Chapter Thirty #2
My eyes flew open, and I screamed at the sight before me. Our car’s front was submerged in the inky darkness of the river, water rushing in against Owen and Jace’s legs but rising no farther than their knees. For now. I heard the doors of the sedan slam shut somewhere behind us on the riverbank.
Jace remained immobile, his face blank, as the three of us struggled to unclip our seat belts, but we were stuck. Suddenly, it was my parents in the front seat. My nightmare. They were going to drown again, and I would be helpless to save them.
I thrashed against the strap across my chest and fought with the buckle, glass fragments cutting my fingers and hands. But I didn’t feel any pain, only panic and despair. I had to get to them before the water rose any farther.
Owen shouted at me while Shae looked at me in horror, but there was no getting through to me. Reason and logic had long since fled. I was like a wild animal caught in a snare. Scared and desperate.
Only one thing could help them now.
As a child, I couldn’t save my parents, but I had a new strength now, a new ally, despised but useful.
I closed my eyes and reached for the darkness within me. I forced my body to still, my breathing to calm. I let the power travel down my arm toward the seat buckle, felt the wrath flow through the black veins and spread along my body.
Click.
The strap slid across my chest as I exhaled in relief. I opened my eyes and reached for Owen’s buckle next, my ears still deaf to his shouting. I could save them. Almost there.
Jace reached back with unnatural speed and clutched my wrist, then touched Owen and Shae as well.
I screamed in agony as I was wrenched sideways through the car’s broken window. I hit the ground so hard that my breath was knocked from my lungs and I saw stars. Rain and wind lashed my heaving body.
Aed’s words, cloaked in Sylvia’s voice, slithered through the night air. “Stay down. We need to talk.”
Groaning, I rolled to my side, my face smeared with blood, gravel, and mud.
Searing pain throbbed along my sides—the gashes from being pulled through the broken window were deep.
I struggled to push myself up, my arms shaking as I reached for my power, but pain exploded in my cheek as someone punched me.
“Kira, stop fighting. You have no chance against me. I am ancient and more powerful than you could ever imagine.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I gritted out before another punch to the side of my face split the skin and splattered blood across the gravel.
“You will try.”
Rough hands grabbed my hair and jerked my head back.
Todd stared at me with hollow, lifeless eyes.
God, he looked grotesque. His skin was sallow and gaunt almost like the magic controlling him was leaching the very life from his broken body.
His other arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, his shirt bloodstained and torn.
When he pushed my head back into the mud, I was almost relieved I no longer had to look at him.
Why didn’t Sylvia look as bad as he did?
“How long have you controlled him?” I asked, almost choking on my words. Every cell in my body screamed in agony, and I was so dizzy I thought I might be sick.
“That pagan ritual you witnessed wasn’t as fake as you thought. The oldest tree in Toronto—the one they needed to use to summon me—was in the university dean’s backyard.”
Oh God.
Todd’s words to me in the bathroom had a whole new meaning. They hadn’t been about us at all. He had been talking about the night he summoned Aed, not the night he cheated, and he had been asking for my help. Against Aed.
“Did you make him cheat on me?” The words felt like stones in my mouth.
Aed barked out a laugh. “No. He did that on his own.”
He still didn’t deserve to be controlled like this. No one did.
“As punishment for losing you, though, I may be taking my anger out on him. Letting him rot from the inside out. Human bodies are so…temporary. So, have you figured out who you are?”
“A dark Druid,” I gritted out.
“Foolish girl! There is no such thing as a dark Druid. Druids draw on the power of nature, and nature is neither dark nor light. It just is. But you…you are something no world has ever seen. An impossibility.”
“The book…the passages are about a dark Druid…me…”
“Foolish girl! The passages are about me.”
Marion’s note came back to me. She will use Druids and my research to sell the stones. Not sell, I realized. Barter.
“So? Who are you?”
I remained silent. I would not play games with her. I reached for my power again, but it didn’t rise, and I couldn’t move my body.
“No guesses? Fine. I’ll tell you a story. After Craos broke the seal and the pieces scattered, and before he was imprisoned, he cast his seed into the world. Into me.
“No one else knew what Craos had done. Not even the three Druids who fought him. And so, I bore a child. That child had a child. And so on. But none of them had the power that we needed. Craos and I waited eons for a descendant powerful enough, not just some weak body that dies when it’s no longer useful. ”
Todd released me, and I slowly lifted my head to see a terrifying sight.
The Aed I had met on the Root Path, her skeletal frame wrapped in a rotting robe, stepped from Sylvia’s body and stared down at me.
From beneath the shadow of her hood, two eyes gleamed, cold and merciless.
Nearby, Sylvia, returned to herself, watched Aed with an expression of horror and regret as her words seemed to sink in.
With a flick of her fingers, Aed snapped Sylvia’s neck, and her now-useless body fell to the ground.
Monsters do not make bargains they intend to keep.
“Craos and I waited thousands of years for a child powerful enough to become his true anchor to the world. And now, at last, we are done waiting.”
“No.” The word was more ragged breath than sound. I was going to be sick.
Aed crouched before me. “Hello, great, great granddaughter.”