by Scott, Helen
Whatever it was, as soon as the Sires saw the figure, they dropped to their knees, and a wave of power crashed into the room, one that forced the council off their lumpy asses and down onto the ground, mirroring the Sires. The Cavalry were already on their knees, but this new arrival had their heads hitting the floor as they got as low as possible.
Child, be calm, a woman whispered in my mind.
I felt Raven withdraw, although I wasn’t sure whether he had willingly done that or if she had kicked him out. Her words were like a sedative to me, though, slowing my heart rate and breathing, so I wasn’t outwardly panicking anymore. It gave me clarity of thought that I hadn’t had earlier when Raven had asked me what was wrong.
What’s happening to me? I asked as soon as I was able to form coherent thoughts again.
You are evolving. It’s happened faster than I thought it would, but something about the Sires triggered it. I apologize for not having arrived in time to warn you. Her voice was like music and raindrops mixed together, and it made me feel like everything was going to work out, even though my head felt like it was being stabbed repeatedly by hot knives.
What do you mean I’m evolving? I half-shrieked, her words hardly a tonic for calming me down.
You are becoming a Mother.
What? I’m not even pregnant, let alone ready to give birth, I spluttered.
Her laugh sounded in my head like leaves rustling on trees as birds sang to one another. Not that kind of mother.
What other kind is there? I practically screamed at her in my head.
I saw her narrowed gaze filled with a reprimand, even though I wasn’t looking at her and was lying prone on the floor. It filled my mind’s eye while my actual vision was still filled with my mates, albeit mostly their backs as they assessed whatever they thought of as a threat, even if they were kneeling. She still smiled down at me though, when a moment later, my mates parted for her like leaves in a breeze, and let her through to reach me.
She was beautiful, like Cate Blanchett and the Mona Lisa mixed into one. Regal and loving vibes rolled from her form as she bent, and effortlessly picked me up off the ground. In her arms, I felt safe and protected, as though nothing in the world could touch me should I not want it to.
The temptation to stay with her, to surround myself in this warmth, was almost overwhelming, but I knew if I did that, I would be giving up my mates, and that was something I could never do. They were as much a part of me as my heart or my lungs. To give them up would be akin to stopping my own heart or breath.
When she spoke again, it was almost as though she had been waiting for me to shake myself out of whatever stupor I had fallen into when she picked me up. Her voice didn’t sound until I had made the decision to stay with my mates. When I’d made up my mind, she warned, This will be unpleasant, but you will understand by the time we are done.
She set my feet on the ground, so I was standing and facing her. My eyes roved over her features, taking in everything from her kind, yet secretive green eyes to her wide, friendly mouth, and her cheekbones that could cut glass, not to mention the effortlessly beautiful, wavy strawberry blonde hair that fell down her back. When she put her hands on either side of my head, I felt her power rush into me like a tidal wave, destroying anything in its path that put up resistance.
I knew I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t even see anything other than her hypnotizing green eyes. All I knew from that point on was pain. I didn’t know when or if it would stop, and all I could do was hold on and beg my body not to give up.
Arthur
The Lady’s presence in the room reminded me of a vacuum. It was as though she sucked all the air out and replaced it with her essence.
It was overwhelming.
Intoxicating.
Glorious.
It had been so long since she’d been free, so long since I’d felt her touch, that I wanted to drop to my knees in thanks that she was here at last.
I shivered, aware that my siblings were just as overpowered by her Awakening. She was purity incarnate, and just to be with her was to feel blessed.
The girl child whose body she was overtaking meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. She was a vessel, a means of allowing us to bring the Lady back to life. We’d tried with hundreds of Descendants over the years, but none had ever taken. The Lady had merged with them, but rather than take over their form, they’d died, taking Her essence with her, denying us Her presence in the world.
I had no idea why this Marcella was strong enough for the Lady to inhabit, and in truth, I didn’t care either. She was a means to an end, and now that this end was here? Well, her purpose was complete.
The glow from the child’s pores was enough to blind a human, but I stared at her through it, watching the bright red hair morph, so it was highlighted with touches of gold. Her face thinned, the cheekbones growing more prominent, and her chin turning a tad pointier as the Lady’s features claimed the girl’s. Her body changed as well. Turning softer, curvier. The muscles being replaced with a more feminine form, and as the Lady was female beauty personified, my heart quickened at the sight of her in all her glory.
Once the Light began to dampen, the metamorphosis complete, the Lady turned her outrage onto the council who were gaping at her, their heads twisted awkwardly so they could look at what was happening from their enforced positions on the ground. From their stares, it was easy to see that they felt sure a monster walked among us.
The thought made me snort because she was our savior, not our enemy. Not that they were aware of that. They were too petty, too lost in their corrupt ways of life to see the truth behind her purpose… freedom for us. A world where we could live without the need for Sleep, where we were able to roam the streets once more.
Society had lost its way, and it was time for us to begin reshaping it.
The Lady raised her hands, and the Light that gathered on her palms was so powerful, I knew it was invisible to the average eye. It collected, growing in strength, two charged balls that could rain hell down on any living creature—be they immortal or not. She threw them in a slicing motion, one that reminded me of the days when I’d tossed stones so that they would skim across the very lake where I’d met the Lady the first time.
When I’d learned my true purpose.
The move was so similar that it dragged me back to that moment, where, in the depth of a forest in the middle of a chilly, English autumnal day, my life had changed.
In one fell swoop, I’d gone from the son of a King, the heir to a throne, to understanding what I was. Who I was. And, more importantly, who I was born to be.
I swallowed, watching as one ball of light skimmed around the room in a shape that followed the path of Elayne’s magic, which had forced the councilors onto the ground. For a second, nothing happened as she skimmed the second ball, and then, as though gravity had been suspended for a second, only for it to kick in once more, the councilors’ heads tumbled off, separating from their necks, and rolling back with a discomforting schlap sound that had Morgana—the sick bitch—giggling in amusement.
With the councilors gone, their reign of corruption no more, I breathed a sigh of relief. The men at our sides, the Cavalry, would take their place again, and the dawn of a new age would begin.
I almost smiled from satisfaction at a task that was a thousand years in the making coming to fruition, filling me with a joy I hadn’t felt in too long.
“Are they dead?” Morgause’s child croaked, but I ignored the words, ignored everything as I stared at the culmination of a millennia’s planning.
And then my joy, my hopes and aspirations, withered and burned.
He was of my ilk, one of my children, so when he twisted to peer out the window and triggered his powers, I felt them stir to life as he connected with the sun, using it to ground him, to gather strength for what he was about to do.
I froze for a second, as panic at his audacity overwhelmed me before rage overtook that. I
threw down a bolt of my own power. A pure blast that should have knocked him off his feet, that should have charred him into a pile of ash, but instead, it did nothing.
As light gathered around him, the Lady, well aware of what he was about, tried to put a stop to his shenanigans, but shadows began to spill from his pores.
The four of us gaped at him then. Having never seen anything like that before, I let my own powers drop as I tried to process what I was even seeing.
The light had revealed the shadows that tainted him, and Morgana whispered, “No. He is tainted, to be true.”
The taint went soul deep, and it covered him in a shell that stopped the Lady’s Light from penetrating him, and it protected him from my wrath.
As my sisters understood what was happening, I watched them focus their attention on the other brothers, their intention to smite the lot of them, and wipe them out to stop the one called Cade from drawing on the sun, from twisting back time.
But just as I felt them grab hold of their children, it was too late.
And what had been destined to come to pass, what had been a thousand years in the making, was suddenly no more.
12
Raven
There were days when I felt like I’d seen it all. When, truly, I thought nothing could surprise me.
Humans thought they were so interesting, so unique and riveting with their petty ways and infinite methods of destroying the Earth around them, but they were the same fuckwits they’d always been.
Whether armed with a sword or a Molotov cocktail, there was one single thread that united the folk of the Sires’ time to those roaming the world today—destruction.
No matter what they did, no matter how advanced they were, humans were endlessly destructive. Death seemed to fascinate them. The myriad ways they could make people suffer was another pastime.
And yet, even as I felt so fucking apathetic with the dullness of the universe, Marcella had been sent to me.
Every day, she was a miracle.
A miracle which shook me up and set us apart from the rest of the monotonous endlessness.
But today? On a day where the shit was doing more than simply hitting the fan, but was exploding with a fallout worse than Chernobyl?
I might have appreciated a smidgen of that monotony.
When light burst free from every single one of my mate’s pores, I felt certain that was the end of her. I thought it was the end of me too. As well as my brothers.
That kind of energy? No one could survive it, not even my mate who seemed pretty damn impervious to damage. But it wasn’t Marcella who died. Nor was it me or my brothers or even Darius, the fuckwit.
It was the council.
Even as I felt certain I should be blinded by the light, even while the council quivered and covered their eyes to shield themselves from something that was barely making me squint, their heads were no longer there.
It took me a second to figure out what the fuck had happened.
Had I had a blackout or something?
But no.
Where once there were a dozen miserable pompous faces staring back at me, now there were none.
For a second, I could do nothing more than gape at them, gape at the men and women who’d been sneering at me just a handful of minutes ago.
“Are they dead?” Barclay croaked, and I twisted to look at him, relieved he looked as fucking stunned as I felt.
“Yes, they are no longer with us,” Marcella whispered, but she was standing now, and in her eyes, there was no hint of the woman I loved. The female who was my other fucking half.
There was something inside her, something…
My heart faltered in my chest, and I quickly shot a glance at Morgana, praying to the Maker she was still there and wasn’t fucking with my woman’s mind again. I really didn’t feel like being on the other end of a massacre again.
But even as I was close to swallowing my tongue, Cade whispered, “What the fuck just happened?”
“It’s time for a new council to govern my people,” Marcella stated. In her own way, my woman was confident, but that was nothing compared to the power she was exuding with every dropped word.
There were none of the hesitant smiles, the downcast looks when we glanced at her. Her voice was stronger, strident even.
“Who are you?” I rasped, striding over to her and cupping her face in my hands. When she looked up at me, my thoughts were confirmed and I tried to slip into her mind, tried to figure out what the fuck was going on, but there were shields up.
No shields that I’d ever come across before, and I’d managed to slip into the Mother of the Pursangs’ mind. I knew what shields fucking looked like.
A hand touched my shoulder, and even though I didn’t turn my head, I knew it was Keiran. On the other side, I felt Cade touch me too, and suddenly, the three of us were united.
United against Marcella.
She’d never shown me how to unite our powers, but I could remember the tendrils that had stirred when we’d awoken Arthur. I clasped onto them with all my might and tried to force my way inside.
“What do you think you’re doing, little mouse?”
Morgause’s command had me shuddering, but I ignored her and remained focused on my mate. Marcella’s gaze shifted behind me, and I knew that what would have had another pursang down on their knees as I used the mental equivalent of a pneumatic drill on her shields, wasn’t affecting her at all.
That truly terrified me.
How was she keeping me out?
“All will be well, Child,” Marcella drawled, her focus on Morgause, not on us.
Since when was Morgause Marcella’s child?
Before I could do little else than panic, like a vacuum, my powers were sucked from me. At first, I thought it was Marcella. Thought that whatever or whoever she was at that moment was robbing me of the gifts I’d been born with. Then I recognized the ‘taste,’ the essence, and knew it was Cade.
We were connected, united in a way we’d never been thanks to my attempt to draw us together, using the pathway that Marcella had created for us a week ago, and because of that, I saw him turn toward the window, his gaze on the sun as he drew on the star’s powers, felt time slow down.
Around us, chaos reigned.
The Cavalry tried to attack us but Barclay, Darius, and Gideon held them off. I could sense the druid’s powers in the air, flavoring every breath I took, but its tang was different. Darker, somehow, and I sensed his pain as he used his gifts. There was the scent of blood, too, and a wolf was most definitely snarling in the near distance. But like a bubble, I was kept away from it. Contained and cordoned off by what Cade was doing.
Each second slowed so that a roar from Barclay could have lasted minutes and not seconds. A punch wasn’t a split-second decision but went on for what felt like forever.
I could feel each millisecond as time decelerated, and then I felt it speed up again. Like on a DVD player, when you hit rewind several times so that you jumped through a dozen scenes instead of merely one.
I had no choice but to stay connected to Cade, no choice but to remain there, channeling my power to him. I knew Keiran was the same. We were both lost to Cade’s will, and I was fine with that.
He may not have been the most sensible brother in the group, but he had his head firmly on his shoulders, and while he might be shadow tainted, that was nothing to whatever the fuck had just possessed Marcella.
When we were spat back out again into Darius’s townhouse, Cade finally released his hold on us, and we staggered away, and exhaustion made me sink to my knees. Keiran fell back on the sofa and Cade slumped into the armchair in front of the fire in the salon.
The wolf blinked, his snarl dying as he realized we were safe. Away from the Sires and their minions. Gideon’s runes ceased their glowing and the scent of ozone that always appeared when he was using his gifts dissipated as he ceased relying on Mother Earth for her aid. Darius’s hands dropped from what I recognized as a
Krav Maga stance, leaving only Marcella looking like she’d been torn through the annals of time with all the damage that had avoided us.
Darius reached for her as she started to swoon, and I helped, grabbing her legs and trying to prop her upright even though I didn’t have much stuffing in my muscles either.
As I gathered her to me, with Darius at her back, she whimpered, “The Lady is coming,” before she passed out.
Cade grunted. “Marcella’s wrong.”
Barclay, now back in his skin, dragged a hand through his hair as he looked at the disheveled scene we all made. “Why is she?”
He cut the shifter a look. “The Lady has already come.”
* * *
Darius
“What the fuck just happened?” Gideon blurted out, his hands tearing through his hair like his follicles were the only thing he could control at that moment.
I didn’t blame him for sounding confused, I was just as lost, and Cade talking like he knew exactly what was going down didn’t fill me with confidence. If anything, it pissed me off.
“The Light claimed Marcella,” Cade rasped, brow furrowing.
“Why did you bring us back in time?” Barclay inquired gruffly. “The Light is good, isn’t it?”
“Anything that can decapitate over twenty people in one fell swoop isn’t good,” I argued, rubbing my hand over my face. My eyes were starting to ache, and that was nothing compared to the rest of my body.
The Cavalry had aimed their punches well, but their hits hadn’t hurt until the adrenaline was starting to wear off. Now? I felt fucking wrecked.
Cade nodded at my words. “Exactly. But whether it’s good or bad, at least now, we’ll be able to take a breath and think about what’s about to happen. We’re not just going to walk into this situation blindly.”