Chapter 20 Voren
Voren
Dreven sweeps us out of the chamber before Tabitha can make another cryptic comment, or Dastian can blow something else up for the sheer joy of it.
The shift is instantaneous, a tear through the shadows that deposits us in Nyssa’s cramped living room.
It smells like safety, which is a dangerous illusion, but one I’ll let her have for an hour.
Nyssa sags the moment her feet hit the floor, the adrenaline finally cashing its cheque. She looks wrecked, vibrating with too much power and not enough sanity. She kicks her shoes off and glares at Tabitha. “You can go.”
“Go where?”
“Somewhere where you can keep an eye and ear out for ex-slayers regrouping,” I point out.
“Fine,” she says and vanishes.
The relief I feel is also shown on Dastian’s face. Dreven looks just as grim as ever.
“Wraith Queen,” I mutter, watching Nyssa collapse onto the sofa. I can’t take my eyes off her. How she ended up with this position isn’t exactly a shock, but it is unprecedented. We assumed her goddesshood would outweigh a monarchical status. Clearly, we have no idea what we are talking about.
“Kettle,” she groans, face planted in a cushion. “And toast. Or I kill everyone.”
“Violent,” Dastian muses, flopping onto the armchair and looking entirely too pleased with the destruction we left behind. “Are you trying to make me hard?”
“You’re always hard,” she grumbles.
Dreven is already moving to the kitchen, practical as ever, though his shadows are twitching, agitated by the revelation that his long-dead father, turned Devourer, has somehow passed his power to the woman he is screwing. Fun, and a bit gross. But still fun.
For us, anyway.
I walk over to the sofa and stare down at the woman who is currently rewriting my existence. She ignores me, so I crouch next to her, taking her hand. “I knew I felt a deep connection with you. I know why now.”
She cracks an eye open. “I don’t want to be Queen of Wraiths,” she murmurs. “I don’t even know how.”
“You don’t know how to be the Goddess of Light and Shadow either, but you’re doing a bang-up job of that.”
She scoffs. “Now who’s lying?”
I chuckle. “You’ve got this, slayer, just like you’ve got everything else.”
“I don’t know what a Wraith Queen is meant to do. How is it any different to you?”
“I am God of the Wraiths. It’s different. More metaphysical. More godly spirits and the such like. You are on the ground in the mortal realm.”
“But the undead answer to you here.”
“Because they have no one else. Or rather, they didn’t. Until now.”
She seems to accept my explanation, although it was given in very basic terms. She will learn, eventually.
“Rest,” I tell her, smoothing a stray lock of hair back from her forehead. Her skin is burning hot, the sheer wattage of the stolen power struggling to find equilibrium. It calls to my cold, a stark contrast that makes my fingers ache to touch her more.
Dreven re-emerges from the kitchen, the domesticity of the mug in his hand at odds with the rippling shadows trying to eat the ceiling. He sets the tea and a plate of toast on the coffee table with precise, controlled movements.
“Eat,” he commands, though his tone is softer than usual.
Nyssa drags herself upright, eyeing the toast like it’s the holy grail.
“So, are we going to discuss the elephant in the room? Or rather, the giant metal snake in the room?” Dastian asks.
“The snake is asleep,” Nyssa says, swallowing hard. “For now.”
“Perhaps try and keep it that way for a while, so you can rest as well.”
She nods, finishing off the toast and gulping back the tea. “Shower.” She stands up but doesn’t get two paces when Tabitha bursts back into the cottage uninvited.
“Cemetery. Now. BlackFen Edge needs the slayer.”
There are no dramatics, just a simple statement that Nyssa accepts, and despite being practically dead on her feet—pardon the pun—she shoves her feet back into her shoes and checks she has her blade.
“What are we looking at?” she asks, all business.
“Undead. A lot of them. The old ones.”
Nyssa raises an eyebrow. “From the original plot? They’ve been undisturbed so far.”
“Probably because they can’t be arsed rising and moaning,” Dastian pipes up.
He’s not far wrong.
“How far back are we going?” I ask.
“Around seven hundred years,” Tabitha says, which predates even us.
“Shit,” I mutter as Nyssa yanks the door open. “Who woke them?”
“Who cares?” Nyssa barks. “Let’s go.”
She runs headlong into the night, and we follow because where she goes, we do too.
Nyssa runs past the usual gate to the cemetery and heads around the back under the clusters of old oaks.
I reach out with my power to track the undead, to figure out what we are dealing with, but they hiss and snarl against the divine power, spitting like I’ve set their bones on fire with salt and holy water.
“Ouch,” I mutter. “They are pissed off.”
“At us?” Dastian asks.
“At everything,” I reply and hurry to catch up with Nyssa.
“Is it her Wraith Queen power?” Dastian asks as we round an oak to see Nyssa already in combat with a skeleton that appears to be at least seven feet tall.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so. They shouldn’t be fighting her.”
“Then that leaves only one being,” Dreven says, throwing a net of shadows over a wraith headed our way. “And they are answering to their original leader.”
“Yep,” I say and throw out a coil of magic that slaps a skeleton in the face, knocking his skull off.
But it gets up and carries on, skull-less.
“Oh, that is not creepy!” Nyssa calls out. “At least pick your head up!”
As expected, the skeleton ignores her. Somehow, the Devourer, former Wraith King, has tapped into these ancient souls to get them to attack BlackFen Edge. To attack Nyssa. Distraction? Or does he simply hope they will kill her?
“He’s testing her,” I growl, crushing a rotting hand that bursts from the earth to grab my ankle. I grind the bones into the mud without breaking stride. “He wants to see if the new Queen breaks.”
Nyssa spins, her blade severing the spine of the skull-less wonder, but two more drag themselves out of the peat to take its place.
“A little help?” Nyssa shouts, ducking under a rusted claymore that whistles past her ear.
“Working on it,” Dastian yells, flinging a bolt of chaotic energy into a cluster of them. Instead of exploding, the skeletons start doing a frantic jig.
“Oh, come on,” Nyssa growls.
Dastian just shrugs, but I can see his perturbed expression.
That wasn’t meant to happen.
“They’re anchored to the void,” Dreven shouts, slicing a shadow-blade through a torso. “Magic slips off them.”
I push my power out again, a cold, hard command intended to snap their knees and force them to the dirt. It hits resistance like a granite wall. The Devourer’s hold is absolute, an ancient frequency drowning out my broadcast. It pisses me off.
“Physical violence it is,” I mutter. I manifest a warhammer of pure ice—simple, brutal, effective. I swing it into the ribcage of a cadaver lunging for Nyssa’s back. The bones shatter with a satisfying crunch, and the thing stays down.
“Nice of you to join the party,” Nyssa pants, sweat slicking her brow despite the chill.
“I enjoy the cardio,” I drawl, smashing another skull. “But we can’t keep this up all night. There are centuries of dead under this soil, and Dreven’s dad seems intent on introducing you to all of them.”
Nyssa decapitates a rotted soldier with a vicious backhand slice. She looks fierce, lit by the pale moonlight and the dying sparks of Dastian’s magic, but she’s growing tired.
“I can’t override him!” she shouts, breathless, kicking a torso away before it can grab her knees. “They aren’t listening!”
“You aren’t trying to override,” I yell back, swinging my hammer in a wide arc that turns three skeletons into bone meal. “You’re trying to outshout him. Don’t shout. Command.”
She pauses, which is a terrible idea in a mosh pit of the undead. A skeleton wearing the remnants of a rusted breastplate lunges for her exposed throat. I move to intercept, but Dreven is faster, a shadow-spike driving up through the thing’s groin and out its skull.
“Use the Crown, Nyssa!” I roar, frustrated by her hesitation. “You have it, it doesn’t.”
“I don’t know how!” she screams, parrying a rusted dagger.
“Find the silence,” I order, my voice carrying over the crunch of bone. “Drop the noise and make them look at you.”
She freezes in the middle of the melee, which is practically suicidal, but I see the exact moment she stops fighting the current and decides to become the river. Her amber eyes glaze over, the gold bleeding into the white until she looks less human and more like an idol carved from judgment.
“Cover her!” I bark, abandoning my icy warhammer to grab a skeletal warrior by the spine and snap it like a dry twig.
Dreven moves, a wall of living darkness shielding her left flank, while Dastian turns three attacking corpses into a pile of confused, snapping badgers.
Nyssa doesn’t blink. She drops her hands to her sides, leaving her chest wide open. The bravado is terrifying. The air around her drops ten degrees. It’s the chill of the grave before the stone is rolled shut.
“Kneel,” she whispers.
It’s not a shout. It’s barely a sound. It cuts through the clash of steel and the rattle of bone like a guillotine blade.
The skeleton in front of her, a hulking thing with a dented helmet, falters, with a sound like grinding stones, it drops to one knee.
Then another. Then all of them. The silence that follows is heavier than the fight. Nyssa stands amidst the bowed dead, chest heaving, looking absolutely horrified by her own authority.
But, of course, it doesn’t last.
“Vampires incoming, and they don’t look like they want a chat,” Dastian says.
I spin around and heave a sigh. This night is nowhere near over.