Chapter 3
The Prodigal Returns
Zayne
Iwake to the echo of bells. Not church bells—but thin, bright, wrong. The kind that only ring in Elderfell when the snow has teeth. I haven’t heard them in five years.
Just a dream. All the same, panic grips me. I roll out of bed and drag the box from beneath the mattress. It contains the few things I kept from my life in Elderfell. A photo of my mum and dad and Tansy. Happy. Another of the silver-haired girl who shredded my fifteen-year-old heart.
And a red paper star on a gold thread.
It’s time to bring home my little sister. I’m not a fifteen-year-old loser anymore. I’m not the scared boy who thought he was losing his mind. I can offer Tansy a home now. A family—albeit a slightly unconventional one.
“What is it?” Josh says sleepily from the bed next to mine.
“I have to go back to Earth.”
He sits up and looks at me solemnly, at the red star clutched in my hand, and nods. “It’s time.”
I shake my head. He doesn’t even know why we’re going. Or maybe he does. Who knows with Josh? He’s been a little…strange since he got hit by that bolt of dark mirror magic.
“We’d better pack,” he says, jumping out of bed. “Come on, Grimlet, we’re going to Earth for Christmas. Maybe it will snow.”
I fucking hope not.
Grimlet’s tiny gray head pops out of the blankets. He yawns, stretches, then scrambles to the floor in a scratchy rustle of wings.
Then I watch, bewildered, as the two of them tear around the room. I’d thought I was going alone. Clearly not. This is what having a family is like. I smile.
“Move it, Zayne.” Josh is already at the door, fully dressed, backpack on one shoulder, Grimlet perched on the other. I start to dress.
Two hours—and a trip through a magical mirror—later, and we’re on a borrowed Harley heading north.
Elderfell—the shithole I used to call home—lies a couple of hours’ drive away.
But I soon realize that I should’ve listened to Brown and taken the truck.
(Brown runs the safe house where the Valandria mirror spits you out on Earth—and, annoyingly, he’s usually right.) But I could never resist a Harley, and this one’s a beauty: black and silver, purring like it knows my name.
Besides, the sky was clear when we left.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way, and the farther north we push, the darker it gets.
By the time I swing onto the Elderfell turnoff, the first flakes hit the visor.
Snow. Fuck. My stomach clenches.
Nothing good ever happens in Elderfell when the snow falls.
How many times did I hear that growing up?
And every single time it proved to be true. Especially the last. But I'm not even going to think about that last time, that last winter when everything went to shit and my whole life fell apart.
Nope, not going there. Not happening.
Josh is clinging on behind me, pressing up close, probably to keep warm. Brown lent us all—well, except Grimlet; I don’t think he feels cold or hot, for that matter—warm jackets and gloves, which is just as well as the temperature has dropped dramatically.
Home, sweet fucking home.
At least it looks like Josh will get his white Christmas.
Grimlet is sitting on the tank in front of me, holding onto the handlebars with his little claws. He's loving it. He's a little speed demon.
The road climbs, and the snow falls heavier, and I know we're not going to make it. The snow gets thicker until we’re crawling along. Finally, about five miles from Elderfell, I admit defeat and pull the bike over to the edge of the road. I sit for a moment.
Five miles. It's a bloody long walk in this snow.
But then, these days I don't have to walk. I do have an alternative. Josh scrambles off the back behind me, and I swing my leg over. Grimlet jumps onto my shoulders as I pull the helmet off and lay it down beside the bike. We don’t have any luggage—just Josh's backpack, but Brown gave us some cash, and I was just going to buy anything we need. I don’t plan to stick around this shithole any longer than I absolutely have to.
Josh is looking around him at the snow. “It's beautiful,” he says.
“It's a menace. I hate fucking snow.” Nothing good ever comes from snow in Elderfell. Gods, why won’t my brain shut up with that stupid saying? We’ll be in and out before any bad things have a chance to happen.
Just stay away from Silvergate a little voice in my head mutters.
But then there’s no reason to go anywhere near that fucking place.
“What do you think, Grimlet?” I ask.
“It's different,” he says. “Grimlet's never seen snow before.”
“No, well, I don't think there's too much of it in hell.” That’s where Grimlet spent his whole 5,000-year-long life until recently. Grimlet’s a gargoyle, whatever that means.
As far as I can tell, he’s the only one around, at least the only live one.
He’s small, about the size of my fist, with dark gray skin, like rock, amber eyes, ears that are too big for the rest of him, membranous wings, and a tail that is currently wrapped way too tight around my neck.
He was a friend of Amber—our foster sister’s—mother, who was married to Lucifer.
Yeah, our sister was Lucifer’s fucking daughter.
Tansy will have a lot to live up—or down—to.
If she agrees to come with us. What if she won’t? What if our bitch of an aunt has totally poisoned her against me? We might have to kidnap her. She’ll come around. I mean anywhere has to be an improvement on Elderfell.
Enough procrastination. “Okay, so we're going to fly in on my basilisk. That's the plan.”
“Yay!” Josh grins. He's another little speed freak. Then he peers at me through the snow. “You need to call him something other than ‘basilisk’. It’s rude.”
“I don’t need to call him anything,” I mutter. “He knows who he is.”
Josh snorts. “Yeah, but I bet he’d like a name.”
Grimlet pipes up from my shoulder. “Grimlet thinks ‘Snakey’ is good.”
I glare. “If you ever call him that again, I’ll feed you to him.”
Josh leans forward, eyes gleaming. “Come on, Zayne. Give him a name for Christmas.”
“How about ‘Eater-of-annoying-little-brothers’?”
“No. That might give him ideas. Again. It needs to be one word. Dark. Dangerous. Something that sounds like you, but scarier.”
Actually, a name has been in my head since the first time I shifted and I didn’t lose myself—since the beast stopped being my rage and started being my survival.
“Raze,” I say finally.
Josh blinks. “Raze?”
I nod. “Because he destroys everything in his path. And because the old me needed burning down.”
Grimlet tilts his head. “Better than Snakey?”
Josh grins. “Raze. I like it. Kinda fits you.”
I roll my eyes, but inside, yeah. It fits.
But back to business. “We're going to aim for the other side of the village, and we'll land where no one can see us. I know just the place, and I don’t think there’s much chance of anybody spotting us up above in this snow.” What else?
“We’ll come back for the bike once the snow clears.
” Or, if it doesn’t, I can maybe get somebody from the village to drive us up here.
Something occurs to me. How am I going to get us all back on a motorbike?
Shit. Worry about it later. We’ll sort it out.
I step back as Grimlet flies from my shoulder to land on Josh's. Then I will the change to come over me. The air fills with the shiver of magic. It ripples through my veins, sharp and electric, until my skin can’t hold me anymore. I love this moment.
When the whole shifter thing first happened to me, I hated it. I thought it was proof that I really was a monster. Now I know better. I've met real monsters, and all of them were in human form. My basilisk—Raze—might like to kill, but he's got a decent heart. I think.
I spread my wings, raise my head to the sky, and roar.
Yeah, I do like it. Josh hurries over. I hold out one leg, and he scrambles up and onto my back.
We've done this enough times that I know he'll be safe. Then we’re lifting into the sky.
I soar upward through the snow. I've never flown in the snow before. It's an amazing feeling.
We cover the distance in minutes, and I’m just about to take a left to go around the village when I notice something down below: Elderfell Manor.
There’s a whole load of cars in the driveway.
Something's happening. I spot my aunt's car. She hasn't changed it since I left—a boring blue Volvo. It fits her perfectly. I hate my aunt. But if my aunt’s there, then there’s a good chance Tansy will be as well, and we can get this over with. I honestly don’t know how it’s going to go down, but I’ve got to do it, and I’ve got nothing to lose.
I look around at the landscape below. There’s a small knoll behind the manor house. I swing around and swoop in to land. I have to admit, now that I'm down, I’m feeling just a little bit nervous, because Tansy's not the only one who’s probably at the manor right now.
Silver eyes flash in my memory. Silver-blonde hair.
Holly. My first crush, my first heartbreak.
We’d been inseparable from the age of eight.
My dad had taken over the job of farm manager at that point, and we’d moved into one of the manor cottages, so we saw each other almost daily.
I’d been given a part-time job in the stables, looking after the horses, and she was pony mad, so, yeah, we saw a lot of each other.
She’d order me around in that haughty lady-of-the-manor voice of hers, and I’d call her princess just to piss her off. But we had something special. We’d planned to escape Elderfell together as soon as we could, and at one point, I’d absolutely known that we would be together forever.
Until we weren’t.
A wave of bitterness washes over me.
I’m still not sure why she lied about that day. But I’m pretty sure I’ll never forgive her.