30. CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 30
Noa
Ivory bird bones tumbled in tiny avalanches, pouring from every corner with the dry clacking of dice. Echoes from a thousand dice games. From old women tossing dried bones in a thousand desert camps.
Pelonie smiled. She was the mother, smoothing her long skirts, her mahogany hair flaring in thick, curled waves beneath the many braids, gleaming with the same otherworldly light glowing in her eyes. “You are a daughter’s daughter. Descended from a queen. Did you think me such a fool to believe the lies? Not see the deceit?” Hate was a scorching brand as she sneered, “Which queen was yours?”
Sweat slicked my skin.
“Was it Brenna? Or Malin?” The sorceress glided toward me; I questioned if her feet were on the ground, or if some evil wind supported her.
“Blood of the blood—still cursed. I can smell you.” Her lip curled. “I watched them with their greedy, grasping hands— those queens. So eager to cut their flesh, pour out the blood, desperate for the magic to give them unimaginable power. So blind, those women, to sacrifice their wolves. Did you think I’d ever give them back?”
My heart pounded hard enough to make the cavern spin. Should I step away or hold my ground? Run from this predator, or make myself larger, stronger, more of a threat?
The sorceress morphed into the crone and revealed a grotesque smile. The taint in her magic had the stench of rot and madness.
“So many selfish queens. Not just those two.”
A choking scent, and then the young girl stood in her virgin white, speaking with a voice pure and innocent. She tipped her head to the side, red lips pursed in sick contemplation. “Whose eyes do you have? I wonder—with that hint of a forest—if it was the timid Leonides. But your soul—whose rotten soul hides inside you?”
I took a backward step. Pulled Effa closer to my side while Caerwen stepped forward. The grotto nymph moved her hands. Rocks tumbled and blocked and crunched over the living bones churning in the corner. Beside her, Effa was building a thorny hedge, the vines whipping in a frenzied mass.
More bones, bodiless skulls spilling from crevices, bubbling up through the sandy ground. Flames guttered in the bronze bowls. The thick scent of incense was that of roses, while the flames turned the shadows red.
“ No-ee !” Effa’s voice stiffened my spine. She was backing away while the Pelonie cocked her head and stared.
“You, nymph. You’ll be first, and I’ll collect your bones when we’re done. Or maybe I’ll leave them for the birds to peck. Drag into the trees to line their nests.”
Caerwen was already stepping in front of Effa.
Heat flared from the pocket where I’d shoved the effigy. Instinct drove me and I pulled the figurine free, held it up.
Light flared, turned into the shimmering force field that I’d once built in a vampire’s dungeon.
The witch screamed. Fell back a step while the surrounding bones clattered and flowed across the sand. Something in the effigy’s runes reacted to Pelonie’s magic. A writhing counter to it, perhaps? A protection against it?
Hadn’t the witch in the Farmer’s Market said I had everything I needed? She was a seer—had known what Grayson said to me long ago, with no one else around to hear.
She was a member of the greatest coven of seers ever to evolve—descendants cursed by the misuse of the seidr magic by this sorceress. To alter destiny.
Do not believe in fate, Noa!
Alter it.
Tossing the effigy to Caerwen, I said, “Keep it focused while I find that rune.”
Her grip firmed. The effigy twitched. Pelonie screamed. The runes pulsed with a glow the color of rubies. I ran to the closest niche, slid my hands over the stones. Cold, lifeless. None of them had carvings. I dashed to the second niche, then a third, a fourth. The breath raced in and out of my lungs. Behind me, desiccated bones rustled like deadened leaves in the first winter wind, stirred by an unseen hand.
I stopped. Light from the effigy was fading: the color of pink roses, now. Losing power? Pelonie continued to cower, shifting from crone to mother to the virgin until she was a blur. I closed my eyes. Let my faille senses seep out. Searching.
And there!
The faintest trace of energy.
Effa was shouting. Her vines slithered and shriveled each time they touched the bones. For every boulder Caerwen moved, more skulls, jawbones, leg bones rushed and gathered. The bones were up to my ankles when I found the last niche, hidden in a dusty crevice. In the low light, rune sparks flickered around the stones while the bloodstains had faded into dull, sad gashes. So many stones—and yet a precious few—but all of them were cold and lifeless beneath my hand. One remained; I sensed the faintest twist of life, a twitch so like the sigil on my wrist.
“I’ve got it.” The icy runestone burned my palm, and I shoved it into an inner pocket, where the effigy had been. Pulled the zippered closing tight.
“Leave,” Caerwen ordered.
“Throw the effigy,” I told her.
She did, and a blast of light bounced around the cave, blinding Pelonie. Dust bloomed in roiling, rancorous clouds. The ancient sorceress pressed a black cloth to her mouth, her nose, muffling her screams. Filtering the air she breathed.
I gripped Effa’s hand to drag her along as we ran, bursting into the sunlight, startled and wild. We kept running. The grass whipped, dry as knives. Clods erupted as bits of bone jolted upward, unearthed by a witch’s rage, animated by an ancient Bone Woman’s song, her horrid keening that echoed through my brain. Something I should not forget.
“Lady!” Caerwen screamed the warning as an elk-like creature broke through the underbrush, bone legs churning, shattering the small branches of a thicket. Massive antlers had a three-foot span with wicked spikes. Gaping eye sockets disfigured the elongated skull and protruding teeth. A reptilian spine undulated, flexing the rib bones. Flattened hip bones and shoulder blades were pieced together.
Dread pumped through my legs and into my lungs as the monstrosity charged. Hooves gouged the dry ground. Sweat slicked my palms as I nocked an arrow, fought the bow’s tension as I drew and released.
The silver-tipped arrow sailed harmlessly through the bone cage, hitting the rocks with a dried-out clatter.
I shot again, severing the skull above the neck bones. Knobby white knees buckled and legs collapsed as the elk-thing toppled to the ground.
“Keep going,” I shouted. The nymphs faltered, as I did with my muscles quivering—foolish, trying to outrun a sorceress. The rune was safe in my pocket, but hadn’t twitched since leaving the witch’s cave, and the idea crossed my mind that the last twitch had been in triumph. A signal that the rune was a decoy to protect the seidr magic that Pelonie cast.
She’d said she’d rather rot than see Amal’s wolf returned, and the idea of deceit after deceit, piling on like the parched skeletons in her cave, had me reeling.
I missed Grayson. Missed the way he slid his hands along my back to ease the agitation. The power in his body when we made love. He was formidable—I wiped a palm at my face, at the sweat gathered there. Thinking of the last time I’d been both exhausted and sweaty. How I’d run my hands over his magnificently ripped body, also sweat-slicked from passion—gods, I couldn’t keep it together. Couldn’t close my mind, shut out the sexy demands he’d made when I slid down his body, took his impossibly wicked cock in my mouth and pleasured him until he’d spilled on my tongue.
My body throbbed.
“ No-ee !” Effa sobbed, dragging my attention toward her. “She’s picking at me. I can feel her ripping.”
Effa’s arms were cut where her leather didn’t cover. Blood dripped from her fingertips.
“Fee!” I screamed.
“The tree.” Caerwen’s braid had come loose. Her voice was hoarse.
“I see it.” I ran, my legs pumping as if lead weighted my feet.
“No-ee!”
I spun. Effa had fallen behind. She stood with her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. Tears tracked across her face. “I’m shrinking.”
She was the size of a ten-year-old.
“Climb on my back,” I ordered. “Hang on.”
Effa clawed at my shoulders. Her body shifted as she wrapped her legs around my waist to avoid the bow and arrows tied to my back. Gods—we were a clunky, desperate pair as I struggled, driving us forward while she bounced and slid sideways with every step.
Caerwen charged toward the main trunk of the massive tree. She was noticeably shorter. When she disappeared, I dragged in a breath and followed her, closing my mind to the reality that we were plunging through a solid object. When we tumbled out on the other side, it was safely away from the Well of Urd. I didn’t question that, either. I was too happy that I hadn’t needed to jump with Effa on my back.
The meadow nymph slid to the ground and sat for a moment with her hands pressed against her face. Behind us, the Tree of Life rumbled—the threat of distant thunder—bulging outward beneath an expanding pressure. Leaves jolted, resettled. The faerie lights danced. I glimpsed gossamer wings, shimmering with iridescence, although that might have been an effect of the light. Sun glinting in mist. Too much seidr magic.
A moment later, Effa tipped her head back. She was staring at the bird circling high above us with its head tipped down… hunting.
“I’m not building your bullspitted nest!” she shouted. “So take your fucking-fish-eyed bird ass somewhere else!”
The bird cawed. Tipped its wings and flew away.
And I laughed and laughed until I was crying.
“We have to leave,” Caerwen said after I’d flopped to my back and wiped my eyes. “The magic is too wonky.”
I peeked at Caerwen; she looked like Effa’s older sister, while Effa was now a five-year-old child. I told her to climb on my back again. Feathers might have weighed more. We were an hour away from the passage. Then another hour in the dark, and we’d still end up in Westvale and away from Aine’s wrinkle.
“How much time do we have?” I asked Caerwen.
She frowned, glaring down. Their clothes were shrinking with them—a minor miracle—but she still pulled at the leather. I didn’t think I’d ever learn all the different rules with the species. What nymphs worried about. The problems facing the witches. How wolves lost their clothes when they shifted, but the river nymphs didn’t… maybe I’d been in my head too much today, and I shouted at the open sky.
“Fee… get me to Aine.”
But it wasn’t Fee who answered. I wasn’t even sure it was the puppy magic.
The meadow shimmered. Spangles glittered in the air, three feet above the ground. The breeze died. Stinging nettles snapped at my skin. Bitter ash stung my mouth. Something like a reptilian eye opened, a cleft in the air—but instead of Amal’s monstrous pigs charging through, only welcoming energy vibrated from the passage.
My energy.
I called to the nymphs. “Looks like a shortcut.”
Once we entered, the passage opened in front and closed behind with a shimmer of magic. I kept going, afraid to stop. I had to trust my intuition. The air held the fresh warmth of early spring—a sure sign of Aine—along with the blooming flowers. Natural light was as normal as the smooth path beneath our feet. The walls and ceiling were black obsidian, and although the sting against my skin continued, along with the grit on my lips, it was a contradiction I’d puzzle through some other day.
“Are you sure this is going anywhere?” Effa asked with her chin propped on my shoulder. Her warm breath caressed my cheek. Her arms wrapped around my neck, although she studiously resisted strangling me.
“It’s keyed to me.”
“We should probably trust it, then,” she agreed. “I don’t think I’m getting any smaller.”
“Lighter would be nice,” I teased. “You’re heavy enough as it is.”
Indignantly, she squeaked, “If you’d put me down, I would walk.”
“And risk you falling into a crack where we can’t get you out?” Caerwen joined in with a light laugh.
I was wondering, not for the first time, if Caerwen had been more alarmed by the encounter with Pelonie than she let on. There’d been no clashing weapons or booted feet, but she’d run once before from mindless destruction. She’d locked that nightmare away. But Pelonie might have reignited the memories. The fear and helplessness.
“Is it possible,” I asked, glancing at the grotto nymph, “that we were a trojan horse for the Gemini Coven?”
“I was considering the same thing,” Caerwen murmured. “Use you to get the effigy close enough to the sorceress for the runes to react to her power. Null her ability to wield the magic. She withered at the end.”
I hadn’t noticed. I’d been too intent on saving Amal’s rune stone. But I might have achieved the coven’s goal. Disabling Pelonie, while recovering what was lost. Perhaps this was a realignment, changing things back to what should have been.
Caerwen stared straight ahead. “Aine needs to fortify that prison. Bury it beneath the earth. Or the depth of the sea. Make sure she never escapes.”
“Even if she withered,” I said. “We can’t trust the nulling to last.”
“A faithless witch, Pelonie,” said Caerwen. “Why Aine trusted her is beyond me, lady.”
“The magic allows deceit. Only mutual desire matters.”
“What will you do now?”
“Try to make the magic right. End the cycle.”
“They’re already fighting, you know,” Effa said. “Where you have to go.”
She was referring to Grayson. The alphas had been arguing before we left, and I’d known he would take his fighters north. Join with the other packs to attack Amal.
I asked, “Can I find them?”
Effa leaned her head against mine. “We’ve been gone longer than you realize, No-ee . It could be weeks. Time, in Aine’s wrinkles, always moves differently.”
“Is that why you shrank? Because time caught up with you?”
“You, too. I mean, time catching up. If you find him, it might still be too late.”
I let her slide to the ground. Breathed, fighting the rush of panic. How many days had I lost by challenging Pelonie?
I rubbed the sigil on my wrist.
“What’s wrong?” Caerwen asked as I blinked and swiped moisture from my cheek.
“However you want me,” I whispered. “I’ll meet you there.”