Lucky and I to the ground, slamming our knees into the earth, hands bound behind us.
My immunity either wasn’t working or couldn’t against her.
Thren and Sorrow were being dragged behind her, thrashing at the end of unseen leashes, Thren’s eyes, wild. Sorrow’s feather’s falling like leaves from a dying tree.
The blue cloak studded with stars, the long blonde hair, the pale skin and deep blue eyes. Thorn smiled… “Well boys, are you and your father ready to go home now? I knew you would bring me my prize. Veyyr. You were always so obedient. Such a good child.”
That sharp, darkness filled smile turned on me, but it was a single word that bounced inside my head, one word that made me doubt my entire existence.
Home.
I stared at her, my jaw cemented shut. Not understanding, or maybe my mind not willing to understand, fighting the truth like a fish hooked far too hard on a line far too strong.
The blood rushed in my head, blocking out every sound, of Alex standing to face her, of Thren and Sorrow going limp in her magic.
Home.
Her back was to me as she patted Harrison’s head. He cringed but she didn’t seem to notice.
I couldn’t understand.
Until she tipped her head and looked over her shoulder at me giving me just a glimpse of her face, the shape of her cheek, line of her nose, corner of her blue eye.
Just. Like. Veyyr.